The Dashwood Sisters Tell All (17 page)

I returned to my room, slipping out of my evening gown and taking off my makeup, but when I lay down on the bed, I was still wide awake. I couldn't blame my sleeplessness on the heat. My room was lovely and cool with the night breeze stealing through the open window, but it didn't make me any less restless. I tried a long, bubbly soak in the enormous bathtub, but my mind wouldn't disengage. That wasn't a problem I normally had, to be honest. I had always been driven more by emotion than intellect. The events of the week, though, had me wound up tight.

I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and made my way quietly out of my room, down the stairs, and into the bar. I didn't see anyone from our tour among the locals scattered at various tables. I ordered an Orangina and slipped out into the side garden. Perhaps a little night air would do the trick.

The outdoor tables were deserted, but I could smell cigar smoke coming from the bothy, a small shelter in the side garden where the gentlemen could indulge. It was difficult to see inside, since the low-hanging roof built to contain the smoke blocked anyone sitting there from view. I could see, though, a pair of expensive Italian leather loafers polished to a high sheen. My heart raced. If Ethan had returned, it was time to confront him.

I ducked through the opening and then stopped. Low-slung leather armchairs circled the small space. Candles flickered on the occasional tables tucked between the chairs. The lone occupant wasn't Ethan after all. It was Tom.

“Mimi? Are you okay?”

“Um, yeah. I’m fine. I just—”

“I find it difficult to unwind at the end of a tour,” he said with gentle understanding. He nodded toward the chair next to him. “If you’re not offended by cigar smoke, you’re welcome to join me.”

I decided that the company would be worth putting up with the smell. “Okay.”

“Are you a big cigar smoker?” I asked when I settled into the chair next to him.

He made a face. “Only occasionally. When I’m restless.” He shrugged. “I gave up cigarettes years ago, but every once in a while, I still indulge.”

“To unwind.”

“Among other things.”

I decided not to ask what those other things were. He seemed like a man with a lot on his mind.

“Thank you for a wonderful week,” I said. I set my Orangina on the table next to his cigar. “Obviously I’m not the usual walking-tour type, but I’ve really enjoyed it.”

“Blisters and all?”

“Especially the ‘and all.’” Which encompassed a lot. Sisterly strife. Disappointed romantic hopes and semipublic humiliation. Secrecy, theft, duplicity…

“So you’re not sorry you came?” He was looking at me with that intent gaze, and I could tell that our conversation that morning in the lythe hadn't been any easier on him than it had been on me.

“No. I guess I owe my mother a ‘thank you.’” Which Ellen and I would show her when we decided the next day where to scatter her ashes. We still hadn't picked a spot.

Tom rested his hands on his knees in a military-looking posture. “I owe her one too.”

I looked up at him, and I found myself at a complete loss for words. He was so different from Ethan. Not the romantic ideal I’d spent so many years pursuing, but something far more…real.

“She's the one who designed the tour, you know.” Tom placed his elbows on the arms of the chair and loosely clasped his fingers in front of him.

“My mother?”

“It was meant to be a surprise.”

I paused. “I didn't know.” I didn't want to cry—not in front of Tom. I forced myself to smile, but the tears still sprang to my eyes. “You said it was someone who’d been at school with the owner of the company. It must have been an old friend of hers in England.”

“I only had contact with her by e-mail,” Tom said, “but she seemed like a fine woman.”

I sniffed back tears, but then I smiled. “She was.”

“Mimi—”

“I was hoping for a grand romance when I came on this tour.” I stopped, unsure whether I had the courage to continue.

“Did you find one?” He didn't look disturbed by my abrupt change of subject.

I should have minded the smell of his cigar, but with both of us nestled in the bothy, the pungent smoke perfumed the air in a very masculine way.

“I think so. I hope so.” Why did his question make my pulse pick up speed?

“So what will you do now?”

“I don't know.” The only thing I did know was that I wasn't ready to go home.

He paused, but he didn't reach for the cigar. “Would you consider staying here to sort out your future?”

Now I knew why my heart was racing. “Stay here in England? Just like that?”

“Well, there might be one or two complications to deal with.”

“Like the fact that I’d have no job and no place to live,” I said ruefully.

He leaned forward, reached for my hand, and twined my fingers with his. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

He was breathtakingly handsome. His strong jaw, stormy silver-blue eyes, and silvered hair were all straight out of a BBC Jane Austen adaptation. Give him riding breeches and a cravat, and women would swoon. I would swoon. As a matter of fact, I was in the act of swooning. My knees went distinctly weak.

“The main problem I see,” Tom said as he lifted the other hand to cup my cheek, “is how we’re going to break it to Ellen that you’re not going home with her.”

He leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine. You could hardly even have called it a kiss, but it drew me to the edge of my chair, seeking closer contact with him.

