Jane Actually

fair JaneAusten2 only chose the email address as a lark, not actually claiming to be the Regency author.
    Her most recent address was [email protected], Jane Actually being a website that Melody had persuaded her to create once her identity was officially recognized. It consisted of little more than a domain name, a holding page and her email address. She did not care for it but Melody insisted she use it for any official correspondence.
    She preferred her original address through the AfterNet. She would not presume to contact the holder of [email protected] and ask her (or possibly him) to relinquish the address. She was after all bemused that three people before her and countless others after her thought the mantle of Jane Austen worth claiming.
    She found in her original email account a letter from Albert.
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Date: Jan. 31, 2011 06:15:09
    Subject: Guess who’s coming to the AGM?
    Dear Jane,
    Have you heard the news? THE Jane Austen is coming to the Fort Worth AGM. I just found out today. I’d been hoping they would invite her, what with the release of Sanditon, but I was still surprised. This certainly puts everything the other way round. Instead of us trying to guess what she was like, we can now just ask her.
    I also found confirmation that JASNA is offering the disembodied a special rate. It’s a nice gesture and makes a welcome contrast from the years before the discovery when I would attend as a lonely ghost, unable to even say “boo!” and reading over the shoulders of the attendees. It’s quite affordable and I hoped that I could persuade you to attend. I know it’s a daft thing to say, but I would enjoy meeting you “in person.”
    You’ve been so coy and secretive of late and I thought that perhaps you were embarrassed that you couldn’t afford the registration fee. Of course I know most of us don’t have money or the means to make any, so I thought I might offer to stand you the fee.
    Or if that makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you could attend unofficially. We could still meet at any public terminals at the hotel. Do say you’ll come.
    Then again, perhaps your recent silence is you giving me the “brush off” and all I’ve done with my offer is make the situation more awkward.
    But the deed is done and my offer stands.
    Albert
    Jane looked at the letter in amazement and she had to admit she felt a flush of excitement. In her day, such a letter would have been an admission of love. Today it would be tantamount to little more than “let’s have coffee.”
Well, perhaps more than coffee. Perhaps it would be closer to …
she couldn’t actually think what it would be closer to. Two incorporeal entities could do little more than reside in the same space.
    She also felt some guilt over Albert’s remark of “recent silence.” She hadn’t intentionally been avoiding his emails; she had simply been busy, but of course this was nothing compared to the guilt over the fact that she had never mentioned to him that she was
THE
Jane Austen.
    In fact she had admitted that to almost no one who knew her as JaneAusten3, apart from Melody and the committee that judged her identity. Her reasoning was simple; she hadn’t wanted to be associated with those who claimed to be Napoleon, Jesus Christ or the very famous singer named Elvis from the mid twentieth century. Their claims made them look mentally unstable and she felt sorry for the actual person in question. So although she had claimed the identity of Jane Austen in her username and email address, she never made any claims in her conversations.
    She had found Albert online and they were drawn together by their mutual interest in Hampshire, he claiming birth near Aldershot. Obviously from her username he thought her to be an Austen claimant, but from the first she—disingenuously perhaps—disassociated herself from any such agenda.
    The other reason for avoiding the subject of her identity was her interest in Albert’s life. He told her he died late in the Battle of the Somme during the Great War, which resonated deeply with her for she had been there amid the mud and the death of that horrific battle. Naturally enough he wanted to avoid talk of that time and by mutual agreement their conversation concerned mainly the period after the war.
    He had returned to Hampshire after his death but like Jane eventually decided to travel as a means of forestalling the terror