Chapter 2

Darcy starts the engine, and I wander down the aisle, checking that all the passengers are wearing their seatbelts. The bus is full of the happy sound of chatter from the three old ladies and Dave and Maggie. Grant and Yvonne stare into each other's eyes, and I stop to gesture to their seatbelts. They hastily put them on, and I walk away happy that I've staved off any possible accidents. Nothing says romance less than a visit to Accident and Emergency, and the NHS has more than enough problems to deal with without adding a visit by Mr and Mrs Sucky Face.

Happy they're all sorted, I head back down the aisle and take my position by Darcy. "All done," I say, smiling at him.

He nods, his big hands sure and safe on the wheel. He's rolled his sleeves up because he's always too warm. We could be in the Antarctic, and he'd want a T-shirt. His long corded forearms are on display, the olive skin dusted by fine black hair. I swallow hard, feeling my face heat, and he looks up at me.

"You okay, Freddie?"

"Yes, why?"

"You look a bit flushed."

"You would too in breeches, shirt, waistcoat, and a dress coat."

"You could just wear normal clothes, you know. Linda does her tours in trousers and a company T-shirt."

"I'd rather pledge my troth to Bluebeard."

He chuckles and does a neat three-point turn waving at one of the other coach tours as we go by. Michael, the guide, looks back at his passengers and then shoots us a discreet finger. I laugh and turn my microphone on.

"Good morning, everyone," I say. The three old ladies along with David and Maggie stop talking immediately and gaze at me expectantly. It's good we've got them because Grant and Yvonne are still looking at each other as if they've been hypnotised, and the mother and daughter are arguing in low voices. "Welcome to the Literary Tour of England. This is the Jane Austen section of the trip. I trust you've had a good time so far."

One of the ladies — Joan, I think her name is — nods energetically. "We did Thomas Hardy before."

"Goodness, I hope he enjoyed it." Darcy snorts, and I smile at Joan. "And are you a fan of Thomas Hardy?"

She wrinkles her nose. "I did try one of his books. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Very depressing." Her two companions nod in agreement. "That Angel Clare deserved a good spanking. Poor Tess would have had more luck with men if she'd tried the bingo halls."

I blink. "Well, you might be right," I finally say. "And at least she'd have had the chance to win a lovely vase." Darcy's shoulders are shaking.

She nods. "But Linda, our tour guide, was wonderful." The other two women chime in with vehement agreement. "So charming and sweet and never flippant."

"Oh dear," Darcy mutters, and I reach out and surreptitiously pinch him.

"Well, I'm so glad you enjoyed Linda's part of the tour. Now, I should tell –"

"And Linda was so kind," Joan continues determinedly. "She brought us a basket of cakes every day that she'd made before she came to work." They all look at me as if waiting for me to produce my very own bakery from under my coat.

"Nope," I say cheerfully. I gesture at my outfit. "It takes me far too long to attain this sartorial level of perfection. I can't fit in baking too."

"Shame," Joan says. Then she brightens. "But you do look like an Austen hero."

"Thank you. I try. So, are any of you fans of Jane Austen?"

The three ladies nod, looking like tiny, permed meerkats. Maggie chimes in with an enthusiastic agreement which her husband conspicuously fails to echo. Meanwhile, Wedded Bliss in the corner sigh into each other's mouths, and the Mommie Dearest duo stare resolutely anywhere than at each other.

"Great," I say loudly, making the microphone squeal. "I'll tell you a little about us. My name is Freddie, and I adore Jane Austen. I fell in love with her books when I read Emma at school. Jane was funny and clever and a born observer of people. I'll be your guide today, and this is Darcy Griffiths in the driving seat."

"Darcy," Liz exclaims. "Oh my. We have Mister Darcy driving us. Dorothy, did you hear that?"

Dorothy promptly looks around as if Colin Firth is going to appear behind the wheel.

"Alas, he's not Matthew Macfadyen," I say mournfully. "But he does his best, and that's all we can really ask from him. He doesn't like his name anyway. When we were in primary school, he told everyone he was called Derek."

Darcy shoots me the middle finger, and I bite my lip to hold in my smile. I hold onto the strap above me as he turns a corner, the rush hour traffic flowing around us. I never worry when Darcy is driving. He approaches it the way he does life - calm and with a small smile on those full lips.

