Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo

Author:Beth Pattillo [Pattillo, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult, Historical
ISBN: 9780824948429
Publisher: GuidepostsBooks
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

It was sometime after midnight before the security officers and other assorted Christ Church employees finished looking over the chaos in my room and taking their reports. Not that I slept much after that. I kept double-checking the lock on the door and wondering which of the likely candidates had ransacked my room in search of the manuscript. Mrs. Parrot? Eleanor? Or someone else entirely?

I skipped breakfast in the Hall the next morning. I would have done anything to avoid seeing James, even sacrifice my morning’s ration of caffeine. While everyone else was filling up on eggs, toast, and black pudding—well, maybe not the black pudding—I darted across the quad like a fugitive from justice and arrived at the seminar room half an hour before we were due to start, the manuscript pages still tucked safely in my purse.

Given the state of my luck, I wasn’t surprised to find Eleanor already there.

“Good morning.” I nodded, stifling a groan, and then went to sit in the farthest chair possible.

Without looking up, I reached into my bag and pulled out the manila folder that held Missy’s paper. I flipped it open and pretended to read, pretended to be engrossed, actually, but the truth was that I couldn’t make any sense of the words on the page. They might as well have been in Sanskrit, for all the sense they made to me.

“Claire, I’m glad you’re here early,” Eleanor said.

I still didn’t look up until I heard her rise from her chair and move toward me. I had a brief mental image of frying pans and fires, with me leaping back and forth between them, before Eleanor settled stiffly into the chair next to me.

“Yes?” I decided to play innocent.

“I meant it, Claire, when I asked you to leave my mother alone.”

“I’m not doing anything to hurt her,” I said, but I couldn’t help the defensive tone in my voice. “She’s a very nice lady.”

“You’ll only agitate her by listening to all her mad theories,” Eleanor snapped.

“You don’t believe her, then?” I wondered that her own daughter hadn’t bothered to do as much as I had, asking Martin Blakely or someone like him to pass judgment on at least a portion of the manuscript. Besides, Eleanor’s attitude didn’t mesh with what Harriet had told me about her daughter’s desire to get her hands on the manuscript.

Eleanor’s face tightened and then drooped into lines of dismay. “She ought to give up the cottage and move to a facility where she can receive proper care. But no, she won’t budge. She has to be near the college.”

I studied Eleanor’s face, trying to figure out whether she was lying.

“Maybe she just wants to be near you?” I barely spoke the words above a whisper, but they sounded loud in my own ears.

Eleanor’s head snapped up, and her spine straightened. “My relationship with my mother is none of your affair.”

“I know. You’re right.” After all, who was I to be giving her, or anyone, advice about how

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