Chapter Seven
I walked back toward Leicester Square Tube station, paying little attention to my surroundings as I ran the conversation with the bookseller over in my mind.
As well as confirming he was just as supercilious and arrogant as I’d originally thought, I was now certain that Mr. Darcy’s arrival must be connected to the stolen copy of Pride and Prejudice.
Why else had Nick been so anxious about it and told me to destroy it?
Clearly he knew—or at least suspected—that his mum’s book had weird Darcy-summoning magic powers, which also suggested this might not be the first time it had happened.
Although, if Darcy had traveled out of the book before, I was pretty certain he had no memory of it, given this whole thing seemed to be as alarming to him as it was to me.
What was also clear was that Nick hated Mr. Darcy and Pride and Prejudice with a passion—so much so that I had to keep Darcy well away from Baskerville Books.
In fact, for now it was probably safest if I kept Darcy a secret from everyone, because if word got out that a world-famous fictional character was alive, then I’d no doubt have social services/scientists/screaming Jane Austen fans at my door, and then Darcy might be taken away from me before I’d been able to get him safely back into Pride and Prejudice where he belonged.
The only person I could trust to keep this a secret was Bianca, but as I rode the Tube back to Kentish Town, I found my fingers hovering over her name in my phone.
I told myself it was because I didn’t want to disturb her at work, but the truth was, I was nervous about how my best friend would react when I told her what was going on.
Bianca was the most logical, no-nonsense person I knew, a criminal barrister who’d decided Father Christmas didn’t exist before her fourth birthday.
So I suspected that if I told her Mr. Darcy had somehow come to life and was staying in my flat, she’d be worried for both my mental health and my safety and insist I keep the hell away from him.
And I wouldn’t blame her either. If the roles were reversed and Bianca told me she had a stranger who believed himself to be a fictional character sitting on her sofa watching Planet Earth, I’d also demand she throw him out.
And yet, I wasn’t sure I wanted to throw Darcy out—or at least, not yet.
Because as weird and unexpected as this situation was, there was no denying it was also the single most exciting thing to happen to me since I was fourteen and won a story writing competition at school.
Twenty-four hours ago, my life had been completely normal, if a tad lonely, and now I had Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy waiting for me at home.
A man who has perhaps the sexiest transformation in all of literature by going from being proud and judgmental to humble and self-aware.
A man who loves a woman not just because of her fine eyes but also for her brains, courage, and lively wit, and who never waivers in his love for said woman, continuing to fight for her even when he thinks it’s impossible.
And as much as I wanted to tell Bianca about him, I knew that if I did, I’d have her six-foot-six, rugby-playing fiancé at my front door within an hour to forcibly evict Darcy from my life.
I stuffed my phone back in my bag, guilt surging through me for keeping something this huge from my best friend.
I stopped off at Sainsbury’s in Kentish Town to pick up some supplies, then walked back to my flat, the guilt slowly being replaced by a fizz of excitement as I got closer to home.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask Darcy while I had the chance.
What had his childhood been like? Did he secretly hate the Bingley sisters?
Did he wear underpants under his britches, or had they not been invented yet?
A smile spread across my face at the thought of his reaction if I asked him that last question.
And then the smile disappeared when I turned onto my road and saw Mrs. Atallah, wearing a fuchsia-colored tracksuit and watering the pots of geraniums that lined her front steps.
“Ah, the lovebird returns!” she bellowed as I approached. “How was your night? Not over too quickly, I hope?”
“It wasn’t like that, Mrs. Atallah. He’s just a friend.”
“I wish I had a friend who looked like that; he reminds me of Jeremy from season three of Love Island. Although I didn’t think much of his dress sense.”
“He’d been at a costume party.” I tried to get past her, but the older woman was wily and moved to block my way.
“From the sound of the TV all morning, I take it he’s still up there?”
“He might be staying for another day or two. That’s not a problem, is it?”
“Not as long as you two keep the noise down,” she said, winking at me.
“I told you, it’s not—”
“Oh, lighten up, will you? You spend far too much time moping up there on your own. It’s good to see you letting yourself have some fun for once.”
“I have plenty of fun,” I said, perhaps a little too defensively, as Mrs. Atallah raised an eyebrow.
“Apart from your Wednesday-night drinks with that friend of yours, you spend every evening at home, alone, reading with your cat. Life is short, hayati—and as good as romance books are, they’re nothing on the real world.”
I was tempted to tell her that was patently untrue, and I’d much rather live in a fictional world where you were guaranteed a happy-ever-after than one where men abandoned you all the time, but I also needed to get upstairs and check on Mr. Darcy.
“It’s been good to chat, Mrs. Atallah,” I said, squeezing past her toward the door.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!” she called after me as I stepped inside. “And make sure you drink plenty of cranberry juice. When Charbel and I first married, I got the most terrible—”
I slammed the door shut, cutting her off before she could give me nightmares for a week. I ran up the stairs, giving my hair a quick tousle before I unlocked the door and stepped inside the flat. Darcy was sitting exactly where I’d left him this morning, his eyes fixed on the TV screen.
“Mr. Darcy?”
He jumped and spun around to look at me. “Ah, Miss Knight. My apologies, I did not hear you enter.”
He rose and gave me a small bow of greeting, and I suddenly knew how the ladies of Meryton must have felt the first time Darcy walked into the ballroom; he really was handsome. For a moment, I considered curtsying in response, but that was just too weird.
