Bespelling Jane Austen

by Mary Balogh

  “No woman,” she said gravely, “should ever rely on the consistency of a man’s heart. It’s always a mistake to assume that just because a man seems to like you he plans to marry you.”

  “Oh, stuff it, Mary,” I said, throwing my coat over the back of a chair and sitting beside Jane on the love seat. It was pretty obvious that she’d been crying, though she tried to smile in her usual way.

  “I’m all right, Lizzy,” she said with a very soft sniff. “I was disappointed at first, but now—”

  “Disappointed!” Mom shrieked. “You are heartbroken, darling, and no wonder! He led you on. Oh, I can’t bear it!”

  I put my arm around Jane’s shoulders. “Was there more in the e-mail from Caroline you didn’t tell me?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes.” She glanced at Mom, who was too busy with her own frustration to pay any attention to us. “She said several times that she and Charles had no intention of returning this year. In fact, she made it pretty clear that they might not come back at all.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! Isn’t his business in the U.S.?”

  “He lived for quite a while in England before he inherited the company. Darcy has many business interests in London. Caroline said that they’d be staying at Charles’s London flat and at Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire.”

  Darcy. I growled, and Jane patted my hand.

  “Really, Izba, it’s not necessary—”

  “Not necessary! What is going on with these people?” I looked at Dad. “What about the acquisition?”

  “On hold,” Dad said, removing his glasses and wiping them with his handkerchief. “There is no guarantee that the same deal will be offered again.”

  “That’s the worst of it,” Jane said. “I just hate to think that everyone at BL will suffer because—”

  “Because Charles is a heel?”

  “Don’t say that.” She dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “There must be some good reason.”

  Somehow I controlled myself. “What else did Caroline say?”

  Jane rose suddenly. “Come with me.”

  “Jane!” Mom cried, sitting up. “Where are you going?”

  “We’ll be right back, Mom,” I said as Jane pulled me down the hall and into her old bedroom. It was still unchanged from years ago, pink and frilly and neat as a pin.

  “See for yourself,” Jane said, pushing a printed sheet into my hand.

  It didn’t take long for me to understand why Jane hadn’t wanted Mom around. The e-mail was a lot more explicit than Jane had hinted to me.

  Caroline spent a few paragraphs saying how much she’d miss Jane, and then got to the meat of it. She said that she was looking forward to seeing Georgiana, Darcy’s younger sister, at the Derbyshire estate, and went on to rhapsodize about Georgiana’s manifold charms and accomplishments.

  I don’t know if I’ve every mentioned this, but I’ve always thought that Georgie would make a wonderful sister. It seems more likely than ever that I’ll get my wish. Charles has always adored her; he’ll be seeing so much of her that I’m sure he’ll realize how happy they’d be together.

  I sat down on the bed. “That little—”

  “Keep reading, Izba.”

  My brother’s marriage to Georgie will make everyone they know very happy and join two prominent and honorable families across the Atlantic. Think how much the combination of these fortunes can achieve. With this money and Charles’s good heart, our company will be able to continue with our cutting-edge research and create the advances that will change the lives of so many people for the better.

  “Ha!” I said. “As if she gives a damn about making anyone’s life better. Except her own, that is.”

  “Charles told me about Georgie,” Jane said, looking away. “She does sound wonderful.”

  “But Charles isn’t in love with her!”

  “We don’t know that, Izba.”

  “We only have Caroline’s word for any of this. It’s obvious that she didn’t want to see you and Charles together, no matter how much she pretended to be your ‘friend.’ We’re— You’re—not rich or high-class enough for her. But that doesn’t mean Charles’s feelings have changed. If she nags him as much as she nags Darcy, he probably went with her just to shut her up for a while.”

  “Maybe you’re right, Lizzy.”

  “I am right.” I crumpled the paper and stood up. “This is all talk right now. The woman’s clearly a shrew, and you can trust her just about as much as you can trust a piranha to pass up a succulent set of toes. In a few weeks Charles will be back, and all this will be forgotten.”

