told Jack after recounting what had happened.
Jack said nothing—a myriad of conflicting emotions and thoughts were running through him, the predominant of which was rage—and instead stormed out of the bungalow, reappearing an hour later with a cut above one eye and his right hand swollen and bruised.
Mimi cleaned the cut with some disinfectant and put some ice on the hand, then knelt on the carpet before Jack, who was sitting there with a gratified ego, a distressed heart, and a splitting headache.
“I wish you hadn’t,” Mimi finally said, after they had stared at each other for several seconds. “I told you I handled it as best I could. He won’t get away with it.”
“As best you could is way too good for someone like him,” Jack practically growled.
“So you left him bruised and battered—now what? He’ll probably come down even harder on me. And charge you with assault. And I’ll end up unemployed, just watch, and you’ll end up in jail.”
Jack pulled her onto his lap in the single most tender motion he had ever made in his life. “So here’s the deal, okay? You’re not going to charge him with rape, he knows that—and he isn’t going to charge me with assault. He knows I know that, too. And you’re out of your contract, if you want. He said he’ll release you.”
“Because I’m old.”
“You’re not old.”
“I’m not young. Or at least, not as young as Angela Cummings or Janice Starling.”
“Screw him, Mimi. The writing’s on the wall over there. Go free agent and name your price and work when you want. I can take care of you the rest of the time.”
“I can take care of myself. God knows I have enough money.”
“There’s no such thing,” he corrected her, taking both her hands in his.
Mimi looked at him in surprise. “What are you saying, Jack?”
“We’ll get married. And you can retire.”
“I don’t want to retire.”
“Well, then, semi-retire. Like what’s-her-name. Make the occasional prestige picture, get that summer place in England you’re always going on about, and read Jane Austen the rest of the time for all I care.”
“I don’t trust Monte, Jack, if I don’t stay busy—he’s just the sort of person who would start spreading lies. Before you know it, my name will be mud in this town.”
“Screw him, Mimi. Look at what you’ve pulled off so far with your career. He can’t touch that.”
“What about babies?” she suddenly asked, almost holding her breath.
“What about babies?”
“I dunno, Jack. Do you eat them? What do you think I mean?”
He smiled. “Well, if you’re already thinking about making babies with me…”
From the open bungalow window she could smell the dahlias and the roses that her gardener took such care of, hear the far-off cries of the coyotes that stalked the canyon, and see every star in the August night through the skylight above their heads.
“My head hurts.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t be making any decisions right now.”
“Don’t, then. Just think about it.” He smiled. “But not too long. Time is money after all.”
Chapter Seven
Chawton, Hampshire
September 1945
Frances Knight sat in the main-floor library of the Great House, staring at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves made of oak and walnut from the woodland on the estate. Two thousand books, Evie the house girl had recently informed her. Two thousand books dating as far back as the 1700s, and many of them bound in leather especially for the family, the front covers imprinted with the Knight family seal. The Austen family would have read these books: Jane and her brother Edward and his daughter Fanny Knight Knatchbull, Jane’s beloved niece, along with Cassandra and many other aunts and uncles and cousins too numerous to mention.
Two thousand books. And all now just for her.
Even more ironically, she had only read a few of them. Mainly the Brontës, the Georges Eliot and Gissing, and Thomas Hardy and Trollope. Over and over again.
This had started in her thirties, after the death of her mother from pneumonia and her older brother in a shooting accident just two years later. Not at all close to her one remaining relative, her distant and judgmental father, Frances had retreated into these familiar worlds of literature. Something about her favourite books gave her tremendous comfort, and even a strange feeling of control, although she could not quite put her finger on why. She just knew that she did not want to invest her time trying to figure out a new world, whom to like and whom to trust in it, and how