Jane Austen Made Me Do It

by Laurel Ann Nattress

  She hadn’t even eaten the herrings. She had known better than that. Herrings were worse than bits of underdone potato when it came to conjuring specters.

  “And you?” The ghost was looking at her keenly. “Are you a guest of General Tilney?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” hedged Cate.

  If this was a dream, why conjure up an inquisitive female? Why not a strapping male in knee breeches? Or a Roman centurion in one of those cute little leather kilts? Her imagination clearly needed help.

  “Who are those uncouth people in the hall?” asked the apparition, settling in for a good gossip. Her see-through skirts lapped around her ankles.

  “Um, they’re … I work with them. We’re on a—” TV show really didn’t seem like something her transparent visitor would understand. Cate hastily cobbled together the closest possible translation. “We’re a sort of acting troupe.”

  “Theatricals.” The apparition’s face lit with interest. “Shall you perform for us?”

  “Er,” said Cate. “I think it’s more that they’d hoped you’d perform for us.”

  Not that Fred would know what to do with a real ghost if he tripped over one.

  Wait. When had she decided this was a real ghost? “Just ignore them,” she said hastily. “If they come after you, pretend they’re not there. Even if they make beeping noises.”

  “Beeping noises?”

  “It’s the most ramshackle operation,” Cate said. “I mean, I don’t know what I’m still doing here. I really only meant to stay for a few months, just for the experience—and, oh, hell, so I had sort of a crush on Hal, but the man is never going to do anything, about me or anything else. He’s under his brother’s thumb like you wouldn’t believe. He’d probably have to ask Fred’s permission before getting up the nerve to make a move.”

  “Like that, is it?” said the ghost sympathetically. “Is this Hal the younger brother?”

  “Yes. Fred’s older. He’s the one who owns the whole kit and caboodle.”

  The ghost nodded sagely. Cate’s slang might have been lost on her, but the general concept was one she understood.

  “Nothing’s going to change while Fred’s in charge,” Cate said glumly. There was something oddly soothing about speaking with someone who wasn’t there. “Hal will never have the guts to do anything about it. It’s a complete dead end.” She looked at the ghost—or, rather, through the ghost—and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, crap! I’m sorry. I mean, it’s not going anywhere. Just forget I said ‘dead,’ okay?”

  “Then why do you stay?” asked the apparition.

  Cate found herself getting defensive. “I have a salary, I have benefits—”

  “Benefits?”

  “Never mind that.” What would a nineteenth-century ghost understand? “The point is, thanks to this, I have enough to live comfortably on my own.”

  “An independence,” mused the apparition. “Not something at which one would sneer. Even so …” She seated herself on a chair that wasn’t there and looked thoughtfully at a fire that wasn’t lit. “Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling, it ought not, it cannot be, the greatest.”

  “What do you mean?” Cate asked.

  “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. If your mind mislikes this current employment, trust it.” She looked earnestly at Cate. “There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better.”

  “Um, what?” said Cate.

  “There will be better,” translated the ghost. “Do not resign yourself too soon.”

  Maybe there was some truth to that. Sure, she whined a lot, but when was the last time she had made any attempt to take an actual hand in her own destiny?

  “I won’t,” said Cate decidedly. “I’ll talk to Fred. Either he gives me something of real substance to do, or I’m out.”

  The apparition looked as though she only understood about half of that, but she gamely nodded her encouragement. “And what of your—forgive me, I’ve forgot the gentleman’s name.”

  “Hal,” said Cate absently. “Hal.”

  Did she still want Hal? She had, she realized, gotten into the habit of having a crush on him, like having her hair parted on the left side or carrying her bag on her right shoulder.

  “You find him not what you believed him to be,” the apparition deduced sagely.

  This was all getting a little too close to home. And from a ghost. For a moment, Cate had almost forgotten she was a ghost.

  “I’m sorry,” Cate said apologetically, “I’ve been talking and talking at you and I don’t even know who you are.”

  The ghost smiled pleasantly. “No matter. Close quarters make for quick friends. I am Miss Austen. And you are?”

