Ophelia Prescott had three major problems in life.

Firstly, she had severely misjudged the weather in London; her jean skirt was riding up her sweaty thighs. She shifted experimentally, almost sliding off her library seat. She had created a swimming pool. Lovely.

Secondly, she had invited her best friend over to her dorm room that afternoon, but she had yet to actually unpack — meaning that her floor currently looked like an episode of "Extreme Hoarders." Oops.

And thirdly, Ophelia was sitting five meters away from her future husband, and he hadn't even had the decency to propose yet.

Honestly.

The gall.

She peeked over her book. The man in question was leaning against a towering bookshelf, rubbing idly at his neck. He was wiry as an exclamation mark, with the dark, shaggy mane of Edward Rochester and the arrogant features of Mr. Darcy. If Darcy also read German philosophical treatises, that was.

She squinted at the book.

Yup. Definitely Kant, in the original translation.

She was officially in love.

She watched as the Darcy lookalike took a seat in the wooden pew in front of her, pulling out a spiral notebook and a pencil. No laptop. Interesting.

Her phone buzzed.

Several heads snapped towards her. Ophelia dived for it quickly, her cheeks flaming as she turned the volume down. Dear god. She had only been at the University of College London for three days, and she was already making an idiot of herself. She might as well have "study abroad student from Canada" tattooed across her forehead.

She scanned the library warily, but nobody seemed all that bothered; two students were murmuring near a vaulted archway, oblivious. Another student — collapsed in a cozy leather armchair — had headphones in. Crisis averted.

Her phone buzzed again.

Ophelia cursed softly under her breath, fumbling to turn it on silent. Screw it. She wasn't risking the wrath of the English. Not this early on, anyways.

Darcy twisted around in his seat. "Is that you?"

Ophelia froze. "Pardon?"

"Your phone," he said. "Is that what keeps going off?"

Ophelia could have died. She would have rather been chained to a rock, having eagles peck at her immortal liver. Screw Prometheus; he had it easy.

"I'm so sorry," she said quickly. "I thought I turned it down, but I—"

"Relax." Darcy grinned. "Don't apologize for being more popular than the rest of us." He nodded to her book. "Good choice, by the way."

Ophelia looked down at her battered copy of "A Tale of Two Cities." Worn brown leather, gold-rimmed pages smudged with fingerprints, cracked spine — it looked a total mess. But she loved it. Her grandmother had given it to her almost a decade ago now, just before she passed away.

"Have you read it?" she asked.

Darcy gave her an affronted look. Then he cleared his throat.

"I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul... a dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."

Ophelia stared at him.

Good heavens. This man could quote Dickens.

She was marrying him. He didn't even have a say in it.

Ophelia opened her mouth — to say what, she didn't know — but she was spared a response by a loud, insistent shriek. She froze.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

Darcy chuckled as she dove for her phone, her cheeks flaming red. She wouldn't be surprised if they matched the color of her hair right now. She probably bore a horrific resemblance to a large, sweaty tomato. Brilliant.

She glanced at the Caller ID and growled inwardly.

"Louise," she hissed into the phone. "I can't talk right now."

"But I—"

"I'm at the library."

"Now?" Louise sounded horrified. "It's a Saturday."

"So?"

"Also, I'm outside your building."

"What?" Ophelia glanced at her wristwatch. "But it's only three."

"It's four, idiot," Louise sighed. "You messed up the time change, didn't you?"

"No," Ophelia lied. "It's just dark in here; I can't read my watch properly." She began frantically gathering up her materials, ignoring the glares from the other students. "I'll be there in ten, okay?"

She hung up the phone. Darcy pushed his glasses up, looking amused.

"Hot date?"

Ophelia's face was hot enough to fry an egg on. "Not quite." She slung her bookbag over her shoulder. "More like an impatient friend."

"Ah."

"Well, it was nice meeting you..."

She trailed off. He took the hint.

"Digby."

"Digby," she repeated. "Right. Well, enjoy Kant."

And with that, Ophelia rushed out of the library.

Ophelia frantically tugged her jean skirt down her sweaty legs. The September sunshine reflected off the white columns, nearly blinding her as she raced towards Astor College. It wasn't a long journey from the library— eight minutes at the most — but she was out of breath by the time the brick facade came into view.

Louise was leaning against a bike rack, her hands stuffed in her pockets. Her brown hair was in pigtails today, and she was wearing a garish green t-shirt that read "Kiss Me, I'm Irish." Ophelia frowned as she approached.

"You're English," she pointed out. "Not Irish."

"I'm aware."

"What's with the shirt?"

"I stole it."

