“Look, I happen to have white thread, too.”
“I don’t have time for this to be sewn up!”
“I could just tack it together with big, loose stitches. It won’t take long.”
Was he kidding?
“We just have to figure out where to go to get the job done.”
One thing about Chase she’d always found attractive was his executive decision-making abilities. He had made the decision for her that yes, he would fix her gown.
“The men’s room,” he said. “Follow me.”
And for once she followed someone else’s lead.
* * *
If it were Julian sewing up her gown, she might have thought it the sexiest sight she’d ever witnessed.
By the time Chase had finished tying off the thread at the hem, she’d sobered up some, and he’d, meanwhile, noticed her tattoo.
“A heart wrapped in barbed wire, interesting.”
Vanessa didn’t have time for this. “It’s an old tattoo.” She leaned her head back on the tile wall in exasperation and put her hand on his thick hair to tussle it, in hopes of changing the subject, offering a quick thanks, and getting the hell out of here and back into the ballroom. “Thank you, Chase. You’re a man of many talents. I owe you!”
At that very moment, the door swung open, and it happened to be Julian, seeing Chase on his knees with Vanessa’s gown hiked up and her hand in his hair. In the men’s room.
As soon as Julian walked in, he walked out.
Vanessa lost her breath for a moment. “Damn!”
“Who was that?” Chase stood.
“Julian!” Vanessa ran after him. “Julian!”
She spotted him in the ballroom, where the music played. He stood with a crowd of impeccably dressed revelers with his back to her.
Vanessa strode right up to the crowd and broke into the small circle, just as any ill-mannered American would.
“Julian,” she said with a smile, “can we talk?”
He returned the smile. “Of course.”
“Julian?” One of the masked ladies passed judgment and sentencing with a single inflection.
“Oh. Vanessa, I would like you to meet someone very important to me.” He made a flourish with his hand.
The woman stepped forward. She held her black mask on a stick and removed it to get a better look at Vanessa.
“Allison, this is my PR agent from Chicago, Vanessa. Vanessa, this is Allison, my fiancée.”
This wasn’t an act and not at all a part of his Mr. Darcy persona, was it? A sudden headache came on, a hangover jabbing into her brain, and her first thoughts, both shallow and swift, fired something like this: Fiancée? Fiancée?! Allison the fiancée didn’t send off any cool or sexy vibes—at all. She stood there like a wilted flower with her plain-Jane face and nondescript gown.
In one-fifth of a second Vanessa judged and labeled Allison as a drag and nothing, nothing like her.
Next thought: Secret engagement? It was straight out of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility!
Chase, who seemed to come out of nowhere, slid next to Vanessa with one hand on the handle of his sword while the other encircled her waist.
Could it be true? The engagement explained the hot and the cold, the sizzle and the ice, and the lukewarm to tepid.
Wait a minute. She’d slept with an engaged guy?
Allison limply held out her gloved hand, and Vanessa wanted to deliver a firm, confident handshake, and she did, by some miracle, manage to extend her hand even as, in her mind’s eye, she saw nothing but her and Julian’s naked bodies writhing together—until she pulled her hand back and propped it on her hip.
“Do you happen to have a white puppy?” Vanessa asked.
“Yes, yes, I do,” the amazingly boring Allison said. “Did Julian tell you about her?”
Vanessa glared at Julian. “No. Julian didn’t tell me a thing about her. I wish he had. He really should have! Right from the very beginning!”
Allison looked confused.
“I wanted to tell you about—the puppy. I tried to tell you—”
He looked sincere, he really did. Still.
Much like the water bubbling below the surface in Bath, she simmered.
“Oh, really? When did you try to tell me?”
The music had stopped, the dance ended, and hundreds of people, breathless, smiling, and sweaty, cleared the floor with their fans fluttering.
Her self-control reached the boiling point and her rage burst out in a torrent. “Was that before you slept with me or after?”
Her voice carried across the now-empty dance floor. Feathered heads turned. People set down their wineglasses to stare.
