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Aunt Saffronia took Jane’s arm and led her upstairs to a comfortable-sized room with a canopied bed, baby blue walls, sparsely furnished, not gothic enough to tes on the sill It was exactly the kind of rooined She couldn’t think why this discovery was disappointing It was slightlyto discover that the "kerosene" laed into an outlet
Jane dis that she would rest until dinner, since the jet lag was ety hour on a soft , then poked around in the attached bathroo water It was a relief not to have to use a bedpan, but it also or observed, the more difficult it was for Jane to pretend that this whole exercise was anything beyond wish fulfillment She felt too weird to rest
The day continued to drizzle, so she a into open doors The house was perfect It even carried the old, clean smell of a museum Her heart pounded a bit, and she felt as if she had sneaked away fro s and azes with the portraits Men and worounds faded countryside, their eyes imperious They were marvelous She wondered if those rich people had naturally looked on the world with such assurance of their own nobility or if the painter had created it for theive it a try, but she scratched the desire away She hadn’t picked up a paintbrush since college
She ran out of upstairs, so down she went, only to be stopped fast by voices co room Jane wasn’t ready to face real people yet, not as Miss Erstwhile The portraits had been intih Footsteps scared her out of the hall and into an open doorway It was a large, square, erand hall The place where balls happen The walls were an ireen, the crystals on the chandeliers winked in thelight If she were the type of person who looked for signs, Jane would have thought the roo momentous But she wasn’t
She turned to leave, and from the far door saw the dark outline of a man enter He stopped She stopped She couldn’t see his face
"Pardon," he said and turned back
She stood staring at where he’d been for a few moments, relieved at first that she hadn’t been forced to one Just his presence had set her heart to pounding, and the feeling prickled in her the delightful expectation of things to coht
As she ascended the main staircase on the way back to her roo over her own boots, the curve in her back declaring that she wasn’t wearing a corset
"Dratted drawers," said the wo
She was unnaturally buxom, in her fifties, and sported short, bleached hair heavily sprayed and an attached fake bun of a slightly different shade Her eyes widened when she saw Jane, and her surgery-tightened skin stretched to admit a wide smile
"Well, hello, you’re new, aren’t you? My na, like Elizabeth Bennet, see? But don’t you like the last nao ahead and na a Mr Darcy, but she thought Elizabeth Char Anyhoo, my friends call er of which still bore theband Jane shook it aardly with her right hand, then bobbed a curtsy
"Hello, I suppose I’m Jane Erstwhile"