  I WAS WRONG. A FEW weeks later, Jane got another e-mail that made it very clear that a wedding between Charles and Darcy’s sister was imminent. I’d tried to convince myself that the mastermind behind this separation had to be Caroline, but I couldn’t fool myself any longer.

  Darcy had to be at least partly responsible. Whether it was because he wanted to undermine the negotiations, to simply keep Charles under his heel or to see his friend marry his sister, he had more than a little to do with it.

  It occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about Georgiana. Was she a vampire, too? I presumed that her parents—and Darcy’s—were long dead, and she wouldn’t still be alive if she weren’t the same as her brother. It was the most logical explanation.

  Apparently, vampires married just like normal people. For eternity. In that case, wouldn’t Charles have to be converted, too?

  Maybe that was another reason for Darcy’s interference…if he let Charles and Jane get together, a lot more people would know, sooner or later, that vampires existed. If Mom found out, there would be no shutting her up on such a juicy subject.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t as if the vampires I’d seen at the club seemed particularly nervous about being exposed. According to what George had said, there was an entire subculture of strigoi and their followers in New York.

  What if I’d found the courage to confront Darcy outright and make him own up to what he was? Would he have denied it? Would he have felt the need to take some action to silence me?

  There wasn’t much point in brooding about that now. Darcy was in England with the others, no longer an immediate source of danger. Jane was safe, too.

  But while the rest of the world might have been fooled by Jane’s stiff upper lip, I wasn’t. Mom gnashed her teeth, Mary offered unwanted advice, Kitty and Lydia urged Jane to come to Manhattan and find a “real” man. Jane bore it all like a champion, and in time even the rest of my family conceded that Jane had gotten over Charles.

  “Everything will go back to normal now,” Jane said, her eyes shadowed by dark circles like bruises. “I’ll remember Charles as the nicest guy I’ve ever met, but that’s all.”

  I smiled and nodded and pretended I didn’t see her pain. Charles had proved to be a huge disappointment; if he couldn’t stand up to Darcy—or his own sister, for that matter—as far as his own happiness was concerned, Jane was well rid of him.

  As for George Wickham, I’d hardly exchanged more than a few words with him when he announced that he’d been offered a senior position in a friend’s Los Angeles law firm, an offer he couldn’t refuse. I can’t say that Mr. Mason seemed that sorry to let him go.

  I still liked George, vampire or not, and was sorry that I couldn’t continue to quiz him about strigoi life and habits—anything that might give me a basis for fighting Darcy if it ever came to that. George promised me that he’d answer my questions by mail (not e-mail, he said, because he didn’t want that kind of information floating around the internet) and assured me that he hadn’t forgotten his commitment to the battle against Darcy’s kind.

  He’d told me the day he left that Darcy would do anything to destroy him. And that he wouldn’t have me or my family suffer because of his history with the man.

  I thought that was a very noble attitude, and felt a definite regret after he was gone. I couldn’t really blame him when my letters went unanswered after the
first two I wrote. He was incredibly busy, he said, and while vampires didn’t have much need for sleep and had stamina beyond that of the most talented human athlete, even he was beginning to feel the heat of living up to expectations. I knew I had to let him get settled, and managed to turn my attention to other things. Just as I managed, by the end of every day, to stop thinking about Darcy. Until I started all over again.

  I finally recognized that I had to take some action, no matter how pointless it might seem. I began to research Darcy’s public background, finances and business interests, hoping to turn up something useful. Everything I could find was rock-solid and completely aboveboard.

  Jane and I both had a welcome distraction when our aunt, Sally Gardiner, came over from England to visit. She was a smart, sensible woman who saw things as they were, and her brisk, warm good nature cheered Jane considerably. When she invited Jane to go back with her to London and stay in her and Uncle Edward’s flat until New Year’s, Jane quickly agreed.

