Page 67 of The Austen Escape
“Hush. I have enjoyed every moment with you. That is all I wanted. I... I can’t remember all the names though. They get so jumbled in my head.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Helene sighed. “None of that matters. Youare still you and I love you. This is a game and I didn’t expect it to show me how wonderful our normal life is. I’m beginning to miss it... When we leave here, let’s ask the children to bring their families for Christmas.”
“Are you afraid I will forget soon?” Herman offered a humorless chuckle.
“I’m afraid I already did. What we have... It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The gig stopped. I looked around and found myself at the stables rather than the house.
“Hello? What are you doing back there? You’re soaked.” Duncan reached for me.
Helene’s hand flew to her mouth. “We forgot! Herman, we forgot poor Mary.”
“Please don’t worry. I was fine.” A coat, holding a hint of citrus, dropped over my shoulders. I twisted to find Nathan close behind me. “Thank you.”
“Your lips are blue,” Isabel cried.
“I am a little cold.”
“Come on. Let’s get you to the house.” Nathan drew me close and hurried me away from the group.
Before I knew it, we crunched across the gravel and the kitchen door swung open. Gertrude gestured us inside. “Grant called and said you got soaked. You need a hot bath.”
“Th... That... sounds... lovely.”
I slid Nathan’s coat off, but he pulled it back over me. “Bring it to me after you’re warm.” He kissed my forehead. “I’ll wait for you.”
Chapter 22
If ever there was a time for a long bath, this was it. Buried in bubbles, I let the morning wash over me. Lines from books floated past with the ease with which I usually recalled theorems—Ohm, Kirchhoff, and Pythagoras now stood beside the truths espoused withinPersuasion,Pride and Prejudice, and Clara’sSense and Senseless.
We can all plague and punish one another.Elizabeth Bennet said it to Caroline Bingley, who was trying to flirt with or “punish” Mr. Darcy for some surly comment. That was true. We could all do that to one another—protect ourselves by causing harm.Intimate as you are,she said,you must know how it is to be done.It was a delicious wisp of spite.
Isabel liked Grant, and I could have ended it. The Nathan story alone would have sent him running. Payback. But Nathan’s grandfather had been right. That would have been about me, not her, and I wanted to be more than that. I wanted more for me, and despite everything, seeing her now as I did, I wanted more for her too.
Finally dressed in the brown wool Isabel had laid out for me, I grabbed Nathan’s coat, now dry from resting on the heated bathroom floor, and stepped into the gallery. I trailed my finger alongthe glass cases. Books, fans, playing cards, gloves. Cases full of family history—Gertrude’s family history. The prayer book carried each Sunday by her grandmother, perhaps. A fan fluttered by an aunt. They were mere objects now. The emotional value lost, the connection lost, by being tucked away under light and glass.
It had struck me as sad to separate the people from their story. But I had done the same. I recalled my Lanvin shoe box and my mom’s treasures I kept locked away inside it.
“What’s wrong?”
I looked up to find Nathan sitting in the same chair I’d rested in days before.
I shook my head. “I just thought of something I need to do when I get home.”
He stood, shrugged on his coat, and stretched out his hand. Once mine was firmly within it, he tugged and we headed down the stairs. “A special late morning tea is set up on the lawn. Sonia’s been darting up and down the stairs, afraid you would miss it.”
“What have they got in store for us now?”
“If her excitement is any indication, it’ll be over the top.”
Nathan led me through the hallway toward the back of the house rather than out the front door. We crossed the ballroom, and in my mind I could hear the previous evening’s music echoing within its walls. We passed through the narrow glass door at the end, and I could feel the notes of our beautiful silent dance.
“By the way, you were right. It doesn’t work that way.”
I glanced up at him. “What doesn’t?”
“Gertrude popped the TV out of its hidden panel in the Day Room. Isabel walked in, watched a moment of some odd show with a girl with pink hair, then walked back out, no change in her expression at all.”
