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will she object? And how the hell does anyone know she’s really Jane Austen?
    The last question he’d asked himself time and again since he’d heard the news that Austen had managed to prove her identity.
    He looked at the mock-up and quietly read out loud the title:
The Real Jane Austen: Hidden Passions and Secret Desires
.
    He dropped his head and the older woman sitting on the opposite side of the aisle might have heard a small moan escape him. His ringing phone interrupted his self-pity.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey Courtney,” he heard his agent say. He winced at the use of his full name and wondered again why he couldn’t convince his own agent to call him Court.
    “Yeah, Dan, what’s up? I’m sorry I haven’t sent my thoughts on the mock up.” Courtney offered an apologetic shrug to the woman across the aisle. She returned to her perusal of a knitting magazine.
    “Oh, don’t worry about that. Listen, there’s been a change on the publication schedule.”
    “What? They can’t move it any closer. I still …” His voice rose and again he attracted the attention of Miss Marple. Courtney turned his head toward the window.
    “No, not closer, they want to delay it. But don’t worry, it’s good news.”
    “How can it be good news they want to delay the publication? And I already bought the tickets for the book tour.”
    “Don’t sweat it, Courtney. You can throw those tickets away. We now have a tour budget, paid for by the publisher. They want to time the release to whenever Austen publishes her book. Anything Austen is hot right now, so you’re sitting pretty. Can it get any better?”
    “Oh, no, I mean yeah, that’s great.”
    “And there’s a rumour going around that they want Jane Austen to be on a book tour, although I have no idea how they would manage it. Luckily I have a friend who might be able to leak me the itinerary when it comes time. Think about how great that would be for you? You could be signing your book right next to Jane Austen herself. I guess she wouldn’t be signing her book, of course. Maybe they can hire an avatar to do it. There have to be copies of her autograph somewhere, right?”
    Dan kept babbling away, envisioning the book tour and obviously very happy having a so-so client with his limited appeal book suddenly become a hot property. But all Courtney could think of was sitting next to an invisible Jane Austen disapproving of his book.
    “You have no idea how great it is having a real touring budget. I usually have to tell my clients to book their own tickets and tell them to stay with family … hell you know what I’m talking about! Well look, got to go. I’m very happy for you, Courtney.”
    Courtney silently cursed after his agent hung up and as he did so, he realized he’d been looking at the woman across the aisle and she’d correctly interpreted his four-letter word. She gave him a long, disapproving look and returned to her magazine.
    Courtney was embarrassed and disappointed that he’d allowed his fear and frustration to be evident to the old woman, although he certainly had justification. His book was essentially finished, and if there were no Austen claimant, it could stand on its own, but now that there was one, he desperately needed the letter. To actually know in her own words the name of Jane’s Lyme Regis lover 8 would be amazing, assuming of course it corresponded with his conjectures. And it would certainly make it difficult for the Austen claimant to refute him.
    He was travelling back to Bath to see if he could find proof the Gorrell family had any connection with the Austen family. And from there he hoped to trace the family forward. Unfortunately it meant nothing if he couldn’t find the old lady and the letter, the trail having run cold sometime in the 1980s.
    He tried to reassure himself that even if he were unable to find the letter, his book was solid enough, but he knew he might have pushed some of his suppositions a little far.
    He’d