The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

Shooting Darcy a final hostile look she closed her fist over the scrap of paper and stiffly acknowledged his formal bow with an abrupt inclination of her chin.

A moment later Edward’s carriage rolled to a stop before the steps. Simmons, the groom, helped Jane and Cassandra into the closed landau and then climbed up to the driver’s seat. With a cluck to the horses the coach rumbled away. Jane looked back to see Darcy slowly waving to her from the portico.

“Obnoxious man!” she hissed under her breath. “I do not think I have ever known a more arrogant and disagreeable person than Mr. Darcy.”

“Do you not, Jane?”

Jane looked up to see Cassandra regarding her with a stony countenance. “Surely you cannot believe I was deceived by that pitiful charade of the gloves,” Cassandra said.

“I cannot imagine what you mean,” Jane replied, fidgeting with her bag.

Cassandra sighed tolerantly. “Jane, I saw Darcy put that note into your hand a moment ago.”

When no reply was forthcoming Cassandra pointed to her sister’s tightly closed fist. “Well,” she demanded, “are you going to read it?”

Defeated, Jane unfolded the note and held it up to the dim light of a carriage lamp to read the few hurriedly scrawled lines. “The insufferable Mr. Darcy writes that he wishes urgently to see me. At midnight,” she reported to her stunned sister. “Further, he specifies that he will be waiting in the small wood behind Chawton Cottage, and that I am to come to him alone.”

“The wood? Alone at midnight!” Cassandra’s utter disbelief at what she was hearing was reflected in her hoarse whisper. “Surely the man is demented.”

Jane considered her sister’s shocked statement for several seconds and it slowly dawned on her that Cass mistakenly believed that Darcy’s intentions toward her were of a romantic nature.

“Yes, he must be mad,” she replied with an enigmatic smile. “For the grass is certain to be damp at that hour of the night and I shall probably catch my death.”

The already scandalized Cass nearly choked. “Jane, have you, too, taken leave of your senses?” she gasped. “You cannot actually be thinking of going out to meet him.”

“I can and I must,” Jane declared, and wondering idly what Darcy’s lips would feel like pressed to her own, she felt her pulse beginning to race as Cass spluttered indignantly.

“But why, Jane? You have said yourself that you despise this man.”

Jane, who was by now playing to her sister’s obvious discomfort, waved her off with an angry flick of her gloves. “Oh, Cass,” she said irritably, “do not ask me any more about it. I shall explain everything to you later. Tonight, though, I must meet with the cocksure Mr. Darcy.”

Obviously injured by this abrupt rebuff, and certain that her younger sister was plotting a dangerous liaison with the handsome American, Cass herself turned irritable. “Well, I think you are behaving very stupidly indeed,” she proclaimed, sniffing loudly. “Such romantic foolhardiness as you intend may occasionally be overlooked in very young girls who are not yet sensible of the world, but you have long since passed that age.”

Jane nodded in acknowledgment of the harshly stated fact and turned her face to the shadowy landscape rolling past the window. For even in girlhood she had experienced precious few romantic adventures. “Of that you need not remind me, sister,” she said regretfully.

“And what of your reputation?” Cassandra pressed on, more intent now on pointing out the sheer folly of a clandestine tryst with Darcy than she was sympathetic to Jane’s emotional state.

Jane laughed bitterly. “Cass, an unmarried woman’s reputation is valued only by her prospective husbands,” she retorted bitterly. “And, as I have no such prospects, my reputation can be neither improved nor greatly damaged by meeting with Mr. Darcy.”

Looking out at the clear, star-filled sky, Jane gradually became aware of the small smile that was creeping across her scowling features. For, despite the circumstances under which the despicable Mr. Darcy had intimidated her into accepting the terms of his outrageous meeting, she suddenly realized that she was quite enjoying Cass’s mistaken conviction that she and the presumptuous American were about to become lovers.

“At least there’s a good moon out tonight,” she cheerfully observed, this last bold remark deliberately calculated to further her poor sister’s scandalous impression.

As the coach rolled on through the night Jane occupied herself by conjuring up a wicked vision of Darcy’s lean body lying in her bed and imagining the words he might speak if they were lovers in fact.

The moon was almost directly overhead by the time Simmons led Lord Nelson out of the stables and walked him over to Darcy. Pleading a headache, and anxious to avoid another confrontation with the irascible Captain Austen, Darcy had earlier declined Edward’s offer of a nightcap and had instead retired to his room upstairs immediately after the other guests had departed.

Fully clothed he had waited in the darkness until shortly before midnight, then crept through the silent house and down to the stables to get his horse. To his great surprise he had found Simmons awake and waiting for him.

“Do mind the ground now, sir,” the young groom cautioned as he placed Lord Nelson’s reins in Darcy’s hand. Simmons affectionately patted the black horse’s nose. “Easy for him to step in a hole in the dark.”

Darcy took the reins and placed them over Lord Nelson’s neck. “Thanks, I’ll be careful, Simmons.”

He paused, trying to read the groom’s expression in the dim light. “How did you know I would be going out tonight?”

Simmons grinned, exposing a row of even white teeth. “I guessed you might be off to meet a lady, sir,” the youngster tactfully ventured. “It’s what many gentlemen do of an evening.”

He gave Darcy a knowing wink. “Even my good master sometimes went out riding of a night, when Mrs. Austen was close to her confinement,” Simmons confided. “Master Edward says a gent must not impose too much on the ladies at such times, if you take my meaning, sir.”

Darcy nodded without commenting, amazed at how casually and openly the matter of marital infidelity was treated in this very early part of the nineteenth century. But then, he reminded himself, the sexually repressive Victorian age still lay several decades in the future.

“Your master seems a very good man,” Darcy finally offered by way of a noncommittal reply. For though he was anxious to be on his way, he did not wish to offend the talkative groom, who might easily report this midnight adventure to Edward.

Simmons’s head bobbed enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, sir,” he declared. “All that’s in his service will tell you there’s no kinder gentleman than Mr. Edward. For didn’t he let his two poor sisters have Chawton Cottage for themselves and their old mother,” Simmons went on, obviously reciting a well-worn tidbit of village gossip, “when most men in his position would’ve made the unmarried ones live up here in the Great House where they’d have nothing of their own and never a moment of privacy.”

Simmons hesitated. His canny eyes darted up to the darkened windows of the silent manor house and there was a note of warning in his next words. “Now Captain Austen, he’s a different sort of man altogether from his brothers Edward and Henry,” he continued. “The captain’s very protectful of his sisters, and he’s got a fearful temper, sir.”

Darcy acknowledged the groom’s well-intentioned counsel with a grateful smile. “You don’t miss very much that goes on around here, do you Simmons?”

Simmons winked. “You just leave the horse in his paddock when you return, sir,” he said. “I’ll see to him for you.” He watched Darcy mount Lord Nelson and ride slowly away into the moonlit night.

Keeping to the soft grass at the edge of the drive, Darcy rode silently past the lawns and gardens and out through the gates of Chawton Great House. When the tall chimneys of the mansion had disappeared behind the hedgerows he guided Lord Nelson onto the narrow dirt road and urged the black horse to a brisk canter. Though the ride to Chawton Cottage was a short one, he did not want to keep Jane waiting any longer than necessary.

Jane. Recalling the angry look she had given him when he had placed the note into her hand, Darcy grimaced. He was uneasy with himself for attempting to force her into a meeting that he knew would be distasteful and possibly even dangerous to her and wondered if she would be there. But he was growing more desperate by