“Julian?” The amazingly boring Allison could speak with a modicum of passion, it seemed.
“Vanessa, let’s not get all feisty and American over this,” he said. “It was one night.” He looked pained even as he said it, as if he were lying. Vanessa had only known him a short while, but she could read his face, his normally stoic face.
He looked at Allison. “It was a mistake.”
No matter how he looked, and what his face said, his words stung. Blood rushed to Vanessa’s head. Her hands shook. “A mistake?”
Some of the people in the circle laughed.
What? He wanted to incite her anger even more? That was another mistake.
Chase brandished his fake, blunt sword.
“Nobody’s ever called me a mistake!” She yanked off her glove and slapped Julian across the face. It resounded across the dance floor.
He winced and squinted his dark brown eyes, his long lashes brushing against his high cheekbones. It hurt him more than physically, and Vanessa knew it.
A crowd gathered and some of them smiled, as if she, Julian, and Chase were actors and this were part of a rehearsed play or planned PR stunt. They had no clue this was for real. A man in the crowd handed Julian his replica sword in jest. Two TV cameras appeared out of nowhere and people in gowns and breeches began filming with their phones.
“You have insulted a lady’s honor, Julian, and I challenge you to a duel,” said Chase.
Julian laughed. “First of all, a challenge is never given at the time of the insult!”
“Well, I happen to be flying out tomorrow, so I’m skipping the usual hand-delivered note.”
“And a gentleman can’t duel with a clansman-pirate. We’re not of the same class.”
“Oh, you’re in a different class, all right.” Chase sheathed his sword. “How about fisticuffs?” He rolled up his sleeves and held up his fists.
“No, I choose swords. I accept the challenge. Name your second.”
“Vanessa will be my second!”
“I will?”
They stood at the center of the dance floor now, with the entire room watching and entertained, the TV cameras bobbing and swaying for better angles.
“A woman as a second? Then Allison will be mine.”
Allison couldn’t take her eyes off Vanessa, and Vanessa realized this must be equally, if not more, of a shock to her.
A redcoat handed Vanessa his replica sword with a wink.
“I’m not going to need it,” Vanessa said.
Within no time, and without any protocol, Chase and Julian began to spar, the room went abuzz, and Vanessa watched as the two incredibly agile and athletic men went at it with their fake swords, their arms bared and straining.
Half the room chanted “Dar-cy” while the other half chanted “clans-man,” and just as Vanessa caught a glimpse of Chase’s kilt flapping up above his muscular, tanned legs, a glint appeared out of the corner of her eye.
It was Allison, pointing a blunted sword in her direction. “You slept with my fiancé.”
Allison had a very pale English complexion compared to Vanessa’s dash of Italian. And now, rage had brought red splotches to Allison’s face as she raised her sword toward Vanessa.
“Allison, you don’t really want to fight, do you?” Vanessa put the tip
of her sword on the ground and leaned on it, putting her emotions aside to appear cavalier. “I don’t even know how to fight.”
“You slept with him!”
“I didn’t know he was engaged! How long have you two been engaged?”
“Almost a year.” Allison spoke through bared teeth. As if this were Vanessa’s fault! “He thought it would be best to keep the engagement secret to help book sales. To capture the female market.”
“Well, he sure captured the female market, didn’t he?”
Allison narrowed her hazel-brownish-greenish-whatever eyes. Vanessa didn’t like her. Not at all.
“When’s the wedding?”
“It’s a Christmas wedding at Chawton House Library.”
The very place, of course, where Julian had made eye contact with Vanessa about a wedding. The gorgeous, completely romantic estate once owned by Edward Austen Knight appeared in her brain, covered in a glistening blanket of snow.
Vanessa glared at Julian, who, she saw happily, seemed to be getting beaten pretty solidly by Chase. It was all Julian could do to defend himself against Chase’s consistent and powerful attacks. A swelling, overpowering feeling of gratitude came over her. Never in her life had a man defended her in any way.
