A Weekend with Mr. Darcy (25 page)

Warwick woke up with a headache that had nothing to do with alcohol. He groaned and rolled over, wishing he could fall asleep again but knowing it would be impossible. He had to try to speak to Katherine again.

Leaping out of bed, he took a shower and shaved and dressed, and then he left his room with the speed of a man on a mission. It was still early and he was grateful that there was nobody around to stop his progress. He really couldn't handle an encounter with the ebullient Doris Norris or the insufferable Mrs Soames.

It took him only seconds to reach Katherine's room, but he instantly knew that something was wrong because her door had been left open with the key hanging in the lock.

‘Katherine?' he called, inching his way inside. The curtains were open and the bed was made, and he knew in an instant that it hadn't been slept in. Katherine had left.

He walked across to the window and looked out over the gardens and down to the lake. There was no getting away from it—he'd screwed up big time. How on earth was he going to sort this one out? And was it something that could be sorted out? He wasn't at all sure it was. It was more complicated than any of his plots. At least if they got too complicated, he could go back and delete things. You couldn't do that with life. There was no Delete button to help you erase an awkward scene. You couldn't hit Backspace to get rid of all the rubbishy bits. You had to live with the decisions you made.

Warwick leant his head against the window, feeling the cool glass against his skin. Katherine would never forgive him, would she? Well, he couldn't blame her. Being a writer, he was good at seeing things from other people's perspectives, and he could perfectly understand why she'd never want to see him or hear from him again—
ever!
He also knew that he couldn't live with that thought. He loved her. He'd never loved anyone more than her, and he was profoundly sorry that she'd become entangled in such a god-awful mess.

He had to sort it out. How he'd do it was a mystery to him and certainly one that couldn't be solved before a cup of coffee so he left the room and went downstairs in search of one.

Higgins the butler was the first person he saw when he reached the entrance hall.

‘Good morning,' Warwick said. ‘Did Miss Sparks get to her hotel all right last night?'

Higgins cleared his throat. ‘I'm afraid madam was in no state to go anywhere, sir.'

‘What do you mean? She's still here?' Warwick said aghast.

‘She is indeed, sir. We thought it best to let her sleep it off so we made up a bed for her in the West Drawing Room.'

‘Can I see her?'

‘Of course, sir.' Higgins motioned in the direction. ‘I'll bring you both some coffee, sir.'

‘Thank you,' Warwick said. ‘That would be most appreciated.'

Like Jace the night before, Nadia was asleep on the sofa, a thick duvet hiding half her head. Warwick didn't want to disturb her but, at the same time, he wanted to shake her until her head fell off.

‘Nadia?' he called.

There was no response.

‘Nadia!'

A slight groan rose from the duvet and a pair of bleary red eyes greeted him. He wished the sight of it shocked him, but it didn't because he'd seen it many times before. Her spiky hair stood up around her head in a scary halo, making her look thistle-like, and her lipstick had turned into a scarlet streak across her face. It was not a pretty sight.

‘Oh, my head! My poor head,' she complained.

‘Your head! You're moaning about your head? What about my heart, Nadia?'

She looked confused. ‘What's wrong with your heart? Are you ill?'

‘No, I'm not ill,' he said. ‘I was being poetic.'

‘Well don't be. It's too early in the morning to be poetic. I need coffee.'

‘So do I,' Warwick said. ‘Higgins is bringing us some.'

‘Is he the cute butler?'

‘Cute? He's seventy years old!'

‘Oh, dear,' Nadia said. ‘Perhaps he looked cuter after a few cocktails.'

‘Nadia!'

‘I think I may have made a pass at him.'

Warwick's head dived into his hands in despair. ‘I still can't believe what you said.'

Nadia pushed the duvet away from her body and swung her feet onto the floor. ‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I don't know what possessed me.'

‘Alcohol!' Warwick shouted. ‘That's what possessed you! Don't you know what you're like when you drink? For God's sake, Nadia, you're a nightmare. You always do or say something you regret.'

‘Do I? Do I really?' She looked genuinely mortified at the thought.

‘Yes!'

She reached out and squeezed Warwick's arm. ‘Well, maybe it's for the best. I mean, it was bound to come out sooner or later, wasn't it?'

‘I'd rather it was later,' Warwick said.

‘She seemed like a really nice girl.'

‘She was a really nice girl,' Warwick said, ‘and you've gone and ruined it!'

