Jane Austen Ruined My Life Page 3

  “What’s that from?” It wasn’t in any of Austen’s known letters or her novels. I could quote them all backward, forward, and upside down.

  “One of the letters, my dear. I believe number twenty-eight hundred eighty-five.”

  “Twenty-eight hundred eighty-five?”

  “One of the last ones. Written near the end of her life.”

  “Twenty-eight hundred eighty-five?” I repeated, stunned. Only one hundred and sixty of Austen’s letters were known to exist. I paused, squeezed my eyes shut, and asked the question I knew would seal my fate. “How many letters do you have?”

  “Personally?” Mrs. Parrot picked up her teacup again. “About five hundred I should think. Perhaps a few more.”

  “And the rest?”

  “In very good hands, I assure you.”

  “How many?” Adrenaline and disbelief mangled my question so that it was hardly comprehensible, but Mrs. Parrot understood.

  “In total, the official inventory lists almost three thousand letters.”

  “Official inventory?”

  The conversation was growing more fantastic by the minute. No doubt I would soon discover that Mrs. Parrot had recently been released from a mental institution where she’d been hospitalized as a delusional psychotic. I glanced down at my tea cup. It hadn’t tasted funny, but …

  “The integrity of the letters has been well preserved, Miss Grant, I assure you.”

  Integrity of the letters? Was she kidding?

  “You say you have almost three thousand of Jane Austen’s letters, hidden away, and you’re worried about integrity?” I pushed my purse strap back up on my shoulder. Definitely time to leave Mrs. Parrot alone with her delusions. “I apologize for troubling you—”

  “Don’t you want to know?” she asked. The vague question hung, suspended, in the air between us.

  “Want to know what?”

  “The truth.”

  “About?”

  “The truth about Jane Austen, of course.”

  “Mrs. Parrot—”

  She held up one hand. “You’ve come this far. Why give up so easily now?”

  Because you’re mad as a March hare, I wanted to say, but I stopped myself. No need to be unkind merely because this sweet, tabby-haired lady was unhinged.

  “I really think I’d better—”

  “Let me show you one, then.” She rose rather unsteadily to her feet. “Perhaps that will convince you.”

  “Show me one of what?”

  “Why, one of Jane Austen’s letters, of course.”

  “You have them here? In your home?”

  She laughed. “Not all of them. That would be madness, wouldn’t it?”

  I stood there, my mouth hanging open, unable to utter a word. Madness? We’d passed that particular stop on the delusional express long ago.

  “Come with me.” She started off toward the door of the sitting room. Mrs. Parrot moved very slowly. I could only hope that wherever we were going, it wasn’t a long distance, or up a flight of stairs.

  As she made her way through the door and back into the foyer, her shuffling step gave me plenty of time to study her home. We moved down a long hallway, and I could peer into each room. Every inch of wall space was covered in artwork— oil paintings, watercolors, sketches, pastels, silhouettes. The pictures were framed in a jumble of gilt, chrome, and wood, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Here and there, modern photos and portraits sprang up like weeds in a garden.

  A jumble of antique furniture formed a maze of Victorian settees, inlaid tables, and random bric-a-brac. There stood a five-foot-tall replica of the Venus de Milo. Next to it, yet another umbrella stand, this one fashioned from what looked to be an elephant’s foot. The sight of it made some of the tea in my stomach leap into my throat.

  “You have some very interesting things,” I said, more to try to anchor myself to normalcy than in a bid to renew our conversation.

  “Treasure is in the eye of the beholder,” Mrs. Parrot said. She looked back at me over one slightly hunched shoulder with a smile I could only describe as mysterious. “The value of a thing always depends upon your point of view.”

  Before I could reply, she pushed open another door. I followed her into the dimly lit room. I couldn’t see as clearly here, but there was enough light to outline the jumble of objects fighting for space on the floor and over the walls.

  “Let me just find the switch.” Mrs. Parrot fumbled around for a moment, and then suddenly the room was illuminated.

