I Could Write a Book: A Modern Variation of Jane Austen's Emma

by Karen M Cox

  “It’s not the house.”

  “No.”

  “Take a midnight swim, George? It’ll cool you off.”

  “Maybe.” His voice wavered as I began to peel off my shirt and shorts. “It’s just a swim, right?”

  “Right.” I reached behind me to unhook my bra, but he stayed my hand.

  “Wait.”

  I shivered at the husky notes in his voice. “Wait?”

  “Let me do it.” He undid the hooks with one smooth move, caressing my shoulders as he slid my bra off and dropped it beside my clothes. Warm hands traced my collar bones, my breast bone, and then held my breasts, thumbs rubbing across my nipples. It was a little comforting to realize through my fiery haze that his hands shook as he slid them down my waist and over the flesh under my panties. He drew them down, and obediently I stepped out of them, before backing away and turning toward the pool.

  I stopped on the first step, the water lapping at my ankles. Moonlight burst down on us from behind a cloud.

  “Dive right in, George.” I forced my attention to the water as I descended into it—night air filling my lungs, and the feel of cool water swirling around my body.

  I’d always found swimming naked—the few times I tried it—to be luxurious and indulgent, like gliding through silk. I bent my torso to go under the water, took a couple of strokes, then surfaced and rolled over on my back as I approached the other end. “Aren’t you coming in?” I called softly.

  He stood still, silhouetted in the night, one fine specimen of man. In a sudden flurry of movement, he doffed his clothes and jumped in. We met in the middle of the pool, laughing, before lips and bodies fused. He pushed me up against the side, cradling my head in one hand and holding me to him in the other.

  “Easy, easy,” he whispered, but I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to himself. He settled me over him and pushed in. I gasped at the contrast of cool water and hot man against my most sensitive parts. It wasn’t my first time, but it might as well have been, it had been so long.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You’ve always behaved like a gentleman, George Knightley.”

  “Yes?” He moved a lock of wet hair over my shoulder.

  “This time, I really wish you wouldn’t.”

  He stopped and stared at me, and then his hands were everywhere, and my back was against the side of the pool again. I’d never seen the savage side of him before, and it occurred to me that it was a fascinating display, and then, suddenly, I couldn’t think at all.

  “This wasn’t what I had in mind for our first time,” he said, holding me from behind and letting his hands roam over me under the water. “I’d like to think I have more finesse than that. You make me impulsive.”

  “We have lots of times ahead of us.” I let my legs float up so I laid on top of the water, my wet hair brushing his chest. “You didn’t like it?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He ran his fingers over my belly.

  “I think it was perfect.” My hands reached back and slid down his body, finding him warm and firm underneath the water. “But if you’re so inclined, there’s always the guest house.”

  He pulled me toward him, turning me so we were face to face with our limbs intertwined, a symbol of how our entire lives had been, and hopefully would be from now on.

  “My bones feel like rubber bands. I’m surprised I didn’t drown,” I said, combing my fingers through his hair.

  He laughed and pulled the two of us under the water’s surface where our lips collided. I thought my heart would burst.

  I read somewhere that there is no such thing as complete truth in any human exchange. That may be true, but with George and me, two souls so disposed to loving each other, I figured that fact matters very little anyway.

  The gray light of pre-dawn seeped into the guest house bedroom, where I lay sprawled across the bed.

  “I don’t want to know where you learned to do that, but I’m glad you did.”

  The early morning stubble on his jaw abraded my inner thigh as George turned his head to brush his lips there.

  “The dangers of loving a woman who’s known you all your life. She knows your life.” He moved up to rest his head on my belly. “Is it a problem?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s not something I want to dwell on, mind you, but it isn’t a problem. I want all of you, George. Your past is part of the package.”

  “I don’t know about your past or if you even have one.”

  “There isn’t much to know and what there is…? Well, it’s…unremarkable. Do you want me to tell you?”

  He considered. “No, I don’t think I do.” He slithered up my body and pinned my wrists above my head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re mine now.”

  The delicate tissues groaned a little as he parted them, but I welcomed him back. “I’m yours.”

  “Mine,” he chanted in rhythm with long, excruciatingly slow strokes. My body arched off the bed as I cried out, and he emptied into me, calling my name.

  Later, when he got up to leave for home, in that magical time between the dark of night and the dawn of day, he left me sated and loose, tangled in the sheets of the guest house bed.

  He ran a hand from my shoulder to my hip and whispered, “I love you so, Emma Kate.”

  I could only smile over the lump of joy in my throat.

  Forty

  Late August, 1976

  “Hello, George.” My father set his cane beside his dining room chair and shifted into it with my help. “Are you here for dinner again? We’ve certainly seen a lot of you lately.”

  My lips twitched. “Daddy…”

  “Oh, we’re glad to have you, my boy. Always glad to have you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I sat down between George and Daddy. As I put my napkin in my lap, George leaned over and said quietly, “We need to tell him.”

  “Soon, I promise.”

