Eddy took a steadying breath. He had found his wife’s side and put a comforting arm around her. I spied her long, red hair as she hid her face against him.
“This isn’t funny, Herb!” The original Mrs. Bigley was throwing a fit now. Her hair and dress still looked perfect, but her face was now the same hideous hue of her dress. “That ungrateful girl allowed that rock star to seduce her with his fame!”
“And what of Chuck’s current wife?” his father retorted. “Who seduced her, do you think?”
“Not my son! She seduced him. If he doesn’t come back, I’ll cut him off without a penny.”
“Come now, Louise, open your purse. We’ve a new a daughter-in-law to impress.”
Laughter rippled through the crowd, the loudest coming from Colin who sat directly behind the Senior Mr. Bigley. Colin had landed a new suit jacket for the occasion and tamed his wild hair. Besides his habit of not meeting anyone’s eyes, he blended in surprisingly well with the other guests. DeBurgy crouched in the pew next to him. He didn’t look happy under the flashing bulbs of Jennings’ unruly camera. I froze when his gaze pierced me through.
“No, no, no!” Mrs. Bigley made a sound of disgust. “Herb, this girl Chuck married is not acceptable.”
“She’s our daughter now. Of course she’s acceptable … if any of us are, you harpy.”
The dark temper emanating from Taylor’s father turned into confusion the more he watched the Bigleys fight. Any normal person would rejoice that his daughter had escaped a bad situation, and maybe he was starting to get a clue. Taylor’s mother pushed from the pew, glowering darkly at her husband. She flipped her black hair behind her shoulder and exited the scene without a word.
“Austen,” Ann-Marie shouted over the raised voices. She came at us in a sparkling silver dress. “There you are. I haven’t been able to get you off my mind all day.” She stroked his arm and gave him her usual flirtatious smile. “Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking?”
Austen’s eyes darted from me to her. “No?”
“Are you sure? I keep playing it over and over in my mind and it’s really good.”
He broke into a laugh. “Then I’m really afraid.”
Her more-boisterous laughter joined his, and I seethed. I had thought Ann-Marie was through with her crush on Austen. Her hand squeezed his arm. “I was thinking that you should give Jane some loving. She doesn’t like it when I flirt with you. I think she’s jealous—she must not know how much you like her.”
My throat tightened. I couldn’t even grace Ann-Marie’s joke with a smile; my heart felt dead. I had lost Austen forever. Of course he didn’t like me—he had married Junie. Ann-Marie let go of Austen when she caught Crawley watching her. “You troublemaker, Harry! You like to cause scenes, don’t you?”
He strolled over to us, looking bored. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.” She skipped over to him and wrestled his hand from his side. “Let’s make another one.”
With an unholy grin, Crawley caught Ann-Marie in a kiss that didn’t belong in any church. His stepmother shrieked out a complaint and swept out of the chapel on her heel. The expression on his own mother’s face darkened.
Austen stared at the passionate couple. “You sure Bigley’s stepbrother isn’t Wickman?”
“Wickham,” I corrected. “And no, I like him much better than that villain from Pride and Prejudice. He’s definitely Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park.”
“He’s a villain too,” Austen pointed out.
I smiled.
“At least someone is getting some action at this wedding!” Crawley’s stepfather called out. He had found a flask somewhere in the vicinity of his pockets, and he chugged it down. “Eddy, use your wedding certificate. Make an honest man out of my Harry. Will you?”
“Dear!” his wife complained—she no longer looked amused.
Eddy forced his grin back down. Elly snatched his hand, either for comfort or as a warning—I’d never know, but since he was the reverend I guessed it was a reminder for her husband to keep his role as the spiritual leader.
“Does anyone object?” Mr. Bigley called out. He had worked himself into a drunken fervor. “No? Good.” He took another drink. “Cheers!” His raucous laughter echoed over the murmurs from the departing guests. His present wife rolled her eyes and sank into her seat.
“Jane!” Bertie’s heels clicked madly beneath her as she barreled through the aisle to find me.
“Run for your life,” Austen said. When I didn’t, he squeezed my hand. “There’s my girl. Be strong.” And with that, he followed his own advice and took off through the throng of people. Before I could get too miffed, I saw that Colin was his target—Austen was off to finish the deal with North Abbey. Now I wanted to cry.