But Julian! Ugh. She looked away from him in disgust. How he could be engaged to this, this simpering woman and lure Vanessa into bed at the same time? Could two women be more different? Could the man be more of a jerk? “I wish I’d never even met the guy! Your fiancé’s an ass.”
With one fell swoop, Allison swung her sword, knocking away the sword Vanessa had been leaning on and sending her off-kilter.
“You’re not going to take that, are you, Vanessa?” It was Lexi.
The crowd laughed and smiled, clasping their gloved hands together and fluttering their fans, still thinking all this had been staged. Vanessa noticed, however, that more men had taken up their own replica swords and were fighting their own fake duels in various corners of the dance floor. A fistfight had started in jest. Camera-phone flashes gave the room a strobe-light glare, and the old seventies song “The Ballroom Blitz” by the Sweet ran through her head. Everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz . . . ballroom blitz . . . The entire room broke out in chaos and noise beneath the glittering chandeliers.
Festival organizers scrambled to regain order.
It was an event planner’s nightmare but a PR person’s dream. This would make the papers, the radio, the Bath TV news, if not the BBC itself. It could even go viral.
“Va-nessa, Va-nessa!” Sherry chanted and pumped her fist.
Allison stood ready, her sword in the attack stance.
Vanessa raised her sword in defense, and that was it: Allison went on the attack.
Allison proved to be a better, more animated fighter than Vanessa expected. Vanessa did her best to keep her form, adapting what she could from the choreography she learned with Chase during the swording workshop.
TV cameras were on them now, from what Vanessa could tell, and in a moment of inspired action, she went on the attack, practically knocking the sword out of Allison’s hands. But she lunged a little too far forward, and the seam that Chase had sewn ripped, and then ripped a little more, revealing her garter and threatening to reveal more.
Various “gentlemen” in the crowd whooped with delight. Ladies pointed their white-gloved fingers at her.
Out of the corner of her eye, Vanessa saw the string quartet, with their expensive violins and cello, sneak out. The dance caller asked them all to “stop before someone gets hurt” but nobody listened.
Vanessa had to get out of here, but how? She went into defense mode and back-stepped, her sword crossing and intercepting Allison’s at every turn until Allison clumsily swung at Vanessa’s ankle with full force, throwing her anklebone into a fit of pain. Vanessa dropped her sword, clasped her ankle, and fell back onto the wooden counter at the fountain, sending half-full glasses of spa water crashing to the wooden floor.
She nearly fainted with the sound of shattered glass. Her ankle throbbed with pain. The room grew blurry. Allison seemed frozen, unable to move, her eyes buggier than usual.
Then, focus and calm overcame Vanessa. She sneered. “This little jousting game is over. You’re fighting the wrong person. You need to kick his ass, not mine.” She grabbed the ripped seam at her thigh and sauntered, as best as she could with a wobbly ankle, out the front door. TV cameras were on her; a reporter with a mike was asking her all kinds of questions.
She could bring Allison down on national TV, and Julian, too, for that matter. She was not afraid to speak to the press, into video cams—she had spent most of her adult life doing it. She could call him a fraud, a phony, an ass. But then she thought of that home of his, and of her aunt.
She pursed her lips and looked into the cameras. “No comment.”
When she went through the front door of the Pump Room to the street, rain pelted down on her, and she hurried through the dark cobblestone streets of Bath, landing in puddles with her flats, hobbling every now and then on her ankle. At the door to the flat, as she turned the key in the lock, she saw that the rain had soaked through her entire gown and her stockings, and her gloves had gone translucent on her quivering hands.
She’d been to a ball in Bath but hadn’t been asked to dance. Jane Austen may very well have been in the same situation. Austen, though, had never been in a sword fight in the Pump Room.
