“He’s selling well, don’t worry, my dear,” Harry said to Zoe on the day before Christmas Eve as they sat in his top-floor office gazing out at the twinkling lights of London dancing on the Thames. “So well that the shareholders have just approved the funds for the next two years.” The old man’s eyes sparkled with glee.
“Oh, Harry!” Zoe sank back in her seat in relief. Two years of security for the research team. That would make Christmas for 125 researchers and their families.
“So, all we have to do is decide on the identity of our next intelligent personal assistant.”
The name ‘Elizabeth’ flashed across her synapses. Evan’s team had been putting in serious effort into her recently. “I’ll set up a special task force this afternoon to come up with a new persona,” she said.
“Or how about we spare the efforts and you choose?”
She inhaled. “You’d let me decide the next AI?”
“It’s my way of asking you to stay.”
“But of course I’ll stay. Why? Did someone suggest I wouldn’t?”
“Little birdie told me you’d booked a ticket to Belfast.”
“It’s a return ticket, Harry. Christmas shopping.”
Harry nodded wisely. “I do hope you enjoy Belfast. She’s a beautiful city. But do think about next year.”
“I won’t be thinking of anything else.”
“Happy Christmas, Zoe,” the CEO said.
Ten minutes later, she paused outside her office door, debating whether to run to Laura first or to the research department to tell them the news. But then Laura, Evan, and José sauntered up, as if conjured from a lamp. Her heart warmed to see her friends one last time before they all dispersed for the holidays.
“Ooh la la, Zoe,” Laura said. “New name plaque?”
“Yeah.” She turned to the gleaming sheet of steel on display outside P-12. Zoe Bunsen, MSc Comp Sci. “What do you think?”
“Your name looks kinda lonely there.”
“Whatever, Laura. I was just about to tell you the news. But what was I thinking?” Zoe laughed at her own silliness. “You all already know, don’t you?”
They grinned in affirmation.
“Evan found out,” Laura said, nudging him.
“Of course he did. News travels to him faster than particle acceleration. Well, looks like I have some big decisions ahead.”
“You want to do Elizabeth,” Laura said. A statement, not a question.
“You know me too well.”
Everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
“But don’t forget,” Evan said. “Darcy thinks she’s dead.”
“No problem. When the time comes, when she’s ready, we tell him she’s been reincarnated in the same way he was, by mind mapping. He should buy it, especially as those are the terms of his own existence.”
Evan rubbed his eyebrow, wincing. “Yeah, all right, it could work. As long as we keep all Darcy instances out of the picture while we train her up.”
“But what if people own both AIs after her launch?” José asked. “They’ll end up with a couple pussyfooting around each other all the time, or worse, arguing, because that’s what they’re destined to do if we model her faithfully.”
Zoe clapped her hands. “That’s what the fans want! It’ll be perfect.”
José shrank back. “Don’t you get enough of that in real life?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
José looked to Laura for help, but she just leaned back against the wall with an ironic expression that said she was having a great old time spectating and letting the lads do the talking.
Evan scuffed the carpet with his toe. “You’ll be over in Belfast the whole of Christmas, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“On your own?”
“Believe me, that’s exactly what I need.” This probably didn’t fit into his family-centric idea of Christmas.
“Christmas shopping, you say?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Right. Well, call me. We can brainstorm about Lizzie. Otherwise you’ll just agonize about it the whole time. I know you.”
“Thanks, Evan. I will.”
“Unless, of course, you’re otherwise occupied.” Laura gave her a sly grin.
“Laura … ” she warned.
“Shopping, I meant. The sales, Zoe. Because I know how much you love shopping.”
Touché. At times like this, it was best to just grin and bear it.
• • •
Her plan of getting to Belfast hadn’t exactly finessed the part about finding Max in a city of half a million inhabitants, assuming he even wanted to be found. All she had was the home address of a family he’d allegedly disowned.