  If the Bingleys and Darcy were really on a country estate in Derbyshire, it didn’t seem likely that they’d meet Jane or the Gardiners in London. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles, anyway. And though I told myself that Charles would never break ranks to see her on his own, even if he somehow found out she was there, part of me hoped he would.

  I didn’t know that Jane had already e-mailed Caroline, telling her she’d be in London. Jane, of course, still hadn’t been able to blame the woman for encouraging Charles into leaving the States. She was bound and determined to give the harpy another chance.

  So, for the first few days after Jane and my aunt and uncle arrived at Heathrow, I haunted my computer from five in the morning until midnight. The first few e-mails were all about how much she loved Aunt Sally’s flat, London and England. There was a long stretch when I didn’t hear from her at all. Then, at the end of the third week, she gave me the bad news.

  Dearest Izba,

  Please don’t tell me, “I told you so.” I know you’ve been trying to warn me about Caroline, but I just couldn’t believe she was as bad as you implied.

  Well, I was wrong. Caroline had written back after my first e-mail, mentioning that she’d love to see me. I didn’t hear from her after that—she never came to visit me—so I went to see her at Charles’s flat. Charles was still at Pemberley, but Caroline answered the door.

  She was polite. She made it very clear that I wasn’t likely to see Charles anytime soon…he was busy with Mr. Darcy and their business interests in England. She didn’t invite me to stay long; she was off to dinner with friends.

  Still, I thought she might finally come to visit me before Christmas. And she did, but it was a disaster. She didn’t even try to be polite. She kept talking about Charles’s forthcoming wedding to Georgiana Darcy, hinted that Charles knew I was in town and made it very clear without actually saying so that she didn’t expect to see much more of me.

  So now we know. I don’t understand why Caroline was so friendly with me when I was recuperating at Netherfield, but any friendship we might have had is over. I haven’t seen Charles once, and now I know I never will.

  But don’t worry about me. I’m having a great time with Aunt Sally, and Christmas in London is wonderful. I can’t wait to see you again on the second.

  Write soon.

  Love,

  Your Jane

  I shoved my chair away from the desk and made a few choice comments that would have made a Hell’s Angel blush. Nothing Jane had said about Caroline had surprised me, but my opinion of Charles had sunk beyond recovery. Jane was better off without him.

  And I, as it turned out, was better off without George. Lydia, who had gone to L.A. to spend Christmas with our other aunt, Daisy Phillips, sent a newspaper clipping announcing George’s engagement to one Mary King.

  If I felt any regret, it didn’t last long. I was more interested in wondering if Mary King was a vampire, too, and how many laws would be passed against vampire marriage if people knew strigoi existed.

  But there was still precious little I knew about vampires. Maybe we’d never see Darcy again. I could only hope so. Still, I was presumably one of a select few “mortals” who realized that such nonhuman creatures haunted our world. Wasn’t it still my duty to learn more as long as there was the slightest chance that Darcy wasn’t through with Bennet Labs?

  My resolve hardened when I received another brief e-mail from Jane.

  Dearest Izba,

  I don’t know what to make of it. Today I saw Mr. Darcy at Harrods. It seemed like a coincidence until I saw him again at the British Museum the next day.

  What does he want? He didn’t talk to me…in fact, he disappeared both times when I saw him. I can’t think of any reason he’d be spying on me, can you?

  I’d worried that Darcy had some kind of evil interest in Jane, and now I was sure of it. If he’d just wanted to keep her away from Charles, well, he’d already succeeded in that, hadn’t he?

  I could think of only one thing to do. If the vampires wouldn’t come to me, I’d have to go to the vampires.

  CHAPTER 9

  I HAD BOOKED A HOTEL IN MANHATTAN TO BEGIN my quest, and from the looks of things, Rosings was hopping tonight.

