Perhaps, but we can certainly catch her in the act of cleverness -- for example, in the way she uses weather to shape events.
"Austen makes her plots turn on the weather," writes John Mullan in his insightful and delightful What Matters in Jane Austen? "Having arranged her characters and defined their situations, having planned her love stories and hatched the misunderstandings that might impede them, she lets the weather shape events. It is her way of admitting chance into her narratives."
But Jane Austen subtly, cleverly, uses the weather to bring events about. Professor Mullan illustrates this with the example of the rainy day in Bath when Anne Elliot, her sister Elizabeth and the artful widow Mrs. Clay go shopping on Milson Street with Mr. Elliot. It begins to rain and Austen arranges matters so that after some bustle about carriage rides and errands, Anne and Captain Wentworth encounter one another in a shop. He watches as Anne walks off with Mr. Elliot in the "manner of the privileged relation and friend." The captain's walking companions remark on how Mr. Elliot is obviously taken with his cousin Anne.
(And I think -- after all the punishment Anne has endured, watching Captain Wentworth thoughtlessly flirt with the Musgrove girls -- I think she has the right to take a little pleasure in his discomfort.)
Another example of using weather to shape events is the light snowfall in Hartfield on the night of the Westons' dinner party which results in Mr. Elton being alone in a carriage with Emma.
A further example, which was so subtle I hadn't noticed it, occurs also in Persuasion...