Karen Doornebos - Definitely Not Mr Darcy

To Jane Austen, may you rest in peace.

Warning: this will not be brief; writing may be a solitary pursuit, but I’ve had a lot of support. The good news is you don’t have to read this, you can just skip to chapter one.

Before I acknowledge my fabulous agent, Paige Wheeler of Folio Literary Management, and my very cool editors, Leis Pederson and Cindy Hwang at the Berkley Publishing Group, I’d like to thank my incredibly supportive husband, Jacques, without whom this book wouldn’t be possible, and my two children, Remy and Samantha, who have been a little neglected of late. In so doing, I hope I’ve thanked you all equally!

Thanks to my artist parents, Judie, and the late Bill Anderson, for the creative upbringing. Thanks to Barry Kritzberg, the ultimate English teacher, for the early encouragement, and Laurel Yourke, faculty associate emeritus at University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Continuing Studies in Writing, who went out of her way to pull me aside to say I had “something.”

My beta readers, who read the entire book when it perhaps shouldn’t have been seen by anyone include: Kim Delich, Susan Havel, Jen Kovar, Barry Kritzberg, Kim Lutes, Alice Peck, and Katie (Meenan, at the time) Walsh.

Two critique groups helped with this manuscript, and I need to thank the first: Pat Dunnigan, Stephanie Elliot, and Elyce Rembos; and my current critique group: M. J. Bressler, Rita Chhablani, Chris Foutris, Barbara Harrison, Fredericka Meiners (writing as Ann Macela), Jan Moretti, and Sherry Weddle.

Thanks go to author and fabulous teacher Christine DeSmet; Arielle Eckstut, author of Pride and Promiscuity; and agent Danielle Egan-Miller, author Syrie James, Erin Nuimata of Folio Literary Management; Abigail Reynolds, prolific Austenesque author; and Maggie Sullivan of Austenblog and There Must Be Murder fame.

Hugs to those who put together “Young Author Outrage,” a hilarious scrapbook that kept me going over the years: Michelle Burton, Liz Calby, Linda Dunbar, Gloria Gyssler, DeAnn Gruber, Anne Kodama, Audrey Korsland, Linda LaBelle, Bianca Loftus, Karen Maher, Ingrid Nolan, Kate Pennington, Jennifer Pollock, Mary Jo Robling, and Jane Wilhelm.

Other stalwart supporters include: Robin Benoy, Janan Cain, Marilyn Groble, Anne Huston, Janice Fisher, Bridget Lesniak, Cathy Louthen, Ingrid Lulich, Michelle Mendoza, Linda Roberto, Cyndi Robinson, Dorie Skiest, Cindy Vitek, and Trish Willinger. Carole and Mike Fortman, thank you for entertaining and, at times, feeding Samantha. Thank you, Jamie Anderson, for your design capabilities and Web advice, and Joost Doornebos and Laurie Gruber for believing.

Those who read pages include: Linda Dunbar, Angela Gordon, Janet Katish, Michelle Marconi, and Anne Kodama, who stopped reading because the book made her forget to pick up her child from piano, or something.

I need to thank the BBC for producing the Regency House Party, because, little did I know until I’d written most of the book that they had actually done a Regency reality show that is available both on YouTube and DVD. I recommend it! A tip of the hat to The Bachelor TV series, too.

I must come clean that my daughter named her American Girl Doll “Chloe,” and when I looked up the etymology of the name, decided to change my main character’s name from “Zoe” to “Chloe.” There. I said it, Samantha!

Thanks to: the Jane Austen Society of North America, Chicago chapter, and especially William Philips. Thanks as well to Romance Writers of America, especially the Windy City chapter. Barnes and Noble, Borders, the Newberry Library, Riverside Library, and Starbucks—all fueled the effort. Thanks to fellow Chicagoan, Oprah, for helping to make reading hip—I’ve watched you for years now, if you want to go out for coffee, just call. Thanks as well to one of my first and favorite bosses, Tim Roberts in England, and my English friends Tim and Alli Moxon.

The 1995 A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, and everyone involved in that production, deserves gratitude. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth brought a certain coolness to all things Austen and forced Janeites worldwide out of the closet. Colin Firth was consequentially typecast for the next fifteen years, but such is the price for playing Mr. Darcy a little too well. 

She gave up pink drinks and took up tea long ago.

Chloe Parker, even after her divorce, still dreamed of a more romantic era. An age when a lady, in her gown and gloves, would, for sheer amusement, banter with a gentleman in his tight breeches and riding boots, smoldering in a corner of the drawing room.

