Dreaming of Mr. Darcy

by Victoria Connelly

  She had experience sketching from life at the art classes she attended at her local college, but the college never had the budget for this calibre of model. They were far more likely to be shrivelled up old men who should have known when to keep their clothes on.

  But Kay couldn’t afford to think of men with their clothes off when she was drawing Oli Wade Owen—it would be far too much of a distraction.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ Oli suddenly asked.

  Kay blanched. It was as if he’d read her mind. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, stalling for time.

  ‘I mean, what does an artist think of when she’s sketching?’

  Kay breathed a sigh of relief. It was just a regular question, and he didn’t have the powers of telepathy.

  ‘I usually don’t think at all,’ Kay said. ‘I mean, I’m concentrating on what I’m doing.’

  Oli nodded. ‘Like acting, then.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘A lot of my mates ask me what I’m thinking of when I’m kissing some beautiful actress in a love scene, and they don’t usually like the answer.’

  ‘And what’s the answer?’

  ‘That I’m thinking of getting the job done.’

  Kay smiled.

  ‘You don’t mind talking whilst you’re working?’ he asked her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know—anything, really. Like what’s a pretty girl like you doing running a dreary old bed and breakfast?’

  ‘Do you think it’s dreary?’

  Oli cast his eyes around at the tatty wallpaper and swirling carpet.

  ‘I know it’s not perfect yet, but it will be,’ Kay said.

  ‘But what are you doing stuck out in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘Lyme Regis isn’t nowhere!’

  ‘It’s a long way from London,’ Oli said.

  ‘And why’s that such a bad thing?’

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise at her question. ‘You don’t like London?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘in small doses. I actually once thought about moving there.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, it was just an idea. I thought my father might be there. He always talked about going to London.’ She looked up and caught Oli’s eye. ‘He left when I was young,’ she explained. ‘And I had this crazy idea that I could find him and make things right again, but it was just a silly dream.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Oli said.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It was all a long time ago, but I still wonder where he is and what he’s doing and if he ever thinks of me. Especially now that mum’s gone. He probably doesn’t even know it.’

  ‘Families can be crazy, can’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kay said, ‘I’m afraid they can.’ She sighed. ‘But you’re happy in London, aren’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t live anywhere else,’ Oli said.

  Kay’s pencil hovered over the paper for a moment. That was a shame, she thought, although she could learn to compromise. After all, it would be fun to have a home in London and one by the sea too.

  ‘Where shall we go this weekend, darling?’ Oli might ask. ‘Down to Lyme, or stay in town for that party?’

  Kay could live with that, she supposed, blushing as Oli looked up at her.

  ‘London’s the place to be,’ he said with a sigh.

  She wouldn’t mind—not if it made him happy. ‘Just sit still a moment.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit of a fidget, aren’t I?’

  ‘You’re doing fine.’

  ‘I’m not very good at being still. I can’t even sit to read a book for more than ten minutes. I usually read my scripts on the treadmill.’

  Kay looked up from her paper. ‘Really?’ She tried to imagine it: a copy of the script for Persuasion in one hand whilst his strong, lean legs ran for miles. It was a heart-stopping image. ‘And what did you think of Persuasion?’ she asked, trying to banish the image of Oli in Lycra from her mind.

  ‘The script was okay,’ he said.

  ‘I love Persuasion,’ Kay said. ‘It’s one of my favourite Austen novels.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  Kay looked up again. ‘You haven’t read the others?’

  ‘I haven’t read Persuasion,’ Oli said.

  ‘You haven’t read it?’ Kay said in alarm.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Oli said. ‘I tried once, but it bored me to tears. It’s so slow! I think you have to be a woman to get that sort of thing. Or gay.’

  Kay looked shocked for a moment. Oli wasn’t joking, was he? He really hadn’t read the novel. Here he was playing one of Austen’s greatest heroes, yet he hadn’t even read the book.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell Teresa. She’d skin me alive.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Kay said. ‘How can you be in the film adaptation of a novel you haven’t read?’

  ‘You don’t need to read it,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of a script if you have to read a huge book as well?’

  ‘But it’s only a small book. It wouldn’t take you long. I could lend you a copy, if you want.’ Kay was about to go get one, but Oli stopped her.

  ‘Please! I really don’t need to read it.’

  Kay put down her pencil for a moment. She couldn’t concentrate.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’ve upset you, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You have.’

  He shook his head. ‘You women just don’t get that Austen is a girl thing. It’s not for men.’

  ‘But Adam loves it,’ she said.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean Adam’s probably gay.’

  Kay gasped. ‘He is not!’ she said, thinking what a disaster it would be for her plans for him if he turned out to be gay. What would poor Gemma do then? She’d hate to have to break the news to her. She could see the scene in her head.

  ‘Gemma, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you, but you’re strong. You’ll get over this. You’ll see.’

  ‘I won’t! I won’t ever get over this. I may as well throw myself from the Cobb right now.’

  ‘No! Gemma—don’t!’

  God, it would be awful, Kay thought.

