A Weekend with Mr Darcy: The perfect summer read for Austen addicts!. Victoria Connelly

‘When will I see you?’

      ‘I’ll give you a call in the morning, okay?’

      Jace nodded. He looked like he was about to fall asleep or maybe just fall.

      ‘Let’s get you into that taxi,’ the man said again.

      ‘Waitwaitwait,’ Jace said, bending forward and grabbing hold of Robyn, placing a slobbery kiss on her mouth before leaving the room.

      Robyn sank back down in her chair.

      ‘You okay?’ Katherine asked as everyone around the table started whispering to one another, desperately trying to find out what was going on.

      ‘That was terrible,’ Robyn said. ‘Everyone’s looking at me.’

      ‘No they’re not.’

      ‘I think I’d like to leave.’

      Katherine nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’

      The two of them left the dining room and Robyn breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thanks for not asking too many questions,’ she said.

      Katherine smiled. ‘If you want to talk about it, I’m here. If not, no problem.’

      ‘I appreciate that.’

      They walked up the stairs together.

      ‘If only life were more like fiction,’ Robyn said as they reached the top of the stairs.

      ‘I’m always thinking exactly the same thing,’ Katherine said. ‘It’s the curse of the voracious reader that reality never quite matches up to the fiction we read.’

      ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Robyn said. ‘Jane Austen has a lot to answer for, doesn’t she?’

      Katherine nodded. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t live in hope of a happy ending of our own.’

      Robyn sighed. ‘It’s just that it sometimes seems a very long time in getting here.’

      They reached their bedroom doors and Katherine smiled at Robyn. ‘You’ll come back downstairs for the film, won’t you?’ Robyn looked lost in thought for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite place where she was or who was speaking to her. Finally, she nodded.

      ‘Good,’ Katherine said, checking her watch. ‘Shall I knock for you?’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Robyn said. ‘I’ll see you down there.’

      ‘I must say, I was tempted to watch Sense and Sensibility for the hundredth time but I’ve decided to wallow in Persuasion’ Katherine said. ‘What about you?’

      Since the upset with Jace, Robyn hadn’t had time to think of the evening ahead. Although she preferred Persuasion as a story, she really couldn’t cope with it tonight. The scene when Anne Elliot realizes that she and her onetime lover, Frederick, are like strangers - worse than strangers because they can never now become acquainted - always brought tears to Robyn’s eyes and would be just enough to tip her over the edge in front of everybody.

      ‘It was perpetual estrangement.’ That line always got Robyn. That was the lump-in-the-throat moment and, if she was ever watching the film in company, a sly finger would dab at the tear ducts and a long soft sniff would try to hide the sadness in her heart.

      Perpetual estrangement, Robyn thought. Wasn’t that exactly what she wanted from Jace?

       Chapter Eleven

      Katherine didn’t see Robyn before the film began and wasn’t even sure that she hadn’t shut herself away in her room for the rest of the evening. And who could blame her? After the awful scene in the dining room, it would be a wonder if Robyn showed her face again at all that weekend. Poor Robyn. It wasn’t her fault. As Katherine chose a seat in the library, she couldn’t help wondering what Robyn’s story was. The man she’d called Jace didn’t seem at all suited to her and it puzzled Katherine why she was with somebody like that. But then, who can know what goes on in the heart of another person and what may attract one to another? Katherine had enough problems working out the complexities of her own heart and wondering what it was she was looking for and if it truly existed or not.

      Ever since she could remember, she’d been searching for a hero who could sweep her away. Before she’d discovered Jane Austen, there’d been Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. As a doctor of literature at Oxford, she should surely frown upon such portrayals of women but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted a hero. Didn’t every woman? Even the tight-lipped Professor Ann Marlowe whom she’d worked alongside for years with her severe haircut and her feminist ways - surely even she wouldn’t turn down Captain Wentworth or Colonel Brandon if they came riding across the quad at St Bridget’s College, professing undying love for her?

      Katherine sighed. The human heart was so complex and a love of romantic fiction just confused things even more.

      Just as the lights were being switched off, Katherine became aware of a presence by her side and looked up into the face of the suitcase-wielding gentleman only, luckily for her, he was now without his weapon of choice.

      ‘Is this seat taken?’ he asked, his voice low, almost shy.

      Katherine shook her head, not wanting to add any words of encouragement or to maintain eye-contact despite the fact that he was rather handsome. She hadn’t noticed that when he’d been running her over with Mrs Soames’s suitcase but his dark hair and bright eyes were very attractive and he had a very cute smile too.

      ‘I couldn’t make my mind up which film to see,’ the man said.

      Katherine’s eyes remained fixed on the television as the sad yet serene face of Sally Hawkins looked out at the audience with clear, all-seeing eyes.

      ‘I mean, Persuasion is excellent but Sense and Sensibility is such a great film too.’ Katherine shifted in her chair.

      ‘A wonderful script,’ he said. ‘One of the best adaptations of a book ever.’

      ‘Shush!’ a woman said from a chair behind them.

      ‘And the young Kate Winslet, of course,’ he added.

      ‘Young man!’ the woman from behind them protested. ‘Will you stop talking?’

      ‘Sorry,’ the man said.

      Katherine allowed herself a very small smile. A young Kate Winslet indeed!

      It was strange but, no matter how many times Katherine read the novel or saw the adaptations, Anne and Wentworth’s story of young love rediscovered never failed to move her. It was, perhaps, Austen’s slowest story in terms of action but there was a beauty about its simple structure and its sublimely gentle narration. Anne was one of the most sympathetic heroines in literature because she had made a mistake when young that had almost cost her her life’s happiness.

      Perhaps that’s why Austen’s books were so popular, Katherine mused - because her heroines made the most terrible mistakes: they either fell for the bad boys or turned the good ones away. They were real, flawed but forgivable girls who had a lot of growing up to do and readers loved them because they were them.

      Which one of us hasn’t made a hash of our lives at one time or other? Katherine thought, daring to think about her own doomed relationship with David. The only difference was, Katherine wasn’t a fictional character in a novel and Jane Austen wasn’t around to ensure her a happy ending.

      ‘Ah, a happy ending,’ the man next to her said.

      Katherine jolted out of her private daydream, irrationally thinking that the dark-haired man had somehow read her thoughts.

      ‘There’s nothing quite like a happy ending, don’t you think?’ he said.

      ‘Exactly,’