Jane Bites Back Read online

  “To get the book out so quickly, I need to get it to production immediately,” Kelly said, drawing her back to the moment. “The good news is that it needs very little editing. I know we haven’t even signed the contract, but I’ve taken the liberty of going through it and making a couple of suggestions. Nothing major. If you’re okay with my edits, then we can go right into production. We’ll do as much as we can while you’re here, and I’ll give you the manuscript to take back with you to finish up.”

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” Jane said, speaking more to herself than to Kelly. Her worries about being found out were fading as she reassured herself that no one would possibly think to connect her to the Austen of old.

  Kelly cocked his head. “Are you sure this is your first book?” he asked.

  For a moment Jane panicked. Had she said too much? Had Kelly somehow seen through her act? “No,” she said hastily. “I mean yes, I’m sure. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just that you’re so calm about it all,” said Kelly. “Usually first-time authors are nervous wrecks.”

  “If it helps, I’m a wreck on the inside,” Jane assured him. “But I’m British. We have no visible emotions, you know. They were bred out of us centuries ago.”

  Kelly laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “So now that I’ve told you our big plans, I should probably tell you what our offer is.”

  Jane listened as Kelly explained the terms of the contract. In truth, she didn’t really care about the advance or the royalty percentage or the subsidiary rights. But she pretended to listen intently, nodding at the appropriate points and even hesitating long enough at one point that Kelly increased the amount of her advance by 10 percent.

  “Of course, you’ll probably want to talk to your lawyer before agreeing,” he concluded. “But I hope you’ll say yes.”

  “Yes,” Jane said.

  Kelly seemed to be holding his breath. “You’re sure?” he asked. “You don’t want to discuss it with anyone first?”

  “Are you saying I should be worried?” Jane said. “I took you for a most trustworthy man, but perhaps I should rethink my opinion.” She was teasing him, but Kelly apparently mistook her remark for hesitation.

  “I’ll increase the royalty to fifteen percent,” he said. “But that’s as high as I can go. Honestly.”

  Jane reached out and patted his hand. His nervousness was charming, particularly as until then he’d seemed unflappable. “Relax,” she said. “You sound like a first-time publisher.”

  Kelly chuckled and shook his head. “You had me worried for a second,” he admitted.

  “Just to be clear, I’ll sign the contract,” Jane said. “We have a deal.”

  “Good,” said Kelly. “Now I can eat.”

  Jane scanned the menu. As usual, she wasn’t hungry, but she knew she had to order something. She considered the chocolate mousse, but settled on French onion soup and a small salad. There was no sense in airing all her peculiarities to Kelly at once.

  The waiter arrived, they placed their orders, and their conversation resumed. With the book talk out of the way, Kelly asked Jane questions about herself, all of which she answered with as little detail as possible. As soon as she was able to she turned the topic around to him. By the time their food arrived, she’d learned that he had grown up in Pennsylvania, attended school in Chicago, and moved to New York immediately upon graduating to work in publishing.

  “My parents were very disappointed,” he told Jane. “They were hoping I’d become an investment banker or, as my father once put it, something useful. I’m afraid books are not held in much esteem in the Littlejohn house.”

  Jane wanted to ask him more questions, but she felt it wasn’t fair to pry too much when she was keeping so much of herself from him. It was a situation with which she was more than familiar after two hundred years of practicing the art of evasion. Instead, she asked about the other authors Kelly worked with. She recognized several of the names he mentioned, although she had read none of their books. She made a mental note to do so as soon as she was home.

  When lunch was over she and Kelly returned to the office, where Kelly presented her with four copies of a contract. After once again reminding Jane that she was free to have someone look them over, he watched anxiously as she signed the final page of each copy. When she handed them back to him, he beamed.

  “Do you want to go over the manuscript?” Jane asked.

  Kelly nodded. “But first I have a little surprise.” He picked up the phone and dialed. “Joanna, I have Jane Fairfax here. Could you come in, please?”

  He hung up. “I think you’ll love this,” he told Jane. “At least I hope so.”

  A moment later a young woman walked into the office carrying a large piece of cardboard.

  “Jane, this is Joanna Clarke. Joanna is the head of the design department.”

  Joanna and Jane exchanged greetings. Then Kelly said, “I was so excited about your book that I emailed Joanna from Paris so she could work on this.”

  He nodded at Joanna, who turned the piece of cardboard around, revealing a mock-up cover for Jane’s book. It featured a photograph of a farmhouse at twilight. In one of the upstairs windows a light glowed, and through the open curtains a woman was visible, her back to the window. From the lower right-hand corner of the cover a man stood looking up at her, holding a bouquet of daisies in his hand.

  “Constance,” Jane read the title. “Jane Fairfax.”

  “I wasn’t sure what name you wanted to use, so I went with what you used on your letter,” Kelly said. “Do you like it?”

  Jane continued to stare at the cover. That’s my book, she told herself. She was so used to the drab covers publishers put on her older novels—boring paintings of English cottages and girls in white dresses—that she’d expected the same thing. But this cover was different. It was modern yet timeless.

  “I do like it,” she said. “I think it’s lovely.”

