“I do not know what see-gee-eye means.”
“You expect me to accept you are Jane Austen. The writer who lived two hundred years ago.”
“Yes?” Jane replied. “As I have said.”
“The novelist who wrote Northanger Abbey. The ambitious and doomed film adaptation of which I am now acting in.”
“While I’ve comprehended little of what you have said, I am nevertheless compelled to answer yes.”
“And you arrived here how?”
“I said a spell, and—”
“The witch, the cabbages, et cetera,” Sofia said, waving a hand. “That is all true?”
“Yes.”
“When you appeared in the curtain. What happened to you?”
“Difficult to say,” Jane replied. “It was similar to the thing that occurred with my book.”
“The dust particles and the disappearing?”
“Yes,” Jane said.
Sofia nodded. “You are not an actress? Not an avatar?”
“I do not believe so.”
“You are not a cartoon?”
“Not that I am aware.” It dawned on Jane then that during the entirety of their short acquaintance, Sofia Wentworth had comprehended a different version of events from the real one. “You did not believe me before?” Jane asked her. “When I said my name is Jane Austen?”
“I thought you were an actress!” Sofia said. “A poorly trained one,” she added.
“Do you believe me now?”
Sofia drained the goblet. Jane waited for an answer.
“What I want to believe is that you are a performer, sent to trip me up, whom I instead planned to maneuver into making me look good on camera and somehow wrangle my husband back. I hoped your appearance out of thin air, and your book’s disappearing act, were tricks of the theater.” Sofia sighed.
“Here’s the thing. It was so strange when it happened. Dust became a person. Excuse me for a moment.” Sofia got up and located a second bottle of wine. She opened it and filled her goblet again. Then she opened the front door. Jane peered after her. Sofia squinted at the sky and tipped the glass to her lips. She swallowed and gulped. Jane thought she might pass out about halfway through, when she seemed to choke and stop breathing, but then she resumed her gulping once more and drained the goblet. She returned inside.
“To summarize. You are Jane Austen. You cast a spell you got from a witch and disappeared from your own time, then reappeared here in a pile of curtains. Stop me if I have left anything out.”
Jane made no remark.
“Are there any disadvantages to me if I cease disbelieving you, and accept this story as truth?”
“I see only advantages to you believing me,” Jane said.
Sofia nodded. She stood and cleared her throat. “On behalf of everyone, welcome to the twentieth century, Jane Austen.”
“I believe this is the twenty-first century?”
“Right. What are your plans while you are here?” Sofia asked.
“To find a way to return home,” Jane answered.
“Makes sense.” Sofia shrugged. “Now we have that answered, we arrive at the next question.”
“What is that?” Jane said.
“Why did a novel, written by you, disappear into thin air?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sofia led Jane out of the house and began walking toward the center of Bath.
“Where are we going?” Jane asked as Sofia strode down the road ahead of her.
“To gather more clues,” Sofia replied. “Hurry up.” She walked even faster.
“You move remarkably well for a woman who recently consumed a bottle of wine,” Jane called after her, shaking her head.
“Thank you,” Sofia said with a nod. “A talent of mine.” Jane caught up to her. “My husband, Jack, is your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great . . . something, by the way,” Sofia said as they turned down Railway Street. “How many ‘greats’ was that?”
“Eight,” Jane replied.
“That’s not right,” Sofia said.
“How many ‘greats’ should there be?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know. Not eight. Anyway, he is your relative.”
Jane stiffened. “Am I to understand a relative of mine, a descendant, my flesh and blood, walks this earth?”
“Yep. He’s handsome, too,” Sofia replied.
“He is a descendant of my immediate family? The Austens of Hampshire?”
“The very same. He’s related to you, Jane. That’s the whole point. He has thirty of your letters in a shoebox in our attic in London.”
“I do not understand. Your husband has my letters in his possession? Why?”
“His mother left them to him. They’re collector’s items.”
Jane reveled in the thought. “Whose child is he? Rather, from whom is he descended?” Was this her great-grandson? Was she destined to return to her own time to marry and bear a child, who through generations of careful marriage and breeding would produce a handsome descendant named Jack? Who was she destined to marry, then?
“James, I think?” Sofia replied.
“Yes,” Jane said with a disappointed nod. “I have a brother named James. I see.”
“Jack is your great-great-great—et cetera—nephew, I believe,” Sofia said.
Jane felt deflated. Still, it did not mean there weren’t others. “Is there any resemblance between us? May I meet him?”
“Who?”
“Your husband,” Jane said. “Does he live here in Bath?”
“No. We are separated,” Sofia said. She swallowed and gazed at the ground.
“Oh,” Jane said with horror. “I am sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Sofia said. Jane caught a look of turmoil on Sofia’s face before she turned away. It was a complex expression, one of both hope and pain. Jane could not respond. She had never met anyone whose marriage had ceased to be. She knew plenty of persons who remained roped to another human in misery, infidelity, and hatred, yes, but no one who had abandoned the marital bed, or whose spouse had deserted them. “Perhaps you can come to set, where they’re filming the movie?” Sofia said. She seemed to force her face into a smile. “It’s your novel. Jack will be there.”
“Mov-ie?”
“Like a theater production, but fancier.”
Jane felt so overcome with delight, confusion, and intrigue that she needed to sit down again. “I might like to see that,” she said.
THE TWO WOMEN
