Authors: Victoria Connelly
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary
The Perfect Hero
The Perfect Hero
VICTORIA CONNELLY
To my dear friend, Deborah, with love.
‘Is not general incivility the very essence of love?’
Elizabeth Bennet,
Pride and Prejudice
Contents
Victoria Connelly’s
Top Ten Romantic Heroes . . .
Coming Soon . . .
The Runaway Actress
Peggy Sullivan leant forward in an attempt to get the pillows behind her just right.
‘It’s my eyes I miss the most,’ she said to the young woman sitting by the side of the bed. ‘I wasn’t too bothered when my legs went. I was too tired to walk around much anyway. I didn’t even mind when my right ear went last month but I do miss my eyes.’
The young woman leant forward and patted her hand.
‘It’s so kind that you come and read to me, Kay,’ Peggy said.
‘It’s my pleasure.’
‘It can’t be easy for you, my dear. Coming here, I mean.’
Kay looked at Peggy for a moment before answering. ‘It wasn’t at first. I kept seeing Mum everywhere – sitting in the conservatory gazing out at the gardens, or serving everyone tea in the sitting room.’
‘We all miss her so much. She always loved taking care of everybody – just like you do.’
Kay nodded. ‘She used to call me “Little Mother” when I was growing up.’
Peggy smiled sadly and then looked at Kay with bemusement in her eyes. ‘How you came to work at Barnum and Mason, I’ll never understand.’
‘It was the first job I was offered,’ Kay said with a shrug. ‘I took it thinking I’d only be there a little while. I was hoping—’
‘Someone would discover your paintings,’ Peggy interrupted.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, they’re taking their time, I must say.’
They were silent for a moment and Kay looked out of Peggy’s window. Her bedroom was on the ground floor of The Pines and overlooked the communal garden which was shivering under a layer of early snow. The poor cyclamen were doing their best to survive but one more fall of snow and they’d be buried alive, Kay thought.
Buried. The word sent a shiver through her. It had only been a month since her mother had been buried in the local churchyard after a brief but devastating illness. She’d been sixty-seven – not old by today’s standards – and Kay missed her more than she could say. Perhaps that was why she was spending time with Peggy. She’d met her whilst visiting her mother and the two of them had clicked. Both had a profound love of the novels of Jane Austen and when Kay had discovered that Peggy was blind – a fact that she’d kept marvellously hidden – Kay had offered to read to her.
Peggy never seemed to have any visitors and Kay couldn’t quite give up visiting The Pines.
‘I do wish I could see your paintings,’ Peggy suddenly said.
‘I do too, Peggy.’
‘Tell me about your new ones.’
‘Well, I’ve only got one new one. I’m afraid work’s been a bit hectic and—’
‘That ratbag Roger still working you late?’
Kay grinned.
‘I remember him when he was a lad. I knew his father. Lived in my road. Bullies – both of them. You mustn’t let him push you around, Kay.’
‘I don’t.’
Peggy nodded. ‘Because I’ll have words with him if he’s bullying you. I’ve got one of them portable phone jobbies. It’ll only take one call.’
‘It’s all right. There’s no need to call him.’
Peggy shifted forward and Kay got up to rearrange her pillows.
‘So, tell me about your picture.’
Kay’s eyes took on a wistful look as she thought about her latest painting.
‘Well, you know the last chapter of
Persuasion
we read together? That moment when Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth see each other for the first time since he went away?’
‘I love that scene!’ Peggy said, her face glowing with the pleasure of remembering it.
‘I chose that moment when Jane Austen writes “a thousand feelings rushed on Anne”.’
‘
Wonderful!
’ Peggy enthused.
‘And “a bow, a curtsey passed”.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Peggy said. ‘I can see it now. All those pent-up emotions they still have for each other. Oh, I
wish
I could see it!’
‘I’ve always wanted to capture that moment when their eyes meet,’ Kay said, tucking a strand of toffee-coloured hair behind her ear. ‘It’s so fleeting and yet so much happens in it.’
‘So which scene are you illustrating next?’
‘One of the Lyme Regis ones. I want to paint that wonderful seafront with the sweep of the Cobb. I only wish I could visit it.’
‘You’ve never been to Lyme?’
‘No,’ Kay said, her eyes taking on a dreamy look again. ‘I’ve always imagined myself living by the sea one day and I think Lyme would be just the place to be.’
‘Then what are you doing in land-locked Hertfordshire?’ Peggy asked. ‘I mean, now that you don’t have any family ties.’
‘My job’s here. My house is here.’
