Dreaming of Mr. Darcy (7 page)

Kay's eyebrows rose. She wasn't used to strange men asking her advice about equestrian matters.

‘I used to ride, but I got out of the habit when I had to work for a living.'

‘I've got nothing against horses,' Kay said. ‘All the best heroes have them.'

‘Heroes?'

‘In books.'

‘I see,' he said with a nod of recognition. ‘I suppose horses were the status symbols of their day.'

‘But where would you park a horse in Lyme?' Kay asked.

‘That's a very good question,' Adam said. ‘Still, imagine the fun of turning up to work on a horse with your briefcase in your hand.'

Kay laughed. She'd known Adam for only about five minutes, but she already liked him.

The front door opened and closed.

‘Kay?' a voice called. It was Gemma. ‘Oh, Adam!' she said as she came into the room, and Kay noticed that Adam's face lit up, and—in true Emma Woodhouse style—she had them matched and married off in a blink of an eye. After all, Adam wasn't bad looking, now that she came to think of it. He had dark brown hair that was a little bit tousled, as if he'd been cycling down a windswept hill, and his eyes were an intense grey behind his glasses, and his smile was very cute too.

‘Everything all right?' Kay asked.

‘Teresa wants to know if we can borrow your copy of
Persuasion
. She wants to check something, and nobody has a copy. Can you believe it?'

Kay picked up her copy and handed it to her.

‘Thanks,' Gemma said. ‘We'll bring it right back.'

‘How's it going?'

‘Not good. We think we might get a couple of shots in, but the wind's really picked up, and it's going to rain,' Gemma said.

Adam nodded. ‘It's meant to be quite heavy.'

‘Oh, dear,' Gemma said looking anxious.

‘It'll be all right,' Adam said. ‘You worry too much, Gemma.'

Kay observed the look that passed between Adam and Gemma and smiled. They were cute together.

What Kay didn't notice, however, was the fact that Adam's gaze soon left Gemma's face and returned to hers.

Of course, it shouldn't have been Gemma who ran back to Wentworth House to find a copy of
Persuasion
, but she took off before Teresa could stop her. Any excuse to get off the set for a while and postpone the inevitable.

Adam had been there. He even walked back with her, giving her loads of encouragement and being a sweetheart.

Gemma then climbed the steps into one of the vans being used as a dressing room and sat in what she had come to think of as ‘the chair of doom' whilst a makeup artist turned her into a nineteenth-century heroine. It was the most bizarre of processes, Gemma thought. She didn't usually bother much with makeup, and having somebody else attacking her with sponges, brushes, and pencils was somewhat alarming.

Beth, of course, loved it. She adored any form of attention and would always be sure to complain if she thought she wasn't getting enough.

‘Shouldn't I be wearing more mascara than that?' Beth asked, peering into the mirror with a horrified expression on her face.

‘You're playing Louisa Musgrove in
Persuasion
,' Sophie said with a laugh. ‘Not Sally Bowles in
Cabaret
.'

Gemma tried to hide her smile. Beth had already been severely reprimanded by Teresa for wearing scarlet lipstick. They'd been halfway through shooting a scene before Teresa noticed and went completely mad.

Makeup complete, it was time for the costumes, which were so beautiful that it was hard not to fall in love with them and try to smuggle them home, especially if you were an Austen fan like Gemma and Sophie were. It was a novelty to be wearing something other than jeans. How many women wore pretty, feminine dresses anymore? And the fabrics that had been chosen were exquisite. The only problem was that they did absolutely nothing to keep the cold out, and when shooting on a windblown Cobb, it could result in white limbs covered in goose bumps.

But there was more to a part than makeup and a costume, Gemma thought. You had to
be
the character. When she got the call from her agent telling her she'd got the part of Anne Elliot, she'd done a little dance in her living room and then grabbed a copy of the book and read it right through. The panic then set in. Playing Anne Elliot was a huge responsibility. For many readers, she was the perfect Jane Austen heroine: selfless, loyal, and compassionate. Some even believed she was Jane Austen herself, and it was made all the more special, for being the last novel she wrote. She'd been writing it when she was dying, and ardent fans felt it was the closest they would ever get to their beloved author. There was an honesty and a simplicity about
Persuasion
. It might not have the exuberance of
Pride
and
Prejudice
or the naughtiness of
Emma
, but it was all the more dear because of that, Gemma thought.

