The Jane Austen Society(48)

As the words left his mouth, he looked about himself a bit more and saw that everything in the Great House, antique or otherwise, seemed to live under layers of memories thick as dust. There were extremely old photographs along the mantel of relatives in Edwardian dress, and ancient oil paintings of others in the Knight family’s past, and not a sign of any modern convenience at all except for the electric lights and a single radiator along the internal wall. Frances, too, looked much older than her years—Jack with his discerning eye would have put her well into her fifties, due to the parchment-like skin on her neck and the deeply etched crow’s-feet, except that he had been told she was only a decade or so older than himself.

“The way I see it,” he was continuing, “it’s a win-win. Everybody would get something they need. Yardley said you were a very sensible woman, and I like doing business with sensible people.”

“And why do you need the cottage, Mr. Leonard?”

“For my lovely fiancée here. She is the world’s biggest Austen fan—no, seriously, show her the ring honey.”

Mimi shook her head in embarrassment, but Jack took her left hand and held it out towards Frances so that she could see the turquoise-and-gold ring on Mimi’s finger.

“Oh, my, that looks—that seems—familiar,” the older woman said haltingly as she slowly realized that this was her famous ancestor’s ring recently featured in the Sotheby’s catalogue, now on the finger of some American stranger whose crass fiancé seemed to only see dollar signs on every object about him.

“It sure is,” replied Jack. “Mimi’s such a fan, we’re even making a movie based on one of Jane’s books.”

Mimi had been watching Frances closely as Jack tried to keep her onside. Something was a little off about the woman, as if she was going through the motions of life and this small interchange, but was not completely present. She looked as if she belonged to another time, with her high-collared white blouse and heavy long skirt and greying blond hair pulled up high on the back of her head. But as Jack mentioned the movies, the woman’s expression finally seemed to relax a bit.

“A movie? Are you a director?”

“Producer,” he corrected.

“Oh.”

Jack cleared his throat. “Well, actually, more than that, if I say so myself. You see, I heard about Sense and Sensibility and I got this writer—you may have heard of him, J. D. Bateman—anyway, I got him to write a script based on the book. What a story.” Jack practically whistled through his teeth.

Frances looked over at Mimi, who was smiling almost apologetically for her fiancé. “Are you involved with the movie as well?”

Mimi nodded and took a sip of her tea.

“Involved with it?” exclaimed Jack. “Why, she’s the star! She’s Elinor!”

Frances looked at the woman with even more interest. “Are you an actress?”

Mimi nodded again. “You could call it that.”

“An actress!” exclaimed Jack again. “Why, she’s a movie star—she’s Mimi Harrison! Of Home & Glory?”

Frances shook her head politely. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t get out to the movies very often. I am sure you are most successful,” she added to Mimi with an apologetic look.

Jack was starting to look a little flushed with annoyance under the crisp ironed collar of his starched white Savile Row shirt. Although not wanting to be recognized everywhere he and Mimi went, Jack did want to be recognized when it could work in his favour. But he was also intuiting that the sale of the cottage might be purely financially driven on Miss Knight’s part, and he wondered just how much of a predicament she was in—and how much he might stand to benefit from at least that.

“So,” Jack declared, deciding to go for the advantage of abruptness, “what do you say, Miss Knight? Shall we make this happen?”

Frances looked at Jack, with his sharp whitened teeth and narrowed hazel eyes, leaning forward in his seat as if about to pounce on his prey.

“Please,” said Mimi, reaching across to lay her right hand gently on the older woman’s forearm, “please don’t feel pressured. We’re just very excited. There is no need to make a decision on the spot.”

Jack felt that old, irritating migraine starting up. Nothing would get done if it was left to these two.

“How long are you here for, in Chawton?” Frances asked hesitatingly.

Mimi quickly looked over at Jack before replying, “Well, we’re staying in London while we look for a summer place, so we’re not far, and we can always come back. In fact, I’d love to.”

“Then come back.” Frances smiled at Mimi. “And we’ll see.”

The words we’ll see were, for Jack Leonard, the deal equivalent of tracing Scotch along a woman’s collarbone, and he stood up confidently to shake Frances’s hand just a little too vigorously.

Mimi stood up, too. “Jack, do you mind if I just have a second alone here with Miss Knight? Girl talk,” she added with a wink.

He looked from one woman to the other. “Alright, honey. Just don’t go giving the farm away. Oh, and Miss Knight, for all my fiancée’s movie stardom, let’s keep her identity just between us for now, hmm? The last thing I’m sure you Knights want is a bunch of news photographers showing up, hiding in the bushes.”