  I pulled my shawl around my shoulders, shivering in the frigid December air. Thank God it hadn’t snowed; I’d have fallen in my spike heels. As it was, I’d had to leave my puffy down coat behind; I didn’t think it would make a very good accessory to my little black dress.

  Most of the women I saw hanging around the alley were just as inappropriately dressed as I was. Some were wearing a lot less than a skimpy dress. A few milled around in nervous-looking groups, as if they weren’t sure they should be there. The rest were fawning over the guys—and one woman—who obviously regarded the human’s abject worship as their due.

  I swallowed, twice, and reminded myself why I was here. George had said that most vampires didn’t hurt humans when they fed—too risky—and preferred willing partners—of whom there were clearly plenty available. I realized there was a chance that one of the “bad” strigoi would be present, but I’d already resolved that gaining knowledge was more important than practicing caution.

  I took a step, stumbled, found my footing again and started for the door.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  The guy wasn’t handsome. At that point I’d come to believe that being attractive was a requirement for any self-respecting strigoi, George and Darcy being prime examples. This guy was homely at best—short, chubby and balding—and he was so lacking in the charisma of the vampires I knew that I wondered for a minute if he was a vampire at all.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asked.

  I smiled in what I hoped was a simpering fashion. “Yes.” I leaned toward him, letting him have a look at my cleavage. “Are you really a vampire?”

  He showed his teeth and licked them sensuously. I couldn’t mistake the pointed canines.

  “Oh!” I said with a shiver that wasn’t completely faked. “I’m so glad to meet you!”

  “The pleasure is mutual.” He preened, brushing off the sleeves of his tux. “Do you want to go inside, or have a quickie here?”

  My hands had begun to tremble. I buried them in the shawl.

  “Inside, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I promise you won’t regret it.”

  He grabbed my arm. “Not everyone gets in, you know,” he said. “Especially new donors. But since you’re with me…”

  “Thank you so much,” I purred. “What’s your name?”

  “William Collins, at your service.”

  “I’m Elizabeth. Elizabeth Barrett.”

  “I think we’re about to become very good friends, Elizabeth.”

  I sincerely hoped not, but I didn’t really have much choice at the moment. I went with him, concentrating on each step. We got up to the door, and the doorman—a beefy guy who didn’t look any more like a vampire than Collins did—passed us through with hardly a gl
ance in my direction.

  The place was like one of those grand drawing rooms in nineteenth-century novels, complete with mirrored walls (which reflected everyone in the room, thank you very much), a high ceiling painted with cherubs and classical figures, portraits of glaring ancestors, and intimate arrangements of overstuffed chairs and sofas. Red doors running along two of the walls indicated the presence of other rooms, and I formed a picture of vampires and their groupies enjoying a little bite in blissful solitude. Did Darcy take his entire “harem” with him at once?

  There were about a hundred people in the room, but it wasn’t as noisy as you’d expect. In fact, the quiet was downright creepy. Presumably mortal women—and men—draped themselves over strigoi of both sexes (who definitely could not, among so many humans, be mistaken for anything but vampires). There were no orgiastic revels that I could see, no blood on the floor or furniture. None of the groupies seemed to have been hurt in any way. It was all supremely civilized.

  “What do you think?” Collins asked, his chest puffed out with pride.

  “It’s…it’s incredible.”

  “All the doing of my patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”

  If I hadn’t been firmly planted on my towering heels, I might have fallen on my posterior. George’s words leaped into my mind: “He was converted by his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, at his own request.”

  The woman who had changed Darcy into a vampire was here, in this very room.

  “There she is, Elizabeth,” Collins said, gesturing toward the head of the room. “Behold!”

  I followed his pointing finger. A middle-aged woman with a long, haughty face sat in a high-backed chair raised on a stage-like platform. A smaller chair beside hers was occupied by a sallow younger woman, and several gorgeous young men stood behind the chairs. I noticed right away that the women were dressed in the same kind of high-waisted, Regency-style gowns that Caroline Bingley and I had worn to the Halloween party.