There were some consolations. Her small, cozy Belfast hotel overlooking the Harland and Wolff shipyard was attuned to her tastes—genuine period furniture and friendly, noninvasive service. And when she ventured outside, the timeless gloom of the cobblestoned docks and the nearness of the clouds in this more northerly sky harmonized with her reflective mood. In the past ten weeks there hadn’t been time to breathe, and now thousands of unresolved thoughts assailed her with every step. She traipsed down countless alleyways and around the pier like a ghost passenger from the Titanic, grabbing lungfuls of salty sea air that brought her soul back to life.
And his accent—she heard it everywhere. Sometimes strong and raw like his brother’s but sometimes mellow and modulated by other influences, as was his, bringing a sharp pang of remembrance. A tall, well-dressed man looking into a window display of toys had looked so like him from behind, but when he turned around, the face was all wrong. This came as a relief, as he was holding a woman’s arm.
When her feet finally protested against the hard cobblestones, she returned to the hotel. Dinner was served in the small family restaurant, and then she retreated upstairs to her room. She took once last look at the docklands and pulled the curtains. Christmas Eve had never been this lonely.
She couldn’t bear the thought of traipsing out to his family’s home to be met with blank stares if he wasn’t there, or worse, polite indifference on his part if he was. No, banging on a strange family’s door on Christmas Eve was just not something she could stomach. It was better not to dwell on the futility of her half-baked plan. Better to keep busy. She cleared the furniture away from the middle of the room and locked the door. Then she opened the special, padded section of her suitcase and strapped on the VR headset, the gloves, and the anklets. It was time to put the Lizzie AI prototype to the test.
She’d adopted a matronly persona for herself, a middle-aged lady called Mrs. Lacey, whose function would be to chaperone Lizzie in the Regency world, as the maiden couldn’t walk about freely without breaking a plethora of rules of propriety.
So far Lizzie was just a hodgepodge of n-grams and Darcy-subroutines, but she’d be a different creature in seven or eight months. She and the researchers and Mrs. Lacey would see to her refinement.
Christmas? She’d spend it right here in Austenland.
• • •
Max stuck his thumb out for a black cab. The flight from Belfast to London City had been smooth enough given it was Christmas Eve, but he was hungry and cold and wanted out of this shoppers’ chaos.
He checked his phone messages—Mal and Maeve needling him again for not spending Christmas at home. How could he explain his last-minute flight to London? He couldn’t. Mal knew the story, and that was why they were needling him. The vultures smelled blood. In other words, entertainment.
“Zycorp office please,” he instructed the cabbie. She’d be working. While he was still there, she hadn’t blocked any time for vacation before Christmas, and she wouldn’t have taken off a day early. He’d go to Laura or Evan first and catch up on the real news, gauge her mood, and then go to her office.
What he had to say was brief and to the point. He wouldn’t dither. He just had to know, face-to-face. If she acted surprised, ridiculed or rejected him, he could handle it. He just needed an answer. Power—and he was under no illusions, she had this now in spades—had a way of changing people sometimes, of ratcheting up their expectations so that nobody was good enough for them. He had to see how she reacted to his new persona, a lowly mechanic’s assistant from Belfast with no current plans of world domination.
“Zoe Bunsen is on vacation,” the Zycorp AI receptionist said in a bored voice when he got into the gleaming foyer with its white and pink lighting.
“What?”
“Zoe Bunsen is on vacation.”
The platinum blond receptionist-on-a-screen was a new installation, proof, if anyone needed it, that AI was taking over the world. There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere in the lobby.
“Well, where’d she go?” He tried to shake the random image of Zoe on a Caribbean beach with Tyler, sipping cocktails, applying sunscreen, kissing ...
“I’m afraid I cannot give you that information.”
“Of course you can. I’m a friend.” He wanted to shake the monitor. “I used to work with her. I’m still in the database. Max Taggart, look it up.” He fought to keep his voice cool in case emotion detection registered something threatening and tipped off security. “She would definitely let me know where she is. Please tell me.”
“I’m sorry, but that is private information.” The AI’s tone had grown snippy.
“Well, is Laura Jackson in?”
“Laura Jackson is also on vacation.”
“What about Evan?”
“I have found three Evans in the database. Do you mean Evan Smith, Evan Myers—?”
