Shaking off the daydreams Eliza plunged her feet into the still water of the lake and started drawing.


While Eliza was thus engaged, Jenny, who had taken an immediate liking to the high-spirited New York artist, had already decided it would be good for Darcy to develop a relationship with her. She suspected that Eliza might just be the right woman to bring him out of the shell he’d inexplicably slipped into three years ago. Having made up her mind, Jenny, who despite her Southern Baptist upbringing had the soul of a Jewish yenta, set out to promote the relationship in any way she could.

Faith’s painfully obvious maneuvers to keep the couple separated throughout the afternoon had resulted in the artist going off by herself while Faith had ensnared Darcy in a series of increasingly mundane tasks. Now, as the gardeners finished aligning the planters along the drive, Jenny stood nearby, determined to block Faith’s next move.

The blonde socialite was ticking off items on a clipboard for Darcy as Jenny edged closer to listen in.

“The driveway roses are done,” Faith was saying. She blew a stray wisp of hair from her carefully made-up face and adopted a martyred look. “Of course,” she added wearily, “I’ve got a thousand things left to do.”

“You’re doing just great,” Darcy said, consulting her clipboard and pointing out two more items for her to check off. “We’ve now got all the carriages rolling and ready for tomorrow, and Lucas and his men are setting up a trough and feed supplies for the horses at the gatehouse.”

He paused and looked around, suddenly aware of the lengthening shadows falling across the lawns. “Have you seen Miss Knight?” he asked.

Fearful of resorting to outright lying, especially when it was likely that she would be immediately found out, Faith reluctantly pointed toward the small lake at the bottom of the lawn. “I believe I saw your little guest walking down to the lake a while ago,” she peevishly allowed.

Darcy scanned the lakeshore and spotted Eliza sitting by herself on a cluster of rocks at the water’s edge.

“She looks like such a solitary soul,” Faith observed in a mock pitying tone. “To tell you the truth, Fitz, I don’t think that girl cares for company at all.”

Ignoring the remark, Darcy turned and started walking toward the lake. “I’ll just go down and see if she needs anything,” he said.

Faith hurriedly fell into step beside him. “I’ll go with you, then,” she offered as sweetly as she knew how. “After all, we wouldn’t want poor little Eliza to feel neglected.”

Darcy started to protest but he was interrupted by Jenny, who suddenly came running down from the house. “Oh, Faith, there you are!” she called with evident relief in her voice. “I have been looking everywhere.”

Faith screwed up her pink, doll-like features into an approximation of a disbelieving scowl. “For me?” she asked suspiciously.

Jenny nodded urgently. “There’s a crisis with the seating chart for tomorrow night’s dinner and I don’t trust anyone’s opinion but yours,” she lied. “It’s a matter of etiquette,” Jenny explained, setting the hook firmly.

Faith, who had long before set herself up as the final authority on all matters mannerly, especially as they related to the Rose Ball, was trapped. “Can’t it wait a little while?” she pleaded.

“We’re doing the place cards now!” Jenny insisted, taking her firmly by the elbow and guiding her toward the house. Looking like a pup that’s just been plucked from its litter, Faith reluctantly allowed herself to be led away.

Darcy grinned as Jenny glanced back over her shoulder and winked at him.

He found Eliza sitting on a large flat rock with her jeans rolled up and her bare feet in the placid green water. She was holding a pad in her lap and intently drawing with pastels. He stood unnoticed, watching her work. The image of her on the balcony only a short time before flooded his memory. She was breathtaking; he wondered at the strong emotions this woman seemed to evoke in him. Once again raven-haired beauty came to mind, as the sunlight played among the highlights in her hair, much like the candlelight had at the library exhibit. Sighing deeply, he smiled at the pleasant warmth that permeated his body.

Stepping closer, Darcy asked, as he sat down beside her on the rock, “May I see your drawing?”

Eliza grimaced, then handed over the pad. He looked at it and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

Without immediately answering he closely examined her brilliantly colored rendering of himself astride the black horse. To Darcy’s utter amazement this complete stranger had perfectly captured the precise moment when he and Lord Nelson had leaped over the stone wall into the blinding dazzle of sunlight.

“Very much,” he said after a long pause, “but not at all what I was expecting.” Darcy’s mind was working furiously in an attempt to derive some meaning from the fact that his visitor had composed this startling picture based on nothing more than his verbal description of an event that had taken place three years before.

Eliza took back her pad with a smile. “I told you,” she said before he could form the question he longed to ask, “my specialty is fantasy.”

Her reply sounded enough like a taunt to make Darcy’s face suddenly redden. “Meaning?” he asked defensively.

“Meaning,” she answered with no hint of mockery in her tone, “that I’d like to hear the rest of your story now.”

Sighing, Darcy gazed down at her reflection in the shimmering surface of the lake. On the one hand he felt like jumping to his feet and screaming at her to go back to New York and leave him in his misery. But there was something else that stopped him, some powerful message in the expectant way she scrunched her shoulders forward, waiting for him to begin, that told him Eliza Knight was willing to be convinced.

“I remained in Jane’s bedroom at Chawton Cottage for the next three days,” he said, “eavesdropping on her conversations and pretending to be asleep or unconscious.”

