Chapter Twenty-Six
Tess felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience as she finally reached the three of them. She’d never imagined that having an out-of-body experience would be so sweaty, breathless and very similar to a major cardiac event.
‘Tess! There you are!’ Ella cried. She looked sleek and minimalist in a simple, sleeveless black dress and trainers. ‘Looking gorgeous as ever.’
‘Ha! I wish,’ Tess squeaked, her eyes fixed on Ella because she didn’t dare look at the photographer even though he had his camera shoved right in her face. She definitely couldn’t look at Darcy, though she felt his eyes on her. Maybe that was why her skin suddenly felt so itchy.
Either that or she’d developed a sudden allergy to tree sap.
Ella must have realised that Tess was a couple of shaky breaths away from a full meltdown as she took her hand and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze.
‘Tess, it’s my absolute pleasure to introduce you to Mr Darcy,’ Ella said, drawing Darcy forward. She was touching him. Touching Mr Darcy. ‘And, Darcy, this is my dear friend, Tess Hardy.’
In an act of sheer and impressive bravery Tess was able to lift her head and stare into the face of a man who did actually look a bit like a young Colin Firth.
He was gorgeous. An absolute heartbreaker.
Tall, easily six foot, even though back in the early 1800s, people were generally smaller.
He was wearing tight, fawn-coloured breeches, tucked into highly polished hessian boots, and over his snowy white shirt and stock, he was wearing a black waistcoat and tailcoat of black superfine, which hugged his muscular frame.
Tess had never been so jealous of a coat before.
He had all the other sorts of things that people, women, Tess, found attractive. Eyes, nose, mouth arranged in a pleasingly symmetrical fashion on his face. Dark, curly hair which clung to his perfectly shaped head like his hair was in love with him too.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ Tess said, with all the shyness of a young girl at her first cotillion.
‘Madam, the pleasure is mine,’ Darcy said in a gruff voice, then he dipped his head like Tess was worthy of a head dip from him, when she really wasn’t. ‘Do you often spend summer in London?’
‘Most often,’ Tess said because she didn’t have access to a large country estate where she could depart to at the end of The Season. ‘London can be quite nice during the summer. Sunny. Not much rain.’
Oh God, she was talking about the weather. The kiss of death on any date, but Darcy nodded.
‘Indeed.’
He was very hard to read, especially as Tess couldn’t bring herself to look up at his face again. His voice was very terse, but she knew that underneath his terse and also very fine exterior, he had a heart of gold.
‘Right, so what I thought was that we’ll get you out on a boat,’ the photographer, a thin wiry young man who seemed to have his camera surgically attached, said. ‘We’ll have you rowing, mate, and you swooning a bit, love. How does that sound?’
It didn’t sound that great. There was no way that Tess had the grace or motor skills to get from solid ground to unstable little rowboat with any of her dignity intact. She didn’t want to be the one who emerged from the lake with her clothes clinging damply to her.
‘I cannot allow it,’ Darcy said sternly, which made Tess’s knees wobble. ‘Forgive me, Miss Hardy, if I speak out of turn, but you seem most alarmed at the prospect of venturing out on the lake.’ He turned to Ella. ‘I have no wish to make a spectacle of myself or my companion.’
Ella pulled her brows together and pouted in a way that was so familiar to Tess that her knees wobbled again for an entirely different reason. A Gabe-shaped reason. But even Gabe’s stern voice was no match for Darcy’s stern voice, which unlike Gabe’s forbidding tones weren’t directed at Tess.
‘I can’t persuade you?’ Ella implored, her hands clasped together. ‘It would make a brilliant photograph.’
‘I still can’t make sense of this photograph invention,’ Darcy said with another frown.
This had to be a lot for him. Suddenly catapulted into the twenty-first century, not in the contained space of the library but in the middle of a busy Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park. Even the sheer number of people had to be daunting.
‘What about a stroll somewhere a little quieter?’ Tess suggested. She pointed to a spot in the far distance. ‘Maybe under those trees?’
‘A capital idea,’ Darcy said, and he shot Tess an approving smile and held out his arm for her to take. Swooning for the photographs was not going to be a stretch. Not at all.
It was quite hard to make the vibes romantic when they had Tim, the photographer, walking backwards in front of them and Ella walking behind them with a picnic hamper and urging them to ‘Snuggle closer together. Darcy, could you put your arm around Tess?’
