Undressing Mr. Darcy (21 page)

Lexi and Sherry watched as she removed the plastic and pulled the tiny card out of the card holder.

Nothing, nothing could have prepared her for the sheer drop from the top of the roller coaster she didn’t even know she was on. The flowers were from Chase.

Just checking in on you . . .

I’ll be calling you soon!

Love, Chase

“Oh,” was all she could say as she dropped the card and it fluttered to the floor. Logically, how could Julian even know about her accident? And did she really think he’d send flowers? Well, she hadn’t until she’d heard “floral delivery,” and then it seemed to be a perfectly rational thing to assume.

Lexi picked up the card, read it, and showed it to Sherry, who instantly said, “How nice of him.”

Lexi trotted the flowers out to the kitchen and came back.

“How did he know about your accident?” she asked.

“He works with Paul. And he came over with chicken noodle soup he’d made.”

“He cooks?” Lexi asked.

“Evidently. It was pretty good, too, wasn’t it, Sherry?”

“Yeah. Really good.”

“He saw you—like this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he sent you flowers today? Honey, when a man sees you at your worst and comes back for more, you have to sit up and pay attention.”

“I’m not at my worst!”

Lexi laughed. “Well,
I’ve
never seen you worse off than this. It’s not so much the neck brace as it is the hung-up-on-Julian thing.”

“Chase is just being nice. That’s how he is.”

“Exactly. He’s a great guy and he obviously has feelings for you, Vanessa.” Lexi tapped the side of her cheekbone with her finger. “Didn’t he say he’d be in London while the Jane Austen Festival was going on?”

Vanessa nodded. “Yes, the auction house is one of the festival sponsors, and he has some auctions to attend at Sotheby’s. But strike my hooking up with him from your to-do list.”

Lexi threw her arms in the air. “Got it. For better or worse, you’re going to the festival for Julian.”

“Yes. And you know what? He got through to me without texting and without a single emoticon.”

“I know. At least you won’t have to unfriend him on all your social media once you see who he really is.”

Optimism never really was a tool in Lexi’s toolbox.

* * *

T
wo days later, with Lexi’s help, Vanessa had cleared enough of her work to leave for a week. She drove up north to tell Aunt Ella and Paul she’d be going to Bath for the Jane Austen Festival.

Not only did she drive the speed limit, but she didn’t check her phone at every stoplight—just once in a while.

Paul’s house was, appropriately, a well-landscaped redbrick Georgian with a circular drive just a few blocks from the lake. The simple wedding they had planned at the end of the month would be held in his backyard under white tents with a small crowd of immediate family. The doorbell had a regal ring to it, and truly, Vanessa couldn’t imagine a more idyllic setting for her aunt than this, complete with the man she loved.

“Vanessa, darling!” Aunt Ella opened the forest green door into the vaulted-ceilinged foyer and kissed and hugged her. “Come in. What a gorgeous floral skirt you have on! And a pink silk tank? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in pink. You look fantastic.”

“The skirt is floral, yes, but it’s still a miniskirt, isn’t it?”

“A pink manicure, too?”

“
Hot
pink.”

Paul came to hug and kiss her, too, and they all sat down in the dining room for a glass of wine before dinner. With the wine and the appetizers they spoke of the surprise engagement party; at dinner they discussed the wedding; and, with the apple pie dessert, Vanessa announced she’d be going to Bath for the Jane Austen Festival, unless they really needed her, in which case she’d exchange her plane fare for some other time.

They were both equally shocked and thrilled, but the thrill outweighed the shock. Of course they wanted her to go!

After they ran down the list of everything she had to see and do, and Paul tried to work out how often she could see Chase while in Bath, he went to take care of some paperwork. Aunt Ella sat with Vanessa in the living room just like they used to do when they lived across the street from each other.

Her aunt spoke first. “You’re wearing pink, you’ve switched from coffee to tea, and you’re going to Bath. I realize anyone can fall in love with Jane Austen after reading even just a few pages of one of her novels—that is the gift of any good author—but why do I get the feeling there’s a man involved here? Specifically Julian?”

