“If you can bring her book back, I’ll exchange it for a new, unread copy. I don’t want word getting out that Nick Baskerville stocks ‘tatty old secondhand books.’”
I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, Nick Baskerville, your reputation is safe. I never leave bad reviews for my shoplifting targets…even the misogynistic, romance-hating ones.”
“I told you, I’m not a misogynist. I just dislike one genre of books.”
“Yeah, yeah, one that sells women unrealistic expectations of what love should be like, or whatever patriarchal bullshit you spouted.”
“You make me sound like a monster,” he said.
“You are a monster! What kind of person hates books that bring people joy?”
Nick laughed again, and despite the weirdness of the situation, I found myself smiling. There was something unguarded about his laugh, like it was a sound he rarely made and so enjoyed all the more when it happened, and I had a strange urge to say something funny just so I could hear it again. Maybe my first impression had been wrong and he wasn’t as terrible as I’d thought? In which case, perhaps I could confide in him that Fitzwilliam Darcy was currently sitting on my sofa, watching David Attenborough and eating Nutella out of the jar with a spoon.
“I like lots of novels that bring joy, thank you very much,” Nicksaid. “Just not ones where the message is that a woman needs to fall in love or be rescued by a man in order to be happy. And especially not ones where that man is a walking advert for toxic masculinity, like inPride and Prejudice.”
OK, so my first impression definitelyhadn’tbeen wrong. “That just shows how little you understand romance novels, because nowadays the women usually rescue themselves,” I said. “And how can anyone hatePride and Prejudice? It’s one of the greatest novels in the English language.”
“Where to start? It’s snobbish, the characters are two-dimensional, and it’s given generations of women Stockholm syndrome by making them think they love an arrogant, hypocritical, emotionally manipulative man.”
“Mr. Darcy is not emotionally manipulative!” I said (possibly shouted). “He’s proud and shy, and maybe a bit misguided about Bingley and Jane, but everything he did was out of loyalty to the people he loved.”
Nick let out a sharp laugh, although there was nothing charming about this one. “I should have known you’d be a Darcy stan. Let me guess: You were a lonely, awkward teenager when you first saw Matthew Macfadyen’s hand-flex and fell hopelessly in love. Or was it Colin Firth’s wet shirt that did it for you?”
I felt a flash of rage at his patronizing tone. For a second, I was tempted to tell him exactly why I loved Mr. Darcy so much. How I’d readPride and Prejudicetime and again with my mum, the two of us fangirling over Elizabeth and discussing the many merits of wonderful Mr. Darcy. How I’d returned to the comfort of that familiar story—and Darcy—when Dad left, Mum died, and I found myself parentless and alone shortly before my eighteenth birthday, and again seven years later, when Crispin broke my heart. How Darcy had even inspired me to write love stories of my own, before I realized I’d never be good enoughto write a relationship as perfect as his and Elizabeth’s. But instead, I just glared at the bookseller.
“You knownothingabout me, you arsehole.”
I saw him startle at the anger in my voice. “I’m sorry, that—”
“I need to go,” I said, turning toward the door. This man might be the only person who could explain my Darcy situation, but he was also the last person on earth I was ever going to ask for help.
“Wait! Just hang on a second, please.”
There it was again, that pleading tone I’d heard last time. I glanced back.
“I’m sorry for being rude just now,” he said. “I just… I really think you should destroy that copy ofPride and Prejudice.”
Destroy it? So he must know there was something strange about the book!
“I thought you wanted me to return it?” I put my hands on my hips, daring him to tell me the truth. “Why should I destroy the book, Nick? What’s wrong with it?”
He looked down at the counter, his brow furrowed as if working out a particularly hard sum.
“My mum…” he muttered.
“What about her?”
He didn’t answer for what felt like ages, and I found I was holding my breath again as I willed him to explain. But when he looked up at me, his face was expressionless.
“I don’t care what you do with the bloody book. Just get rid of it.”
Chapter Seven
I walked back toward Leicester Square Tube station, paying little attention to my surroundings as I ran the conversation with the bookseller over in my mind. As well as confirming he was just as supercilious and arrogant as I’d originally thought, I was now certain that Mr. Darcy’s arrival must be connected to the stolen copy ofPride and Prejudice. Why else had Nick been so anxious about it and told me to destroy it? Clearly he knew—or at least suspected—that his mum’s book had weird Darcy-summoning magic powers, which also suggested this might not be the first time it had happened. Although, if Darcy had traveled out of the book before, I was pretty certain he had no memory of it, given this whole thing seemed to be as alarming to him as it was to me.
What was also clear was that Nick hated Mr. Darcy andPride and Prejudicewith a passion—so much so that I had to keep Darcy well away from Baskerville Books. In fact, for now it was probably safest if I kept Darcy a secret from everyone, because if word got out that a world-famous fictional character was alive, then I’d no doubt have social services/scientists/screaming Jane Austen fans at my door, andthen Darcy might be taken away from me before I’d been able to get him safely back intoPride and Prejudicewhere he belonged.
The only person Icouldtrust to keep this a secret was Bianca, but as I rode the Tube back to Kentish Town, I found my fingers hovering over her name in my phone. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to disturb her at work, but the truth was, I was nervous about how my best friend would react when I told her what was going on. Bianca was the most logical, no-nonsense person I knew, a criminal barrister who’d decided Father Christmas didn’t exist before her fourth birthday. So I suspected that if I told her Mr. Darcy had somehow come to life and was staying in my flat, she’d be worried for both my mental health and my safety and insist I keep the hell away from him. And I wouldn’t blame her either. If the roles were reversed and Bianca told me she had a stranger who believed himself to be a fictional character sitting on her sofa watchingPlanet Earth, I’d also demand she throw him out.
