Eliza James smoothed her hands over the cream-colored, empire-waist gown. The dress was a bit small, straining at her chest too much for her liking, but that didn’t dampen her joy at being in full Regency garb. Tingles raced up and down her arms. Tonight! It was happening tonight!
“We’re beautiful.”
Eliza threw a grin at her best friend, Catherine Schreiber, as they studied their reflections in the mirror. “Yes, we are. There’s something to be said for emphasizing the feminine form, isn’t there?”
She’d never felt so gorgeous in her life. Sure, men hit on her often, complimenting her sapphire eyes and flaxen blonde hair, but now, standing here, dressed as if she could have walked out of a Pride and Prejudice movie set, she believed it—despite those pesky twenty extra pounds.
“At least the boobs,” her friend said. “They haven’t seemed this perky in years. I actually have cleavage.”
Eliza elbowed her. Cat may envy her curves, but Eliza would trade for Cat’s tall, lean frame in an instant. Until now, perhaps. Her boobs did look particularly appealing, squished up in the low-cut bodice as they were. She just hoped they didn’t escape the dress at an inopportune time.
“Look at us, Eliza. Really look at us.” Cat’s hand grabbed hers. “I’d like to think that if we had lived two hundred years ago, we still would have been best of friends. You mean the world to me, and you always will, even if tonight is the last night we are together.”
Eliza’s eyes welled up. She wiped away the tear that escaped and gave Cat an impulsive hug. Their last night together. It didn’t seem possible. Maybe it wasn’t possible. But Eliza hoped it was.
Tonight was her fairytale ball, her chance at being Cinderella, and ending up with her very own Prince Charming. Well, not a prince, but a duke, if all went right.
It was crazy, this plan she and Cat had hatched to launch Eliza back to the early nineteenth century. The Regency period. In England. If any of their friends knew, they’d say the two ought to be committed.
But nothing seemed crazy anymore, not after Cat had found a medieval manuscript left to her by her father, plus old love stories she’d written but forgotten about, and strange things had started happening. Make that strange men.
They’d come out of nowhere, these men asking her friend out. No one had paid attention to Cat in years, which was exactly as Cat liked it. Then suddenly, she’d had three guys hot after her. And not just any three guys—guys exactly like the ones in her stories.
Eliza almost cackled out loud. It still amused her to know that Cat, who’d teased Eliza mercilessly for years about her reading genre of choice—romance novels, when not Jane Austen—had secretly written her own stories about the fantasy men she’d longed for. The men who’d appeared, one by one, this fall.
The only explanation was magic. Well, that, and Cat’s manuscript, which claimed its owner had the power to turn words into flesh. Her friend hadn’t believed it, had fought against it. Who wouldn’t? The whole idea was insane. But when Cat had changed a story and it’d changed reality, they’d known: Cat could bring fictional men to life.
That’s when Eliza had come up with this nutso idea: to throw a Regency-themed ball in the Treasure Trove, Cat’s downstairs bookstore, in order to bring an English duke, one Cat would create for her, forward in time to find Eliza—and take her back with him.
Over the last two weeks, the friends had played around for hours on the British Museum’s online site and on Pinterest, researching and plotting and drafting to their heart’s content, until Eliza was satisfied with her dream duke—someone she envisioned as a cross between Hugh Jackman, Colin Firth, and the hero of every romance she’d ever read.
Her heart swelled with the idea that she would be meeting him tonight. So did her anxiety levels. Because, really, even if this duke, this Deveric Mattersley, as Cat had named him, did show up and whisk her back two hundred years, who was to say he’d actually fall in love with her, Eliza James, twenty-nine-year-old widow, perpetual grad student, a woman too fond of brownies and not fond enough of exercise? She wasn’t exactly ideal duchess material.
She shook off those thoughts. Who was to say she’d fall in love with him? Love was a two-way street, after all. And it would work out as it should. It would. She had to believe that.
“I’m sorry for leaving you, Cat. I love you like the sister I never had. Thank you for understanding ... and for letting me go.”
“I’m not letting you go. I’ll just have to meet you in a different place.” Cat backed up a step. “If this works, that is. May I admit I’m secretly hoping it won’t?”
“You may,” said Eliza. “But if it doesn’t, I know you were willing, and that means everything to me.” She wiped more tears off her cheeks. “Thank goodness most Regency women didn’t wear mascara,” she said, “or I’d resemble a raccoon right now.”
She breathed in and out, in and out, working to calm herself. This was going to work. This had to work. There wasn’t much here for her, anyway, besides Cat. Eliza’d lost her husband ten years ago, and then her parents. She loved her best friend, but she wanted more. Now that Cat was hopefully on the verge of her own happy-ever-after, it was Eliza’s time for more, right? She lifted her chin up, adjusting her breasts in her dress a final time before pulling on her evening gloves. Start as you mean to go on, girl. She sniffed as she checked one last time to ensure her jewelry and phone were tucked in the hidden pocket she’d added to the costume.
Cat handed her a Kleenex. “C’mon, Miss Austen, let’s go greet our guests.”