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“Ah, Miss Erstwhile,” said Colonel Andrews. “I was just coming after you to join me in the stables.”
“You were looking for me?” She waited for him to change his story. He didn’t. “Uh, what about Miss Charming?”
“Miss Charming is resting in her chambers, but I cannot be idle. I must have some diversion.”
“Are you sure she is? I mean, aren’t you looking for her?” Jane felt a little dizzy.
“She told me of her plans after breakfast. You seem surprised that I was seeking you. Don’t tell me that I’ve been so neglectful as to cause you this astonishment.”
“Nap,” she said. “Yes. I think I’ll follow Miss Charming’s example and rest myself. Perhaps, colonel, you need a break, too.”
She left with a quiet swish of her skirt. Back to work. She was the work. She was. Rats. She’d had a sweet little hope that she was the treat, the rest from laboring conversations. Nope, hanging out with Miss Erstwhile was reason to sigh with exhaustion.
Did Mr. Nobley feel the same way? Could he have been the unseen smoker?
Tomorrow was the ball. She’d channeled all her hopes into the ball, where she would face the fantasy of Mr. Darcy and somehow . . . somehow just know what to do? She was all befuddled. The ball had to be her closure, her triumph. But reminded that for these actor men, she was work, it was getting hard to keep her eye on the ball. She was not who she’d thought she was. No one was.
When she got back to her room, her self-portrait’s eyes stared back, startled, even more unsure.
“Stupid art,” she said.
Glum, glum, glum. That was the sound her feet made as she descended to the drawing room that evening. Glum, glum, as she walked alone at the back of the line of precedence into the dining room. It sure felt cold back there. She sniffed and rubbed her arms.
“Mr. and Mrs. Longley will be coming from Granger Hall and the two older Miss Longleys as well,” Aunt Saffronia was saying, her conversation as endlessly full of names as the biblical lists of who-begot-whom. “Oh! And Mr. Bentley. Miss Heartwright, you recall Mr. Bentley? Still single and has four thousand pounds a year. Takes such good care of his mother.”
Jane click-clacked her fork on her plate, pushing her food around. Her mother would’ve been shocked. It was not often that Jane was truly and absolutely despondent, and tonight she felt enslaved by that word. It shouldn’t matter what they thought of her, she reminded herself. This was her game, and when she won it would be her victory. She just had to dig in her heels and keep playing. But the reality of the men being bored by her, paid to pretend to like her, intruded too much on her fun tonight, coupled with the dread that she wouldn’t be able to conque
r her obsession before her time in Austenland was up.
Jane tried to keep the despondency to herself, though Mr. Nobley seemed to be keeping a pretty good eye on her, as usual. She took another bite of . . . poultry of some sort? . . . and decided she’d pull the headache excuse out of the bag and dismiss herself to bed as soon as the dinner torture was over. She hated to waste a single moment of her last days, but she felt pulled inside out and couldn’t figure out how to right herself.
She returned Mr. Nobley’s gaze. His eyebrows raised, he leaned forward slightly, his mannerisms asking, “Are you all right?” She shrugged. He frowned.
When the women stood to leave the gentlemen to their port and tobacco, Mr. Nobley rose as well and made his unapologetic way to Jane’s side.
“Miss Erstwhile, too long have you been asked to walk alone.
May I accompany you to the drawing room?”
Her heart jigged.
“It’s not proper,” she whispered, the fear of Wattlesbrook in her. She didn’t want to be sent home, not before the ball.
“Proper be damned,” he said, low enough for just her ears.
Jane could feel all eyes on them. She took Mr. Nobley’s arm and walked across that negligible distance, stately as a bride. He found her a seat on a far sofa and sat beside her, and except for the fact that she couldn’t kick off her shoes and tuck her feet up under her, all felt pleasantly snug.
“How is the painting going?” he asked.
Of course it had been him (the paints). And of course it hadn’t been him (Colonel Andrews’s unseen smoking companion). Jane sighed happily.
“How do you do it? How do you make me feel so good? I don’t like that you can affect me so much, and I find you much more annoying than ever. But what I mean is, thank you for the paints.”
He wouldn’t acknowledge the thanks and pressed her for details instead, so she told him how it felt to manipulate color again, real color, real paint, not pixels and RGBs, like the joy in her muscles stretching after a long plane ride. She talked about artists she admired, paintings she’d done when she was young and dramatic and how cowed by false emotion they seemed to her now, how the embarrassment of immature art had chased her away from the canvas for too long. And how grateful she felt, how chock-full of happy things just for having returned. She didn’t worry that she was boring him, as Old Jane would’ve done. It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. He was paid to listen to her and make her feel like the most interesting person in the world, and so, by George, she would be.
His lips pressed into a small smile that stayed. A very small smile. Sometimes almost imaginary. Jane wished that it might be bigger, that it might beam at her, but she supposed that wasn’t the Nobley way. Then when she’d decided that his smile was a figment, Mr. Nobley said—or whispered, rather—
“Let’s go look at your paintings.”
