Undressing Mr. Darcy

by Karen Doornebos

  “Not this discussion again—not now, okay? You will see who I end up with, I promise you!”

  “I certainly hope so, because nothing would make me happier than to see you settled. Here are some English pounds I have leftover from my last trip. Drink the healing waters at the Pump Room for you and me both. Daily, if you can stomach it.”

  “Do you think I’m unwell?” Vanessa asked with a smirk.

  “You keep me young, Vanessa, that’s for sure, with all of your antics. Be warned. The Jane Austen Festival attracts the real fanatics, you know.”

  “Pun intended? I’ve packed my fan.”

  “Let’s be serious for a moment, Vanessa dear. Are you sure about this? Have you fully recovered from the shock of the accident? And have you really developed feelings for Julian?”

  “Yes, yes. And yes.”

  “You can change your style of clothing for the sake of a man, but you shouldn’t change yourself. Just remember that. That being said, I do think you must go on this journey. You’re on a journey already, darling, just like me. I’m on a path with Paul and my health, and it’s not as pleasurable as trouncing off to Bath. That is simply the reality. But you! You’ll have a wonderful time and you shall do it all for me—I won’t make it back to England ever again.”

  “Don’t say that . . .”

  “It’s all right, Vanessa. I’ve come to terms with it. And you? Well, as Jane Austen herself said in Northanger Abbey, ‘If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.’”

  After the hugs and kisses, Vanessa lingered outside in the dark, on the circular drive, looking at the house and the windows lit but shaded by draperies, and thought how safe and cozy it all looked. Her aunt had found happiness and security when she needed them most.

  Still, Vanessa ached with guilt for leaving her at this juncture, even though it was only for a week.

  Aunt Ella’s nurse stepped out the front door—catching Vanessa by surprise.

  “Oh, hi, Vanessa.”

  “Is everything all right, Kathleen? You don’t usually stay so late! I didn’t even know you were here.”

  “I see to it that your aunt gets into bed nowadays.”

  “Oh. She seemed fine tonight.”

  “I know, she seems fine. I’ll let you know when she needs an overnight nurse.”

  “You have my cell phone number, right? I’m going to England for the week, so you’ll need to use the country code. Here’s my card. You can e-mail me, text, phone, whatever. Are you on any of the social networking sites? You can message me there or instant-message me—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get in touch if I need to. One week isn’t long. It’s best that you go now, actually . . . Enjoy yourself!”

  She would . . . do her best.

  The Other Side of the Pond

  Chapter 13

  As soon as the plane landed, Lexi offered a quote from Austen about London: “‘Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my Morals corrupted.’ Could a girl ask for more? All sorts of sordid things happen in London.”

  Vanessa smiled, appreciating not only Austen’s exaggeration and humor, but Lexi’s humor, too. She and Lexi had officially made up during the flight at forty thousand feet in the air and it felt right to let the grudge go. Lexi was high maintenance, but her persistence had won Vanessa over, and she decided to give their friendship a second chance.

  Sherry, who laughed at the quote, wore a T-shirt to commemorate the trip. This one read:

  Single

  Taken

  Waiting for Mr. Darcy

  The two glass doors from customs to the international arrivals section of London’s Heathrow Airport in Terminal 3 each had a palace guard painted on it, with fuzzy black hat and red coat. Welcome to Great Britain, it said under the guards. Welcome, indeed. She was on Julian’s home turf now.

  She wasn’t prepared for the throng of people cordoned off at international arrivals, with their heart-shaped balloons and their welcome signs and the hugging and kissing and groping, and that, too, just brought her back to the first time she’d met Julian. Against all reason, she actually looked for him in the crowd. As if he would be there! She knew he could very well be at home in Chawton, a ways from both London and Bath, because his Undressing show wasn’t scheduled until the end of the festival week.

  Suddenly, it seemed, British accents rang out all around her, most of them nothing like Julian’s. As she, Lexi, and Sherry whisked along the hallway, they passed a blur of shops sporting a barrage of images from Union Jack flags to red double-decker buses to the Tower Bridge, black cabs, and the royal family.

