Dreaming of Mr. Darcy (2 page)

Kay sat at her desk in the office at Barnum and Mason. It had been three months since Peggy's funeral, and Kay still couldn't believe that her dear friend was gone and that Kay could no longer visit her at the nursing home, a pile of books in her bag ready for reading.

On a February morning that was sunny but bitterly cold, Peggy's funeral had taken place in the same church as that of Kay's mother. The snow had melted, and everything seemed wonderfully green, but there had been nothing to rejoice about that day. Kay had sat shivering in the same pew that she occupied only a few sad weeks before, watching the service through a veil of tears.

Now here she was sitting in the office as if nothing had happened. How callous time was, she thought. It hadn't stopped to mourn the passing of a dear friend but had marched onwards with ceaseless optimism and dragged Kay along for the ride.

She hadn't sketched for weeks, choosing to read instead. There had been the usual diet of Jane Austen, with Kay choosing
Northanger
Abbey
in the hopes that Catherine and Tilney's company would cheer her up. She'd also been trying to find out more about preparing her illustrations for publication and had raided the local library. There was one very useful book full of tips for the first-timer, and she'd sneaked it into work in the hope that she'd be able to photocopy some of the pages in a quiet moment.

‘Which is possibly now,' she said to herself, looking around the office. It was a small open-plan office with four desks occupied by her colleagues. Paul and Marcus were out at lunch and Janice was on the phone laughing. It obviously wasn't a work-related call; none of the business at the solicitors was the stuff that provoked laughter.

Opening her bag, she took out the book and walked over to the communal photocopier. She hoped she could get the pages copied before the silly old machine pulled a paper-jam stunt.

She was halfway through her copying when her phone went. Janice was still laughing into her own phone, so Kay had no choice but to return to her desk to answer it.

She was just replacing the receiver when Roger Barnum walked into the office brandishing a large document that looked as if it had an appointment with the photocopier.

Kay watched in horror, unable to make a move in time to rescue her book, watching as Mr Barnum lifted the lid of the photocopier.

‘Whose is this?' he barked, holding the book up and grimacing at it as if it might be infected. ‘
Painting
for
Pleasure
and
Profit
.'

Kay, blushing from head to foot, stood up to claim the book. ‘It's mine, Mr Barnum.'

‘And what's it doing on the photocopier?' he asked.

Kay wanted to groan at the ridiculous question, but she didn't. She simply took it from him and mumbled an apology.

Mr Barnum sniffed. ‘I'd like to have a quiet word with you in my office, Miss Ashton,' he said.

Kay nodded and followed him through.

‘Close the door and sit down,' he said.

Kay did as she was asked.

Mr Barnum walked around his desk and sat down on an expensive-looking chair. It wasn't like the threadbare office chair Kay had.

‘If you don't mind my saying,' Mr Barnum began, ‘your mind hasn't really been on your work lately, has it?'

‘Well, no,' Kay said. ‘My mother died recently, and I've just lost a dear friend too.'

‘Ah, yes. Well, one has to get over these things—move on and all that.'

Kay blinked hard. Had she just heard him right?

‘People come and people go. It's a sad fact of life, and we have to get on with it.'

‘Right,' Kay said. ‘I'll try to remember that.'

‘And this drawing of yours,' he continued, ‘you mustn't bring it into the office with you. I think we had an incident before, didn't we? Something concerning that Mr Darcy. For the life of me, I can't see what it is you women find so fascinating.'

Kay didn't say anything.

‘It's interfering. You must keep these things separate. Quite separate. Work is work. Play is play.'

‘But it isn't play, Mr Barnum. It's my passion.'

Mr Barnum's eyes widened in shock at the word ‘passion,' as if it might leap across the table and do him some sort of mischief.

‘In fact,' Kay said, enjoying having provoked such a response, ‘I've been thinking of
playing
a bit more. You see, I've just had a phone call, and it seems I've got some money coming my way very soon. I was left a property recently and it's just sold, so I'll be moving.'

‘Moving?' Mr Barnum said.

