Midnight in Austenland

“Off on an adventure?” he asked.

“Yeah. Will you come with me?”

Caesar wasn’t alone as he waded into the waters of the Rubicon. When Charlotte solved a violent, shocking murder, it would be nice to have a friend beside her. Because when she thought about what she was about to do, she felt a buzzing in her fingers warning that her hands were most likely shaking. She gripped Eddie’s arm harder to try to keep them still.

“And where are we going?” he asked, placing one of his hands over hers.

“The pond.”

The pond lay dull and gray between the trees, no breeze to finger its surface into uneasy ripples. The sky was clogged with clouds, preventing reflected sunlight from winking mischievously on the waves, as one might expect if the waters did indeed hide a secret. But the pond resisted all personification, neither begging for inspection nor warning of horrors best left alone. It just lay there, uninterested.

Which was really irritating. Charlotte would have appreciated some seductive shore lapping, ripples beckoning like a curved finger, that sort of thing. But no. Thanks a lot for nothing, pond. So Charlotte did her best to supply the scene with the necessary exaggerations to provoke her to action.

See there, how that cloud’s reflection was shaped like a hand?

My, but wasn’t there a great looming shadow in the water’s depths?

Hark, but didn’t the twittering of birds in the trees seem to sort of imply that the wildlife was all aflutter about something horrid and unnatural that took place here, such as, oh, I don’t know, murder most foul?!

Eddie and Charlotte stood on the banks of the pond. Staring at it. At least one of them wishing it looked more intriguing.

“So here we are,” said Eddie. “At the pond. I certainly hope this vapid gaping does not qualify as an adventure, or I might have to take aggressive action and save you from the continued dullness of country life.”

“Nope. I’m just gearing up to take a swim.”

She started stripping down before he could reply.

“Er … several responses are coming to mind,” he said, holding his head as if it hurt. “Hard … to choose … between them all.”

“Just like we used to do back home,” she said. That sort of logic usually worked with Eddie. Besides, there was no view of the house or any of its outbuildings from the pond. It was unlikely that Mr. Mallery or one of the others would come along. And her corset, chemise, and bloomers were far more modest than twenty-first century bathing fare, even if they did qualify as weird underwear.

“If you’d rather not, I’ll go it alone. I’m just … uh, dying in this blazing sun.”

Eddie squinted suspiciously at the overcast sky.

“Right. Blazing. You always were impetuous. Weren’t you?”

“Always,” she confirmed. Not really, but it was nice to imagine a brother who thought of her that way—wild Charlotte, unpredictable Charlotte, dive-into-unknown-waters-in-search-of-clues Charlotte. She could be that—for a little while, anyway.

“Yes, I remember well. So. It would appear my brotherly duty is to stand guard, because I am not climbing into that cesspool.”

“Spoilsport,” she said and jumped in.

Chilly. Oh yes, most definitely chilly. But she swam around, warming up her muscles, and the exercise felt great, as long as she avoided the shallower parts and the greedy little pond plants that reached up to tangle her ankles. Way creepy sensation in a pond where a murderer might have dumped a body.

She didn’t want Eddie to know what she was really doing. Because, honestly, what on earth was she doing?

Charlotte flipped her hips up and dove underwater, swimming with her eyes open. It was deeper than she’d thought, and the water wasn’t exactly country club clear. She came up for a breath.

“Doing your mermaid impersonation?” Eddie called from the shore.

“Come on in, the water’s fine!” she called.

“So sings the siren before pulling the unsuspecting sailor down to Davy Jones’s locker. I am no water nymph. And I do not like … fish.” He shivered.

“What, you’re afraid of teeny little pond fishies nibbling on your toes?”

He grimaced.

“Fish!” Charlotte screamed and went underwater as if pulled from below.

“Charlotte!” Eddie shouted, standing.

She popped back up with a wet grin. He glared and threw a chunk of grass at her.

She dodged and went underwater again, swimming toward the middle. Something was there. Something was really there. Her heart beat harder, making it difficult to hold her breath. She came up, breathing in deeply, and floated on her back, looking up at the sky. Once her breath slowed, she dove straight down.

Straight down to the roof of a car. Despite the murkiness, there was no mistaking it. She could see the silver glint of a BMW decal on the hood. Those had been tire marks on the edge of the pond after the rainstorm. Someone had driven a BMW into the pond and then stamped over the muddy tracks to try to disguise them. If Mr. Wattlesbrook, drunk and stupid, had driven his own car into the pond, then who had covered his tracks?

She came back up, breathing rapidly.

Don’t think too hard yet or you’ll freak out. You are like Jacques Cousteau. You are investigating underwater wildlife, like algae and sunfish and Beamers. That’s all. Keep breathing.

Down she went again. She kicked hard till she could grab the door handle and peer in the window. Little light filtered through the dirty water and car windows, but if there’d been a body at the wheel, she could have made it out. As near as she could tell, there weren’t even keys in the ignition. The windows were rolled down partway, as if welcoming in the water, and the doors were locked. Something was dangling from the ceiling of the car. Her motion caused it to slowly spin. It was a glove, pockets of air in the fingertips suspending it in the water. In natural light, she guessed, it would be yellow.

Charlotte swam around to the trunk and tried to pry it open with cold, awkward fingers. Locked.

There’s a body in there, she thought.

Suddenly her lungs did fine imitations of rabid dogs, snarling and snapping at her. MUST HAVE AIR, they said. Her eyeballs hurt, the cold pressure of the water unbearable. She released her held breath in a flurry of bubbles and beat her way to the surface.

Charlotte came up with a shudder and a gasp. She swam lamely to the side and hoisted herself onto the grassy bank.