Eddie laughed, and Charlotte shrugged.

“I know,” she said. “But I’m nice. It’s what I do.”

It was the heroine’s prerogative to give the villain a final kiss, and she had decided to be the heroine after all. Jane Austen had created six heroines, each quite different, and that gave Charlotte courage. There wasn’t just one kind of woman to be. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She was feeling at home at last in Austenland, and she meant to enshroud herself with that boldness and take it home with her.

And she meant, quite specifically, to damn the torpedoes and fall very much in love with Eddie, even if it was temporary, even if she didn’t quite know what she meant to him.

They weren’t alone for the rest of the day. Miss Gardenside, Colonel Andrews, and Miss Charming were always hovering nearby. Eddie didn’t say anything significant to her, such as “I love you,” or “Please stay forever,” or even “I’m going to go brush my teeth—meet me in your room in ten.” He stood near her, his attention on Miss Gardenside.

Evening drew close. Mrs. Wattlesbrook chased the last of the police away and the guests to their rooms. The ball would be starting soon, and Charlotte could hear musicians tuning and smell pastries baking. She had no expectations. That made her feel a little bit lonely, but a little bit lonely was nicer than a whole lot numb.

Eddie would be back in character and dancing with Miss Gardenside tonight. Charlotte didn’t feel much motivation to spruce up, but her ball gown lay neatly on her bed. She’d been measured for the gown on her first day, and it must have just arrived from the seamstress. Its newness seemed to make it glow, as if a magic wand had only just zapped it together from rags. She held it up. The length from high waist to low hem was longer than her everyday dresses, accentuating her height. The cream-colored organza was delicately embroidered in a pattern of flowers and curlicues and embellished with beads that winked in the window light. Seventeen years of fashion changes had rendered her wedding dress laughable, but two hundred years hadn’t hurt this style. The gown was beautiful.

Mary was no more, but Charlotte was certain that if she pulled her bell cord, some downstairs maid would come help her dress. No matter. Charlotte had been doing her best to dress herself for the past week. She could ask Miss Charming to do up the unreachable buttons and help her with her hair. Or maybe Colonel Andrews. Something told her he’d be a whiz at an updo.

There was a knock at the door. No one had ever knocked at her door besides Mary, and the last time Mary had come around, she’d been exercising the right to bear arms.

Eddie’s voice asked, “May I come in?”

“Sure,” she said.

He entered, still exercising his own right to tote a practice foil.

“Here’s my bodyguard.”

“You’ve proved to need one.”

“Do you think you’ll have another chance to use that?”

“A chap can dream.”

“It’s got a blunt tip.”

“In my dream it’s sharp as a tack. Also, I get to keep whipping Mallery’s face with it till he cries like a baby.”

“Quite a detailed dream.”

“And I haven’t even gotten to the part where I’m a racing driver.”

He stood by the door as she touched up her makeup in the bathroom and turned his back when she pulled off her robe and slid into the ball gown.

“Um … I could use some help with the doing-up,” she said.

He sighed. “Truly?”

His reluctance made her blink. “I can ask Miss Charming if you’re busy.”

He trudged over, showing unwillingness in every movement. Like a big brother annoyed with his pesky sister? She bit her lip as he fumbled with the gown’s many buttons, determined not to speak and annoy him further.

“You drive me mad.”

“Sorry, brother of mine,” she said flatly.

His hands paused. “Please don’t call me that.” She felt his fingers continue up her back. “Since our outing to the abbey, when you were concerned you were letting me down by not being clever enough, you have kept me laughing and longing too. Your kindness is genuine. Do you know how rare that is? Your presence absorbs me, and yet I’m not supposed to notice. It was hard enough to pretend indifference when you were bathing in the pond. Loosening your corset about undid me. And yet here I am again, so near you yet unable to carry you off to be my own. I must be a masochist.”

She remembered to empty her lungs, but after she could only inhale in quick, shallow breaths.

“So you’d prefer I didn’t call you ‘brother’?”

“Not in private, please.” She felt him rest his forehead against her neck, and his exhale raised goose bumps on her back. “Please. I don’t know how to have you here, when I am not me. I don’t know …”

She nodded. He put his arms around her waist, holding her from behind. She put her arms over his and they stood there in a silent embrace. Her heart was beating so hard she could see her bodice shake, yet she felt oddly calm.

This would have killed me when I was fourteen, she thought with sudden insight. I remember that much of my younger self.

The romance and awkwardness and sublime uncertainty would have broken her heart and driven her crazy. What next, what then, what should I say, what if I turned around, what will we do? But age gave her the peace, at least, to live inside that moment like a poet—to not sacrifice the beauty to the anxiety of What Next, but to just observe. The warmth of his hands under hers. His heartbeat against her back. The moment he adjusted his head to the side, as if he wanted to feel her skin against his cheek. The way his arms subtly tightened—conscious of her waist, feeling her there, enjoying her. How she felt from inside her throat down her middle toward her legs—all zingy and cold and light too. This was why she’d come here. Nothing else ever need happen again. She’d had her moment in Austenland, and even unfulfilled and uncertain, it was perfect. She leaned her head back till it touched his own, and she heard him sigh.

“I will be dancing with Miss Gardenside tonight,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.”

“It’s why you’re here. Why she’s here. It’s supposed to happen this way.”

“I wish it weren’t.”