Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Viera Rigler

  “Wes, I must ask—” Oh dear, there is no polite way of posing such a question. “Wes, you lied to me about Frank when you knew he was with another woman, and I would very much like to know why.”

  There. I’ve said it. Easier than I could have imagined, though my heart is racing so fast I can hardly breathe.

  He draws in a long, shuddering breath, meets my eyes, and looks down at the ground before raising his eyes to me again.

  “I knew he was there. He called me forty-five minutes after he was supposed to have shown up here, and I heard a woman’s voice in the background answering the phone for the cake place. I knew he was up to something, but I had no proof. When I confronted him, he swore there was nothing going on. Said he was on his way out of there and would explain it all later. Don’t make a mess where there is none, is what he said to me. And so he asked me to tell you his meeting was running late if you called and, God forgive me, that’s what I agreed to do.”

  “But why not tell me what you suspected?”

  “I had no proof. And frankly, I didn’t trust my own motivations for telling you.”

  Wes looks down for a moment and then meets my gaze. “I didn’t want the woman I loved—the woman I love—to marry this guy. But who was I to decide what would make her happy?”

  The woman I love. That is all I can hear. The woman I love. He loves me. He loves me.

  “Agreeing to be his alibi was the worst mistake I ever made, Courtney. I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”

  There are tears in his eyes, and one of them breaks free and runs down his cheek.

  I reach up to his face to wipe his tear, and he moves my fingers to his lips and kisses them.

  “I think we’ve both made mistakes,” I say, and for a moment I am afraid to meet his gaze. But I do. “Can you forgive me?”

  He raises my chin with his hand and looks into my eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he breathes. “Nothing at all. I love you, Courtney. I’ve always loved you.”

  He puts his arms around me and I can hardly breathe. I reach my arms up around his neck and he leans down and touches my lips with his own, and it is the softest gentlest sweetest kiss I could ever imagine. And then the kiss becomes more urgent, and he wraps his arms around me even tighter and I am dizzy with his kiss, with his scent, with the sound of his breathing and the little moans that escape me, and I have never wanted anyone as much as I want Wes right now. I am shuddering with desire, and when finally the kiss ends, he is trembling, too, and I rest against his chest, listening to the thudding of his heart, and I know that this is more than mere desire, that I love this man more than I have ever imagined I could love anyone.

  Which is why I must be completely honest with him.

  I summon my courage for what I have to say.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  And I take a deep, deep breath, for I have been warned by Deepa that some things should not be shared with just anyone. But Wes is not just anyone, and I want no dissembling, no dishonesty, no pretense in my connection with him of all people.

  “Whatever you want to tell me,” he says, giving me little kisses all over my forehead and cheeks and moving down lower to my neck. My breathing quickens and I am getting so distracted that if I do not pull away—very gently—I shall not be able to go on.

  “Wes, if you truly want to be with me, then you must allow that I am not who you think I am.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Please allow me to say what I have to say, or I will lose the courage to do so. I will agree that Courtney is my name and that somehow I have come to be in her life, and in this body. But I cannot be with you and carry this around inside me. I cannot pretend that I am someone I am not. I cannot continually try to hide from you that I do not remember almost everything that Courtney did and lived and felt and thought because I did not live her life. I shall, I know I must, pretend, with the rest of the world. But not with you. Please. Not with you.”

  “Courtney, this is crazy. How am I supposed to understand you?”

  “You think me crazy.”

  “Of course not. But how am I supposed to believe that you’re not who you are? You’re standing right here in front of me.”

  “Am I not different from the Courtney you knew before?”

  “You had a bad concussion, and your memory—”

  “Wes, you know as well as I that this has nothing to do with a concussion. And while a few memories have appeared, I may never know the rest. Is not who we are the sum total of what we have experienced, what we remember?”

  “No, because I would rather not ever remember another minute of what I suffered watching you with Frank, and then knowing you were in the world and refusing to see me or speak to me.”

  I cannot help but smile. “Yet you know as well as I that I am not the person you think I am.”

  “Then how about this: I don’t care who you are.” He puts his arms around me and moves his face so close to mine that I can smell the inimitable scent of his skin and feel the warmth of his breath against my forehead. “All I care about is that you’re here, in my arms, right here and right now.”

  I breathe in the scent of him, hold him close against me, then look up into his eyes. “You truly don’t care that I do not remember you past that first day I woke up here, save for that memory of you in the hospital and in the shop and when I came here looking for Frank? And little fleeting pictures of happier times in this house? You don’t care that you—someone I am supposed to know so well—are a wholly new person to me?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” he says, touching his lips to my forehead and then bending his head lower so that his lips hover just above mine. “Who wouldn’t want to be wholly new with the woman he loves more than anything in the world?”

  His lips meet mine, and now I can receive his kiss without restraint or fear. I am free. Completely and utterly free. Of the past. Of Jane. Of Courtney. The past does not exist. Nor does Jane. Or Courtney. There is only this woman—whoever she is—kissing this man in this one divine moment.

