INSOMNIA HAD NOT TROUBLED ME IN MONTHS, BUT THAT NIGHT I lay awake, looking at the nearly full moon through my window and thinking about the disaster that had befallen us. Probably Jane would never speak to me again; we would have to leave Chawton from the awkwardness of this, and wait somewhere for the Opportunity of Return. Would she tell the others? I supposed it didn’t matter, that she was the one who counted, yet the thought of Cassandra and Martha and Henry despising us as well made me sad. We would have most of the letters, but not “The Watsons,” and I would never diagnose her mysterious ailment. Not to mention that we might have shortened her life. Over all, we would return to our world stinking of failure.
But maybe Liam could rescue the situation somehow; maybe that was why he’d wanted to speak to her alone. Perhaps he could persuade her that I was insane, and that was why I’d done it. That would be legitimate reason to break the engagement with Henry, which would be a relief. Liam could somehow remain friends with Jane, and get “The Watsons,” even if it required me to feign madness and pretend to be locked up, like Bertha in Rochester’s attic. It was an audacious plan, but it had merit. It was the sort of thing he might think of.
Adding to my list of woes, he stayed away from my bed that night, a first. Maybe he was getting bored of me; my hunger for him was too evident, too scary. Or maybe he was angry about the Henry thing. He’d seemed stricken at the time, indifferent when I brought it up later. Or was that a pose? Maybe he was offended, waiting for me to make a move, and I should go to his room. I willed myself to rise from my bed and steal across the hallway, but I couldn’t do it.
So, was I turning into a woman of the nineteenth century, fainting from an excess of emotion and lacking the courage to sneak into my lover’s bed? Impossible; yet something was wrong. Something had happened.
I considered that I’d possibly let myself grow too fond of him. For me, having a lover or a boyfriend has always been about mutual enjoyment: a pleasure borrowed, not possessed. I’ve never liked the idea of shackling myself to one person for life, and I’ve always made that clear. Except maybe this time.
I thought again of things Liam had told me that night under the stars, the next morning in the asparagus bed: words I’d classified as the verbal flourishes of an actor playing a part. So why had they stuck with me?
He had not meant them. I did not want him to have meant them. Yet I found myself regretting he’d gotten engaged, so shortly before leaving for 1815. Sabina, in her tall blond hauteur, was not right for him; I was sure of that now. If only we’d been a little friendlier in Preparation, perhaps he would have realized this and not committed himself. Why had he, anyway? I tried to imagine the dynamic between the two of them, and failed.
But this was crazy. He is not mine, I reminded myself: I don’t want to possess him, or anyone. And maybe it was better that he stayed away from my bed, at least now and then. I needed to practice, for when we returned to our own world and our real lives, and he would stay away from my bed always. With this depressing thought, near dawn, I finally fell asleep.
I WOKE UP LATER THAN USUAL, AND SKIPPED ANY PRETENSE OF garden work, instead calling for my breakfast as soon as I was dressed and downstairs. My brother had already breakfasted and gone, Jencks informed me with a sneer. He always took advantage of Liam’s absence to be particularly rude to me, but in a passive-aggressive way that was hard to pin down, and I regretted again that we had kept him on while losing handsome Robert.
“Where did he go, Jencks, do you know?” I assumed it was to Jane’s, but wished I’d seen him first.
“I am sure I cannot say, miss,” he said, his tone suggesting he knew perfectly well but wouldn’t tell me.
THE MORNING WAS SUNNY FOR ONCE, BUT COLD, FORETASTE OF AUTUMN in a summer that had never quite begun, and I was shivering by the time I got where I was going. I knocked on the door and pulled my shawl tighter around me, wondering what kind of reception I’d get.
To my surprise, Henry opened the door. “Forgive my informality, but I was passing by the window and saw you coming down the lane, and the maid is busy elsewhere, so I took the liberty.” I stepped in, and he leaned past me to close the door, beaming down at me, wrapping an arm around my waist, and pulling me close for a moment, purring: “And I take another! Oh, how I have missed you at Oxford. You are even more delicious than I remembered. Are you quite recovered from your swoon? Please tell me you are. We need no more invalids in the house.” He had released my waist but kept a hand on my arm just above the elbow as he guided me down the hallway; I resisted the urge to shake it off. “But in truth, Jane is remarkably well today.” He opened the door at the back, which led to the garden and the kitchen and stables beyond, gesturing for me to go first.
Jane and Liam were on a bench under a tree, heads together like conspirators. They looked up as we approached, and Liam rose to give me his seat, meeting my eyes with a look that seemed to be trying to tell me something, if only I knew what. I sat down next to Jane, who gave me a smile and squeezed my hand, and I understood that I had been forgiven, but could not imagine what Liam might have said to make this possible.
And we were not going to discuss it in front of Henry, who stood talking to Liam about a horse he was thinking of buying. How could he do that? He’d gone bankrupt a few months earlier. Perhaps the prospect of a curacy—or a rumored marriage to a wealthy woman—was something he could borrow against.
Not wishing to think about Henry any more than necessary, I turned to Jane, who was wrapped in a thick shawl, more like a small blanket, against the morning’s chill. Her eyes shone bright hazel in her bronzed face. “How sorry I am to hear you fainted,” she said. “We must bar you from taking care of me for a while. But you see, I am feeling much better today.”
I stared at her, struck by a new idea. How, in all the weeks I’d spent sitting by her bedside, turning over possible diagnoses, had this not occurred to me before? It was not much, but it was something. A possibility. “Jane. They do not bleed you, do they?”
“Mr. Curtis did not think it advisable in my case.” He was the apothecary in Alton who looked in on her, although I—or officially, Liam—had mostly taken over her care. “Why?”
I turned to look at the men. “William,” I said to Liam. “If you are going to go look at this horse of Henry’s, please leave word with Mr. Curtis. He should come here as soon as possible.”
A pause followed my words as I realized I had spoken too decisively, not as women do. Jane was staring at the ground and Liam looking at her, as if gauging her reaction. Henry seemed startled, then amused.
“Your word is law, madam,” he said, and then, turning to Liam, “It is on our way. If you think it advisable.”
Liam’s eyes met mine. “Mary would not have suggested it on a whim. Let us go there at once, Austen. Are you ready?”
“I? To be sure.”
AFTER THEY SET OFF, JANE AND I REMAINED OUTSIDE. LOOKING across at the garden and the outbuildings beyond, she was silent, and so was I. I needed my words to match what Liam had told her, but first I needed to work out what that possibly could have been.
Finally she turned to me. “Your brother has told me a most remarkable tale . . .” She frowned. “But, he cannot be your brother, can he? That would explain why you look nothing alike.”