Studies in Romantic Fiction II

Ravenwood

She sat at the bar slowly eating toast at some time roughly before noon. She hadn't been able to go back to sleep, and while she was really suffering the ill-effects, she couldn't bring herself to go to bed again. Maybe Jenny would find a way to leave work early, so that their day could reconvene, carry on where it had been left? Her eyes had defocused from the newspaper article she was trying to read, and she realised she had been chewing one soggy wad of toast for longer than she should have been. Picking up her mug, she took a hearty swig of tea to wash it down with, and began eating the other slice. The front-page news was just something to do with more scandals in the House of Commons, but Clara thought the House of Commons was one big scandal and none of the words sank in.

"Is there anything good in there?" Nios asked, returning from the cellar at that moment with a fresh bucket of paint. She was painting her bedroom upstairs but apparently couldn't get the precise shade of blue she wanted, so kept mixing all the paint they had downstairs for painting the main room. She set the paint bucket down on the bar next to Clara.

"I'm trying to see if there's anything about those murders last week. You know, the one where the alien-bloke was harvesting human organs to sell to intergalactic restaurants as a delicacy," Clara said.

"What are you looking at that for?"

"I'm after the address – I'm thinking of stepping up from drinking human blood to eating human meat," she quipped, smiling at Nios as she took another bite of toast. Nios had made the toast for her, incidentally, in exchange for being allowed to mix all the paint to her heart's content. "I just want to see if Jenny's mentioned anywhere, she got a commendation for it. Because I collect the newspaper clippings."

"Do you?" Nios asked, surprised.

"I have been since she started working; don't tell her, it's a secret. I'm going to compile them into a scrapbook and give them to her on her birthday in a few months," Clara said, "My fiancée, the hero cop."

"You haven't asked her yet."

"I know, but she'll say yes, I'm sure of it," said Clara, "That's why I was just going to propose over a nice breakfast she didn't have to make while she has time off. I think the ring is a romantic enough gesture – it's got a black diamond. My future wife will absolutely not have your ordinary, run-of-the-mill engagement ring. See?" Clara took the ring out of her pocket again where she was keeping it, not in a box because she really wanted to take Jenny by surprise. This time, Nios didn't grab it out of her hand, and merely examined it from where she stood. "Do you think she'll like it?"

"I think she'll love it just as much as that old scarf she still wears constantly." Clara couldn't keep the goofy smile off her face as she stashed the ring safely back in her pocket. "What's your new proposal plan?"

"I don't know. Dinner?" she suggested, "Maybe I should just bite the bullet and take her to a restaurant, like normal people…"

"Seafood!" Nios exclaimed suddenly, "Take her to a seafood restaurant."

"Oh yeah…" Clara's eyes grew wide with this realisation. Jenny did adore seafood, and seafood restaurants were some of the restaurants where there was a lower amount of garlic than most. She could normally cope with them once in a blue moon, and her proposal was more than a good enough excuse. "I'll do that. I'll start googling it now. You're beautiful – if Jenny says no, I might ask you to marry me."

"I'm taken, unfortunately."

"Really? Even with the bribe of some delicious seafood?"

"Even then." Clara pouted. When she put the newspaper down, Nios picked it up and started skimming it as well. Clara unlocked her phone to look up any seafood places she might be able to get somewhat last-minute reservations for, but when she did she came face-to-face with all of Sally Sparrow's texts from the middle of the night. Clara had not responded to any of them because she didn't want to get involved.

"Guess what?"

"What?"

"Sally and James have broken up again," Clara updated Nios with all the gossip she didn't really care about. "Apparently he's trying to control her 'every move' and he 'ordered her' to clean up what was 'basically no mess.'"

"They've split up because he asked her to tidy?" Clara nodded. "Maybe it'll be for good this time."

"I'm sick of their fights. I always hear the other side to Jenny and then we argue about it – I hate that. Why should we be arguing about what's going on with Sally Sparrow and James Elliott? I wish Esther would come out of hiding and sort it. She doesn't even need to be in hiding because she's not a Manifest."

"She has the symptoms of a Manifest, and she's still wanted by UNIT," Nios pointed out. Esther was still an integral part of the Manifest underground, but it was going to be another few years until the HCC and its tyranny was shut down completely. Clara hated that, seeing so many stories in the papers about more and more Manifests being detained, the spin they put on it to make it seem like they were doing everyone a favour – it reminded her of when people lost their jobs or went to prison for being gay, and she had a very personal stake in that shameful part of history. "I never thought they were good together."

"Never?"

"You just think they're good together because they're both pretty," Nios said, "But they're not. Ever since that ridiculous scheme he concocted to make her jealous at Rose's wedding."

"You're very pessimistic, sweetheart."

"I think you can tell from the beginning whether things are going to work out or not."

"Sure, sure." Clara didn't believe her. "Do you think I should run out and get a new dress quickly?"