I turn back to my little group. "Okay, the itinerary for this part of the tour is firstly a stop off at Stonehenge, where you have VIP passes. We've added this especially for you as it wouldn't normally feature on a Jane Austen tour as current facts state she wasn't prehistoric." I pause. "Or a druid. Anyway, you'll be able to make your own way around there and then it's onto Lacock, where you'll have a tour around the village with me and then afternoon tea. After that, the night is yours. We'll be staying at a beautiful old coaching inn that's hardly changed in hundreds of years. Then in the morning, it's back to Bath. We'll check you in at your hotel, and you'll have the morning to yourself. I'll meet you after lunch and take you around the city and point out areas of interest regarding Jane Austen. The following day you'll be onto the next part of your tour, which is James Bond's London. Any questions?"

The three ladies have got their knitting out and are happily beavering away, their needles flashing in the sun.

"Let's start by you telling me something about yourselves. Where are you all from?"

Joan's knitting needles pause. "Well, we've been friends since our schooldays, haven't we, girls?" The other two ladies nod. Joan has obviously been appointed spokeswoman. "We live all over the country and meet every year, and this time we decided to do the literary tour."

"That's lovely. Darcy and I have been friends since we were little, haven't we, Darcy?"

Darcy mumbles something. He's never been particularly comfortable with the spotlight. When we were in infant school, if a teacher asked him a question, he'd look reproachfully at her and then point at me to answer. Like I was his spokesman.

"Yes," I continue. "It's why I look like I'm sixty. Darcy's antics can really age a person."

The ladies chuckle while Darcy rolls his eyes. "It's definitely the other way round," he says. "I'm starting to look like one of my subjects on a dig."

I turn to David and Maggie. "And are you Austen fans?"

"Oh, I am," Maggie exclaims. "I loved the Pride and Prejudice film with Sir Lawrence Olivier. He was a fine figure of a man. And of course, I adore the BBC series. Jane Austen's stories are so wonderful."

"Puts me to sleep every single time," David says cheerfully.

"Maybe that's why I like her so much," Maggie returns, and he bursts into laughter.

When he's calmed down, he pats her hand. "I don't mind what we do as long as we're together and my Maggie is happy."

I look to Grant and Yvonne. "And how about you two? How did you come to be on this trip on your honeymoon?"

Grant manages a big smile while stroking his wife's cheek lovingly. It's wonderful that he's such a multitasker. "Yvonne and I met when I was a printer salesman, and I called in at her place of work."

"I was a receptionist," Yvonne interjects.

Grant frowns. "Yes, I thought I was telling this."

"Sorry, darling," she says immediately.

"Anyway, our eyes met over a crowded foyer, and the rest, as they say, is history."

"Oh." I'm obviously required to say something, but I'm a bit stuck on exactly what. "So did you get married soon after?"

"Yes. It was fate written in the stars. We got married very quickly."

"Well, after our divorces came through," Yvonne says thoughtfully.

There's a silence in the bus, so loud tumbleweeds should be rolling through at any moment. Even the mum and daughter have pulled themselves away from maternal filicide.

"Oh." I clear my throat. "Those pesky divorces," I finally manage in an uber cheery voice. "The British divorce system complicates everything."

Grant huffs. "Well, our partners at the time didn't approve of our love."

"Really?" I say far too loudly, and he frowns.

"But you cannot stand in the way of true love."

"Of course not." I shoot Darcy a look, but he's staring at the road with fierce concentration, although the quirk of his mouth tells me he's finding this terribly entertaining.

"Yes," Grant goes on pompously. "I'd like to think Jane herself would have asked to write our love story, don't you, Yvonne?"

"Either her or Bram Stoker," someone mutters on the bus.

He looks around wildly. "Who said that?"

I move on before we have fisticuffs. "And how about you two?" I say to the mother and daughter.

"Bonding," Brenda says. "If certain people would ever let that happen."

Pippa glares. "Mother, don't even think of airing our dirty laundry."

Brenda gives rather a dramatic sigh. "Children can be a curse or a blessing, don't you think, Freddie?"

"Not sure and equally certain I don't ever want to know," I say cheerfully. "So, bonding? Well, Jane would definitely have approved of that. She was extremely close to her sister Cassandra although she had rather a fractious relationship with her mother." I trail off. "Anyway, I'll let you all have some peace," I say quickly. "I'll just be at the front."

The conversation starts back up loudly behind us, and I make my way to the front by Darcy, swaying with the movement of the bus and watching the countryside slide by. "Where else were you going to be?" he mutters. "In the luggage compartment?"

"Is it quiet in there because that's beginning to look like a viable alternative to me."

He chuckles, and I bend down to talk low.

"You're going to need to help me with this lot. When I became a tour guide, I didn't know I'd have more need for diplomacy than the United Nations. So, turn your microphone on and say something."

