Chapter Twenty-Six #2
‘How does that even work?’ she continued, as if there was a drug in the Prosecco that was making her spout all sorts of nonsense.
Sadly, there wasn’t. The nonsense was all her.
‘When you go back to the book, do you even remember that you’ve been out of it?
And when you’re in the book, do you just relive the same story all over again or is there stuff that happens to you off the page? ’
That was really quite deep. Almost Hegelian in its complexity. Because she knew all about Hegel now from the book that Gabe had given her.
Bloody Gabe! Why was she thinking about him again?
She pulled a face, which wasn’t ideal but at least she’d stopped talking.
‘Have you had too much sun?’ Darcy asked, which was a fair question. ‘I notice that you have no bonnet, no parasol.’
‘I’m just very nervous,’ Tess admitted. She sipped what was left in her glass. Sipped. Chugged. Potato. Potarto. ‘I do talk a lot when I’m nervous.’ She paused, perchance to shut up. No, she wasn’t shutting up. There were more words coming down the pipe. ‘You know, I thought you’d be different.’
Darcy didn’t seem to be able to arch an eyebrow. But he did flex his hand again, although Tess couldn’t help but feel that the hand flex should be used sparingly or else it would totally lose its appeal.
‘Different?’
‘More prideful. Proud.’
‘An accusation that has been levelled at me before.’ Darcy stared bleakly into the middle distance, which still made him look unfeasibly handsome.
Brooding was a really good look for him.
‘An accusation not without its merits because I have been guilty of arrogance, conceit, even as I believed that these traits were born out of a sense of duty. To maintain my good name and character and the best interests of those dear to me …’
He was hot, but boy, Darcy was also a talker. Tess wasn’t even sure what he was talking about, but she liked the way his face moved as he was speaking, and although she was still far too nervous to even stress eat, she was happy to sit on the grass and gawp at him as he spoke.
‘… the unhappy realisation that I have been a selfish being all my life,’ Darcy was still going strong some time later as Tess eyed up the cocktail sausages, just hanging out, uneaten, in their little waxed cardboard container.
He came to an unsteady halt and poured himself a glass of Prosecco. All that speechifying must have given him a parched throat.
‘Selfish is quite a harsh word,’ Tess pointed out, because she knew Darcy better than he knew himself. ‘Misguided, maybe?’
Darcy shook his head. ‘Misguided in that it wasn’t until I was taught a hard but most advantageous lesson, and properly humbled, that I knew I had to transform these most disagreeable aspects of my character.’
Tess already knew this but she nodded. ‘You did the work.’
‘I came to understand how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased. And in order to obtain that fair lady’s forgiveness, to lessen her ill opinion, by letting her see that her reproofs had been attended to.’
It was the dream. Women didn’t want six packs or diamonds or someone who anointed them as wifey-worthy. What they wanted was a man who’d understood the assignment, digested the notes he’d been given, then fixed himself. If he could remember to put the loo seat down too, that was an added bonus.
Darcy was silent again, but he gave Tess a curious look so she sat up a little straighter. He was probably appalled at her posture. Most women of his acquaintance had probably spent their childhoods parading around their drawing rooms with a book on their head.
‘You possess great patience, Miss Hardy,’ he noted warmly. ‘I’m not entirely cured of my selfishness for indeed I have been holding forth at great length and you have very patiently endured it.’
‘Really, it’s fine,’ Tess assured him. He was so fit and he was so evolved and she’d been worried that he would be the haughty Darcy of the earlier chapters of Pride and Prejudice and that if he spoke harshly to her, she’d cry. But no, he was great. It was a great date.
There was just one problem.
It wasn’t even the two hundred odd years between them, or their different social classes, or the very real obstacle that Darcy lived in a book.
It was much worse than that.
They had zero chemistry.
There was not even one metric gram of sexual tension between them.
It wasn’t a slow burn but very much a no burn.
Which was why Darcy could look at Tess with a kindly expression as he let her down gently.
‘I’m sure you have many admirable qualities,’ he said. Tess wished that he would speak to her harshly. She’d rather that than the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech she’d heard so many times before. ‘I believe that I’m not the only one who perceives them.’
‘You’d be surprised then,’ Tess said rather bitterly.
‘I begin to understand now why Sharma …’
‘Sharma! Gabe! What has he got to do with anything?’ Tess demanded, not lollygagging now but sitting up so stiff-backed that even the most exacting sergeant major would be delighted with her posture.
‘He summoned me, against all the accepted protocols, and well …’
Now wasn’t the time for Darcy to go silent on her.
‘Well, what?’
‘He urged me in the strongest possible terms – his demeanour verged on threatening – to show you no courtesy. On the contrary, he wanted me to display all the worst facets of my nature …’
‘He wanted you to throw the date,’ Tess supplied for him. ‘Once again, he’s trying to sabotage The Love Library and any chance that I might have at least one enjoyable encounter with a man. Un-fucking-believable!’
Darcy gasped. ‘Miss Hardy!’
Tess was unapologetic. ‘Look, it’s the twenty-first century, Darcy. Everyone throws the F-bomb around, especially when there are people behaving like absolute bellends.’
‘Such language demeans a lady. Especially one with such a gentle heart,’ Darcy said carefully.
‘My heart isn’t gentle. It’s a shrivelled-up husk because of men like Gabriel Sharma!’
It was Tess’s turn to go off on one. She should have known that Gabe wouldn’t be able to stop himself from interfering.
How dare he speak to Darcy about her. ‘I can only imagine the horrible things he said about me,’ Tess hissed around a mouthful of Scotch egg because this date with Darcy was the usual disaster, so she might as well rage eat.
Even ladies in the Regency era must have chowed down at times of great personal distress.
‘Did he tell you about what happened with Mellors of Lady Chatterley’s Lover fame? ’
Darcy didn’t answer at first. He wasn’t even looking at Tess. Clearly the sight of her wolfing down a Scotch egg was extremely displeasing. ‘I’m not acquainted with the Chattertons,’ he said vaguely. ‘I don’t believe they’re from Derbyshire.’
‘I said Chatterley, not Chatterton,’ Tess said, as shrewish now as Mrs Bennet when her blood was up. ‘You’re not even listening to me!’
With apparent difficulty, Darcy fixed his gaze on Tess’s face. ‘I apologise. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty women can bestow.’
He wasn’t talking about Tess’s eyes because he was looking over her head again.
When she swivelled round, she saw exactly who he was looking at, because some distance away but not fucking far enough, sat Gabe Sharma, in jeans and a navy t-shirt, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Next to him was a pretty young woman in what looked like an exact replica of a lilac muslin Regency gown.
If she was doing cosplay, she was doing it very well, for she was accessorising with white kid leather-laced slippers, a soft grey shawl and her beautiful animated face was shielded from the glare of the sun by the white lace parasol she was holding.
The parasol, however, wasn’t powerful enough to shade the woman’s own glare as she stared directly at Tess.
He hadn’t!
He had!
Tess was going to end him.
‘Is that …’ She could hardly speak. She tried again. ‘Is that Elizabeth Bennet?’
That dragged Darcy’s attention back. He smiled, properly smiled, for the first time, although Tess was now immune to his charms.
‘That is not Miss Bennet. Of late, the last six months, she has been Mrs Darcy.’