“She wants you at her wedding, too,” I said, “even if she told you not to come.”
We sat there for a moment while I wrestled with my hopelessness. Dancey looked torn. He rested his elbow on the steering wheel, pushing his dark hair out of his tired eyes. It would be easier to make a dramatic exit. Every romantic scenario screamed for me to run away from my misery in a huff and do something crazy that would make everyone sorry for what they’d done—but in real life, people stayed put and toughed things out.
After a moment, I handed Dancey his keycard. “Sometimes we have to do hard things for the people we love.”
Dancey stared down at it. His beautiful eyes cleared from the storm that had hijacked them earlier. Peace slipped through his expression, and he popped the trunk to release my luggage. He left his car and helped me drag my things back up the stairs to my room.
Chapter 27
“Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.”
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The morning came too fast. The birds chirped outside my window, and with nothing in the loft, I felt like I was camping. I took my time getting ready to go. Everything but my dress for Taylor’s wedding was crammed into my “London” suitcase. This was the time to make myself look glamorously unavailable, strikingly hot, but … I wasn’t really into it. I stood in my pajamas, staring at the sad girl in the mirror. I put more mascara on. Waterproof.
Something hard plinked against my window. I cringed at the sound, thinking the window would break, and when another clatter followed the first, I hurried to my window and peered down at the grass below. Austen stared up at me. He was in his suit, his white shirt untucked, his collar open. “Jane, get down here!”
I grappled with the window and shoved it open, but when I looked down at the grass, I didn’t see him anymore. I had only a few seconds to wonder if I had gone crazy before the doorknob to my bedroom turned. It was locked. The knob-twisting turned into impatient knocking. As soon as I got the door open, Austen came storming inside like a raincloud. His tie dangled in his hand.
I clung to the door in shock. “You came back.”
“I’m not going to leave until we stop this wedding.” He took a hurried tour of my room, his eyebrows going up when he stared at the bare walls.
“Austen?”
He glanced back at me. “I forgive you; now let’s go.”
But he hadn’t forgiven me, not really … unless he hadn’t gone through with his elopement with Junie. I studied him, noticing that he still looked on-edge. He took a steadying breath. “This is the most idiotic thing that I’ve ever done, but that’s the way things are supposed to be, right? Sacrifice everything for love?”
I felt lost. I had no idea what he was saying, but he was talking about how love could solve all life’s problems. He was the illogical one now—it left me without a role in his life.
“So we lost the fight,” he said, pacing the room. “We screwed everything up, but that was yesterday, not today. We haven’t lost anything today, not until we go out there and throw it all away. Then we can go back to normal like none of this ever happened.”
Nothing would ever be normal again—especially after that terrible speech. I realized I was pouting, literally pushing out my lower lip. I bit my lip to keep it from misbehaving. His eyes roved over my pink-striped pajamas. “Hurry. Get dressed.”
“Are you talking about going to the wedding?”
“What else did you think I was yacking about?” He gathered my off-white dress and stuffed it into my arms. The cotton swished through our hands as our fingers came into contact. I never thought I’d be so close to Austen again. As if aware of it the same time I was, he stepped back from me. “We’re going to stop a wedding,” he said. When I didn’t move after that, his hand went to my back and he nudged me closer to the door. My legs and self-respect took over from there, and I rushed into the bathroom, clutching my dress close to me.
Taylor had thought it would be darling for the wedding party to have dresses fashioned in a Greek style, and mine was no exception. As soon as I pulled my head of auburn curls through the collar and stared at myself through the full-length mirror, I shrank back. I didn’t see Greek at all. With the high waist and flowing fabric, I could’ve stepped from the pages of a Jane Austen novel. Austen would notice as soon as I walked out of the bathroom.
“Jane?” he called. “Why is there nothing in your room?”
That would be harder to explain than the dress. I rushed out of the bathroom to distract him. As soon as his eyes fell on me, instead of the scorn I expected, they filled with admiration. “You look beautiful. Is your plan to cause a scene while I steal away the bride?”