Vanessa smiled. “You may be right. But maybe I just want to take in the waters at the Pump Room.”

“Vanessa, listen. You’re getting a bit long in the tooth to be playing these games. You’re going to go there, you’re going to get him, and you’re going to bring him back. For your sake
and
mine. I’d very much like to be cognizant of what man finally does win your heart!”

“Not this discussion again—not now, okay? You
will
see who I end up with, I promise you!”

“I certainly hope so, because nothing would make me happier than to see you settled. Here are some English pounds I have leftover from my last trip. Drink the healing waters at the Pump Room for you and me both. Daily, if you can stomach it.”

“Do you think I’m unwell?” Vanessa asked with a smirk.

“You keep me young, Vanessa, that’s for sure, with all of your antics. Be warned. The Jane Austen Festival attracts the real fanatics, you know.”

“Pun intended? I’ve packed my fan.”

“Let’s be serious for a moment, Vanessa dear. Are you sure about this? Have you fully recovered from the shock of the accident? And have you really developed feelings for Julian?”

“Yes, yes. And yes.”

“You can change your style of clothing for the sake of a man, but you shouldn’t change yourself. Just remember that. That being said, I do think you must go on this journey. You’re on a journey already, darling, just like me. I’m on a path with Paul and my health, and it’s not as pleasurable as trouncing off to Bath. That is simply the reality. But you! You’ll have a wonderful time and you shall do it all for me—I won’t make it back to England ever again.”

“Don’t say that . . .”

“It’s all right, Vanessa. I’ve come to terms with it. And you? Well, as Jane Austen herself said in
Northanger Abbey
, ‘If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.’”

After the hugs and kisses, Vanessa lingered outside in the dark, on the circular drive, looking at the house and the windows lit but shaded by draperies, and thought how safe and cozy it all looked. Her aunt had found happiness and security when she needed them most.

Still, Vanessa ached with guilt for leaving her at this juncture, even though it was only for a week.

Aunt Ella’s nurse stepped out the front door—catching Vanessa by surprise.

“Oh, hi, Vanessa.”

“Is everything all right, Kathleen? You don’t usually stay so late! I didn’t even know you were here.”

“I see to it that your aunt gets into bed nowadays.”

“Oh. She seemed fine tonight.”

“I know, she
seems
fine. I’ll let you know when she needs an overnight nurse.”

“You have my cell phone number, right? I’m going to England for the week, so you’ll need to use the country code. Here’s my card. You can e-mail me, text, phone, whatever. Are you on any of the social networking sites? You can message me there or instant-message me—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get in touch if I need to. One week isn’t long. It’s best that you go now, actually . . . Enjoy yourself!”

She would . . . do her best.

The Other Side of the Pond

Ch
apter 13

A
s soon as the plane landed, Lexi offered a quote from Austen about London: “‘Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation & vice, and I begin already to find my Morals corrupted.’ Could a girl ask for more? All sorts of sordid things happen in London.”

Vanessa smiled, appreciating not only Austen’s exaggeration and humor, but Lexi’s humor, too. She and Lexi had officially made up during the flight at forty thousand feet in the air and it felt right to let the grudge go. Lexi was high maintenance, but her persistence had won Vanessa over, and she decided to give their friendship a second chance.

Sherry, who laughed at the quote, wore a T-shirt to commemorate the trip. This one read:

Single

Taken

Waiting for Mr. Darcy

The two glass doors from customs to the international arrivals section of London’s Heathrow Airport in Terminal 3 each had a palace guard painted on it, with fuzzy black hat and red coat.
Welcome to Great Britain
, it said under the guards. Welcome, indeed. She was on Julian’s home turf now.

She wasn’t prepared for the throng of people cordoned off at international arrivals, with their heart-shaped balloons and their welcome signs and the hugging and kissing and groping, and that, too, just brought her back to the first time she’d met Julian. Against all reason, she actually looked for him in the crowd. As if he would be there! She knew he could very well be at home in Chawton, a ways from both London and Bath, because his
Undressing
show wasn’t scheduled until the end of the festival week.