  Joanna smiled. “I’m pretty pleased with it myself. Of course there will be some tweaking once marketing puts their two cents in, but I think this is pretty much it.”

  “Would you like a copy to take home with you?” Kelly asked Jane. “We can have one printed out.”

  “Really?” Jane asked. “Of course I’d love one.”

  “I’ll go get one for you,” said Joanna.

  “Thank you,” Jane said as Joanna left the office. “I really do love it.”

  She looked at Kelly. “I can hardly believe this is happening,” she said. “It’s all a bit like a dream.”

  “We’ll see if you think so once we’ve gone through my editing suggestions,” Kelly said. “Shall we begin?”

  Jane hesitated only a moment before nodding. “Yes, let’s,” she said as Kelly turned over the first page.

  Chapter 9

  She had promised herself that she would not fall in love with him. Experience—not love—was her objective. She reminded herself that a worldly woman should easily be able to distinguish between the two. Yet she could not pretend that Jonathan was not simultaneously everything she disliked and everything she desired in a man. Despite what she knew of him, she found herself wishing he would take her in his arms.

  —Jane Austen, Constance, manuscript

  JANE STOOD AT THE WINDOW, LOOKING DOWN ON TIMES SQUARE. IT was one in the morning, and she was not the least bit tired. She still couldn’t quite believe that her day had actually occurred. That morning she had been in Brakeston. Now she was in New York City, having signed a book contract and gone over the edits with her editor. Her handsome, funny, smart editor.

  She brushed the thought from her mind. It was true that Kelly was all of those things. But thinking about him in that way was hardly professional. Still, over the dinner they’d shared following their work on the manuscript, she had found herself behaving more and more like a besotted schoolgirl and less like a woman of 234. It was during the performance of Gypsy, to which Kelly had taken her
after dinner, that she had realized that he reminded her very much of Richard Mansfield, the enchanting nineteenth-century actor and star of the D’Oyly Carte opera company. She had attended seventeen consecutive performances of The Mikado just to see Mansfield, and her devotion to him had not faltered even during the nasty Jack the Ripper business, when he was one of the prime suspects. (She’d known the Ripper, and although charming, he was not nearly as handsome as Mansfield.)

  Her crush on Mansfield had eventually faded, and she suspected this one would as well. It was just the excitement of once again being a published author. She turned and looked at the cover of her book, the poster of which she had taped to the mirror above the room’s dresser. It hardly seemed possible that it was really her book. “Constance,” she said aloud. “By Jane Fairfax.” She giggled, embarrassed by how thrilling it was to say her name like that.

  The title of the book, she had to admit, was not her best. She preferred something pithy. After all, could anything be better than Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility? True, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey were a bit drab, but that had been the fashion at the time. And at least they weren’t as bad as Scott’s Tales of My Landlord.

  Anyway, she liked the cover. And she mostly liked being Jane Fairfax. She would have preferred to be Jane Austen, but that was of course impossible. Besides, she was used to being a Fairfax now.

  Opening the minibar, she took out two Scharffen Berger dark chocolate bars and a half bottle of Shiraz. Then she lay down on the bed, sinking into the impossibly soft mattress with a contented sigh. Pulling the wrapper from the first bar, she nibbled the corner as she turned on the television and began flipping through the channels. She watched a minute or two of several different things, but none held her interest. She had consumed half of the chocolate bar before she recognized a familiar face on one of the channels and stopped.

  It was Peter Cushing. And the film, she realized shortly thereafter, was Brides of Dracula. It was one of her favorites, and she had not seen it in a long time. Now she settled in to enjoy it, alternately sipping from the bottle of wine and taking bites of the chocolate.

  One of the infamous Hammer horror films, Brides of Dracula was enormously fun, particularly, Jane thought, if you were a vampire yourself. Watching the young heroine fall under the spell of the gorgeous and tragic vampire Baron Meinster (the name made her cringe) amused her, as did the generally ridiculous plot and the fact that despite the title and one brief reference in the dialogue, not once did Dracula himself actually appear in the film.

  Yet as she watched the story unfold, Jane found herself growing sad. For the first time, she identified with young Marianne Danielle, the innocent schoolteacher tricked into helping Meinster escape from the room in which he was being kept prisoner by his mother the baroness. Rather than seeing her as a stupid girl who overlooks the obvious, Jane saw her as a girl in love, a girl who sees a wounded man needing her comfort.

  By the end of the film she had worked her way through the bottle and most of the second chocolate bar, and felt a bit sick. And although she was happy that Marianne had escaped the fate of the other vampire brides, the scenes in which the baron is first disfigured by holy water and then done in by a cross-shaped shadow added to her queasiness.

  She couldn’t help thinking back to the time when she’d been as innocent as Marianne. She too had trusted someone who had betrayed her. Unlike Marianne, however, she had not escaped.

  “No,” she said to the dark. “You’re not going to think about that. You’ve let it go.”

  She felt foolish speaking the thoughts out loud. It was a trick she’d learned during an est seminar in 1972. That was the year she’d decided to become self-actualized. Along with a perm and bell-bottom jeans, it was one of many things she regretted. The technique of getting rid of unhealthy thoughts by speaking them aloud, though, was actually helpful. It had helped her release some of the anger she’d carried inside her for so long.

