The Austen Escape

by Katherine Reay

  I stood. We weren’t finished, but I also needed action to help us. “Let’s get you changed.”

  “I can’t go back there, not yet. I’m not cold.”

  “Then at least let’s get the dress drying. This way?” I tilted my head farther down the path. “Are your legs burned? That’s what Grant was trying to find out.”

  “Oh.” She stood, and I imagined she was remembering Grant and how she’d slapped at him. She touched a finger to her thigh.

  “They’re fine. They sting a little, but I can tell they’re not burned.” “Then if you won’t go change . . .” I mustered up a smile and looped my arm through hers. “We shall walk. When there are serious matters to discuss, Austen women walk. And it has the side benefit of keeping our figures so light and pleasing.”

  She choked on a laugh that became a mess of tears before we’d walked five steps.

  “I don’t want Austen anymore. I don’t even want to finish. I . . . I never knew myself, Mary.”

  “I think that’s Austen.”

  “True . . . I’m not sure I have many original thoughts left.” She swiped at her nose. “But Lizzy was right when she lamented her despicable behavior. And I’ve done the same . . . I’ve acted so horribly. How did I get here?” She pulled at me. “Do you hate me? Or is the question how long have you hated me?”

  “Stop . . . I don’t hate you. But I was close, maybe I even did for a heartbeat, when I first heard Nathan’s voice on the phone. But not now.” I stared straight ahead.

  “I’d never heard you talk like that about a guy. You’d always wanted that fairy-tale thing, and then there you were laughing about a guy’s faults and quirks—and you accepted them all. You and I—we were written, and then you started changing and I didn’t. It was like you were ready for something new and I . . . I didn’t know what I wanted. It wasn’t planned, honest, but I met him and I was jealous. Can you forgive me?”

  We had strolled up the path and out Braithwaite House’s front gate. We walked on, and eventually it dawned on me she was waiting. She wasn’t pushing me for an answer; she wasn’t demanding one. She was awake and waiting.

  I broke our silence. “I do forgive you, and I’m sorry too.” That spun her head my direction. “I’m your best friend, Isabel, but until this trip I don’t think I ever understood, not even when it happened before.”

  “It can’t happen again.”

  “When we get back to the house you need to call Dr. Milton for his daily update. We’ve been talking and texting the past couple days. If you hadn’t come back by tomorrow, I was to get you on a plane somehow.”

  “But now?”

  “You can ask him yourself . . . And call my dad too. He’s been getting practically hourly updates as well.”

  “I love your dad.” Isabel sighed.

  “I know.” I’d always known. Now I understood.

  I felt Isabel stiffen next to me, and I lifted my head to see a small group of women staring at us. I also noticed Bath, twenty-first-century Bath with its buildings and cars—and tourists—surrounding us.

  We were standing on the sidewalk of the Royal Crescent, a mile from Braithwaite House, in full Regency dress. And at that moment, three separate families were taking pictures of us.

  “Can you pose again please?”

  Isabel clapped her hand over her mouth. “What do we do?”

  “Smile, then run.” I stretched my lips wide.

  She grabbed at my arm with both hands, then looked out at the growing crowd. “‘For what do we live,’” she quoted, “‘but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?’”

  Three women clapped.

  I cringed. “Can we go back now?”

  Isabel shook her head. “There’s something cathartic about humiliation. Let’s walk to the end and back.”

  “I don’t need any more humiliation.” As soon as the words escaped, I wished to call them back. Isabel understood that I was reacting to more than the dresses.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t.” I looped my arm through hers. “Going back won’t help us. I shouldn’t have said that. And in the end maybe I’ll be thanking you.”

  “Thanking me?”

  “Nathan had left WATT, and you know me. I wouldn’t have pursued him—ever. There is a chance I wouldn’t have seen him again.”

  “I will never take credit for that.” She tugged me close. “Come on. One lap for good-bye.”

  Arm in arm, we took our lap. We were stopped seventeen times for pictures—and several groups cut in front of us to take selfies with us as their backdrop.

