Page 17 of Me and Mr. Darcy

Turning left into a pair of impressive wrought-iron gates, there’s the delicious sound of gravel crunching under the tyres as we slowly make our way up the broad, sweeping driveway. Just this is enough to set the wings of my anticipation fluttering. I’ve always thought you can tell instantly, just by the driveway alone, whether or not you’re going to love a place. And I’m going to love this place.

Big, bold and beautiful, it stands at the top of the driveway to greet us like something torn from the pages of Pride and Prejudice – the kind of place I always imagined Netherfield Park, home of Mr Bingley, to be. I gaze at it in awe. Set in beautiful grounds, with ivy-covered walls, an imposing entrance and rambling outbuildings, it’s everything I dreamed it was going to be and more.

The tourbus pulls up outside the hotel and the next half-hour is spent disembarking, collecting luggage and checking in, while our tour guide flaps around us with her clipboard like a tweed butterfly. The hotel is even more spectacular from the inside: wood-panelled hallway, sweeping staircase, hunting pictures, portraits of bygone ancestors, stone-flagged floors . . . Everything reeks of history.

‘You’re in room twenty-eight,’ instructs Miss Steane, standing behind the front desk a few minutes later. Behind her is a large board filled with differently numbered keys, and handing me a small brass one, she ticks me off her list, seemingly oblivious to George, the general manager, who is standing next to her looking rather redundant.

‘It’s on the second floor,’ George is now adding timorously. ‘Turn right and it’s all the way to the end of the corridor.’

‘Great. Thanks.’ I nod, reaching for the retracting handle on my wheelie suitcase. ‘Which way’s the elevator?’

There’s a pause.

‘The elevator?’ repeats George, twiddling his cufflinks uncertainly. I notice a few glances flying around me and I twig.

Oh, God, Emily, don’t be so stupid. Of course there isn’t a goddamn elevator. This place is hundreds of years old.

But just as I’m about to correct myself, I hear a derisive snort behind me and someone mutters, ‘Americans, huh?’

I stiffen. I know immediately who that someone is, even before I twirl round and see him leaning up against the desk, arms folded, picking his teeth with a matchstick: Mr Asshole. I glare at him challengingly.

‘Have you got a problem?’ I demand, trying to appear ballsy and confident and not like the complete idiot I really feel. Unfortunately, my voice doesn’t play along and betrays me by coming out all shrill and nasal. I sound petulant, rather than nonchalant. I feel my face burning up, and curling my hand tightly round the handle of my suitcase, I dig my nails into my palm.

But Mr Asshole doesn’t react. Instead, he fixes me with his heavy-lidded eyes and adopts a bemused expression. ‘No,’ he replies casually, taking the matchstick out of his mouth. For a moment he studies it as he twirls it between finger and thumb, then flicks his gaze back to me. ‘But it appears that you have.’ The corners of his mouth turn up in smug amusement.

‘Really?’ I return the smile with as much sarcasm as I can muster. ‘And what might that be?’

Apart from you, you arrogant little shit.

We eyeball each other. Which is when I’m suddenly aware that it’s all gone very quiet. Everyone has stopped what they’re doing at the front desk and are now watching us like spectators at a boxing match.

Ding, ding. Round two.

‘This isn’t Macy’s, you know.’ He smirks.

‘Now you tell me,’ I reply dryly.

‘This building happens to be over four hundred and fifty years old.’

‘I know that.’

‘And you want to take the elevator?’

My cheeks are on fire. ‘Well, no, obviously. I wasn’t thinking. I’m a bit jet-lagged, that’s all—’

‘Perhaps you’d like me to ask if there’s an escalator instead,’ he interrupts, his faded blue eyes twinkling.

‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,’ I say stiffly, and grabbing my suitcase, I head for the staircase and begin bumping up the stairs.

George rushes to help me. ‘Now then, miss, let me do that, I can easily—’

‘I’m fine, honestly, I can manage,’ I insist, grasping on to the handrail and tugging the suitcase up behind me, trying not to grunt. Jesus Christ, it weighs a ton. What the hell’s in here? That freaking black sweater you’re never gonna wear, I tell myself crossly. I curse the black sweater. Thump, bang, thump. Because it’s all that black sweater’s fault. Bang, thump, bang. If it wasn’t for that black sweater, I wouldn’t have even thought about taking an elevator.

Thump, bang, thump. Ouch!

Banging my legs on the corner of my suitcase, I wince with pain and bend down to rub my throbbing shin. Then catching Mr Asshole staring at me from the bottom of the staircase, I pretend I can’t feel a thing and continue climbing. Until, finally reaching the top, I hoist my suitcase on to the landing and flounce off down the corridor.

Lunch is being served in the Elizabethan dining room and so I quickly freshen up in my room. Dark and chintzy, it has a real four-poster bed, over which is hung a watercolour of a hunting scene (they seem to be very popular, they’re all over the hotel) and in the corner stands a big old wooden closet.