Chapter Six
It will come as no surprise to you that I barely slept.
Several times, I crept out into the living room to check if my dream had ended, and each time I was confronted with a man snoring loudly on my sofa.
I considered calling Bianca and telling her what had happened, but then remembered she had a massive court case that week—my best friend was a kick-ass barrister—and so she probably wouldn’t appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night.
At five a.m., I gave up on sleep altogether, so I washed, dressed, and then sat on my bed with the copy of Pride and Prejudice I’d stolen from Baskerville Books.
It looked completely ordinary, if a little worn around the edges, but there was nothing to suggest it might be some weird magical book that summoned its characters into real life.
But how else to explain what had happened?
I’d been reading this book on the top deck of the bus, and moments later Mr. Darcy had turned up, apparently whisked out of the exact scene I’d been reading, onto the lower deck of the exact bus I’d been riding.
Of course, there was another, more rational explanation, which was that I’d been correct in my first assumption yesterday and “Darcy” wasn’t actually Jane Austen’s romantic hero but someone with a delusion or a really intense cosplay hobby.
After all, just because he spoke like a Regency person and knew his Pride and Prejudice facts didn’t mean he really was the fictional character come to life.
I sighed and closed the book. Clearly, sitting here scouring Jane Austen’s words wasn’t going to help.
As much as I hated to admit it, if I wanted to work out what the hell was going on, my first port of call had to be that arrogant bookseller.
Although he’d no doubt be furious at me for stealing his book and would probably call the police the second I arrived and have me arrested for shoplifting.
Or worse, call a doctor and have me committed for raving about fictional men in my flat.
In fact, it was probably best if I didn’t take Mr. Darcy with me or mention him, but go into the shop with a cover story and then gently dig to see if I could get any sense of how this might have happened and how to reverse it.
At eight o’clock, I heard the sound of movement in the living room. I poked my head out the bedroom door to see Darcy rubbing his eyes and looking around in confusion.
“It was not then a dream, as I had so desired.”
“I’m afraid not.”
He sighed loudly, then bent forward and began rummaging under the sofa.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
He looked up, his cheeks pink. “I am in need of a chamber pot.”
“Oh, right. We don’t have those anymore; we have something called a toilet. If you go through that door over there, you’ll find a seat thing with a lid on it. You can, uh, do your business in there, and then there’s a little handle to make it flush away.”
He arched an eyebrow in disgust. “And to where does it go? On the head of some unsuspecting servant on the floor below?”
“No, we have plumbing—pipes that take it underground into the sewers. And you’ll also find a glass cubicle in the bathroom called a shower that you can wash yourself in it. I’ve left a clean towel for you on the rail.”
“Am I to bathe without a manservant?”
“You’re a big boy. I’m sure you can manage it.”
I retreated into my bedroom, and a moment later I heard his heavy footsteps across the floor and the sound of the bathroom door closing.
I took this opportunity to go out into the living room and tidy up his pillow and blanket, which were still warm from the heat of his body.
I resisted the temptation to put my head in the pillow and sniff him, and instead folded up the sofa bed and went to feed Mr. Wickham.
But just as I was putting down his bowl of food, I heard a bloodcurdling scream from the bathroom.
Shit, what happened? I raced across the room and tugged open the door.
And then I was the one screaming, because Mr. Darcy was standing in my tiny bathroom, dripping wet and completely naked.
I threw my hands over my eyes, but not before I’d caught sight of his pale chest covered in a thin layer of tight, dark curls, his muscular thighs, and his long—
“What are you doing, woman? Leave this instant!”
“I’m sorry!” I staggered backward out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut. “I heard you shout.”
“I was attempting to pour water into this peculiar upstanding bath,” he said through the door. “Only, when I turned the handle, rather than running downward, as gravity would suggest, the water shot out in my face.”
“OK, that’s the shower, and you stand underneath it. But you need to shut the glass door first.”
There was some banging inside the bathroom, a curse from Mr. Darcy, and a moment later, the sound of running water.
I moved away from the door, my face still burning.
For a second, I was tempted to text Bianca and tell her I’d just seen Mr. Darcy’s dick, but that would lead to lots of questions, not to mention a high probability that Bianca would abandon her client in court and turn up at my front door to stage an intervention.
