Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend by Cora Harrison Read Free Book Online Page A

manor house
to see Harry and he had been most upset that we thought he had not bothered to deliver the letter.
    ‘I’ll take it over no matter what – even if I am in the middle of sowing turnips,’ he said, according to Jane – who didn’t think he showed much romantic taste
in mentioning turnips in the same sentence as love letters.
    ‘But there is a difference,’ cried Eliza. ‘Your aunt is an old lady who has nothing to do in her life other than to write letters. The good captain, ah, now that is a different
matter. He is busy, shouting orders, standing on his ship deck . . . La, la, I do not know, but I’m sure a thousand things must occupy him. How can he sit down and write a pretty love letter
when his men are standing by, waiting for him to shout, “Lower ze boat, my hearties.”?’
    I had to laugh at that, especially as Eliza made no effort to copy a sailor-like voice but pronounced the words in the refined tones of a Parisian lady.
    ‘I know why you haven’t heard from him,’ exclaimed Jane when we were reluctantly responding to Mrs Austen’s shouts from the open window.
    ‘Why?’ I asked. Jane had stopped in the middle of the gravel sweep in front of the door and was staring at me with serious eyes.
    ‘He’s been taken prisoner by French brigands, of course.’ She looked quite satisfied by that explanation and shook her head when I pointed out that England was no longer at war
with France.
    ‘Once a brigand, always a brigand,’ she said wisely. ‘We should write and find out his news – and tell him ours.’
    She raced upstairs, seized a pen, sharpened it to a fine point, trimmed the feathered end carefully and took a piece of scrap writing paper from her desk.
    Then she folded the paper in four, wrote the address, scattered some sand on it, opened it out, turned it over and wrote the message on the inside in her most elegant hand. Then she refolded the
paper, melted the end of a wax stick, dropped a blob to seal the letter, told me to stick the copy into my journal and then jumped up. ‘Let’s go and see Harry,’ she said
enthusiastically. ‘I bet he will ride straight up to Deane with it. That will be in Southampton by tomorrow morning.’
    Jane’s letter to Thomas:

Tuesday, 19 April 1791
    It’s very early in the morning and I am writing in my journal before the others are awake. Everything is ready for our journey to Bath. The post-chaise will call for our
bags and trunks and then, at Deane Gate Inn, only a short walk up the road, we will get on the coach and start on our journey to Bath.
    Jane is very excited about it, but I am not. I wish now I could stay on in Steventon and keep inspecting that hollow tree to see whether Thomas has remembered me. Everything is so uncertain for
me. I feel that I am in danger of going back to being the very insecure, worried girl that I was before I came to Steventon.
    Perhaps Thomas doesn’t love me any more. That thought keeps coming into my mind. Perhaps he has found another girl whose parents are very pleased at the idea of a match between their
daughter and the handsome naval officer with his own property in the Isle of Wight and his uncle, the admiral.
    After all, my brother has turned him down. When he got back to Southampton, Thomas must have thought of that. He must feel very angry.

Tuesday night, 19 April
    By six o’clock in the evening we had been travelling for hours. The journey across the Salisbury Plain was long and tedious. Eliza entertained us in the early part by
telling us about an undercover agent a – rrrrevolutionary who took part in storming the Bastille. She told us some hair-raising stories of this daring individual who even swam through
the murky waters of the River Seine in Paris, with his pistol clenched between his teeth. Although Eliza’s husband is an aristocrat, she seems to find this ‘rrrrevolutionary’ undercover agent very attractive, and Jane’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. Mrs