Happy Birthday, Mr Darcy (7 page)

‘Well, we couldn’t think of anything more romantic, could we, Katherine?’ Warwick said.

‘That’s right,’ she replied.

‘Every true Janeite will be celebrating this year and what better way to do that than by marrying your true love?’ Warwick said, his dark eyes sparkling in the candlelight.

‘Oh, how romantic!’ Dame Pamela said, clasping her hands to her chest.

‘Can you believe
Pride and Prejudice
is two hundred years old?’ Robyn said.

‘Mr Darcy is doing very well for his age,’ Dame Pamela said with a little chuckle. ‘Pleasing women for two centuries is no mean feat!’

Everybody laughed and Warwick proposed a toast. ‘Happy Birthday, Mr Darcy!’ he said and they all echoed his sentiments, clinking their glasses with each other as they did so.

‘Pammy – tell them about the mad American,’ Dan said.

Everybody fixed eager eyes on Dame Pamela.

‘Ah, yes!’ she said, drawing in a great breath as if she was about to give a great performance – which she probably was. ‘I had a telephone call from this American businessman. He’d heard about my first edition copy of
Pride and Prejudice
and wanted to make me an offer for it.’ She paused, glancing at her rapt audience around the table. ‘He offered me a million dollars.’

Katherine gasped. ‘You didn’t sell it, did you?’

Dame Pamela looked shocked. ‘Of course not! And I told him that I wouldn’t sell it even if he offered me ten million dollars.’

‘And what did he say?’ Warwick asked.

‘He said he wasn’t offering ten million dollars but he would go to five million.’

Warwick’s mouth dropped open and Katherine gave a nervous sort of laugh. ‘And you still refused?’ she said.

‘I most certainly did and I jolly well told him to go and find himself a first edition of
The Great Gatsby
or something American because
Pride and Prejudice
was
not
leaving England!’

Everybody applauded Dame Pamela and she blushed with pride.

‘Quite right, Dame Pamela, quite right!’ Warwick said.

‘Money can’t buy
every
thing, you know,’ she said. ‘There are some things in this life that are priceless.’

Warwick caught Katherine’s eyes and winked at her.

Coffee and biscuits were served in the drawing room as the last light faded from the western sky in a show of violet and rose, and conversation moved easily from subject to subject until the lantern clock on the sideboard chimed ten o’clock and Katherine sprang to her feet.

‘Goodness! How late it is,’ she said. ‘Dame Pamela – thank you so much for a lovely dinner.’

‘It was my pleasure,’ she said, standing up and embracing her guest. ‘Have a good night’s sleep, my darling.’ She kissed Katherine on both cheeks, her diamond drop earrings swinging like pendulums.

‘Goodnight, everyone,’ Robyn said, standing up.

‘Do you want an escort?’ Dan asked.

‘No, we’ll be fine. My eyes have finally adjusted to life in the country,’ she told Katherine. ‘There are no street lights between here and our cottage but there is a bit of a moon around so we should be okay.’

The men, who were staying at the hall, escorted the ladies to the front door.

‘Dan, who was that on the phone during dinner?’ Robyn asked.

‘It was nobody,’ he said rather unconvincingly.

‘Well, it must have been something important for them to keep ringing you over and over like that.’

‘It wasn’t anything to worry about.’

Robyn’s face fell into an expression that clearly said she
was
worried. ‘And you’ll be all right with Cassie?’ she asked, having already checked on her daughter several times since dinner.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘and I know where you are if we need anything!’

She smiled. ‘It’s going to be funny not having you both at the cottage.’

‘It’s just for one night,’ he said.

‘I know.’

They kissed and said goodnight and then it was Katherine and Warwick’s turn. They were standing a little apart from Robyn and Dan and their foreheads were pressed together.

‘Feels strange, doesn’t it?’ Warwick said to Katherine, taking her hand and squeezing it.

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘The next time we see each other, it’ll be to say “I do”.’

Katherine took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said again.

Warwick leaned back and tipped his head to one side. ‘You okay? You were very quiet at dinner.’

‘I was just thinking,’ she told him.

‘We’d better get going,’ Robyn said, ‘before those great clouds hide the moon.’