  “Oh!” I stood there, my mouth agape. Rows and rows of shelves lined the walls, each one crammed with dozens of books. Desks of every size and shape covered almost all of the floor space.

  “What in the world—”

  “One of our research rooms,” she said, giving me a tip of her head to indicate that I should follow her. “Over the years, our mission has expanded.”

  “Our research room? Our mission?” Mrs. Parrot was merrily leading me down the same road to madness that she had already traveled. “Who do you mean?”

  “The Formidables, of course.”

  “The Formidables?”

  I recognized the phrase immediately. Jane Austen’s own appellation for herself and her sister, Cassandra, in their later years. As in the formidable maiden aunts who bossed, cajoled, comforted, and cosseted all their relations.

  “Cassandra deputized the first of the lot before her death. Fanny Knatchbull was one,” she said, referring to Jane’s niece and one of her best-known correspondents.

  “One of the Formidables.” I repeated her words in a monotone, not as a question but as if trying to convince myself that they might be true. A secret society? Devoted to Jane Austen? It was too fantastical to be believed. As an academic, I knew better than to give it a moment’s credit. But as a woman … a romantic. As my mother’s daughter. My heart leaped into my throat.

  Of course it wasn’t true. It was some elaborate game of make-believe played by elderly ladies with vivid imaginations and too much time on their hands. It couldn’t be true. But, oh, how desperately I wanted it to be.

  Mrs. Parrot paused next to a set of bookshelves. “You don’t believe me?”

  “You have to admit, it all sounds a bit far-fetched.”

  “Most true things do,” she replied. She reached up and pulled a heavy volume from the shelf. It wavered in her ancient grasp. I darted forward, caught the book, and helped her lower it to the nearest desk.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  I stepped back, and she opened the cover and leafed through the large gilt-edged pages. “I’m sure I left it in this one …”

  The mere idea that this obviously senile old lady might actually have one of Jane Austen’s undiscovered letters shoved in a book somewhere made my pulse race, both out of excitement and anxiety. “I can help—”

  “Here it is.” She held up a yellowed piece of paper in triumph, shot me a victorious smile. “Sharp as a tack,” she said, pointing to her head with her free hand.

  “May I?” I held out my own hand toward the letter. I could see that spidery handwriting covered the sheet. At first glance, the letter certainly looked to be antique, but that was a far cry from actually having been penned by Jane Austen.

  “Not so hastily,” she said, pulling the letter away from me. “Sit down first.”

  I resisted the urge to lunge forward and snatch it from her hands. At least she kept it stored in a book, away from the damaging ultraviolet rays.

  With great reluctance, I sank into a straight chair pulled up to the nearest desk.

  Mrs. Parrot nodded her approval. “Very good. Now, before I show you this, I must swear you to secrecy.”

  Secrecy? Now she was mentioning secrecy? And then I realized she’d baited her hook quite irresistibly. She wasn’t nearly as dotty as she appeared to be. At the moment, I would have promised her my firstborn, not that I was ever going to have one now, for one close peek at the letter in her hand. Even from several feet away, I could tell the handwriting had the right slant and elegance to belong to Jane Austen.

  “I will be as discreet as possible,” I said, hoping to evade an outright commitment. I should have known that wouldn’t work.

  “Absolute secrecy,” she said again. She glanced around, and then plucked up yet another book from the shelf behind her. She laid it on the desk in front of me. “Swear on this.”

  “You want me to swear on the Bible?” That was taking things a bit far. And given my current disillusionment with the Almighty …

  Mrs. Parrot sniffed. “Of course not. People break vows sworn on Scripture all the time. But this? If you’re the Austen scholar you claim to be, you’d never desecrate this with a lie.”

  She nudged the book toward me. It was a small leather-bound volume. “Open it,” she instructed, and I did. I didn’t have to turn any further than the title page to realize what she’d placed in front of me to secure my fealty.