  Yes, just in case she didn’t know it: she had arrived in England. The airport versions of the Globe Pub, Harrods, Glorious Britain, and WHSmith confirmed it.

  She stopped with her rolling suitcase at a dizzying array of shirts, ties, and cuff links on display in Thomas Pink. A placard in the shop window caught her eye:

  Mr. Pink was an eighteenth-century London tailor who designed the iconic hunting coat worn by Masters of Foxhounds, whippers-in, huntsmen, and other hunt staff. The coat was made of scarlet cloth but was always referred to as PINK, in honour of its originator. Meticulous attention to detail, exclusive fabric, and exquisite craftsmanship were the hallmarks of a PINK coat . . .

  Lexi moved her along. “We’re not even out of the airport yet. How will we ever get you around England?”

  “That story was just so—interesting. And spelling ‘honor’ with a u really lends it a certain elegance, doesn’t it? Why don’t we spell it with a u?”

  Lexi sighed. “The English have u in all kinds of words, like ‘colour’ and ‘favourite.’ We Americans just streamlined it—that’s what we do, right? The American way?”

  Vanessa stopped at the Starbucks counter, where a sign on a pedestal read, QUEUE STARTS HERE.

  “Julian says ‘queue.’” Vanessa smiled.

  Lexi sighed. “They all say ‘queue.’”

  “No Starbucks for you, girlie,” Sherry said. “We’re going local, okay?”

  “I’m here to go native,” Vanessa agreed.

  Navigating through the crowd on her way to the Heathrow Express train, Vanessa found herself practically bumping into people, people who said “sorry” to her in their varied British accents until finally, when she settled on the escalator with her unwieldy suitcase, Sherry tapped her on the shoulder.

  “You need to be standing on the other side. Even foot traffic goes the opposite direction here.”

  As soon as Vanessa moved to the other side of the escalator, a line of frustrated but very patient and polite Brits in suits and business skirts filed by in a huff.

  “There should be an app for this,” Vanessa said.

  How had Sherry instinctively picked up on the foot-traffic flow and escalator etiquette and she hadn’t? Sherry had never been to England before, either.

  Everything struck Vanessa as familiar and foreign at the same time; even the train station’s convenience store food and drinks looked similar but completely different as they loaded up for the train ride. She stared at the refrigerated section for some time before she decided to get an egg-and-cress sandwich, the cheapest one available, because she’d spent a mint on her last-minute flight to London. Although the pear cider she picked up seemed overpriced.

  “Not very well globally traveled, are you?” Lexi asked. “It helps to get out from behind your electronic devices every now and then.”

  Her train ticket, too, when she read it, made her laugh. The English called a train car a “carriage” and their seats were in carriage C. How quaint, how cute—how English. Cuter still was the fact that they were heading to Paddington Station. Paddington? As in the adorable little bear with the yellow hat and toggle-buttoned coat?

  “Here’s to Jane Austen,” Lexi said once they’d settled in and she raised her bottle of Pimm’s.

  “To the Jane Austen Festival.” Sherry ra
ised her can of Fanta.

  “Yes, to both of the above, and Mr. Darcy, too,” Vanessa said, realizing the pear juice she’d picked up had alcohol in it. Pear “cider.” Note taken.

  When at last they stepped from the train that took them from Paddington through gorgeous green countryside to the Bath Spa station, it hit her that she would be spending a week in a spa city. Would she come out of the spa experience feeling any better? She sure hoped so.

  The late-afternoon sun shone, and they decided to hoof it from the station to the hotel rather than taking a cab.

  They crossed east out of the station when they should’ve stayed on the west side of Manvers Street, where Vanessa stopped so instantly with her suitcase that Sherry crashed into her.

  GEO. BAYNTUN, read the letters on the massive white stone-colored building. BOOKBINDER and BOOKSELLER wrapped around the arched windows, and Vanessa held on to the wrought iron fence in front of the building. OLD PRINTS, it said in painted letters on an outdoor gas lamp just near a window. Julian shopped here. She’d seen the bookplates in his books.

