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

Chapter Five

      To be stuck in a car with a loved one for over two hundred miles would be a challenge at the best of times but being stuck with the most impatient driver in the world when what you most wanted to do was break up with him was an impossible situation.

      ‘I told you I should’ve got the train!’ Robyn said, as Jace honked the driver in front of him for not moving away fast enough at a set of lights.

      ‘What are you complaining about? We’re making good time!’

      Robyn sighed and did her best to relax. They’d left North Yorkshire just after ten in the morning and registration for the conference was at five o’clock followed by tea and an official welcome by Dame Pamela Harcourt which Robyn didn’t want to miss under any circumstances.

      She was also hoping that they’d have time for a slight detour to Steventon so she could see the church where Jane Austen had been baptized and spent her former years, but she wasn’t sure how Jace would respond to such a proposal. Poking around churches with literary connections wasn’t his sort of thing at all. He’d much sooner check into his bed and breakfast and head for the nearest pub to sink a few pints, then have an evening belching in front of the TV.

      Robyn opened her handbag and pulled out the information sheets about the conference. After the tea and welcome, there was a chance to mingle before dinner and then there was a choice of watching either Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility or Simon Burke’s version of Persuasion.

      ‘Ooooo!’ Robyn sighed.

      ‘What’s up?’ Jace asked. ‘You don’t need the loo again?’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just choices to be made for tonight.’ She didn’t bother to go into details. He wouldn’t understand. How could a woman choose between Hugh Grant’s bumbling Edward Ferrars and Rupert Penry-Jones’s smouldering Captain Wentworth? That was the trouble with Austen - there were too many wonderful heroes. It was hard enough deciding which book to read next and which hero to fall in love with again but it also made real life hard too for no man could live up to Austen’s heroes, could they? Where was a girl going to find a man as patient as Colonel Brandon or as witty as Henry Tilney? And could one ever truly hope to find that most elusive of all men - Mr Darcy?

      Robyn smiled to herself. If the truth were known, she rather preferred Mr Bingley to Mr Darcy. He was - in Jane Austen’s own words - amiable; there was nothing complicated about him and Robyn liked that. You didn’t have to do any emotional wrestling with Bingley. He liked dancing. He smiled a lot. He didn’t go around insulting anyone and making a hash at proposing to a woman. In short, he was just the sort of man Robyn was looking for.

      But you have a man, a little voice inside her suddenly said.

      But I don’t want him, she replied.

       Then you should tell him.

      I’ve tried!

       Then you haven’t made a very good job of it, have you?

      Robyn took a sideways glance at Jace. His eyes were narrowed into angry slits as he focused on the road ahead and then gesticulated at a car that was overtaking them. Mr Bingley would never gesticulate, Robyn couldn’t help thinking. He was far more likely to articulate.

      ‘Upon my honour!’ he might declare. ‘I have never met with so many unpleasant drivers in my life.’ He would shake his head and think nothing more of it, probably declaring that a ball was in order and that he’d make the arrangements forthwith.

      Yes, Robyn thought, Bingley was - as Jane Bennet had told Elizabeth - ‘just what a young man ought to be’.

      Slowly coming out of a daydream in which she was wearing a white empire-line dress and dancing with Bingley, Robyn saw the sign announcing that they had crossed into Hampshire. At long last, she’d arrived in Jane Austen country.

      Turning round to retrieve the road atlas from the backseat, she flipped to the right page and made a study of the area. Almost at once, she found Chawton - perhaps because she’d circled it in bright red pen. There was already a planned trip to Chawton from Purley Hall on Saturday and Robyn was so excited about it that she felt sure she’d burst with joy but she longed to see the church at Steventon too.

      ‘Jace?’ she said, her voice gentle.

      ‘What?’ he snapped back.

      ‘I’ve got an idea.’

      ‘What sort of an idea?’ he asked. ‘A naughty idea?’

      ‘No!’ Robyn said. ‘A detour idea.’

      Jace frowned. ‘I don’t like detours. I like going from A to B, and A to B today has been one hell of a drive.’

      ‘I know it has,’ Robyn said sweetly, ‘and you’ve been brilliant but this is such a tiny detour, you’d never even notice it.’

      Jace’s frown didn’t budge but he tutted and sighed. ‘All right, then. Where do you want me to go?’

      Robyn was tempted to answer something rude to that particular question but said, ‘Take the next right,’ instead, and it wasn’t long before they were driving through the narrow lanes of Hampshire with tall hedgerows and sunny fields on either side of them. The landscape was far less dramatic than Robyn’s limestone valleys of the Yorkshire Dales but she loved its gentleness. With its pretty village pubs, cute cottages and stone churches, it was perfect and just what tourists thought of when they imagined Jane Austen’s England.

      As they passed an old wooden stile to the side of the road, Robyn could easily imagine Elizabeth Bennet hopping over it on her way to visit her sister, Jane, at Netherfield. For a moment, she wondered whether she dared ask Jace to stop the car so that she could walk across a couple of fields until her eyes shone like her favourite heroine’s but one look at Jace changed her mind. He wouldn’t understand and she’d better not push her luck after getting him to agree to the detour to Steventon.

      It only took ten minutes to reach the little church and Robyn gasped as Jace stopped the car.

      ‘Oh, look!’ she said, her eyes wide with instant adoration.

      ‘It’s a church,’ Jace said.

      Robyn did her best to ignore his sarcastic tone. She was determined that nothing was going to spoil this moment.

      ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ she asked as she opened her door.

      ‘Nah. I’ll wait here. Churches creep me out.’

      Robyn sighed but she was secretly glad that he wasn’t coming with her. He’d only complain and spoil things.

      Getting out of the car, Robyn stretched her arms and took in a great lungful of warm October air. Theirs was the only car in the dead-end lane and everything was perfectly still and quiet.

      Entering the churchyard, she looked at the modest little building before her. St Nicholas’s didn’t shout about its presence in the landscape but it was very pretty with a tiny crenellated tower in a warm beige stone and a small silver spire. There were three arched windows above a fine wooden door either side of which were two carved faces gazing out over the pathway.

      A great yew tree cast a cobwebby shadow across the front of the church and Robyn thought of how Jane Austen must have walked by it so many times and that made her smile.

      Opening the church door and walking inside, she marvelled at the coolness of the building after the warm sunshine and gazed at the beautiful white arches under which delicate flowers had been painted.

      A bright brass plaque on the wall to the left announced that Jane Austen had worshipped here. Robyn looked around at the neat wooden pews and walked up the aisle and sat down. Where would Jane have sat? she wondered, sitting in both the front row pews and sliding along them just to cover all the options. And would she have been paying attention to her father’s sermon or