  Sense and Sensibility:

  A Novel.

  In Three Volumes.

  By A Lady.

  I looked at the date at the bottom of the page. 1811. “This is a first edition.” My head swam, and I felt faint.

  “Not only a first edition” was Mrs. Parrot’s matter-of-fact reply. “One of the author’s own inscription. Not that she inscribed it herself,” she said quickly when she saw what must have been unadulterated hope on my face. “The publisher wrote that for her. But it was sent at Austen’s direction to the recipient. It’s only volume one, of course. But I can find the other two if—”

  “No, no. That’s not necessary.”

  And it was at that moment that I knew I was going to do it. I was going to swear myself to secrecy. Because if she had this book, one of only a few in existence, then it was no
t so farfetched to believe that she was also in possession of at least one of Austen’s undiscovered letters.

  Later, I would persuade her to release me from my vow. Later, I would win her agreement to publish the text of the unknown letter. Later, I would convince her that no one had a right to keep from the world anything that flowed from Jane Austen’s pen. I could already envision the first small steps toward rehabilitating my academic reputation. But at that exact moment, the only thing I knew for sure was that if I wasn’t allowed to examine the letter she held in her hand, I would expire on the spot from sheer unbounded curiosity.

  Before Jane Austen’s sister, Cassandra, died, she was reputed to have destroyed most of the author’s letters. Those that she’d saved from destruction were given to various friends and family members, so it took years and years for many of them to be located.

  There had always been speculation in the academic world, as well as in circles of Austen’s devotees, that other letters would resurface over time, but the expectation had been that these would be occasional rarities. The idea that such an enormous number of letters as Mrs. Parrot claimed might still exist and, what’s more, be thoroughly cataloged, boggled my mind. And then Mrs. Parrot gently laid the letter she’d been holding on the desk before me, and my world turned upside down.

  True, I was no expert on handwriting or carbon dating or whatever else one needed to verify the authenticity of something like this, but I’d seen enough facsimiles of the real thing to know that this was either the most brilliant forgery ever or it was, be still my heart, the real thing.

  A lost letter of Jane Austen.

  “You may touch it, my dear,” Mrs. Parrot said from her perch at my shoulder.

  I reached out and gently traced my finger beneath the signature at the bottom of the page.

  J. Austen

  I tore my gaze away from the letter and quickly scanned the room. Were the rest of the letters hidden in random books on the numerous shelves as this letter had been? Mrs. Parrot must have seen the surge of literary greed in my eyes, because she gently retrieved the letter from the desk in front of me and tucked it back between the pages of the book.

  “Wait—”

  She held up a staying hand. “As I was saying earlier, I will be happy to show you more of the letters, provided you accomplish certain tasks that I set for you.”

  I looked at her to make sure she wasn’t joking. Earlier, I’d hoped that she was teasing me, or perhaps testing me. But, no, I could tell from the set of her mouth and the martial gleam in her gray eyes that she was serious.

  “What kind of tasks?” I asked, full of trepidation. The little-old-lady persona no longer lulled me into a false sense of security. Shuffling step or no, Mrs. Parrot was a force to be reckoned with.

  “They are not difficult, but they will require something of you.”

  “Such as?”

  She smiled as mysteriously as a woman on the wrong side of eighty possibly could. “You shall see.”

  By the time I left Stanhope Gardens, I had sympathy for Alice and her tumble down the rabbit hole. Tucked in my purse was a sealed envelope that I’d sworn not to open until I’d completed my assigned task.

  A few minutes later, I ran into Adam on Gloucester Road, across from the Underground station. I was loitering in front of the Starbucks, trying to decide if I could part with almost three pounds sterling for a grande skinny latte. If I’d ever needed caffeine in my life, it was at that moment, but I was keenly aware of the shabby state of my finances. Mrs. Parrot had made no mention of assisting me with the expenses occurred in performing her tasks, and I’d been too proud to bring up the subject. One way or another, I would do what I had to do. I wasn’t about to let money stand between me and the discovery of a lifetime.

