Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen has been filling women with unrealistic expectations of men since 1813. Zoe Bunsen was one such woman. Twenty-eight and single, she’d never encountered a man as compelling as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. But she possessed the good fortune of being employed by a British software company, which, after decades of research, had beaten the Silicon Valley giants to the post. Zycorp Ltd. in London had created the world’s first artificially intelligent Mr. Darcy.

Zoe had the even greater fortune of being one of the two software testers selected to prepare Mr. Darcy for entry into the modern world. She spent the two weeks until project kickoff in excited agitation, rereading the book several times and dreaming up tweaks to the AI’s mannerisms and opinions in order to make him as Darcy-like as possible. She hoped that a genuine heart of gold had been encoded into his circuitry and that he wasn’t some lipstick-on-a-pig job, because she’d seen enough of those.

Day one of the project arrived. After clearing out her messy old cubicle on the ground floor, her next task was to transport her cardboard box of office junk up seven floors to her new quarters. This meant catching the next elevator, which meant pressing the button—a challenge as both her hands languished underneath the box.

A petite hand slapped across the button, solving the problem. Gold nail polish flashed white under the harsh strip lighting. Laura.

“Thanks, Laura.”

“Haven’t pressed it yet.” Her best friend flicked back strands of blond frizz to reveal dark, accusing eyes. “You sure about this? It could kill him.”

“It won’t kill him.”

“His legacy. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Could you be any louder?”

Laura smirked. “They’ll find out soon enough.”

Zoe rotated to cast her gaze over the “they” in question—her colleagues in software usability, trickling into the office. With its musty hardware smell and low-level hum of productivity, it had been home for half a decade, and she hated to leave it even if the rewards promised to be mind-blowing.

“Test him here,” Laura said. “You’d have loads of support.”

“Distraction, you mean.”

“Max Taggart could be worse, for all you know.”

“Max Taggart could be the Antichrist for all I know.” Zoe had combed the Internet for info on her new colleague and future office mate. All she could gather was: male, hotshot project manager, thirty-four, poached from Tenzhong Inc. in Silicon Valley, and too busy being indoctrinated last week to trek to the bottom floor to introduce himself. Neither had she ventured upstairs, because that would have made her look curious or keen, both of which would set the balance of power in his favor, and if there was ever a time in her life when she needed to gain control of a project, it was now.

Laura whacked the button. “You wouldn’t want to be late.”

Zoe readjusted the weight of the box a smidgeon farther up her sweating arms. It was natural for Laura to be peeved; she’d applied in vain for the same job, and it had put a strain on their friendship for a horrible day and a half after the interview. But they were past it. Almost.

“You’ve better things to do.” Zoe cocked her head toward José Morales, sitting at three o’ clock, his nose in a screen. “Such as asking out a lonesome business developer.” With any luck, her departure from this nerd ranch would act as a catalyst, rebooting the lives of those left behind. “Do it, Laura.”

Laura twisted her mouth and said nothing.

“Darcy’s in good hands.”

Laura’s mouth untwisted. “You’ll be lucky if you can dictate the color of his dialog box.”

“Let me worry about that.”

The stares of colleagues scorched her back as she waited, foot tapping, for the elevator to ascend from the basement. In all her five years here, she’d never had reason—or authorization—to go upstairs. Was this the best move? Would she survive up there without all her friends? Was it in her power to finesse a Darcy AI that Jane Austen would be proud of, and then release him unto the unsuspecting world by Christmas?

She stepped into the elevator. If she couldn’t, then sure as hell no one could.

“Don’t eff this up for us,” Laura called. “And by us, I speak for Austen fans worldwide.”

“Hey, I’m her biggest fan.”

The elevator doors closed on Laura’s retort, whatever it was.

Inside the full elevator, Zoe realized two things. First, everyone apart from her was wearing a wool-mix suit, crisp shirt, and expression of clean-shaven impassivity, as if two decades of hipsterdom had never happened. The dress code was more formal up here given the high density of managers. Her skinny jeans and t-shirt, which yelled Mr. Darcy Ruined My Life, may not have been the best choice after all. But, hey, at least she hadn’t worn her steampunk vintage.