"No."

"Really?"

"She'll definitely work out something's going on if you book a table in a restaurant and buy a new dress. Just wear whatever her favourite dress of yours is," Nios advised. Clara nodded, taking in this information, and went back to searching around Google Maps for places with at least three stars in a decent radius. Clara scrolled and Nios skimmed, actually reading the stuff about the newest accusations of political fraud.

A yowl and a male scream of terror erupted from the other side of the building. It was coming from the back alley the kitchen opened onto, and both Clara and Nios heard it clearly despite the distance. She dropped her phone and Nios dropped the paper, but Clara won the race to open the door and see what was going on; she had learnt a lot of tricks in her six years of being a vampire, like how to move very fast indeed. A tall man in a raincoat was being savaged by a black monster on their doorstep, a black monster Clara shortly recognised as her own cat.

"Oi! Batfink!" she shouted at it, approaching. It was a good thing the rain was still pouring and the clouds were blocking the sunlight so that she could go wrangle the cat and pull it off the poor man, though Clara was suspicious of him loitering around outside the back door of the building. She dragged the enormous Maine Coon off him and it clung onto her and began to purr when she scratched the damp fur behind behind its ears. "I'm so sorry! He attacks everybody, he's like a guard dog. My girlfriend is absolutely terrified of him, and she's in the police."

"He came out of nowhere!" the man exclaimed. He had scratches on his face.

"Yeah, he does that, I can't apologise enough – what were you doing in the alley?" she inquired, trying to ignore the rain battening down on them.

"Looking for the way into this building, I couldn't seem to find the front door but I have to meet somebody at this address."

"Oh, really?" Clara frowned, still stroking the huge cat in her arms, holding him to stop him from lunging and attacking the stranger again. Maybe this unknown was some contact of Jenny's there to give her unofficial advice – it wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

"Clara Oswald," he said, "Do you know her?"

"I…" she stammered. Nios had been standing in the doorway listening the whole time, avoiding the bad weather, but now her attention was piqued. "Uh…"

"I've been instructed to deliver a package to a woman named Clara Oswald at this address on this date and this time," he said.

"Package?"

"It's only for her to see."

"I'm Clara Oswald," she confessed finally. Perhaps she was now Clara Ravenwood, but what package for her Other Self could be so confidential that she wasn't allowed to shed her own eyes on it? And she rather thought it might be for her, since it was her address, after all. "Sorry, you took me by surprise. I've changed my name. It used to be Oswald, it's Ravenwood now. Still Clara, though." She smiled. "What's the package?"

"I… think it might be better if I come inside, if that's alright with you?" he said. Clara squinted at him a little, but couldn't place him anywhere. She was sure she had never met him before.

"Yeah, alright, if you go in and then I'll put the cat out and make sure he won't get back in for the time being. He's an outdoor cat," Clara nodded for him to go in, and Nios stepped aside, still silent. She was like a cat herself, it took her a very long time to warm up to strangers. Maybe it was a synthetic thing. Clara dropped the cat back on the ground and shooed him away before returning to the interior of the hotel herself, shutting and locking the door behind her.

"This is a hotel?" he asked, looking around when Nios led him through the kitchen and into the bar, "Surely it should be easier to find the front door of a hotel."

"Depends on what kind of guests you want to attract," said Clara quite cryptically. They weren't really in the market for human patrons. "What's this package, then?" It was probably ill-advised to let strange men saying they had packages into your home, but she wasn't scared. Mainly because unless he had a stake or a crucifix she probably wasn't in any danger, and Nios was right there. Plus, she had one of Scotland Yard's top detectives on speed dial.

"I don't know," he said, "We've been instructed to never open it, that Clara Oswald had to open it."

"By who?"

"By my…" he paused and thought, then shook his head. "I don't know, my great-great-great-great aunt, or something. She lived over two hundred years ago, this thing has been in the family for a long time, I don't understand how she could know where you were in the future."

"Who's your aunt?"

"Jane Austen," he said, and Clara's smile vanished.

"What?"

"The novelist, you know-"

"Yes, I know who she is," she said awkwardly, "She gave you something to give to me? What is it?"

"Here," he opened his coat and drew out a very large, thick envelope.

"Ni, could you be a dear and get my flask?" Clara asked. She needed blood, desperately, and was clenching one of her fists. Nios went over to the bar to retrieve the flask where Clara had left it and brought it over to her, while this man – this Austen descendant – slid Clara the envelope over the table. She opened it and found a very thin cardboard box, a little like a cake box, and opened that to find a manuscript. An incredibly old and fragile manuscript; the kind she wouldn't normally so much as touch without wearing a pair of gloves in case the pages disintegrated between her fingertips. There was that, and a letter, which she very carefully unfolded. She recognised all of the handwriting very well. The letter was very short, however, and was simply instructions to deliver the manuscript that exact address on that day at that time.