I launched myself into his arms. He caught me and pulled me into his lap. Then he kissed me properly. Thoroughly. Like an Austen hero kisses his lady, with passion but also a hint of restraint. I was pretty sure the bothy hadn't been intended for this purpose, but in a pinch…

“I think that I love you,” I breathed into his ear when we came up for air. The words startled me. I hadn't known they were true until the moment I said them.

“It took you long enough.” Tom smiled down at me with a kind of fierce, masculine happiness. Not exuberant, but deep-seated and purposeful.

“It hasn't even been a week,” I said, laughing. “Give a girl a chance.”

“It only took me the first five minutes,” he said smugly.

“Military efficiency, huh?” I pressed a kiss against his neck.

“No.” I leaned back to see that his smile had faded. The intensity in his gaze turned my insides to mush. “More like the answer to a prayer.”

How could I not be humbled by that? “I don't deserve you.” I wasn't fishing for compliments or reassurance. I knew at that moment, deep in my bones, the truth of that statement.

“I waited for you for so many years,” I said. I wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled him forward so I could kiss him again. “What took you so long?”

His arms came around me, strength and experience and wisdom enveloping me.

“I got here as soon as I could,” he whispered before, once again, we put the privacy in the bothy to good use.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I
couldn't believe it was the last day of the tour. The week had gone by so quickly, and yet it seemed ages since Ellen and I had turned up at Oakley Hall on Sunday evening. I had run out of time to figure out how to get the diary back from Ethan. I couldn't avoid telling Ellen the truth any longer. Before we left Winchester, I had to come clean with her and ask for her help in fixing my mistake.

Tom rounded us up on the hotel steps that morning. “We’ll see the house on College Street where Jane Austen was living when she died, and then walk over to the cathedral to visit her grave and the exhibit about her life.”

“Will we get to go inside the house?” someone asked, but Tom shook his head.

“It's a private residence now. The owner understandably gets a bit irritated at people knocking on his front door, asking for a tour.”

That drew smiles and a few laughs from the group.

“After we finish at the cathedral, we’ll return here for our luggage and head for the train station.”

With that, Tom took off down the street, and we obediently followed as we’d been doing all week. We made our way through a few narrow twists and turns, following Tom's instructions to watch for cars jumping out from behind the sharp corners. Finally we crossed one last street, and suddenly, through the trees, the cathedral loomed in front of us.

The enormous stone structure somehow managed to look delicate as well as majestic. Tom paused on the square outside so we could take photographs, but then he led us around the side of the building, past a small lawn where workers were assembling large stage lights.

“What's happening here?” Tom asked a woman who was passing by. She had the scarlet academic gown of a teacher from Winchester College thrown over one arm.

“They’re presenting
Romeo and Juliet
,” she said with a smile.

I looked up at the massive side of the cathedral, with its magnificent buttresses and intricate stonework. “It's the perfect backdrop.” There was even a small parapet in the corner that would serve quite nicely as Juliet's balcony.

Farther on, we came to a collection of Tudor buildings hunched over the street. A group of schoolboys in white choir robes passed by, and Tom explained that it was most likely the end of the term for nearby Winchester College, the boys’ boarding school, and they were headed to the cathedral for a closing service. It all seemed quite magical.

We stuck to the pavement rather than the cobblestoned street and a few turns later found ourselves in front of a brick townhouse painted a vibrant yellow. Tom gathered us on the pavement opposite where a small bit of lawn was buffered by a high wall. I suspected it was either part of the cathedral grounds or part of the college.

Ellen, Daniel, and I were standing to the back of the group as Tom relayed the details about the last months of Jane Austen's life, her wasting illness, and how Cassandra cared for her. They had traveled to Winchester so that the ailing Jane could be near her doctor. Ellen and I had heard most of the story from our mother, and so we spoke in whispers as we gazed at the house.

“It seems sad, doesn't it?” Ellen asked me. “For her not to be at home when she died.”

“It does.” I drew a deep breath. I had to bite the bullet and tell my sister the truth about how I’d betrayed her trust. “Ellen, there's something I need to tell—”

But Ellen was already saying something. “Look at the Dutch tourists.” She pointed at a group moving toward us, no doubt eager to take our places on the small lawn so that they, too, could pay homage.

My courage failed me. “Very blond, aren't they?”

She nudged me. “You’d fit right in.” It was the kind of lighthearted moment that had been missing in our relationship. I couldn't bring myself to spoil it.

We returned to the cathedral, and Tom led us through the entrance. The interior was practically empty of people, which was, as far as I was concerned, the best way to see such a magnificent building. Tom led us into the nave and gave us a brief history of the place before turning us loose to explore on our own.

“Let's go find her grave,” Ellen whispered, tugging on my arm.

As it turned out, we had to make our way around the outer aisles of the cathedral in a large loop and were almost back to where we’d started before we found what we’d come to see.