  Lexi put her hand on her hip. “Really, Vanessa? A bookshop? We’ve traveled a total of eleven hours to see the hundreds of men dressed in tight breeches and dashing red coats who are a mere ten minutes from here, and you stop at a bookstore. You have an e-reader anyway. Remember? You were the first to get one because they’d hired you to test-market it.”

  Vanessa left her suitcase on the sidewalk as she hopped up the stairs and peered in the glass-paneled doorway. The shop was closed, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen anything as beautiful as the sun streaming in on the dark wooden floors and glass cases that rose to the ceiling full of leather-bound books with gilded lettering on the spines. A sign on the door read, BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. How quaint.

  She could buy Aunt Ella a gorgeous edition of Pride and Prejudice here and maybe, just maybe, an elegantly bound book for herself.

  “We’re going now. It’s pub time,” Lexi said as she looked at her watch.

  “After we check in with the festival, right?” Sherry asked.

  “Right,” Lexi confirmed as she crossed the street.

  Vanessa trailed behind them, her suitcase bumping along and sometimes spinning out on the cobblestones, making her aware she’d left the United States and was officially across the pond.

  Julian was right about the stone Georgian architecture being both stunning and elegant. Feeling as if she’d fallen into Jane Austen’s Persuasion or Northanger Abbey, Vanessa floated by the abbey and the Roman Baths, craning her neck to see them, but stopped at the Pump Room.

  “Lexi! Sherry!” she called out to them among the crush of tourists. She pointed to the gorgeous sign that read, THE PUMP ROOM. “We’re going in.”

  “Not now,” Lexi whined, cocking her hip.

  “I’m thirsty and I’m getting a mineral water. Look—the sign says it’s fifty pence a glass. My treat. Let the healing begin!”

  “I’m in,” Sherry said.

  “Hurry up,” Lexi mumbled. “I’ll watch the bags. I didn’t come all this way for a glass of water.”

  “You came all this way for a tall glass of water.” Vanessa smiled.

  “Or two. Preferably in breeches.” Lexi laughed. “Go.” Lexi waved them off as she smiled at a good-looking guy standing outside a shop across the way. He beamed back at her.

  Vanessa, in her snug-fitting thin leather jacket and flirty skirt, flounced into the formal room to the strains of a classical trio playing piano, harp, and violin. It could’ve been worse—she could’ve been wearing her black nail polish, her earbuds, and scanning her phone. That was the old Vanessa.

  Still, maybe her aunt was right. Maybe she did need healing.

  The only sounds other than the music were the clinking of silverware and the hushed din of conversation under tiered tea plate servers. Floor-to-ceiling windows flanked the minty-green-colored room, punctuated by white columns, eighteenth-century oil paintings, and shimmering chandeliers.

  As if she’d been here before, she felt that off to her right, in a light-filled, domed-glass alcove, would be the fountain. Of course, the short line of people waiting while others drank clear glasses of water might’ve been a clue. She laughed at her own folly. Folly? Had she ever used that word before? Why did she palpably feel Jane Austen’s presence across the room, near the trio, with folded arms and laughing at her?

  Vanessa had never seen a spa fountain before and had never been to an ancient spa town, so she had nothing to compare it to, but the sacredness of the font did not escape her, jaded as she was. Behind the fountain itself stood sand-colored Georgian buildings that left the entire alcove in a wash of honeyed light.

  Beyond a waxed wooden counter stood the stone base of the fountain with THE KING’S SPRING etched in it.

  “Wow. Cool,” Sherry said as she took a picture with her phone.

  Atop the rougher base, an urn-shaped vessel had been carved out of smooth stone and four spigots, each decorated with a bronze shell, poured a perfect stream of water into one of four bronze fishes’ mouths below.

  The server took Vanessa’s pound coin and brought two glasses of water from the pump.

  “Here’s to our health. Especially our mental health.” Vanessa laughed as she clinked with Sherry.

  Sherry immediately made a sour face, but then drank half her glass.

  Vanessa drank her entire glass even though it tasted like liquid metal. Panacea or not, she felt better already and toasted her empty glass to the smirking ghost of Jane Austen across the room.