The reason Gemma loved the novel so much, though, was because of Anne. Readers couldn't fail to feel Anne's pain, because which of us hasn't experienced the pain of a lost love? We have all had our hearts broken, and we have all made mistakes, Gemma thought. Perhaps that's why it was so easy to identify with Anne.

What if the fans didn't like Gemma? What if she let them down? What if they didn't
believe
that she was Anne? Gemma knew only too well how disappointing it could be if actors in literary adaptations didn't live up to expectations. Such was one of the major worries about adapting a much-loved novel. People knew the characters well and had incredibly strong views as to how characters should be portrayed and what they should look like.

‘I don't care how handsome he was,' a fan might say, ‘he was not
my
idea of Mr Darcy.'

‘Her hair! Did you see Fanny Price's hair? What were they thinking?'

Gemma sighed. Adapting a classic novel was a minefield, and taking on the role of its heroine was fraught with potential disasters.

As Gemma got up to leave the relative warmth of the van and was rudely accosted by the wind, which quickly whipped around her thin muslin dress, she could only hope that her performance wouldn't disappoint the legion of fans out there.

She was trying to take shelter in the curve of the Cobb until she was needed, when a dark-haired man walked past her. It was the man from the bar at The Three Palms—the one on whom she'd turned her back.

‘Hello,' he said.

Gemma nodded.

‘You okay?' he asked. ‘You look cold.'

‘I'm fine, thank you,' Gemma said politely, half expecting him to move on to wherever he had to move on to. But he didn't.

‘That dress doesn't look very substantial,' he said.

‘It isn't,' Gemma said and then blushed as she saw his eyes sweep over her exposed bosom.

‘
Rob?
' a voice yelled from the other end of the Cobb. ‘Get over here, will you?'

The man shrugged. ‘No rest for the wicked,' he said, and as quickly as he'd appeared, he disappeared, leaving Gemma with the impression that he was, indeed, very wicked. Rather cute, too.

***

Adam always felt like a bit of a spare part when he was on set. For a start, he wasn't really needed. Nobody asked him his opinion about the way a scene should be shot, and if there were any questions about the script, they were always directed to Teresa. He didn't mind, though. He quite liked being in the background. It gave him a chance to observe everything that was going on around him. He loved the bustle of film sets; the excitement had never waned over the years. No matter how many he'd been on, there was always something different to experience. For the
Persuasion
shoot, it was the transformation of the Cobb. There were canteen trucks, trucks for the actors full of costumes and makeup, vans full of cables, dolly tracks for the camera, and ropes cordoning off several streets, with notices apologising for any inconvenience. He'd been working on a film up in Scotland when the 2006 production of
Persuasion
had been shooting in Lyme Regis, and he'd been gutted to miss it. Now he took a step back and gloried in the chaos that he caused by sitting down to write a script one day.

He'd been told about the burst pipe at The Three Palms and how Teresa had managed to find Wentworth House. Adam smiled as he thought about its new owner. It had been her, hadn't it? The girl with the toffee-coloured hair he'd seen outside the estate agents. She hadn't recognised him, but how could she have? He hadn't exactly made his presence known that day, had he? But he remembered her. There'd been something about her that captivated him immediately. She had a sweetness about her the like of which he'd never seen before, and it had been easy to talk to her. He'd been surprised at how at ease he felt in her company. Women usually had the effect of tying him up in knots, but Kay loosened him. Gemma was the same. He adored Gemma and cared enormously about her, but she didn't give him the fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach that Kay did.

Adam took a deep breath of salty air. Now was not a good time to fall in love. He'd just started a new screenplay and was up to his eyeballs in ideas, plus there was still much to sort out with the film. His phone never stopped ringing, unless he switched it off, which he often did when he was writing. His imagination was working at full capacity at the moment, and there wasn't room to start imagining romantic scenarios in his own life. He had to write those of his characters' first, but that was easier said than done, wasn't it?

A sudden gust of wind buffeted Adam, and he buttoned his coat. It was cold for May, and the sea was a menacing grey to match the sky. He watched as the actresses left the safety of the makeup vans, the fine fabric of their dresses whipping around their legs. They were all wearing coats, and he could see strands of hair desperately trying to escape from the confines of their bonnets.

‘It's impossible!' Beth shouted above the wind. ‘I can hardly get my breath.'

Sophie and Gemma linked arms and struggled along behind Beth as they approached the Cobb. The sea was whipping up some alarming waves, and they hit the Cobb on the far side and sprayed over the top, soaking anyone who dared to stand nearby.