  “Miss … did you say ‘Austen’?”

  “Yes,” said the specter. “Miss Jane Austen.”

  What was it Mr. Morland Tilney-Tilney had said? Something about a lady novelist coming to Northanger and spreading lies. Something beginning with a vowel …

  Cate remembered the one picture she had seen of Jane Austen, on a Barnes & Noble bag. It had been strangely out of proportion, awkwardly drawn. The authoress’s eyes had seemed to squint—although that might have been a fold in the bag—her lips had been pressed tightly together, and there had been a frilly cap covering her dark hair. She had looked, in Cate’s opinion, more disgruntled than anything else, as though miffed at finding herself rendered in green and beige and used to convey other people’s books.

  This woman, on the other hand, was young and vibrant, with shiny hair and a sparkle in her eye. Or maybe that was just the gold from the cabinet showing through her transparent face.

  “And you are?” asked the ghost who claimed to be Jane Austen.

  Why? Why her? Cate was sure there were plenty of people who would be delighted to be visited by the ghost of Jane Austen. Cate had been a poli sci major. She had read Rawls and Nozick, not … what else had Austen written? Five hundred pounds and a room of one’s own; no, that was that depressing woman who’d drowned herself. Cate wished she had paid more attention in Intro to English Lit.

  Did watching that miniseries with Colin Firth in it count?

  “I’m Cate,” she blundered. “I mean Catherine. You can call me Catherine.”

  The apparition gave her a look, but dipped a tiny curtsy anyway. Oh, crap, they didn’t use first names back then, did they? Damn, damn, damn. She was so not prepared for this.

  Cate curtsied clumsily back, her jeans protesting against the movement. Her midriff felt very bare. She ought to have been freezing, but adrenaline pumped heat through her veins. Was this how deepwater divers felt or those crazy people who jumped off bridges on a bungee cord? Warm, with a desperate heat like a fever burning one up from the inside out? Or perhaps it was just because in real life, the real Cate was under the covers, burrowed in warmth, dreaming of an authoress she ought to have read.

  “Forgive me,” said Cate. “I know I should know this … But do you write ghost stories?”

  “I write stories, yes,” said the ghost firmly, “but not what you call a ghost story. I leave those to Mrs. Radcliffe and the heirs of Otranto.”

  “Oh?” Cate didn’t like to ask who Mrs. Radcliffe was.

  “I have no patience with such trumpery horrors—except in satire. I have,” she added blandly, “written just such a story about Northanger. You can find it here, in this chest. I’ve left it as a gift for my host in exchange for the fine entertainment he afforded me during my visit.”

  There was a lively gleam in the authoress’s dead eye that made Cate wonder just what sort of gift it was intended to be. And what sort of entertainment she had been afforded.

  Hell hath no fury like an authoress bored?

  “I think I may have heard of it.” C
ate conjured up Mr. Tilney-Tilney’s ravings about aged housekeepers, secret passageways, and murdered wives. “What is it about? Your Northanger story, I mean.”

  The apparition gave the lacquer chest a fond pat. “My heroine, a great reader of Mrs. Radcliffe, visits Northanger. Overcome at staying under the roof of a genuine abbey—and one of such antiquity!—she imagines herself surrounded by every sort of ghost and ghoul. Naturally, she finds it to be nothing of the sort.”

  “Why naturally?” asked Cate.

  “Silly Catherine,” said the ghost of Jane Austen indulgently. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

  LAUREN WILLIG is the author of the New York Times bestselling Pink Carnation series, which follows the adventures of a series of Napoleonic-era spies in their attempts to thwart Bonaparte and avoid Almack’s Assembly Rooms. A graduate of Yale, Willig has a graduate degree in English history from Harvard and a JD from Harvard Law. After receiving her first book contract during her first month of law school, she juggled the legal life and Napoleonic spies for several years before deciding that doc review and book deadlines don’t mix. Now a full-time writer, she recently taught a class at Yale on “Reading the Historical Romance,” an examination of the Regency romance novel as literature from Jane Austen (especially Northanger Abbey!) through Julia Quinn.

  www.laurenwillig.com

  Editor’s Note: The following journal entry, spanning a few days in the spring of 1805, was recently discovered tucked into Jane Austen’s 1813 diary.

