‘Is he yours?’
‘No,’ Robyn said. ‘I mean yes. Kind of.’
Katherine looked confused and Robyn swallowed hard as she realized that the whole room was now looking at her.
‘Really!’ the master of ceremonies said. ‘I must ask you to leave. This is a private function.’
‘Get your hands off me. I’m here to see my gal.’ Jace stumbled and swayed across the room, catching hold of the table in front of him as he reached Robyn. ‘Babes!’ he said. ‘I was worried about you. Your phone must be broken.’
‘It’s not broken, Jace,’ Robyn said in a whisper, hoping he’d lower his voice to match her own.
‘I had to come and see you - make sure you were all right.’
Robyn stood up. ‘You shouldn’t be here!’
‘I was bored!’ he whined. ‘I’m stuck in that bloody B&B by myself.’
Again, there were more gasps and mutterings from the guests at the intruder’s ripe language.
‘I told you not to come.’
‘Aw, babes!’ he said, making an attempt to hug her but she swerved out of the way. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘You should have stayed at home!’ Robyn said, anger raising her voice. ‘This isn’t the place for you.’
‘Come with me,’ he said, grabbing her wrist.
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘What do you want to be with all these stiffs for when you could be having fun with me?’
‘Jace!’
‘Hey! Leave her alone.’ Somebody had stepped in between them and calmly but firmly pushed Jace away from Robyn. It was the handsome man on horseback. ‘I think you’d better leave. That’s your taxi outside, right?’
Jace’s face had turned purple with rage. ‘You’re that toff whose horse kicked my car!’
Robyn shook her head. ‘It didn’t kick your car, Jace.’
‘You are, aren’t you? Is that why you’re here?’ Jace asked, peering round the man to look at Robyn and almost toppling over in the process.
‘What are you talking about?’ Robyn said.
‘I know you women - you don’t care who the man is as long as he’s on a bloody horse. Put Jabba the bloody Hutt on a horse and you’d all be swooning over him!’
‘Jace, you need to lie down.’
‘Let’s get you into that taxi,’ the man said.
‘But I want to stay!’ Jace cried, shaking the man’s hand off him.
‘No, you don’t. We’ll be watching a film later,’ Robyn said. ‘You’ll be bored out of your mind if you stay.’
‘What - a film with one of those infernal dance scenes?’
‘Exactly,’ Robyn said.
Jace seemed to be considering this for a moment and, finally, he saw sense. ‘When will I see you?’
‘I’ll give you a call in the morning, okay?’
Jace nodded. He looked like he was about to fall asleep or maybe just fall.
‘Let’s get you into that taxi,’ the man said again.
‘Waitwaitwait,’ Jace said, bending forward and grabbing hold of Robyn, placing a slobbery kiss on her mouth before leaving the room.
Robyn sank back down in her chair.
‘You okay?’ Katherine asked as everyone around the table started whispering to one another, desperately trying to find out what was going on.
‘That was terrible,’ Robyn said. ‘Everyone’s looking at me.’
‘No they’re not.’
‘I think I’d like to leave.’
Katherine nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’
The two of them left the dining room and Robyn breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thanks for not asking too many questions,’ she said.
Katherine smiled. ‘If you want to talk about it, I’m here. If not, no problem.’
‘I appreciate that.’
They walked up the stairs together.
‘If only life were more like fiction,’ Robyn said as they reached the top of the stairs.
‘I’m always thinking exactly the same thing,’ Katherine said. ‘It’s the curse of the voracious reader that reality never quite matches up to the fiction we read.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Robyn said. ‘Jane Austen has a lot to answer for, doesn’t she?’
Katherine nodded. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t live in hope of a happy ending of our own.’
Robyn sighed. ‘It’s just that it sometimes seems a very long time in getting here.’
They reached their bedroom doors and Katherine smiled at Robyn. ‘You’ll come back downstairs for the film, won’t you?’ Robyn looked lost in thought for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite place where she was or who was speaking to her. Finally, she nodded.
‘Good,’ Katherine said, checking her watch. ‘Shall I knock for you?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Robyn said. ‘I’ll see you down there.’
‘I must say, I was tempted to watch Sense and Sensibility for the hundredth time but I’ve decided to wallow in Persuasion’ Katherine said. ‘What about you?’
Since the upset with Jace, Robyn hadn’t had time to think of the evening ahead. Although she preferred Persuasion as a story, she really couldn’t cope with it tonight. The scene when Anne Elliot realizes that she and her onetime lover, Frederick, are like strangers - worse than strangers because they can never now become acquainted - always brought tears to Robyn’s eyes and would be just enough to tip her over the edge in front of everybody.
‘It was perpetual estrangement.’ That line always got Robyn. That was the lump-in-the-throat moment and, if she was ever watching the film in company, a sly finger would dab at the tear ducts and a long soft sniff would try to hide the sadness in her heart.
Perpetual estrangement, Robyn thought. Wasn’t that exactly what she wanted from Jace?
