Jane inhaled and gripped the book tighter. She scoured her brain for a suitable reply. “Perhaps I read it. I must have forgotten.”
“Every child in England who completes A-level English reads some Austen, I believe.”
Every child in England. Jane stared at him.
“I daresay a great many children in the States, too.”
“The States?”
“America,” he replied.
Jane stared at him again until her eyes grew dry from the lack of blinking. Her position in this new world, in the bookshop even, took on a new dimension. Just how many people were aware of her? How many people read her novels?
Jane closed the book and read the cover once more. What was this “pride and prejudice” of the title? She was dying to know what she had written. Had she changed her style? Perhaps now instead of country farces, she wrote about pirates—proud ones. Was this the reason for her new, widespread fame? She turned to a page and read. She worked her way through a paragraph, then a second. She exhaled.
No new story of pirates greeted her. No new style graced those pages, not even new prose. These were not new words written in some future life, should she ever succeed in returning to her own time; she had read these words many times before. The book she held in her hand told the story of a young woman, spirited and clever, but poor, who rejects a marriage offer from one of the richest men in England because of the low opinion she forms of him when they first meet. It was First Impressions, the novel rejected by Thomas Cadell and incinerated by Mama on the hearth. Somehow the words had made their way to a more sympathetic publisher, or one with better taste. They resonated enough that they were now taught in schools. A rush of what she could only describe as fire coursed through her veins.
Lord knew what George made of all this. He was unlikely to deduce the person holding the battered little tome was the time-slipping author of the words inside it. Instead, he likely saw a woman breathing and sighing and stepping backward and forward on the carpet. “Do you like it? It’s yours,” he said.
“I could not possibly,” Jane replied.
“I think you must,” he said. “Anyone who has a reaction like that to a book must keep it forever. I insist.”
Jane scanned the other titles on the shelf. A Collected Works of Shakespeare sat next to The Theban Plays by Sophocles; The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer took the position to the other side of her own novel. Jane shook her head. Her books sat beside giants. The time had arrived for more sighing and carpet-pacing.
“I have others by Austen,” George said. He selected another title from the shelf: Mansfield Park.
Jane again selected a page and devoured it in a breath. If possible, this novel presented more excitement than the last. She observed at once her own style as she read: her phrasing and quips bounced off the page, so different from the earnest adventures and romances of her contemporaries, whom she tried to emulate, but always found her own stubborn words fighting through. But while she recognized her style, she did not know this story. The tale told of a young woman, Fanny, who was clever but again poor and lived as some sort of ward with rich relations. Jane read three pages in quick succession. She sat down to see what she would write, settling in to consume the book.
“Cup of tea?” George said. “I’m so delighted to have such a great reader in the shop.”
Jane smiled in acceptance. What a thrill to read something she had not yet written. She turned back to the first page and began:
About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park . . .
As the words entered her mind, she closed the book as quickly as she had opened it. She put the book back on the shelf and stood.
“Are you all right, Jane?” George said. Jane stared at the floor. This was a thrill she could do without. How could she be reading something she had not yet written? This was no good. To sit there and congratulate herself on a book she had not yet slaved over was not only hubris, it was dangerous. There was but one way out of this: she needed to find the way back to her own time, so she could write this book. Jane handed George the novel.
“You don’t want the Austen?” he said.
She shook her head politely, then sifted a piece of paper from her pocket. “Do you know this place, sir?”
George read the address. “EC2? I know it.”
“Is there another way I could arrive there, rather than walking?”
“Yes. If you’re game.”
Jane beamed. “How?”
“You can take the tube.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sofia walked onto set. A grip smiled as she walked past, to her delight, and a production assistant nodded hello and showed her to the sound stage. She had to break herself away from their approving smiles, however, when she spotted the man she had loved from almost the first moment she saw him, sitting on the other side of the room.
Seated in his director’s chair, Jack wore a look of concentration on his face as he read the day’s rehearsal sides. She studied him. Five months apart had not tarnished his leading-man bone structure, and his full head of hair remained, even though he was approaching his midforties. He looked more like a film star than a director. He should be reclining in a private jet dressed in a tuxedo rather than sitting on set, wearing a beige utility shirt. Sofia breathed in. This would be the best part of her day, before he saw her. She could watch his beautiful face and pretend for a second they were still together, about to meet up and go for coffee. She