He almost sounded like the old Austen, except he wasn’t mine. That made him a much different Austen. He pushed past me into the bathroom and used the mirror to work on his tie. My hands itched to help him out with it, but I kept them down firmly.
“Jane,” he called. “You really need to put up some pictures in here.”
Before I could answer, he came out of the bathroom and rushed me out the door, down the stairs, and to his Jeep in the parking lot. His car had been stuffed with surfing gear the last time we had been in such a hurry. It still was … and with biking gear mixed in with that. I wasn’t sure if I could fit inside with it all.
“It’s fine,” he said, reading my expression. As if to prove it, he helped me into the passenger side. It was a tight fit, and he had to arrange my dress around me, tucking this way and that. He found a bicycle crane near my feet and threw it into the backseat, then returned to tucking in the flimsy material of my dress. His fingers tickled me with his rough efforts, and I slapped his hands away. Normally I’d grab him and kiss him, but the thought of Junie stopped me.
He pulled slowly away. “All right and tight?”
“Yes.” I clicked in my seatbelt. “I’m all tucked in, Mommy. Let’s go.”
Austen gave me a meaningful look that made my toes curl in delicious anticipation. Normally that expression was followed by a kiss, but he slammed my door instead. I silently reprimanded myself for still being such a fool for him. The Jeep dipped when he got in the driver’s seat. I sensed that he was fighting his own inner battle because, though he kept his hands firmly on the wheel, he wasn’t concentrating on the road at all. His eyes kept finding me on our race to the church.
We’d crash if we weren’t careful. “Austen,” I said. “Slow down. We’re not late.”
He did, but I still felt jittery. “You ever stop a wedding before?” he asked. “I’d prefer we do it the least-dramatic way possible. During what part do we object?”
I tore my gaze from the road, my hands tight on my seatbelt. “What?”
“You know, during the wedding ceremony? When will Eddy say ‘object now or forever hold your peace’ and then we run in shouting like crazy people?”
Tension ran through me at the thought. “I don’t think that actually exists in real weddings.” It hadn’t happened in rehearsal. “No, that’s just Hollywood.” I was starting to have second, third, and fourth doubts about crashing Taylor’s wedding, and it made me wonder if we were doing the right thing. “Sometimes, Austen, we have to do tough things for the ones we love …” I began.
He snorted. “What do you think we’re doing?”
My speech had worked better on Dancey last night. Austen parked the car in front of the church much faster than I felt comfortable with. The parking lot was packed with cars—many of them the same ones that I had parked during Taylor’s brunch.
I pushed open the car door, hearing the birds in the trees. A dog barked in the distance. Austen’s door slammed behind him, and I followed him up the stairs to the church. He pushed the chapel doors open. I got ready for him to shout out, “I object,” but the ceremony hadn’t started yet. No groom. No bride. The guests were all there, but I couldn’t find a bridesmaid or a groomsman among them.
The musicians played Pachelbel’s Cannon in the background.
I turned to Austen. “I’ll find Taylor!”
“I’ll get Dancey.”
We split up, searching through the guests and finding no one that could help us. I’d have suspected that we had crashed a fake wedding except the Bigleys took up a whole pew of blondes on the groom’s side. Taylor’s mother sat on the bride’s side of the church. Taylor’s father wasn’t there—he’d be with Taylor. Redd sat in the pew at the front. That’s where I found the first bridesmaid. Bella lounged against a pillar, giggling and drinking in Redd’s every word.
I rushed down the aisle to reach her. “Have you seen Taylor?”
A dimple touched Bella’s cheek. “She’s with Elly, getting ready.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Elly said to wait out here.”
There were a few rooms I could search. Since Taylor had fired me, she hadn’t told me where she’d be. Mary traveled through the side foyer, ripping up tissues in her nervous hands. Bertie was there with her little dog, too. She leaned close to a blond male wearing a fitted grey suit. I stiffened when I recognized the subtle pinstripes I had picked out from Macey’s. The suit belonged to the groom. Bertie was all over him. Fortunately, Bigley wasn’t flirting back; not that she needed any encouragement.