‘Yes. To the sea. I've always wanted to live by the sea. It's another of my passions. So you'd better accept this as my notice. I'll put it in writing, of course, during my lunch break which is now, I believe.' She stood up and smiled at Mr Barnum. She was feeling generous with her smiles now that she knew she was leaving.

***

Arriving home that night, Kay flopped onto her sofa, kicking off her shoes and sighing. She felt exhausted. Decision-making was a tiring business, she decided, but she felt happy tired. She'd handed in her notice! She smiled as she remembered the look on Roger Barnum's face. It was the first time he'd actually looked at Kay—
really
looked at her. Usually his eyes just swept over her as he handed her a pile of paperwork.

Perhaps, she thought, it was also the first time she'd ever really looked at herself. She was thirty-one. She knew that age wasn't exactly ‘past it,' by modern standards, but she wasn't exactly a spring chicken, either. Enough years had been wasted. In Jane Austen's time, thirty-one would have been a very dangerous age for a woman. She would have been rapidly hurtling towards spinsterhood.

Life had to be grasped, and what better time than now? What was it Peggy had said?
Do
something
amazing!

‘I will!' Kay said. ‘I owe it to you, Peggy.'

Getting up from the sofa to pour herself a glass of wine, Kay still couldn't comprehend everything that had happened to her over the past few months. It was still impossible to believe that she was a relatively wealthy woman. She'd never had so much money, and she was determined to use it to its best advantage.

She was going to move to the sea—that much was certain, and as a Jane Austen fan who was currently reading
Persuasion
for the seventh time, it seemed only right that she should focus her search on Lyme Regis. She'd already Googled it a dozen times, gazing longingly at the images that greeted her. The picturesque fishermen's cottages, the high street that sloped down to the perfect blue sea, and the great grey mass of the Cobb all seemed to speak to her.

Hey, there, Kay! What are you waiting for? Come on down. You know you want to!

Having grown up in landlocked Hertfordshire, Kay had always wondered what it would be like to live by the sea. For a moment she remembered a family holiday in North Norfolk. Other than two glorious sun-drenched days, the weather had been dreadful, and Kay had to spend most of the time trapped in the tiny chalet with her mum and dad, who did nothing but row. Kay had done her best to shut herself away with an armful of secondhand books she found in a nearby junk shop. Reading about dashing highwaymen and handsome cavaliers helped enormously, but it was still a wonder that the whole experience hadn't put her off the idea of living by the sea for good.

What exactly was she going to do in Lyme Regis, though? Was she going to buy a tiny cottage as cheaply as possible and live off the rest of the money whilst she hid herself away with her paintings and waited for publication? She'd never been a full-time artist, and she had to admit that the thought of it panicked her. What if she wasn't good enough? What if she spent years striving for publication whilst eating into the money that Peggy had left her? She was a practical girl, and the thought of running out of money was terrifying. She might have hundreds of thousands to her name, but she also had a lot of life to lead, and she was planning to live to a ripe old age. Besides, she'd always worked. Perhaps her job at Barnum and Mason's hadn't been the best in the world, but she'd been proud to make her own way and pay her own bills. What could she do in a house by the sea in Lyme Regis?

‘There's only one way to find out,' she said.

It had been decided that Kay could take the annual leave that was owed to her in lieu of her notice, which meant that she could get down to Lyme Regis this very weekend and not have to worry about being back home for work on Monday.

Finishing her glass of wine, she went upstairs to start packing her suitcase, and she felt that Peggy—wherever she might be—was smiling down at her in approval.

Adam Craig had lived in Lyme Regis all his life or, to be more precise, in a tiny village called Marlbury in the Marshwood Vale just a few miles north of the seaside town. He'd studied English at Cambridge and worked briefly in London, but he never wanted to live anywhere else.

With its winding country lanes, tiny stone cottages, and ever-present caress of a breeze laden with the salty scent of the sea, he couldn't imagine anywhere else coming close. He loved the rolling fields filled with lambs in the spring, the hedgerows stuffed with summer flowers, the tapestry colours of the trees in autumn, and the slate-grey sea in winter. Every season had its joy, and he welcomed each one.