  So there I was, pacing back and forth in front of Starbucks, when I looked up and saw Adam, tall and dark, coming down the sidewalk toward me. My heart started beating double time. Had he followed me? I couldn’t let him know about Mrs. Parrot. But, no, he was coming from the opposite direction, and he’d still been sleeping when I left the house that morning. What was he doing so far from Hampstead?

  “Emma!” He looked as surprised as I was. “What are you doing here?” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, which immediately made me suspicious. Adam didn’t seem any happier to see me than I was to see him.

  “I was … I mean … I had an appointment. Nothing important.”

  “Are you picketing Starbucks?” He jerked his head toward the coffee shop.

  I shook my head. “Just trying to decide whether to get a latte or not.”

  And then, it was like he read my mind. I could see the understanding dawn in his eyes. “Let me treat you,” he said.

  “No, that’s—” But he’d already disappeared inside the coffee shop. What else could I do but follow him?

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Grande latte,” he said to the barista. “And a tall coffee of the day.” He turned back to me. “Unless your usual has changed?”

  “No. No, it hasn’t.” If I hadn’t wanted that latte so much, I would have resented his high-handedness.

  I waited while he paid. He had no trouble producing the right change. I was still trying to figure out why the ten-pence piece was so enormous compared to the five pence. On the way to South Kensington that morning, I’d resorted to shoving a palm full of change into the face of a newspaper vendor and asking him to just take what he needed.

  A few moments later, we had our coffees in hand. When we reemerged onto Gloucester Road, Adam waved toward one of the empty café tables in front of the shop. “Have you got a minute?” he asked.

  The envelope burned a hole in my purse, but I kept my expression from showing my impatience. The sooner I could get moving, the sooner I could accomplish my task and have the right to open the letter. A conscience was very inconvenient at times like this. I wanted to rip the envelope open and be done with it.

  “So, you’re doing some top-secret research?” he said, prompting me for an answer.

  “Look, Adam …” And then I stopped. I had no idea how much he knew about what had transpired between Edward and me. Oh, I knew he must have heard about the divorce through the academic grapevine, but I wasn’t so sure about the plagiarism charges my teaching assistant had made against me. I didn’t know if he knew that Edward had backed her up, or about my subsequent dismissal. It had all been very discreet. The university agreed to let me leave quietly if I didn’t kick up a fuss.

  “Look,” I began again, “I don’t mean to be rude—”

  “I know about all of it,” he said. Again, it was as if he was reading my mind. “Although I certainly have some questions.”

  I snorted. “Questions? Like, why was I such a blithering idiot? Like, what kind of woman doesn’t catch on when her husband is—” I stopped myself. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear about all this.”

  “Edward’s an academic legend, but he’s not God. I think his actions speak for themselves. After all,” he looked down into his cup, “it wouldn’t be the first time.” He lifted his gaze to mine.

  With a sudden flash of understanding, I realized what he was saying.

  “It’s wasn’t the first time?”

  “That the great Edward Fairchild messed around with a teaching assistant?” He shook his head. “No.”

  My chest tightened. “Are you saying he cheated on me before?”

  Despite all the emotional trauma, it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that maybe the kitchen-table girl hadn’t been Edward’s first dalliance, as Jane Austen would say.

  “When we were in grad school—” He broke off. “Never mind.”

  The latte in my stomach, which had felt so comforting a moment before, turned to sludge. “I had no idea.”

  “I know.”

  A new round of humiliation poured through me, lighting a flame in my cheeks. So, everyone had known. Even someone as removed as Adam.

  “So it was common knowledge? What happened?”

  Adam shrugged. “I’m afraid so.” He reached over and laid a hand on my arm. “It’s not your fault, Em. The man’s a dog. Always has been.”

  I knew that Adam had disliked Edward, that he felt I’d chosen Edward over him. “Did you know back then? When we were in grad school?”