* * *
When Vanessa got up to the flat and caught a glimpse of plastic Colin Firth with her thong draped on his head, his once-friendly smile seemed smug to her now. She went straight to the bathroom, where she stripped off her torn gown, which did seem to be stained with six inches of dirt. She wrapped her shivering self in a towel and soaked her ankle under cold running water in the bath.
Allison had hit her on her tattoo and a purple bruise appeared right over the heart. She’d put herself out there and gotten hit—hard.
Had she mistaken proximity for intimacy? Sex for connection? Had she ever known this kind of humiliation? She’d been a fool for thinking there might have been a spark of something between her and Julian.
After her shower, Vanessa promised herself she wouldn’t check the social networking sites, which she knew would be blowing up with amateur videos of the night. And she had a ton of texts that she didn’t want to see, either. But when her phone rang and Paul’s number appeared, she had to answer.
Had Aunt Ella gotten hold of the car keys? Vanessa’s mind raced.
Paul spoke clearly, with authority and calm, but his words meant only one thing, and even as she spoke with him on the phone, she flung her suitcase to the bed and tossed her stuff in. She called a cab to take her to the train station, where her plan was to take the last train to London and get the first possible plane back home.
Aunt Ella had burned both hands on the electric stove, not remembering the burners were on. Her hands had been bandaged and she’d been released from the burn unit.
So that was it.
Vanessa was going home now. She wouldn’t be attending Julian’s Undressing Mr. Darcy show the next day—well, she wouldn’t have been doing that regardless. She left her torn, wet, and dirtied gown hanging in the shower and rushed out to the cab in the rain. On the way to the train station, the cab drove past George Bayntun’s bookstore. She’d never even gone in.
This Side of the Pond (Again)
Chapter 21
There happened to be a Starbucks at Heathrow and, after a week of darting in and out of quaint and quirky English tearooms, she stood in line for the familiar, the predictable, the safe. Safe coffee, safe everything. It wasn’t so much giving up as it was giving in.
Once in Chicago she didn’t stop at her condo but went straight to visit Aunt Ella at Paul’s.
Her aunt on the sofa covered in a blanket, reading another new scholarly tome about Jane Austen, looked thinner and more frail than when Vanessa had left her. The bandages on both her hands sent a
shiver through Vanessa, but seeing her aunt’s smiling face proved a comfort beyond compare.
Aunt Ella hugged her as she whispered in Vanessa’s ear, “You are loved,” she said.
“I know. I’m lucky. Just like Edward Austen Knight.” She could see, in her mind’s eye, a horseshoe nail pointing toward her peep-toed heels.
She pulled up a chair to Aunt Ella’s side.
“Chase called and told us everything. Please don’t be upset with him. He really has your best interests at heart.”
“I know he does. It took me a while to see that. I’m a little slow on the uptake.” Vanessa smiled.
And so did her aunt.
Vanessa had taken a chance, gone after Julian on a whim, based on something she had thought was there, but she had learned, now, to be more in touch and grounded. Eight hours on the plane without her electronics had given her time to think. Her plan now included being more a part of the human world and less susceptible to the distractions of the bright, shiny, and beeping cyber world.
“Here, my dear, I want you to have this.”
In the palm of Ella’s bandaged hand sat a reproduction of Jane Austen’s turquoise ring, a bright blue stone with a gold band, the one Kelly Clarkson had bought.
“Oh, no, I can’t—” Vanessa pulled up the blanket and tucked it around her aunt.
“I want you to have it.”
“Thank you. I really just want to thank you—for everything.” She kissed her aunt on the forehead, her soft, slightly wrinkled forehead.
“My pleasure. So I don’t need to ask how it went, but how do you feel?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m so sorry I brought him into your life.”
“I’m not. Not at all. The whole thing resulted in my finally appreciating Jane Austen—and that, as you know, is for life.”
“There’s a scene in Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth sees Pemberley from a distance for the first time. Darcy’s estate, you know, is very much like him. Symmetrical, balanced; the grounds are natural, Elizabeth notices, without blatant artifice. Julian needs work. Just like his estate.”
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