  “Let’s swing by here every day for a glass,” she said to Sherry as they stepped back out onto the cobblestones, where Lexi had already lured the man from across the street to her side. Evidently she’d procured his phone number, seeing as he gave her the universal gesture for “call me” before he took off.

  “I’m pumped about the Pump Room!” Sherry said. “Anytime you want to go, Vanessa.”

  Three to an English-sized flat proved a bit snug even with the cot and foldout sofa, but the flat had its own washing machine. Besides, it meant more to Vanessa than she’d anticipated that their flat stood a mere block from Trim Street and just a few blocks from Queen Square and Gay Street—all three places that Jane Austen had lived. She couldn’t wait to explore and see the actual houses she’d stayed in!

  At the same time, she couldn’t believe her excitement about that.

  Once they’d freshened up and changed, they stood in line at the Bath Box Office to collect their preordered tickets for various events during the week.

  The very polite ticket girl, wearing a bonnet garnished with fake fruit, handed Vanessa her lecture tickets and then an envelope. In her adorable English accent, she said, “Your vouchers are in here along with your punch card for the Dash for Darcy scavenger hunt.”

  Dash for Darcy scavenger hunt? Vanessa had given Julian that idea—he must’ve used it! He’d listened. But how had she gotten on the list?

  “There must be some mistake,” Vanessa said. “I didn’t sign up for a scavenger hunt.”

  The girl smiled. “Vanessa Roberts, correct?”

  She nodded.

  “Right. There you are. Perhaps someone signed you up and paid for you as their special guest?”

  Had Julian signed her up? Her heart literally leapt. “I suppose it’s possible. What’s it all about?”

  “It’s a brand-new event, introduced at the last minute, really, but it has sold out and people are clamoring to get into it.”

  Wow. Just wow.

  “It takes place over a couple of days and has you crisscrossing Bath and even some out-of-town sights.”

  “Oh.” That didn’t sell Vanessa. She didn’t want to go out of town.

  “Our very own Mr. Darcy organized the event and offered the prize: a dinner with him at his historical home and recognition of winning the scavenger hunt at the ball.”

  But she had to be sure this was Julian. “Who is your ‘Mr. Darcy’?”<
br />
  “Why, Julian Chancellor, of course, the esteemed author and Jane Austen scholar. This is all to help benefit the restoration of his historical home. Excuse me, miss, but there is quite a queue behind you.”

  Flustered and flummoxed, Vanessa stepped out of line while Sherry and Lexi got their tickets.

  “Julian must’ve signed me up for the Dash for Darcy thing,” Vanessa said once Lexi and Sherry had ventured over.

  “How do you figure that?” Lexi asked.

  “Who else would’ve done it? It’s one of the most expensive things on here. The ticket price is hefty—a fund-raising fee.”

  “That was nice of him, then, wasn’t it?” Sherry asked.

  “I—I guess so,” Vanessa said.

  “If he signed you up for it, he obviously knows you’re here, then. Have you heard anything from him?”

  “No.”

  “Clearly he wants you to chase him—the old-fashioned way.”

  “Did you two sign up for it?”

  “I didn’t sign up, but I have a voucher and packet for it,” Lexi said. “How about you, Sherry?”

  “I got one, too! He signed us all up!” She’d been rifling through the packet. “It looks like we’ll be taking the train to London—and Chawton, too.”

  “Hurrah! We’re trotting off to London town,” Lexi said as she looked at each day’s clues.

  “But we just arrived in Bath! I don’t know about this,” Vanessa said.

  “What?” Lexi said. “You came all this way and you’re going to let someone else win and have dinner with Julian at his—place? After he paid for you to partake? I don’t get it. Does this approach– avoidance method of snaring men work well for you?”

  Vanessa sighed. “I need a drink. A Bath bitter.”

  Lexi put her arm around Vanessa. “Me, too.”

  “Not too many drinks,” Sherry said. “Tomorrow morning’s the promenade in our costumes.”

  Lexi opened her itinerary. “Look. We can start with a glass of wine at the prefestival gathering at the—wait for it—Bath and County Club in the Queen’s Parade.” She said the last bit in a fake English accent and laughed. “Are we in England now, or what, girls?”