The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

“Are you referring to Darcy?” Eliza intoned coldly.

Jerry nodded, stripping a piece of chicken from the undercooked breast and popping it into his mouth. “Darcy,” he repeated, swallowing. “All you’re really interested in is whether or not this Darcy character was sleeping with Jane Austen.”

“Who said anything about her sleeping with him?” Eliza angrily retorted. “I only said they may have written to one another.”

“Whatever!” Jerry shrugged to show that in his mind it really made no difference whether Darcy and Jane Austen were platonic lovers or depraved sex fiends. “The point is,” he said with forced patience, “it all happened two hundred years ago, if it happened at all. So who cares?”

“I care,” Eliza said. “Yes, you’re absolutely right, Jerry. I care.”

“See,” he said, pointing his fork at her in triumph. “I can read you like a book, Eliza,” he added with maddening smugness. “And all I’m saying is that you need to be careful about how much time and emotional energy you invest in this sentimental stuff.” Jerry paused to stab another piece of chicken. “You need to manage your time wisely, give priority to the really important things that you need to be doing.”

Eliza abruptly placed her napkin on the table and got to her feet. “You know, Jerry, I think you’re absolutely right,” she agreed. “Now, I’d better be going.”

“Going? Where?” Jerry demanded. “You haven’t even finished your smoked-salmon platter yet.”

She smiled and picked up her bag. “You just reminded me of something important that I have to do,” she replied. “And, as you’ve just pointed out, the important things should get first priority.”

He squinted up at her in confusion. “But I, uh, thought we’d probably go back to your place after dinner and…You know, have a little ‘romantic evening,’” he whimpered like a whipped puppy.

Eliza actually heard the quotes around the romantic evening part and knew that romance was not what he had in mind. “Romance? No, no, no…That would be a terrible waste of time, don’t you think?”

His mouth fell open, revealing an unattractive view of half-chewed chicken.

“’Bye now,” Eliza said, leaning to deliver a quick kiss to his forehead. “Don’t forget to floss.”

Then, before he could reply, she was out the door and hurrying away down the sidewalk, her heels clicking sharply against the pavement.

Fuming, she had wanted to slap the silly grin off his face when he’d said he knew her like a book. Yeah, well it was evident that he’d never gotten around to reading this part of the book and he’d certainly skipped over the chapter on romantic evenings or he would have known that a deli sandwich and lecture on her overactive imagination were not the proper prelude to romance.

Why hadn’t she told him that? Because the perfect rebuke seemed to come to mind only later when she was alone and it didn’t matter anymore. Sighing, she supposed it was just another stake in the fence creating the boundary that was Jerry.

Chapter 8

At home alone an hour later, Eliza stood in the middle of her living room, attending to the important task she had assigned herself for the evening. The floor had been carpeted in a layer of newspapers and she was industriously applying a thick, messy “guaranteed” French furniture restorative to the top of the vanity table.

Wickham, who had been banished from the immediate area of the easily tracked brown gunk with threats of “no tuna, ever again,” sat sullenly in a chair watching her with resentful yellow eyes.

Eliza’s muscles grew tired and her hands began to tingle as she lovingly rubbed the cleansing polish deep into the wood. Before long her efforts were rewarded with the warm gleam of natural rosewood slowly emerging from beneath a two hundred year accumulation of grime.

“Oh, isn’t it lovely!” she exclaimed with satisfaction.

Looking up, she caught a glimpse of her comical smudged features in the hazed mirror. And she wondered again, as she had a dozen times since bringing the vanity home the night before, how many other faces before her had looked into those same misty depths.

“Just think, Wickham,” she whispered, pleased with the untouchable mystery of the idea, “this table might have belonged to Jane Austen. Perhaps she even wrote part of Pride and Prejudice right on this very spot that I’m cleaning now.”

If Wickham had any response in mind it was derailed by the sudden bright musical tones of “Mr. Postman” playing from across the room. Annoyed, Eliza wiped her hands on an old T-shirt and glared at the offending computer.

“I thought I’d turned that thing off,” she grumbled, angry with herself for her inability to resist walking over and peeking at the newly arrived message.

“I should have taken Dr. Klein’s advice and smashed this thing,” she complained as she opened her e-mail folder and looked at the new message, which popped onto the screen and sat there seeming to taunt her.

“Wonderful!” she told Wickham, who had interpreted her move to the computer desk as license to leave his chair and jump up on the drawing board. “It’s another e-mail from that weirdo who thinks he’s Mr. Darcy.”

Eliza sat pondering the twisted logic of the e-mail, trying to think of a suitably sarcastic response.

Dear SMARTIST,

Even if it were true, my being a crackpot would have no bearing on whether Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy was a real person.

[email protected]

“Darcy, you are becoming a royal pain in the butt!” Eliza breathed. She took a deep breath, and then began to tap out a swift and angry reply that she hoped would rid her of this pest once and for all.

Much later, despite her bone weariness, her mood vastly improved by a hot shower and the removal of most of the French furniture restorative from her hair and fingernails, Eliza sat before the little vanity table. Smelling faintly of lemon oil it was now gleaming, basking in the moonlight beside her bedroom window.

Dinner with Jerry fleetingly crossed her mind; she shouldn’t really be angry with him, he was who he was and she knew it. The question, of course, was why she continued with anything but the business aspect of their relationship. Especially when there were men out there like… whoever he was at the library: a man who appreciated Jane Austen and the romance of her era. She wondered what such a man would be like to know and felt a touch of regret that she hadn’t even gotten his name.

For a long, silent moment she gazed deeply into the mirror. Then tentatively she touched the cool surface of the glass with her fingertips.

“Hello, Jane!” she whispered, smiling into the haze. “Are you still in there?”

Long after Eliza had retired to her bed to dream of Jane and her mysterious lover the glow of a computer screen once again lit the luxuriously appointed study of the great country house.

Sitting at the desk, the shadowy figure leaned back in the butter-soft leather chair and closed his eyes. Several times since his trip into the city he had found himself thinking of the raven-haired beauty he’d met there. He hadn’t actually met her, since he didn’t even know her name, but he smiled at the memory of the light dancing in her hair. The pleasant thoughts were rudely interrupted by the coarse electronic voice of his computer telling him he had mail.

And once more he found himself gazing at an angry and provocative message from his unknown e-mail correspondent.

Dear DARCY,

I am not interested in you or your silly games.

Please stop bothering me.