Suddenly, it seemed, British accents rang out all around her, most of them nothing like Julian’s. As she, Lexi, and Sherry whisked along the hallway, they passed a blur of shops sporting a barrage of images from Union Jack flags to red double-decker buses to the Tower Bridge, black cabs, and the royal family.

Yes, just in case she didn’t know it: she had arrived in England. The airport versions of the Globe Pub, Harrods, Glorious Britain, and WHSmith confirmed it.

She stopped with her rolling suitcase at a dizzying array of shirts, ties, and cuff links on display in Thomas Pink. A placard in the shop window caught her eye:

Mr. Pink was an eighteenth-century London tailor who designed the iconic hunting coat worn by Masters of Foxhounds, whippers-in, huntsmen, and other hunt staff. The coat was made of scarlet cloth but was always referred to as PINK, in honour of its originator. Meticulous attention to detail, exclusive fabric, and exquisite craftsmanship were the hallmarks of a PINK coat . . .

Lexi moved her along. “We’re not even out of the airport yet. How will we ever get you around England?”

“That story was just so—interesting. And spelling ‘honor’ with a
u
really lends it a certain elegance, doesn’t it? Why don’t we spell it with a
u
?”

Lexi sighed. “The English have
u
in all kinds of words, like ‘colour’ and ‘favourite.’ We Americans just streamlined it—that’s what we do, right? The American way?”

Vanessa stopped at the Starbucks counter, where a sign on a pedestal read,
QUEUE STARTS HERE
.

“Julian says ‘queue.’” Vanessa smiled.

Lexi sighed. “They all say ‘queue.’”

“No Starbucks for you, girlie,” Sherry said. “We’re going local, okay?”

“I’m here to go native,” Vanessa agreed.

Navigating through the crowd on her way to the Heathrow Express train, Vanessa found herself practically bumping into people, people who said “sorry” to her in their varied British accents until finally, when she settled on the escalator with her unwieldy suitcase, Sherry tapped her on the shoulder.

“You need to be standing on the other side. Even foot traffic goes the opposite direction here.”

As soon as Vanessa moved to the other side of the escalator, a line of frustrated but very patient and polite Brits in suits and business skirts filed by in a huff.

“There should be an app for this,” Vanessa said.

How had Sherry instinctively picked up on the foot-traffic flow and escalator etiquette and she hadn’t? Sherry had never been to England before, either.

Everything struck Vanessa as familiar and foreign at the same time; even the train station’s convenience store food and drinks looked similar but completely different as they loaded up for the train ride. She stared at the refrigerated section for some time before she decided to get an egg-and-cress sandwich, the cheapest one available, because she’d spent a mint on her last-minute flight to London. Although the pear cider she picked up seemed overpriced.

“Not very well globally traveled, are you?” Lexi asked. “It helps to get out from behind your electronic devices every now and then.”

Her train ticket, too, when she read it, made her laugh. The English called a train car a “carriage” and their seats were in carriage C. How quaint, how cute—how English. Cuter still was the fact that they were heading to Paddington Station. Paddington? As in the adorable little bear with the yellow hat and toggle-buttoned coat?

“Here’s to Jane Austen,” Lexi said once they’d settled in and she raised her bottle of Pimm’s.

“To the Jane Austen
Festival
.” Sherry raised her can of Fanta.

“Yes, to both of the above, and Mr. Darcy, too,” Vanessa said, realizing the pear juice she’d picked up had alcohol in it. Pear “cider.” Note taken.

When at last they stepped from the train that took them from Paddington through gorgeous green countryside to the Bath Spa station, it hit her that she would be spending a week in a spa city. Would she come out of the spa experience feeling any better? She sure hoped so.

The late-afternoon sun shone, and they decided to hoof it from the station to the hotel rather than taking a cab.

