Eliza examined the dress appreciatively, once more slightly revising her early opinion of the enigmatic Fitzwilliam Darcy. She realized with a start how he had happened to know so much about Regency-era clothing that first day when they had met at the library.

“Mr…. I mean Fitz, seems to be quite an extraordinary person,” Eliza said, hoping to draw an unguarded opinion from Jenny. “Is it really possible for one man to be rich, handsome and as genuinely nice as he appears to be?”

Jenny put down the gown she was holding and her voice turned suddenly serious. “I have known Fitz my entire life,” she said without a moment’s hesitation. “And he’s probably the best man I’ve ever known.”

Eliza raised her eyebrows at this seeming exaggeration of a good friend’s character, but Jenny wasn’t finished yet.

“The times might have changed,” observed the beautiful black woman, “but you still don’t find that many Southern aristocrats hobnobbing with the descendants of the family slaves. And besides his other work and contributions to a number of causes, Fitz puts on this charity Rose Ball at his own expense every year, just so the poor kids around here—many of them from former slave families like mine—can go to college.”

Jenny was obviously speaking on a favorite theme and she reached her conclusion with near religious fervor, “The man is a saint in my book.”

“Yet he seems to be somewhat…obsessed, too,” Eliza timidly observed.

“Oh, you mean the Jane Austen thing?” said Jenny. “Isn’t that why you’re here after all?”

“Well, yes,” Eliza admitted.

“I can’t honestly claim to be a big fan of that Austen lady,” Jenny said, “considering the fact that she was bemoaning the problems of the not-quite-rich-enough back in England while my people were chopping cotton and being sold by the pound. Though to be fair,” Jenny went on, “Miss Austen did from time to time write a few things disapproving of slavery.” Jenny lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I have my own private theory as to why Fitz is so hung up on Miss Jane Austen.”

Eliza leaned forward eagerly.

“First,” Jenny explained, “you have to understand that this place almost came apart two hundred years ago, when Rose Darcy read that woman’s book naming her man and a place he owned called Pemberley. I suspect that if Rose hadn’t known that no Darcy had set foot in England for forty years or more, the rose-petal baths would have come to a screeching halt.”

Eliza stared at the other woman. “Are you saying that Fitz’s ancestor wasn’t in England around the time that Jane Austen was writing?”

“Lord, no!” Jenny snorted. “The Darcy family were American patriots back in 1776, and not a one of them ever went back to England again until well after the end of the Civil War.”

Jenny suddenly hesitated, almost as though she feared revealing embarrassing family secrets that had come to light yesterday, rather than two centuries earlier. “But after Pride and Prejudice was published here in the U.S.,” she said in a low voice, “there was scandalous gossip that the first Fitzwilliam Darcy, the man who built Pemberley Farms, must have been Jane Austen’s lover, else why would she have used his name in her book?”

“Good question,” said Eliza, remembering the haunted look in Darcy’s verdant eyes as he had related his extraordinary tale to her. “Why do you think Jane Austen used those names?” she asked Jenny. “I mean, the mere fact that she linked two rather odd names like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Pemberley together would seem to rule out coincidence.”

Jenny laughed. “Well, if the same thing happened today,” she said, “my first guess would have been that she must have picked them out of the phone book…or off the Internet. But where or how she might have run across them two hundred years ago is anybody’s guess.

“All I know,” Jenny said, “is that because of Pride and Prejudice there were no Austen lovers in the Darcy family. And though Fitz doesn’t talk about it, I think his obsession with Austen’s letters and papers may have something to do with proving once and for all that there was never any connection. You know, family honor and all of that.”

Jenny paused and her eyes lit up as she pulled another gown from the rack. “Oh, my! Look what I just found for you!” she breathed, holding up an emerald green velvet Regency-era ball gown that was strikingly similar to the one that Eliza had seen and discussed with Darcy at the library exhibit.

Eliza took the gown from her, turned to a full-length mirror on the wall and tried to imagine how she would look in the shocking garment. “Well, it might fit me,” she reluctantly admitted, “but I have it on good authority that Jane Austen would never have worn anything this revealing.”

“Maybe not,” Jenny grinned, “but then she didn’t have access to the Wonder Bra either. You have just got to try it on,” she insisted, standing back and scrutinizing Eliza. “And we need to do something with your hair.”


Having minutes before calmed the frantic caterer, Darcy was now standing out on the front lawn, facing the Great House. As was his custom each year before the ball, he was going over last-minute details with the two dozen employees and volunteers who had assembled on the drive. It would be their responsibility to transport arriving guests by carriage from the gatehouse parking area to the house.

The men, most of whom were local grooms and trainers, would be transformed for one evening into liveried carriage drivers, footmen and attendants, and many of them were nervous or uncertain about their roles in the grand costumed drama of the Rose Ball.

Eliza stepped out onto the balcony wearing the green Regency dress, her hair swept up, with soft tendrils framing her face. She stood there for a moment and watched Fitz on the lawn with his employees, joking and having a good time. She smiled at his seeming ability to fit into any situation with ease.

“Now, as the guests arrive tomorrow night,” Darcy said, pointing to two younger men near the front of the group, “Jimmy and Larry here will help them from their carriages as quickly as possible. Speed is very important,” Darcy stressed, “because we only have a limited number of carriages and they must be turned around and sent immediately back down to the gatehouse to…”

Attracted by a flash of movement, Darcy let his eyes wander up to the second story of the house. He stopped talking at the site of Eliza at the balcony railing. She looked like a snapshot out of time. Their eyes met, they stared at each other, bewitched. Eliza recovered first and quickly vanished into the bedroom.

