The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

of time, if we only knew how. And these same scientists think that sometimes two parts of the path may curve and touch, and that such points may open portals to other times. I believe I accidentally entered into your time through just such a portal,” Darcy concluded, realizing how incredible his explanation must sound to someone from an era when the concept of human flight was still in the realm of fantasy.

Jane, however, did not disappoint him by discounting his theory out of hand. She considered his explanation for several seconds, and then frowned. “If you are a visitor from another time,” she asked, “who is this man Darcy in Virginia, the person my brother thinks you are?”

Darcy smiled. “My ancestor,” he replied, “the founder of Pemberley Farms, which is the estate I own in my time…two hundred years from now.”

“Your own time… two hundred years into the future…” Jane’s composure finally slipped and she buried her face in her hands. “I am sorry, it is too much to comprehend.”

He gently lifted her chin and looked into those beautiful eyes. “Jane, please,” he whispered, “I need you to tell me how to get back to the exact spot where I was thrown from my horse. Maybe the portal is still open and I can step back through to the world I know.”

“And if you cannot?” she asked.

He threw up his hands helplessly, for hers was a frightening question, and one that he had dared not ask himself. “I don’t know,” he said grimly. “I only know I can’t stay here. I beg you to help me.”

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “I shall, of course.”

Relief washed over him. “Then please tell me how to return to the place where I was found.”

“Tomorrow,” she said haltingly. “I will tell you then.”

Jane saw the sudden confusion in his eyes and felt hot blood rushing to her cheeks. “The men who brought you to me said only that you’d been found about a mile from Chawton, nothing more,” she timidly explained.

“What?” He was staring at her in shock. “But you said you knew the place.”

“I was angry,” she told him. “I wished to force you to reveal your secret to me.” She suddenly turned away, unable to bear his look of bitter disappointment.

She murmured, “Please forgive me. But you were so arrogant and deceitful—”

Darcy leaped to his feet and stared down at her. “Deceitful?” he snorted, cutting off her rationalization.

“You spied on me, eavesdropped on my most private conversations… And you lied to me first,” she accused in a tremulous voice. “Tomorrow I shall send for the men who brought you to me and discover from them the location of the place where you fell,” Jane promised.

“That’s just great!” Darcy groaned. “Let’s hope your brother doesn’t decide to put my head on a spike in the meantime. Or have you English given up that lovely practice yet?” he asked sarcastically.

“Has civilization advanced so much in your time that criminals are no longer executed?” she retorted.

“No, I guess not,” he reluctantly admitted. Then, unexpectedly, he found himself grinning. “But our executions are very much neater than yours,” he added lamely.

Realizing that he had made a joke, though a very poor one, Jane began to laugh. “Lord, what a fine dialogue this will make for a new novel,” she told him. “I must make a start on it right away.”

Suddenly mindful of the extreme jeopardy in which he had placed her, Darcy extended a hand to help her up from her seat. “I’m afraid I’ve kept you here far too long,” he apologized. “Please send word to me the moment you’ve located those men.”

“On that you may depend,” she assured him.

Jane reached out to take his hand, but his touch so electrified her that she remained sitting. “Will you not stay yet awhile?” she softly inquired, inviting him with a slight tug of her hand to sit again. “For there is much about your future world that I would like to know.”

Chapter 26

Darcy looked over at Eliza, who was curled up comfortably with her feet beneath her on the gray suede coach seat, listening intently to his every word.

“So she asked me to stay with her and tell her all about the place I came from, and to explain what the future would be like.”

He paused in his narrative to take a sip from his nearly full glass of champagne. Noticing that Eliza’s glass was empty, Darcy retrieved the bottle from its shelf and refilled it for her.

“I did as she asked,” he continued, replacing the bottle on the shelf, “but it wasn’t easy because, if you think about it, for all of its obvious shortcomings her time was still in many ways far more innocent than ours.”

Eliza frowned at that. “It sounds like an awful time,” she said. “A time of wars, slavery, barbaric medical practices…”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, but in 1810,” he continued, “the skies and oceans of the world had not yet been polluted with industrial wastes. Great expanses of unbroken primeval forest still covered much of Europe and North America. There had been no world wars or nuclear bombs. No Hitlers had yet thought of constructing factories for the sole purpose of wiping out entire races of human beings…” Darcy’s voice trailed off.

“So was that how you described the future?” Eliza asked. “World wars and nuclear bombs?”

Darcy smiled and shook his head. “Fortunately, Jane wanted to know about other things, the kinds of things she wrote about. She asked me how society would change, customs, the role of women in the modern world…”

“And love?” Eliza inquired archly.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “love, too.”

Eliza slowly sipped her champagne and gazed thoughtfully into his eyes, wondering. “And what did you tell her, about love, Fitz?”

Darcy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Before I tell you that,” he said, “try to remember that I was speaking to a woman from a world where most women, especially women of her elevated class, were virtual prisoners of men. Generally they entered into loveless marriages based on property and money. Or they simply didn’t marry at all. In fact, something like sixty percent of women in Jane’s circumstances didn’t.”

Eliza’s eyes widened in surprise at the startling statistic, wondering where he had gotten it. But she said nothing.

“And even if an English Regency-era gentlewoman was lucky enough to find a suitable husband,” he continued, “her troubles were often just beginning. In that time and place, women were routinely kept pregnant, bound to their husbands, unable to inherit if there was a potential male heir anywhere in their family line—”

“I don’t think I understand where you’re going with this,” Eliza impatiently interrupted. “What about love? Jane Austen wrote constantly of love.”

Darcy nodded excitedly, thrilled by her evident interest in what he was saying. “Yes, but always she wrote about love as an ideal, an ideal that was only very rarely realized in life. Try to put yourself in her place. How old are you, Eliza?”

“Thirty-four,” she replied hesitantly.

“And how many lovers have you had in your life?”

Eliza felt her face reddening. “That is none of your damned business,” she snapped.

Darcy appeared to be genuinely startled by her hostile response. “Sorry,” he said, reaching for the champagne bottle again. “I was only trying to illustrate my point. By age thirty, an Englishwoman of Jane Austen’s time would generally have been considered unmarriageable… an old maid, a spinster.”

Darcy considered his next words for a moment, then went on speaking in a quieter tone. “She would never have had any lovers at all, Eliza. Because the risk of pregnancy was just too high, and giving birth out of wedlock may well have resulted in her being literally cast into the streets and abandoned by her family and friends. Remember Lydia, the younger sister from Pride and Prejudice who ran off with Wickham, who then had to be bribed into marrying her? Well, that was actually no joking matter. In real life, both the girl and her family might well have been ruined as the result of her indiscretion.”

Eliza nodded. She tried briefly to imagine what living such a life might have been like, and failed. “I think I get the point,” she said after a moment of further reflection. “In Jane Austen’s world love was truly a luxury. And