  George slid his hand over my knee and up my thigh. “He’ll have a helluva shock if he comes downstairs one morning and sees me sitting at the kitchen counter in my boxers and bathrobe.” He smiled at Daddy, who was tucking into his chicken pot pie with oblivious abandon.

  I shivered with barely controlled pleasure. “I’m going to tell him. After his birthday.”

  We had already been together six weeks, and we hadn’t told anyone, although Nina knew. She’d caught us kissing by the side of the house after one of her family cookouts. She’d just smiled and shook her head, then put a finger to her lips, and backed around the corner out of sight. She knew we’d tell everyone eventually. When we were ready.

  Sneaking around hadn’t been our original plan, but now I almost hated to give it up. It gave the passion of new love a hot, sexy kick. To appear in public as friends, knowing we’d have our hands all over each other the first chance we got…? Delicious. I told George I was starting to understand the irresistible pull of clandestine meetings. “This has made me a more understanding person.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes. I think I understand Jane and Frank much better now.”

  “Nonsensical girl.” But, in all honesty, he had to agree with me.

  An added benefit of hiding our budding romance was the ability to keep everyone else out of it in its fragile, infant state. In a small, tight-knit community like Highbury, and with two people whose histories crossed and separated and meshed time and again, there would have been a tendency for everyone to put their two cents in. By insulating ourselves in a tiny love nest for two, we could explore whole new sides of each other unprovoked, uninfluenced, and undisturbed. No Daddy bemoaning the loss of his beloved daughter, even if the man I chose was his beloved protégé. No Delores and Helen fawning over us with congratulations. No Jack and Izzy, sitting in shock with their babies in a whirling dervish around them.

  No Mary Jo crying tears of disappointment—again.

  I kept Mary Jo’s secret crush on George to myself, deciding it would serve no one’s int
erests to let that cat out of the bag. I dreaded the day I would have to tell Mary Jo about my love for George and his for me, but our sneaking around ended up solving that problem too.

  Sometime in the middle of August, I came home to a phone message from Mary Jo. When I returned the call, she sheepishly confessed she was dating Robert Martin. It was a recent development, but she thought it might get serious pretty quickly.

  Apparently, when George offered Robert the job of managing Donwell Farms, the day of the strawberry party had come up in conversation. He’d told Robert about showing Mary Jo around and how impressed she was. That led to a discussion about women, and family, and Mary Jo in particular. George encouraged Robert to try again for her, if that was what he truly wanted. According to Robert, that encouragement, coupled with the newfound confidence he gained from the promotion, spurred him on to try his chances.

  “I realized Mr. Knightley most likely wasn’t interested in me, given that he’d encouraged another man to ask me out. But even more, I realized how much I’d missed Robert: our talks, his smile, his voice. I do love his voice.”

  “He does have a great voice.”

  “Emma, accepting his invitation to dinner was the best thing I ever did. We just…fit, you know? I’m so happy. I’m not nervous around him the way I was around men like Tim Elton. Robert is such a caring, gentle person. I always feel at ease around him.”

  I knew now how precious and rare and compelling that quality was in a man. When a woman found it, it shouldn’t be ignored. “I’m glad, so glad that you’ve found someone who will value you and care for you the way you deserve. It’s what every modern woman wants, isn’t it?”

  Later, when George and I were out walking Maude, I said, “They’re so good together. Why did I not see it before?”

  “Perhaps you chose not to see.”

  “Do you think I let race influence me?”

  “Only you know the answer to that, Emma.”

  “Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure. I would feel such shame, if that were true. My mother marched alongside Civil Rights workers. My father taught me to see the person inside the shell of color. I cried like a baby when Dr. King died. Could I, without even realizing it, let something that superficial affect me, and through me, Mary Jo?”

  “Mary Jo found her way regardless. Such is the nature of love.”

  “Don’t tease, George. I’m being serious.”

  He reached for my hand. “Society often changes slowly. I know it’s the seventies, and we think we’re so enlightened now. We hope the issues surrounding color are all behind us, but I would be very surprised if that were so. Human beings are notoriously fickle and short-sighted. But this I do know: people like Robert and Mary Jo are the ones who bring us real change, real justice. They, and ordinary people like them, show us all another path, and each time that path is taken, it becomes wider and wider until one day, it’s a road traveled by many, without any thought at all as to how it came to be.”

  “It’s quite brave, isn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m happy for them.”

  “Me too.”

  Mary Jo and Robert were busy updating the cottage at the end of The Lane, preparing it for his move at the end of September. By the time George and I finally began seeing each other publicly, Mary Jo’s infatuation with her boss was a faded memory. Even years later, Mary Jo Martin was convinced that I had waited until she began dating Robert to date George. I heard from several other people that she said, “Emma Knightley is not only a good friend but a woman with real class.” What higher praise is there than that?

  For George and me, keeping our relationship secret had also given us time to wrestle with some particularly thorny practicalities about merging our lives, like what to do about my father.