“Do something!” Bertie poked me in the ribs. “You call yourself an event coordinator?” I swung around to face her. She glared at me. “Usually when I go to a wedding, I watch someone get married!”
All the stress from the morning culminated and I snapped back at her, “In this case, you watched someone avoid the same mistake you made, Bertie. Taylor married for love. It happens sometimes.”
Bertie’s bitter complaints died on her lips. She tugged on the low décolletage on her dress, though it revealed nothing but the stark bone in the middle of her chest that heaved out her indignation. “Taylor will hear about this.”
“Leave your complaints outside. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
Bertie’s magnificent eyes narrowed on me before she jerked away. I noticed that Mary had been standing behind her the whole time. I bristled, getting ready for another attack. The woman had dropped her sick act and looked confused. “Why would Taylor not marry Chuck? He … he has everything. Handsome, charming, rich.”
“Unsettling as it is, wealth and attractiveness isn’t the fountain of all happiness in a marriage. What do you need? Another box of tissues? A medicine cabinet? CPR?”
Mary dropped her unused tissues into the garbage can behind us. “I love my husband,” she said. I felt my anger melt away at her earnest words. “We actually went through with the wedding—it wasn’t much; not what I’d dreamed. We never had a lot of money; certainly not as much as my friends have. Even the Hayters have more. You know, that roommate from college? I used you to hide from her at the brunch,” she reminded me, “the one who married the plumber.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” I said. “Plumbers actually make a lot of money.”
“I know! And I married an accountant who had a crush on my roommate before he even looked at me—she didn’t like him back, so I always thought I was second choice. Third choice after Anne!”
“Who?”
“That’s not the point. Now we have four boys who drive me crazy, but they don’t drive him crazy. I don’t drive him crazy, either. We’re happy.” I wasn’t sure where Mary was going with this until she said, “Poor Taylor. Poor Chuck. What would it be to have what they have?”
I didn’t think that Bigley had a very good home life. Taylor didn’t know what it was like to have her parents talk to each other, but I had a feeling that everything would work out now. “Taylor’s going to be okay,” I said. “Dancey really loves her.”
Mary nodded. “I think my husband loves me too—I know he does. He’s a good man, Jane. Thank you for the party. I’m going home to my family now.” Her chin tilted up, and she left with a new confidence in her step. I hoped that her pristine minivan would soon be filled with the sound of her boys’ laughter and forgotten goldfish crackers crushed underfoot now that she realized what most mattered. She passed Austen on her way out. He was still deep in conversation with Colin. I pressed my lips in worry while the two shook hands. I knew that meant the end of North Abbey.
“I knew I hated weddings, but this tops the cake,” DeBurgy said. I looked over my shoulder and saw him standing behind me like the devil he was. His irritated expression was still intact. “I see that absolutely none of you listened
to me.”
I glared at him. “Well, that’s Americans for ya.” He gave me a disgusted look and refused to answer. I struggled to keep my breath even, knowing he was behind Austen’s grudge against me. “I think you’re through here, DeBurgy,” I said. “You’ve already done the worst that you could possibly do.”
“Then you don’t know me very well. I have much worse in mind. I am most displeased.”
My ears rang at the familiar line—it happened to be the last one uttered by Lady de Bourgh herself in Pride and Prejudice, and now I was hearing it from the worst snob in all of England. DeBurgy scraped past me, his breath hot on my face. “You are about to feel the worst of my displeasure, Jane.”
Perfect villain. Just like a book, everything neatly fit together like the pieces of a puzzle: perfect beginning, perfect ending—except Austen. He should’ve been with me. And he wasn’t. He might as well be a daydream for all the good it did me. He’d take me in his arms, sweep me off my feet, declare his love with a kiss. But in reality, he talked with Colin in low voices. He hadn’t chosen me, and now we had to say goodbye.
DeBurgy pushed his way into the conversation between Colin and Austen. His face morphed into a pleasant expression before joining in. I couldn’t figure out what mischief DeBurgy was planning. He had already ruined everything for me. But as DeBurgy talked, Austen glanced back at me and, even more troubling, turned away when our eyes met. A few more excruciating minutes passed before Austen patted Colin on the back and broke from DeBurgy to return to my side.