Darcy ignored Ella’s directives but under her fingers Tess could feel the muscles in his forearm stiffen and then, it happened.
He flexed his hand!
No matter what else happened or didn’t happen, Darcy had flexed his hand.
It was something that Tess would remember to her dying day.
She’d be on her deathbed, hopefully lots of grandchildren and great grandchildren gathered around crying, and she’d say in a croaky voice as the monitors beeped, ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I had a date with Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice and he did the hand flex?’
‘Oh my God, yes, Granny, on an hourly basis,’ someone would snap, but …
‘Are you quite well, Miss Hardy?’ Darcy enquired of her with a searching look. ‘You seem a little out of breath. If you’re too fatigued …?’
‘Oh no, I’m fine,’ Tess assured him. ‘Quite fine. I don’t need to go to Bath to take the waters or anything.’
Was that the faintest hint of a smile on Darcy’s austere features? ‘You know of Bath?’
The last time that Tess had been to Bath was for a hen weekend with the Romance Girlies.
They’d been full of lofty intentions to follow in the footsteps of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey and any number of Georgette Heyer’s heroines.
Walking sedately in the Royal Crescent, visiting the Assembly Rooms, maybe a high tea at one of Bath’s many delightful tearooms, but instead they’d spent the entire weekend on a wine-fuelled rampage.
So now she smiled coyly. ‘I know it tolerably well.’ She was even nailing the Regency lingo, and she wasn’t going to think about nailing anything or anyone else. Really, how uncouth.
They continued walking towards the secluded spot that Tess had suggested. Despite the fact that Darcy was kitted out in full Regency gear or what he’d just call clothes and Tess was doing Regency cosplay, plus they had a photographer and an assistant in tow, no one really paid them any attention.
It helped that during the course of their gentle amble they passed any number of people filming their own fit checks and TikToks and of course they were in the centre of London.
Tess often thought that she could dress up as a mermaid and cycle down Oxford Street on a penny farthing and it would be a point of principle that not one single Londoner would bat so much as a single eyelash.
Eventually, they came to a halt in a shady corner of the park. The pictures had been taken, Tim had gone, and now Ella was backing away too. ‘Just text me when you’re done,’ she called out to Tess. ‘Enjoy yourselves. I got you some of those viral Dubai chocolate cupcakes as part of the picnic.’
Then she was gone and it was just Tess and Darcy, sitting under a tree on a tartan picnic blanket, absolutely not K.I.S.S.I.N.G.
‘She’s unwell? She has a virus?’ Darcy said with some alarm, drawing a spotless white handkerchief from the pocket of his coat and holding it over his mouth.
‘No, viral can mean something different here.’ There was no point in explaining any further. Tess rose up on her knees to unbuckle the hamper and explore its contents.
Normally she loved a picnic, even though they were one of those things that were better in theory than in practice, especially when there was a danger of wasps and a nearby Golden Retriever was suddenly looking over with much interest.
Clearly, the Sharmas were a family of feeders.
Tess didn’t want to think about Gabe again – even just thinking about him made her cross and her heart pound almost as much as Darcy had made her heart pound – but he knew how to assemble an excellent spread.
As did his sister. Ella had put together a selection of mini savouries: sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, little filo parcels which contained some kind of soft cheese, tiny smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels.
Posh crisps in posh flavours: Himalayan pink salt, truffle dust, Serrano ham.
Then the sweet stuff. Strawberries and a pot of clotted cream to dip them in.
Little scones, macarons in an assortment of jewel-like shades and the promised viral Dubai chocolate cupcakes with a gooey pistachio centre.
Not that Tess was going to be eating any of it. She offered to make Darcy up a plate, but he took one look at the disposable crockery and cutlery and shook his head. ‘I’ve only recently had luncheon,’ he demurred.
He also didn’t want a plastic glass full of Prosecco and though Tess knew that well-brought-up young ladies didn’t day drink in public, her Regency cosplay only went so far.
She was gasping for a little something to take the edge off, but she couldn’t blame the alcohol, because she’d only managed half a glass, before she heard herself talking. Babbling. Burbling. Words were coming out of her mouth no matter how hard she tried to stop them.
‘It’s so funny that ten thousand pounds a year is such a selling point in the book, when today it’s below minimum wage. Like, really below it. Is it all right to say that? You do know that you’ve come out of a book?’
Darcy didn’t reply but he looked at Tess in some consternation, like she’d just escaped from Bedlam.