No, given everything she had going on this week, it was better for me to work out some answers before I blew my best friend’s mind by telling her I had a total stranger who believed he was a fictional character sleeping in my flat.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Darcy emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed and looking rather pleased with himself.
“I must admit, that shower device is a most ingenious invention,” he said. “Now, where may I partake in breakfast? Does your obnoxious maid cook, for I am in a mind for kidneys and bacon?”
“I told you, Mrs. Atallah isn’t a maid; she owns this house. And I don’t have a cook—or any other servants, for that matter.”
“Then who provides your meals?”
“I cook them myself. Or rather, I toast or reheat things myself.” I walked into the kitchenette and pulled open a cupboard. “I can offer you toast, cereal, or a banana.”
“No kippers?”
I felt a flash of annoyance at Darcy’s tone, then reminded myself that the man had been waited on hand and foot since birth, so it was no surprise he was a little demanding. “Why don’t you leave it to me, OK?”
Darcy was largely silent during breakfast, his face a grimace of suspicion as he ate a bowl of muesli, and all my efforts at conversation were met with one-word answers.
At first I felt a bit put out, but then I remembered Darcy’s many awkward silences with Elizabeth Bennet and felt a bit better.
Besides, he became considerably more animated when I offered him some Nutella and banana on toast.
“And you tell me this was grown in the Americas?” he said, studying the banana with curiosity. “But how does it not perish on the ship, for that perilous sea journey must take many moons?”
I attempted to explain the concept of both refrigeration and air travel, but he started to look a bit queasy, so I stopped. By this point it was past 9:15, and I was keen to get to Baskerville Books when it opened at ten.
“I’m not working today, so I’m going to go and see this man and try to get some answers about how you got here,” I told Darcy as we finished breakfast.
“Then let us leave promptly.”
“Actually, I think it’s best if you stay here.”
He scowled at me. “Surely I am best placed to converse with this gentleman, given you are but a woman.”
“Yeah, those attitudes died out about sixty years ago. Mostly.” I dumped our plates into the sink. “Trust me, it’s easiest if I talk to him on my own. He might find your presence here a bit…confusing.”
“Very well, but you will impress upon him the urgency with which I must return to Netherfield? Mr. Bingley will have called in the constabulary by now, and I am sure one of his sisters will have written to Georgiana, who will be most concerned at my absence. And Miss Bennet…” He trailed off.
“I’ll tell him it’s urgent. I promise.”
“And how am I to pass the morning while you are gone? I cannot be expected to sit idly by all day. Am I to read?” He pulled a book off the nearest shelf, and my heart almost stopped when I saw it was Sense and Sensibility. I snatched it out of his hands.
“I’m not sure that’s really your cup of tea. How about I introduce you to the concept of TV?” I grabbed the remote control, and the screen burst into life.
“Lord have mercy on me!” Darcy cried, leaping back onto the sofa in terror.
“This is television. It was invented about a hundred years ago and has become very popular.”
“But where… How…?”
“Think of it like the theater, only transmitted into people’s homes,” I said. “And look, there are lots of different channels you can watch, with everything from current affairs to sports.”
I flicked through Storage Wars, The Real Housewives of Miami, and an old episode of Friends to demonstrate. Darcy was staring at the TV with his mouth hanging open.
“I think you might enjoy documentaries,” I said, bringing up BBC iPlayer and searching for Planet Earth. “This program tells you all about the natural world.”
“And the people cannot…escape…from the box?”
I smiled. “No, you’re perfectly safe. Now, I need you to promise me you won’t touch anything in the flat while I’m out. The last thing I need is you blowing the place up.”
Darcy didn’t answer, his eyes transfixed on the screen like a toddler shown Peppa Pig for the first time.
“I’ll only be a couple of hours,” I added, and he let out a faint grunt but didn’t turn to look. “OK, bye then!”
I grabbed my bag and left the flat, locking the front door behind me so he couldn’t escape and get himself in trouble, or steal all my belongings and disappear. Then I crept down the stairs and out the front door before Mrs. Atallah could stop me for a blow-by-blow account of my night.