Midnight in Austenland

by Shannon Hale

  She laughed harder, and with the laugh and spinning reality, she forgot Regency etiquette and leaned into Mr. Mallery, laying her head and hands on his chest, laughing into his cravat. She could feel his heart beating against her head at a galloping pace. Why did his heart race? Was it her nearness, just as his nearness was spazzing out her own heart? And did this mean she was in love with him? Or he with her?

  Stop it, Charlotte, said her Inner Thoughts. You can be so dense sometimes.

  But wait. An actor can pretend to fall in love, but he can’t make his heart beat faster, can he? The thought made her stomach feel icy, and she stepped away from him, talking rapidly.

  “I can’t believe I was such a ninny. Yeah, that’s the word I’m going with—‘ninny.’ A goose, a half-wit, a mooncalf, any of those old words that mean ‘naive idiot.’ I fit right in with the silly girls Austen poked fun at, though hopefully she might care for me anyway, as she seemed to for Catherine Morland. Did you ever read Northanger Abbey? Well, she was a guest in an old house and convinced herself there’d been a murder, just like I did. I mean, I fought the idea because I knew it was ridiculous, but I just kept convincing myself anyway. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  His smile took her in, approving. His admiration, combined with her acute embarrassment, made her feel as if she’d downed a jug of beer in one breath. She licked her lips, her head giddy, and began to talk faster.

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so steady-minded, so unaffected. Maybe novels really do fill your head with fluff, like the characters in Northanger Abbey who don’t read books seem to believe. Reading too much makes a house seem full of ghosts when it’s just the creak of wood; it makes thunder seem like a metaphor instead of just the weather; it makes heart-throbbing romance seem possible, when it’s not.”

  He took a step closer to her, his approving smile suggesting something even more, something that made her swallow and look away and talk faster.

  “I know I’m making an even bigger idiot of myself,” she said with a laugh. “But I can’t seem to shut myself up.”

  “Please don’t. You are so charming.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m really not.” She twisted her hands and asked softly, “Am I?”

  “You are charming when you speak like a sparrow in the morning. You are charming when you are silent.” He took her hand, felt it between his fingers. “You are even charming when you think me a murderer.”

  She gave a little laugh at that. He smiled with fondness.

  “You have charmed me.” He nodded, as if surprised he’d spoken the words. “You have indeed. I do not know if I fully realized just how much until this moment. Mrs. Cordial … Charlotte …”

  He paused as if afraid of speaking more, and pressed her fingers against his lips to stop his words. Charlotte’s heart was frantic.

  It’s a game. It’s all a game, she told herself.

  The murder mystery wasn’t real, and neither was Mr. Mallery’s affection. But did it matter? A man was looking at her in that scrumptious way, as if he wanted to kiss her. Not really, of course, but he was a real man and he was really looking at her. Good grief, but was she lonely.

  “Charlotte …” he breathed. He opened her hand and rubbed a thumb across her palm. “I feel as if I have been dead, and your eyes have awakened me.”

  So this was it. She’d assumed that each guest would be the recipient of a fake but well-spoken proposal of marriage, since all of Austen’s heroines were so lucky. But she hadn’t imagined it happening in a dark, dusty room where she’d once run into a dead body. Or thought she had.

  Her own body didn’t mind the macabre environs. Her heart was rattling out a rhumba; her stomach felt all fluttery and wonderful. Even when her mind clamped down, getting stubborn and practical, her body still relished the farce. Her body floated.

  “I knew from the first that you were a formidable woman. I thought I could keep my heart safe, but your honest looks and gestures leave me defenseless, your beauty undoes me.” He ran his thumb lightly over her freckles. “I knew you were a dangerous woman, but I did not care.”

  Wait, was the actor speaking or Mr. Mallery the character?

  “Let’s not play chase any longer—let’s not play anything. I am impatient to leave pretense behind. Please, Charlotte, tell me I do not love you in vain. Please assure me of your own attachment, or I know I will die.”

