At Home with Mr Darcy (9 page)
Read At Home with Mr Darcy Online
Authors: Victoria Connelly
Robyn sighed with relief at her first sighting of Horseshoe Cottage. She’d not even been away for three whole days but it seemed like a lifetime to her.
The minibus had dropped her at the end of the unmade road that led to her home on the Purley Hall estate and Robyn walked down it in the fading evening light, the last of the day’s swallows screeching overhead.
Opening the little gate and dragging her suitcase along the path, she brushed her fingers lightly on the horseshoe door knocker before turning the handle.
‘Hellooooo!’ she called into the house.
‘Robyn!’ Dan called from the kitchen.
‘Dan!’ she cried, catching sight of her husband as he appeared in the doorway on crutches. ‘What on earth’s happened? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine – totally fine. I just got kicked by Winter when she got spooked.’
‘But you’re on crutches,’ Robyn said, quite unnecessarily.
‘Just to stop things from getting worse,’ Dan said. ‘Got to keep my weight off this leg.’
‘Oh, my God! Why didn’t you tell me? How have you been coping with Cassie? Is that why Higgins was here? How have you been walking the dogs and–’
‘I’ve coped, okay? I’m not a total invalid. I’ve just had to be a bit inventive about how I do things.’
‘But I would have come home if I’d known.’
‘I know you would have and that’s why I didn’t tell you,’ he said with a smile.
‘Oh, Dan! I feel awful.’
‘Don’t feel awful,’ he said. ‘Come here and give me a kiss.’
Robyn moved towards him and felt herself glowing with warmth in his embrace. How she had missed that, she thought.
‘I never want to leave here again. Not ever,’ she said a moment later, placing her hands on his chest and looking up into his handsome face.
‘You don’t have to,’ he told her.
Robyn sighed. ‘Well, Pammy’s already talking about the next trip. She wants to see the place where they shot the interiors for Pemberley in the 1995 adaptation.’
Dan smiled. ‘Tell her she’ll have to take somebody else’s wife next time.’
Robyn laughed. ‘Well, I’ll probably end up going but I won’t like it!’
‘Yes you will,’ Dan said, ‘and it will do you good. Everyone should get away from time to time. It makes you appreciate home all the more.’
‘I don’t need to go away to appreciate what I’ve got right here,’ Robyn said, cuddling into him and sighing in contentment. ‘In fact, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Something that would keep me at home for the foreseeable future.’
‘Really? What’s that?’ he asked.
She gazed up at him and smiled and the twinkle in his bright eyes told her that he understood her perfectly.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he said.
‘Can you make it on those things?’ she asked, concern etched across her face as she looked at his crutches.
‘Trust me – I can make it,’ he said, giving her a wink before they headed up the stairs together, looking in on the sleeping Cassie and kissing her goodnight before walking into their own room and closing the door behind them.
It was good to be back at Hawk’s Hill. It really was a special place to come home to, Katherine thought as they drove up the driveway and gazed at the honey-coloured Georgian exterior, the sun setting behind the gold-green fields beyond.
After parking the car and unloading the boot, they opened the front door to be greeted by the cats, Freddie and Fitz. Chrissie, who’d been sitting the house, had left a little note by the phone, saying she’d made them some supper. Katherine smiled at the thoughtfulness of her friend.
The heaps of books were still waiting to be sorted in each of the rooms but Katherine wasn’t thinking about those as she walked through the house and up the stairs, her hand gently stroking the warm wood of the banister rail.
She knew where she was going: to the little room next door to the master bedroom and, when she entered it, she felt the warmth of the day still lingering within its walls. The view from the window took in the great sweep of lawn at the back of the house and the herbaceous borders filled with roses, lilies and delphiniums. It was a beautiful room. An empty room. The room which she’d hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since her conversation with Robyn at Chatsworth.
‘Katherine?’ Warwick’s voice called from the landing. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in here,’ she said and he soon joined her by the window.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked, resting his hands on her shoulders.
‘Just thinking,’ she said.
‘Oh, yeah?’ he said. ‘What about?’
‘About–’ she paused and turned to face him, looking up into his dark eyes. ‘About how we’re going to use this room.’
‘Guest bedroom, I thought you’d said.’
She shook her head. ‘Not next to ours.’
Warwick nodded. ‘Where are you going with this, Cherry? I know you’re going somewhere, aren’t you?’
‘I think you know where this is going.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, you’ve been dropping hints about it ever since we got married,’ she said.
‘You mean?’ His eyes widened and his face filled with a wonderful light. ‘
Katherine!
’
She smiled at him, feeling his joy mingling with her own and growing so rapidly that she couldn’t help but laugh.
‘But what about your work?’ he asked, stroking her hair.
She took a deep breath. ‘Now, I’m not saying I’m going to give up work,’ she told him earnestly. ‘I don’t think I ever could do that but, right now, that doesn’t seem so important to me.’ She drew him closer to her until their bodies were touching, warm, comforting and natural. ‘
This
is what’s important to me – you and me and a family.’
Warwick bent his head to kiss her. ‘You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that,’ he told her.
‘I do,’ she said, resting her head on his chest and hearing the beating of his heart. ‘You know Robyn wants to try for another baby?’
‘Does she?’
Katherine nodded. ‘And I can’t have her getting
too
far ahead in the baby stakes, can I?’
Warwick laughed and squeezed her closer to him. ‘I love it when you’re competitive,’ he said and the two of them stood there together by the sash window, kissing and smiling and kissing again as they thought with great joy about their future.
I would like to thank the following people who helped during the writing of this story: Erica James, Catriona Robb, and the staff at Chatsworth House and Lyme Park. Also, a special thank you to all the readers who love these characters as much as I do! I love reading your messages and hearing your thoughts.
Victoria Connelly was brought up in Norfolk and studied English literature at Worcester University before becoming a teacher. After getting married in a medieval castle in the Yorkshire Dales and living in London for eleven years, she moved to rural Suffolk where she lives with her artist husband, a Springer spaniel and ex-battery hens.
Her first novel,
Flights of Angels
, was published in Germany and made into a film. Victoria and her husband flew out to Berlin to see it being filmed and got to be extras in it. Several of her novels have been Kindle bestsellers.
To hear about future releases sign up for Victoria’s
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victoriaconnelly.com
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@VictoriaDarcy
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