By a Lady Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph 1

  Epigraph 2

  Book the First

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Book the Second

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Book the Third

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Book the Fourth

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reader’s Group Guide

  Available in parperback July 2006...

  Copyright Page

  In Memory of Howard Fast

  In late 1996, I had the great good fortune to be cast in the role of Jane Austen in Mr. Fast’s two-character romantic drama, The Novelist. It was a “what if” story, opening with the premise that as Miss Austen began to write Persuasion, a dashing sea captain fairly barged his way into her life, sweeping her off her feet and insisting that she marry him. Mr. Fast was one of the twentieth century’s most prolific novelists himself, but he cherished his lovely little stage play like a favorite child, and I was honored beyond all measure when the author attended, and then complimented, my performance. My experiences working on The Novelist were the best I’ve enjoyed thus far during my theatrical career, unparalleled in their professionalism as well as their reward. By a Lady—and in fact my own career as a novelist—was born of those experiences, and for that I remain forever grateful to the two fellow travelers who so greatly changed my life: Miss Jane Austen and Mr. Howard Fast.

  I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

  JANE AUSTEN

  Letter to the Prince of Wales’s Librarian

  The novels which I approve are such as display human nature with grandeur—such as show her in the sublimities of intense feeling—such as exhibit the progress of strong passion from the first germ of incipient susceptibility to the utmost energies of reason half-dethroned—where we see the strong spark of women’s captivations elicit such fire in the soul of man as leads him . . . to hazard all, dare all, achieve all, to obtain her. Such are the works I peruse with delight, and I hope I may say, with amelioration. They hold forth the most splendid portraitures of high conceptions, unbounded views, illimitable ardor, indomitable decision—and even when the event is mainly anti-prosperous to the high-toned machinations of the prime character, the potent, pervading hero of the story, it leaves us full of generous emotions for him; our hearts are paralyzed.

  JANE AUSTEN, Sanditon

  Book the First

  Prologue

  IT’S BEAUTIFUL,” C.J. murmured, examining the curiously pockmarked amber cross. She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glaring sunlight, then ducked under the vendor’s makeshift white canopy, which protected his merchandise from the exigencies of the elements but blocked his enjoyment of a cloudless postcard-blue Long Island sky.

  “It’s very old,” the vendor advised, in a lilting Indian accent. He handed the young woman his business card.

  “Aki Singh,” C.J. read. “Exactly how old is ‘old’?”

  The edges of the cross were worn away, having lost some of their definition over the decades. “Was this ever set in silver, or something?” C.J. asked, noting the uneven honeycomb pattern that covered the bottom half of the cross. She could not imagine that it had always looked so rough. It owned a homemade quality, most certainly crafted by hand.

  “It is very difficult to say,” the vendor replied, adjusting his turban. “Erosion is natural. Amber is a fossil, essentially a living thing.”

  “I always thought fossils were dead things,” C.J. muttered under her breath.

  Mr. Singh continued. “Over time, the edges have probably worn away so that they are as you see them now. Once, there may have been a setting, and you are right; it probably would have been silver. But it is very hard to tell.”

  C.J. was prepared to buy the cross anyway, as long as the price was reasonable. After all, this was a local crafts fair with the odd antique thrown in; how expensive could it be?

  Mr. Singh shrugged his shoulders. “I tell you what: I give you a very good price. I will sell it to you for thirty-five dollars. If you desire a chain, I will make it forty.” He displayed an array of generic-looking metal chains.

  “Thank you, but I’m sure I have a chain at home. Do you take credit cards?” C.J. fumbled through her voluminous purse for her wallet. As a frequently unemployed actress, she was perennially strapped for cash.

  “Cash or checks.” The vendor rummaged behind his stall for a little cardboard jewelry box, into which he nestled the amber cross.

  “Oh boy,” C.J. sighed. She counted the bills in her wallet. Twenty-three dollars, and she still had to take the train back to Manhattan from Bridgehampton. “A check it is.” She made out a draft for thirty-five dollars payable to Aki Singh, Estate Jewelry.

  The vendor noted the antique gold paper and the writer’s name and address printed in formal script at the top of the draft. “Thank you,” he said, reading the name on the check, which he then placed inside a slightly dented green strongbox.

  “Thank you very much, Miss Cassandra Jane Welles.”

  Chapter One

  Wherein our heroine expresses an affinity for an earlier era, and a series of events irrevocably alter her destiny.

  WILL YOU JOIN ME for the first set?” C.J.’s friend Matthew asked as she perched on the wooden folding chair at the perimeter of the gym, changing her shoes.

  “I’d be delighted,” she smiled. C.J stood up, in her soft-soled dancing slippers. “You tower above me,” she laughed, looking up at her new friend. “Are you sure you don’t want to dance with a lankier lady?”

  “I’ve been coming to the English country dance sessions every Tuesday night for four years, and you are my favorite dance partner ever.”

