The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

reminiscent of carriage wheels rolling over crushed gravel boomed in her ear.

“What the hell are you doing up here? This is a restricted area. No visitors!”

Her face reddening, Eliza whirled about and found herself face-to-face with an imposing, iron-haired, middle-aged woman built like an oil drum. The woman was blocking the entrance to the alcove with her thick body and glaring at her quarry like a hungry cat that’s just discovered a parakeet in its litter box. The corners of her razor-thin mouth were turned down almost to her jowls and she was in the process of raising a cell phone in one stubby hand, doubtless to call Security.

Realizing that she was trapped, Eliza quickly scrutinized the woman, assessing the chances of bowling her over and making a run for it. Then her eyes fell on the plastic library ID badge clipped to the lapel of the woman’s shapeless gray suit and Eliza breathed a sigh of relief.

“Dr. Klein,” she said, smiling as brightly as possible under the awkward circumstances. “My name is Eliza Knight and you’re just the person I wanted to see—”

Thelma Klein slowly lowered the cell phone and rolled her slightly bulging blue eyes ceilingward. “Oh God, not another one!” she groaned, stepping out of the alcove and pointing back toward the stairway. “You’ll have to make an appointment.”

“You don’t make appointments,” Eliza countered, standing her ground. “Which means you won’t actually see me.”

That prompted a thin smile from the portly researcher. “Very good!” she said grumpily. “You’re a regular genius! Good-bye now.” She started to move forward, intent on entering the lab, but now it was Eliza who blocked the way.

“I have some documents that I think you’ll find very interesting—” she began.

Thelma Klein raised a chubby hand to stop her explanation. “Wait! Don’t tell me,” she said sarcastically, “let me guess. You went to an estate sale and bought a genuine copy of the Declaration of Independence. Now you just want my lab to authenticate it so you can sell it for a million bucks. Is that it?”

“No! That is not it!” Eliza responded, injecting an equal measure of venom into her tone. She fumbled in her purse for the letters and thrust them at the other woman. “I discovered these letters last night and I thought they might be important. I learned about your Jane Austen exhibit and I came here hoping you could give me some advice.” Eliza softened her tone slightly as she added, “I’ve already tried researching the Internet.”

Thelma Klein grimaced and wagged her big head in disapproval. “The Internet,” she growled. “What made you think you could learn anything from that soulless monstrosity dedicated to reducing the power and majesty of the written word to moronic babbling? I hate the damn Internet!”

Leaning forward until their noses were almost touching, the big woman lowered her basso voice yet another octave. “You want some advice from me?” she rumbled. “Go home to your computer and smash it with a sledgehammer, while you still have some semblance of a brain left.”

Before Eliza could think of an adequate response to that, Thelma emitted a deep sigh of defeat and held out her hand. “Okay,” she said, “let me see the letters!”

Eliza silently handed them over. From a hidden recess somewhere in the massive bosom of her jacket the researcher produced a pair of dainty reading glasses with lobster-pink frames and squinted at the letters.

“At first I thought maybe they were some kind of joke,” Eliza explained breathlessly. “But then I couldn’t figure out why anyone would go to the trouble. There was a scrap of old newspaper with them, dated 1810…”

Without taking her eyes from the letters Klein swatted at the air in front of her, the way one wards off a pesky mosquito. “Newspapers,” she snorted. “That’s the oldest trick in the book, honey. Every two-bit junk dealer knows an old newspaper will make the suckers think the stuff with it is old. Now kindly shut up and let me read this.”

Eliza fell silent as the researcher, still reading, pushed past her and opened the door to the lab. The younger woman started to follow but Thelma suddenly turned and blocked the doorway. “Come back tomorrow afternoon, late,” she ordered.

A protest rose in Eliza’s throat but Thelma cut her off with a reassuring smile that completely transformed the older woman’s forbidding visage. “Don’t worry,” she said warmly, “your letters will be safe with me. I’m going to have to run a lot of tests,” she explained, “and it’s going to take time. But you have my word I won’t let these letters out of my sight.”

Thelma Klein’s smile broadened. “Now, if you’ll just wait here a minute,” she said, “I’ll have my secretary make color copies of the letters for you and I’ll sign a receipt confirming that they’re your property and that you’ve entrusted them to the library for authentication.”

“Th—thank you,” Eliza stammered, overwhelmed by this sudden turnabout in the other woman’s demeanor. “I really do appreciate this very much, Dr. Klein.”

“It’s Thelma,” Klein replied.

She held up the old letters like a sheaf of worthless junk bonds. “And don’t thank me yet,” she smiled. “If you went to Vegas the smart money would tell you these letters of yours are probably as phony as Madonna’s eyelashes.”

Chapter 7

“I think you should forget about this whole Jane Austenthing and stay focused on your work. You’ve been doing okay with the online gallery, but your property taxes are coming up pretty soon and I’d like to see you sock another few thousand into your IRA before the end of the year.”

Exactly as in her dream of the night before, Eliza was sitting at a scratched Formica table in a neighborhood deli and Jerry was occupying the seat on the other side of the table. Instead of a salad he was consuming a pallid chicken breast, but just as in the dream he was dispensing dry financial advice, completely unable to grasp the romance of the letters.

Following her trip to the library that morning Eliza had excitedly called Jerry and asked him to meet her for dinner this evening. She had been anxious to share with him the news of Thelma Klein’s unexpected decision to examine the letters.

Jerry’s response to her announcement, however, had been less than enthusiastic and for the past twenty minutes he had been taking every opportunity to pour cold water on her carefully nurtured hopes and dreams for what he was now derisively calling her “Jane Austen thing.”

“Jerry, researching the letters isn’t going to do anything to my business one way or the other,” Eliza interrupted defensively. “In fact, now that Thelma’s taken over, there’s not much else for me to do but wait, so I don’t see the problem.”

Jerry frowned his most serious accountant’s frown and squinted at her through the panes of his gleaming round lenses. “The problem as I see it,” he said, “isn’t the research time, but all the emotional energy you’re putting into this thing that you consider romantic. It’s all what-if stuff, not real.”

Eliza nodded sullenly. “Well what if the letters turn out to be genuine?” she replied, trying hard to keep the emotion out of her voice and failing miserably. “Oh, I know Dr. Klein said the letters are probably phony. But if you’d seen the look in her eyes, Jerry…I think she believes they are real. And if they are,” she concluded on a practical note, “I imagine that they could turn out to be quite valuable.”

Jerry started polishing his glasses with a paper napkin, a sure sign that he was about to deliver another lecture. “You don’t fool me, Eliza,” he said. “If those letters should prove to be real— although from what you’ve told me that seems highly unlikely—I’ll admit that they might actually be worth something.” He paused to fix her with his version of a piercing gaze. “But that’s not what you’re really interested in at all, is it?”

“Well, of course, I’m interested—” she began.

“What you’re really interested in,” he interrupted, waving away her denial, “is whether or not old whatshisname, the guy from that book—”