“Yeah, number two. Myers.”
“Evan Myers.” A pause. “Evan Myers is present. Should I call him for you?”
Chrissake, this AI was so soulless. He missed Darcy. “That would be very nice, yeah, thank you.”
“Evan Myers will see you, Mr. Taggart. After security clearance, please take the green elevator to floor four, room 417. Do you require further directions or assistance?”
Max waved her off, already halfway to the biometrics scanners. “No, you’ve been wonderful.”
When he reached the VR lab, he was hit sideways by the familiarity of it, the mess, the dry smell of computer fans, upholstery, and old pizza, the intensity of the smattering of faces basked in the light of their computer screens, even on Christmas Eve. He’d missed the buzz. He’d missed all of this.
Evan sauntered up and held his gaze for a long, calculating moment, his pale-blue eyes blinking with every conclusion he drew.
Yeah, he’d missed this guy too.
The researcher laughed and shook his head. “Yeah.”
“Joke?” Max asked.
“Kind of. Okay, here’s what you’re going to do.” Evan whipped up a VR headset from a nearby desk. “Put this on, jump into Austenland, and talk to some people we got parading about Grosvenor Square. There’s a particular lady—”
“No time, Evan. I’m here to find Zoe. Do you know where she is?”
“Yes. Shopping.”
“Where?”
Evan winced. “That hardly matters now, Max. Put this on. You really got to meet Mrs. Lacey.” He placed the headset in his hands.
Max refused to hold it. “Look, I’m not going into that thing. Forget about it.”
“That’s a pity.” Evan adjusted the wires on the headset. “Let me just tell her.”
Evan covered his eyes and ears with the headset. Max no longer felt any warmth toward him. This guy deserved a punch.
“My friend, Mr. Tarrant, would like to meet you, but I’m afraid he’s shy, Mrs. Lacey, Miss Bennet,” Evan said into his microphone. “Please bear with me for a moment.” He whipped off the headset again and looked speculatively at him. “Mrs. Lacey says that introductions are extremely important.”
Those words, those exact words. He’d heard them before. “Give me that.” He grabbed the headset.
“Careful,” Evan warned. “That cost a fortune, and Zoe already broke one.”
• • •
Zoe pulled Lizzie aside, swirled her parasol dramatically, and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Do not be alarmed, dear Lizzie, but prepare your nerves, for in London, this type of thing may often happen. Strange men think they can just talk to you as they please. He can’t be that shy if his address is so forward. Make sure you put him in his place.”
“But Mrs. Lacey!” the dark-haired beauty protested. “We are hardly fit for presentation.” They had wandered down a puddle-strewn Grosvenor Square, which meant an unfashionable redness of face and muddy petticoat hems, although these details should not bother Elizabeth.
Oh, come on, Lizzie, show some gumption here.
Zoe glared at Evan’s avatar. “Mr. Everett, why does your friend show such a keen interest in us?”
The gallant old Mr. Everett bowed slightly. “I do apologize, ma’am. Tarrant has come from afar to bring you a message. He dithers by that shop window; I know not why. I shall bring him over to you immediately.”
“I suppose we had better hear what he has to say,” Lizzie said with a wry twitch of her eyebrows, perfectly in character.
Nice. Evan was throwing a most unusual suitor in Lizzie’s path.
She surveyed the unfamiliar avatar standing before them. A gentleman in appearance, around the same size and level of fashion as Darcy, well dressed but not too fancy. The perfect rival indeed.
She eyed Lizzie. What would her reaction be?
Then the man spoke. “I wish to speak to, uh, Mrs. Lacey?” His gaze drifted to Lizzie and back again. “Alone.”
No explanation as to how he knew her name. He hadn’t even tipped his hat. “I’m sure Miss Bennet can be present for anything you might have to say,” she said in the haughtiest tone she could muster.
“No, Miss Bennet can’t,” he said.
Evan was laying it on thick. Elizabeth would need to summon all her self-possession to deal with this. She was struggling herself, to be honest.
“I shall leave you,” Elizabeth said, bunching up her skirt.
