Chapter Twenty-Two #2
It certainly wasn’t the heated debate from earlier that had finally motivated him to keep the promise he’d made to Tess.
Rather it was the promise that he’d made to himself regarding Tess, ever since their walk and talk.
Or maybe it had been those minutes in a Soho dim sum restaurant when he’d been an unwilling but fascinated witness to her date with Rochester.
It was obvious to anyone with eyes and a modicum of common sense that Tess Hardy needed saving from herself.
She also needed saving from her ridiculous notions of the kind of men she was convinced were her type.
Gabe wasn’t anybody’s saviour, but in this instance, because it was Tess, he felt compelled to act for reasons he barely understood.
Or maybe he didn’t want to examine them too closely in case he didn’t like what he found.
So, Gabe had to read Pride and Prejudice if only to see what he was up against.
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’
He could hear Tess saying the words in her soft voice, which still bore the faintest trace of the Devon countryside which she’d so desperately wanted to escape.
He settled down to read.
Except settled was the wrong word.
He was extremely unsettled.
Exercised.
Perturbed.
In fact, it was fair to say that he was very alarmed.
Fitzwilliam Darcy was not a catch. As head librarian, Gabe had already had several encounters with the man.
Encounters which had given him reason to believe that this date that Tess wanted so desperately might not be the success that she seemed to think it would be.
Yet now that he was reading the source text, his misgivings had seriously upgraded.
Darcy might have ten thousand a year, but he was an insufferable, haughty, snobbish young man who was going to be horrible to Tess on their date.
Tess was no Elizabeth Bennet. In her dealings with Gabe, she could certainly hold her own but that was only because they were dealing with each other in a strictly professional capacity and Gabe had gone easy on her. He really had. Or, he’d tried.
He’d seen what Tess was like when confronted with an objectively handsome, red-blooded man like Mellors.
Before the incident had happened, she’d giggled, she’d even simpered, there had been a couple of heart-stopping seconds, when she’d fluttered her eyelashes.
There had been no critical thought. No logic employed.
Which wasn’t to say that Tess was stupid, far from it, but she was far too emotionally invested in wanting to find her soulmate.
It clouded her judgement, and she seemed to think that Darcy was that soulmate.
She was setting herself up to be absolutely crushed by the fellow.
Wickham was a much better bet, Gabe decided, as that handsome lieutenant made his first appearance. Both Elizabeth and Tess would be much better off with a Wickham. Or maybe Tess would suit Bingley. He seemed like a perfectly pleasant, if ineffectual, chap.
Gabe surprised himself with a bark of laughter. Mrs Bennet was alarmingly like his maternal grandmother, who was famous for retiring to her sofa and expecting to be waited on hand and foot whenever she felt she wasn’t being paid enough attention.
And Mr Collins! All that mansplaining and obsequious behaviour put him in mind of Doctor Little, a tedious bore and dean of Humanities at the university.
He’d always tried to lord it over Gabe and had even tried to school him in the ways of philosophy just because his academic interest was European Thought and Culture, a very woolly discipline, which didn’t stop him from very loudly extolling the dubious virtues of Brexit.
At least Mr Collins wasn’t quite that bad. He was still pretty bad. Proposing to Elizabeth Bennet. Talk about hope over expectation.
Gabe blinked and took off his glasses to rub his eyes, which were gritty and aching. No wonder. In the time it had taken him to read, oh, almost half the book, the sun had slipped away, the shadows had lengthened and the room was almost in darkness.
It was time for dinner. He had some essays to mark.
He preferred to do that on a Friday evening, so he could have the rest of the weekend free.
Not that his weekends were free anymore.
Saturdays he was at the library and even though they were closed on Sundays, there was always admin to do.
Though now that Ella was apparently not on maternity leave anymore – and Gabe wasn’t going to feel guilty about that because it was her decision and anyway, he’d had everything under control or mostly under control – fifty per cent of the admin work was hers.
Of course, he could make arrangements to grab a beer with friends. Or have Sunday lunch with his parents. There were even a couple of attractive, intelligent women of his acquaintance who’d be happy to hear from Gabe.
But as Gabe heated up some butter chicken (now that he’d retired, Mr Sharma senior did a lot of batch cooking, of which Mr Sharma junior was a grateful recipient) and made some rice to go with it, he wasn’t scrolling through his phone contacts.
Instead, he leaned over his kitchen worktop, Pride and Prejudice open in front of him, and read on.
Honestly, Darcy was awful. The worst. Gabe ate standing up, still in the kitchen, as that prideful buffoon proposed to Lizzie (Gabe felt that he now knew her well enough to call her Lizzie) in the most insulting way possible.
He had started off so well with the whole, ‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’
‘But he doesn’t admire you,’ Gabe said out loud. ‘He certainly doesn’t deserve you. Not at all.’
On the next page, Gabe was proved entirely right.
Darcy was so arrogant. So conceited. ‘Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? – to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?’ Was that any way to propose to someone?
Gabe was still very much #TeamWickham as he took another beer from the fridge and arranged himself back on the sofa.
There he read until the absolutely perfect and happy ever after. His emotions wrung out. His brain racing. His heart unexpectedly and curiously full.
Of course, Darcy and Elizabeth ended up together. They were meant to be. She had rid herself of her preconceived notions, her impulsive judgements about people’s characters. And Darcy had shed himself of his awful pride.
He hadn’t been changed by the life of a good woman.
He had changed himself in order to be worthy of Elizabeth Bennet’s love.
But also, he’d been honourable the whole time; forcing that snake Wickham to marry Lydia Bennet after ruining her, and keeping his involvement secret.
Not doing it to win Lizzie’s love, but because it was the right thing to do.
Darcy was worthy of anyone’s love. No wonder Tess and all those bloody PhD students adored him.
Fucking Darcy.
There was absolutely no way that Gabe was going to let Tess go on a date with him. There was no weapon forged, not even his sister at her most implacable and unreasonable, that would defeat Gabe in his mission to keep Tess and Darcy apart.
He needed to come up with a plan, but first of all there was something much more pressing that he needed to do.
Eleven hours later, Gabe was outside his local bookshop, waiting impatiently for it to open.
‘Hello, Gabe! You look quite agitated. What’s the emergency?’ asked Katie, the owner and one of the most cheerful people Gabe had ever met, after she’d unlocked the door.
Although they only stocked a very basic selection of philosophy texts, Gabe was a regular customer. A book always made a perfect present and he had a large family and quite a wide social circle who would insist on having birthdays and special occasions, which necessitated a present.
Gabe stumbled into the shop and looked around wildly. He’d barely had any sleep. ‘It is an emergency,’ he agreed. ‘I need to read every book that Jane Austen has ever written.’