He shoots me a dubious look. "What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Mention archaeology or something."

"Oh, so just condense a subject that would take hundreds of years to get through. No big deal."

"That'll be very handy then. You can dig yourself up at the end of it." He laughs, and I shake my head. "This has all the hallmarks of a nightmare trip."

He shrugs. "Same as every other one then."

"How can you say that? Our tours are very successful."

"Like the last one when you got drunk and made up lots of facts about Jane Austen, which was highly unfortunate as we had a lecturer on the bus whose specialist subject was Jane."

"He was very argumentative and so sour-faced."

"And got more so when you tried to tell him that Jane had run off at the age of seventeen and joined the circus where her speciality was training the monkeys."

"Well, at least I didn't leave all the luggage behind in Lacock," I say sourly, and he snorts.

"You talked to me and distracted me, and at least that extra twenty minutes gave you the time to tell the extremely fascinating and very fictional account of Jane Austen meeting Colin Firth at a ball."

I roll my eyes and try not to shudder at his breath on my ear. "Well, hopefully, my new bloke will never hear that story from me. He's a Jane Austen fan."

The silence lasts long enough for me to think he didn't hear me. It's perfectly possible with the radio playing and Joan, Dorothy, and Liz all talking loudly behind us. Then he stirs. "Who?" He stops to clear his throat. "What new bloke?"

I look at him anxiously. His voice is hoarse. Is he coming down with a cold?

"I met a bloke online."

"You did what?"

The old ladies stop talking. "Everything okay?" Joan calls.

"Oh yes." I wave my hand at her. "Just discussing routes." They return to their conversation, and I look down at Darcy only to do a doubletake. He's frowning heavily, his eyebrows drawn down over his amber eyes like twin thunderclouds.

"You met a bloke online? How do you know it's safe?" he demands.

"It's not a hook-up. I met him on the Heart2Heart app."

He goes still. "You're on there? Isn't that where you find gay plumbers?"

"Well, I'm sure you can find those. I just wasn't searching for one. I have my mum's husband for all my plumbing needs, and I wouldn't want to sack Neil off. He's close to retirement and already worried about rival plumbers and –"

"So, you're meeting this bloke then?"

His voice is sharp, and I notice his hands are clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that his knuckles are white.

"Yes," I say uncertainly. "He sounds really nice, Darcy. Very funny. I think this one might be it. The one."

We both stop talking and turn as two questions come flying at us.

"Excuse me, Freddie, how long until Stonehenge?" Grant asks.

"Oh, Freddie, do you have a minute?" David calls.

I look at Darcy, who's staring straight ahead. He looks rather pale. "You answer the newlywed knobhead," I say. "I'll deal with David."

He flicks his microphone on. "We're about ten minutes away," he says hoarsely and very succinctly.

I wander down the aisle to David and Maggie. He leans close to me and mutters, "Is the loo plumbed in on this bus?"

I nod. "Of course. Feel free to use it."

He immediately jumps out of his seat, and his wife smiles at me. "I love your outfit, Freddie. Do you hire the costume?"

"I actually made it," I say, smiling at her. "I'm a tailor by trade."

"How unusual."

"How unusual and how not paying very much." I shrug. "I love it though."

"You know I was just saying to David that you look a lot like that actor Douglas Booth."

"Well, that's very nice of you, although I have to say I feel more like John Wilkes Booth most days." Especially after a day on this bus.

I'm straining to see Darcy, who's sitting patiently as Grant tries to tell him the different route he should be taking and gives him unsolicited advice on his driving. I've got the strongest impression that Darcy's not listening at all.

"Well, thank you for your input," Darcy finally says. It's a diplomatic answer, and I'd expect nothing less from my best friend, who has the patience of twenty patient men, but it makes me frown. His voice is distracted and slightly abrupt, which isn't like him. A car cuts in front of us, and he has to brake. Unfortunately, he still has his microphone switched on. "You fucking wankweasel," he growls. "Humungous twat."

Due to the wonders of technology, this is broadcast to every cranny of the bus, and several people inhale sharply. All conversation stops, and I look around frantically. "Oh, goodness me, Darcy," I call. "Fancy you remembering Jane's immortal words when she saw her brother for the first time after his years at sea. You are so clever."

Maggie stares at me. "Jane Austen said wankweasel?"

"She was from a naval family." I nod to add veracity to my voice.

The sound of the toilet flushing breaks the stunned silence. The door opens, and David appears. "Phew," he says cheerfully. "I wouldn't go in there any time soon if you value your nostril hair."