Jane in Love

late, the gentlemen may have noticed,” she counseled, with all the kindness of her heart. Lady Johnstone still powdered her hair, though the style had gone out of fashion twenty years ago, and flecks fell on Jane’s arm as the woman spoke.
“Thank you, Lady Johnstone,” said the Reverend. “You are kind to us. A pretty bag, madam. Is it new?”
Jane opened her mouth to make a less diplomatic remark, but before she could, her father guided her up the stairs. They entered their own apartment, where Jane quickly changed her gown and washed her face before being set upon by her mother, who dragged Jane and her father into the parlor. “Mr. Withers and his son are already here,” Mrs. Austen hissed, as she had a habit of doing when eligible men were around. “They wait in the sitting room.”
A breeze blew down the hallway and opened the sitting room door by a crack. Jane crept forward and stole a glance. She inhaled.
“What do you think, Jane?” asked her father.
Jane Withers, thought she. She could scarcely believe the man standing in the sitting room across the hall. The last man who’d come to the door as Jane’s intended suitor resembled a boiled egg. From where on God’s earth had the matchmaker drummed up this chiseled statue? Mr. Withers’s height required him to duck to see through the window. His shoulders protruded from his torso at twice the width of other men’s. He smiled when he looked out the window and smiled again when he spoke to his father, who stood next to him in the sitting room. From what Jane observed, he smiled a great deal.
As Mr. Withers turned to point out the window, a singular shard of English sunlight caught every fleck of gold in his chestnut hair. Jane gasped. The angel Gabriel had stepped from his cloud and entered their drawing room.
Then Jane halted the celebratory feeling, replacing it with a more appropriate one of worry. The matchmaker had erred once more. Whereas before she had delivered partners of too low quality, imbeciles and shouters, this time she delivered one too high. Jane calculated the combined worth of her prospective spouse’s handsomeness, financial solvency, and station, compared them to her own, and found the totals did not match. This wealthy Adonis, with his pick of women, would not fall for a novel-writing, rapidly aging, dowry-lacking woman.
Jane caught her reflection in the hallway mirror. She’d swapped her muddied boots and field-splattered pelisse for silk slippers and her finest gown, but her best clothes looked like rags compared to the fine wool of Mr. Withers’s coat. She gasped at the worst portion of her person. “My hair!” A bird’s nest had replaced her mother’s Grecian knot.
“Perhaps take the lumpy left bit,” said the Reverend in a helpful voice, “and move it northward?” Jane did so.
“You are making it worse,” said Mrs. Austen, slapping Jane’s hands away. She grabbed Jane’s head, removed the piece of hedge, and scraped the hair back into a painful yet decent style. “Let me look at you.” Her mother stepped back and studied Jane’s overall appearance. She harrumphed with a frown and ran her hand along the thick, solid gold necklace that hung around her neck.
Mrs. Austen came from a wealthier family than Mr. Austen, with distant connections to rank and title, and had upset her relations by marrying a country parson. As the years passed in their quiet parish, her income and station had diminished still until she retained a singular vestige of her old life: a solid-gold locket and chain that shamed the brass trinkets she had acquired during marriage. Purchased in the 1600s for a princely sum by her great-grandmother, a baroness, the necklace had since then grown in value. Mrs. Austen displayed it proudly around her neck and polished it every Sunday with a silk cloth.
She grabbed Jane by the shoulders. “Listen now, Jane. Say beguiling and coquettish things to this man. Do not talk about books or politics or anything else to make him feel stupid. No one marries a clever boots.”
Jane bristled; she would have argued had she not explored the theme herself all morning. “Yes, Mama,” she said. “I promise to act as silly as possible.”
Then her father touched her hand. “It will be all right, Jane.”
Jane nodded. With the gravity of the situation communicated, and enough scowling and worrying completed, the trio each took a deep breath and proceeded into the sitting room.
Reverend Austen entered first and greeted Mr. Withers and his son, Charles. Introductions were then made with startling control for the Austens. Even Mrs. Austen was shushed into a modicum of decency by the wealth and handsomeness of the suitor. She waited a full seven minutes before providing a list of her son Edward’s houses, filling the space with polite and meaningless chatter, as was her talent.
Jane sighed with gratitude for once at her mother’s conversation, for it removed the focus from her. She preoccupied herself with not meeting the young man’s eye; the first time Jane allowed him a decent look at her face, he would run a Yorkshire mile. She counted the floorboards instead. But when she finally snuck a glance in his direction, to her great surprise, she found him smiling at her.
“Mr. Withers, I believe you are a naturalist,” Mrs. Austen said to the father.
“Indeed, I am,” replied Mr. Withers Senior. “Though I am no professional botanist; it is a hobby of mine.”
Jane stole another glance at the young man as her mother praised and flattered the older one for his dedication to nature. Could it be? Was Mr. Withers truly smiling at her? He was. Jane commanded her breathing to slow.
“There is a bush of roses in the garden which I cannot identify,” Mrs. Austen said. “Would you assist me in classifying it?” Mr. Withers Senior replied his assent, and the quintet set forth outside to explore Sydney Gardens. Jane knew the roses her mother referred to were pink Queen Mary’s,