“Miss Knight,” Evie half whispered, trying not to appear rude, “would it be alright—I mean, are you alright—if I tell Miss Harrison about the society we’ve started up?”
“Of course, Evie, please do. I am sure Miss Harrison would love to hear about it.”
Evie explained to Mimi the recent formation of the Jane Austen Society, with Frances and herself being the newest members in addition to Adam Berwick, Dr. Gray, Adeline Grover, and Andrew Forrester—just two people short of the desired quorum of eight.
Mimi listened with increasing excitement, then exclaimed, “I need to be part of this. I mean it. Please?”
The other two women stared at each other quickly in surprise, with Evie looking as if she was doing various quick calculations in her head.
“Are you sure?” Evie asked first. “I mean, we’re a bunch of people who never leave this village—you would be in a pretty bright spotlight when you needn’t be.”
“No, I totally want to do this. And I know Yardley will want to join, too. So that gets you to eight, right?”
“But you’re not a resident here,” Frances added.
“But I plan to be, for at least a good chunk of the year. Can you ask Mr. Forrester for me, if that could pose a problem of any kind?”
“Of course, if you want. But give us time to prepare everyone. We have some rather romantic gentlemen in the group—”
“Three!” Evie piped up again, holding up as many fingers on her right hand.
“Yes, how amusing.” Frances smiled. “Evie is right, they are all three of them terrible romantics.”
“Well, Yardley will love that,” Mimi tried to interject, but the comment went straight over the other two women’s heads.
“They are also all inveterate moviegoers, as far as I know,” Frances was continuing. “It might be a bit too much for them at first.”
Mimi thought it delightful that these two women were being so protective of the group. She thought it said something, for both the society and the village of Chawton as a whole, that they all knew each other so well. She had left her near decade in Hollywood without any such understanding. In fact, the longer she had stayed there, the less she had understood of the people around her. That there might be a place where people were not constantly competing against each other for their very sustenance, but were instead helping each other survive through war and injury and poverty and pain, seemed as much something out of a Jane Austen novel as anything else she could have hoped to find.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Chawton, Hampshire
February 2, 1946
Adeline was a little annoyed to see Liberty Pascal answer the front door when she arrived at Dr. Gray’s house for the second meeting of the Jane Austen Society.
“Addy,” Liberty said, even though everyone who knew Adeline also knew how much she disliked that shortening of her name. “You’re early.”
Adeline noticed the ring of keys hanging from Liberty’s belt and wondered just how much the young woman had already ingratiated herself into both the business and the personal life of Dr. Gray.
“He’s so particular about his things,” Liberty explained, catching Adeline’s questioning glance. “I’m the only one with access to the medicine cabinet during office hours. He doesn’t want even one copy of the key left lying about.”
“That’s quite a responsibility.” Adeline wondered why Dr. Gray would be so strict about the keys that he wouldn’t even keep a copy for himself. “You must be here at all hours.”
Liberty nodded. “I’ve taken a room at the boarding house near the school. Your old stomping ground I understand. Dr. Gray tells me you were quite the teacher in your day.”
“Does he? That’s a little surprising, since he and the other trustees were always trying to get me fired.”
“Oh, Adeline!” Liberty laughed. “You always were so dramatic!”
This struck Adeline as so ironic coming from the other girl that she could only step silently away at the sound of another knock at the front door. She started to wander down the hallway and realized she had never before been this far inside. Halfway down the corridor, a steep staircase led upstairs. Adeline’s breath caught as she saw the sharp edge at the bottom that jutted out from the banister and had killed Jennie Gray.
At the end of the hall there was a step down into the back kitchen, and this galley-shaped room was very different from the austere medical quarters in the front section of the house. Bright and cheery, the kitchen featured white-painted cabinetry, a row of windows that stretched the width of the back wall above the butler sink, and a maplewood butcher block in the middle of the tiled floor. Feminine touches were everywhere: from the delicate cream-and-rose-patterned curtains that covered the bottom halves of the windows, to the collection of Cornishware on the open shelving trimmed with Victorian lace edging.
She was picking up a little blue-and-white-striped pitcher from one of the shelves when she heard a cough behind her.
Turning around too quickly, she fumbled with the pitcher and just managed to hold on to it as she put it back in its place.
“I’m sorry, you startled me.”
Dr. Gray came into the room. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing his usual suit jacket and tie, just an open blue shirt beneath a brown tweed vest that matched his eyes. He looked like any regular husband, busying himself about the kitchen.
“The meeting’s in the drawing room,” he said.
“I know that. Liberty’s out there playing hostess, have no fear.”
He nodded at the kettle warming up on the stove set back inside a former inglenook fireplace. “While you’re in here snooping, why don’t you help me with the tea?”
She nodded and got out of his way just as he reached for a matching creamer jug and sugar bowl from the bottom shelf nearest her.
“The spoons and napkins are in those drawers over there.” He gave another curt nod behind him, his back turned to her, and she went to count them out.