‘Surely not,' Nadia said. ‘You just need to explain things to her.'

‘She won't listen to me.'

‘Maybe she will this morning, now she's had a night to sleep on it.'

‘She left last night.'

‘Oh,' Nadia said.

They sat in silence for a moment, Nadia's eyes casting around for her shoes.

‘I really love her,' Warwick whispered.

‘Oh, Warwick!'

‘And I don't know what to do.'

Higgins entered the drawing room with a tray holding two cups of strong black coffee.

Nadia looked up, her face instantly flushed red, and she quickly looked away.

Higgins laid the tray down on a table. ‘Your coffee,' he announced unnecessarily, and Warwick noticed that the old butler was blushing too.

***

Robyn was deliberately taking forever to get showered and dressed. It was the last time she'd wake up in the Cedar Room and the last time she'd enjoy the view out across the lawn.

After putting on a poppy-coloured dress and pinning her silver horse brooch to it, she sat on the window seat, looking out towards the stable block. She could just see the clock tower, and the temptation to leave the house and go see Dan once more was overwhelming.

‘But I've said my good-byes,' she told herself and getting up from the window seat, she wheeled her suitcase onto the landing in preparation for departure, taking one last look at the room before heading downstairs for breakfast.

As soon as she entered the entrance hall, she heard raised voices and the figure of Warwick appeared from one of the rooms that led off the hall.

‘Katherine's gone, Nadia, and she won't be coming back.'

‘Well, she would've been leaving today anyway. What's the big problem?'

Robyn watched as a dishevelled-looking woman followed Warwick.

‘Robyn!' he said, looking surprised.

‘Katherine's gone?' Robyn said. ‘Why did she go?'

‘Why?' Warwick's eyes widened alarmingly. ‘Why don't you ask this woman?'

‘Oh, for pity's sake,
don't
start all that again! My head's throbbing!'

‘If you hadn't turned up, Nadia, if you hadn't gone and got drunk like you always do and opened your big mouth—'

‘She'd have found out sooner or later,' Nadia said.

Robyn looked from one to the other in deep puzzlement. ‘Found out what? Why's Katherine gone?'

The hall was beginning to fill with people on their way to breakfast.

‘Katherine's gone?' Roberta said as she and her sister Rose joined Robyn. ‘Did she have any breakfast?'

‘She left last night,' Warwick said.

‘But why?' Rose asked.

‘Because she found out the truth,' Nadia said.

‘Shut it right now, Nadia.'

‘Oh, Warwick, it's out now, isn't it? What's the point in hiding it anymore?'

‘Hiding what?' Roberta asked.

Nadia took a deep breath. ‘Warwick here is Lorna Warwick.'

‘Oh my god!' Warwick yelled, as if he'd been shot.

‘Lorna Warwick?' Robyn said. ‘I don't understand. How can you be Lorna Warwick?' she asked, turning to face him.

‘It's his pen name, silly!' Nadia said. ‘He writes as a woman.'

Warwick's mouth dropped open. ‘Why not tell the whole world while you're at it? Take out a page in
The Times
!'

‘Lorna Warwick?' Doris Norris, who'd just entered the hall along with Mrs Soames and half a dozen others, jostled to the front. ‘
He's
Lorna Warwick?'

‘He certainly is!' Nadia said, suddenly looking very pleased with herself. ‘It was my idea, too.'

‘
Your
idea?' Warwick cried. ‘It wasn't your idea! I submitted my first novel to you as Lorna. You had no idea I was a man until I turned up at the restaurant that day.'

‘Of course I knew,' Nadia said, blushing furiously.

‘Lorna Warwick?' Doris said above their voices. ‘
He's
Lorna Warwick?'

‘That's what they're saying,' Roberta said.

‘Well, I never!' Doris said, her hands flying to her face. ‘I simply must get my books signed by her. I mean
him
!'

Suddenly the hall filled with excitement and the sound of footsteps up and down the stairs.

‘It's Lorna Warwick!'

‘Who?'

‘Him! That Warwick fellow!'

Warwick's secret was well and truly out and before he could escape, there was a mad scramble to get books signed by him.

‘I bought five!' Doris announced, thrusting the bright paperbacks under his nose. ‘Put “To Doris,” and let me have my picture with him. Here, Rose, take my camera, will you?'

Warwick was surrounded. There was no escape. The public he'd hidden from for so long were making up for lost time.