“So?” I asked.
He studied me in return, his heavy lids shuttering his expression. “So?”
I tucked my hair behind my ear, feeling miserable. This was worse than the last time I’d told him goodbye. I smiled bitterly at the irony. “So, you should text me when you’re in Boston,” I said.
Austen’s eyes sharpened on me, and I knew he saw through my brave act. He nodded. “I’ll be sure to give you the full itinerary of my trip.”
His sarcasm was hauntingly familiar—too much of this reminded me of what had happened last time when we had tried to say goodbye. I wished I knew how to rewind our relationship between then and now, back to when we had been crazy about each other.
A snapping camera behind me reminded me of what had driven the wedge between us. “You gave me an empty chapel to photograph?” Jennings complained. She wandered the chapel, snapping a few pictures of the stained-glass windows while making caustic comments. “I’m not sure I got the best part of the bargain, Jane. Do you know how popular I would’ve been after my last photo-shoot? You and Dancey made a gorgeous couple.”
Her words plunged daggers into my heart, and I turned to see what damage it had done to what was left of my relationship with Austen. My stomach sank when I saw that he was already gone. He had left me for Junie.
“You know why I did it, right? Right? Jane, are you listening?” Jennings waved her hand in front of my eyes. “I did it all to take down DeBurgy. I’ll take pictures of empty chapels all day if it means getting back at that conceited pinhead-in-a-suit.”
I lowered onto the pew on the front row, vaguely aware that Jennings and I were the only ones left in the chapel. “What did he do to you?” I asked.
“I don’t like him. He destroys people—I give them flavor.”
“You worked as a pretty good tag team this time around,” I said. “DeBurgy found those photographs you took and gave them to the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Now he won’t have anything to do with me.”
“That man with you earlier?” Jennings’ face turned into a row of hard lines, her pursed mouth spread across her face along with the wrinkles in her forehead, every bit of her scrunched up in thought. “He still loves you,” she said finally. “I saw the way he looked at you—he can’t get enough of you. I’m not a tabloid writer for nothing. I can sniff out tragic love stories from a whole chapel away.”
What a lie. It was also Jennings’ job to weave a story that would sell—I knew better than to believe her now.
“Jennings,” Elly interrupted us out of nowhere. She had been so quiet that I could’ve taken her for a church mouse. She held out a manila envelope—I recognized it as the one that had held those hated photographs. “Taylor wants you to have these.”
Jennings snatched the envelope from Elly’s hands, ripping off the top. I stared at the floor, not able to do this anymore. Jennings was wrong about Austen. He didn’t care enough about me to say goodbye. My cell phone vibrated with a message, but I couldn’t look at it.
Jennings slipped photographs out of the envelope. “Willard Dancey,” she breathed. The photograph was of him, but this time I saw that his arm was around Taylor and he was kissing her.
“A picture of the happy couple,” Elly explained.
“I had high hopes for those two after she broke my camera,” Jennings said.
Elly blushed in Taylor’s behalf. “My cousin’s full name is Taylor Elizabeth Weston—for when you do the write-up. If-if … you do a write-up, I guess.”
“Taylor Elizabeth?” Jennings couldn’t keep back her satisfaction. “Her parents are fans of the movie star, I take it?”
“Actually her mother named her for Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.”
I startled at that, at the same time that my phone vibrated. I turned it off.
“That’s not all.” Elly handed Jennings her last envelope. “This is Mr. Charles Frank Bigley the III, with the new Mrs. Bigley … the third; or shall we say, Junie Bennet Fairchild-Bigley. Looks like Taylor and Dancey ran into them at the strip—Chuck stole Dancey’s idea to elope.”
I gasped, my reality spinning so much that it rocked my world. I could scarcely believe it. “Junie Be Fair?” I asked. “B” stood for Bennet—Austen had known that and never put it together that she could be Jane Bennet from Pride and Prejudice? “But, but … ?” I stared at the photographs in Jennings’ hands. The couples posed in front of the “Chapel of Love” on the brightest strip in Vegas. They smiled broadly. And why wouldn’t they? They had played us all for fools.
