Hi friends! Are you ready for some fun? 🤩

The lovely Jayne Bamber is visiting today to celebrate her new release – Just Between Us. 🥳

And guess what happens in this book? The characters play a drinking game! 🍷

Those of you who are fans of New Girl may recognize it! 📺

Jayne is here to share her Regency version of True American and a most diverting excerpt of her characters playing this game together. 😄

We hope you enjoy! 🤗

Hello Austenesque readers! It’s a pleasure to be back with a new release. My latest, Just Between Us is not a mashup, my usual forte, but purely P&P with a healthy dose of Taylor Swift influence. While the narrative is based on my favorite ten-minute break-up song – but with a happy ending for everyone – the story also includes one other pop-culture Easter egg I’d like to share with you today.

While costume dramas are my usual TV go-to, my favorite show of all time is New Girl, and those of you familiar with the show probably share my secret wish to play True American. This rowdy drinking game of jumping on furniture and spouting nonsense is featured once every season, and it is a running joke that the rules are as vague as they are unhinged. And thanks to the good people of the internet, a playable version of the game is on Wikipedia.

So when I got to a part in the story where a mature and confident eighteen-year-old Lydia Bennet is looking for a way to liven up a house party and throw some couples together, it occurred to me that they should play True American – or rather, an Austenized and regency appropriate (or more accurately, a believably inappropriate) version of the game.

I renamed the game Regents and Lunatics (looking at you, George III) and developed a whole set of rules modified and scaled down enough to be politely acceptable in the situation, an intimate gathering of friends all related by blood or marriage. And our darling Lizzy Bennet is credited as having invented the game when snowed in with her family one Christmas, painting a picture of what the Bennets and Lucases got up to together in their younger days.

Before I share today’s excerpts, here are the rules to Regents and Lunatics, as the Bennet sisters inform Colonel Fitzwilliam, Bingley, Darcy, his sister, as her husband Viscount Webster….

Basic Rules:

A large table goes in the center of the room. On the table, place several bottles of wine, a decanter of brandy, and four baskets of pastries. Then, four large ottomans or chairs are placed very near the table. These are called the Rookeries – like the four rooks in the corners of a chess board. (This was Mr. Bennet’s contribution to the game.)

From each Rookery, another five pieces of furniture are positioned in a loop (the four loops make a cloverleaf shape) so that players advance from one Rookery to the next in a circuitous pattern. Players must stay on the furniture, because the floor is the Thames.

Everyone must begin with a full cup of wine, and players can only refill their cup when they are at a Rookery. But they must always have wine, and must drink as directed by the Regent.

Each player takes a turn at being Regent, and they can determine who moves through the circuits. They may demand Quote, Quiz, or Quirk, and all the other players must call out an answer.

Quirk is worth one space (piece of furniture) advanced. The Regent will do an impression of somebody present, and other players must guess who it is. Only those correct may move through the circuit.

Quiz is worth two spaces advanced, if answered correctly – and the question must have an objective answer, it cannot be a matter of opinion.

Quote is worth three spaces advanced. The Regent will recite a line of verse, and everyone must complete the quote correctly to advance.

All advancing players must take one sip of wine for each space they move. If the Regent manages to stump everyone, they drink/advance that many spaces instead.

If a player tumbles into the Thames (touches the floor) they must move to a Rookery and refill their cup. If there are too many people they must pass to advance in the circuit, they can just “swim the Thames” by walking across the floor to whatever piece of furniture they choose, but they have to mime swimming.

Special Rules:

There are four circuits connected by the four Rookeries, making the cloverleaf shape. Each circuit has about 5 pieces of furniture in it. One of the four circuits is the Lunatic Circuit. When players are in this circuit, they can throw things at the Regent if they get a wrong answer to Quirk/Quiz/Quote. However, it is considered bad form to get an answer wrong on purpose.

If a player is standing at a Rookery when it becomes their turn as Regent, they may call out ‘Marie Antoinette’ and the last person to say, ‘Let them eat cake’ is pelted with pastries by the Regent. (This rule was invented by Lydia Bennet.)

The “Queen Charlotte” rule (per Miss Lucas) stipulates that if a player runs out of wine before they reach a Rookery and refill their cup, they are obliged to heckle everybody relentlessly until they reach a Rookery and refill their wine.

The King Edward Caveat (named for Uncle Gardiner) states that if a player spills wine and soils a carpet, they must abdicate – they might still win the game, but they can never be Regent again.