The whole place was filled with memorials, of course, everything from very plain marble plaques inscribed with the details of the person's life and death to elaborate statues of royal and nearly royal personages. None of those memorials, though, prepared me for the large black slab that I now found at my feet, or the inscription on it.

In Memory of JANE AUSTEN, youngest daughter of the late Revd GEORGE AUSTEN, formerly Rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this Life on the 18th of July 1817, aged 41, after a long illness supported with the patience and the hopes of a Christian. The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections. Their grief is in proportion to their affection, they know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm though humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her REDEEMER.

I hadn't thought I would cry, but my throat closed up, and I wanted to weep. For the first time on the trip, I felt my mother's presence, almost as if she were standing next to me. But no, that was Mimi, who looked as emotional as I felt.

“It doesn't even say anything about her writing,” she protested. “Why wouldn't they mention that?”

I knew the answer from one of my mother's long-ago lectures on the subject. “Her novels were published anonymously in her lifetime. The only reason she got buried here was because of her father and all the clergymen in their family.”

“It figures,” Mimi said. “Write six of the greatest novels in the English language, but in the end, they only care who your male relatives were.”

“Since when did you think that she wrote six of the greatest novels in the English language?” I asked, half laughing and half serious. Mom had spent years trying to get both of us to make our way through Jane Austen's entire oeuvre. She’d eventually succeeded with me, but I didn't know that Mimi had ever succumbed.

“I just finished
Sense and Sensibility
.”

“When?”

And now she began to cry in earnest. “I started when Mom got sick.”

“Mimi, what's wrong?” We’d been through all of this, and I thought we’d resolved it. “I don't blame you anymore. I understand why you couldn't come to Dallas.”

“It's not that.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It's the diary.”

“The diary?”

“It's my fault that it's missing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I might have mentioned it to Ethan.”

My stomach dropped to the memorial beneath my feet. “Meems, you didn’t.”

“I thought that maybe he could help. He's related to the Austens, and he had a whole room full of that kind of thing. I wouldn't let him see it, though, until I’d told you and”—she choked back a sob—“that's why he dumped me. Because I wouldn't prove that I had the diary. But it didn't matter, because now he's taken it…”

I leaned forward and pulled her into my arms. “Shh, Mimi. It's okay.”

She was crying so hard now that she shook. “We can't get it back now though. He’ll never admit that he has it, and we don't have any proof.”

I wanted to be mad at her, but she was trembling like a leaf, and suddenly that diary seemed like the least important thing in the world.

“Ellen, you have to forgive me.” She pulled out of my arms. “I know it's practically a full-time job with me, but I really need for you to do that.”

I looked at Mimi, the only family I had left in the world, and I knew that it was time to let go of the past. All of it. I wasn't going to get the magically perfect sister. Ever. But I wasn't go-ing to be the perfect sister, either. Cassandra and Jane hadn't seen each other that way, and yet they’d been so devoted to one another. Mimi said I had to forgive her, and she was right. I could only hope that she could forgive me as well, for all the times I had let her down.

On impulse, I put my arm around my sister, and we stared down at the inscription. “Meems,” I said, “do you think we could agree to make a new start? Right here, right now?”

She was quiet for a moment, and my chest tightened. Maybe it was too late. I’d held her at arm's length for so long. I’d judged her and fussed at her and generally made my contempt for her clear. I’d always thought the problem was that Mimi needed to make amends to me, but now I saw the situation in a different light.

“I am sorry, sis,” I said and squeezed her shoulders. “We should have been able to talk about everything that happened with Mom.”

“And I’m sorry that I wasn't there. I’m sorry I wasn't stronger.”

“We still have to decide what to do with her ashes,” I said. “We’ve gotten so caught up in all this diary stuff that I think we may have forgotten the most important reason that we’re here.”

“To say good-bye to Mom.”

“And to pick her final resting place.” I looked down at the memorial. “It's too bad we can't leave her here. That would probably have been her first choice.”

The corners of Mimi's mouth turned up, just a little bit. “Well, if we can't leave her with Jane, maybe we could do the next best thing.”

“Which would be?”

“To leave her with Cassandra.”

I nodded. “In the churchyard at Chawton.”

“Tom would probably drive us over there.”

She turned toward me then, and we held on to each other while we both cried. Other tourists passing by probably took us for Jane Austen aficionados who were just a little too enmeshed in idol worship. Only Mimi and I knew what it had taken to bring us to this moment. Being named after the Dashwood sisters. A lifetime of misunderstandings. Our mother's manipulation from beyond the grave. And two real-life sisters who, two hundred years ago, had been far wiser about resolving their differences than we had been.

Mimi pulled back and laughed through her tears. “We look like fangirls, don't we, weeping at Jane Austen's grave.”

I laughed through my tears. “Mom would be so proud.” And that was the truth.