  A frantic morning of angina, followed by a trip to the ER and an overnight hospital stay resulted in me standing on the doorstep of George’s townhouse in tears.

  I, Emma Katherine Woodhouse, the girl who never cried, was at it again for the second time in a month.

  “How can I marry you? How can I leave him, even in the care of the best nurses, so I can share your life?” I broke down, sobbing. “It just won’t work, George.”

  “We can make it work. It’s not like we don’t have options and resources.”

  “But he needs family. He needs me. It’s not the same to have someone else take care of him. And I can’t ask you to wait, not like that.”

  George held me in his lap as he considered.

  “You can’t leave him.”

  I shook my head. “And I can’t uproot him either. It’s an impossible situation.”

  “There’s one other possibility you haven’t considered.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After we marry, I can move in with you.”

  “What?”

  “I can sell my townhouse and move in with you and your father.”

  “But…”

  “Donwell Farms is but a mile or two from Hartfield Road, and the law office is a twenty-five minute drive. If John needs you to stay in your home, let me call it home too.”

  If anything convinced me that I had chosen the right man, it was that one statement. I threw my arms around him. “I don’t know what to say, except I love you so much! I can’t believe I had the good fortune to win you.”

  “If I say I’ll move to Hartfield Road when we get married, will that shorten our engagement?” George asked, smiling.

  I laid my head on his shoulder. “It will still be a respectable nine months. Like my sister and my mother, I want to be a traditional June bride. I want to eat strawberries at my wedding.”

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  Epilogue

  May 21, 2017

  George

  Emma and I enjoyed that season of young love all to ourselves, but all things must come to an end, and by the last of September, we told our friends and families that we planned to marry the next June.

  It was a beautiful wedding. I thought my heart would stop when Emma walked toward me from the back of the church. John joined her when she reached his seat in the front pew, and there was hardly a dry eye in the place, including his, when his voice wavered as he gave her away.

  Emma’s eyes though were dry and clear. She knew how it would be, how right we were together, and nothing less than a happily-ever-after would do.

  We had our reception at Bromley Crossing. It held fond memories for us: Bob and Nina’s first Derby party, nullifying Tim Elton’s slight on Mary Jo, that dance we shared. There were some issues at first— some changes that Emma wanted to make that the owners were reluctant about.

  So, I bought the place. Even today, it’s a favorite venue for community get-togethers of all kinds: weddings, political rallies, bar—and bat mitzvahs, and of course, Derby parties.

  Life has brought ups and downs to the people of Highbury; no one can escape them. Frank and Jane were married until 1982. They divorced, as quickly as they married, and Frank, after marriages to two more Jane Fairfax-lookalikes, ended up single and selling real estate in Phoenix, Arizona. Jane continued to do some theater, but then she landed a role on a daytime soap opera that carried her through the rest of her career.

  Helen is still living—if you can believe that—eighty-nine years young. After a fall a couple of years ago, Emma arranged assisted living for her, and she loves it. Some people find that situation confining and long for home, but Helen finds the company much to her liking and regales the residents with tales from her long life, told in her unique, rambling style.

  Tim and Edie’s marriage also fell victim to the societal tide of divorce. After ten years, two children, and a term in the state legislature, Tim came out of the closet—unfortunately, in a very public way—after being caught in a liaison with his college-aged intern one night in the Capitol offices.

  Robert and Mary Jo’s brood of four grew up tall and strong, and each one went on to ac
hieve true success: a doctor, a musician, a plumber running a successful business in Lexington, and a lawyer, who works for me, in fact. She’s a real go-getter.

  John Woodhouse passed away after another stroke in 1981, so he only met the elder of our two daughters. Nina and Bob’s daughter, Anna, grew up alongside our Melissa and Amanda, and the girls played and ran around the yard at Randalls’ place or at the house on Hartfield Road, the younger ones toddling after the older ones. We lived in Emma’s house until several years after my father passed on, and we had to move into Donwell to take care of my mother. By then, Taylor had married, so she and her new husband stayed in the old Woodhouse home while they saved for a house of their own.

  Emma once said to me that the events of Highbury reminded her of one of those great novels of small places. “So much life happens here, and you’d never know.”

  “You’d know, Emma. You know everything about everyone.”

  She laughed. “I do. I could write a book.”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  So, she did. Eight romance novels, four young adult stories, and a cozy mystery series of seven books set in Kentucky flew from her pen, and later, from her computer. She’s still at it, although historical fiction has become her new passion.

  As I predicted, Emma never found her one true calling. Instead, she found many, and this, along with a deep well of love for those around her, has made for a life steeped in wealth that can’t be inherited, that I couldn’t give her, and that can’t be earned—only accepted.

  Emma and I married in 1977, when divorces seemed as trendy as polyester suits and disco music. Thank goodness, some trends die permanently. Divorce, however, is a social trend that has continued through the decades. Sometimes a parting of the ways is the best thing for everyone involved. I know that—have witnessed that fact in my law practice, and sometimes in my colleagues and my friends.