Happy Birthday, Mr Darcy
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Authors: Victoria Connelly
Happy Birthday, Mr Darcy
Victoria Connelly
Copyright 2013 Victoria Connelly
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover image by Roy Connelly
Published by Cuthland Press
in association with Notting Hill Press
To my lovely friend and fellow writer, Jane Odiwe, with love.
Table of Contents
Other Books by Victoria Connelly
‘Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.’
Jane Austen in a letter to Fanny Knight, 1814
Chapter 1
Katherine Roberts was quite determined to keep calm. It was just a wedding. There was nothing to worry about. The fact that it was her own wedding and that it had never been in her grand plan to get married was quite beside the point. She would remain calm and gracious at all times like Anne Elliot or Elinor Dashwood – two of the most controlled of Jane Austen’s heroines.
Still, as she sat in her tiny book-lined office at St Bridget’s College in the heart of Oxford, the early evening light gilding her long dark hair and turning the papers on her desk golden, she found it hard to believe that, in a week’s time, she would be married.
Katherine smiled to herself as she twisted the engagement ring on her finger. Warwick had chosen a stunning Georgian ring from the late eighteenth-century set with a single rose-cut diamond. The stone was oval in shape and how it sparkled! Katherine held it up to the light now to admire its beauty. It wasn’t garish like some modern diamond but rather infused with the magic that age brings and seemed almost silvery in complexion which Katherine knew was due to the foil backing of the stones which was typical of jewellery of the time.
It thrilled her to know that her ring had been around in Jane Austen’s time. Indeed, it was possible that her idol had seen it. Perhaps she’d been walking by a jeweller’s with her sister, Cassandra, when she’d spied the ring and stopped to admire it. Katherine liked to imagine that – a direct, physical link with her favourite author.
Still, she couldn’t help thinking that it was much too good a ring for her to wear every day. She’d never worn anything more ornate than a Russian wedding ring before Warwick had proposed to her and, for the first few weeks, she’d been very self-conscious about wearing it to her lectures and tutorials but had been secretly delighted with the attention it had got from her female students who had fawned over it with gasps of wonder and romantic sighs.
For a moment, she thought back to Christmas at Purley Hall and the last Jane Austen conference she’d attended with Warwick. It had snowed and snowed until there’d been no hope of any of the guests leaving until well after the festivities were over unless it was by police escort like the dastardly Jackson Moore or by helicopter like dear Doris Norris. Katherine had spoken to her friend just the week before and was glad to hear that she was fit and well and learning to take things easier.
‘I’ve had to spend a lot of time on my sofa,’ Doris had told Katherine, ‘and what else is there to do but reread my favourite books and watch all my favourite adaptations again? I fear the BBC video of
Pride and Prejudice
is on its last legs! The lake scene is looking very wobbly these days.’
‘You’ll have to buy it on DVD,’ Katherine told her. ‘It will last longer.’
‘On PVC?’
‘No, DVD.’
‘But I’ve only just got the hang of video. Oh, dear. I guess I’ll never be able to keep up with things. I wonder what Jane Austen would have made of it all. I mean, fancy being able to watch Mr Darcy on TV and make him fast forward and rewind at the touch of a button. It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it?’
Katherine laughed. ‘When it comes to Mr Darcy, I rather prefer the pause button myself!’ They giggled like a couple of school girls.
Ah, yes, that was something which had been worrying Katherine. Would she be able to fully indulge in her evenings sitting on the sofa, wearing her baggy Fairisle cardigan and eating peppermint creams whilst watching Jane Austen adaptations? As long as she could remember, this had been a very private and uninterrupted pleasure of hers but what would happen when she was sharing a home with Warwick? How would he feel if she needed to escape into the early nineteenth-century for a couple of hours? They’d watched a few films together of course but it was different when you were dating because you were always impeccably behaved, weren’t you? But what would happen after you’d been living together as husband and wife for a few weeks, a few months. A few
years?
‘You’re not watching that film
again
, are you, Katherine? Honestly, I know you lecture in Austen but do you really need to keep watching the same Colin Firth and Alan Rickman scenes over and over again?’
Katherine tried to blink the scene away. They wouldn’t be like that, would they? They were both Janeites; they had an understanding about such things and Warwick was partial to the young Kate Winslet in
Sense and Sensibility
and he’d also expressed a naughty fondness for Hayley Atwell’s Mary Crawford in
Mansfield Park
so they were bound to tolerate each other’s little obsession, weren't they?
Sometimes, Katherine had to pinch herself at the speed at which things were happening. It didn't seem that long ago since she had been writing letters to her favourite author - Lorna Warwick. She remembered with great fondness sitting at the little table by the window in her cottage. It was a table not dissimilar to the one at the Jane Austen House Museum where the author used to write her novels. Katherine would make a cup of Earl Grey tea in a blue and white china mug, take her favourite fountain pen from her study desk and give herself the luxury of time to handwrite her letters to the historical novelist. Only the historical novelist had turned out to be a man - a man with whom she had fallen deeply in love.