  Chapter 23

  Isabel stalled at Brathwaite House’s front gate. “I don’t want to do this . . . Do I have to?”

  “It’s a few apologies. The rest we can work out later.” I started forward.

  She gestured to the path. “This way is faster to the stables. I owe everyone an apology, but I owe him more, Mary. I need to see Grant first.”

  “Go then.”

  She gave me a hug and headed down the side path while I continued up the main drive. The sun was behind the house now. Afternoon sent slanted rays across the roofline and shot a warm rose glow off the chimneys.

  I didn’t want to go back either. Each step felt heavy. I pushed open the front door and found myself alone in the darkened front hall. Sonia had not gone through and switched on the lights or lit the evening’s candles.

  It was that Regency resting time, the lull between the afternoon event and the procession of the evening. I suspected the Muellers were in their room asleep; Clara was curled up with her iPad with Sylvia nearby; and Aaron, if not comforting his daughter, was out-side somewhere with Grant.

  I climbed the stairs, intending to change for dinner as was expected. Yet without thinking about it, I found myself pulling on jeans and a sweater. I grabbed my Converse from the bottom of my suitcase.

  I stepped into the gallery as Gertrude passed, clutching a high stack of linens.

  “Can I help you?” I reached for the toppling tower.

  “The cupboard is at the end of the hall.” She righted the stack and continued on. I followed. “Is Isabel okay now?”

  “She will be . . . I don’t think I ever truly understood. I doubt I do now.”

  “Sometimes you can’t see something clearly until you step away from it.” Gertrude propped the linens on a display case while she opened another concealed closet. She turned and took in my outfit. “Are you going out?”

  “Would you mind if I walked into Bath? I might even skip dinner. I need to clear my head.”

  “Not at all. Everyone is a little weary tonight. Sylvia asked if Clara could have soup in their room.”

  “I’m so sorry about her. Isabel feels horrible. She’s planning to speak to them, to apologize.”

  “Kids are resilient. It sounds cliché, but it’s true.”

  “To a degree.” I thought of Isabel and I wasn’t so sure.

  Gertrude touched my arm as if offering condolences. “Go. Take some time for yourself. Do you want Duncan to drive you?”

  “Thank you, but I’d rather walk.”

  She placed the linens in the small closet, then gestured to the narrow stairs I’d found my first day. “Let me get you a coat. It’s cooling outside.”

  We passed through the cupboard-lined hallway to a mudroom. It was stone floored and hook lined. Coats, boots, umbrellas, gardening equipment, and assorted chaos filled counters and bins.

  She handed me her own gray waxed coat and opened the side door. “When you come back, if you come through here and up those stairs again, you most likely won’t run into anyone. If that’s a goal.”

  “It is tonight. Thank you.” I pulled on the coat and set out.

  As I rounded the house, Nathan crossed my path. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You found me.” I stalled. “I’m sorry I disappeared. Isabel and I—”

  He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “
Had a lot to talk about. You don’t need to apologize or explain. Where is she?”

  “She went to find Grant and start her round of apologies. I suspect she’ll get to you too.”

  “How are you?” Nathan’s hand slid from cheek to hand and stayed there.

  “I’m sorting it all out. She said something on our walk about us being ‘written.’ She meant the terms of our friendship were fixed, and they were, I agree, but they were fixed on wrong assumptions, if that makes any sense. I pride myself on seeing things clearly, objectively, but I never saw my best friend. Maybe not myself either.”

  “Don’t judge yourself too harshly. Outside math, what’s objective?”

  I didn’t have an answer beyond nothing and we both knew it. “You were a pawn, by the way. She never really liked you at all.”

  Nathan burst out laughing. “I figured that. I mean a Third Choice Guy can’t cause too much heartache, but”—he patted his chest, much like Herman in his fine vest—“I am charming. You never know, it might have gone the other way.” He stepped back and took in what I was wearing. “Where are you going?”

