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About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_d23fe58b-90c6-5db3-b5a8-bfec35b0118d)
‘You have bewitched and bewildered me, Miss Bennet. From the moment we met I’ve thought of nothing, of no one, but you. Only say you’ll put an end to my very great unhappiness and marry me.’
Elizabeth stood motionless on the terrace as rain fell on her face, and regarded Fitzwilliam Darcy with luminous eyes. ‘I scarcely know what to say in reply, Mr Darcy.’
‘Of course you must say “yes”,’ he said quietly, ‘only “yes”, Miss Bennet, which single word shall make me the happiest man in all of Derbyshire.’
She lifted her face to his and reached out to touch his cheek. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, laughing as she flung herself into his arms. ‘Yes, a thousand times, yes! Of course I shall marry you, Mr Darcy.’
‘And… CUT!’ the director called out. ‘Thank you, everyone. Ten minutes, please.’
‘Someone bring me a towel!’ Cara Winslow, the actress portraying Miss Bennet, bellowed. ‘I’m bloody freezing.’ As if to underscore the point, she shivered in her thin muslin gown – hand-stitched by the costume designer, and plastered now by the fake rain to her body – and crossed her arms against her chest.
As the rain machine was switched off and the actors drifted from the set to dry off, Lizzy caught the arm of the young man beside her and turned to him in excitement. ‘Thanks for letting me come and watch the filming, Harry. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?’ Her eyes swept over the rose-bordered terrace to the cables and lights and sound booms cluttering the surrounding lawn.
‘Brill,’ he agreed, his words dry. ‘If you don’t mind tripping over cables and living with this lot every day for months on end.’
‘Well, you can’t have everything,’ she pointed out. Unlike his more serious older brother, Hugh Darcy, Harry – with his reddish-blond, almost-but-not-quite-ginger hair and wide smile – loved a good time more than anything and always managed to make her snort with laughter, usually at the most inopportune times.
Of course, without the worry of inheriting Cleremont, his family’s ginormous 150-room estate, Harry Darcy could afford to be carefree.
‘They’ve taken a few liberties with the dialogue,’ she observed. She lowered her voice. ‘And Cara Winslow’s a bit of a diva, isn’t she?’
‘A diva?’ Harry snorted. ‘That’s not what the cast and crew call her.’
‘Oh? What do they call her?’
‘Never mind. I wouldn’t want to sully your delicate ears. Suffice it to say, this is Cara’s first starring role, and it’s gone straight to her head.’
Lizzy returned her attention to the set. ‘Still – it’s amazing to watch, isn’t it? Like seeing Elizabeth and Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice come to life before your very eyes.’
‘Too right,’ Harry agreed. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it – you’re a Bennet, and I’m a Darcy.’ He grinned. ‘No Fitzwilliam Darcy tendencies here, though. Sorry.’
‘That’s probably a good thing,’ Lizzy said. ‘After all, that Mr Darcy was a bit of an ass, at least in the beginning.’
‘Well, if it’s judginess and snobbery you’re after, my brother’s your man.’
‘Hugh’s not a snob,’ she protested. ‘He’s… refined, and expects a certain type of behaviour. He sets the bar very high.’
‘Too high, if you ask me.’ Harry shrugged. ‘No one can live up to his impossible standards. Although mum’s even worse,’ he admitted. ‘Still – for all of his good points, Hugh can be a real tight-arse sometimes.’
‘It’s hard to believe you’re brothers,’ Lizzy agreed, and grinned. ‘You’re much more fun.’
Her thoughts drifted, as they often did, to Hugh Darcy. Like his namesake, Hugh wasn’t an easy man to know. His aloof manner and reserve marked him – unfairly – as a snob. The fact that he was also a barrister, and in line to be the Twelfth Earl of Darcy, did little to mitigate the rather forbidding first impression he made.
Now, with the filming of Pride and Prejudice at Cleremont, and costumed actors bringing Elizabeth and Darcy’s story to life, Lizzy couldn’t help but get caught up in excitement.
Her fingers tightened on Harry’s arm. ‘Look… over there! Isn’t it… it is! It’s Ciaran Duncan.’
He followed her gaze to a man in breeches and boots who lounged back in a canvas chair, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles before him, studying a script.
‘Yes.’ Disapproval was plain on Harry’s face. ‘He’s playing Wickham. Perfect casting, that.’
‘What do you mean?’
Before he could elaborate, his mother approached, a mobile phone in her hand.
‘Harry, darling, you’ll never guess the news I’ve just had.’
‘In that case,’ he said with a slight smile, ‘there’s no use my guessing, is there?’
‘None at all.’ She turned to Lizzy with a polite smile. ‘Hello, Elizabeth. How is your father getting on?’
‘Very well, thank you, Lady Darcy. I brought some scones he baked this morning. Blueberry,’ she added.
‘Lovely,’ Harry’s mother murmured. ‘The vicar’s baked goods are always such a welcome… surprise.’
Lizzy suppressed a smile. That was Lady D’s polite way of saying that the lumpy, misshapen creations her father termed ‘muffins’, ‘breads’, ‘scones’ and ‘cakes’ – well intentioned though they might be – were usually inedible.