“We’re seven, right? Or has Liberty developed a sudden appreciation for Jane Austen, too?”
“I’m not sure if Liberty actually reads.” His back was still turned to her. “Anyway, I think we’re eight. Miss Frances is bringing two guests now from the city.”
Adeline counted out the cutlery and napkins and brought them over to the tray he had set down on the butcher block. As she placed them down, he did the same with a stack of saucers, and their hands touched just so slightly, and she jumped back.
He didn’t say anything, just looked down at the jumble of tea things in the middle of the tray for a second as if distracted, then turned back to get the teapot and teabags from a nearby tin canister.
The water in the kettle was starting to boil on the stove, and as he walked past her to get it, something in her stomach dropped. It felt as if they had done this kitchen routine a hundred times before, and she realized for the first time how very aware of each other’s body they both were. They never brushed against each other, yet they never kept more than a foot apart.
The sound of the kettle whistle crashed into her thoughts, and he came over to pour the water into the teapot.
“Watch yourself,” he said as he passed by her again.
She took a step back and then realized to her astonishment that she didn’t want to.
“Are you okay?” He poured the water into the large Brown Betty teapot. “You’re being remarkably silent for once.”
“I can’t do two things at once,” she tried to say lightly, as she placed eight teacups down in a few separate stacks.
“I highly doubt that.”
“So,” she said, trying to change the subject, “Miss Frances told you, about Mimi Harrison coming? I couldn’t believe it when I heard. Samuel and I used to see her movies together all the time.”
“Miss Frances seemed to think we men would need time to get used to the idea. Meanwhile it’s Liberty Pascal I’ve got running around town screaming her head off in excitement.”
“Oh, is that why she’s here?” Adeline smiled. “Movies are definitely much more her thing as I recall. Although she can read.”
Dr. Gray put the kettle back down on the stove. “That was probably a little unfair of me.”
“Just a little. Is everything going . . . well, though, with the two of you?”
He wiped his hands on a little flowered tea towel hanging from the oven door. “Well enough. I do need someone around here to help out, with the housekeeping and the practice, and Liberty is very eager to do whatever I ask.”
“I’m sure she is.” Adeline quickly regretted her words as he raised an eyebrow at her. “No, listen, it’s great. She will keep things under control as you said. And unlike Miss Peckham, Liberty doesn’t know a soul in town to gossip with. At least not yet.”
Dr. Gray leaned both his forearms down on either side of the tea tray, then looked up at Adeline, always a little surprised at how tall she was.
“Adeline, back at Christmas, when I came to your house . . .”
“With my present.”
“Yes, that, too. But your mother—she said Harriet had called first.”
Adeline shifted uneasily on her feet. She was starting to realize where the conversation might be heading, and it was something she had successfully blocked out of her mind until now.
“Yes, she called my mum to tell her you were on your way—or might be, I think.”
“I never told her any of that. I never told her where I was going. I had just taken your card from her, the Christmas card you sent me, but it wasn’t return addressed. And I never said a word to her.”
“I see.” Adeline leaned back against the butler sink. “Is that—was that—one of the reasons why you fired her?”
“It was one of them. Your mother . . .” He paused.
She felt her stomach drop again.
“Your mother seems to think . . .” He started again, then stopped.
“My mother respects you very much, Dr. Gray. You saved my life.”
“No, I didn’t. I lost your baby. I ruined everything for you.”
“Oh my God, no, of course not.” She came over to him and he looked away from her as his shoulders started to shake. “Oh, God, is that what you’ve been thinking? Is that what you’ve been worried about all this time, from me?”
She hesitated, then put one hand on his shoulder, but he continued to look down, his arms still shaking.
“Dr. Gray, not for one moment did I ever think anything other than that you saved my life. Dr. Westlake told me as much. He said that if you hadn’t called the ambulance when you did, before heading over to the house, it would have been too late. I would have bled to death.”
“But you’d been bleeding a bit the night before and had the back pain, and I should have figured it all out right away, and then I could have saved both you and your baby from all of this.” He straightened himself up and backed away from the table. “We’ll never know what to believe.”
“But I know. Isn’t that all that matters?”
He took a deep breath and picked up the tea tray. “Maybe you believe only what you want to.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because I’m your doctor—I’m everyone’s doctor around here—and it’s only natural that—”
“You’re not my doctor anymore, remember?”
“How can I forget? It’s the first time I’ve ever been fired.”
“So it’s an ego thing with you. . . .”
“Look,” he said firmly, “either way, you have been under my professional care for years, and it would only make sense that you would give me the benefit of the doubt.”
She was feeling confused again and even a little sick to her stomach. “I’m not giving you the benefit of anything. I believe what I do not because you were my doctor, but in spite of it.”
Now it was his turn to feel confused, and he was just about to say something when Liberty appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Everyone is here now, Dr. Gray. Even ol’ Miss Knight has been let loose—can you believe it?”
