From Pemberley to Manhattan Read online

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  THAT SAME MOMENT

  IN PARIS

  “Wow, this place’s amazing.” Terry was mesmerized by the view of the Eiffel Tower, while Fanny imagined all the things she and the detective could do in the bathtub.

  When Fanny walked to the small kitchen, she was certain her best friend had been living here. There was the Nutella Nat liked to eat with pancakes for breakfast on Sundays, the grated fresh parmesan cheese for homemade pasta, the Colombian coffee she drank every morning, and the rum raisin ice cream she had for dessert every time she was romantically frustrated. There was a lot of it. Not a good sign… “Where are they?”

  “They must be out. It’s a beautiful day”, Terry guessed, still admiring the best view in Paris.

  “Wow! Look at these outfits! All in Nat’s size! But I’m pretty sure they’re not hers. At least, she wasn’t the one to buy them.” Fanny had to drag Nat every time her best friend needed to do some shopping. So she was pretty sure Nat would have never had bought an entire armoire of clothes by her own, let alone clothes as expensive as those were.

  “Perhaps it was the man who identifies himself as the Professor who is the responsible for them.” Terry was less and less worried about Nathalie: it seemed obvious to him she’d been having the time of her life in the last few weeks. He was also convinced Fanny should relax and take advantage of Paris too, just like her best friend had been doing.

  There were many clues as to Nathalie’s well-being: besides the new clothes, he’d seen a few city maps and museums tickets on the coffee table in the living area. He’d also discovered souvenirs in a wooden box on that same coffee table while Fanny examined the bathroom. His cop’s instincts, along with many years of training told him all was far better than okay.

  “But if the Professor was hired by Ethan, as Bobby told us, then this means Ethan was the one who paid for all this stuff”, she kept examining everything in the wardrobe: shoes, purses, belts, “and I’m pretty sure the Ethan I know couldn’t afford all of this.”

  Terry took in a deep breath. He was about to say something that would hurt her. “Fanny, it’s pretty clear to me you don’t know a lot about that family.”

  “What are you talking about?” She was hurt and offended, as expected, “I’m Nat’s oldest friend.”

  “Of course you are”, he agreed right away. “But I believe there are somethings, especially regarding Ethan, that not even Nathalie knew about before she was taken here, you know. Things so complicated and dangerous that kept her from even calling you since she came to Paris.”

  His reasoning did make sense, and Bobby had indeed told them something of the same sort. He’d told them Nat believed (and so did he and the rest of the family) her lack of communication was for everyone’s sake. Nat and Darcy were just making sure everyone was safe by staying hidden. Fanny still didn’t know the reason behind all that secrecy, but she’d seen the sincerity of Bobby’s words in his eyes.

  “Do you think they’re okay?” She was still worried about Nat, regardless what she saw in the apartment.

  “Yeah, I see no signs of fight and it seems they’ve been here recently. There are used towels and dirty laundry in the bathroom and–” Terry interrupted himself when he saw Fanny’s expression. “Sorry. I guess I’m still on my cop mode.” He smiled at her.

  “No problem. I like a man in uniform, anyway”, Fanny teased, stepping out in the balcony.

  “Well, maybe I could dress like a cop and arrest you…”, he joked back.

  She wore that wicked look of hers, the one that made Terry forget his own name. She moved closer to him, only stopping when her chest was smashed against his flat abdomen.

  “Fanny…” Terry took a step back, and his legs touched the metallic rail. Yes, he’d been flirting back, yet he couldn’t believe how her mood had changed so swiftly. Only moments ago she was worrying sick about her friend!

  “What? We’re all alone”, she moved closer, placing her hands on his chest.

  “Yes, we are”, he couldn’t contradict that.

  “And there’s a big bed in that room”, she indicated the bedroom.

  “Yes, I can see that.” Again, no way to deny her affirmation.