***

Nadia left quickly and quietly, sneaking out as Warwick was crushed by fans. Dame Pamela, who'd been informed of the situation by a perplexed Higgins, finally came to his rescue, leading him up for a quiet breakfast in the privacy of her personal library.

‘Goodness! I've never known a weekend like this one before,' she said. ‘This room's certainly been made the most of.'

Warwick sat down on the chaise lounge, shaking his head in shame.

‘You are a man of mystery, aren't you?' Dame Pamela continued with a big smile. ‘I must say, I am surprised.'

He moved to the edge of the chaise as a much-needed cup of coffee was placed in his hands.

‘I am so sorry, Dame Pamela.'

Dame Pamela tutted and wagged a finger at him. ‘Everyone keeps apologising to me this weekend, and I've no idea why. I'm having an absolute ball. This is the best Jane Austen Conference ever!'

‘I feel like I've let everybody down,' Warwick said.

‘What do you mean? Everybody
loved
your revelation. They were going mad down there. They feel like they've been let in on the best kept secret in the world.'

‘I never meant for this to happen,' Warwick said. ‘I'm such a private person. I really don't crave attention for my work.'

‘Yes, I don't blame you for shunning the public's attention,' Dame Pamela said. ‘It can be wearisome having people clamouring after you all the time for your autograph.'

Warwick sighed. ‘That's just the sort of thing I wanted to avoid.'

Dame Pamela nodded sympathetically. ‘Now, before you leave, you simply
must
sign my Lorna Warwick books for me. I have them all, you know.'

Robyn sat at her desk at the college where she'd been working for more years than she cared to remember. A window overlooked a courtyard that held industrial-sized bins used by the catering students. Behind that was a canal that was looking a murky grey-green. It wasn't much of a view, but Robyn wasn't really looking at it because she was thinking of a place so beautiful that it wouldn't matter if her little window overlooked a sugar-white beach in the Seychelles.

She was thinking of Purley.

October had slipped into November and it was three weeks since she'd left Hampshire, but it seemed like a whole lifetime ago. She often recalled the last lovely glimpse of Purley from the back of the taxi and downloaded a photograph of it from the Internet and set it as her computer background.

She hadn't seen Dan on the morning of her departure. There was one moment as the taxi driver had been loading her suitcase into the boot when she looked across to the stable block and saw Biscuit racing back and forth after a couple of pigeons but there'd been no sign of Dan. But isn't that what she'd wanted?

Time. She'd asked for time, and now she had it in abundance. There was no Jace to pick up after at home anymore, and her evenings were hers to do with what she liked. She could sit and read or watch exactly what she wanted, without the fear of an irate boyfriend coming in and putting a foot through the TV.

The funny thing was, Robyn would pick up a book or put a much-beloved film adaptation on and then not really pay any attention to it. The pages would turn but the words wouldn't be fully digested, and Mr Darcy would be just a blur on the TV screen.

It was the same with everything she tried to do. Since coming home to Yorkshire, Robyn walked about in a daze, as if she were drifting, merely going through the motions of her day-to-day life, while with every breath in her body, she wished she were back at Purley. Life was happening all around her, but she wasn't noticing much at all. Take that week for example. She didn't notice buying three bruised bananas from the stall on the market. She didn't notice filing all the
M
's under
N
. Well, not until Bill Cartwright bellowed at her. And she didn't even notice the blouse that she wore inside out. She had only one thing on her mind, and his name was Dan Harcourt.

She'd spent days—
weeks
—thinking about their time together and agonising over how quickly it had all happened. That couldn't be right, could it? Nothing good could happen that fast, she thought. It must have been one of those holiday romances one hears about—brief, beautiful but unsustainable.

The more she thought about it, the more she believed that her time at Purley had been as fictional as her favourite books. It seemed like a dream world to her, and the feelings she experienced there didn't have a place in the real world.

Now, sitting at her desk in the office, she absentmindedly stroked her silver horse brooch. She pinned it to every outfit she wore—whether it was inside out or not. As she felt its smooth coolness beneath her fingertips, she remembered the panic she had the week before when she misplaced it, and there'd been a frantic search to find it. Everyone in the office had been involved until the work placement student, Samantha, found it at the side of a filing cabinet.

Perhaps that's why Robyn's fingers flew up to it with increasing regularity. She needed to be sure it was there.

