A Weekend with Mr. Darcy Read Free Page B

shawls were totally inappropriate and the reason was simple. Lorna Warwick was a man.

Chapter 3
    It would have been very unfortunate if Robyn Love had turned out to be anything other than a romantic. As it was, she fit her name perfectly, choosing to read nothing but romances, wearing only feminine dresses, and renouncing any film that didn’t have a happy ending.
    Life for her was never as good as it was in fiction. A good story beautifully told was always preferable to reality. For Robyn, nothing came close to the highs she got when reading. Her reception job at a small college in North Yorkshire tickled only the surface for her and she could never wait to get home and stick her head in a favourite book and for her, the very pinnacle of literary perfection was Jane Austen.
    Some took their pleasures in the spin-offs and Regency romances told by modern authors but Robyn was a true Janeite who preferred her Austen undiluted.
    â€˜If only she’d written more,’ Robyn would often say with a sigh. The big six just weren’t enough. There were the shorter stories too, of course, but they weren’t the same as the big novels, and the letters and endless biographies just didn’t give the same satisfaction; they were takeaways rather than a three-course meal. They might fill a gap but they left you feeling unsatisfied and wanting more.
    There was never enough. No matter how many versions of Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion there were—whether for the cinema, TV, or theatre, she would devour them. Each one was different, shedding some new light onto Austen’s world and her characters. Whether it was Pride or Prejudice or Bride and Prejudice , Emma or Clueless , Robyn would unplug the house phone, turn off her mobile and tune in for her allotted slot of pure happiness.
    There were favourites, of course. Who could forget Colin Firth’s brooding Mr Darcy from the 1995 BBC version? But equally, Matthew Macfadyen striding across the meadow at dawn could be the recipe for many a happy sleepless night. There was Jennifer Ehle’s witty and intelligent Elizabeth and Keira Knightley’s youthful exuberance. How could one possibly choose? It entirely depended on what mood you were in. One thing was for sure, though: there could never be enough. Robyn had often wondered what it was about Austen that inspired such devotion. In these modern times of CDs, DVDs, computer games, iPods, and the Internet, there were still people who preferred to sit down in a quiet corner and read a Jane Austen novel.
    Perhaps it was the irresistible blend of wit, warmth, and romance that did it. Robyn had never stopped to analyse what it was that gave her such a buzz. She knew only that when her mind was immersed in the Regency period, her twenty-first century problems evaporated. Well, most of them.
    It was late afternoon before the Jane Austen Conference in Hampshire, and Robyn was standing in her back garden behind the row of friendly Yorkshire terraces that overlooked fields and allotments. She had shed her work clothes which had consisted of a white shirt and navy skirt and was wearing a knee-length dress in a floaty floral fabric. Her long hair was unpinned and blowing around her face in a tangle of curls, and her bare feet had been thrust into a pair of sparkly sandals.
    Her garden was quite unlike all the others in the terrace. They were mostly given over to neat lawns lined with bedding plants or patios housing tubs of begonias but Robyn’s was home to her chickens, and her obsession with Jane Austen extended to her feathered friends. There was Mr Darcy—the obvious name to be chosen by an Austen addict for her first rooster, except it wasn’t a terribly fitting one as he soon turned into something more approaching a villain, and Robyn had to rethink his name, eventually coming up with Wickham, the villain of Pride and Prejudice . The trouble was that Robyn liked sandals and bare feet, and Wickham had a