  “Into Bath.” I gave him the same once-over. “And if you’re coming, you cannot go dressed like that.”

  “I’m invited?” He pulled his hand from mine and held it out, fingers spread wide. “Give me five minutes.”

  At my nod he took off running.

  Fifteen minutes later, he joined me down the hill at the house’s main gate.

  “I thought you’d given up on me and left.” He was breathless with the run.

  “It took you long enough. If I’d stayed up there, more people might have wanted to come along.” I tried to laugh, but it came out flat.

  I felt him brush the back of my hand. Our fingers tangled and held.

  Nathan was wearing jeans and a quarter-zip sweater and soft brown loafers. His hair looked as if he’d just woken up, or just pulled a sweater over his head. He’d been too hurried—for me. I also noted no five o’clock shadow. He’d shaved. And he had really long eyelashes.

  I squeezed his hand, which elicited a questioning glance. “I’m very glad Isabel missed all these charms of which you speak.”

  “I feel pretty lucky too. Are we walking into Bath?”

  “It’s only about a mile. I’ve seen you run on that treadmill. You can handle it.” I pointed to a sign ahead. “Sonia told me the Number 12 bus stops there and will take us right to the Roman Baths, if you’d rather.”

  “Walking is fine.” He nudged me. “So you did notice me at WATT?”

  “It’s clear I noticed you, Nathan.”

  “Mary Davies.” Nathan drew my name long. “It wasn’t clear to me. Ever.”

  He swung my hand in an exaggerated motion like this was exactly what he wanted to be doing and with whom. I willed myself to believe it.

  After almost a quarter mile, during which he squeezed my hand, pulled me close, shoulder-bumped me away—generally acted like a sixth grader with his first crush—he pointed to an old car scooting down the street.

  “That looks exactly like my first car. My parents helped me buy it a few months after I turned sixteen, and a mechanic my dad knew helped me fix it up.”

  “I did that too. I inherited my eldest brother’s car at seventeen. It was a mess. I did most of the electrical work myself, which might have been illegal. I think all electrical work requires a license.”

  “You mean except for playing around with it at work?” Nathan bumped me again.

  “Yes, but WATT has state-of-the-art counter-fire measures in that lab.”

  “Thank goodness.” He laughed. “I heard you blew up a Golightly prototype.”

  “That was not a good day. You should have smelled the lab. I was actually on fire, burned all the hair off my right arm.”

  “You could’ve been hurt.”

  I shook my head, recalling the panic of that moment. “I was a little and I was banned from the lab. I may be still. I haven’t pressed it.”

  When we passed a cottage tucked between a gas station and an antique store, Nathan told me how his family rented a house on the coast of Massachusetts one summer and he spent the entire summer cleaning boats and babysitting his sisters.

  When we passed a fallen tree, I told him about the fort Isabel and I built in my bedroom when we were eleven—how I sawed branches from a downed tree and wove together a layered roof out of leaves.

  “My dad almost killed me over that one. A squirrel nest came in with one of the branches we dragged in, which also scratched up all the paint as it came through. Then the squirrels got loose.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Dad called animal control and hauled out all the branches. They caught the mother squirrel, but not two babies. She was pretty mad and very territorial. So was my mom when she found a baby squirrel in her bed that night and screamed so loud the neighbors heard her. Then Dad really lost it.” I glanced at him. “If you knew my dad, you’d know that was a red-letter day. My dad never gets angry. Gentlest man you’ll ever meet . . . I got grounded and gathered leaves and random bugs for weeks. It’s one of my best memories, though. Before he came home from work and things went south, Mom and Isabel and I crawled inside and told stories the whole afternoon. She could tell the best stories.”

  “May I ask?”

  “You? A question? You never ask questions.” I stopped and crossed my arms. Teasing him felt good.

  He stopped too. “Tell me about your mom?”

  “Isabel never told you about SK’s mom?”

  He shook his head. “I’d like to keep Isabel out of us, if that’s okay.”