  ‘Perhaps you could try an audio book of it,’ Kay said, not willing to give up on Oli just yet.

  ‘Tried that,’ he said.

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I fell asleep in the bath. Nearly drowned.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could read it to you.’

  Oli looked around at her, his blue eyes wide. ‘You’d really do that?’

  Kay nodded, thinking of the hours they could spend together.

  ‘That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever offered to do for me.’

  Kay smiled. Oli had redeemed himself just a little.

  ‘Can I look now?’ Oli asked.

  Kay looked up from her sketch. ‘I’ve not finished yet. You keep distracting me.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I’m dying to see.’

  ‘Sit still!’ Kay said with a giggle.

  But Oli was on his feet and crossed the room in a moment. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘That’s really good.’

  ‘You think so?’ Kay said, looking at what she had managed to get down in their brief time as artist and model.

  ‘Of course I think so. You should do this for a living.’

  Kay beamed him a smile. ‘I’d love to. I really would.’

  ‘Then you should. You absolutely should.’ He held her gaze for a moment, his blue eyes mesmeric, and Kay could have sworn something wonderful was about to happen. Just one moment longer and—

  Beth’s head popped around the door. ‘What are you two doing?’

  The spell was broken.

  ‘I’ve been sitting in that front room all by myself,’ she said, accusation flooding her voice. ‘You’ve bee
n ages.’

  ‘Kay’s just capturing me,’ Oli said. ‘Take a look.’

  Beth hopped into the room and looked at Kay’s work. ‘Hmmm. Not bad, but then you have a good subject.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’ Kay asked, furious that her special time with Oli had been interrupted.

  ‘I’m bored,’ Beth said. ‘I’ve been on that sofa for hours, and I’ve missed all the fun today. It’s not fair.’

  ‘I think it’s time we got you to bed,’ Oli said. ‘Can you make the stairs?’

  ‘I might be able to if you help me,’ Beth said, her voice becoming all girly again.

  ‘’Night, Kay,’ Oli said, bending down to kiss her cheek.

  Kay felt her skin burst into flame, and she watched as Beth claimed his attention, placing her arm around Oli’s shoulders.

  ‘Nice and slowly,’ he said, leading her to the stairs. ‘One step at a time.’

  ‘That’s how I like it too,’ Beth said coyly.

  Kay rolled her eyes.

  Chapter 22

  Gemma couldn’t believe her mother was in Lyme Regis. Well, she could. After all, it wasn’t the first time she turned up unannounced. As she lathered her hair with a squirt of her favourite apple shampoo, Gemma remembered the night of her performance as Lady Macbeth at drama school. It was the biggest part she had ever taken on, and she was pacing up and down with nerves backstage when somebody screamed from the auditorium.

  ‘Kim Reilly’s here! Kim Reilly’s here!’

  Everyone flocked to her mother—as they usually did—and she was lost amongst a mass of hysterical drama students. Gemma had been forgotten. Not one person was there to tell her to break a leg that evening, and she remembered spying her mother sitting in the front row, her mouth moving as she whispered advice to her daughter, her hands wringing themselves during the ‘out, damned spot’ scene as if it were her playing the role of Lady Macbeth and not her daughter.

  The party afterwards had been all about Kim Reilly too, and Gemma faded into the background.

  ‘My natural place,’ she said to herself as shampoo bubbles rinsed down her shoulders and back. She learned long ago that there was absolutely no point in trying to compete with her mother. She just had to let her mother get on with it and hope that the experience wouldn’t be too painful.

  Finishing her shower, Gemma pulled on a cotton night dress—the kind her mother would refer to as a ‘passion killer.’

  ‘How on earth are you going to get a man when you wear something like that?’ her mother had said when she barged into the bedroom of Gemma’s flat recently and discovered the knee-length cotton night dress covered in hummingbirds on the edge of her bed, but after a long day on set, nothing was nicer, nothing more snugly, than her beloved cotton night dress, and she didn’t care what her mother thought of it.

  Sophie had fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, her breathing deep and calming. Gemma was glad of the privacy, because she knew Sophie would only want to talk about Gemma’s mother. That was the curse of being the daughter of a famous actress—everybody wanted to know everything.

  What’s it like having a famous mother?

  Lonely, most of the time.

  Aren’t you terribly proud of her?

  Sometimes, but mostly I just get embarrassed.

  I bet you want to be just like her.

  That’s what I worry about more than anything else in the world.

  Gemma closed her eyes and waited to welcome sleep. Perhaps her mother would get bored with everything as early as tomorrow. She had a short attention span and would probably find Lyme Regis dull. A small seaside town with a few bookshops, boutiques, and bakeries wouldn’t be enough to occupy her for long, and once everybody had made a big fuss about her and returned to the job in hand, she’d grow restless and go off in search of somebody else to indulge her. Gemma could then stop worrying about being watched all the time. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t nervous enough about this film already without having her mother’s eye roving over every move she made and questioning her delivery.

  ‘She’ll get bored soon,’ Gemma said to herself and promptly fell asleep, dreaming of missed cues and meddling mothers.

