Mr. Darcy Forever by Victoria Connelly

I’ll have to get work on it right away.’
    Mia’s face flushed scarlet. ‘Sorry, Shelley. I guess I eat when I’m unhappy.’
    ‘ Oh, I’m lucky. I starve.’
    Mia smiled. Her friend had always had a full figure and Mia had never seen her off her food ever. She always had an appetite.
    ‘ Look at me, I’m skin and bone,’ she said.
    Mia admired her comely figure. ‘Yes, like Marilyn Monroe,’ she said.
    ‘ Well, not to worry. I can soon fix this,’ Shelley said, taking a seat at her trusty sewing machine. ‘And I’ve got the perfect piece of ribbon to finish it off with. You’ll look just perfect tomorrow. Why don’t you go and make yourself a cup of tea? I’ve left the 1995 copy of Persuasion in the DVD player. You can watch that if you want. I’ll give you a call when I’m ready for you.’
    Mia nodded. She knew Shelley preferred to work without an audience and she couldn’t resist the pull of Persuasion . Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds would be just the thing to get her in the mood for the promenade tomorrow. It was one of Mia’s favourite film adaptations and she loved trying to recognise the locations used in Bath, imagining herself walking in those same locations in her own Regency costume. That was one of the privileges of the Jane Austen Festival - one could make believe that one was in the very heart of an Austen novel or, at the very least, a film adaptation. The streets of Bath were amongst the most beautiful in the world and were certainly the most romantic to walk around in costume.
    There was something very special about wearing a costume. It made you feel as if you were somebody else entirely. It was like an armour against reality and you could make-believe that you were quite another person and that was a very seductive feeling.
    Going through to the kitchen at the back of the house, Mia made herself a cup of tea in one of the “I Love Darcy” mugs, smiling at her friend’s collection of Austen paraphernalia. There was a Jane Austen tea towel hanging over the cooker door, a film locations calendar on the wall from which a handsome Henry Tilney was staring down, and a shopping bag with the words “Obstinate, headstrong girl!” was hanging on the back of the door.
    Stirring a spoonful of sugar into her mug, Mia left the Austen-infested kitchen and walked through to the sitting room, stopping abruptly at the door. Shelley’s lodger, Pie, was slouched in a chair in the corner of the sitting room, his head in the racing pages of a newspaper. He didn't look up as Mia took a seat but made some sort of a grunt, perhaps in recognition of her presence, she couldn't really be sure. For a moment, she looked at his shock of brown hair and his stubbly chin. He was rather striking, she thought, in a very rough sort of way.
    Deciding not to grunt back in response, she placed her mug on a little table and sat on the sofa.
    ‘ You don’t mind if I watch something, do you?’ she asked, thinking it polite to check.
    A grunt came from behind the racing pages and Mia took it as a form of consent. She picked up the remote controls and switched the TV on and then pressed play on the DVD player and the bright image of the Cobb at Lyme Regis filled the screen. Shelley had obviously started watching it yet again and Mia decided not to rewind it. The Lyme Regis scenes were amongst her favourite.
    She was just reaching the famous moment when Louisa Musgrove flings herself from the Cobb steps when Pie mumbled something incomprehensible and left the room.
    ‘ I guess he's not an Austen fan,’ Mia said with a little smile. Either that or he’d already overdosed on them since sharing a house with Shelley. She did, after all, have just about every single Jane Austen adaptation that had ever been made. There were two Persuasions in her collection and wasn't there a new version to look forward to? Mia had read on one of the Austen forums that Oli Wade Owen and Gemma Reilly had been filming in Bath in May and