Jane Bites Back_ A Novel - Michael Thomas Ford [23]
“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