myself. Perhaps, colonel, you need a break, too.”

She left with a quiet swish of her skirt. Back to work. She was the work. She was.

Rats. She’d had a sweet little hope that she was the treat, the rest from laboring

conversations. Nope, hanging out with Miss Erstwhile was reason to sigh with

exhaustion.

Did Mr. Nobley feel the same way? Could he have been the unseen smoker? Tomorrow was the ball. She’d channeled all her hopes into the ball, where she

would face the fantasy of Mr. Darcy and somehow… somehow just know what to do?

She was all befuddled. The ball had to be her closure, her triumph. But reminded that for

these actor men, she was work, it was getting hard to keep her eye on the ball. She was

not who she’d thought she was. No one was.

When she got back to her room, her self-portrait’s eyes stared back, startled, even

more unsure.

“Stupid art,” she said.

Glum, glum, glum. That was the sound her feet made as she descended to the

drawing room that evening. Glum, glum, as she walked alone at the back of the line of

precedence into the dining room. It sure felt cold back there. She sniffed and rubbed her

arms.

“Mr. and Mrs. Longley will be coming from Granger Hall and the two older Miss

Longleys as well,” Aunt Saffronia was saying, her conversation as endlessly full of

names as the biblical lists of who-begot-whom. “Oh! And Mr. Bentley. Miss Heartwright,

you recall Mr. Bentley? Still single and has four thousand pounds a year. Takes such

good care of his mother.”

Jane click-clacked her fork on her plate, pushing her food around. Her mother

would’ve been shocked. It was not often that Jane was truly and absolutely despondent,

and tonight she felt enslaved by that word. It shouldn’t matter what they thought of her,

she reminded herself. This was her game, and when she won it would be her victory. She

just had to dig in her heels and keep playing. But the reality of the men being bored by

her, paid to pretend to like her, intruded too much on her fun tonight, coupled with the

dread that she wouldn’t be able to conquer her obsession before her time in Austenland

was up.

Jane tried to keep the despondency to herself, though Mr. Nobley seemed to be

keeping a pretty good eye on her, as usual. She took another bite of... poultry of some

sort?...and decided she’d pull the headache excuse out of the bag and dismiss herself to

bed as soon as the dinner torture was over. She hated to waste a single moment of her last

days, but she felt pulled inside out and couldn’t figure out how to right herself. She returned Mr. Nobley’s gaze. His eyebrows raised, he leaned forward slightly,

his mannerisms asking, “Are you all right?” She shrugged. He frowned.

When the women stood to leave the gentlemen to their port and tobacco, Mr.

Nobley rose as well and made his unapologetic way to Jane’s side.

“Miss Erstwhile, too long have you been asked to walk alone. May I accompany

you to the drawing room?”

Her heart jigged.

“It’s not proper,” she whispered, the fear of Wattlesbrook in her. She didn’t want

to be sent home, not before the ball.

“Proper be damned,” he said, low enough for just her ears.

Jane could feel all eyes on them. She took Mr. Nobley’s arm and walked across

that negligible distance, stately as a bride. He found her a seat on a far sofa and sat beside

her, and except for the fact that she couldn’t kick off her shoes and tuck her feet up under

her, all felt pleasantly snug.

“How is the painting going?” he asked.

Of course it had been him (the paints). And of course it hadn’t been him (Colonel

Andrews’s unseen smoking companion). Jane sighed happily.

“How do you do it? How do you make me feel so good? I don’t like that you can

affect me so much, and I find you much more annoying than ever. But what I mean is,

thank you for the paints.”

He wouldn’t acknowledge the thanks and pressed her for details instead, so she

told him how it felt to manipulate color again, real color, real paint, not pixels and RGBs,

like the joy in her muscles stretching after a long plane ride. She talked about artists she

admired, paintings she’d done when she was young and dramatic and how cowed by false

emotion they seemed to her now, how the embarrassment of immature art had chased her

away from the canvas for too long. And how grateful she felt, how chock-full of happy

things just for having returned. She didn’t worry that she was boring him, as Old Jane

would’ve done. It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. He was paid to listen to her and

make her feel like the most interesting person in the world, and so, by George, she would

be.

His lips pressed into a small smile that stayed. A very small smile. Sometimes

almost imaginary. Jane wished that it might be bigger, that it might beam at her, but she supposed that wasn’t the Nobley way. Then when she’d decided that his smile was a

fig_ment, Mr. Nobley said—or whispered, rather—

“Let’s go look at your paintings.”

What a delight, this man. How he kept surprising her, tossing aside his uptight

propriety for her sake, murmuring plans for meeting in secret, fibbing to the others that

he would withdraw early, then waiting upstairs for her to do the same. What a thrill to

look around for watchers and scramble into her chamber, shutting the door behind them. Jane stood with her back to the door, her hands still on the knob, breathing hard

and trying to laugh quietly. He was leaning against the wall, smiling. The moment was

giddily awkward as she waited to see what he had in mind, if he would suddenly shed

Mr. Nobley and become some other man entirely. If he would break any other rules. The

wait was agonizing. She realized she didn’t know what she wanted him to do. “I would love to see those paintings,” he said, his voice still proper.

“Of course,” she said. Of course he was still Mr. Nobley, of course the man, the actor,

was not falling in love with her. And a relief it was, too, as she realized she wasn’t ready

to let go of Pembrook Park yet. Somehow she had to be by the day after tomorrow. She presented the first painting, and he held it at arm’s length for some time