“What? No!” Zoe cried, but she was gone. Damn. Elizabeth had chickened out far too easily. She clutched her headset to rip it off but had second thoughts. She rounded on the man, now the only other occupant of the street, as Everett had vanished too. “Speak, sir. Say what it is you have to say.”
“Zoe, it’s me, Max.”
Her head spun, and that was no fun inside a VR headset. “W-what are you doing in Grosvenor Square, Max?” was all she could finally utter.
“I’m standing right here in Evan’s office. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in Belfast.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I’m on vacation.”
“What?”
“Okay, I was looking for you.”
“Oh no,” he groaned. His avatar held his head in his hands. “I came over here to find you.”
His words sank in. He’d done that for her. A sudden fear stunned her, fear of losing this opportunity. “Okay, but at least we’re both here, in a sense,” she said. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
“No.”
Oh, God.
“No more VR.” His avatar advanced and held out his hand. His clear, blue eyes blinked seriously, very Max-like. “Meet me. Somewhere, anywhere. I don’t care. As long as it’s in reality.”
She reached for his hand, and her avatar’s gloved hand gripped his while her real gloved hand clutched the air. It didn’t matter; it felt glorious. “I’m not sure a dowager such as myself should engage in such a wild and wanton enterprise.”
“You think I enjoy propositioning a middle-aged dame in a bonnet? I am so going over there to make you eat those words and that snooty attitude. There’s nowhere in Belfast you can hide from me.”
“Okay, okay, hold on to your breeches,” she said with a laugh. “Despite your ungentlemanlike behavior, I’m quite prepared to take this offline with you.”
• • •
The insane hustle and bustle of arrivals in Belfast Airport late on Christmas Eve teemed all around her, but she may as well have been on a deserted island, cocooned in her mad thoughts. She was tripping with happiness that he’d made the British Airways flight last minute but sick with worry that something would go wrong. Real life was far too unpredictable.
But there he was. Strolling out, luggage-free, gorgeous in a dark duffle coat she’d never seen before and his familiar baby-blue scarf. She ducked under the barricade and rushed to him, collapsing into his chest.
“Ow. Is this what you mean by taking it offline?” he asked, cradling her head in his big hands and forcing her lips to meet his, greedy and demanding.
She broke off, gasping for breath. “No, that’s what I mean by ungentlemanlike.”
“Plenty more where that came from.” He wove his arm through hers and escorted her to the side of a café, away from the throngs of people. When he looked down at her with that new softness in those burnished blues, she found herself lost in emotion and unable to say a word.
“How should I say it, Zoe?” His native accent came through stronger now. “I’m no gentleman. I’ve been a brute. I’ve bossed you around, thrown hurdles in your path, and even killed your favorite companion, for which I’m truly, deeply sorry. I’ve completely underestimated you in every way. And—I’ve nothing to offer you. I’ve no job. My life’s a mess. My family’s a mess. I don’t even have a house, for God’s sake.”
“Let me be the judge of your family,” she said.
“Of course. You’ve met Mal.”
“He’s not so bad. He beats either of my brothers hands down. And I’m sure I’d like Maeve, too.”
“She’s no Georgiana Darcy, but she’s okay.”
She let out a surprised laugh. “You really did read the book.”
“I told you I did. But is that what you want from a man? I can’t live up to that … nobility, that … nauseating level of goodness. I’m just Max, boring, insufferable Max. I’ve nothing to offer you but myself and my love for you. I love you, Zoe. I think I have ever since you came in that door with your fleabag copy of Pride and Prejudice.”
She clasped his hands in hers. “Well, Max, if you can consider a relationship with someone who has no proper connection to her family, someone who jeopardized your project, mocked you behind your back, and slapped you in the face, then you’re my kind of man. I love you, too. Hell, I don’t know exactly when that started—you were annoying me too much. But I knew it for sure when I slapped your jaw. I couldn’t have done that to any lesser man.”
“Charming,” he said, eyes aglitter. “Let’s go to your hotel, where you can take out more of this unbridled passion on me.”
“That sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan,” she said. “Darcy, please hold my calls until tomorrow morning.”