  He had to be acting, right? And couldn’t she just pretend for a time? Couldn’t she stop inventing murders and mayhem and problems to fix and simply enjoy the story? Yes, she could! She was about to assure him of her attachment, and to use archaic verb formations in the process just to get into the mood, when he reached out and smoothed a strand of her hair off her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. Exactly as James used to do, back when he loved her.

  Charlotte reacted as if she’d been zapped with electricity. Mr. Mallery was like James was like Mr. Mallery was touching her, alone with her, seemingly adoring her. She stumbled away, her mind screaming, This is crazy! How do I process? I can’t process! Her hip knocked a little table, and the black Chinese vase and its coy little lid tipped and fell on the ground with a crack. Something tumbled out of its previously empty interior.

  A key. The key was attached to a big fat key ring, like the kind that came from the dealer, branded with the car’s make. A circle divided into fourths, white and blue. The BMW logo.

  That vase had been empty. Mr. Mallery had put the key in there. Why? Because she’d suggested a room search, and the key ring was too big to flush down the toilet. The night after Bloody Murder, Mr. Mallery had returned to this room, dumped the body out the window, gone downstairs and carried it to the trunk of Mr. Wattlesbrook’s car, then driven the car into the pond to hide it. But perhaps out of habit, he’d locked the doors and pocketed the key. And now, threatened with exposure, he’d naturally returned to the room where he’d hidden Mr. Wattlesbrook, a room that most people did not know existed. As far as he knew, Charlotte had accidentally stumbled into it the night of Bloody Murder and never gone back. So Mr. Mallery had concealed the clue of the key in his favorite hiding spot until he could dispose of it permanently. And he did all that because he’d murdered Mr. Wattlesbrook.

  Charlotte saw the key, processed the murder, and had one second to react. Time seemed to slow. She could try to play innocent. But Mr. Mallery already knew: Charlotte was clever. She could not undo such a thing as proven cleverness.

  How inconvenient clever women must be to men like Mr. Mallery. If only she’d been frivolous, light-minded, vapid even. Generally speaking, when a man is a murderer and a woman uncovers the unmistakable clue pointing to him, it would be so much easier if that woman were dull-witted. A clever woman can get herself killed.

  The second passed, and clever Charlotte had no clever plan. She looked from the key to Mr. Mallery. He looked back. His expression was no longer alluring.

  “Oops. Do you think Mrs. Wattlesbrook will be angry I broke the vase?” Charlotte said, adding a desperate bat of her eyelashes. “I hope it wasn’t valuable.”

  Mr. Mallery did not blink. He said, “I wish you had not seen that.”

  She nodded. Her rush of words was gone, the giddiness in her head emptying like a tipped goldfish bowl.

  “You’ve made things much more difficult, Mrs. Cordial.”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Yes, she apologized to a murderer for uncovering his bloody crime. Even in this moment, about to be killed, Charlotte was aware enough to cringe at herself.

  “I do not know what to do with you,” he said.

  “Take me to the ball?” she suggested with a hopeful smile that she managed to scavenge out of the hopeless dread. “You can have the first two dances.”

  He studied her face then looked down. “I know what I must do, but I do not want to. Killing Mr. Wattlesbrook was one matter, but you are another entirely.” He met her eyes again. “Can you offer me a way out?”

  “Yes! Of cour
se. A way out. Let’s talk about it. What do you need from me? I’m a very reasonable person. I can be your partner in this secret. With pleasure!”

  Her cheery speech was spoiled somewhat by the intense shaking of her hands and the sickly tremble in her voice.

  Hold still! she commanded her hands. Be cool! she told her voice. They didn’t obey. Traitors.

  Mr. Mallery’s frown deepened. He took a step toward her. She took a step back.

  “I wish I knew I could trust you,” he said. “But are you as you seem? Or are you someone else entirely? So many secrets in this place. So many falsehoods.”

  She heard a slick scrape as he pulled a knife from his belt. She barely processed the silver flicker of the blade before she turned and ran for the door.

  Her finger slipped on the hidden knob, but on her second press, it opened. She leapt away from the swinging door and heard it collide with Mr. Mallery behind her.

  Mary peered out her door and blinked at Charlotte, as if she had been expecting to see someone else.