Second, her box was growing heavier each time the door opened and closed. She inhaled, aiming for yoga poise, but by the third floor, sweat slicked at her neckline and her biceps screamed in chorus with her forearm extensors. She glared at the ascending numbers. Fourth floor. For a hi-tech elevator it was freaking sloooow. Her eyes darted around the tiny space. Two men left.

Something creaked. A loud crash filled the space as the strain on her arms released and a gush of objects spewed down her legs. Her Japanese vase careened across the floor and smashed against the wall. Odious, five-year-old dust flew up as paper clips rained down. Her collection of peacock-feather fans lay in a heap around her feet, adding much color to the polished steel floor. As the seventh floor bell pinged, a solitary tampon had the nerve to roll away and settle against someone’s shoe.

“Oh, God.” She searched the face of the nearest man, hoping for help, but his expression remained icy as he pirouetted past her and clopped down the corridor in his Italian leather shoes. This was her level. She needed to get out, but what about this mess? The door was closing again. Crap.

The number five above the door lit up. The elevator was about to descend. She bolted up and fumbled with the touchpad to reopen the door. “How do I—?”

“It’s okay. I got it,” the other man said. Likewise, Italian leather shoes.

“Thanks.” She glanced at the face peering down at her—a long face with wide-set, cornflower-blue eyes and angular features drawn with precise lines like in a graphic novel. “I have to … I have to—”

“Yeah, I’m stalling it. It’ll trigger an alarm in three minutes. Our priority is to get the stuff off the floor before someone gets hurt. We need another box.”

“I know, I know.” Her fingers gripped the cardboard at her chest tighter. “This box is useless. Anyone out there who’ll help?”

“Doubt it.” He tugged the cardboard from her grasp and tossed it into the hallway. “Hold your finger here. Don’t let go.”

She replaced his finger on the pad with hers while he whipped off his blazer and flattened it on the ground. With decisive arm sweeps, he shoveled her bits and pieces onto the silky fabric then took a sleeve and pulled the pile over the elevator threshold. She watched, openmouthed.

He yanked her through the door a millisecond before it closed. As she stood gaping at the numbers above the elevator, his grip on her arm relaxed and broke off.

She hunkered down and inspected the label on the collar. Ermenegildo Zegna. Queasiness set in. “My stuff’s not worth a fraction of this!” She pawed at the satiny lining. Maybe, just maybe, her items hadn’t ripped any holes in it or contaminated it somehow. She pocketed her pink troll. Why couldn’t her box contain electronic equipment or just papers, simple document papers? “You should’ve just left it. I-I’d have managed somehow.”

“Couldn’t help myself.” His blue eyes were all aglitter. “Cold instinct.”

“Well, I guess I’ve given you something to talk about.” On your next five-second espresso break.

He backed off a step, palms up. “I’ll go and mind my own business now.”

“I’m sorry.” As she was still on her knees, it was even more demeaning than usual to say that. “I’m not sure where that came from.”

He advanced again and extended his hand with a smile. “Max Taggart.”

Aaaargh, no! Her sweat froze all over her body. He would be. Slowly and excruciatingly, she got up off her knees. So much for her poised entry into his sphere as a formidable lady-programmer to be reckoned with. She accepted his cool, dry hand. “Zoe Bunsen.”

His smile faltered. Then died. A worry line cut an equator halfway up his forehead, dividing the freckles into north and south. Amazement at the train wreck of a colleague who stood before him, no doubt.

“American?” he asked.

“Johnson County, Kansas.”

“Right ... ”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Not at all. It’s ... great.” His accent was a blend of Irish, undulating and earnest, and Silicon Valley drawl. The name Taggart had suggested no particular region of the world to her.

“Yeah.” She hooked her thumbs into her back pockets. “Well, I got this.”

“Good, because I’ve a meeting”—he glanced at his watch and did a cartoonish double take—“now. Let’s talk at ten. We’re in P-12.” He sprinted off, leaving a gust of breeze in his wake. “There’s a spare box by the bookshelf by the way,” he called back.

“Let’s talk at ten,” she mouthed after him. Asserting his dominance already, even though they were on the same level on the org chart. Because he’d been in P-12 a whole week before her, or because he was a Zegna-wearing man? Either way, he could put a zip on it.

She gathered up shards of the vase lurking in his blazer armpit. She turned over the largest piece—hand-painted ceramic—a relic from her Japan trip eight years ago with Shingo, a kakejiku artist and her first boyfriend. Before Tyler. She’d adored Shingo back then, but it hadn’t ended well. Much like the vase now.

Chairs squeaking in a nearby room alerted her to her situation. The nearest door was P-8, so her new office had to be close. Not a single office was open, just a row of forbidding white doors glaring back at her. This seventh floor was as devoid of personality as the ground floor was overflowing with it. She knew this would be an adjustment, but who’d have guessed she’d be homesick after only five minutes?

On the steel plaque next to P-12 she read off his name in Courier—Max Taggart, PhD MBA, Project Manager—and nothing else. Why didn’t they put her name first? Or at all? Now she’d have to fight for her rights. Her seven-floor ascent had changed nada.

But she refused to get waylaid by any of that. She was here for the project, for Darcy. For Austen fans. To bring him into the world and reach the masses, even those women who hated to read the classics. Especially those. They were the ones who most needed Darcy magic in their lives whether they knew it not.

She used to be one of those uninitiated. Her first memory of Mr. Darcy was her maternal grandmother laying down the yellowing paperback of Pride and Prejudice in their library back home in Kansas, and sighing, “Now there was a gentleman.” At age eight, Zoe wondered why Grandma had chosen that book when she had the likes of Stephen King and J.K. Rowling to select from. Zoe and her brothers had always scorned Mother’s section of the library—wan-sounding classics such as Emma, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights. But Grandma had been enthralled, so Zoe ventured one day to open the innocuous little book on the words, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man with a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” The sentiment was so alien to her, she shoved the book back onto the shelf before anyone saw her reading it.

At age sixteen, she pulled out the book again from the same position she’d tucked it in eight years earlier. So much had changed. Her mother had joined Grandma in the great afterlife, and her father, in his determination to hold everything together, had turned to despotism. Her two older brothers were studying law in Kansas City, treading in their parents’ footsteps. Zoe was expected to follow the same well-worn path but hated the notion—that perpetual searching for ambiguity and weakness in the arguments of others. She cherished the positivism, the exactness, of computer science, where everything was possible, but Father forbade her to even speak of it. After such bitter exchanges, she often found solace in reading.

And this time she’d gotten it. Fallen in love with Austen’s world, with Mr. Darcy and the man he represented. The disparity between this and her reality caused a seed of discontent to grow inside, which blossomed into rage as her father worsened. At age nineteen, she fell in love with Shingo and did the unthinkable by flying off to London with him, taking few possessions, one of them being the book.

She never looked back. Not once. Father didn’t speak to her for five years after she left the U.S. On the rare occasions she called him or her brothers now, the conversations remained surface-level only, them bossing her about. Her greatest crime was surviving alone in a field they had no clue about.

Maybe if Mother had lived, her early adult life would have been happier. But it was fitting that her path had led her to this. Being in charge of releasing an AI Mr. Darcy was the logical next chapter in Zoe’s life’s story. Harry Hampton must have sensed that certainty vibrating off her and cut the interview short. She was fond of old Harry. Not at all what you’d expect of a tech CEO—avuncular, yet with a hint of childlike wonder in his eyes, like he’d done too much LSD back in the day.

Normalcy abounded inside P-12—nothing to instill enthusiasm. One empty desk—hers. Not a whole lot on Max’s either—a laptop, tablet, jar of pens, portable disk drive, everything polished clean and aligned at right angles. Sure enough, a box sat beside the bookshelf. She grabbed it, marched back to the elevator doors, and flung her junk into it. Who cared what got broken? The main thing was to get out of this corridor and stop looking like a nut.

Max’s blazer showed no signs of permanent damage once she’d shaken the dust off. Draped over her shoulders, the garment engulfed her, and she caught a whiff of … grapefruit. It had been a while since she’d met a man who smelled so fresh. She smoothed the blazer over the back of his chair and flopped down in hers. 9:15 a.m. Not exactly a stellar start, but why stress over trifles when she was about to meet Mr. Darcy?

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