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

made our way back to the church door. I held my breath as I tried to figure out how to work the key. With a little help from Adam, I managed to get it in the lock and turn it.
    "Voila!" I said as the door opened. My heart was pounding. We stepped inside the vestibule, and I got my first glimpse of the interior.
    I'd spent the past ten years learning everything there was to know about Jane Austen, but nothing I had read in a book or scholarly journal could have prepared me for the wave of emotion that threatened to carry me away as I moved farther into the church. My chest tightened, and I stepped forward to grip the back of the last pew for support.
    "Emma?" Adam moved to stand beside me, and his hand cupped my elbow.
    I was supposed to be a seasoned academic, an impartial observer and analyst of the object of my study. But short of the home she'd grown up in, here was the place where Austen had spent the most time in the first half of her life. I couldenvision her there, on one of the front pews, sandwiched between Cassandra and one or the other of her numerous brothers while they fidgeted through their father's sermon. I'd experienced that myself, trading jabs with my older brother on Sunday mornings while my father delivered his message and my mother bribed us with lemon drops to behave.
    "The Anglicans loved their whitewash, didn't they?" Adam said. I followed his gaze, over the plain white walls to the wide beams of the ceiling and the gentle rise of the arches that framed the altar. Matching arches formed alcoves on either side. On the front of the wall that divided the nave from the altar, someone had removed the wash, and I could see the faded colors of the decorative painting that had once covered the interior of the church.
    "Most people generally do," I quipped, a desperate attempt at humor. Anything to strengthen my knees and help me draw breath.
    Cautiously I stepped forward, the stone floor echoing beneath my feet. Halfway down the aisle, a carpet runner began to dampen the sound. I trailed my hand along the pew backs as I went, desperate to touch something, to make it all real.
    When I reached the front, I moved to my right. A table, about the size of a small buffet, held a few mementos, chief among them a copy of a page from the parish register, the record book of the church. It was this page, actually, that I'd come to see, per Mrs. Parrot's instructions. It was actually the sample page fromthe front of the parish register, the record book of baptisms and marriages and funerals kept by the rector, and Jane Austen had filled this page out as a joke when she was a teenager.
    Adam appeared at my side and looked over my shoulder at the facsimile of the document.
    "What's that?" He studied it for a moment. "Henry Frederick Howard Fitzwilliam of London," he read. "To Jane Austen. An impressive choice for her first marriage. He must have been a baronet at least."
    He was kidding, of course. Jane had filled in her own name as the bride, as she'd done with all of the entries she'd made.
    "Arthur William Mortimer of Liverpool." I read the second out loud. "A banker, maybe?" I said to Adam with a smile. "He sounds like someone with pots of money."
    "I wonder how she got away with it. Isn't this an official record in England?"
    "Her father kept the parish register at home," I said absently. "And it was just the sample page. Not an actual entry."
    My eyes traced the printed form, which left blank spaces for the names of the bride, the groom, and the witnesses. The youthful Jane had filled these in, but what had been her motivation? Were these names of real men? Or were they merely figments of her imagination, precursors of the heroes she would someday write about?
    "There were fewer than three hundred parishioners in her father's day," I continued. "I can't imagine he performed allthat many weddings, not to mention baptisms or funerals. I doubt he pulled the register out very often."
    "How old was she when she did