Jane Actually

entered.
    “Oh, here you are, Miss Austen,” Ms Smith said, “I want you to meet … oh, hello.” She pulled up short at seeing Stephen and must have read Mary and Stephen’s body language and realized she had interrupted an intimacy.
    “Ms Smith …”
    “Laurie, please,” she said.
    “Laurie, may I introduce Stephen Abrams. He is a graduate student who is studying … me. Stephen, this is Ms Smith, who works here, at the Tattered Cover.”
    “Nice to meet you,” he said, putting out his hand.
    “And you. Were you here for the reading?”
    “I was one of the last to squeeze in. I just drove up from Colorado Springs,” he added.
    “Oh, are you at UCCS?” 2
    “Uh, no, University of Chicago. I’m attending a … conference … and I wanted to … interview Miss Austen … about the paper I’m writing.”
    “He’s charming, but not very elegant,” Jane said in Mary’s ear.
    “And who is your friend?” Mary asked Ms Smith, to rescue Stephen.
    “Oh, pardon me. This is my friend Jeanette. She’s a fan but she couldn’t make it in time. She works at our Colfax store.”
    The next thirty minutes were spent with pleasantries and Mary must sign Jeanette’s copy of
Sanditon
and inquiries as to what were their plans for the rest of the day. Stephen tried to avoid looking at his watch and Mary tried to avoid noticing his glances, even though she also chafed at sacrificing their time together.
    Finally they were able to part with Ms Smith, her friend, and two other store employees who arrived to meet Miss Austen.
    “OK, if we hurry, we can get to the mountains while it’s still daylight,” Mary said once she was alone with Stephen. It was an exaggeration, of course, for in July they had many hours of daylight left.
    “Pardon me, but do I not have an opportunity to speak to your young man?” Jane asked.
    “What?”
    “I would like to speak with him directly … before you abandon me in our hotel room.”
    “Argh! OK, Stephen, Jane wants to talk to you before we …” She stopped because the smile on his face made it obvious he had no objection to speaking with Jane. “Oh right, the girl of your dreams. How about we go back to the hotel, I can get changed, and then we can meet you in the coffee shop and you and Jane can chat?”
    This plan was agreed to and Mary hurried back to the hotel while Stephen remained behind at the bookstore a few minutes—to avoid to be seen leaving together. Mary quickly changed clothes, all the while ignoring Jane’s speculations, and hurried down to the coffee shop where Stephen was waiting.
    Stephen had already ordered Mary a coffee, apparently remembering her order from their meeting in Chicago, which pleased her, although she would have preferred plain water. She thanked him and then put the terminal on the table so that Stephen and Jane could talk directly.
    “So you are the young man who had Mary so excited after Chicago,” were Jane’s first words, to Mary’s embarrassment.
    “Thank you Dolly Levi,” 3 Mary said. “Ignore her, Stephen.”
    “Uh, OK. I mean, it really is nice to see you … to talk to you again, Miss Austen.”
    “To be precise, this is our first direct communication—without Mary as interlocutor. And I do apologize for teasing you both. Making young people blush is one of the few pleasures I have left.”
    “Oh this is typical Jane,” Mary said. “She says something outrageous and then she puts on the charm.”
    “I guess that’s what I’ve always hoped you’d be like,” Stephen said.
    Stephen’s obvious worship made Mary roll her eyes, which Jane chose to ignore.
    “Now, I believe your thesis had something to do with the Enclosure Movement?”
    And so Stephen began to ply Jane with questions relevant to his thesis. To Mary, most of the questions were incomprehensible, despite her study of Jane’s life and times. She heard Stephen and Jane refer to the Reform Act, open field farming, famine, climate change, riots and Karl Marx. She kept looking at her phone to check the time, which was approaching four.
    “So did Knightley enclose the commons?” 4
    “Mr Knightley? No, of course not.”
    “But then what was all that about digging drains and moving rights of way? And the gypsies attacking Harriet? It sounds like the underpinnings of …”
    Mary had had enough and said so. “Fascinating as this is …”
    Jane got the hint. “Quite right, Mary. You and Stephen had hoped to travel to the mountains. Mary shall give