Page 49 of The Austen Escape
I shrugged. “She said TCG worked as a finance consultant and was...” I stalled, embarrassed. I never used Isabel’s nicknames. They were descriptive, informative, often brutal, and always private. He’d only learned his—or thought he had—by accident.
I shook my head in apology. “It doesn’t matter what she said. I never made the connection. The surprise was on me.” I bit my lip to stop anything more from coming out. I sounded hurt, surly, and immature. I wanted to be more than that.
“Is she okay?”
“Yes.” I felt the tension between us release with the clarity of why he was here. “For all this craziness, when you see her you’ll agree. She is safe and well, wherever she is up here.” I tapped mytemple. “But if she’s not back in the twenty-first century in two more days, I’m flying her home, and then I don’t know.”
I felt Nathan’s hand slide down my arm and clasp my own. I watched our hands bound together for a moment before remembering who and what he was—Isabel’s.
I turned away, pulling my hand from his, and headed back toward the Blue Room. “Gertrude, the manager, is gone this morning, but she and I discussed everything and she’ll formally check you in later. Follow me and I’ll show you your room.”
I glanced back. He hadn’t moved. His face was shadowed, as if something dark or unpleasant had passed by.
“She’s good, Nathan. I promise.”
He registered my reassurance with a look of surprise.
“This is it. The Blue Room.” I tapped the brass plate centered on his door. “We’re in the next room. It’s green.” I twisted the knob and swung the door wide. “Welcome to Regency England.”
Nathan followed me into the room. He scanned it thoroughly, then picked up a pair of socks from the bed and dangled them in front of me. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Silk stockings.” I reached for them. “Real silk. I’m not sure cotton could get this white. Aren’t they nice? And you use this garter thingy to keep them up.”
“Nicewasn’t the word that came to mind.” He looked back to the bed. “I wear all this? At once?”
“Yes.” I opened the wardrobe where Gertrude and I had hung the other clothes. “There are two more outfits in here, and more stockings and stuff in these lower drawers. I recommend you wearyour own underwear or boxers or whatever...” I felt my cheeks warm. “But you can do what you want.”
“Good to know.”
“I had to guess your sizes.”
He held up the blue coat. “You did great.”
“And...” My words toppled over his, but standing there made my heart race, my body heat, and my skin itch in the wool dress. “If you know any Austen, it all goes easier. The guests here are really nice, but they throw around names and quotations like WATT throws acronyms. We all have characters. I e-mailed you that, but if you haven’t chosen one, you could be Willoughby fromSense and Sensibilitybecause we have two characters from that book, Margaret Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, or that guy fromPersuasion...”
“Captain Wentworth?”
“The other one; the younger Walter Elliot. We’ve already got an old Sir Walter, so that might be fun.”
Nathan closed the distance between us. His face was a disconcerting few inches from my own. “Are you mad at me? What have I done?”
“I—No. Why?”
“Those are terrible men, Mary. I’m a little worried you put me in their camp. Couldn’t you pick Darcy or Knightley or Ferrars? Edward, not Robert.”
“Not Knightley. I mean...” No way would I suggest a Mr. Knightley to pair with our Emma. “Hey, you know your Austen.”
“I’ve told you. English major. Three sisters. Those movies were like background noise growing up.” He laughed at my scowl. “I take it engineers aren’t required to take nineteenth-century literary criticism. But...”
He paused to capture my attention and placed a finger under my chin to keep it up. I’d been looking somewhere near his Adam’s apple. I changed my focal point.
“Youaremad.” He moved the finger to rest between my eyebrows. I felt the tension I held there.
“I feel like a fool.” My face flamed as I backed away.
“Mary—” He stepped toward me. His eyes held a look of pity—and that made everything worse.
“You don’t owe me anything.” I backpedaled to the door at a faster rate than he advanced. “You change and then we’ll go find Isabel.”
