Jane Actually

Tamara had interpreted as the offer and was struck by the amount. Then she realized that what Melody had written down was her percentage as Jane’s agent.
    Their conversation turned to other topics; the daily back and forth of two people who loved each other and had been in love for quite some time. Eventually, however, Melody decided she’d been away from Mr Pembroke too long and resigned herself to returning to discussions of the minutiae of the book launch. She said goodbye to Tamara and thought yet again how fortunate she was to find someone so lucky and talented.
    And Tamara thought she’d better look up a chicken parmigiana recipe online.

Roommates
Stephen and Albert meet online
    S tephen tried to ignore the distractions his computer continually offered while he was writing his speech for the upcoming romance conference in Colorado Springs, but the bookmark for Virtual Chawton kept tempting him.
    He was no longer actively helping Dr Davis and frankly thought her obsession a waste of time. It wasn’t like this Jane Austen suddenly emerged out of nowhere. The AfterNet had announced it was examining a claimant to Jane Austen’s legacy for months before they made their decision. So if this person was not really her, then the real Jane Austen had had ample time to make a counterclaim. That no one had done so meant either that there were no legitimate claimants or the real Jane Austen had over the course of nearly two hundred years withdrawn from the world of flesh and blood so much that she no longer cared about her identity and her legacy.
    So if he had to choose between a Jane Austen who seemed to be living up to the reputation—and that certainly seemed to be the impression of those few familiar with her completion of
Sanditon
—or a Jane Austen so lost to dementia that she couldn’t be bothered to claim her identity, then his choice was simple.
    But just as an intellectual exercise, he was still curious how Austen had proven her identity. As he’d told Davis, the mapping project, the 3D reconstructions and the inventories of both Chawton House and Chawton Cottage meant it was pretty difficult for anyone to claim secret knowledge.
    He had been wondering if the answer lay in Edward Austen-Knight’s other home, Godmersham Park. Perhaps Austen knew some detail at that house, which was now the home of a medical college. And soon he was reflecting on the parallels between his life and Edward’s.
    Jane’s brother was the third oldest sibling, one of Jane’s six brothers. And he had been borrowed by his father’s cousin, Thomas Knight and his wife, and later adopted by them as they had no children of their own. The Reverend George Austen and his wife must understandably have hated to relinquish their rights to their son, but in the practical calculations of the day, it made sense to offer Edward a much better life with the wealthy Knights. After all, the Austens regularly visited their son at his several homes after the death of his adoptive parents and it was Edward who allowed Mrs Austen, Cassandra, Jane and their friend Martha Lloyd to live at Chawton Cottage, a house near his estate Chawton House. In that light, allowing Edward to be adopted certainly paid off.
    Edward’s life closely resembled that of a character in
Emma.
In that novel, Mr Weston, left unable by grief and genteel poverty to raise his son after the death of his first wife, allowed his brother-in-law and his wife to adopt his son, Frank. And in
Mansfield Park,
Fanny Price is not quite adopted but is raised by the Bertrams. And again in
Emma
, Jane Fairfax is cared for by the Campbells after the death of her father.
    So repeatedly, Stephen found that Austen’s definition of family ties was quite mutable, something he appreciated, as he was also to some extent a loaned son. At sixteen, he’d gone to Evanston, Illinois, to live with his childless uncle and aunt. He’d enrolled in prep school there, paid for by his uncle, and then went to Northwestern University, also partly paid for by his uncle and the scholarships Stephen had been awarded. He regularly went home to Bloomington, however, and didn’t need to change his name, but in many ways, he felt the same divided loyalties that he imagined Edward had experienced. And now he also felt guilt in not being able to support Davis in her quest to unseat Austen.
    Lost in these conflicting thoughts and emotions, he was happy when his computer distracted him with new mail.
    From: