Read Online Pride, Prejudice and Jasmine Field by Melissa Nathan - Free Book Online Page A

your guide.’ Jazz gazed round at his audience. They would let him drill their molars if he so desired. They were eating out of the palm
    of his hand.
    Incredible. She’d never seen anything like it before. Slowly, she tore her eyes away from his entranced followers and looked back at him. She was more than surprised to find that he was looking straight at
    her. She became aware that everyone else was now looking at her and realised that he had just asked
    her a question.
    She smiled half-heartedly. ‘Sorry, I -1… wasn’t listening.’
    He tilted his sculpted face at her with an expression she couldn’t yet read.
    ‘An excellent start, Miss Field,’ he said calmly, hardly moving his perfect lips.
    There was a slight laugh from the audience.
    Jazz felt her cheeks warm.
    ‘I just asked our starring lady, our Elizabeth Bennet (crescendo) to stand up and introduce herself.’
    Jesus Christ.
    She stood up.
    ‘Hi,’ (cough), ‘my name is Jasmin Field. I’m a journalist. So don’t piss me off. Ha ha. And um - well, I can’t really act. Ha ha.’ No one laughed.
    She didn’t know what else to say. Harry’s almost inaudible voice cut the atmosphere like an ice-pick.
    ‘I don’t work with people who can’t act, Miss Field.’
    Oh pur-lease, she thought. Get out of your bottom, it’s dark in there.
    ‘Good job this is voluntary then,’ she smiled sweetly.
    There was an uncomfortable pause.
    ‘Money has nothing to do with an excellent performance, Miss Field.’ He smiled wrily at the rest of the cast. ‘Although I don’t expect a journalist to understand that.’ They broke into relieved laughter, grateful that he had shared a joke with them. Out of the corner of her eye, Jazz could see Gilbert attempting the look of an offended genius.
    Harry started looking around the room for his next victim.
    ‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ Jazz said a bit too loudly. ‘We journalists understand lots of things. Particularly,’ she pretended to pluck words out of the air, and finished softly with ‘pomp and affectation.’
    The room held its breath, but Harry merely looked back at her. ‘Oh dear,’ he said in an infuriatingly measured tone. ‘Miss Field, we might as well sort this out once and for all. For the short period of your life that you leave behind the tacky world of women’s magazines and work with me, I will turn you into
    a good actress. However painful that experience may be for both of us.’
    Jazz bristled. ‘I never leave behind my “tacky world”, as you put it, Mr Noble - it follows me, I’m afraid. Much in the same way that a bit-part in a “tacky” American sitcom would follow a classic actor.’
    A couple of people coughed nervously.
    ‘Well, there you’re very much mistaken, Miss Field,’ said Harry, leaning forward and allowing his voice more inflection. ‘I don’t allow anything to follow anyone when they act with me. I want you, Miss Field, completely and utterly naked.’ A fractional smile. ‘I’m speaking emotionally, of course.’ Jazz grimaced. ‘And that’s your first lesson.’ He threw her a hard smile that landed, with a dull thud, in her gut. ‘Learning the difference between pomp and affectation and substance and integrity we’ll have to leave to another day.’
    And with that he turned swiftly to his next victim. Somehow Jazz found her seat again without falling flat on her bottom. The fact that everyone had now stopped watching her did nothing to lessen her sense of embarrassment. She hated him. In fact, she was so shaken by the public humiliation that it was several moments before she began to look forward to describing it in her column.
    It was Mr Darcy’s turn next. Jazz had at first been delighted to discover that Harry had succumbed to Matt’s advice and given the part of the greatest romantic hero to the acerbic critic, Brian Peters. But within moments, her delight turned to serious concern. Poison Pen Peters’ prose, albeit cruel, was always elegant,