The singular ray of English sun dropped behind the horizon. A breeze blew and made Jane shiver; she buttoned the coat Sofia had given her. “All right,” she said.
“All right?” Sofia turned to her.
“Take me home,” Jane said.
“Truly?” Sofia said. She took Jane’s hand and kissed it, then wiped a tear. “You could take Fred with you?”
Jane sat back into the bench. She thought of Fred. He had not come looking for her, despite her being gone for hours. Sofia must have said something to him to make him stay away. She wondered what Sofia had told him: a kind lie to keep him in ignorance, at least for a little while longer, or the truth, perhaps.
“I could not,” Jane said.
“No,” replied her friend. They walked home as the gray sun set over the hills of Bath.
RETURNING TO THE old rules made the best tactic. Jane stayed indoors as before and risked no further contamination by the modern-day world. She felt awkward remaining under Fred’s roof, but there was no remedy for that. She avoided him as much as was possible without seeming rude. It broke her heart to conceal her plans from him, to act like all was well when secretly she intended to leave him, but she and Sofia had agreed that telling him anything would only hamper their plans; he might try to stop them. Everything was done to ensure the chance of her returning home.
“You need to accept that the damage might already be done,” Sofia told her. “It may already be too late to get you back to 1803.” She collected her bag and walked to the door.
Jane nodded. “What are you going to do?” Jane asked.
“Impose on a person who deserves better,” Sofia said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Sofia waited in front of the University of Bristol’s main library. “Hi, Dave,” she said as he walked past her to enter the building.
Dave swung around. “What are you doing here?” He didn’t smile.
“I need your help,” Sofia said.
“Sorry, no can do,” he replied, and ran inside.
“I need your help, Dave. Please!” She ran after him.
“No way. I called you about a hundred times and you never answered. You can’t do that to people.”
“It was not a hundred times,” Sofia called. “It was a significant number. I’m sorry.”
“You are a rude person!”
He went into an area with a sign that read Library Staff Only. Sofia waited. He didn’t come out. Sofia walked into the staff-only area and hit Dave with the door on the way through. He seemed to have been standing there watching but pretending not to. He now pretended to make a cup of tea.
“Dave. I behaved poorly.”
“I believed you when no one did. When you told me Jane Austen was living with you—no proof, no nothing. Makes me some kind of idiot. But I believed you.”
“I know.”
“Do you know how many phone calls I made to Sotheby’s to try to get that letter for you? I spoke to a man in a bow tie.”
“I’m sorry. Can you call him again?” Sofia looked at him beseechingly. Dave blustered and fumed and spilled the tea all over the laminate counter. “You did not deserve it. But now Jane needs your help.”
He harrumphed and shook his head. “Sorry, no can do.”
“Okay, answer me one question, and I’ll leave.”
“Go ahead,” he said, a little too quickly.
“If Jane Austen had to choose between the heart and the pen, what would she do?”
He sighed. “You are a cunning woman. I go weak for literary hypotheticals.”
“I thought you might. How do you answer?”
He put the tea down. “I think, for a time, she chooses the heart,” Dave said, crossing his arms. “But then, with great sadness, I think the pen.” Sofia bowed her head. “What’s happened?” he asked.
“As you have said,” Sofia replied in a sad voice. “She chooses the pen.”
Dave leaned back on the counter, nodding thoughtfully.
“She wants to return to 1803,” Sofia said. “I only hope it’s not too late to help her. You said Mrs. Sinclair wrote Jane a letter in 1810. Where is it?”
They returned to the stacks. They sought out the Sotheby’s book once more. Dave turned to the page and gasped. “It’s gone.” He pointed for Sofia. He told the truth. The entry detailing Mrs. Sinclair’s letter was no longer on the page. “I can’t believe it! This is the correct page.”
“Welcome to my world,” Sofia said.
“Why is it gone?” he asked.
“Returned any Jane Austen books to the shelves lately, Dave?”
He looked upward, as though trying to remember. “Come to think of it, no.”
“Do you know anything about time travel?”
“I may have read one or two things on the subject.” He coughed and shifted his feet. Sofia waited for him to think, to catch up. His face fell. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Jane has fallen in love with my brother. She has accepted his marriage proposal.”
“If she marries your brother and stays here, she never goes back to write her books. They’ve vanished.”
“Yup. And the letters?”
“She’s not Jane Austen anymore. She’s not famous. Her letters, her personal correspondence, they’re not valued or of historical importance. No one has collected them. They’re gone.”
Sofia sat down next to him. “What can we do? Does any chance exist we can still get her back?”
“I don’t know.” He scratched his head.
“Is this bad?” Sofia asked.
“It’s not good,” he said. “Wait a minute. How come I still remember Jane Austen if no one else does? Her books are gone, the films adapted from her books are gone.”
“Even the woman at the library didn’t remember her,” Sofia added.
“Right. No one else remembers her. But we do. Why?”
Sofia nodded. “We’re exempt, somehow. Because we know her.”
Dave stood up. “Maybe I can help. But I need more information.”
“About Jane?” Sofia asked. He nodded. Sofia grabbed his arm. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s someone I want