Austen had taken Junie to the airport to meet Bigley, not to marry her. What a big, stupid misunderstanding. So where did that leave Austen and me? I scrambled for my phone. DeBurgy said that we would feel his displeasure. He couldn’t have done anything worse than the photographs—I hoped not. I stared at the screen on my phone, my fingers shaking. Sure enough, there were twelve messages. All from Austen. I flipped through them.
AUSTEN: I AM WALKING TO THE DOOR.
AUSTEN: I AM WALKING THROUGH THE FOYER.
AUSTEN: I SAID GOODBYE TO THE REVEREND.
AUSTEN: HUGS FOR EVERYONE. FIRST A BIG HUG FOR MRS. BIGLEY THE SECOND AND THEN A BIGGER HUG FOR MRS. BIGLEY THE FIRST, COULDN’T GET HER TO SMILE. I’LL KEEP WORKING ON IT.
AUSTEN: REDD PATTED ME ON THE BACK. HE’S HOLDING HANDS WITH BELLA.
AUSTEN: I AM WALKING DOWN THE STEPS.
AUSTEN: I’M GOING TO MY JEEP, LISTENED TO AN AWESOME STORY FROM FREDDY ABOUT YOU.
AUSTEN: ONE STEP.
AUSTEN: TWO STEPS
AUSTEN: THREE STEPS.
AUSTEN: TWELVE STEPS.
AUSTEN: I AM WAITING FOR YOU ON THE HOOD OF THE JEEP.
Austen had promised to give me the itinerary of his trip and there it was. Jennings was right—he still liked me. I interrupted her conversation with Elly. “I’ve got to go. Someone’s waiting for me outside.”
Jennings burst out laughing. “Give that cute boy a kiss for me.” Her cackle followed me out of the chapel. I couldn’t get outside fast enough. The wind from the crisp morning air hit me as soon as I rushed out the church doors to find him. The wedding guests lingered near their cars under the sun, gossiping and joking about the non-wedding. Austen sat on the hood of his Jeep, his head down. I got another text on my way to him.
AUSTEN: I’M GETTING HOT. A LITTLE BORED.
“Austen!” I called.
He put down his phone. I saw he was laughing
at me. I looked down at my dress. I knew I looked very Jane Austen-esque. Despite everything that I had learned during the last week, all my beliefs in romance and happy endings stared back at me from the folds of fabric in my skirt. Sappy dreams of love weren’t true, and yet they were happening anyway. Austen sat on the hood with his suit and tie. I didn’t have to imagine that he looked like the man of my dreams—he just was.
I hurried down the chapel steps … and ran into a guy and his dog. The leash got tangled around my legs. I clawed at the leash in my haste to escape. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said and looked up to see an abnormally attractive man.
“Quite all right,” he said. His warm eyes found mine. “Do I know you?”
This scene could’ve come straight from my daydreams. “No, no.” I untangled myself, glancing over at Austen. His head was tilted at me. I excused myself from the handsome dog-walker and tried to cross the street. The latch on one of my Greek sandals broke, leaving my right foot completely bare. I desperately scrambled around to find the sandal and saw an exotic-looking man holding it. “Is this yours?” he asked.
“Uh …” I was stuck in another meet-cute. I stepped backwards and ran into a dumpster. My arms paddled through the air as I felt myself tip into it. Another man wearing a tie and vest rushed forward to save me from my fall. He was muscular and athletic, and reached me far too fast. With sheer force of will, I forced myself upright without his help, my pulse rushing. The guy with my sandal stepped tentatively toward me, and I picked up my skirt and deserted them all, running for Austen like my life depended on it.
I reached him in a matter of seconds and leaned heavily against his jeep, trying to catch my breath. That was a close one—a million meet-cutes coming at me at once, and still I had managed to elude them all for the man that I adored. I grabbed his hands. “Austen! I thought you and Junie eloped.”
“What?”
“It was a misunderstanding. I get that now.”
“I was just taking her to the airport.”
“I know, I know! I thought she was taking the deal she made with DeBurgy, and you were mad at me, so I thought … but I didn’t know that the B in her middle name stood for Bennet.”
Jane and Austen Page 34