  Us.

  “Very okay. My mom was diagnosed with MS soon after I was born, and it moved fast.” I scrunched my nose. “Correction—it felt fast. It’s a disease with a lot of variance, and it would hit hard, level off, hit again, level, and . . . She died two years ago, just before Christmas.”

  We walked past The Circus roundabout.

  “I’m remembering a lot about her this week. It’s the first time I’ve missed her, really missed her, in a long time. I . . . It sounds horrible, but I think I said good-bye years before she died.”

  He pulled me close and swung his arm around me. He kissed my temple as we walked and said nothing more.

  Within another block we found ourselves in the heart of Georgian Bath. One sign pointed to the Roman Baths and another to the Assembly Rooms. Without making a plan, we strolled in the direction of the latter.

  The main room at the Assembly Rooms was larger than I expected. Isabella and Catherine met here constantly in Northanger Abbey, Isabella to see and be seen and Catherine to search for Mr. Tilney. In Persuasion, Anne met Lady Russell here as well, to tread these same boards and to share news.

  When I’d read the books, the Pump Room scenes felt small and tight—intimate. The ladies needed to whisper to keep from being overheard. They bumped into acquaintances rather than simply met them. This room felt too large for that. Even with at least fifty tourists about, I didn’t bump into anyone. It made me again wonder what I’d misunderstood, what I hadn’t seen clearly.

  The walls were painted peach halfway to the ceiling; the next twenty feet were covered in plaster and painted in a faux marble design. I’d have thought it was real marble if not for the weight and the fact that Isabel had explained it all to me when peeling the curtain back on Braithwaite House’s plaster moldings.

  At one end, columns supported a deep balcony. It, too, was filled with tourists watching the rest of us circle the room below. I fell into step, then noted that the wood floor did not run in parallel slats.

  I bisected the room and pulled Nathan with me. “It jigs and jags at odd angles. How did they lay this? How did they get the angles to meet up?”

  Nathan pulled me back into the Austen-accepted path. He tucked me into his side and offered a quick apology to an older woman in a bright-pink poncho. “You and angles. You almost knocked her down.”

  Outside we cont
inued down Gay Street which, with a quick turn on Stall Street, ended right near the Roman Baths and a central market square. The Bath Abbey capped one end in all its Gothic glory, and shops lined the other three sides. There were hanging baskets of flowers; windows bursting with Union Jacks, postcards, Peter Rabbits, and tiny red double-decker buses; and restaurants featuring bright signs offering tea, crumpets, scones, and ale. The buildings were all Georgian and beige stone, changing from pink to gray in the late afternoon light. And . . .

  “The Pump Rooms.” I dragged Nathan inside the door.

  The main room of the Pump Rooms, now filled with tea tables and tourists, was exactly what I expected, minus the tables. I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The space was small, intimate, with a delicate oval balcony at one end. This was where Lady Russell and Anne met. This was where Catherine and Isabella pressed close to whisper so as not to be overheard—though Isabella kind of liked that.

  “I thought the other place was where the women met and gossiped, but this is it.”

  “The other was where they went to listen to concerts and where Captain Wentworth went to show Anne he loves her, but gets the wrong impression and leaves.”

  “He was kind of dense, especially after she chased after him.”

  “Really?” Nathan hiked one brow. “So you’re saying if someone showed up, you’d understand it was because he loved you? You’d notice and believe it? Turn the tables and chase him, even?”

  “I . . . Are we talking about a book?”

  He tilted his head as if noting I had not answered any of his questions. But rather than answer mine, he offered a half smirk and walked away. I followed him from the Pump Rooms to the Roman Baths.

  Moving from one building to the other, we switched from Regency-meets-modern-commercialism to high-tech-swank-meets-ancient-Rome. The atrium was all glass, steel, and informational kiosks, yet right beyond and through a set of glass doors we found ourselves strolling through ancient stones and past altars to gods I’d never heard of. I paused at the gorgeous central green pool.