  He moves his lips to my ear and whispers, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Courtney.”

  I gasp.

  “Did I scare you?” he says.

  “Are you proposing marriage to me?”

  His gray-blue eyes are vulnerable. “I’m going too fast, aren’t I.”

  “No—I mean, yes—I mean, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know how you feel about me.”

  “No! I do.”

  “And . . . ?” His eyes are hopeful.

  “I love you. Of course I do.”

  He takes me in his arms again. “That wasn’t so hard to say, was it?” And he kisses me, long and deeply.

  “No,” I breathe. “Not at all.” I listen to the rhythm of his heart. “It is just that I—”

  I cannot put into words what my feelings are. I came here wanting more than anything to feel his love, to know that it was not just a fancy but true and steady and real. But am I ready to give up all the independence I have earned? And have yet to earn?

  “What is it?” he says. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

  He gazes at me for a long moment.

  “Indeed I do love you. More than I can say. It is just that I do not know if I am quite ready for—I think I need—”

  “Time,” he says simply. “You need time.” And it is but a statement of fact, not an accusation, not an expression of disappointment.

  I hug him gratefully. “That is it exactly, Wes. I need time to get my bearings a bit more in this strange new world. I need time to acquaint myself a little better with this new person I am becoming. And I need—I would like, in truth—time to see if I might earn more of a competence.”

  I feel myself blushing. It is strange to say such a thing at all, and most particularly to a man who has just made me an offer of marriage.

  He looks perplexed. “A competence?”

  “You ca
nnot always be rescuing me from my embarrassments, you know.”

  He still looks as if he does not comprehend.

  “I speak of money matters, Wes.”

  I must, I shall, apply myself to learning the vernacular.

  “I don’t want you to worry about money anymore, Courtney.”

  “You are a kind and generous man. But I wish to know what it is like to be truly independent. I need to know what it is like.”

  He nods. “I understand. Completely. And I support you. For as long as it takes.”

  He enfolds me in his arms, and I nestle against his chest.

  He kisses the top of my head. “I’m not going anywhere, Courtney.”

  Twenty-eight

  As I lean over my sketchbook, which lies upon the counter in the café, it occurs to me that although I am no closer to earning a competence than I was two weeks ago when Wes spoke to me of marriage, my drawing has certainly improved. Perhaps it is the natural result of both cellular memory and my daily practice. In fact, the drawing to which I am putting the finishing touch is something I may even frame. The gentleman subject is dressed in the clothes of my time, as are all of my subjects, and he is alighting from a carriage. I like to think that he is filled with wonder at his first glimpse of his destination but that he dare not reveal his wonder lest he be judged less worldly than other young men. I doubt that to an observer other than myself such feelings would be visible on his countenance, but I fancy I can see them all the same.

  This has become a motif of sorts in my drawings. My subjects are always entering rooms or stepping out of doors or alighting from carriages, all on the threshold of an exciting and novel experience.

  Which is how my life feels every morning when I awaken, and throughout the day as well, for I am not only living as a wholly different person in a wholly different time and civilization, with all its attendant wonders, I am also experiencing, for the first time, a taste of true independence.

  Thanks to the hoped-for severance money from David, I have repaid Wes in full and still have a little money left in the bank. I’ve not yet divined a way to make my income from the café stretch to the point where I may leave those funds untouched and available only for extreme circumstances, but I continue to draw up plans of economy and to think up ways to augment my income.

  My latest effort at retrenching was to do without cable TV service—a measure inspired by one memorable night which I spent rooted to the sofa, watching a woman with enormous white teeth peddle fake amethyst necklaces while I battled the impulse to call the number on the screen and purchase one with my credit card, after which I spent several more hours immersed in a potpourri of news programs in which horrific reports of bloody wars were interrupted by advertisements for deodorant and dating services. It was as if I were divested of my free will, and when finally I tore myself from the screen, bleary-eyed and bewildered, I vowed never again to subject myself to such disagreeable fare, especially when I discovered how expensive it was. Besides, I can get everything worth watching on DVD, and more important, I already own a fine collection of movies from Jane Austen’s novels. Some of which are silly indeed, with all their immodest attire and “public displays of affection” (or PDAs, a term I have recently acquired; oh how diverting twenty-first-century American English is), but pleasing nonetheless. And they give me a little taste of home, or what I wish to remember of home, for in those films, there is little of dirt or poverty and none at all of such things as assizes and public hangings. But who would wish to watch them if such things were on offer?

  Which is why my drawing has become such a solace as I make my way round a wondrous and bewildering new world. I find drawing a way of revisiting what is beautiful about my past with fond detachment rather than with longing. Indeed, how could I long for my past when I have Wes’s company, which is ever more dear to me? In fact, I shall have the pleasure of seeing him again tonight. How relieved I am that his reasons for having lied about Frank came not from blind allegiance to a rigid code of honor that would render him unable to betray his friend’s confidence or to speak an ill word of him to me as the betrothed of that friend. After all, how many ill-fated marriages might have been prevented if only the polite world would speak freely of what they knew?

