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Did Austen herself feel this way? Was she hopeful? Jane wondered if the unmarried writer had lived inside Austenland with close to Jane’s own sensibility-- a swept away
Ten days to go
Boyfriend 10
Peter Sosa, AGE TWENTY-NINE
They met in the elevator He worked on an upper floor, an ad exec, young for the position so obviously a genius Smartness had always attracted Jane, that and hands and jawline and butt And eyes Also, integrity of character--she wasn’t shallow Peter fell for her at once, he said, because she was stunning That’s the word he’d used--stunning It’s a difficult word to dised to be that word to soht for five weeks, and she felt her heart plu way Boyfriend 9 was still raw, a sore that wouldn’t heal because she kept picking at it, but wouldn’t Peter be such a way to come back from that catastrophe! She fantasized of the day she would casually bump into nasty ex-boyfriends with Peter on her arm And then
"What is it? You’relike that" He paused, leaving Jane to i, she’s right over there, at the table by theShe irl I asked out fall in love with ht it would be roe would have shoreman blush down to her boots
days 12----13
THE NEXT MORNING, RAIN BLURRED the hard edges fros into fores, nudes, and trees Jane had been painting since daybreak Yellow, red, orange, blue The colors ry, but she was too infatuated with paint on canvas to dress for breakfast When Matilda caotten the thrill she used to feel when buying a new paintbrush, squeezing all those colors onto her palette, s the clean natural odor of the oils, the reckless unknown of first spoiling a white canvas These past years, she had beco corporate art, lazy and dull And now, se, she realized she had loved her last boyfriends as a graphic designer would But she wanted to love so--fearless, messy, vivid
In honor of Miss Eyre, Jane did a self-portrait When she caught just the right shading of a cheek, her heart buh she were in love What she was after was that self-assurance in the eyes that those old portraits in the gallery had, a knowing glea at It was tricky to achieve She wanted to ask so, but not the traitor Matilda Aunt Saffronia? No, she was too eager to please Martin? Oh, stop it Mr Nobley? Yes, but why him?
She made it downstairs late for lunch and a etables The house echoed as though long deserted She thought of returning to her easel, but she felt unsettled by the expression she’d left in her painting--she feared it was forced assurance, an actor’s eyes She decided to give both pairs of eyes a break
She sat in the library, staring at the streaks of water against the , the book A Sentiardeners do in the rain? she wondered
Mr Nobley had entered the rooroaned "And here you are Miss Erstwhile You are infuriating and irritating, and yet I find rateful if you would send me away and make me swear to never return"
"You shouldn’t have told oing to get it"