His parents had moved to California twelve years before. His father had taken early retirement from his antiques business in Honiton, and determined to give the wine business a go, he bought an established vineyard in the Napa Valley. Adam had been invited to join them but had declined. The Dorset coast and countryside were in his blood, and he could no more leave it than he could his old nan.

Nana Craig was eighty-four years old and lived in a tiny thatched cottage in a hamlet not far away from Adam's own. Of all his family members, it was Nana Craig who was his closest. Whilst his parents had been building their business, Nana Craig was the one who cleaned his scraped knees as a toddler, bought his first pair of football boots as a youngster, and read each and every one of his screenplays since he'd scribbled his first attempt as a teenager—a rather embarrassing romance called
The
Princess
and
the
Pirate
. Adam sometimes wished that his nan's memory weren't
quite
so sharp.

He'd been a screenwriter and film producer for more than ten years now, and his newest project was the one he'd been planning in his head for that entire length of time, for what screenwriter who lived near Lyme Regis wouldn't—at some point in his career—turn his attention to Jane Austen's novel
Persuasion
?

He had to admit that he hadn't been a fan of Austen growing up, but what young lad was? Austen was for girls, wasn't she? All those endless assemblies and discussions about men's fortunes that went on for entire chapters weren't the stuff to stir the imagination of a young boy. As an adult, though, and as a writer, her books, particularly
Persuasion
, began to make their mark, and three years earlier, he started putting things into motion. It was all coming together wonderfully. Very early on, he managed to get highly respected director Teresa Hudson on board. She had a string of period dramas under her belt and had won a BAFTA for her recent adaptation of Thomas Hardy's
Two
on
a
Tower
. Whilst she was filming it in Dorset, they had got together and started discussing
Persuasion
.

Now the crew and all the actors were on board, and filming had begun. They were due to descend on the unsuspecting town of Lyme Regis soon, and Adam was looking forward to it. He'd long been envisaging the scenes he'd written around the Cobb, imagining the fateful leap of Louisa Musgrove and the cautious exchanges between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth.

He was envisaging them as he walked into town, walking down Broad Street with great strides, shielding his eyes from the sun so that he could catch a glimpse of the wonderful sea.

He was heading to the bookshop when he saw her. Tall and slim with a tumble of toffee-coloured hair, she was gazing in the window of an estate agent and was frowning. She was wearing a floral dress that was far more summery than the weather, and her hands were busy doing up the buttons of her denim jacket in an attempt to keep the nippy little breeze at bay. She had a rosy face and intensely bright eyes which Adam wished would swivel around in his direction, but what would he do then? What exactly would he do if she swivelled? It would take a small miracle for a girl like her to notice him.

It was a sad fact that Adam had spent most of his life unattached, and it wasn't because he was unattractive—far from it—but that he was painfully shy when it came to women. He was the man who stood in the corner at a party waiting for the host to introduce him, and whilst he might have a lot more of interest to say than the party bore who didn't stop talking all night, Adam's stories would rarely get an airing, because of his shyness.

It had always been the same. At primary school, he had been the one to work behind the scenes in the school play, because he'd been too shy to put his hand up for the acting roles. At high school, he'd never dare ask a girl to dance, even when encouraged by all her friends to do so. University wasn't much better. He spent most of his time with his head in his books.

Maybe that was one of the reasons he became a writer. Writers were behind-the-scenes sort of people who could hide away for months at a time.

Oh, there had been a few relationships over the years, but they were more happy accidents where he'd been physically flung together with somebody. Like Camille. She was the co-producer on his first film a few years before, and he fell head over heels in love with her. It hadn't lasted, of course. She told him she needed someone to take control of her—to tell her what to do. Adam had given her a baffled look, and she flung her hands up to the heavens as she searched for some words to fling at him.

‘You're so… so
quiet
, Adam!'

You're so quiet
. The words had haunted him down the years—the long quiet years.

As he was mulling over the memory, a small miracle occurred. The toffee-haired girl swivelled her eyes in his direction, and he was met with a warm smile, but being Adam, all he could manage was a smile back before she turned and entered the estate agent's office.