Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Pattillo Read Free Book Online

enthusiasm under wraps. As far as Adam knew, it was a casual day trip, not a matter of life and death. Well, my career's life and death, anyway.
    "Okay. But let's wait until after morning rush hour."
    I would have agreed to just about anything he suggested, as long as it meant reaching my destination.
    It wasn't until later, after we'd walked back to Anne-Elise's house and retreated to our separate rooms for the night, that I began to wonder why Adam, after years of estrangement, was being so agreeable. Why he was so willing to drive me to Hampshire. Why had he been in South Kensington that morning or, indeed, what kind of research he was doing in London to begin with? I wasn't the only one being vague.
    No, I thought, shaking my head where it lay on the pillow. Edward's infidelity had made me suspicious, made me see ulterior motives where there weren't any. I was boxing with shadows. I refused to let Edward's betrayal make me paranoid. If I did that, then I would lose far more than my marriage.

W e left for Hampshire the next morning a little after nine o'clock.
    Thankfully, Adam filled the car with gas, and we set out in my cousin's tiny Ford Fiesta without my having to confess my dire financial straits. Adam had printed off directions from the Internet, so I sank into the passenger seat, at least as much as one can sink into a car that small, and let him direct our journey.
    It seemed to take forever to make our way out of Greater London, but finally we were on the motorway and headed southwest.
    "How long will it take?" I asked.
    "About an hour and a half, if we don't hit any traffic."
    How he could drive on the wrong side of the road was beyond me. I was content to watch the scenery as it passed, and Adam was intent enough on his driving not to mind the lackof conversation. I felt like I'd been dropped into a scene from Masterpiece Theatre, everything was so green and pastoral. At length, we exited the motorway and made our way through the thriving town of Basingstoke.
    "Lots of corporations are setting up shop here," Adam told me when I commented on the high-rise office buildings springing up like weeds after a rain. "London's so congested, they're trying to get big companies to locate outside the city."
    I could guess what Jane Austen would have thought of multinational corporations invading her territory. I was pretty sure she'd have had a thing or two to say about that.
    We passed through Basingstoke and turned off a major road onto a little country lane. "Not far now," Adam said. Two wrong turns later, we finally found what we were looking for. At a junction near an open field, Adam made a left and pulled to the side of the road.
    "There you go."
    "There I go what?" An open field, grassy and green and trimmed with hedges, lay to my right. It sloped upward until it met a woodsy area. An ancient lime tree was the field's only occupant.
    "According to the map, that's where the Steventon rectory stood." He swiveled in the seat and pointed up the hill behind us. "And that's where it is now."
    "I remember that later occupants finally figured out that building a house at the bottom of a hill might have had something to do with all that rising damp Austen mentioned in herletters," I said, but my attention was on the scene before me. It looked so empty, that field. Pretty, but empty.
    "Isn't there a plaque or something? Some kind of marker?" Adam asked.
    I shook my head. "Just the tree. According to what I read, her brother planted it when he was the rector here after her father." My chest ached with disappointment. How could the birthplace of one of the greatest English novelists be so completely ignored? "If she'd been a man, there'd be a ten-foot statue," I said between clenched teeth. "Not to mention a pub named after her."
    Adam nodded. "Probably. But I kind of like it like this. Only the true believers like you know the importance of the site."
    I wasn't convinced. "Would you say the same thing if it were your hero,