I raised my hand and called out, “Bigley! Bigley.” When he didn’t hear me, I tugged on his arm. He turned, and I found that I had a hold of his stepbrother instead. “Crawley?”
His friendly eyes crinkled up at the sides. “Well, there you are. I wanted to tell you that I got Taylor’s ring.” Then he leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I got the groom too … safely hidden away.”
A rush of horror filled me. He hadn’t actually kidnapped him, had he? That was definitely taking things too far. “When you say you have the groom, Crawley, I hope that you aren’t talking about anything sinister.”
“Only if you want me to be.”
The guests in the chapel were getting restless. “Are you going to tell me what you actually mean?” I asked.
“No, I’m going to keep you in suspense … just like everybody else.”
I was afraid of that. Eddy walked past the musicians up to the front of the chapel, taking his place at the pulpit. “Welcome, beloved guests of the bride and groom. Today we gather for a happy occasion.”
Or not so happy.
Elly slipped in through the back of the chapel, her crystal earrings dangling. Taylor would be ready to walk down the aisle, too. Bertie, Mary, and Bella disappeared from the side foyer to take their places with the bride at the back. I imagined Taylor in her veil, with her bouquet of old-fashioned roses, her flower girls holding her train that had been especially lengthened for the occasion. And then I imagined her heart breaking when she thought Bigley had deserted her at the altar. I meant to talk her out of this, not humiliate her. My eyes raced to the front of the chapel. The groom should’ve taken his place there by now with his best man—both of them were nowhere to be seen.
“Crawley.” I shook him. “Where’s the groom?”
He didn’t answer, though his eyes sparkled with some inner joke. I saw Jennings in the back pew. She wore a marvelous cream-colored dress suit. She clutched her camera and studied the gathered crowd. She wouldn’t hesitate to make Taylor’s private shame public.
I picked up my phone and texted Austen: I THINK WE MIGHT HAVE A BIG PROBLEM.
Elly gave the reverend an encouraging nod as soon as she found her seat. Her husband met her eyes and smiled before opening the ceremony. “Today we are here to celebrate love. When love is in its holiest and purest form, it is sacrificing. It fills us with hope. It is everlasting. This love is not only what a husband feels for his wife, but the love that one feels for a child, for a parent, for a brother, for a sister. Love brings out the best in us all.”
The doors in the back weren’t opening. I got another sneaking suspicion—if I was right, then Crawley was far too efficient. “Hey, where’s Taylor?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Crawley gave me a distracted look. My worry turned into real fear. I dug my fingers into his arm. “Did you take Taylor too? You can’t just kidnap the bride and groom from their own wedding!”
He let out a bark of laughter. “Jane, please. It wasn’t that complicated. You put the idea in my head. It didn’t take much work after that.”
Eddy was still talking about love, his eyes straying to the doors now. The musicians repeated the last few bars of Pachelbel Canon like they were a skipping record while they waited for their cue to start the wedding march.
“This’ll be good. Be patient.” Crawley patted me on the head and strutted to the front of the chapel, confidence lifting the powerful line of his broad shoulders. He looked for all the world like he was entering a high-fashion dance club, not like he was about to demand a ransom for the bride and groom. Instead of getting a mic, Crawley cupped his mouth with his hands to make his announcement: “You’re a few hours too late to watch the wedding. My brother, Charles Frank Bigley the III, ran off to Vegas last night to get married there instead. Turns out the bride and groom are tired of everyone’s interference in their lives, so they both eloped.”
I gasped. That wasn’t what I wanted them to do. What was Crawley thinking? Jennings’ camera went off, catching horrified expressions and a few grins from the crowd. She couldn’t have gotten better reactions if she had planned them.
Bigley’s mother propelled to her feet. “Take that back, Harry! That is a horrid trick to play! Get me my son!”