Warwick bent forward and kissed Katherine. ‘I love you, Miss Roberts.’

‘
Dr
Roberts!’ she said with a little smile.

‘I love her too,’ Warwick said and they kissed again.

Katherine and Robyn then left the hall and walked down the driveway. It had turned into a world of silhouettes and shadows and the air was soft and cool. The moon was bright and guided them back to Horseshoe Cottage and a tawny owl provided a haunting soundtrack as they walked.

Katherine went straight up to the guest bedroom.

‘I’m sorry it’s so small,’ Robyn said as she stood in the doorway to say goodnight. There was a pretty single bed with an ornate white metal frame, a bedside chair and a tiny dressing table on which had been placed a sea-green jug filled with white roses.

‘It’s perfect,’ Katherine said.

‘Do you have everything you need?’

‘I think so.’

‘Well, I’m just next door if you do need anything,’ Robyn told her.

‘Thank you,’ Katherine said. ‘It’s so kind of you to let me stay.’

‘It’s my pleasure. I’m so excited about tomorrow.’

‘Are you getting up early?’ Katherine asked.

‘I usually do but only since having Cassandra. My sleep is all over the place these days but please don’t feel that you have to get up at the crack of dawn. Just take your time. The carriage isn’t arriving until quarter to four.’

‘Now,
there’s
a sentence a girl doesn’t hear every day,’ Katherine said with a grin.

Robyn laughed. ‘You’re going to feel like Cinderella!’

‘I hope not. I much prefer Jane Austen’s heroines to those insipid ones in fairy tales,’ Katherine said.

‘You’re going to look perfect, I just know it!’ Robyn said. ‘You’ll be Elizabeth Bennet and Cinderella all rolled into one!’

Katherine couldn’t help but laugh at that.

‘Good night,’ Robyn said with a smile before shutting the door.

Katherine closed her eyes for a moment, savouring the peace. When would she next have a quiet moment to herself, she wondered? Tomorrow would be one big whirl of activity and noise. What was that lovely bit she adored so much in
Northanger Abbey
when poor Catherine Morland is finding the Upper Rooms in Bath so daunting?

‘I think we had better sit still, for one gets so tumbled in such a crowd!’

Katherine smiled as she remembered it. Was that what it was going to be like tomorrow? Would she and Warwick be pushed and tumbled and not find a moment to be still – to be alone?

Katherine sighed. She had unpacked her things that afternoon and now set her little travel clock on the bedside chair next to her trusty travelling copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. She would treat herself to a few chapters before she went to sleep.

Chapter 11

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. For half an hour, Katherine lay awake in bed listening to the rich clear notes of a blackbird in an apple tree before drifting back to sleep in the knowledge that it wasn’t going to rain on her wedding day and all would be well. But, unseen, the clouds were gathering over the wild stretches of the New Forest and it seemed that they had one direction in mind – Purley Hall.

By mid-morning, the first fat raindrops were falling, pit-pattering on rooftops and sliding down windowpanes. The florist had arrived with a team of helpers who were busy decorating the hall and the library where the ceremony was going to take place as well as the marquee and the temple on the island, dodging the showers as best as they could. Dame Pamela was flitting around, casting her eyes to the lavender-coloured sky and shaking her head in dismay at the pearly curtain of rain.

‘This is not what we ordered, Higgins,’ she said to the butler who was in the library where the chairs were being set out for the wedding ceremony.

‘No, madam,’ he said.

‘I only hope the sun makes an appearance before the bride does.’

Horseshoe Cottage was a blessed haven away from the madness of the wedding preparations and Katherine was so grateful to Robyn for suggesting that she stayed there but she wasn’t so happy when she saw the rain.

‘Just look at that sky!’ she said, peering out of the kitchen window and grimacing. ‘It’s not going to clear in time, is it?’

‘Oh, I think it will,’ Robyn said. ‘I think those clouds are on their way north and will be chased away by sunshine long before the ceremony begins, leaving everything freshly washed and smelling delicious.’

‘Do you?’ Katherine asked.

Robyn nodded. ‘I do.’

‘I wish I had your optimism,’ Katherine said.