To Win:

Taking turns being Regent and asking Quirk/Quiz/Quote continues until the wine is finished, and then the first person to reach a Rookery, then pour and drink a glass of brandy is declared the winner.

The excerpt I’m sharing today picks up just after Lizzy, Lydia, and Jane have explained the rules to their friends, who eagerly agree to play the game in honor of Lizzy’s birthday….

***

Within a quarter hour, the room had been transformed. Chairs, sofas, cushions, ottomans, and a variety of sturdy tables were arranged in the cloverleaf formation, with Elizabeth and Lydia supervising the gentlemens’ labour in placing the furniture properly. Charles insisted that his wife not lift a finger to assist them, in her condition, and made sure that none of the furniture was placed more than a foot apart, so that she might easily traverse it.

“I shall make a boat of a small cushion, and float the Thames to assist you in traversing the circuits,” he said gallantly to his wife.

Jane smiled and took his hand in hers. “How excellent, my dear – the first new rule added in three years!”

“The King Charles Heir Armada,” Elizabeth declared, clapping her hands regally.

“Heirmada,” the colonel japed.

Georgie threw a pillow at him for the pun. “Forgive me – I was practising for the Lunatic Circuit.”

Lydia was so delighted by this that she threw her arms around the surprised and delighted Viscountess and embraced her. “I am so happy you wish to play. I feared you would think it undignified.”

“I certainly do,” Georgiana teased. “Which is precisely why I wish to play! And I am a married woman, now, so my brother cannot forbid me.”

“It is fortunate she has had a protective and attentive brother, for she has a very indulgent husband, but seldom requires me to be so indecorous,” the Viscount quipped.

Captain Darcy clapped his new brother on the shoulder with a wry smile. “You forget, Jerome, I am the only one besides the Bennet sisters who has actually played this game before.” He turned to look warmly at Elizabeth. “Mrs. Lucas’s husband taught it to me when we were at sea. We could only hop between one bunk and the next in our quarters; Captain Lucas liked to play the game when we were in stormy waters, for the motion of the boat added a degree of difficulty. It helped distract us in dangerous conditions.”

Elizabeth returned his heated gaze with one of her own. He had told her many stories, years ago, of his time at sea, and often his tales included Olly. But he had never told her this one. She was glad of this pleasant surprise, as her heart swelled with a longing to embrace both of the men she so loved. Even as she wistfully thought that one of them was gone forever, she was filled with joy that the other was here, at last. Oh yes, they were in dangerous waters indeed.

Once the arrangements were complete, the revelry of Regents and Lunatic began; everybody poured themselves a glass of wine and selected a piece of furniture as their starting position. Georgie asked if she ought to remove her slippers, but Jane reassured her, “It is not as though you have been tromping through mud in them – but if any damage is done, I had already planned to reupholster much of the furniture in this room.”

“And you may need them, for if you find yourself in the Lunatic Circuit without any other projectiles in reach, a shoe will always do nicely,” Lydia said cheerfully.

Colonel Fitzwilliam looked as though he wished to propose to her that very moment. But he only asked, “Who shall begin?”

“On the count of three, everybody must hold up any number of fingers they choose,” Elizabeth said. Lydia counted to three, and they all held out their hands. “Jane, Lydia, and I have one, so we will each go first in order of age. Colonel Fitzwilliam and Charles, as you have two fingers up, you go next – oldest then youngest. Let me see, then it will be Lord Webster, then you, Captain Darcy, and lastly Georgie. And we shall repeat the sequence until there is a victor.”

Lydia looked to Jane. “Quirk, Quiz, or Quote?”

“So many Q’s,” Charles muttered.

“At the time the game was devised, Lizzy was an ardent and annoying admirer of alliteration,” Lydia quipped.

“How queer,” said the colonel.

“Quite quixotic,” Captain Darcy agreed, grinning at Elizabeth.

“Quiz,” Jane cried. “Let me think – what year was the Magna Carta signed?”

“1215,” was the answer given by everybody but Lydia, who said “1066,” before clapping a hand to her face.

“Too easy,” Elizabeth chided her.

“Yes, but now nearly all of you can advance two places,” Jane said.

“And take two sips of wine,” Lydia reminded them, sulking at her exclusion.

It was Elizabeth’s turn to be Regent next, and she tapped her chin thoughtfully as she considered. She knew Lydia wished them all to be quite foxed by the end of the game, but Elizabeth worried for Jane, who had taken the tiniest of sips from her glass of wine. She did not wish her sister to come to any harm in the game, and yet Charles was being so attentive. When she had played this game as a younger woman, she had preferred to ask questions that would stump her companions; this time she did as Jane had done, in making her demand an easy one to satisfy.