  No, I have nothing to reproach Wes for; he has done nothing worse than what my own weaknesses have been. For yes, I must own that if I am to be the steward of Courtney’s life, then I must bear the responsibility for all of her deeds, past and present. Yet there is no need to give the past any power over me. I feel, as Wes said it so perfectly, wholly new.

  Wes has been most patient as I get my bearings in my new life. His proposal, as he put it, has no expiration date. I have only to say the word, and the subject shall be reopened. In the meantime, he assures me of his love most fervently, yet with true gentlemanly restraint, never pushing beyond the most passionate of kisses. He has also assured me that such forbearance is a trial, but he has left any move towards something more entirely in my power.

  Something more . . . I own that forbearance is a trial for me as well. And I know that when at last I unite with him, it will indeed be as if he is my first, and I his. I long to give myself to him completely, yet it is almost unimaginable to think that anything could be more heavenly than kissing him; when I am in his arms, I lose the very sense of where my body ends and his begins. It is complete and utter surrender. Just the stroke of his hand on the back of my neck is almost enough to make me . . .

  Indeed such thoughts are entirely too distracting for the workplace. I had much better attend to the petite woman who is peering at the posted menu of drinks on the wall behind me.

  “May I help you?” I push the sketchbook aside, at which the lady makes a sharp intake of breath.

  “That drawing!” she says, abandoning the menu and staring at the picture. She says not a word for a full five minutes, during which time I wait and wonder what could have fascinated her so. I cannot help but note that this is the second occasion on which one of my drawings has had an extraordinary effect upon a person in this café. Fortunately, they do not, in general, create such effusions, for I bring the book with me daily, having been encouraged to do so by Sam, who noticed me drawing during my break one day and said what a “cool” thing it was to have a barista who was also an artist. I hardly think of myself as an artist, but I must say I warmed to his praise. Sam, who is already the model of a kind and liberal employer, said I should take every opportunity to draw when business is slow, and I do.

  Finally, the blond lady raises her eyes from the drawing and addresses me. “Did you draw this picture?”

  “I did.”

  “But this is uncanny. I happen to be in pre-production on a film set in Regency England, and can you believe that I was just today researching this particular type of men’s boots?” She points at the boots the gentleman in my drawing is wearing. “And that little detail above the tassels”—she points to a circular design that would have been stamped into the leather—“how could you have known about such an obscure little signature flourish made by only one bootmaker in London?”

  I suppose I had better not tell her that my brother had such a pair of boots from that very bootmaker. “I guess I—I drew what I saw.”

  “What you saw? Where could you have possibly seen these boots?”

  I clear my throat; I could interpret her manner to be merely impertinent, though from the look in her eyes, I can see that she is excited and thus likely to forget herself. And so I muster a smile. “I saw them in my mind’s eye, of course.”

  The woman regards me solemnly, peering over her glasses. “I’ve been researching the minutiae of Regency dress and décor for a very long time. That I should have happened to read about that very type of boot today and then walk into this café, where I have never been before, and see this drawing and meet you is—well, serendipitous to say the least. May I ask where you read about or saw a picture of these boots?”

  How to answer such a quest
ion? “I cannot say that I recall where I came across that particular type of boot. But I can say that I have made a lifelong study of the style and manners of the period.”

  At least the latter part is no lie.

  The woman looks at the drawing again and begins to lift a corner of the page. “May I?” she asks eagerly, and I nod, whereupon she pages through the sketchbook, examining all of the drawings that are my time. “These are extraordinary,” she murmurs. “Such authentic detail in every one. Well then,” she says, closing the book and smiling at me broadly. “This is too good an opportunity to pass up. I could use someone like you on my team. Would you be interested in talking to me and my coproducer about coming on board as a researcher? Or a consultant?”

  A film. To think that I might take part in creating one of those wonders that have given me so much delight since I arrived in this place. This offer could be the opportunity I have been hoping for—how could I have imagined such a thing could happen?

  “I can see by that smile that you’re not averse to the idea,” she says, and that is when I realize I am grinning broadly.

  But Sam—and the café. I cannot deny that I have grown attached to my place here at the café. But it cannot be my future; I know that. But I would have to give him two weeks’ notice and—

  “Of course I wouldn’t expect you to start tomorrow,” she says, as if reading my mind. “But does the idea interest you at all?”

  “It does.”

  “Excellent,” says the lady. “I’m Imogen, and this is my card. Do you have a card, or could you just write down your info on the back of this one?”

  We exchange information, she promises to call me tomorrow, and for the rest of my shift and during my drive home, I float on a cloud of happiness. To think that my knowledge of my own time could translate into a wonderful new situation. On a movie, no less.

  I am so buoyant when I return home that I find myself cleaning and tidying and even digging into the back of my clothes closet, from which I pull out the white gown I wore that very first day I arrived here, the white dress which was to be my wedding gown. The white dress which made my friends think I was insane, and small wonder that they did think such a thing.