Darcy remained frozen to the spot, gazing up at the balcony as if he’d seen a ghost. Several of the men turned to see what had distracted him, but there was nothing to be seen. Jimmy, one of the two young stable hands whom Darcy had been addressing a moment before, cleared his throat for his employer’s attention.

“Uh, Fitz, are we footmen supposed to escort the guests up to the steps, or what?” Jimmy asked.

Darcy slowly lowered his eyes to the group of men patiently waiting for him to resume speaking. “What?”

“After we get them out of the carriages,” Jimmy began again, “do we walk them over to the steps?”

“Sorry, Jimmy. No,” Darcy replied, trying to remember exactly what he had been saying before Eliza’s ghostly appearance. “One of the hostesses will be waiting to escort each group into the house,” he resumed. “It’s your job to get those carriages turned around as fast as you can.”

“Fitz, what about these here costumes?” whined another young hand. “Do I really gotta wear them tight fancy pants they give us?”

Darcy smiled at the predictable question that was always prompted by the men’s first sight of the red satin breeches that went with their bright green coats of Pemberley livery. “Ben, this is your first year in costume,” he replied. “But the other guys here can all tell you that once your girlfriend sees you in those tight red pants she’ll never let you go back to wearing overalls again.”

Ben nodded miserably. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he groaned, prompting a good-natured outburst of laughter from the other men standing on the drive.


Inside Rose Darcy’s bedroom Eliza leaned against the beveled glass of the French doors trying to catch her breath. God, the way he looked at her, the butterflies were going crazy in her stomach.

Walking to the bed she sat down and looked around the room, taking note of the lush rolling hills outside the window. Sitting here in this exquisite old house, wearing a ridiculous but beautiful vintage gown she really did feel like Alice in Wonderland. Were there mushrooms in the salad? Laughing at herself she decided that this would be a good time to see more of the estate. With Jenny gone off on some Rose Ball business she was alone and free to walk the beautiful grounds of Pemberley.

Chapter 20

The sun was sinking behind the stables as Faith and Darcy watched a team of gardeners placing ornamental pots filled with crimson roses along the drive. Though Darcy had intended to return immediately to Eliza after taking care of a few pressing matters related to the ball, several hours had passed during which Faith had professed that no detail could possibly proceed without his personal approval.

Eliza had changed into jeans and a T-shirt after finally collecting herself. She had to keep her wits about her; fresh air and a change of scene would help. She had told Darcy that she wanted to paint some of the vistas he’d shown her and this might be the perfect time to take advantage of the opportunity to commit some of Pemberley’s magnificent views to paper; she took her sketch pad from the leather portfolio and headed downstairs and out into the warm afternoon air.

Wandering the magnificent estate Eliza tried in vain to reconcile Jenny’s logical theory of Darcy’s obsession with his own bizarre tale of time travel. Jenny’s idea was far more rational but Fitz’s story seemed to have the ring of truth to it, although maybe she was just being swept away by the romance of the whole thing. Trying to keep her wits about her, she walked down to the lake at the bottom of the broad lawn.

Smiling to herself at the absurdity of the situation, she lay down in the soft grass on the shore of the small lake and watched puffy clouds float above her in the hot summer sky. She realized that she welcomed the temporary respite from the intensity of Darcy’s narrative, the incredible details of which continued to swirl through her mind, embellished by her own vivid imagination.

Though she found it quite impossible to take seriously her soft-spoken host’s account of his accidental trip into the past and his subsequent encounter with Jane Austen, Eliza was nevertheless intrigued by the handsome millionaire.

She felt a sudden flush of heat rising to her cheeks as she recalled the intensity with which Darcy had gazed up at her when she had stepped onto the balcony of the Rose Bedroom.

She smiled inwardly; Jerry wouldn’t have been capable of such a smoldering look. And yet, with Darcy, that look of barely restrained passion had seemed almost natural. It must be the way, she imagined, that he looked at all women and was perhaps the reason poor Faith found him so irresistible. For certainly nothing had passed between him and Eliza to indicate that it was a look reserved exclusively for her.

She reflected that, his strange obsession aside, Fitzwilliam Darcy was possibly the most fascinating and attractive man she had ever met. “Careful now,” Eliza cautioned herself as she found a comfortable place to sit by the lake, “you’re already beginning to sound like Jenny. Fitz Darcy may be a hunk and an extremely nice one at that, but the bottom line seems to be that the poor guy is just slightly out of his tree. Besides, this is real life, not a romance novel.”

Romance wasn’t likely to happen here anyway. There was an aloofness, a standoffishness in him that Eliza suspected was often taken for arrogance. Jenny had theorized that the loss of the three people he was closest to—his grandmother, father and mother—before he was eighteen had made him wary of intimate relationships. The pain of loving and losing again was simply not worth the risk. That was something with which Eliza could easily understand and sympathize.

She had determined after the death of her father that she would never again love anyone that much and realized now it was the reason that the only relationships she’d allowed herself had been like the one with Jerry. Completely unsatisfying. But now, as Darcy’s face drifted through the clouds, she questioned that decision. Maybe happiness with someone you love, who loves you in return, was worth the risk of pain.