  25 Gay Street, Bath

  Wednesday, 17 April 1805

  “By the by, Jane,” my mother observed from her comfortable chair by the fire, “your disreputable Lord Harold has again brought disgrace upon all his noble family.”

  “Indeed, ma’am?”

  “From this account in the Morning Gazette, I conclude that he has met a man in a duel—and been wounded for his folly! It is conjectured that his lordship’s opponent is already fled to the Continent, in expectation of Lord Harold’s death.” She peered at me over the edge of her newspaper. “You do not seem excessively cut up at the intelligence! Have you given over your tendre for the villain?”

  “My respect for his lordship is undiminished,” I replied. “I have merely learnt not to credit every on-dit the papers may chuse to publish.”

  My mother’s eyes narrowed. Tho’ a woman blessed with a fund of absurdity, she is capable of exercising considerable wit when one least desires it—and our enforced tête-à-tête of recent weeks has redoubled her attentions to myself. My father having passed from this life in January, and my sister being absent nearly two months on an errand of mercy to our friend Martha Lloyd, I have enjoyed little society beyond Mrs. Austen’s. Such a picture of female devotion ought to prove inspiring—but has been cause for exasperation.

  “Fighting over a lightskirt, I daresay,” my mother sniffed; “some brazen Cytherean the papers could not mention. Ah, well—it is all as I predicted. His lordship is a rogue not fit to darken the threshold; and I suppose there’s not the least chance of you getting him now. When I consider, too, of the opportunities that have been thrown in your way! And so recently as last week! Every possible attention paid you in Laura Place—the most distinguishing notice—and it shall all be for naught, once his lordship is dead!”

  “Forgive me, ma’am.” I set down my needlework and pressed my hand to my eyes. “I have the headache—and believe I shall take a turn in the Gravel Walk. The fresh air will do me no end of good.”

  Impossible to explain that I could put a name to both the duelist and the Cytherean; nor to admit that I had witnessed the affair of honour, in the early hours of yesterday morning.

  A walk was certainly in order, if I were to preserve my sanity; but my steps turned toward Laura Place, and the man who hung between life and death, in the great curtained bed of the ducal household.

  • • •

  The mad episode began with a gilt-edged card of invitation, bearing the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s direction. The honour of my presence was begged in Laura Place Sunday evening—to celebrate the betrothal of Her Grace’s granddaughter, Lady Desdemona Trowbridge, to the Earl of Swithin.

  Lord Harold Trowbridge, that notable Corinthian, Admiralty spy, despoiler of maiden hearts, and general Rogue-About-Town, is Lady Desdemona’s uncle and the Dowager Duchess’s second son. He has honoured me with his acquaintance, and with his confidence in several affairs of a mysterious and deadly nature. I will confess to a decided partiality for Lord Harold’s society—he may be dangerous, but he is never dull—and in such a season of enforced boredom, I leapt at the opportunity to meet with him again—in a suitable gown of dove grey sarcenet, trimmed with black velvet bands about the sleeves and bodice, as befitted my mourning state.

  Torn between gratification and disapprobation—convinced that all gaiety must be foresworn in respect of my father’s death—my mother very nearly forbade my attendance in Laura Place. Wild horses, however, should not have kept me away; I should have been forced to dose Mrs. Austen’s soup with laudanum, and slip out of our lodgings while she snored unawares. In the end, however, hopes of the Gentleman Rogue triumphed over my mother’s anxiety for my reputation; and to Laura Place I was to go.

  “Only do not be drinking too much of Her Grace’s claret, Jane,” she warned, “for it heightens your colour unbecomingly. You are in only passable looks as it is. Lemonade will stand your friend.”

  I had been in Laura Place on several occasions—for a rout, a game of charades, and the unmasking of a murderer—and expected to find a crush in respect of Lady Desdemona’s impending nuptials. Her Grace had collected a genteel party of but thirty persons, however, most of them members of the Trowbridge and Swithin families. It was with an unaccustomed shyness, therefore, that I dropt my deepest curtsey to Eugènie, Dowager Duchess of Wilborough; felt Lady Desdemona’s arm slip about my waist; and turned to find the Gentleman Rogue performing his most elegant bow.