Teresa shook her head. ‘It's no good,' she bellowed. ‘We can't shoot in this.'

‘I told you,' Beth bellowed back. ‘We should have had that lie-in.'

‘Best hangover cure, though,' Oli said with a laugh. He was wearing an enormous coat over his Captain Wentworth clothes, and his face was damp with sea spray. The other actors who were part of the Cobb scene were similarly attired, and most were bent double to try to cope with the ever-increasing wind.

Then the rain came. There was no buildup—no hesitant drops to warn of an impending downpour—the heavens just opened and dumped their load onto the poor unfortunates below.

Adam pulled up the hood of his coat and ran towards the nearest van for cover, as did everyone else. Bonnets and hair were flattened in an instant, and makeup rivered down each actor's face. Dampened dresses clung to the actresses' legs, and everyone's face was as glum as Les Miserable's.

Towels were quickly passed around and the makeup girls went into standby to repair the damage, but Teresa shook her head.

‘Get out of those wet things,' she shouted. ‘Get dried, and then we're heading out to do the Uppercross scenes.'

Adam saw Gemma's face fall, and he could guess why. She'd psyched herself up for the Cobb scene, and now the weather had put paid to that.

‘Hey,' he said, sidling up to her, ‘you'll be fine.'

She looked up at him with wide eyes, reminding him of a traffic-startled deer, but then she nodded.

‘Come on, everyone,' Teresa suddenly bellowed. ‘Get moving!'

Adam knew that they'd hired a minibus, and it wasn't long before the cast were battling their way along the windy Cobb and boarding the vehicle. Nobody asked him if he wanted to join them, but he hadn't expected that they would, and he didn't mind. He had his own wheels, and he also had an idea brewing.

‘Kay,' he said quietly to himself as he left the Cobb. Kay could come with him. She was reading
Persuasion
. She was bound to want to see it being filmed, and it would be the perfect opportunity to get to know her.

Bowing his head against the wind, he walked along Marine Parade towards Wentworth House, making a couple of quick calls to the production team first, so he couldn't be accused of skiving.

This
is
a
good
idea, isn't it?
a little voice inside him said as he approached Kay's. He cleared his throat and pulled down his hood, raking a hand through his hair, which he feared was even more tousled than usual, with the wind he'd been battling. Before he could change his mind, he knocked on the door.

And waited.

He knocked again, rapping the knocker as loudly as he could.

He waited some more. Lucky there was a porch, he thought; otherwise he would have been soaked to the skin by then.

Finally the door opened. ‘Oh!' Kay said.

‘Hello,' Adam said, noticing her face was flushed and her long toffee-coloured hair had been piled on top of her head in a funny sort of bun.

‘I was under the bed,' she said.

He gave her a quizzical look.

‘Vacuuming,' she explained. ‘Did you forget something?'

‘No. Can I come in?' he asked, knowing he was the kind of guy who girls didn't automatically invite into their homes. ‘It's a bit blustery out here.'

‘Oh, right,' Kay said.

‘There's something I want to ask you,' he said as he walked inside, waiting for her to close the door behind them. ‘They've broken off filming at the Cobb. The weather's too bad. They're going to do some of the Uppercross scenes—up in the Marshwood Vale.'

‘Where you live?'

‘Nearby, yes. I was going to drive up there and wondered if you wanted to come along.' He paused, his heart thudding in his chest. This isn't a date, he told himself. There's no need to get tied up into nervous knots about it.

‘Right now?' she asked, her bright eyes widening.

‘Yes.'

‘I don't know,' Kay said. ‘There's so much to do here. I've got beds to make and towels to wash and carpets to vacuum and sinks to clean. And I've got to prepare a meal for tonight.'

Adam watched as she puffed out her cheeks.

‘Okay,' he said.

‘Maybe another time?'

‘No. I mean—okay—I'll help you,' he said. ‘I'll make the beds and wash the towels and vacuum anything that needs vacuuming.'

She gave him a quizzical look. ‘Why?'

‘Because I think you should come and see
Persuasion
being filmed, and I want to show you the Marshwood Vale.'

Kay looked thoughtful for a moment.

‘All the cast will be there. I'm sure they'd be happy to see you,' he added, and he watched as Kay's expression changed.

‘You'll really help out here?' she asked.

‘Of course. Just point me to the nearest sink that needs scrubbing.'

A smile broke across Kay's face, and Adam found himself mirroring it. He'd known this would be a good idea.