“And do you know where you were when you woke up on the bus?”
“The driver informed me I was in Camden Town, although it bore no comparison to the parish of such a name that I know.”
I felt a cold chill spread through my body despite the warmth of the afternoon sun. I’d been on the bus in Camden last night when I fell asleep readingPride and Prejudice, at exactly the same point in the novel the man was talking about. I stared at him, trying to slow the thoughts that were racing through my head.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” I said carefully. “Did Bianca put you up to this?”
“I am unfamiliar with any Bianca. And I do not joke, Miss Knight, and certainly not of my current ill-fated predicament.”
“How did you end up in Cake Expectations this afternoon?”
“I spent the night attempting to walk from Camden Town to Mayfair, where I maintain a residence, but I could not find my bearings,” the man said. “At one point, a stranger took pity on me and delivered me to a hospital, but I was left to wait for hours and at last discharged myself. I eventually walked to the place you call Covent Garden, and there stumbled upon your establishment.”
I swallowed, my heart hammering against my rib cage. This had to be some elaborate and frankly perverse hoax, which meant there must be a way to catch him out.
“What’s your date of birth?” I demanded.
“The fifteenth day of November in the year of our Lord 1783.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Lady Anne Darcy.”
“And the name of your housekeeper at Pemberley?”
“Mrs. Reynolds. Why do you interrogate me thus?”
I had to give it to him, this man was a Jane Austen superfan—or else I was the one having a delusional episode. Or… But that was impossible, surely? As much as I wanted to meet Mr. Darcy, I couldn’t have somehow magicked a fictional character into real life. But how else to explain what was going on?
I felt suddenly dizzy, and I leaned against a wall.
“Are you quite well, Miss Knight? Your complexion has turned pale.”
I stared at him, willing myself to wake up from this bananas dream.When I spoke, my voice was barely a whisper. “Are you telling me that you’re the actual Mr. Darcy fromPride and Prejudice?”
“I know nothing of a town called Pride and Prejudice. But upon my honor, I assure you that I am Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
At which point, I bent over and was violently sick on Mr. Darcy’s shoes.
Chapter Five
I didn’t take the man to hospital. I know you’ll read this and wonder what the hell I was thinking, but in that moment, all I could focus on was that someone who looked and sounded exactly like Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy had apparently come to life, and his appearance seemed to have coincided with me readingPride and Prejudicedrunk on the bus. I could hardly abandon him in twenty-first-century London, given his presence here might be my fault, so I decided to take him back to my flat while I worked out what the bloody hell was going on.
As we walked, I subtly quizzed him on details from the novel. His knowledge of the events up to and including the dinner in chapter ten were impeccable, but when I asked him about a ball at Netherfield, he claimed to have no knowledge of such an event. Whatever was going on here, the man clearly believed himself to have come from the precise moment in the story I’d been reading last night.
“And how exactly did you arrive here?” I asked as we reached the end of my road.
“As I described earlier, I had just asked Miss Elizabeth Bennetto dance a reel, and she had denied my request and said something along the lines of daring me to despise her. At which point I felt a most uncustomary pain in my stomach, as if I were being pulled by my own entrails, and then I believe I must have lost consciousness. When next I opened my eyes, I was prostrate on the floor of one of your omnibuses.”
“And you’re sure this was last night?”
“Absolutely. My pocket watch has stopped, but when I remonstrated with the lady driver of the bus, she informed me it was five minutes to eleven, before unjustly accusing me of being a drunkard and evicting me from the transportation.”
Five to eleven must have been around the time I fell asleep on the top deck of the bus, as it was about ten past when I was woken up by a female driver. Had Darcy appeared while I was asleep and been evicted from the bus before I woke up?
We’d reached my building, and I unlocked the front door quietly.
“Try to keep your voice down so we don’t disturb my—”