The Perfect Hero: The perfect summer read for Austen addicts!. Victoria Connelly

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СКАЧАТЬ She was thirty-one now. She knew that wasn’t exactly past it by modern standards, but she wasn’t exactly a spring chicken either. Enough years had been wasted. In Jane Austen’s time, thirty-one would have been a very dangerous age for a woman. She would have been rapidly hurtling towards spinsterhood.

      Life had to be grasped and what better time than now? What was it Peggy had said? Do something amazing!

      ‘I will!’ Kay said. ‘I owe it to you, Peggy.’

      Getting up from the sofa to pour herself a glass of wine, Kay still couldn’t comprehend everything that had happened to her over the past few months. It was still impossible to believe that she was a relatively wealthy woman. She’d never had so much money and she was determined to use it to its best advantage.

      She was going to move to the sea, that much was certain and, as a Jane Austen fan who was currently reading Persuasion for the seventh time, it seemed only right that she should focus her search on Lyme Regis. She’d already Googled it a dozen times, gazing longingly at the images that greeted her. The picturesque fishermen’s cottages, the high street that sloped down to the perfect blue sea and the great grey mass of the Cobb all seemed to speak to her.

       Hey there, Kay! What are you waiting for? Come on down. You know you want to!

      Having grown up in land-locked Hertfordshire, Kay had always wondered what it would be like to live by the sea. For a moment, she remembered a family holiday in North Norfolk. Other than two glorious sun-drenched days, the weather had been dreadful and Kay had had to spend most of the time trapped in the tiny chalet with her mum and dad who’d done nothing but row. Kay had done her best to shut herself away with an armful of second-hands books she’d found in a nearby junk shop. Reading about dashing highwaymen and handsome cavaliers had helped enormously but it was still a wonder that the whole experience hadn’t put her off the idea of living by the sea for good

      But what exactly was she going to do in Lyme Regis? 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 in her name but she also had a lot of life to lead and she was planning on living to a ripe old age. Besides, she’d always worked. Perhaps her job at Barnum and Mason hadn’t been the best in the world but she’d been proud to make her own way and pay her own bills. But what could she do in a house by the sea in Lyme Regis?

      ‘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 and that 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 couldn’t help feeling that Peggy – wherever she might be – was smiling down at her in approval.

       Chapter Three

      Adam Craig had lived in Lyme Regis all his life or, to be more precise, 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 had worked briefly in London but he would never want to live anywhere else.

      From the winding country lanes to the tiny stone cottages and the 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 ago. His father had taken early retirement from his antiques business in Honiton and he’d been determined to give the wine business a go, buying 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’d cleaned his scraped knees as a toddler, bought his first pair of football boots as a youngster and had 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 wasn’t quite so sharp.

      He’d been a screenwriter and film producer for over 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 their career – turn their 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. But, as an adult – as a writer – her books, particularly Persuasion, had begun to make their mark and, three years ago, he’d started putting things into motion. And it was all coming together wonderfully. Very early on, he’d managed to get highly-respected director, Teresa Hudson, on board. She had a string of period dramas under her belt and had won a BAFTA for her recent adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower. It was whilst she was filming that in Dorset that they’d got together and started discussing Persuasion.

      Now all the crew and actors were on board and filming had begun. They were due to descend on the unsuspecting town of Lyme Regis soon and Adam was looking forward to that. He’d long been envisaging the scenes he’d written around the Cobb, imagining the fateful leap of Louisa Musgrove and the cautious exchanges between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth.

      He was envisaging them now as he walked into town, walking down Broad Street with great strides, shielding his eyes from the sun so that he could catch that wonderful glimpse of sea.

      He was heading to the bookshop when he saw her. Tall and slim with a tumble of toffee-coloured hair, she was gazing in the window of an estate agent and was frowning. She was wearing a floral dress that was far more summery than the weather and her hands were busy doing up the buttons of her denim jacket in an attempt to keep the nippy breeze at bay. She had a rosy face and intensely bright eyes which Adam wished would swivel round in his direction. But what would he do then? What exactly would he do if she swivelled? It would take a small miracle for a girl like her to notice him.

      It was a sad fact that Adam had spent most of his life unattached and it wasn’t because he was unattractive – far from it – but that he was painfully shy when it came to women. He was the man who stood in the corner at the party waiting for the host to introduce him and, whilst he might have a lot more of interest to say than the party bore who didn’t stop talking all night, Adam’s stories would rarely get an airing because of his shyness.

      It had always been the same. At primary school, he had been the one to work behind-the-scenes in the school play because he’d been too shy to put his hand up for the acting roles. At secondary school, he’d never dare ask a girl to dance even when encouraged by all her friends to do so. And university wasn’t much better. He’d spent most of his time with his head in СКАЧАТЬ