In awe, Clara very delicately turned the manuscript to its first page and deciphered the slanted handwriting and the many crossings out to be as follows:

A Gentleman & Lady travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex Coast which lies between Hastings & E. Bourne, being induced by Business to quit the high road, & attempt a very rough Lane were overturned in toiling up its' long ascent half rock, half sand-

"Oh my god," she breathed to herself, and immediately began flipping through the rest of the pages until she located something truly remarkable at the headings of one of the pages, a page wedged only a third of the way through the whole lump of pages: Chapter 13. "Holy shit."

"What is it?" Nios asked, which made the stranger jump.

"Yes, what is it?" he pressed her.

"It's Sanditon," Clara said, "Or – she's renamed it, put a proper title, it's called My First Goodbye now. But she never finished it, famously, she got too ill and put down her pen – she even made a note of it. But this is it! This is her last novel, but it's completed, and she sent it to me, to me now, finished!"

"But who are you?" the man asked, "How would she know you existed?"

"It's complicated," Clara said, flicking to the end because she was dying to find out what happened – though she assumed all the characters ended up getting married off happily-ever-after, because that was always what happened at the end of Jane's stories. "It's got a character in it called Clara, Clara Brereton. She's very kind, very poor, and very beautiful."

"Oh, how you are enjoying yourself," Nios quipped.

"I don't understand," said the man, "How-"

"Shh, I'm trying to read," Clara hissed at him, then she looked up and addressed them both, "This is totally like Back to the Future. You know, when Doc goes to 1886 and asks them to send Marty the letter explaining what happened when the DeLorean got struck by lightning? This is exactly like that."

"Only, you don't have a time machine to use to go back and visit my aunt," the man said. Clara laughed slightly to herself, and went back to scanning the pages. And what she gleaned from the excepts she skimmed was marvellous, truly marvellous. It was something of a hobby of hers – what with her being both a Literature scholar and Jane Austen's ex, female lover – to keep up with the queer theory surrounding the woman. And there was a lot of it, as there was around more or less every female author. Of course, Clara had the added advantage of knowing the truth about Jane Austen and how she 'swung', as it were, but what she read still surprised her. Quite possibly the first blatant work of what could be called 'lesbian fiction' in all of modern English literature – where it was none other than whom she was sure was her namesake, Clara Brereton, and the novel's protagonist, Charlotte Heywood, who wound up falling into each other's arms.

But that wasn't even the most interesting thing; the most interesting thing was the very last paragraph, where Charlotte Heywood professed her everlasting love for 'Clara.' Only, Charlotte began to speak of not having much time left, of weakness, and of wanting to see her – Clara – one last time. Before 'Sanditon is overrun by tourists forever.'

"What is it?" Nios asked, "Are you okay?"

"It's a love letter," Clara realised, "The entire thing."

"To who?" the man was desperate.

"To me," she said, "Obviously. You're probably not gonna believe this, but I'm a time traveller, and I sort of… went back in time and… got with your great-great-great-or-whatever-aunt. Got with, as in, like, a gay way. She wasn't straight. She never got married."

"You can't go see her!" Nios exclaimed, "Not today! Not when you're meant to be proposing!"

"I have to!" Clara argued, "This novel was completed on her deathbed, Ni. The fact she managed to finish it was a miracle. I have to go see her, I can't say no, not when she's dying. Not when she's done this. You just don't understand because you've only ever been in love with one person – if Astrid Eicher had written a letter like this to Jenny, Jenny wouldn't hesitate to go and be with her at the end, she'd run off straight away. If Jane wants me to be there by her side when she… then I can't refuse. Do you see? I have to go. I have to go now."

"No!" Nios protested. The stranger was still reeling from the revelation of his distant relative's sexuality. "Absolutely not." But Clara was standing up already, she was searching for her coat and her umbrella. "Can't it wait until tomorrow, at least? Until everything with Jenny? Your reservations?"

"You make the reservations for me."

"I won't be a part of this."

"Nios, please," Clara went to talk to her directly, putting her hands on her arms and clutching her, "Do you think if you and Cohen broke up that if one day, years later, she asked you to be there when she-"

"Don't say things like that."

"Nios, she's dying. I'm not going to be able to think about anything else until I do my part, do the good thing. What if I'm the love of her life? I can't abandon her. I just can't. It's not like we broke up on bad terms – it would just never have worked. There's never been any animosity. Just let me go in the spaceship and don't tell Jenny. Make something up, I don't know. She'll have to hear it from me or she'll get all jealous and think I'm cheating on her, you know how she gets when anyone ever brings up Jane Austen. She can't even sit through Bridget Jones' Diary. Please cover for me, I'll be back before you know it, alright?"

"…Fine. But you're making your own proposal dinner reservations and you're making them now, before you leave. Under my supervision."

"Great! Thanks so much, Ni," Clara hugged her tightly, "You're my favourite evil robot in the whole world."