A Weekend with Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly

Author:Victoria Connelly
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Katherine and Warwick were in the first group to tour the house and amongst the first to enter its rooms. As soon as they were out of sight of the room steward in the drawing room, Warwick grabbed Katherine’s hand and pulled her towards him, kissing her firmly on the mouth.

‘Warwick!’ she protested, but it was rather feeble as protests went because he kissed her again straightaway and she didn’t complain. Well, not at first. Not until they heard footsteps behind them. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘in the home of Jane Austen! There must be a law against such things.’

He grinned at her. ‘And what’s wrong with that? I’m sure our author would have approved. Wasn’t love the key to all her books?’

‘I just feel so guilty,’ Katherine said, self-consciously straightening her hair in case she’d been ruffled.

‘Why?’

Katherine thought for a moment. ‘I suppose I think of this place as being a bit special. It’s almost like a church.’

Warwick smiled.

‘You don’t think I’m crazy?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’ They smiled at one another and then moved on through to the dining parlour, where a small table and chair had been set by the window.

‘This was the room she wrote in.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Warwick said. ‘Nice and bright although I couldn’t write next to a window that looks out over the village.’

‘Do you write?’ Katherine asked with a smile.

Warwick frowned. ‘I mean, if I were a writer, I think I’d be distracted by a window. I’d be too interested in watching what my neighbours were getting up to. I’d have to have my back to the window.’

‘I wonder how she wrote,’ Katherine said. ‘I mean, did she mind people interrupting her? Could she enter the world of her book and shut everything else out? There’s that gorgeous scene in the film Miss Austen Regrets when Cassandra walks into the room while Jane is writing, and she stops and her pen is hovering over the paper until her sister leaves. I love that. I think I’d be like that if I wrote fiction.’

‘Have you ever wanted to?’

‘What, write fiction?’

Warwick nodded.

‘No. I’m quite happy with my nonfiction. I like researching the facts. Fiction is my escape at the end of a long day. I don’t think I’d ever want to write it. What about you?’

Warwick shrugged. ‘I love books. I love reading them and buying them and selling them.’

‘But not writing them?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, clearing his throat.

But Katherine wasn’t really listening. She was looking at the grand portrait of one of Jane Austen’s brothers, Edward Knight, the one who’d been adopted by a rich family.

‘How strange it seems to us now to send one of your children away to be raised by somebody else—with their name too.’

‘And their fortune,’ Warwick pointed out. ‘If Edward hadn’t left the Austens and become a Knight, his mother and sisters wouldn’t have had this cottage.’

‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘I wonder what would have happened to them.’

‘Jane and Cassandra would have had to marry.’

‘Oh!’ Katherine said.

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