“Thank you, Liberty. You can head home now. It is a Saturday after all.”
But Liberty didn’t look to be going anywhere. Instead she continued to stand in the doorway, her right hip leaning against the frame, looking from one slightly flushed face to the other. Something was going on between these two, she just knew it. She herself found Dr. Benjamin Gray attractive in a distinguished-older-man kind of way—plus he had that lonely widower thing down pat. She remembered from college how Adeline Lewis had had a crush on one of their professors, and even though she was practically engaged to a boy back home, they were all pretty sure that something had happened. Adeline always had a way about her, a confidence, that men seemed both intimidated by and attracted to. Liberty had even tried to model herself a bit on the other girl, although she would never have told her that.
Adeline Lewis was confident enough as it was.
Mimi Harrison and Yardley Sinclair had taken the noon train to Alton together from Victoria Station. She had spent the journey telling him all about Frances Knight, and the strange little servant girl Evie Stone, and the entail laying waste to everyone’s plans for now. Mimi did not know much about the other four members, only that they were three local men of a “romantic” inclination and a young war widow.
“I always find it interesting how Jane Austen’s fans are always romantics to some degree—when I swear she wrote those books with a goose quill dipped in venom,” Yardley was saying over a paper cup of black coffee from the train station café.
Mimi laughed. “You stole that line—I just saw it in Preminger’s film Laura.”
“We steal in the auction business, don’t you know?”
“You steal. And then you hold the rest of us hostage for the highest price. That’s quite a system you’ve got going there.”
“Talking about holding hostage . . . how’s that engagement going?”
Mimi made a face at Yardley, who she knew did not care for Jack, although not at all in a jealous way. Yardley preferred men, as he had made clear to her on their second meeting over lunch at Rules, when he had subtly flirted with the waiter in a way that she had not witnessed before outside of L.A.
“Jack is, and I know this is hard to believe, but he is actually a very loving and generous man.”
“To you.”
“Is it wrong of me to care most about that?”
“Mimi, you studied history at college, right? Did you learn nothing?”
She made another face at Yardley, but this time a little less confidently.
“You know he’ll never change, though, right?” Yardley persisted with a sigh. “Tell me that at least, or I will have given up all hope for you.”
“Yardley, this is becoming unfair. We always end up analyzing my relationships, and you get off scot-free.”
“But I don’t have relationships. You know this about me.”
“Not through choice, though.”
He looked at her sitting across from him in the first-class cabin, her brilliant eyes set off by the plush purple velvet covering the high-back bench seat facing his. They had not discussed any of this before—but he hoped and thought that he could trust her.
“It’s a little hard, when you can end up in jail for your efforts.”
“It’s the same in the U.S. I know several actors who live together as roommates in name only, or even as joint tenants. I know one who actually adopted his lover as his son on paper, so that he can leave him his life insurance and his estate one day.”
“That’s a pretty circular argument against all of these laws to begin with, wouldn’t you say? When people have to—and can go to—lengths like that?”
“My father was a judge—did you know that? He always said, trust people to make the best decisions for their bedrooms and leave everything else to the law.”
Her words were such a relief to Yardley that he was uncharacteristically q
uiet for several seconds before asking, “Mr. Knight’s will, by the way—how is Frances handling it? You’ve seen her a few times since then.”
“She’s a remarkable woman. She has this almost eerie—I don’t know, preternatural?—calm about her. Total acceptance.”
“Resignation you mean.”
“No, I used to think it was that. But I think she has a higher purpose in mind. I think she has a very different moral system from the rest of us.”
“Isn’t that what you’re always trying to argue about good ol’ Fanny Price?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I just know that on some level she believes that everything is happening for a reason, and she just sort of swims in it, like a cork bobbing about in the ocean, not trying to find the current, just being.”
“Wow. Buddha.”
“Oh, look, we’re here!” Mimi jumped up and grabbed her hat and purse. “Yardley, get ready—you are going to love this place.”
Mimi was wearing flat brown riding-style boots for once, and Yardley, who was not particularly tall himself, could now see the top of her head as they walked along together. She had forsaken her usual towering heels so that she and Yardley could make the walk on foot from the Alton to Chawton, with Mimi excitedly crowing “just like Jane Austen would have done!” as they set off up the steep main road through town. But she had also wanted to be a little less physically conspicuous at her first meeting with the society, to the degree that was possible.
When they passed the village common at the triangular perimeter of the Alton town line, they could see ahead the opening up of vast farm fields bordered along the lane-way by holly and blackthorn hedgerows. Sheep could be glimpsed through the greenery, and in the distance several Shropshire horses could be seen pulling at last year’s desiccated fruit still hanging from an orchard grove. On the other side of the lane-way was a long row of single dwellings, some of them little thatched cottages and terrace houses set right on the road, others more substantial homes—the old estates, manses, and farmhouses of the past—set much farther back and preceded by stately long private drives.
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