  “Run for help,” Charlotte pleaded. “Mallery killed Wattlesbrook.”

  Charlotte barely got out the words when he grabbed her from behind and pulled her back into the room with such force that she tumbled across the floor.

  She looked up to see Mary not running for help but holding open the door and staring at Mallery. Even in her thoughts, Charlotte could no longer muster up a “mister” title for him.

  “Do you have need of me, sir?” Mary asked, her voice mostly breath.

  “Mary, you’ve always been a very good girl,” he said. His hair had pulled free of its restraint and hung loose around his face. He looked wild.

  “Mary, hurry!” Charlotte shouted.

  Mallery approached Mary leisurely, and the girl held still, waiting for him, faintly trembling, a mouse caught in a cobra’s gaze. He moved Mary’s hair behind her shoulder and ran a finger along her long, white neck in a way that seemed practiced. Mary’s faint trembling escalated to a full-body shiver. She gazed at Mallery with wet eyes.

  Oh no, Charlotte thought. Mary would throw herself into a volcano for him. That does not bode well.

  He fingered the neck of Mary’s blouse and slipped it off her shoulder. Her collarbone was tense and standing out like a skeleton’s.

  “Would you give us some privacy to take care of business,” he whispered into her neck. “And then I will come find you. To thank you. You have proven to me that you are the only woman I can trust.”

  Mary seemed scarcely able to move, let alone speak, but she managed to nod jerkily.

  “Mary, please, he’ll kill me,” Charlotte said, pulling herself to her feet with a grunt. The bruises she felt forming on her hip were added to her Things Not Regency Appropriate list.

  Mallery held his face close to Mary’s and touched her lips with a finger. “You know how much I value your discretion.”

  He kissed the corner of her mouth, a tease, the promise of more, then stepped back and nodded, as if giving her permission to depart. She took a deep, unstable breath.

  “Excuse me,” Mary said shakily and shut the door on her way out.

  Charlotte was trying to wrench open one of the windows when she heard a skin-crawling rasp behind her. Mallery had pushed a highboy to block the door. He considered his knife before putting it away. Maybe he wouldn’t hurt her after all! Maybe he just wanted to chat about stuff.

  Or maybe he just preferred to kill her without a lot of blood.

  “Hold still,” he said, sounding so reasonable. He came at her, and his hands looked as dangerous as any knife.

  Charlotte dodged, putting furniture between her and those hands. He followed. He didn’t say anything. He was focused on catching her. And then what?

  Charlotte didn’t think about what James’s reaction would be when he heard she was murdered. She only gave her children a passing thought before her mind fled in white-hot panic from the idea that she could be taken from them. Instead, she thought of Eddie, and how she very much wanted him to save her. Yes, if she could choose any man in the world to save her, it would be Eddie. But he wouldn’t, would he? Because no one knew she was here, except Mary, who’d been mesmerized into submission by the predator. Charlotte was starting to suspect that Mary was seriously messed up.

  Stupid Charlotte, she screamed at herself. You believed you were clever, and that made you more vulnerable.

  When the chase drew her near the window, she plucked a naked lamp from the debris and slammed it against a pane, hoping to break the window but only managing a few cracks.

  “Help!” she screamed.

  “You do not need to do that,” he said.

  Mallery and his hands were coming at her. She ran from the window, weaving through clutter and broken furniture, trying to keep that man as far away as possible. But he kept following.

  Stupid Charlotte, she screamed at herself again. Two minutes ago you considered falling in love with him!

  Those fluttery feelings of new love—those lung-tickling, heart-kicking, squealing sensations of hot and cold and pulses snapping and lips wetting—they were as false as cravats and corsets. They were merely sensations, like the wrenching drop on a roller coaster that warned of impending death. She wasn’t really going to die on a roller coaster (probably not, though some were pretty scary). And just because she felt tangled up and swoony with a man didn’t mean she was in love or could be happy with him ever after.

  Duh, Charlotte. Duh. You’re not going to die on a roller coaster, but you are going to die in this room.

  “Help!” she yelled again.

  Mallery lunged and missed. He would get her sooner or later. It would probably take several minutes to die by strangulation, his hands around her neck, her lungs burning like they had when she’d spent too much time underwater, her eyes wide open with the awareness that she was almost gone.

