Read My Jane Austen Summer for Free Online

considered themselves an exclusive sorority, the guardians of the Jane Austen grail, perhaps I could pledge. Like siblings clamoring for attention, I didn't particularly want to share My Jane Austen with them but I most certainly felt they should share theirs with me. All the same, I wished for a white gown. And gloves.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    Climbing the stairs, I noted cream-colored molding painted so many times the crisp edges were gone. The building was probably older than anything in Texas. And Jane Austen's presence felt so much stronger here. She hovered in my periphery now, a gauzy, ethereal being. If I attempted a direct look, she darted to the other side like the floaters I sometimes get in my eyes. Her fragile dress of faded lavender might have come from a dream or a 1950s prom rather than the Regency. Her dark hair fell in loose curls and she favored red lipstick, the color my mother wore when I was very young. When I read her books, Jane Austen spoke to me from the place between the lines of her fiction and I recognized mybest friend, as if we'd shared a porch swing on summer evenings and traded confidences in another realm of time and space. She agreed that Martin would change if I was patient. She agreed that my boss was a total jerk and I deserved better. She never looked away to see if someone more interesting had just walked into the room. Through all the long days I spent staring at the walls after Martin abandoned me, she waited patiently, never ditched me out of boredom. Whereas in Texas she'd been confined to remote reaches of my imagination, here in her homeland she grew stronger, commanding a nearer presence in the periphery of my thoughts. Not quite a ghost, more like an imaginary friend.
    Gary and I dragged my bags up two flights of stairs, through cavernous halls, over creaking wood floors smelling so musty they diminished the power of Gary's very strong aftershave. Transom windows flared open above doors, and damp air gave me a chill. My simple square room offered two beds with bare mattresses, two closets, a large bureau, and a very old sink with rust stains. Gary set my bags on the floor and hesitated, expecting a tip or a good night kiss. Did he sympathize with the women in period dress or the academics?
    "Bye," I said, opening the door, calculating the cost of a custom pelisse. Gary left and I hoisted my large suitcase onto my bed and unloaded the contents. Did everyone here own a pair of snowy white gloves? My hanging clothes took only five inches of the closet bar and my folded clothes filled less than two of the eight dresser drawers. Tiptoeing around, checking out the table, opening a window and a bureau drawer, everything seemed so new to me, bordering on mysterious, hardly related to the books I'd read and the novel I expected to live in. There was even something odd about the light switches and door handles I couldn't resolve.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    A knock rattled my door and I jumped out of my skin.
    "It's me, Gary," the voice of my driver who'd left me less than ten minutes ago called through the open transom. Only it sounded more like, "Ees me, Gahr-ree."
    I opened the door a tiny crack and peeked. Gary offered me a small white bakery bag.
    "Arabic cookies. For you. Ees very goot."
    "Oh, thank you." I reached out and accepted the bag. "That's sweet of you." I gave him the unencouraging smile for door-to-door magazine salesmen.
    "I make dem," he said, planting his large brown foreign student sandals closer to my threshold.
    "You made the cookies?" I peeked into the bag.
    He nodded. "Middle Eastern Bakery in Hedingham. My job." He said something in Arabic, and then translated for himself, smiling, his white teeth contrasting with his swarthy skin. He could be a young Omar Sharif except for the accent. "You going to the pub?" he asked.
    "Not yet." I backed away. "I'll see you later," I said as his face fell. "Good-bye." I waved, closing the door, listening as the muffled creak of his footsteps