“How have you been getting on with Planet Earth?” I asked.
“It is quite remarkable! I have seen wonders I could never have imagined existed. Did you know that in the Americas, there are trees that have been alive since two thousand years before Jesus Christ? And that at the very bottom of the ocean, there are monstrous creatures with the name gulper eels, which can consume prey larger than their own bodies?”
His eyes were shining as he spoke, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your first taste of television.”
“At first I thought it obscene, but it is a quite extraordinary invention. Although I fear I may have offended Sir Attenborough, for I have made many blasphemous exclamations of surprise throughout his presentation.”
“Don’t worry, he can’t hear you,” I chuckled, then stopped when I remembered Elizabeth’s observation that Darcy didn’t like being laughed at. “Are you hungry? I can make us some lunch.”
He nodded, but his attention had already returned to the screen, on which two baboons were mating enthusiastically. I made us two ham-salad sandwiches, and by the time they were ready, the episode had finished and I was able to drag Darcy away from the TV.
“Did your acquaintance inform you of how I may travel back in time to my own era?” he said as he sat down.
I took a sip of water to allow myself a moment before I answered.
Should I tell him the truth: That rather than being a time-traveler, he was actually a fictional character, and although I had no idea how it had happened, it was possible I’d somehow released him from a magical book I’d stolen from a bookshop?
But then Darcy would want to go straight to the bookshop, and I’d have to see that smug, Jane Austen–hating man again, reveal Mr. Darcy’s presence in London, and grovel for his help.
No, there was no way I was doing that. Besides, given his hatred of the character, I could never trust Nick to have Darcy’s best interests at heart.
For all I knew, he might try to destroy Darcy, along with the copy of Pride and Prejudice he’d come from.
I was aware Darcy was watching me across the table, and I put my glass down so he wouldn’t see my hand shake.
“I’m afraid he had no idea how you got here or how to get you home.”
Darcy’s face fell, and I had to look away in case he saw the guilt in my eyes.
“Oh,” he mumbled. “That is most unfortunate.”
“I’m sorry, but I promise I’ll find the answer myself,” I said quickly. “It might take another few days, but I’ll work out how to get you home.”
“Thank you,” he said, but all the enthusiasm from a minute ago had disappeared from his voice.
“And in the meantime, you’re very welcome to stay here,” I continued. “I know my flat isn’t quite Netherfield Park, but you can watch as much TV as you like. There are documentaries on all sorts of subjects, not just the natural world.”
He nodded, but his shoulders were hunched and he ate his sandwich in moody silence.
After lunch, I put the TV back on and we watched another episode of Planet Earth.
Although Darcy was distracted at first, before long he was gasping his way through an epic battle between a polar bear and a herd of walruses, his grief from a few moments ago numbed by the anesthetizing power of TV.
And I felt bad about this—I really did. I knew from Pride and Prejudice that Darcy was a man who prized honesty above all else, and yet not only was I keeping his true identity a secret from him, I was also keeping him away from the one person who might know how he’d gotten here and, therefore, how to get him home.
Did that mean I was technically kidnapping Darcy?
Shit, was I Annie Wilkes from Misery, only in North London rather than remote Colorado and with considerably better hair?
But as the afternoon wore on, and David Attenborough took us from the Arctic north through the Amazonian rain forests to creepy dinosaur-like birds in Australia, I began to see my situation in a different light.
Because rather than being the baddie by lying to Darcy, wasn’t I actually protecting him from the severe existential crisis that would inevitably come if he found out he was a made-up character?
The man was struggling enough to deal with electric lights and a flushing toilet, so surely to suddenly spring the whole “you’re a figment of a woman’s imagination” on him might cause him to have a nervous breakdown?
And not only that, but rather than kidnapping Darcy, I was actually keeping him safe from the dangerous, book-burning Nick Baskerville while I worked out how to return him to his story on my own.
Yes, I wasn’t Annie Wilkes; I was that kid from E.T.
, protecting my alien from the evil forces intent on destroying him.
Before I knew it, the sun had moved behind the rooftops of the houses across the street, and Darcy and I had watched six episodes of Planet Earth back-to-back.
I didn’t have the facilities, or abilities, to cook a proper dinner, so I ordered in takeaway from the local Chinese restaurant.
Darcy was deeply suspicious of the food when it arrived, prodding his chow mein noodles as if they were poisonous worms David Attenborough might meet in a jungle swamp, but as soon as he had his first mouthful, he was groaning with delight.
“And this is all from the Orient?” he said between mouthfuls of spring roll. “I have never eaten delicacies of such exquisite flavor and composition.”
“If you like this, just wait until you try Indian food,” I said, spooning more fried rice onto his plate. “There’s also an excellent Korean place nearby, and I think you’ll love their kimchi pancake.”
“When first I arrived in this foreign era, I believed myself to have landed in the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno. But between Sir David’s wonders of the planet and this fine cuisine, I believe that I may find myself in heaven, not hell.”
Darcy gave me a shy smile across the table, and I felt my heart lifting. With the exception of Bianca, I’d never had anyone over to this flat before, and now I was eating dinner here with Mr.-fricking-Darcy. And not only that, he thought it was heaven!
I grinned back at him. “I’m glad you’re having a nice time, Mr. Darcy. Now, let me introduce you to the pleasures of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream.”