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Indoors was cozy and hot, both effects produced by an unseasonably large fire A woe cap rose from behind a desk and led Jane to a seat beside the hearth

"Welcome to i8i6 I am Mrs Wattlesbrook And what shall we call you?" "Jane Hayes is fine"

Mrs Wattlesbrook raised her eyebrows "Is that so? You are certain you still wish

to retain your Christian naht? We shall address you as Miss Jane Erstwhile"

Erstwhile? "Uh, okay

"And how old are you, Miss Erstwhile?"

"Thirty-three"

Mrs Wattlesbrook leaned on her arm with an air of impatience "You

her eyebrows significantly "You are aware that at this time a lady of thirty-three would be an affireable"

"I’d rather not lie about e," Jane said, then i Austenland where she’d pretend the year was r8i6 and that actors were her friends and fa a few years off her age? Her stoht not be able to see this through

Mrs Wattlesbrook atching her shrewdly Jane gulped a breath Could she know? Did she have that uncanny Carolyn intuition, did she sense that Jane was here not as an idle vacationer but because she had a nasty obsession? Or did she assu a fantasy in earnest, that she believed she ht find him, find love, on this It’s a Small World ride?

Jane’s ht years old, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she still answered with conviction, "I want to be a princess" Perhaps because of her mother’s pleasant mockery, by her adolescence, Jane had learned to hide her desires for such wonderful i a princess, or a supermodel, or Elizabeth Bennet Bury and hide thelected as to so ready to stretch herself out on a Freudian couch

Noup those weedy issues and toss them out She would enjoy this last trip to fantasyland so utterly that it’d be easy in three weeks to put it all behind her--Austen, men, fantasies, period But in order for it to work, she had to be Jane, experiencing everything for herself, and so she clung stubbornly to her actual age

"I could say ‘I’m not yet four and thirty’ if you prefer" Jane smiled innocently "Quite," said Mrs Wattlesbrook with firm lips, insistent that there was no humor

to be had "For the duration of your stay, there will be one other guest at Pe, who arrived yesterday When Miss Ae, so you shall see her often as well I expect all of you ladies to maintain appropriate ossip, no swapping university prank stories, no yo’s and ho’s and all that I am very strict about my observances, hm?"