She turned back to her youngest son. ‘I’ve just had a text. Your brother’s coming home next week for a visit.’
‘What? Hugh’s coming home?’ Surprise flickered on his face. ‘I thought he was stuck in Hare Court, locked away in chambers for the entire summer.’
‘Not this time,’ his mother said with satisfaction. ‘He says he’ll be home for at least a month, and…’ – she paused for effect – ‘… he has an announcement to make.’
Lizzy scarcely heard another word Lady Darcy said; her happiness was too great.
Hugh Darcy was coming home.
She remembered how kind he’d been in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Although Mrs Bennet’s demise was not unexpected, after the cancer claimed her it nevertheless left her husband and daughters desolate and all but inconsolable with grief.
‘You must always think of Cleremont as your home,’ Hugh had told Lizzy as he took her, numb and reeling with anguish, into his arms. ‘We’ll always be here for you.’
Her sixteen-year-old heart had been comforted by his arms around her and the knowledge that, so long as the Darcy family lived next door, she need never feel alone. And somehow, mixed up in his words of reassurance and comfort, Lizzy found something more than solace…
…she found a deep and abiding love for Hugh.
Like Elizabeth Bennet, Lizzy had lost her heart to the Darcy heir. She’d harboured a secret hope that her own life would follow the fiction, and that someday she might become Hugh’s wife.
Hard to believe eight years had gone by since then.
In that time, she’d finished school and gone on to university; lost her virginity to a boy she thought she loved who, unfortunately (or luckily, perhaps) didn’t return her feelings; and got herself a job as a slush pile reader with a publishing house in Clerkenwell.
And although Lizzy and Hugh kept in sporadic touch through email and texts, life too often got in the way. She loved her job at Aphrodite Books. The company was laughably small, publishing mostly out-of-print and forgotten material, but it acquired a certain bijoux cachet, and it became Lizzy’s job to sort through the unsolicited manuscripts to find the ‘jewels in the slush’.
That was how she had met Mark Knightley, whose novel landed in her reading pile. Lizzy was captivated by the story. Aphrodite’s owner, Willa Candlish, readily agreed, and acquired the book on Lizzy’s recommendation.
It was a heady time. There were editorial meetings, lunches with Willa and Mark, and, best of all, the friendship that had grown between Lizzy and Mark, her first (and, as it happened, only) literary discovery. More amazing still was discovering that Mark was the son of one of her father’s closest friends at seminary.
Soon the editorial lunches were shared à deux with Mark in out-of-the-way cafes or quiet hotel restaurants. And late one afternoon, as the rain pelted down outside, he and Lizzy finished their lunches at a hotel bar and ended in a room upstairs, where they’d spent the rest of the afternoon in bed…
‘Places, everyone. Places!’
Lizzy looked up with a guilty start. The director stood once again below the terrace, and the actors had drifted back, ready to resume filming.
‘I’d better get back home,’ she said, and touched Harry’s arm. ‘Will you come to Daddy’s garden party next Sunday? He’d love to see you; it’s been ages.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘He’s making strawberry scones especially for the occasion.’
Harry pretend-groaned. ‘Thanks for the warning. Your father’s scones are legendary here in South Devon.’
‘Yes, they are,’ Lizzy agreed, ‘and for all the wrong reasons. But I won’t tell him if you won’t.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘See you on Sunday, then? I’ll send an invitation so you don’t forget.’
‘Oh, I expect I’ll see you before that. I’ve asked Emma to the Longbourne regatta next Saturday.’
‘Oh? And did she say yes?’
‘She did. I may actually succeed in prying her away from your father for an entire day.’
Emma, the elder of Lizzy’s two sisters, managed the Bennet household and prepared most of the family’s meals.
Although Mr Bennet had no real need of a housekeeper, he had resigned himself to Emma’s superior will, hiding himself away at every opportunity in his study, and leaving his firstborn daughter to manage the day-to-day running of the household.
‘Good,’ Lizzy said. ‘Perhaps you’ll stay to dinner afterwards? And don’t worry,’ she hastened to add, ‘I’m cooking, not Daddy.’
‘In that case,’ Harry assured her with a grin, ‘I’ll be there.’
Chapter 2 (#ulink_97998c18-c742-5109-901a-d23cc39a5ca5)
‘It’s like something out of a film,’ Holly James breathed as the hire car proceeded down a lengthy, tree-lined drive and emerged from the shade and into the sunshine.
Cleremont sprawled before them on a knoll overlooking gently rolling hills, lush now with early summer greenery. Holly lowered her window and thrust her head out to get a better look, breathing in the scent of roses and honeysuckle and listening to the sound of silence, and felt as if the heat and traffic of London they’d so recently left behind was nothing more than a bad memory.
Slightly below and to the left of the house she glimpsed a folly, and a lake with swans gliding serenely on the surface. Cleremont was enormous and had doubtless seen a thousand sunrises and as many sunsets; the late afternoon sun now warmed and softened the Jacobean façade.
