Dreaming of Mr. Darcy Read Free Page B

the idea of living by the sea for good.
    What exactly was she going to do in Lyme Regis, though? Was she going to buy a tiny cottage as cheaply as possible and live off the rest of the money whilst she hid herself away with her paintings and waited for publication? She’d never been a full-time artist, and she had to admit that the thought of it panicked her. What if she wasn’t good enough? What if she spent years striving for publication whilst eating into the money that Peggy had left her? She was a practical girl, and the thought of running out of money was terrifying. She might have hundreds of thousands to her name, but she also had a lot of life to lead, and she was planning to live to a ripe old age. Besides, she’d always worked. Perhaps her job at Barnum and Mason’s hadn’t been the best in the world, but she’d been proud to make her own way and pay her own bills. What could she do in a house by the sea in Lyme Regis?
    â€˜There’s only one way to find out,’ she said.
    It had been decided that Kay could take the annual leave that was owed to her in lieu of her notice, which meant that she could get down to Lyme Regis this very weekend and not have to worry about being back home for work on Monday.
    Finishing her glass of wine, she went upstairs to start packing her suitcase, and she felt that Peggy—wherever she might be—was smiling down at her in approval.

Chapter 3
    Adam Craig had lived in Lyme Regis all his life or, to be more precise, in a tiny village called Marlbury in the Marshwood Vale just a few miles north of the seaside town. He’d studied English at Cambridge and worked briefly in London, but he never wanted to live anywhere else.
    With its winding country lanes, tiny stone cottages, and ever-present caress of a breeze laden with the salty scent of the sea, he couldn’t imagine anywhere else coming close. He loved the rolling fields filled with lambs in the spring, the hedgerows stuffed with summer flowers, the tapestry colours of the trees in autumn, and the slate-grey sea in winter. Every season had its joy, and he welcomed each one.
    His parents had moved to California twelve years before. His father had taken early retirement from his antiques business in Honiton, and determined to give the wine business a go, he bought an established vineyard in the Napa Valley. Adam had been invited to join them but had declined. The Dorset coast and countryside were in his blood, and he could no more leave it than he could his old nan.
    Nana Craig was eighty-four years old and lived in a tiny thatched cottage in a hamlet not far away from Adam’s own. Of all his family members, it was Nana Craig who was his closest. Whilst his parents had been building their business, Nana Craig was the one who cleaned his scraped knees as a toddler, bought his first pair of football boots as a youngster, and read each and every one of his screenplays since he’d scribbled his first attempt as a teenager—a rather embarrassing romance called The Princess and the Pirate . Adam sometimes wished that his nan’s memory weren’t quite so sharp.
    He’d been a screenwriter and film producer for more than ten years now, and his newest project was the one he’d been planning in his head for that entire length of time, for what screenwriter who lived near Lyme Regis wouldn’t—at some point in his career—turn his attention to Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion ?
    He had to admit that he hadn’t been a fan of Austen growing up, but what young lad was? Austen was for girls, wasn’t she? All those endless assemblies and discussions about men’s fortunes that went on for entire chapters weren’t the stuff to stir the imagination of a young boy. As an adult, though, and as a writer, her books, particularly Persuasion , began to make their mark, and three years earlier, he started putting things into motion. It was all coming together