  C.J. looked about the room at the other dancers, most of whom were in their forties and fifties, and smiled to herself. If they had all been living during the actual periods of the dances—the Georgian and Regency eras—most of them would be considered rather ancient, if they reached that age at all, thanks to poor diets and limited medical knowledge. No penicillin. No prophylactic fix-ups.

  Wow! she thought, if they had been Georgians, Matthew would be in the prime of life, and she—goodness!—pushing thirty, would be an absolute on-the-shelf spinster. Her prime would have been over by the time she reached her early twenties. Forget kids; she would have had very little chance for a husband at her age.

  C.J. had never considered herself wholly at ease in the twenty-first century. The constant barrage of images and noise, the relentless pace, the seemingly unlimited rudeness of some people. Hip-hop. Cell phones. Al
l of that set her teeth on edge. Oh for a truly kinder, gentler world where quiet and a sense of delicacy and respect—of fellow feeling—were the norm.

  Barbara Gordon, one of the workshop callers, took her place in front of the microphone at the far end of the gym. “Okay, if everybody could form sets longways—I think we have enough people for three lines—‘old’ people, invite some of the ‘new’ people to dance. Get ready for ‘Apley House.’ ” Barbara nodded to the trio of musicians—piano, violin, and flute.

  The musty church basement was not exactly atmospheric for anything but a sock hop, but once the musicians struck up their centuries-old country melodies, everyone seemed to forget all but the dances. In the dancers’ imaginations, their Keds became kidskin slippers, and eclectic cotton T-shirts magically metamorphosed into Empire-waisted sheer muslin gowns and tight chamois trousers.

  Matthew bowed to C.J. “Miss Welles, would you do me the honor of joining me?”

  C.J. placed her small hand in Matthew’s, wishing she were wearing elbow-length gloves. She rose and made a slight curtsy, allowing Matthew to lead her to the top of the set. “Are you crazy?” she whispered. “I’m not sure I know enough to lead!”

  “Didn’t you study English country dancing at Vassar?” The music had begun; the dancers were honoring their partners and opposites, and listening intently to Barbara’s instructions as she began to call the dance.

  C.J. looked down the set at some of the dumpier dancers, in their T-shirts and sweats, who were very game but hopelessly twenty-first century. “No, I didn’t. I studied period movement styles. The theatre program was very thorough, but English country dancing wasn’t even an elective.” She flashed Matthew a warm smile.

  “Another reason I like to dance with you, apart from your grace,” Matthew said, while they set to the right and then to the left, light on their feet. “You love to play as much as I do.” He took her hands and they spun, giving themselves completely to the momentum of the music.

  “That’s true enough,” C.J. agreed, and nodded at Matthew’s barrel chest encased in a perfect replica of a double-breasted vest, circa 1800, constructed of French-blue brocade. “Nice waistcoat. We’re such period geeks, aren’t we?!”

  “I prefer the term aficionado.”

  C.J. did a figure with her neighbor, a dour-faced matron who put her in mind of a vicar’s wife in a small Regency hamlet.

  “Do you ever look at these people,” C.J. whispered softly to Matthew as they executed a back-to-back figure, “and think of them in period costumes, as townspeople in a Jane Austen novel?”

  “All the time,” he grinned.

  “Imagine the same faces—the same bodies, even—in cape collars and starched cravats!”

  The dance ended. “Promise me the supper waltz,” Matthew pressed C.J.’s hand before he went in search of his next partner.

  “Forgive me,” C.J. said as she made eye contact with Paul, another one of the callers, “but I love that they call it the supper break when we go into the kitchen for lemonade and Oreos.”

  “Don’t you think they had Oreos in the early nineteenth century?”

  “Of course they did. Even earlier, in fact. Poor Richard referred to them as one of the basic food groups in his Almanack.” C.J. winked, and curtsied to Matthew to thank him for the dance.

  “May I have the honor?” Paul Hamilton asked.

  “The honor would be mine, sir,” C.J. smiled demurely. Paul was a historian and a stickler for proper carriage and execution.

  “You should never be looking at your next partner,” Paul had cautioned the assembly as part of his weekly litany. “It is the height of rudeness. Treat each partner as though he or she were the most important person on earth and give him or her your fullest attention. This is about flirting. For the three hours a week that you spend in this basement, you are not only allowed, but you are encouraged to flirt.” When Paul was on the floor, he was in great demand as a partner. His grace and manner seemed timeless. “May I give you a tiny correction?” he murmured in C.J.’s ear as he led her into the set. “You have such natural exuberance that you are a joy to watch as well as to dance with.”

  “Thank you.” C.J. felt her cheeks go pink.

  “But, if I may—you must execute your traveling steps more smoothly. Think of gliding. You have a tendency to bounce a bit, which is not as out of place in some of the more energetic dances, but it sticks out when you are cutting the more stately figures.”

  “Does it make my bosom heave too much?” C.J. joked.