  “My dear Miss Austen,” he murmured. “You can have no idea how much pleasure this meeting brings. I have a thousand things to say to you! But they will keep until you have greeted your friends, and taken a glass of wine.”

  I had not had a glimpse of Lord Harold since the turn of the year; had received only a kind letter of condolence at my father’s death—and then, silence. Word of his exploits occasionally reached the London papers, in the most veiled terms. I caught wind of him at Gibraltar, consulting with Nelson; knew that he had dropt down to Portugal, at the request of the Emperor; and read that he had danced at Devonshire House with Desirée de la Neuve, a celebrated French soprano who had taken the ton by storm.

  I paid my respects to the Earl of Swithin, happy possessor of Desdemona’s heart; enjoyed a bit of raillery with her brother, the Marquis of Kinsfell, whose neck I had saved from the noose; and observed at a respectful distance no less a prince than the Duke of Clarence, his jovial Royal face already shining with heat and good will. Fortified by Her Grace’s excellent wine and even more amusing conversation—for there is nothing like an actress for all that is engaging, whether she be seventy years or no—I found Lord Harold once more at my side.

  “Miss Austen—may I present Mademoiselle Desirée de la Neuve to your acquaintance?”

  She was exceedingly lovely—just the sort of black-haired beauty the Gentleman Rogue cannot resist, with a queenly carriage, a stunning décolleté, and a damask complexion. None of your insipid blond beauties for his lordship, I thought with resignation; only a diamond of the first water should do. I managed a smile as I performed my courtesy, and said, “This is indeed an honour! I hope we may have the pleasure of hearing you sing this evening?”

  Mademoiselle de la Neuve was plainly indifferent to my pleasantries, however; she merely inclined her head and saved her charms for Lord Harold.

  “Mon dieu!” she breathed, so low as to draw him near. “Dear Aunt Eugènie keeps her rooms so very hot, is it not? I am always on the point of fainting. If you wo
uld be so good, ’Arry, as to procure me a glass of lemonade—”

  So the toast of the ton called the Dowager her aunt, did she?—And was on such terms with the Rogue as to call him Harry?

  I will confess to a swelling in my bosom that ill-became one so recently bereaved. My eyes followed Lord Harold as he sought the supper tables; watched the elegant figure vanish into the dining room—and turned with effort to the Incomparable before me. But she had long since dismissed the little dab of a female in fusty mourning, in favour of a gentleman better worth pursuing—whose air and address proclaimed the man of Fashion. He was a stranger to me, perhaps thirty years of age and exceedingly handsome; but something in the inclination of his head, the quirk of his lips, and the way his eyes roamed over the figure of Mademoiselle, proclaimed the accomplished rake. Heat was once more the subject of conversation.

  “Her Grace lives in a veritable furnace, winter and summer,” he said smilingly. “A rheumatic complaint, I believe. Allow me to escort you to the balcony, ma chère, before you swoon.”

  I stared after them, utterly unconscious of Lord Harold’s return, until he said into my ear—“A glass of lemonade, Jane? For I perceive that it is no longer of Desirée’s desiring. If you will forgive the pun.”

  “Thank you, my lord, but I detest lemonade.”

  “Well done.” He set the offending glass upon a side-table. “When the ducal cellars are opened, drink nothing but the most noble vintage. And now I think you should pretend to feel the flames my mother has so obligingly fanned. Flutter your eyelashes a little and stagger, Jane, if you will.”

  Puzzled, I obliged. His lordship supported me—his long, elegant fingers burned unwittingly into my arm. I cannot deny the effect his touch has upon me; it is perpetually electric.

  “Observe,” he murmured. “There are two sets of French doors giving out onto the balcony; and we might be profitably disguised by the draperies shielding the nearest. The Witch, I believe, has disappeared with Harcourt through the farther set of doors. What did you make of her, by the by?”