Hiring Mr. Darcy - Valerie Bowman Page 0,53
turned in about early-nineteenth-century English etiquette, but my mind kept drifting back to my dinner with Jeremy on Saturday night.
It had so totally felt like a date. We’d talked, we’d laughed, he’d paid. Though I had to admit the part where he’d encouraged me to write a romance novel had been my favorite. He hadn’t laughed or made fun of it, or been derisive like Harrison had been. I mean, Ellie had to support it. She was my best friend and also a romance reader. Jeremy, on the other hand, was supportive because he believed in things like people following their wildest dreams and being happy instead of traditionally successful. He’d acted as if it was perfectly normal to want to write a historical romance novel. As if people did it every day. I wanted to. I really did, and I had to admit I’d spent most of Sunday contemplating the plot idea I had for my first book. Could it really be that easy? To just start typing and see where it led me? Could I do it and worry about the repercussions later? Could I be the next Lisa Kleypas? Wellesley hadn’t kicked her out of the alumnae association, had they?
The romance novel discussion part had been fun. The other part of the evening, however, seeing Harrison and Lacey, had been as much fun as a root canal. Even if I didn’t have the right to be mad about seeing them there together, I could bloody well be pissed about Harrison’s refusal to defend me when Lacey had insulted me. “A working dinner,” Harrison had called it, but I could tell he wasn’t happy to see me there with Jeremy. Well, I’d been on a working dinner, too.
I stood and turned around to open my office window. It was far too hot in the room, but the office window was about as easy to deal with as a recalcitrant mule. I’d just finished prying the thing open when a sharp rap on the door made me jump. I spun around to discover that the knock had heralded the arrival of Dr. Edwin Holmes, the English Department head and my boss. Damn. Damn. Damn. If he was coming up here to find me, it wasn’t good. He usually summoned his staff to his spacious, first-floor, air-conditioned/heated office when he wanted to speak with us.
Dr. Holmes wore a Deerstalker hat at times, just like his namesake, Sherlock, and Harrison and I spent hours laughing about it and discussing it. We were convinced he did it so that people would think he was related to Sherlock—who, of course, was a fictional character—but that clearly didn’t stop our boss from pursuing Sherlock’s panache. Dr. Holmes also always wore dark pants and a dark t-shirt under a tweed blazer with brown, suede elbow patches. Even in the ninety-degree heat, which up on the fifth floor today was particularly ridiculous. He rarely doffed his hat. I wondered if he’d actually remove his coat. I was always hoping he’d add a pipe to the look.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Knightley,” he intoned in his Madonna-esque pseudo/semi-fake English accent that Harrison and I also loved to mimic.
I cleared my throat and made a show of stacking the papers in a perfectly straight pile on my desk. “Afternoon, Dr. Holmes. What can I help you with?”
There wasn’t much space for dramatic pacing in my tiny attic office, but the man worked with what he had. Only pacing back and forth across four feet looks a lot like walking in a circle, and he was beginning to make me dizzy before he finally said, “I hear you’re going to the Austen Festival...” He gave me a stern stare. “To compete.”
The sharp sting of betrayal hit me like a slap in the face. “Who told you that?”
Dr. Holmes ran his hands down the front of his blazer. “Miss Lewis mentioned it. She said Dr. Macomb told her.”
Okay, so Harrison hadn’t betrayed me, but telling Lacey hadn’t been the best idea. Of course she would spill to Dr. Holmes. Why couldn’t Harrison see how sneaky Lacey obviously was? It drove me nuts.
Though now that the cat was out of the proverbial bag and running around the tiny, hot room, I supposed it helped me in that I didn’t have to find an awkward way to tell Dr. Holmes myself. “It’s true,” I said simply. “I was planning to tell you this week.”
“Forgot where my office was?” Sarcasm always sounded a little more