They were sitting in the kitchen and were glad of the cheering warmth of the Aga even though it was July. Robyn had made scrambled eggs on wholemeal toast for breakfast and Katherine was now sipping an orange juice.

‘Robyn, when you first moved in with Dan, what was it like?’

‘Cramped,’ Robyn said with a smile. ‘We had so many boxes between us, we couldn’t move for weeks!’

‘No, I mean-’

‘What was it
really
like?’ Robyn said with a knowing expression on her face.

Katherine nodded.

‘Well, after Jace, I knew that anything – any
one
- would be a breeze.’

Katherine nodded again, remembering the errant ex-boyfriend who had terrorised Robyn at a previous conference at Purley.

‘And you were happy? You didn’t feel like...’ her voice faded away, her sentence unfinished.

‘Like what?’

‘Like you’d become less of yourself.’

Robyn frowned as if she didn’t quite understand what Katherine meant.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, and she bit her lip as if in deep thought. ‘I remember feeling this wonderful peace – as if something in me had settled. That sounds funny, doesn’t it? As if I started to wear big furry slippers and stop worrying about what I looked like. But it wasn’t that. It was more that I felt content – a real feeling of contentedness.’ She smiled. ‘Does that make sense?’

Katherine nodded.

‘And Dan was so sweet. He made such an effort to make me feel at home here. He made me a new run for my hens, let me pile all my cushions on the sofa and even let me keep my pink chintz bedding. And he genuinely seems to enjoy the occasional Jane Austen adaptation but he did fall asleep towards the end of the recent
Mansfield Park
,’ Robyn said with a wry grin.

‘Ah,’ Katherine said, ‘an adaptation too far. You should have stuck with
Pride
and Prejudice
and
Sense and Sensibility
. It’s a rare man that can stomach anything more than that.’

‘But you haven’t got to worry about that with Warwick,’ Robyn said.

Katherine nodded. ‘True but I sometimes worry that we’re too alike in that respect.’

‘What do you mean?’ Robyn asked.

‘I’m scared that we’re going to turn into each other or morph together like those dreadful married couples you sometimes see who wear the same clothes and have the same haircuts.’

Robyn laughed. ‘You won’t be like that!’

‘I just worry that I’m going to wake up in a year’s time and not recognise myself anymore.’

‘But life changes all of us – you don’t have to get married for that. It wasn’t long ago that I was doing a job I hated in a college in the Yorkshire Dales and living with someone who made me miserable and now look at me!’

‘Life moves at an alarming pace sometimes,’ Katherine said.

‘But it’s only alarming if you’re going in a direction you don’t want to be going in, isn’t it?’

Katherine didn’t answer. She was gazing down at her engagement ring and her face had turned marble-white.

The telephone in the hallway rang before Robyn had a chance to ask if Katherine was okay and she went through to answer it.

‘Hello?’ she said. There was a pause at the other end of the line and Robyn heard somebody hang up. She sighed and walked back through to the kitchen. ‘That’s odd,’ she said. ‘That’s the second time that’s happened this morning.’

Warwick had woken up just before the weather had turned and had gone out running. It was something he’d been doing a lot recently because he wanted to look his best. He’d used to run all the time but had somehow got out of the habit, preferring his rock climbing expeditions to the Peak District and Lake District but those trips were difficult to fit in with his writing commitments and he’d felt like he was getting out of shape.

That was one of the downsides of being a writer – it was so easy to spend the whole day indoors, glued to a computer screen and getting no exercise whatsoever. He’d just signed another three book deal with his publisher, Parnaby and Fox, who published a hardback in time for the Christmas market and the paperback in time to catch the summer sales and, once again, Nadia had negotiated him a pretty good deal. He had to be the best paid man writing as a woman in the whole of the UK, he thought, but the next deadline was tighter than usual and he’d been working longer hours because of it.

Now, back from his run and breakfasted courtesy of Higgins who had brought a silver tray into his room so loaded with good food that Warwick had felt certain that the poor butler was about to topple over, he sat himself down at the mahogany dressing table by the window and started writing.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a soft knock on the door brought him out of his writing trance.

‘Come in.’

‘Morning, Warwick,’ Dan said. ‘Not disturbing you, I hope?’