Austenland Read Free

the extraordinarily pale lawyer say, “You’re not rich.”
    “What?”
“In fact, she didn’t leave you any money at all.” His every blink was slow and deliberate, reminding Jane of a frog. “People often hope, so I like to get that out up front.”
Jane laughed uneasily. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Of course.” The attorney sat down and sorted through a stack of papers with no wasted movement. He was saying something in lawyer-ese, but Jane was distracted. She was trying to figure out what besides the measured blinking made him seem so amphibious. His taut, shiny complexion, she decided. And his eyes being so wide apart. And his salad green tone. (Okay, he wasn’t actually green, but the rest was true.)
He was still talking. “Our client was . . . eclectic . . . in her will. She made purchases for a few friends and family members and left the bulk of her money to charities. For you, she arranged a vacation.”
He handed her a glossy, oversized pamphlet. On the cover was a photograph of a large manor house. A man in jacket, cravat, and breeches, and a woman in an empirewaist dress and bonnet were walking in the foreground. They seemed awfully content. Jane’s hands went cold.
She read the elegantly inserted text.
    Pembrook Park, Kent, England Enter our doors as a house guest come to stay three weeks, enjoying the country manners and hospitality—-a tea visit, a dance or two, a turn in the park, an unexpected meeting with a certain gentleman, all culminating with a ball and perhaps something more.
Here, the Prince Regent still rules a carefree England. No scripts. No written endings. A holiday no one else can offer you.
    “I don’t get it.”
“It’s an all-inclusive, three-week vacation in England. From I gather, you dress up and pretend to be someone in the year 1816.” The attorney handed her a packet. “It also comes with a first-class plane ticket. The vacation is nonrefundable, my client saw to that. But if you do need cash, you could exchange the first-class airfare for economy class and pocket the change. I make such suggestions whenever I can. I like to be helpful.”
Jane hadn’t looked away from the pamphlet. The man and woman in the photo held her gaze like a magician’s swaying watch. She hated them and adored them, longed to be that woman but needed to stay firmly in New York City in the present day and pretend she had no such odd fantasies. No one guessed her thoughts, not her mother, not her closest friends. But Great- Aunt Carolyn had known.
“Pocket the change,” she said distractedly.
“Just make certain you report it to the IRS.”
“Right.” Seemed odd, that Carolyn would point out this flaw in her poor, pathetic great-niece and then send her right into the belly of the beast. Jane groaned. “I’m hopeless.”
“What was that?”
“Um, did I say that out loud? Anyway, I’m not hopeless, that’s the problem. I’m too hopeful, if anything.” She sat up, leaning against his desk. “If I were to tell you my first dozen boyfriend stories, you’d call me screwy for ever going out with anyone again. But I have! I’m so thick-headed it’s taken me this long to give up on men, but I can’t give up completely, you know? So I.. . I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can’t reject me because he isn’t real!”
The lawyer straightened a stack of papers. “I think I should clarify, Miss Hayes, that I did not mean to flirt. I am a happily married man.
Jane gaped. “Uh, of course you are. My mistake. I’ll just be going now.” She grabbed her purse and split.
The elevator dropped her back at street level, and even after stepping through the doors, the ground still felt as though it were falling away under her feet. She fell/walked all the way back to work and into her gray rollerchair.
Todd the manager was at her cubicle the moment her chair squeaked.
“How you doin’, Jane?” he asked in his oft-affected pseudo Sopranos accent.
“Fine.”
She