Jane Actually

the Brontës myself, but I can understand what it would mean to Janeites. Of course the content … well, that’s your business.
    “Needless to say we’re very excited and when Mrs Westerby should bring this to market …”
    “Yes, well that’s not decided yet. And the journal?”
    “That’s more difficult. Despite being in boxes, those papers are in much worse condition. The pages are quite brittle and stuck together. You really shouldn’t have opened the box. And unless we know that you definitely mean to bring those to sale … it would be a considerable expense to converse and authenticate those.”
    “So you can’t say whether the journal is … genuine.”
    “All I can say is that the undoubted authenticity of the one … makes one hopeful. We’re able to read a few of the pages of the journal … here’s a report,” Mr Handy said, sliding it to Courtney. He looked them over eagerly.
    “It’s a diary,” Courtney said, “of her married life to Harris Bigg-Wither.”
    “So it would seem, but again, this is only three pages of what we expect to be about 350.”
    “This is … it’s just amazing. But the cost of restoration and authentication … what is your estimate?”
    Silently Mr Handy handed Courtney another piece of paper.
    “Oh my,” he said.
    But sensing a potential sale slipping through his fingers, Mr Handy quickly added, “The authenticators are reasonably certain the despatch boxes were used by the Ministry of Defence during the war, possibly by military intelligence. That adds an air of mystery that should affect the sale price. And as it would be part of a larger Jane Austen collection … well your Mrs Westerby could find herself quite rich. Mind you we don’t exactly know how the identification of Jane Austen will affect the price. She’s got a book coming out this week in fact.”
    “Today, actually,” Courtney said.
    “Yes, very providential,” Mr Handy added.

Feeling silly
Pursuing a girl
    A lbert closed the window and his newly purchased copy of
Sanditon
disappeared. He honestly did not know what to think. Austen’s unfinished novel had been a favourite of his because he’d read it so late in his afterlife. Being an unfinished work, it had been difficult to find someone reading it over whose shoulder he could peer; consequently he’d never had the opportunity to read it uninterrupted until the birth of the AfterNet. He could never make it past chapter two and Jane had only written about eleven chapters before her death.
    So the incomplete story had become a favourite both because it had been elusive and because once he’d finally read it, it seemed so full of possibility. He’d often wondered what Austen’s intent had been. Would Charlotte Heywood, from whose viewpoint the story was related, prove to be the heroine? and would romance be her reward?
    Upon finishing this completed
Sanditon
, he could not honestly say whether either of those questions had been answered. It ended so abruptly (for Austen) and the ending was so pregnant with possibilities that he was overwhelmed with emotions and questions. He was reminded of his wife telling him that he would be a father—for a second time had stopped, his legs had left him and he’d been unable to speak for half a minute.
    He certainly had not anticipated, that like Emma, Charlotte would be a matchmaker, or that unlike Emma, she would prove to be quite a capable one. Nor had he anticipated that Lady Denham should get her just deserts. He could not recall any of Austen’s villains ever getting their comeuppance, although the humour of Lady Denham’s downfall took some of its sting. 1
    Humour, in fact, was the hallmark of the completed
Sanditon
, he realized. Austen’s previous novels breathed with humour, of course, but in this story it was a ever present ocean breeze that swept and swirled around every character and every character’s folly. That they were such laughable creations made them all the more endearing.
    He so much wanted to discuss the novel with his Jane, but she had of late been rather uncommunicative and some of his emails had gone unanswered, which was very unlike her.
    Not for the first time he wondered about her and also not for the first time did he worry about those details he knew or thought he knew about her. She had become more and more important to him since their first meeting four years ago, when they had argued on some forum: he defending Edward Ferrars in
Sense and