  ***

  Kay yawned and drew back her bedroom curtains, smiling at the sea view that greeted her. She wondered, would she ever grow bored of it? Would she ever take it for granted and not appreciate its blue beauty? And it really was blue today. After days of slate grey, the sea had changed to the most miraculous blue Kay had ever seen, and it took some of the sting out of the earliness of her wake-up call.

  After showering and dressing quickly, Kay stepped out onto the landing. All was quiet, and she guessed the actors were still in bed. She was just descending the stairs when Beth’s door creaked open. Kay waited, eager to enquire how she was feeling this morning, but it wasn’t Beth who emerged from the room. It was Oli. He was fully dressed, and it didn’t take Kay long to realise that he was still wearing his clothes from the previous night. He hadn’t gone to bed. At least, he hadn’t gone to his own bed, had he?

  His blond hair flopped over his forehead, and his blue eyes were bleary, suggesting that he hadn’t slept much. Kay stood motionless on the stairs, hoping that the banister rails would hide her, but she didn’t have to worry. Oli hadn’t spotted her, and he sneaked back into his own room, closing the door behind him.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, she fled to the kitchen. Oh, God! How could she have been so stupid as to fall in love with an actor? Hadn’t Adam warned her that they always stick to their own? Here was irrefutable evidence that that was exactly what they did. It was the phenomenon that Kay was only too eager to read about in the celebrity magazines—who was having an affair with whom on location. It was one of the oldest clichés in the business; the leading man always had an affair, except this time it wasn’t with the leading actress.

  ‘Just as well,’ Kay said to herself, seeing as she’d already matchmade her.

  As she put on her floral pinny and started to get breakfast ready, she tried to console herself.

  He never would have looked at you, anyway, she told herself. You’re not in his league at all. It was true enough, but it still didn’t stop a girl from dreaming, did it? Your head might tell you one thing, but your heart can pull in a different direction completely. It was the same old story with Kay; just like her mother before her, she always seemed to fall for the heartbreaker, getting swept up by the romance of everything and eager to overlook the problems that were staring her in the face. And look how it had worked out for her mother.

  Kay sighed as she remembered the time her mother swore she was getting married again and the two of them went shopping to celebrate.

  ‘You’re going to be the prettiest bridesmaid,’ her mother told her, picking out the sweetest pink dress for her to wear whilst buying herself an outrageously expensive tiara. ‘Harry is going to be so proud of us.’ They smiled and giggled all the way home until they found the badly scrawled note stuffed through the letterbox. Harry, it seemed, had found somebody else.

  ‘Poor Mum,’ Kay said to herself, and for a moment, she thought back to the tempestuous relationship between her mother and her father and how badly that had ended too. Was she destined for the same fate? Perhaps that was why she was always trying to matchmake people—it was her way of making up for the doomed relationship of her parents.

  Twenty minutes later there was a gentle tap on the door.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was Oli. Kay looked up to see his head popping around the kitchen door. Such a wonderful head, Kay thought, despite the fact that he was obviously having an affair with Beth Jenkins.

  ‘How are you this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Something smells good in here.’

  ‘That’ll be the bacon,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘You okay?’ he asked, running a hand through his hair, which had obviously been washed since the floppy look he’d been
sporting leaving Beth’s bedroom.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kay said, smiling brightly.

  Oli frowned, obviously not convinced by her answer. ‘You seem a little—distant.’

  ‘Do I?’

  He nodded. ‘Not working you too hard, are we?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘’Cause I know we can be a pain.’

  ‘You’re not a pain,’ she said. ‘I love having you. Around,’ she added quickly. ‘I love having you all around the place. You bring things to life.’

  He grinned. ‘I’ve got the morning off. I’m not needed until later this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kay said, having visions of his hanging around the house all day, forgetting all about Beth Jenkins and slowly falling in love with her—once she’d taken off her pinny and fixed her hair, of course.

  ‘I thought maybe I’d get a bit of lunch somewhere. There’s meant to be an amazing pub out near Beaminster. I thought we might have a spin up that way and see what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘We?’ Kay said.

  ‘We,’ Oli said. ‘You and me. How about it?’

  Kay nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Shall we get going then?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘I suppose you’d better feed this lot first and do whatever you’ve got to do.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘How’s about I see you in the front room at eleven?’

  Kay grinned at him, his brief affair with Beth banished from her brain. It wasn’t Beth he was interested in at all—it was her!

  Chapter 23

  Eleven o’clock couldn’t come around quickly enough for Kay. She whizzed around Wentworth House, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing, and tidying like a thing possessed. Finally, at twenty to eleven, she took off her pinny. It was time to get herself ready.

  She had the quickest of showers, because she was sure she smelt of bacon and cleaning products, and it wasn’t the most romantic of combinations. But then came the problem of what to wear. She had to get this right. Her whole life might depend on it.

  ‘You know when I decided I was going to propose to you?’ Oli would tell her in future years. ‘The moment you came into the front room for our first date wearing that amazing—’