  A sob punched her throat. Imagining how she was going to die wasn’t exactly helping her morale.

  “Listen, listen,” she said, angling to keep a broken sofa and a stack of boxes between her and Mallery. “I don’t want to die, so you have a lot of bargaining power.”

  He came around the side. She fled again, kicking up dust on her way to the stack of chairs. She could see him through the cage of legs.

  “You write up something, I sign it. A promise that I never speak a word about my suspicions. I know Mr. Wattlesbrook was an unpleasant man, clumsy with fire and sherry and probably very gassy …” What was she saying? Focus, Charlotte, don’t be a ninny. “You don’t hurt me, and I let you get away with murder. You see? We all win!”

  She tried to smile. Still, he didn’t speak.

  Nice try, said her Inner Thoughts. He already knows you’re too moral to do that.

  Help me or shut up! she yelled back.

  His hands flexed. Charlotte ran again.

  The cat-and-mouse might have gone on much longer, but Charlotte stepped on her hem. It occurred to her, the split second before she hit the floor, that men invent fashion. Men who want women in ridiculously long skirts so just in case they murder someone and a woman figures it out, she’ll be so hampered by her ridiculously long skirts that she can be killed too.

  She scrambled backward and blurted desperately, “I have kids. Two kids. Beckett and Lu.”

  Mallery didn’t slow. He came at her like a man at work, his hands the tool to get the job done. He really was going to do her in. A small part of herself had been hoping she was wrong, but nope. Pessimism wins again.

  Killing her would hurt her kids too. She knew this with the pain of a wound. It didn’t matter that Lu hadn’t wanted to talk to her on the phone or that Beckett had called Justice “Mom.” They would suffer if she died. They would cry and ache and need years of therapy, and would James pay for it? Probably not. So they’d have to submit to school counselors who might not be properly trained because of budget cuts, and what if that wasn’t enough and the grief sent them into drugs and alcohol and depression and
meaningless sex and regrettable tattoo choices and petty crime leading up to serious crime and jail and shock therapy? What if lobotomies came back into vogue? And the surgeon messed up and they died?

  And it would all be James’s fault. Wait … and Mallery’s too! It was as if Mallery had cornered not just Charlotte but also Lu and Beckett, as if he was coming at them with dangerous hands and intent to strangle, and they were scooting back and pleading for mercy, but he had none. No mercy for her children? That was so not okay.

  In the old stories, this was the part when the heroine, overcome with terror, would faint, and the dastardly bastard would throttle her alabaster neck and leave her body for the wolves. Right?

  No.

  This was the part where Charlotte, heroine, remembered she was a twenty-first-century woman and a mother. This was Charlotte saying, Hell no!

  Charlotte screamed.

  But this wasn’t a scream for help. This wasn’t a plea, a panicked, earsplitting supplication for immediate rescue. Charlotte screamed the cry of attack.

  Clearly, Mallery did not recognize the subtle difference. Showing no alarm, he was still on offense, and he knelt over her, his hands on her throat. That hurt, but her body, with or without her mind’s help, had a plan. She’d sat in on enough of Beckett’s martial arts classes to learn a few self-defense moves. When an attacker is strangling from the front, his hands are occupied, leaving every part of him open. Charlotte formed her fingers into spearhead shape and jammed them as hard as she could into his throat. He choked and his grip lessened. She took a deep breath and kicked him in the ’nads, as Beckett would say.

  He was on the ground, and she stood up, but she didn’t stop kicking. A spare chair leg lay nearby, practically begging to be used as a club. Charlotte complied.

  “You’re the ninny!” She hit him again. “You hear me? YOU’RE THE NINNY!” She hit him again and again. “No one just falls in love, you idiot. You chose to not love me anymore. You chose to leave me. You chose to leave the kids. One weekend a month and one month a year—that’s parenthood? You don’t go to marriage counseling, you don’t give me a chance to fight back. No, you sneak around. You sleep with Justice for weeks and come home to me all smug with yourself. You sick, sick, sick son of a—”