a young war widow.
“I always find it interesting how Jane Austen’s fans are always romantics to some degree—when I swear she wrote those books with a goose quill dipped in venom,” Yardley was saying over a paper cup of black coffee from the train station café.
Mimi laughed. “You stole that line—I just saw it in Preminger’s film Laura.”
“We steal in the auction business, don’t you know?”
“You steal. And then you hold the rest of us hostage for the highest price. That’s quite a system you’ve got going there.”
“Talking about holding hostage … how’s that engagement going?”
Mimi made a face at Yardley, who she knew did not care for Jack, although not at all in a jealous way. Yardley preferred men, as he had made clear to her on their second meeting over lunch at Rules, when he had subtly flirted with the waiter in a way that she had not witnessed before outside of L.A.
“Jack is, and I know this is hard to believe, but he is actually a very loving and generous man.”
“To you.”
“Is it wrong of me to care most about that?”
“Mimi, you studied history at college, right? Did you learn nothing?”
She made another face at Yardley, but this time a little less confidently.
“You know he’ll never change, though, right?” Yardley persisted with a sigh. “Tell me that at least, or I will have given up all hope for you.”
“Yardley, this is becoming unfair. We always end up analyzing my relationships, and you get off scot-free.”
“But I don’t have relationships. You know this about me.”
“Not through choice, though.”
He looked at her sitting across from him in the first-class cabin, her brilliant eyes set off by the plush purple velvet covering the high-back bench seat facing his. They had not discussed any of this before—but he hoped and thought that he could trust her.
“It’s a little hard, when you can end up in jail for your efforts.”
“It’s the same in the U.S. I know several actors who live together as roommates in name only, or even as joint tenants. I know one who actually adopted his lover as his son on paper, so that he can leave him his life insurance and his estate one day.”
“That’s a pretty circular argument against all of these laws to begin with, wouldn’t you say? When people have to—and can go to—lengths like that?”
“My father was a judge—did you know that? He always said, trust people to make the best decisions for their bedrooms and leave everything else to the law.”
Her words were such a relief to Yardley that he was uncharacteristically quiet for several seconds before asking, “Mr. Knight’s will, by the way—how is Frances handling it? You’ve seen her a few times since then.”
“She’s a remarkable woman. She has this almost eerie—I don’t know, preternatural?—calm about her. Total acceptance.”
“Resignation, you mean.”
“No, I used to think it was that. But I think she has a higher purpose in mind. I think she has a very different moral system from the rest of us.”
“Isn’t that what you’re always trying to argue about good ol’ Fanny Price?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I just know that on some level she believes that everything is happening for a reason, and she just sort of swims in it, like a cork bobbing about in the ocean, not trying to find the current, just being.”
“Wow. Buddha.”
“Oh, look, we’re here!” Mimi jumped up and grabbed her hat and purse. “Yardley, get ready—you are going to love this place.”
* * *
Mimi was wearing flat brown riding-style boots for once, and Yardley, who was not particularly tall himself, could now see the top of her head as they walked along together. She had forsaken her usual towering heels so that she and Yardley could make the walk on foot from Alton to Chawton, with Mimi excitedly crowing, “Just like Jane Austen would have done!” as they set off up the steep main road through town. But she had also wanted to be a little less physically conspicuous at her first meeting with the society, to the degree that was possible.
When they passed the village common at the triangular perimeter of the Alton town line, they could see ahead the opening up of vast farm fields bordered along the lane-way by holly and blackthorn hedgerows. Sheep could be glimpsed through the greenery, and in the distance several Shropshire horses could be seen pulling at last year’s desiccated fruit still hanging from an orchard grove. On the other side of the lane-way was a