That evening, after being released from the restraints of yet another day at the office, she fed the chickens in her back garden, marvelling at how bright their colours looked in the last rays of the sun. Wickham was looking a bit out of sorts as Robyn's toes had been put away until next spring, and Lydia and Miss Bingley were squabbling over some poor beetle in the grass that only just managed to escape their brutal beaks.

Inside, Robyn moped about for a while, picking up her prize copies of the Jane Austen novels she won in the quiz night at Purley.

For a moment she thought about Jace and how he would have teased her at having yet more copies of the famous books. She'd seen him the previous week on the high street. She ducked behind a stall selling dog rugs and he hadn't seen her. He'd been with his mum, and Robyn had a feeling that he always would be.

After she pulled out the white-and-gold copy of
Pride and Prejudice
, her fingers rubbed over the embossed cover and spine. It was perfect, but it wasn't as perfect as her old trusted travelling copy she'd leant to Dan and which was all the more precious to her now because he'd held it in his hands for hours, devouring the words as eagerly as she did. She picked it up, turned to the famous first page, and read the very words Dan would have read.
It is a truth universally acknowledged…

‘That a single girl in possession of a great love must be in want of a complete change of lifestyle,' Robyn said with a little smile.

It was no use. She could ignore it no longer. She'd had enough time being herself in her old house in the old town she was brought up in, doing the old job she'd grown to hate. She didn't belong there anymore, and it was finally time to move on.

Before she could think of a reason not to, Robyn grabbed her conference pack and picked up the telephone, dialling the number on the front cover.

‘Purley Hall,' a voice said. It was Higgins, and Robyn had to stop herself from shouting his name in her excitement at hearing him again.

‘Higgins, it's Robyn Love. I came to the Jane Austen Conference.'

‘Good evening, Miss Love. How may I help you?'

‘I was wondering if I could speak to Dame Pamela.'

‘I'll see if she's available,' Higgins said and put Robyn on hold.

‘Robyn, darling! How are you?' Dame Pamela's voice sang down the line a moment later. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure? Everything okay, I hope?'

‘Oh, yes, Dame Pamela, but I have a question for you.'

‘Fire away, my dear. Fire away.'

‘Are you still looking for a PA?'

As Robyn waited to hear the answer, she only hoped that she wasn't too late.

***

In a quiet corner of West Sussex, Warwick was writing himself silly, with novels and letters. In the three weeks since the Jane Austen Conference, he'd written eighteen letters to Katherine, and all of them had been returned to him unopened. He sent them to her home address as well as care of St Bridget's. After the first six came back, he started getting sly, printing out typed address labels and using different envelopes. It worked, and Katherine obviously opened them, but she still returned them, without a single word of her own added to them.

‘Goddamnit!' Warwick cursed, highlighting and deleting a whole page of nonsense he'd just typed. It was his new novel, and it hadn't been going well. Nothing had been going well since he left Purley.

Once word was out about his true identity, his publishers had gone to town, making the most of an excellent PR opportunity, and Warwick was expected to do all sorts of interviews for newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. It had been awful. The only thing he got out of it had been to use these forms of communication to try to apologise to Katherine, hoping against hope that she'd be reading, listening or watching.

‘I never meant to hurt anybody,' he told Andre Levinson on his chat show. ‘It's just that things got out of hand and I couldn't see a way out.'

‘I have some very special readers who mean the world to me,' he told the reporter from the newspaper
Vive!
‘And I hope they stay in touch. I really do.'

He'd received five sacks of fan mail after that story went out, but not a single letter from Katherine.

He finally made the decision to visit her, driving from West Sussex up to Oxfordshire, one day. If she didn't respond to his letters or phone calls, what other choice did he have? But there was no reply at the little cottage, and he spent more than two hours hanging around the garden and pressing his nose up against the windows. He made friends with one of the cats, though, a gorgeous hairy beast that wound his way round his legs and meowed when picked up.

‘Who are you, then? Freddie or Fitz?' he asked. The toffee-coloured creature just purred. ‘Tell your mistress I'm sorry, will you?' he said, stroking the furry head that she herself must have stroked a thousand times.

After that, he drove in to Oxford but when he tried to get into St Bridget's College, he was told it wasn't open to visitors. He spent an hour walking around the city but its beauty left him cold. There was only one thing of beauty he wanted to see, so he drove back to Katherine's once more. There was a car in the driveway, and he knocked and called until he was hoarse and a next door neighbour came out and glared at him, a dangerous-looking broom in her hand.

The event was thoroughly depressing. He returned to West Sussex and his writing.