  “Besides, we’re dating now.” She’d accepted his terms as soon as she found out what he had to offer. She couldn’t wait to tell Nat how amazing his offer was…

  “True.” When her hands moved to his backside he inhaled sharply. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Oh, so many things, Detective.” The way she pronounced the words sounded like a challenge. Terry couldn’t breathe. “But I can start by teaching you how to use my pleasure balls…”

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  2 DAYS KIDNAPPED

  SECRET LOCATION

  Every eight or nine episodes of Seinfeld, a man walked in with food and beverage, asked her if she was ready to talk, and, as Nat told them exactly where they could shove their talk, he left silently. When, after Nat had lost track of how many episodes she’d watched, they opened the cabin’s door and she saw it was nightfall, they turned the volume down on the television, offered her a sleep bag and left again.

  It was the weirdest, less effective torture she’d ever heard of, she considered, as she fell sleep that night. She’d heard Darcy’s voice now and again during the day, after the rain had stopped, and silence fell around her cabin; but, as she closed her eyes, she noticed things had gone quiet on his side of the woods as well. She only hoped he was in a warm sleep bag and in a cabin just like her.

  In the middle of the night, or what she guessed to be the middle of the night, two men walked in, one with a bucket, the other one with a weird type of bottle with transparent liquid in it she thought was water. The TV was turned off and everything was quiet, except for the sound of some crickets outside.

  Since she was used to all the noise in New York and Paris, she’d tossed and turned for a long time before catching asleep. Now, awaken again, she feared she’d have trouble to go back to sleep. So, if she were to watch more of Seinfeld, it might have a calming effect on her: being sleepless made her anxious.

  “Are you ready to talk?”, one of them asked, after placing the bucket on the ground, in the center of the room, while the other guy tried to stabilize the strange bottle on the beam, right above the buckle.

  “No, not yet”, Nat informed sarcastically. “Maybe you should put on some more episodes of Seinfeld.

  “Since we’ve noticed that did not convince you to speak, we’re changing strategies.” Then they left her with no further words.

  Oh, dear. Is that liquid poisonous? Or is it inflammable? Am I supposed to take it down? Nathalie wondered about all possibilities she could think of, trying to decide what should be her next move. Then, a drop left the bottle and fell into the bucket, making small splash sound. That was it. If the water was poisonous or contaminated, she was gone.

  Yet, that situation reminded her of a torture technique she’d read about somewhere. It was a Chinese torture method, a process in which water dropped slowly on a person’s forehead. Was this a new version of that? If it was, it just became the most inefficient torture ever, taking the first place from the watching-Seinfeld-method.

  She waited for a few more moments and, deciding the liquid in the bottle wouldn’t kill her, she went to sleep, the water drops making her relax into a deep slumber.

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  Darcy was agonizing. He hadn’t been physically hurt yet, but he was desperate to hear Miss Nathalie’s velvet voice again. He knew she was alive, but was she well? How were these malicious people treating her? Did they give her something more comfortable to sleep in than that awful and strange rug? Had they fed her with more than flavorless sandwiches and water? Had they too make her bath in that tiny – and completely inappropriate for his height and position – tub?

  He sincerely hoped they didn’t make her do h
er necessities in a bucket, like him. He was used to living without the toilet device, but she was not. Oh, how he wished to be able to hold her in his arms once more, feel her silky hair in his hands, caress her perfect lips with his own, touch every millimeter of her soft skin, make trails of kisses on her curves, have her tongue all over his–

  Never mind. What mattered was that he now realized how foolish he’d been, not allowing any romantic entanglements while they were not wed! They should have enjoyed each other for the time they had, which wasn’t much! Now, he didn’t even know if he would have a new chance with her!

  “Are you ready to speak yet?” The brute had returned. He brought with him another sandwich, which Darcy foresaw that tasted like nothing, and an apple. The barbarians had been asking him the same question since the day before: who had helped hide him in New York, and if Miss Nathalie had known when he really was from.