‘It’s let out to film companies on a regular basis,’ Hugh Darcy remarked as he negotiated a rut in the drive. ‘My parents and brother live in a small section of the house during production. The rest is taken over by shouty directors and cables and lights, and actors with overinflated egos.’
‘Oh, you mean like Ciaran?’ she joked. Instantly she wished she hadn’t, when she saw his jaw tighten and his smile fade at the mention of the film star. Hugh’s was such a handsome, serious, noble face that she couldn’t bear him to mar it with a frown.
‘Yes, exactly.’ As the Mercedes drew closer to the house, he nodded in the direction of sound and equipment trucks parked on a gravelled side lot. ‘There’s a production on now. My mother abhors having them here. She throws a huge cocktail party the instant they leave and invites everyone in South Devon over to celebrate.’
‘And when the filming ends… what then? Do your family rattle around in this ginormous place by themselves?’ Holly asked as Hugh brought the car to a stop before a sweep of stone steps that led to the entrance.
‘No.’ He opened his door. ‘There’s an estate cottage adjoining the property, the dower house. They stay there.’
‘Dower house?’ Holly echoed, staring up at the enormous stone façade before her with a sinking sensation. What, exactly, she wondered, had she got herself into?
‘It’s where the lady of the house goes to live when her son – the heir – marries and brings his bride home to Cleremont. As I’ll do with you, eventually,’ he added, and leaned across the seat to kiss her.
Holly kissed him back and threaded her fingers into his thick, dark hair, then drew reluctantly away. ‘Do you mean to say that we’ll live here, you and I, after we’re married?’
‘Not straight away, no. We’ll live in London, I expect, until…’ He paused. ‘Until such time as my father passes on, at which point I inherit the title, and then this great pile of stone becomes my responsibility.’
She eyed him. ‘You don’t sound too happy about that.’
‘Of course it’s not something I like to dwell on, my father’s death,’ he said, ‘nor am I enamoured with the idea of taking on ownership of this place.’ He frowned. ‘Owning a house like Cleremont is a huge responsibility. It’s like having a relative with an outstretched hand and an unrelenting need for cash. You want to say “no, enough”, but you can’t. Duty compels you to find a way forward, to keep the roof repaired and the salaries paid and the gardens maintained, as well as keeping the money coming in to pay for it all.’
‘What about location fees?’ Holly asked. ‘For films.’
‘They don’t pay as much as you might think,’ he said as he got out of the car. ‘As the film companies like to point out, the publicity Cleremont receives in return is invaluable.’
‘Yes, I suppose people come here in droves after seeing Cleremont on the screen,’ she agreed as her gaze swept over the imposing Jacobean façade. ‘Where is the dower house, exactly?’
‘Behind those trees, over there.’ He waved an arm to the left. ‘Grandmother lived there until she died.’ He opened the boot and began unloading their luggage. ‘Now my family stay there, unless they’re entertaining guests or hosting a hunt, so they can live normally, without the worry of tour groups or film crews or journalists seeing the reality behind the “stately home” façade.’ His smile was wry.
‘How strange it all is,’ she mused. ‘When I first met you, working at my father’s department store, I thought you were the most pompous ass I’d ever met, and you thought I was a fashion-obsessed bird-brain. Now, here we are… about to get married. Isn’t life funny?’
Before he could reply, the front doors opened and a man and woman emerged. The first thing Holly noticed was their perfect posture.
The second thing she noticed was a young man, hands thrust in his jeans pockets, standing behind them. He had ginger hair and, unlike the others, a wide and welcoming smile on his face.
‘Hugh,’ the woman exclaimed, and drew her son forward. ‘I’m so glad you decided to come home.’
Her hair was cropped into a stylish mid-length bob, and was a rich, maple syrup colour, and Holly realised where the young man behind her had got his own more gingery shade. She wore a navy voile shirt tucked into a twill skirt, and low-heeled but fashionable shoes.
Hugh’s father – for Holly assumed the elegant, lanky gentleman with grey hair in khakis and a pale pink polo shirt was Lord Darcy – clapped his son on the shoulder. ‘Welcome home, Hugh,’ he said gruffly.
‘Thank you.’ Hugh turned to Holly and slipped his arm around her shoulder. ‘Father, mother – I’d like you both to meet my…’ He stopped. ‘I’d like you to meet Holly James.’
She glanced at him in surprise. Why hadn’t he told his parents they were engaged?
‘Welcome, Holly,’ Lord Darcy said as he took her hand in his. ‘A pleasure.’
‘Thank you. I’m pleased to be here. What a lovely home.’
Hugh’s mother extended her hand. ‘Lady Sarah Darcy. Welcome to Cleremont, Miss James.’
‘It’s lovely to meet you, Lady Darcy. Call me Holly, please.’
But Hugh’s mother had already turned away to introduce the ginger-haired young man. ‘This is my youngest son, Harry. Harry, Miss James.’
‘Holly, please,’ Holly said again, with just a tiny trace of pique.
‘Welcome, Holly. It’s a pleasure.’ Harry took her hand in his and leaned forward to peck her cheek. ‘Bit of advice?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Don’t fight mum. She always wins.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ she murmured, and returned his smile.