“Quote,” she said, thinking of something Olly had often said of her diminutive stature. “Though she be but little….”

“She is fierce!” This time everybody cried out the correct answer, drinking and shambling about the furniture as they advanced along the circuits.

Lydia was next, and she grinned from her position on one of the Rookeries. “Marie Antoinette!”

“Let them eat cake!” Everybody answered in a chorus, but Charles had been the slowest to speak, and was subsequently pelted with tarts. He caught one mid-air, took a bite, and gave Lydia a bow.

Lydia followed suit in delivering an easy question. “How many wives did Henry the eighth have?”

There was a cry of “Six,” from everybody but Charles, who blurted out “Eight,” and clapped a hand over his face in chagrin. His fingers smeared some jellied fruit across his face, inciting a great deal of hilarity in his guests.

Richard managed to stump them all by asking, “When was the Battle of Culloden?”

Only Captain Darcy and Lord Webster advanced and drank, though Georgie and Lydia had advanced to the Lunatic Circuit and seized the chance to throw their slippers at him.

Charles chose Quirk and leapt from an armchair to stand by the window, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture erect, and his countenance brooding and grim. “Captain Darcy,” Elizabeth, Georgie, and the colonel answered.

“Well done,” the latter boomed. “But it seems you have taken a dunking in the Thames, is that not so, Miss Bennet?”

“Finish your wine, Charles,” Lydia chided him.

He had just refilled his glass, as they had all been obliged to do once already, and so he took a couple minutes to finish the drink and put another before leaping back into the game. He selected a place in the Lunatic Circuit and declared himself quite ready to give a few incorrect answers.

The game proceeded with increasing wild glee as the decanters of wine began to deplete. Elizabeth had kept a steady pace a few spaces back from Captain Darcy throughout the game, until she knew the answer to a verse of poetry Georgie recited and Captain Darcy, positioned on a Rookery, did not answer. Now Elizabeth found herself at his side, one space away; they were almost near enough to touch.

It was Jane’s turn again. “Quirk,” she declared, before batting her eyelashes and fanning herself as she mimicked Lydia’s voice and said, “Flirting! Who is flirting? Are you talking about me? I do hope so!”

Lydia protested so vehemently that she fell off the little end table she was perched on; “King Edward,” Jane cried, though only a few drops of wine had been spilled. Lydia grumbled and refilled her cup.

Everybody guessed that it was the youngest Bennet sister Jane had mimicked, except for Captain Darcy. He extended his hand to Elizabeth, who stepped onto the same ottoman where he remained. She could see in his eyes that he had failed to answer deliberately, for the sake of standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

And now it was Elizabeth’s turn. As she had reached a Rookery, she bent down to pour herself a fourth glass of wine, and she was grateful that Captain Darcy steadied her, for she was half-dizzy with drink already. She straightened her shoulders and softly said, “Quirk,” before affecting a solemn face, her voice gravelly as she held Captain Darcy’s gaze and pronounced, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to me.”

Charles, Jane, and Lydia all called out the right answer; from the Lunatic Circuit, Colonel Fitzwilliam threw a pillow that hit Captain Darcy squarely in the chest. Captain Darcy knew the answer all too well, but he did not speak it, which would have obliged him to move a space away from Elizabeth. He only sipped at his wine and then smiled enigmatically as he stared at Elizabeth in a way that made her feel a vast deal beyond tolerable.

The moment was shattered when Lydia sang out, “Lizzy, you forgot to….”

“Oh! Marie Antoinette!” Elizabeth waited to see who would cry “Let them eat cake” last; once again Captain Darcy said nothing. Elizabeth held onto his hand as she leaned down and plucked a strawberry petit four off the centre table and then she leaned close to him as she smeared it across his cheek.

***

I hope this little taste makes you hungry for more! Just Between Us is available on Kindle Unlimited and paperback.

Oh, I love it! Especially the ending! I would love to play this version of True American – I’m a big fan of it! And I would love to trade places with Elizabeth and see Captain Darcy being all cute and ardent! 💗

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GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

Jayne is kindly offering an ebook giveaway of Just Between Us, in conjunction with her visit today!

 

To enter this giveaway, leave a comment, question, or some love for Jayne below and fill out the rafflecopter form.

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• This giveaway is open worldwide. Thank you, Jayne!
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