  How dare they ask Mr. Darcy to tell on his friends and his… Nathalie! He would never do anything to wound the Estevez Browns, even if it meant taking the blow himself! And they did everything they could do to make him talk.

  They had humiliated him the worst possible way, forcing him to spend the last day reading those vulgarities out loud. The book they’d given him was almost as horrifying as the one Miss Nathalie had once tricked him into reading once in Central Park, but, that time, he’d read only a few pages. The day before, they’d made him read for hours straight! Out loud, too! Thankfully, no ladies were in that dark, smelly hole they called a cabin, otherwise they would have been ruined.

  “No, sir, I am not ready to talk. Should I go back to reading?”, he dreaded reading the infamous book, but he would never allow the bandits to learn about his weakness.

  “No, you shouldn’t.” The man then moved aside from the door, letting someone else walk in. Even with the dark bag covering her head, there was no mistaking to the person’s identity.

  “Nathalie!”, he exclaimed, racing desperately in her direction. He took her in his arms and held her in an intimate embrace. He didn’t care about the company: if they had heard all those vulgarities with not a word, they could witness this moment as well. Darcy, however, wished for some privacy so they could talk.

  He gingerly removed the bag from her head, while the guard left them alone. “Oh, Nathalie! Are you all right? Are you hurt?” He examined her.

  “Are you calling me Nathalie? Are you alright? Are you hurt?”, she asked him back, also surveying him for injuries.

  After he was satisfied she was unhurt, he took her in his arms again, “I was so worried; I feared they might… Oh, my Nathalie!”

  She didn’t fight his arms. Quite the contrary: she felt she belonged there, in his warm embrace. If only he was always this passionate about her, always losing control of his emotions like that… “I’m really fine, Darcy. They were okay, actually, which was weird.”

  “I am very relieved, Nathalie.” Darcy hesitated for a moment, but then said, “I must make you a promise. If we get out of here, we may share all intimacies, Nathalie.”

  “What?!” Had she heard it right? “All intimacies? With no wedding?” Maybe there was a catch.

  “I would still wish you to become my wife. But no. No wedding needed.”

  “And that’s a promise?” This abduction was getting better and better.

  “Yes. As soon as we leave this place. As soon as we are let go.” He was resolute in his decision.

  At that moment, they heard a click and the door opened again. The Professor was outside.

  “Were you responsible for this?!” Nathalie turned from romantically horny to pissed off in an instant.

  “No. Your brother was responsible for this, Nathalie”, he said calmly.

  “Where are we, Professor?”, Darcy asked respectfully, making Nat even angrier; how could have he forgiven the old jerk so quickly?

  “You are on my property, in England”, he explained before Nat could accuse him further and unleash her weird cussing against him. “We are going to London now. And, tomorrow, Darcy will return home.”

  “Home?!”, Nat felt as if her blood had frozen over.

  “Yes”, the Professor said. “Mr. Darcy is going back to the nineteenth century.”

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  Chapter 25

  ONE HOUR IN LONDON

  Nat

  I had been staring at my own reflection in the vintage mirror for long minutes. I was about to take a shower, and I desperately needed one; yet, I didn’t feel like having a shower alone.

  Darcy’s promise kept hammering against my brain and other body parts, but I couldn’t make myself walk to his room, across from mine, and force him to fulfill a vow he’d taken in a time of despair.

  On the other hand, our time together would be over in a few hours now. He’d return to his own century and Ethan would come back. It would be our last chance to actually do what we’d been yearning for since… Well, basically since we’d met.

  Wow, it was suddenly hot in here…

  “Excuse me”, a woman let herself in swiftly, holding a silver tray with spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of wine. “May I come in?”

  I didn’t even need to say yes; my stomach growled embarrassingly loud when I saw the delicious-looking food. She smiled in response and placed the tray on the desk. I dug in unceremoniously, thanking her with my eyes.

  “If you wish, I could take your dinner to the gentleman’s room, so you can have some company while you eat”, she said unnecessarily, since I was already eating (or swallowing) my dinner with her as company. Still, I understood the appeal of her idea.