They crossed east out of the station when they should’ve stayed on the west side of Manvers Street, where Vanessa stopped so instantly with her suitcase that Sherry crashed into her.

GEO. BAYNTUN
, read the letters on the massive white stone-colored building.
BOOKBINDER
and
BOOKSELLER
wrapped around the arched windows, and Vanessa held on to the wrought iron fence in front of the building.
OLD PRINTS
, it said in painted letters on an outdoor gas lamp just near a window. Julian shopped here. She’d seen the bookplates in his books.

Lexi put her hand on her hip. “Really, Vanessa? A bookshop? We’ve traveled a total of eleven hours to see the hundreds of men dressed in tight breeches and dashing red coats who are a mere ten minutes from here, and you stop at a bookstore. You have an e-reader anyway. Remember? You were the first to get one because they’d hired you to test-market it.”

Vanessa left her suitcase on the sidewalk as she hopped up the stairs and peered in the glass-paneled doorway. The shop was closed, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen anything as beautiful as the sun streaming in on the dark wooden floors and glass cases that rose to the ceiling full of leather-bound books with gilded lettering on the spines. A sign on the door read,
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
.
How quaint.

She could buy Aunt Ella a gorgeous edition of
Pride and Prejudice
here and maybe, just maybe, an elegantly bound book for herself.

“We’re going now. It’s pub time,” Lexi said as she looked at her watch.

“After we check in with the festival, right?” Sherry asked.

“Right,” Lexi confirmed as she crossed the street.

Vanessa trailed behind them, her suitcase bumping along and sometimes spinning out on the cobblestones, making her aware she’d left the United States and was officially across the pond.

Julian was right about the stone Georgian architecture being both stunning and elegant. Feeling as if she’d fallen into Jane Austen’s
Persuasion
or
Northanger Abbey
, Vanessa floated by the abbey and the Roman Baths, craning her neck to see them, but stopped at the Pump Room.

“Lexi! Sherry!” she called out to them among the crush of tourists. She pointed to the gorgeous sign that read,
THE PUMP ROOM
. “We’re going in.”

“Not
now
,” Lexi whined, cocking her hip.

“I’m thirsty and I’m getting a mineral water. Look—the sign says it’s fifty pence a glass. My treat. Let the healing begin!”

“I’m in,” Sherry said.

“Hurry up,” Lexi mumbled. “I’ll watch the bags. I didn’t come all this way for a glass of water.”

“You came all this way for a
tall
glass of water.” Vanessa smiled.

“Or two. Preferably in breeches.” Lexi laughed. “Go.” Lexi waved them off as she smiled at a good-looking guy standing outside a shop across the way. He beamed back at her.

Vanessa, in her snug-fitting thin leather jacket and flirty skirt, flounced into the formal room to the strains of a classical trio playing piano, harp, and violin. It could’ve been worse—she could’ve been wearing her black nail polish, her earbuds, and scanning her phone. That was the old Vanessa.

Still, maybe her aunt was right. Maybe she did need healing.

The only sounds other than the music were the clinking of silverware and the hushed din of conversation under tiered tea plate servers. Floor-to-ceiling windows flanked the minty-green-colored room, punctuated by white columns, eighteenth-century oil paintings, and shimmering chandeliers.

As if she’d been here before, she felt that off to her right, in a light-filled, domed-glass alcove, would be the fountain. Of course, the short line of people waiting while others drank clear glasses of water might’ve been a clue. She laughed at her own folly. Folly? Had she ever used that word before? Why did she palpably feel Jane Austen’s presence across the room, near the trio, with folded arms and laughing at her?

Vanessa had never seen a spa fountain before and had never been to an ancient spa town, so she had nothing to compare it to, but the sacredness of the font did not escape her, jaded as she was. Behind the fountain itself stood sand-colored Georgian buildings that left the entire alcove in a wash of honeyed light.

Beyond a waxed wooden counter stood the stone base of the fountain with
THE KING’S SPRING
etched in it.