Darcy closed his eyes, remembering the smell and feel of the soft, rose-scented featherbed, the same intoxicating scent that he had come to associate with Jane herself.

“Very gradually I reached the impossible but inescapable conclusion that I was neither dreaming nor insane,” he continued, forming a new picture in his mind of Jane’s gentle countenance and lively, sparkling eyes. “By then, of course, I had also realized who she was.”

Darcy smiled. “God knows I had heard enough while I was growing up about Jane Austen, the great English novelist who had nearly ruined the distinguished Darcy family name. But where had she gotten the name in the first place? The family always naturally assumed that she had somehow heard of my ancestor and liked the sounds of his name and estate. But there I was, lying in her bed. The implications of that were maddening, especially since it seemed evident that she had never heard the name Darcy until my arrival at Chawton.

“Anyway,” he said, “for three days Jane and her sister, Cassandra, took turns sitting with me. And whenever they left me alone for a few minutes I would get up and take a few halting steps around the room, praying I would become strong enough to escape before the kindly Mr. Hudson subjected me to fresh medical horrors.”

Chapter 21

As he had done morning and evening for the past three days, the bombastic Mr. Hudson stood over Darcy’s bed, thoughtfully examining the forehead of his apparently unconscious patient. “His wound is healing splendidly,” the physician pronounced, running his none-too-clean fingers over the tender, pink tissues of the wound on Darcy’s scalp.

Hudson turned to Jane who was standing apprehensively beside the fireplace, watching. “The scar will be completely hidden by his hair,” the old doctor happily predicted. Then, with a worried frown for what her august brother might think if a cure was not soon effectuated, he asked, “But you say he hasn’t spoken again?”

Jane shook her head. “He has said not a word since the first night,” she affirmed, this time having no need to lie. For it was true that the handsome American lying in her bed had uttered not a sound since she had heard him murmuring in his fever three nights earlier.

She did not mention to Hudson that late at night, when she was alone at her writing, she sometimes experienced an eerie sensation that the stranger’s eyes were upon her, watching and secretly scrutinizing her every move. Once or twice the feeling had grown so strong that she had actually whirled about to look at him.

But always she had found Darcy’s eyes tightly shut, his breathing deep and regular. Odd, she thought. So very odd.

Distracted as she was by those thoughts, it took a moment before Jane realized that Mr. Hudson was again speaking to her. She returned her attention to the old doctor and found him leaning over Darcy.

“Hmmm, an extraordinary case,” Hudson muttered, stroking the tuft of snowy whiskers on his chin. “Extraordinary.” He finally straightened and cocked his head. “Perhaps I should treat him with an injection of mercury or stinging wasps,” he ruminated aloud. “Well, we shall see how he looks this evening and then decide which treatment shall be better. For it is a sad fact that many patients cannot tolerate the effects of such strong systemic poisons, though they often have the beneficial effect of shocking the brain back to activity.”

Jane wisely said nothing, but waited until the doctor closed up his bag and then escorted him out of the room.

The instant the door closed behind them Darcy’s eyes popped open and he got out of bed, feeling both ridiculous and vulnerable in the long linen nightshirt he wore.

He shuffled barefoot to the window and pulled aside the lace curtains to peek outside. In the garden below he saw Cassandra standing at the gate, speaking with Hudson. Beyond them, a heavy post coach rumbled through the tiny village, scattering a cloud of squawking ducks and chickens in its wake. Then all was silent again.

“Mercury and stinging wasps!” Darcy whispered the frightening words in abject terror as his mind conjured up horrible visions of the bumbling Mr. Hudson working his medieval tortures.

Though the gash on his forehead was indeed healing nicely and hardly gave him any pain at all now, he was still unsteady on his feet. He had been hoping to become just a little stronger before seeking out his clothes and departing from Chawton Cottage under cover of darkness, hopefully to reclaim his horse and return to the spot where he had stepped into this nightmare.

But Hudson’s last pronouncement had convinced the unwilling patient that he must escape before the old doctor returned and managed to do him some lasting harm. Darcy had, over the past few days, come to understand that he had been incredibly lucky so far. Because it was clear that Mr. Hudson’s outrageous treatments with catgut and leeches actually represented the cutting edge of early nineteenth-century medical technology. However, Darcy had no confidence that he could even survive another round of bleeding, much less wasps and applications of mercury.

While he was having these thoughts and wondering where to begin looking for his clothes, Darcy heard the bedroom door opening behind him. He turned to see Jane Austen angrily regarding him.

“Just as I suspected!” she said, pointing at the bed. “Get back in that bed, sir!”

“Now just a minute…” Darcy blustered, managing to feel both guilty and foolish at the same instant.

“Immediately!” she commanded. “You may be an artful deceiver but you are still a sick man.”

With her dark eyes flashing dangerously she watched as Darcy sheepishly climbed into the bed and covered his naked legs with a quilt. “Now, sir,” she demanded, “tell me without delay who you are and how you came to be here in Hampshire.”

“My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy and I am from Virginia,” he began, reciting the carefully rehearsed story he had put together over the past three days of listening to his hosts discussing him. “I was visiting friends nearby when I—”

Jane cut him off with a disgusted look. “You have no friends in this neighborhood, sir,” she coldly informed him. “Nor is there any large house such as you described closer than twenty miles to the west of this village.”