  She turned on her side and focused her eyes on the window. Beyond the curtains the lights of Broadway blinked on and off and the sounds of car horns broke the stillness. “That was the past, this is now,” Jane said. “That was the past, this is now.” Another trick she’d picked up during that long-ago weekend.

  She repeated the phrase over and over, until the sound of her own voice drowned out everything else. When she felt her eyes beginning to close, she rolled onto her back. Across from the bed the cover for her novel still hung on the mirror. “I am Jane Fairfax,” she said. “I am Jane Fairfax.”

  Repeating this new mantra, she fell asleep.

  When she awoke, the room was filled with dirty gray light. A quick glance out the window showed that it was snowing again. Jane was tempted to pull the covers over her head and sleep some more, but the numbers on the clock beside the bed showed that she was due to meet Kelly for breakfast in an hour to go over the rest of his editing suggestions. She was supposed to have looked through them, but the manuscript still sat untouched on the coffee table by the window

  She forced herself to get up and take a shower. Then, dressed in the fluffy white robe provided by the hotel, she raced through the manuscript, adding words here and there and occasionally muttering her disagreement with something Kelly had written. But mostly everything he’d done made sense, and she finished with just enough time left to get dressed and pack her suitcase for the trip home.

  Kelly had arranged to meet her in the restaurant in her hotel, so she had only to go downstairs. Still, she was five minutes late, and found Kelly already seated at a table.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized as he stood and kissed her lightly on cheek. “I was up late going through the manuscript.”

  “I only just got here,” he reassured her.

  As she sat down and placed the manuscript on the table, Jane couldn’t help noticing how put together Kelly looked. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and a blue striped tie. His hair was slicked back and he looked refreshed and impossibly handsome. Meanwhile, Jane thought, I look and feel like the undead.

  “Did you sleep well?” Kelly asked as Jane accepted a cup of coffee from the waitress.

  “Very well, thank you,” said Jane.

  “And is there anything in the manuscript you want to discuss?”

  Jane shook her head as she poured cream into her coffee. “It all looks good,” she said. “There were just a few little things. Nothing terribly important.”

  “I have to tell you, so far you’re a dream author,” Kelly told her. “I almost hope the book doesn’t do well.”

  “Why?” Jane asked, startled by the statement.

  “I’m kidding,” Kelly said, noticing her reaction. “It’s just that often when new authors have a bestseller they become, shall we say …” He waved his hands around as he searched for the right word.

  “Self-important?” Jane suggested.

  Kelly nodded. “Self-important,” he agreed.

  Jane raised her eyebrows and smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” she said.

  She and Kelly went over the final edits on her manuscript. When they were done, Kelly tucked the pages into his briefcase.

  “We should get you to Penn Station,” he said. “Your train leaves in half an hour.”

  Jane went upstairs to retrieve her bag. Then Kelly flagged them a cab and they rode to the train station.

  “Have a safe trip home,” Kelly said, kissing Jane on the cheek again before she exited the cab in front of Penn Station. “I’ll call you in a few days to discuss what happens next.”

  Jane waved goodbye and watched as the cab pulled away, her head filled with thoughts of Kelly, her book, and the new possibilities in her life. Had his lips lingered a bit longer than was strictly polite?

  The train was not particularly crowded, and Jane had a row to herself. She settled into the window seat and opened the book she’d started on the journey down the day before. But she found herself unable to concentrate. She woul
d have to tell people about her novel, of course. Lucy anyway. Perhaps Walter. Suddenly she thought of Walter. She saw his face, and imagined how excited he would be for her when she told him she was going to be published. His congratulations would be genuine, not the insincere words of someone jealous of her success. Walter was incapable of insincerity.

  Despite knowing it was foolish, Jane couldn’t help comparing Walter to Kelly. They were so different. Where Kelly moved in a fast-paced world, Walter was content with small-town life. Where Kelly was worldly, Walter was simple. Yet both were kind men. Most important, Jane reminded herself, Walter had already expressed his feelings for her. Kelly was just her editor.

  And yet she couldn’t help wondering if Kelly might not become more. They were—at least as far as Kelly knew—roughly the same age. They shared many interests. And they would be working closely together. Wasn’t it possible that romance could blossom?

  Jane felt guilty for even thinking such a thing. But there it was. She couldn’t deny that she found Kelly attractive. And part of her believed that he might accept the inevitable truth about her condition more easily than Walter would. I imagine there are far more unbelievable things in New York than vampires, she thought.

  As the train left the station and began its steady crawl north, Jane continued to wrestle with the question of her romantic life like a dog worrying a bone. After two hundred years of romantic deprivation, it was time for a change.

  “I won’t do anything rash,” she assured herself. “I’ll just take things as they come.”

  It was a sensible decision, and she was pleased to have come to it. After all, she had made no promises to Walter. Until she did, she was free to do anything she liked. And at the moment she wasn’t doing anything but speculating. If she found that Kelly was interested, then she would do the right thing and make a decision between them.