Darcy gave a bashful smile, then turned serious again. “You had not told me that you were a writer.”
“That’s because I’m not. I gave up writing a few years ago, when I was still with Crispin.”
“May I be so bold as to inquire why?”
“Several reasons, but mainly because I wasn’t good enough. Writing was something I’ve loved since I was a kid, and my mum always encouraged me to believe I could make a career out of it. But eventually, I realized that my attempts at writing a romance novel just weren’t up to scratch, and I stopped wasting my time.”
As I said this, I remembered Crispin’s words to me when I’d shown him various bits of my manuscript.This is sweet, babe, but you’re not there yet… I just don’t think anyone would believe in the chemistry between these two characters… What is this story adding to the world, apart from a few lame gags and a couple of average sex scenes?
“Correct me if I am wrong, Miss Knight, but I have always believed that in order to become accomplished at something, one must practice,” Darcy said. “Take the pianoforte, for example. My sister was very poor at it when first she began, but through tuition and practice, she is now quite proficient. Is the same not true of writing?”
“Sure, but natural talent is important too; otherwise every person who took piano lessons would become a world-class concert pianist,” I said. “And I just didn’t have enough talent to make that next step. I’d write a few rough pages and then compare it with the published romance books I love, and what I’d written was nowhere near as good.”
Darcy frowned. “Is that not like looking at a lump of rock and complaining that it is not the Great Pyramid of Giza? I am no writer myself, beyond letters and my diary, but I would imagine that every great novel starts off with a few rough pages, which must then be edited and revised many times before they are published. So perhaps, rather than comparing yourself unfavorably to other authors, you should simply focus on your own writing?”
Darcy was staring at me with his intense brown eyes, and I lookedaway. He was right, of course. How many times had I said the same thing to Crispin whenever he fell into one of his regular depressions about his work? How many hours had I spent coaxing and cajoling him out of bed and back to his typewriter, telling him to stop obsessing about the end point and instead just focus on the joy he got out of writing. Yet somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten to take my own advice and had allowed my love of writing to get crushed by doubt and fear.
I looked back at Darcy. “Did you say you write in a diary?”
“That is correct. My father was a prolific diarist and instilled in me the value of keeping a daily journal, not just as a practical record of my affairs but as an intellectual pursuit too. I confess that I find it highly therapeutic.”
I chewed my lip. I hadn’t written anything for years, but perhaps starting a diary wasn’t such a bad idea. After all, no one was ever going to see it, so I didn’t need to worry whether what I was writing was any good; it would be purely for myself.
“Do you mind if we take a quick detour to Owl Bookshop so I can pick up a notebook?”
I saw the hint of a smile spread across his lips, but he quickly hid it. “Very well. And after that, I wonder if we could pay a trip to the butchers?”
“What for?”
“I pondered what you told me yesterday, and I have decided that the idea of a male chef is not so abhorrent. After all, is cooking not just science? So Mrs. Atallah has given me a recipe for an Italian meat sauce from Bologna, which I was hoping we could attempt to make.”
“Of course we can, Darcy.”
As I said this, I remembered the previous evening, when I’d considered the idea of him wanting to stay here and what that would mean forus. Could Darcy and I be an actual couple, living together and doing wonderful, ordinary things like cooking each other dinner? The idea was a thrilling one, and I tried to stifle my own smile as we made our way toward home.
Chapter Twelve
Over the next few days, Darcy and I settled into a comfortable routine. I went to work each morning, leaving him watching TV with Mrs. Atallah, and when I came home, he and I would go up to my flat and prepare dinner together. Sometimes we chatted while we cooked, telling each other about our lives and families, and sometimes we worked in silence, but I didn’t mind. I now felt comfortable enough around him that I knew I could be myself and not worry about being interesting or intelligent all the time, like I’d always felt I had to be with Crispin. And so I learned to relax into the silences and just enjoy having someone else cooking alongside me.
Although “cooking” might be a generous description for what we were doing. I’d always been a terrible chef, and Darcy took it as seriously as you’d imagine but was equally incompetent, so most evenings ended up with ingredients splattered across the kitchenette and something only moderately edible on our plates. On Monday, after our disastrous attempt to “toast spices” for a lamb curry set off the smoke alarm, Mrs. Atallah came storming upstairs to complain about the noise. She was sohorrified by our culinary endeavors—turns out you should use a frying pan to toast spices, not a toaster—that she ended up staying for the evening, barking instructions at us like a tiny army major while Darcy tried to keep up and I tried not to get the giggles. It was after ten by the time we finally sat down to eat, the three of us squashed up on the sofa because my table was too small, balancing plates on our knees and drinking red wine out of mugs because I didn’t own three wineglasses. I went to bed that night full of curry, slightly tipsy, and with a massive grin on my face.
This wasn’t to say I’d given up on trying to get Darcy back into his story. Despite what Nick had said about it being an ordinary book, I knew Darcy’s arrival had to be connected to Maggie’s old copy ofPride and Prejudice, so I pored over its pages looking for anything unusual that might hint at its special powers. I even tried reading passages out loud in case I could somehow reverse the magic and send Darcy back, but to no avail.
The blogger, Lily, still hadn’t gotten back to me about the other people who’d been interested in Baskerville Books, but I spent hours online looking for any references to Maggie or the shop. On Tuesday evening, my spirits lifted when I found a nine-year-old post on Reddit by a user called MrRochestersBitch asking if anyone knew how to join the book club at Baskerville Books in London. A couple of people had replied, but their responses were vague, with one user saying they’d heard about it but that it was invitation only, and another asking MrRochestersBitch to share details if they found anything. This finally felt like a lead into whatever Maggie had been doing at the shop, and yet, despite going down a Reddit rabbit hole looking for other clues as to what they were talking about, I came away empty-handed. I promised Darcy that I’d keep looking and wouldn’t give up trying to gethim home, but the truth was that with each passing day, I was secretly becoming more and more relieved that my efforts to find an answer continued to fail.
On Wednesday morning, I left Darcy sleeping and crept down the stairs to go to work. As I walked past Mrs. Atallah’s flat, her front door swung open.
“I take it you’ll be going out tonight, as it’s a Wednesday?”
I shook my head. “I’m going to cancel Bianca this week. It’s not fair to leave Darcy on his own.”
“He won’t be on his own; he can have dinner here with me.”
“But I—”
She jabbed me in the chest with a bony finger. “Do you want to be one of those terrible women who abandons their best friend the second they get a new man?”
“Eh, no, but—”
