Her eyes widened and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. Had an international film star really just offered to give her his private number and asked her out on a date? Oh. My. God. ‘I’d like that,’ she said, as if getting asked out by a film actor was an ordinary occurrence and she wasn’t about to burst with excitement.
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ Harry pointed out. He frowned as he glanced at Ciaran and back at Charlotte. ‘Church, remember?’
‘Oh, bother, you’re right. I’d forgotten.’ She sighed. Her father allowed the girls to miss a Sunday service only if they were extremely ill, dying, or dead. Afterwards, the family ate lunch, either in the dining room or on the terrace, with whomever Mr Bennet had invited to join them.
Only then were the girls free to go their own way.
‘Call me when you get home,’ Ciaran suggested, and smiled. ‘Perhaps we can arrange to do a bit of sightseeing. Or… something.’
‘Yes.’ Despite the mad pumping of blood through her veins and the light-headedness that threated to swamp her, Charli withdrew her mobile with trembling fingers and handed it over, watching in excited disbelief as the actor tapped his private number into her phone.
‘We have to go, Charli.’ Harry’s words were implacable.
‘Just a minute,’ she murmured, starstruck. ‘Please.’
‘Places, everyone.’ The director and crew were ready to resume filming the scene. ‘Let’s go.’
Ciaran handed her phone back and met her eyes. ‘Until tomorrow,’ he said, his voice low and intimate.
She nodded. She couldn’t speak, could barely think. Ciaran Duncan’s proximity, and the delicious, sexy scent of his aftershave made forming a response or even a thought all but impossible. He smiled, offered a polite ‘goodbye-and-nice-to-meet-you’ to Harry – who looked ready to implode – and left.
Charlotte stared after him, admiring his trim physique and erect posture (not to mention his tight buttocks), and let out a small, dreamy sigh.
It wasn’t so much the prospect of having lunch with Ciaran that dazzled her, she reflected as she watched him take his place next to Cara on the set, or the fact that the film star had just given her his private number.
No, what left her knees weak and filled her mind with impure thoughts was the promise of those two, tantalising words, ‘or… something.’
She imagined what it must be like to make love with someone like Ciaran. Her own experience of sex was limited to hurried gropings in the passenger seat of various boyfriends’ cars, stolen kisses in the back of the movie theatre, and avidly reading well-thumbed copies of books like Fifty Shades of Grey and Fear of Flying that she found in the used-book stalls or the pound shop.
Most of the local boys refused to go too far with her, not because they didn’t (literally) fancy the pants off her, but because her father was the former vicar and they feared his wrath (not to mention the wrath of God) if they should get his youngest daughter in the family way.
And she was really tired of being a virgin.
Harry tugged at her hand. ‘As soon as they’re done with this scene,’ he hissed in her ear, his words steely with determination, ‘we’re out of here.’
Charli scowled. ‘But I don’t want to leave,’ she sulked. ‘I want to stay, and watch Ciaran.’
‘If you don’t come with me the minute this scene is over,’ Harry promised, his expression grim, ‘I promise I’ll tell your father exactly what you’re getting up to with Ciaran Duncan. He won’t approve. And he’ll never let you come here to Cleremont and watch the filming again.’
‘Oh, very well,’ she retorted, and crossed her arms against her chest in irritation. ‘Honestly, Harry – you’re no bloody fun at all.’
Sunday morning, for the Darcy family, meant church.
After a light breakfast of eggs, toast and tea, Lord and Lady Darcy rose from the table and made their way to the dining room door.
‘Don’t be long, darling,’ his mother reminded Hugh. ‘You know Father Crowley frowns on latecomers.’
‘We’ll be along shortly.’ He glanced at Holly, who looked at him with a trace of apprehension, and reached out to give her hand a reassuring squeeze.
Harry pushed himself away from the table as well. ‘Gotta go. See you later.’
‘You’re welcome to ride with us to St Mark’s if you like,’ Hugh offered.
‘Thanks, but I need to get to church a few minutes early. I promised Father C I’d help with the Offertory this morning.’
‘I never pegged you for the church-going type.’ Holly set her coffee cup down.
‘I’m full of surprises.’
‘So I’m learning.’
‘Come along, then, darling,’ Lady Darcy urged. Harry followed them into the entrance hall and out the front door.
Holly couldn’t help but notice, as she laid her napkin aside and pushed her own chair back to leave, that Harry, normally so quick with a joke or a clever comment, hadn’t said above a dozen words during breakfast.
‘What’s up with Harry?’ she asked as she followed Hugh out to the hire car. ‘He didn’t say much beyond “good morning”, “please pass the butter”, and “see you later”.’
Hugh held the door open and waited as she slid inside, then went round and got behind the wheel. ‘I’ve no idea. He seemed fine to me, just quiet.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s probably nothing. Never mind.’
They arrived at St Mark’s a short time later, and Holly studied the gothic stone edifice as she emerged from the car and waited for Hugh to park the Mercedes. Ancient trees shaded a cemetery on the far side of the church, its gravestones enclosed within an iron fence; the car park where she stood took up the opposite side.
Hugh appeared beside her a few minutes later and held out his arm. ‘Ready?’
She nodded as she took it, and confessed, ‘I haven’t been to church in a very long time, I’m afraid.’
He laid his hand atop hers. ‘Nor have I,’ he admitted. ‘Not since the last time I was at Cleremont.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Promise you won’t tell my parents.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me.’
Hugh led Holly down the aisle to the Darcy family pew in the front of the church, and as she took her place at the far end with her fiancé and his family, she studied her surroundings.
Tall windows lined the length of the nave, leading up to an altar fronted by fresh-cut flowers and bracketed on either side by a pair of candles on tall candlesticks. A pulpit of Devon marble stood to the left, with the chancel and choir on the right. The scent of incense from an earlier service lingered on the air.
Over the rustling of pages and the clearing of throats, Holly heard footsteps advancing down the aisle. She glanced back to see the Bennet family as they filed in – she knew, because she recognised Emma – each kneeling briefly in turn before they entered the pew across the aisle from the Darcys.
She studied them with covert curiosity. Mr Bennet was stout, with reading spectacles perched on the end of his nose and a pleasant if unremarkable face; his daughters, however, were another matter. They sat alongside him on the pew like three beautiful swans.
Emma, the girl with the dark hair whom she’d met only yesterday, sat next to her father.