‘Oh, rot!’ Peggy said. ‘I know it’s a terrible cliché but, if you don’t take charge of your life, nobody’s going to do it for you. Think of Anne Elliot and all those years she wasted.’
‘But I’ve got a mortgage to pay. I’m kind of stuck here.’
Peggy’s mouth narrowed. ‘I don’t like to hear such excuses. If you want to live near the sea then you should. It’s as simple as that.’
‘I wish it was,’ Kay said. ‘I really wish it was.’
That night, Kay Ashton dreamt of Mr Darcy again. It wasn’t the first time, of course, and it wouldn’t be the last. She often dreamt about her favourite fictional hero and she often
day
dreamed about him too. How many dull afternoons in the office had been cheered up by imagining the sudden arrival of Mr Darcy? He’d come striding in across the carpeted reception, his eyes fixed on Kay.
‘In vain have I struggled,’ he’d say, confessing his love to her there and then and sweeping her up in his arms, telling her to leave her desk behind and run away to Pemberley with him.
If only I could,
Kay thought.
It was funny that she should be dreaming about Mr Darcy because she’d been drawing Captain Wentworth for the last few weeks now. Darcy had been the main subject of her last book – a collection of drawings in pen, and watercolour paintings of scenes from
Pride and Prejudice
.
She couldn’t remember the first time she’d drawn Mr Darcy but she’d been putting pen to paper all her life, sketching little scenes of handsome princes and fairytale princesses which, as she’d grown older, had become heroes and heroines from the books she read. It was a world she’d loved diving into because the real one around her had been a cold and cruel place.
Kay had been ten years old when her father had left her. She’d been upset and confused and had watched as her mother had crumbled before her. The two of them had clung to each other and had slowly built a new life for themselves but, just as they were getting used to being just the two of them, the unthinkable had happened. Her father had returned.
Life had been turned upside down once again and Kay was forgotten in the space of a moment as her parents had got on with the business of fixing their marriage. It hadn’t been easy. Kay often wondered how her parents had managed to stay together for so long because they seemed to spend most of their time fighting. She could hear them shouting from her bedroom even when she closed the door and hid her head under her pillow. They shouted at night too when they thought she was asleep, their voices only slightly dimmed by the thin wall that separated their bedroom from hers.
Her mother would always look washed-out and red-eyed in the morning whilst her father would be silent and morose, his eyes avoiding hers as she ate her breakfast before school.
Then, after a year of endless fighting, he’d left again. This time, it was for good. There was no forwarding address and he never rang. It was as if he’d forgotten that he’d ever been a husband and a father.
Kay, who already spent most of the time with her head in a book, had retreated into her fictional world like never before and had never really surfaced since. For her, reality was only made bearable by the existence of novels and her beloved stories and sketches had got her through the traumas of a dozen father-figures, the trials of her own string of disastrous relationships, and the boredom of her job at Barnum and Mason. It had been the one constant of her life.
The strangest thing was that Kay had never let the experience of her parents’ marriage affect her own views of relationships. She still believed in the possibility of love and that your soul mate was out there just waiting to be found. Maybe it was a notion she’d picked up from the books she read but she truly believed it. She looked at her collection of illustrations now. It had been sitting on her desk for weeks and she didn’t quite know what to do with it next. She supposed she should send it to a publisher but what if they rejected it? What if all her hopes and dreams of seeing it in print came to nothing? Leaving it sitting on the desk might not result in it seeing the light of day but at least her dreams remained intact that way.
The Illustrated Darcy
she called it because, although she’d made sketches and paintings of all the main characters and major scenes, the emphasis remained on Darcy. He was a hero for all time, wasn’t he? Kay often wondered if Jane Austen had known that when she’d created him. Had she known the power of her very special hero? Had her sister, Cassandra, said, ‘Wow, Jane! You’ve done it! There will never be another hero to match this one!’
Kay often wondered what it was about Mr Darcy that fed the female imagination so much. There was something so special about Austen’s heroes that had never been matched in other fiction. Kay had once – very briefly – gone through a Brontë phase but pulling your lover’s hair out and then digging up their grave wasn’t really the mark of a hero, was it? You wouldn’t get Mr Darcy prowling around graveyards in the middle of the night.
Ah, could there ever be a hero to match Fitzwilliam? she wondered.
Getting out of bed, Kay grabbed a sheet of paper and sketched a few lines, desperately trying to recall the man from her dreams. It was always the face that eluded her. She could capture the stride, the movement of the man, and the clothes were always easy to remember but the face always seemed to hover on the outskirts of her consciousness. What did the perfect hero look like?