Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library Read Free Page A

royalty, no less, is quite beyond our remit. The court’s learned advisers, Mesdames Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis, have already shown us future generations enjoying them. Sit down, please, Mrs Ferrars. Even the judges of the dead cannot fight fate.
    ‘But neither, prisoner in the dock, can we acquit you of the charge that Mrs Norris and her co-prosecutors bring. However we have, we believe, found a way forward. Your books, Miss Austen, shall be spared and read until the end of time.’
    She closed her eyes in relief.
    ‘But listen, young woman,’ the judicial voice went on, avuncular but resolute, ‘to our sentence. You have, throughout your life, maintained regular correspondence with your brother Vice-Admiral Sir Francis Austen, have you not?’
    Frank? An Admiral? How wonderful!
    But—
    ‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ was all she said.
    The judge nodded.
    ‘Francis Austen we know to be fond of you. Throughout his earthly life – which will prove long – he will cherish every letter you ever wrote him.’
    Every letter? There must be hundreds. She had kept no journal, but her writings to Frank served a journal’s purpose. They held her innermost thoughts.
    ‘He will often re-read them to catch in their sentences the cadence of a favourite sister’s voice.’
    At the thought of it, she wanted to laugh for pure pleasure.
    ‘He knows you opened your heart to him as you did to no other creature upon earth.’
    It was true. The novels were witty in their way, but all her happiest teases and shrewdest remarks lay in the letters to Frank.
    ‘Your confidences,’ the grave voice pronounced, ‘will delight him all his days and bring him a little consolation for your early death. Further, he will harbour the hope that in time your letters’ wisdom and shrewdness will reach and delight other readers too. But they never shall.’
    He paused.
    ‘Francis Austen’s daughter, Fanny, shall burn them in bundles on her father’s death. With them will vanish a fair part of yourself, Miss Austen – perhaps the pithiest, most compassionate part; the part that speaks through Mr Knightley rather than Mrs Norris. But your books shall remain. You may stand down.’
    At the time, the thought of all her exchanges with Frank passing into oblivion left her wretched. As she departed from the court, she had to steel herself not to cry. But in the fullness of eternity, she met her niece Fanny under the white cypresses surrounding the Elysian Fields. She recognised her at once.
    ‘What thought was in your mind,’ she asked, their greetings done, ‘when you destroyed my letters to your father?’
    ‘Oh,’ said Fanny, ‘did I really do that?’
    She frowned, as though scouring her thoughts. At last she sighed and shook her head.
    ‘When I arrived in this place,’ she said, ‘I was thirsty and they gave me water of Lethe to drink. It is extraordinary that I should even know who you are, Aunt Jane, for of my earthly life I can remember nothing.’

    My inspiration: Jane Austen is strong on rebarbative women. I wanted to show them turning the tables on her, and had a suspicion that Mrs Norris would take the lead.

SECOND THOUGHTS
    Elsa A. Solender
    She had said yes. Yes, I will. She had felt his hand briefly touch her shoulder; his lips lightly graze her check. When she opened her eyes, he had turned away. Had he any notion that she had avoided his eyes?
    Now all was settled between them. Watching him leave the room, she could read his satisfaction – his relief – in the spring of his step. Were he to leap up and click his heels together, she would not be entirely surprised, for he must be pleased that he had brought it off so well, as truly he had.
    He was a stout young man turned twenty-one, just down from Oxford, wearing a striped silk waistcoat – a puce-and-purple striped waistcoat – poised to commence life as a gentleman of means, if not fashion. Was ‘poised’ the proper word? Was ‘poise’ indeed possible for Harris