Mrs. Bigley the Second stood up, bristling in behalf of her own son. “How dare you blame Harry for this? It isn’t his fault, Louise, it’s yours!”
“How is that?”
“You’re a control freak! You drove your son to this.”
Bigley’s father tried to pull both ladies down by their designer sleeves. “Now, now.” His hand missed his second wife several times before grasping her expensive purse. His slurring speech betrayed that he’d had too many drinks that morning. “Chuck’s a hopeless romantic. Just got impatient.”
The scathing glare his first wife directed his way should’ve been enough to sober him. “I didn’t come all the way from London just to miss my own son’s wedding! You call Chuck back here this instant! Harry?” She turned to him. “Do you hear me? Do it before I rap some sense into your thick skull! You’re just as thick as your mother.”
Harry Crawley met her glare with a smug smile. I was furious at him, too. He helped them do this? It made no sense for Taylor and Bigley to run away the night before their wedding … unless they were both afraid of getting talked out of it. That would officially make this my fault. My gut wrenched at the thought. First I had lost Austen, now Taylor.
The Bigleys bickered loudly and I stepped toward them. “Stay out of this, or we’ll get skinned alive,” Austen warned me. His hands were on my arms. Before I could turn to him, the doors in the back flipped open and the bridesmaids came spilling through, their eyes and mouths wide with shock. I knew how they felt.
Taylor’s dad marched down the aisle at the head of the group, his eyes on Crawley. “Where’s my daughter, boy?”
Elly stood up, clutching an envelope close to her stomach. “Uncle George, Taylor ran off to Vegas. I’m so sorry.”
Taylor’s cousin would never lie. The two really had gotten married. There was nothing Austen or I could do to stop them now. That still didn’t explain why the best man had disappeared unless he had already figured out what had happened. My heart hurt for him. “Where’s Dancey?” I asked Elly.
Her hands trembled, and she looked more nervous. “Dancey is with Taylor. They eloped together.”
The chapel went silent. Sweet relief spilled over me. Of course, that’s what Crawley meant—Taylor had eloped with Dancey. How could it be otherwise? Dancey must’ve convinced Taylor to go with him after he’d helped me upstairs with my bags. I tried to imagine the romantic scene and failed to
get past their “Hello.”
Taylor’s dad looked over at his wife. No reaction crossed her expression. “Did you know?” he asked her gruffly. Mrs. Weston frowned harder, not answering him—that was a big “no.” Her fingers tightened on her purse.
Mr. Bigley leaned back, both his elbows resting on the back of the pew. He looked thoroughly entertained. “Then who did Chuck take to Vegas?”
“Not Taylor,” Crawley said with a laugh.
Bigley’s mother collapsed back into her pew. She groaned. “He took that little tart. I told him not to marry her!”
My own legs felt weak as I tried to process everything. Crawley had given his stepbrother one last pep talk that had convinced him to disobey his mother—I just hadn’t thought it was possible, especially since Bigley had kept it secret that his London love was in town for his wedding. I remembered all the times that he had disappeared. Had he gone to see her? It seemed Vegas was the way to go. Austen would’ve taken Junie there last night, too. I wanted to cry at the thought. Unlike the rest of them, Austen had come back to torment me after tying the knot.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Austen whispered next to me. “We didn’t have to do a thing.”
“Herb! Stop laughing!” Bigley’s mother screeched. She threw her purse at him. “Go bring my son back.”
“Which girl do you expect me to bring back in my collection of runaways?”
“Taylor, of course! She agreed to marry my son! Talk some sense into her.”
Bigley’s father let out a crass laugh and glanced over at Taylor’s father. “I’m not sure what Mr. Weston would say to my kidnapping his daughter.”
Taylor’s stern father lowered onto the pew next to his wife, his expression inscrutable. It was infinitely more terrifying than the original Mrs. Bigley’s growing temper, though she turned redder the more her former husband talked. “We’ll make it a shotgun wedding,” Mr. Bigley said. “What say you, Eddy; you ready to perform the thing?”
Jane and Austen Page 33