Who would have thought it? The academic and the romantic novelist? Her work colleagues at St Bridget's College had split into two camps: those who thought that the match was absolutely delicious and those who were simply appalled and showed their disdain by keeping their distance which suited Katherine fine because, like Elizabeth Bennet, she could not abide a snob.
Besides, Jane Austen’s novels were full of odd couples. Who would have paired the outspoken Elizabeth with the dour Mr Darcy? Well, readers would have, obviously, for opposites always attract in fiction but imagine their modern counterparts in real life. And think of the young, Emma and her Mr Knightley, and wilful Marianne and steadfast Colonel Brandon. The novels were littered with couples one would never have thought to pair. So why not Katherine and Warwick? If there was one thing that the novels of Jane Austen taught us it was that love was idiosyncratic, unpredictable as well as rather wonderful.
To be absolutely fair, Katherine really didn’t care what people thought about her and Warwick even though there’d been a bit of press about their engagement.
‘Lorna and Katherine – Happy Ever After?’
Ran the saucy headline in the tabloid
Vive!
. They’d somehow managed to find out that she and Warwick had been pen pals before they’d met and accused Warwick of ‘cruel duplicity’ but other publications were kinder with headlines such as
‘Romantic Novelist Writes His Own Happy Ending’
and
‘Jane Austen Love Match’
which was Katherine’s personal favourite.
Warwick had told her that she would have to get used to a bit of press intrusion.
‘I’m not J K Rowling,’ he told her, ‘but they do occasionally poke their noses into things and want an interview.’
That didn’t worry Katherine but there were other things worrying her about their marriage. Up until now, her books and her teaching had been everything to her but marrying Warwick was bound to change that. The day to day business of living with somebody was going to shift her focus away from herself and her work and she wasn’t sure how that was going to affect her. And Warwick too. She’d never been around him when he was fully immersed in his writing. What if he turned into some kind of beast – slamming his study door shut and locking her out of his life? Would she be able to cope with the working Warwick?
So far, they had only grabbed weekends and brief holidays together and they’d both been on their best behaviour around each other – putting their work on the backburner and giving each other their undivided attention. Well, except when inspiration struck and Warwick had to scribble some note down about his latest hero or heroine. But that couldn’t last, could it? You couldn’t carry that momentum forward into everyday married life and that thought terrified Katherine for she’d never lived with a man before. Her time had always been her own.
Then there was the practical side of things like where would all their books go? Would they have separate bookcases for their individual collections or were married couples expected to join their libraries together? What if it all became one big literary jumble and she could never find her beloved volumes again? It was very important to Katherine that she could put her hand on a particular volume at any time especially when she was writing her own books and needed to reference a specific title. Would that sense of order be lost once she was married?
They’d once had a conversation about their vast book collections.
‘How many do you think you have?’ Warwick had asked her.
Katherine had pursed her lips together and her head did a succession of little nods as if she was counting them in her mind’s eye.
‘About four thousand, I think.’
‘Right,’ Warwick said, completely unfazed.
‘And you?’
Warwick’s dark eyes had widened. ‘Well, I’ve never actually counted them but if you’ve got four thousand-’
‘Approximately.’
‘Approximately,’ he said, ‘I must have at least
ten
thousand. If not more.’
Katherine gasped.
‘An editor friend of mine recently moved house and he had to use the same firm of removal men who did the British Library,’ Warwick said.
Thinking about all those books made Katherine’s head spin. It would be wonderful to be surrounded by fabulous volumes, of course, and to share Warwick’s library but she feared the sheer number of books at the same time. There was only one solution. They would have to find the right house that was big enough to house their mammoth library without making it feel as if the book-lined walls were closing in on them.
She bit her lip nervously at the thought of a new home and then thought of her much-loved little Oxfordshire cottage and of the comfortably snug rooms, the woodburning stove and the modest pieces of antique furniture she’d collected over the years. It was a home she’d been so happy in but it was time to say goodbye to it now and move forward to a new home with Warwick.
Warwick was going to sell his beloved house. When he’d first suggested it, Katherine had been heartbroken and had tried to persuade him to change his mind. She couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing The Old Vicarage again with its beautiful sash windows and lofty ceilings but Warwick seemed adamant.
‘I love The Old Vicarage, of course I do,’ he’d told her, ‘and I’ll miss it like crazy but it’s part of my past and it’s time now to move forward and find a home together. Who knows – there might well be its double in some corner of Oxfordshire.’
Katherine felt lucky that Warwick was willing to make the move to her part of England because she couldn’t imagine a life away from Oxford.