  Paul’s gaze strayed to the ripe fullness of her chest. “As a man, I of course have no problem at all with the—er—buoyant movement of your body. But I thought that given your affinity for the correctness of period detail, you might want to practice the proper form. Always remember to keep your back straight and your chin lifted.”

  After the supper waltz ended, C.J. and Matthew bowed to each other and braved the crowd in the kitchen, chatting away over the junk food and fruit punch. This was the time when the dancers exchanged information on other events: concerts, weekend English country dance conferences in New England, and other bits of information and gossip. Flushed from the waltz, C.J. squeezed past a knot of dancers to get to the lemonade, downing three Dixie cups’ worth in rapid succession. She sidled past a cluster of women gathered in front of the week’s notices and flyers and immediately lit upon a rose-colored leaflet announcing auditions for a Broadway production of a new play called By a Lady. C.J. had already clipped the casting notice out of the current edition of Back Stage, the professional actors’ most popular trade paper. By a Lady, a two-character drama set in 1801, depicted the ill-starred romance between the young Jane Austen and a distant relation of hers, Thomas Lefroy. They had hoped to marry, but Tom lacked the funds to support a wife, in addition to which, Jane was considered a poor relation. Tom’s protective aunt, Anne Lefroy, was adamantly opposed to the match, so Tom returned alone to his family’s village of Athy, in Ireland, where he read law and eventually became the country’s chief justice. Jane never wed, of course.

  “You should go to that tomorrow,” a voice crunched in her ear.

  “No kidding! I can’t miss it! Between the Back Stage ad, this flyer, and your encouragement, the rule of three is now fully in effect. I can’t not go, now. And . . . Matt . . . ? You’re dropping Oreo crumbs down my neck!”

  Matthew brushed off the offending bits of chocolate cookie. “Nice necklace, by the way.”

  “Matthew Bramwell, I thought you of all people would recognize it,” C.J. teased, “since you’re as big an Austen buff as I am. One of her naval officer brothers—Charles, I think—brought back topaz crosses and gold chains as souvenirs for both Jane and Cassandra from his tour of duty in the east during the Napoleonic Wars. Jane fictionalized the event in Mansfield Park, when William brings back an amber cross from Sicily for Fanny Price, and she has nothing but a ribbon to thread through it.”

  “So it’s a keepsake for a reasonable Price.” Matthew winked.

  The musicians struck up a lively tune, heralding the recommencement of the evening’s exertions. “Well, my friend,” Matthew said, “if you promise not to do so out on the dance floor . . . break a leg!”

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, C.J. found herself standing in a colorful, densely populated audition line that snaked its way through the winding streets of Greenwich Village.

  By the time there were only twenty-three people ahead of her, C.J. felt in her heart that the role of Jane Austen had to be hers. It was more than the visceral connection she felt to the time period. Getting a leading role on Broadway was the holy grail of any stage actress. She fiddled with her amber cross. Somehow, the simple act of touching the antique talisman, of memorizing its rutted topography, centered her in a way no form of meditation ever could.

  “Hey there, folks, we’re moving right along now. Okay, if I could have the next three men and the next three women step inside the hallway, please. And please have your pict
ures and résumés ready.” The announcement came from a bearish-looking man with a kindly face set off by wire-rimmed glasses. He ushered in the next group of performers with the air of a jovial train conductor. “Have a seat in one of these chairs in the order in which you were standing in line. I’ll take your headshots now.”

  “Who are you?” asked one of the actresses.

  “Me? I’m Ralph Merino, the assistant set designer.” He patted his belly. “We have a stage manager, but I need the exercise. On behalf of the By a Lady staff, thanks to all of you for coming.” He handed each actor a photocopied set of “sides,” the pages from the script with which they were expected to audition.

  “Okay, listen up, folks. If you don’t know anything about this show, here’s the scoop,” Ralph said. “This is a two-character play—a hypothetical love story set in 1801 that focuses on Jane Austen the woman, rather than Jane Austen the novelist. The playwright, Humphrey Porter, is exploring what made The Woman become The Writer. Beth Peters, the director, is an Englishwoman. She’s a bit of a wunderkind over there, but she’s never directed in New York, and, therefore, yes, she is seriously interested in seeing everyone. I won’t lie to you: famous names might be important to the producers, but Beth genuinely wants to see new talent. A U.S. national tour and a West End run are not out of the question after the Broadway run closes. Yes, Miramax is a coproducer of the Broadway production, which means that they own film rights to the show, should that become a viable option. Nothing is set in stone at this point, including the casting, so you are not wasting your time by showing up this afternoon.” His presentation completed, Ralph made a little theatrical bow and his rapt audience applauded. “Back in a few to pair you up.”

  “C.J. Welles?” C.J. looked up when she saw Ralph come out of the auditorium a minute or two later. “C.J., you’ll be paired with Bernie Allen. Bernie?” An Archie Bunker type, who was not exactly C.J.’s idea of an English hunk, looked up from his script. “So, Bernie? C.J.? We’re ready for you.”