So now that she stood deep in the English countryside, loaded down with her suitcases, at the registration desk of a Tudor-style inn, she felt as if she’d been drinking something much stronger than tea. Was she woozy from the jet lag of the eight-hour flight from Chicago to London, or enthralled with the antique furniture and aroma of scones?

A young woman in a long blue frock, apron, and ruffled cap approached and curtsied. “I’ll be your maidservant during your stay, Miss Parker,” she said in a monotone voice with a slight Cockney twang. “My name’s Fiona.”

Chloe had a maidservant? Who called her, at thirty-nine years old, a “miss” and curtsied? As Chloe’s eight-year-old daughter, Abigail, would say, “This rocks.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Chloe said instead.

Fiona would be beautiful, were it not for the pierced hole in her pouty lower lip where her lip ring would be.

“Welcome to the set, Miss Parker,” she said without a glimmer of a smile. “To Jane Austen’s England. Or should I say Mr. Darcy’s Derbyshire?”

Chloe would be happy to be welcomed to Mr. Darcy’s pigpen, but that was beside the point.

Fiona looked Chloe over. “It looks as if you’re almost dressed for the part.”

Chloe wore lace-up boots, a long pencil skirt, and a poet blouse. She shopped at vintage and secondhand stores and most people noticed her quirky outfits.

Fiona took a skeleton key from behind the check-in desk. “Are you excited to join in our little charade?”

“This documentary’s a dream come true for me! A chance to live in the year 1812 for three weeks? No computers, just gowns, balls, and tea parties. This is my Vegas, my—Brighton.”

The ice between mistress and maidservant had been broken for a moment, because Fiona managed a half smile.

You wouldn’t have to have read Pride and Prejudice like Chloe did at eleven years old to appreciate the magnitude of the moment. Mr. Darcy was her first love, although other Austen heroes soon followed, but Mr. Darcy loomed large in her heart for twenty-eight years—the longest relationship she’d ever had with any man, fictional or real.

She’d also never been abroad, and never to England, even though English blue blood ran thick on her mother’s side and she surrounded herself with all things Austen and all things English, from BBC costume dramas to Cadbury chocolates. She had even named her daughter Abigail so she could call her “Abby” after the famed English abbeys.

Abigail, though, didn’t like to be called “Abby.” She took hip-hop dance classes, programmed her own apps, shot her own YouTube videos, and even filmed and uploaded Chloe’s audition video for this Regency documentary.

“With all the social networking, Twittering, e-mailing, and texting I’m supposed to be doing, I’m twenty-first-century weary and twenty-first-century challenged,” Chloe told Fiona. “I can’t wait to escape to the 1800s and slow things down for a while.”

“Right.” Fiona held out her waiflike arms toward Chloe’s suitcases. “It’s time to go upstairs and get dressed for your carriage ride to Bridesbridge Place, where you’ll be staying. Might I take your baggage?” Her outstretched arm revealed a Celtic ring tattoo around her wrist.

It occurred to Chloe that Fiona might be a little miffed that she had been cast as a servant forced to wait on the likes of her. “No thanks, I have them.”

“As you wish. Follow me, please.” Fiona spun around and led Chloe to a narrow wooden staircase with steps smoothed from hundreds of years of wear, and Chloe couldn’t help but imagine the people who must’ve walked the same path over time. It was fitting that her journey would start at an inn, as inns were the crossroads of early 1800s society, where rich and poor intermingled, horses were switched out, ladies could lunch in public, and trysts in various rooms changed destinies.

Chloe tried not to bang the plaster walls with her heavy bags.

She had baggage, that was for sure. An ex-husband, a stack of overdue bills, and a house facing foreclosure, all because her antique letterpress business was tanking. Nobody paid for their wedding invitations or anything to be letterpressed and handcrafted on one hundred percent cotton-rag paper anymore.

Letterpress was a dying art, another casualty of the digital age. The bank sent her threatening letters run off on cheap paper and laser-printed in Helvetica, the font she despised the most, because it was sans serif, overused, and, to her, it heralded the reign of the impersonal.

With Chloe’s failing business, Abigail’s entire world was in jeopardy. That brought Chloe here, first and foremost, to compete in this documentary, to put her knowledge of Austen novels to the test and win the $100,000 prize. How else could she rally that kind of cash so quickly and generate PR for her business at the same time? Perhaps, though, even more than the cash, the documentary offered her one last chance at—everything.