  “Yeah, I guess that’d be nice”, my voice was shaking with insecurity, but she certainly didn’t share it. The woman, who was in her sixties, with rosy cheeks, white hair and brown eyes, smiled broadly at me, took back the tray (I was still eating, I must emphasize), and left my room even more swiftly than she’d entered it. “I… You…” Yeah, she’d turned me into Tarzan there and then. Me Nat. You Lady-who-took-my-food-away.

  By the time I’d washed up a little bit and crossed the hall, she had already vanished. She must be related to the Professor somehow, I was sure.

  The delicious smell of fresh tomato sauce invaded my nostrils, and I, like the troll I was, ran to the table for two (why did my room have only a desk for one?) in the center of his room (why was his so much bigger than mine? Oh, Ethan was so going to explain that one when he came back) and continued eating my food as if nothing had happened in the interim. Until I heard it.

  Someone was taking a shower.

  And, unless the lady-who-took-away-my-food had gone nuts and was having a shower in the Professor’s guest room, it was Darcy in there.

  Naked.

  Wet.

  Warm.

  Did I mention naked?

  Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod.

  If this were a Hollywood movie, the heroine would be confident enough to enter the bathroom, slowly strip in front of the hot-but-too-slow hero, and enter the shower with him so the couple could have the dot-dot-dot moment we waited for patiently the entire movie. I had to be that heroine.

  I was that heroine! Right?!

  I drank my glass of wine in one huge gulp. Then I drank Darcy’s in two. Not that I needed alcohol to gather up some courage, it was just that… Well, this was Darcy we were talking about, not just a guy from the twenty-first.

  And I was about to deflower him.

  Wow, talk about a sentence I believed I’d never-ever-not-in-a-million-years use. I wasn’t even sure if I could use it when referring to a guy and– Gee, I was totally stalling. I took in a very deep breathe, and walked to the bathroom.

  The door was ajar, and I could see the mirror. It reflected the shower, and Darcy in it. He had his back turned towards the mirror, letting the hot water untangle some of his sore muscles. I could help him
with that. His pale skin was flawless, and he had the tightest, cutest tushie I’d ever seen in my life.

  I took a few steps into the room, still staring at the mirror. I was brave enough to enter, but not enough to stare at him directly. He heard me after a while, and turned his head in my direction. “Nathalie?!” Question, prayer and desire in one word. I was so relieved he hadn’t used the “miss”.

  “I’m here to collect your debt, Darcy.” Surprisingly, I didn’t stutter and he didn’t flinch. Instead, the desire I’d heard in his voice was now in his blue eyes.

  The shoes were gone in a second. I then grabbed the hem of the cotton shirt and pulled it off as well. I could see his breathes were shallow now. When I “bathed” myself back in the cabin, they had given me comfortable clothes with lace underwear they probably took from the Parisian apartment. I didn’t understand, back then, why they’d given me sexy lingerie to wear in the middle of nowhere, and I even feared they might have cruel intentions for me.

  Now I understood. Everything was a preparation for this moment; the fake kidnap orchestrated by my brother and executed by the Professor, the flight to London to send Darcy back home, the rooms so near each other in a huge mansion, and even that lady who had brought me dinner. All had been carefully planned so I would ruin Mr. Darcy’s reputation.

  Thank you, Ethan.

  I took my yoga pants off while Darcy fully turned in my direction. His mouth was hanging open now, and I really wanted to do the same as I saw his proportionality fully awaken. Yet, I kept going, as if his… situation did little to me. Tonight, I’d be the seducer; he’d be the seduced.

  When the last piece of cloth was on the bathroom floor and I was completely exposed, he opened the shower sliding doors with a lopsided smile that made me melt like butter in heat.

  “Are you sure, Darcy?” Suddenly, I was worried about his virtue.

  “I could not be more sure even in two hundred years, Nat.”

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