"From who?" Ophelia fished around her book bag for her keycard. "A leprechaun?"

Louise pursed her lips thoughtfully. "You know what? He did look a little like a leprechaun, actually. In a good way." She trailed Ophelia into the building. "Anyways, his name was Jack. Or was it John? Definitely something with a J."

"James?"

"Yes!" She snapped her fingers. "That's the one."

Ophelia sighed; she had long given up trying to keep track of Louise's latest conquest; the only man that she had dated longer than a month was Theo, her older brother's friend and band mate, and that had fizzled out well over a year ago.

She led Louise through the lobby, dodging grey sofas and tables, the same colour and shape as the little plastic things found in pizza boxes. Astor College was more modern than she had expected; everything was sleek and straight, made from glass and cement. Not exactly the whimsical castle that she had hoped for.

Admittedly, Ophelia always romanticized things — particularly when it came to men.

She sighed.

Ophelia knew that she shouldn't get attached to Digby. Hell, she hardly even knew him. But holding back her imagination was a lot like trying to hold on to a rope attached to a runaway boat: futile, and often painful.

Besides, she had spent her whole life waiting for her own fairytale; the kind of whirlwind romance that included English castles and white knights on horseback. Darcy in the meadow. Heathcliff digging up a grave. The kind of love that tore you apart and then put you back together again.

So, yes. She knew that she was getting a little too attached to Digby.

But what was the harm in a little crush?

Ophelia unlocked her door, and Louise froze in the doorway. "Oh, my god," she said. "I think you've been ransacked."

"It's a bit messy."

Louise arched an eyebrow. "Are you sure we shouldn't call security?"

"Very funny."

Ophelia stooped down, picking up a knitted green sweater. Louise sprawled down on the bed. She scanned the books on the white honeycomb shelves — the only thing Ophelia had actually bothered to arrange — and plucked out a collection of Tennyson's poetry.

"I can't believe you brought all these over."

"I need them."

"For what?" Louise cracked the book open. "You've already read most of them."

All of them, actually, but Ophelia wasn't about to correct her. She folded a pair of jeans, placing them in the cupboard. "What's wrong with re-reading?"

"You already know what happens."

"So?"

Ophelia found something comforting about the familiarity of a book; she picked it up and all of the characters were frozen in time, like dolls on marionette strings, ready to resume the play as soon as Ophelia — the benign conductor — signaled her assent.

Invariably, nothing changed in books; that made them diametrically opposed to life, which was always changing.

Louise, however, looked at Ophelia as if she'd declared that the moon landing was a hoax and that all raccoons were just cats in disguise.

"You know what?" Louise shook her head. "Forget it." To Ophelia's relief, she put Tennyson back on the shelf. "What's the plan for tonight, then?"

"How about dinner?"

Louise perked up. "Indian?"

"Sure."

"And then?"

Ophelia paused, a navy pea coat dangling from her hands. She hadn't really thought that there was going to be an "and then."

"And then I go to sleep."

"You're kidding, right?" Louise hopped up. "It's your first weekend in London! You can't just go to sleep."

"Well, I'll probably read first."

Louise threw a black sweater at her head. "We're going out, Fi. Whether you like it or not."

"Not to a club."

Ophelia despised clubs; she had only been to two of them before, and it baffled her that anybody could enjoy a humid room teeming with drunk, stumbling strangers and the stale smell of booze. And then there were the washrooms. She shuddered. She had never seen so much graffiti and stray toilet paper in her life.

Louise sighed. "Fine, then. We'll go somewhere else."

Ophelia hung up the sweater. "I'm not going to a brothel, either."

"I'm not going to take you to a brothel," Louise sighed, clearly exasperated. "And nobody calls it that anymore. What are we, Shakespeare?"

"Actually, he would have called it a nunnery."

"I hate you sometimes."

"What if we just took a walk along the Thames?" Ophelia suggested. "Or had a glass of wine back at your place?"

Louise had been living in a gorgeous flat in Fitzrovia for two years now, which was the longest relationship she'd ever been in. She spoiled her flat more than any boyfriend, too; Ophelia had taken one look at the receipt for Louise's pink velvet couch and promptly choked on her water.

Yes, Louise loved her flat.

Alas, it still wasn't enough.

Louise pursed her lips. "A pub," she said. "That's my final offer."

Ophelia considered this. Pubs were quiet, right? Besides, Samuel Johnson and Dickens both wrote at London pubs. If they were good enough for the literary greats, then they were good enough for her.

"Okay," Ophelia relented, and Louise let out a little whoop. "On one condition."

"Anything."

She threw a white top at her. "You need to change, first. There's no way that I'm being seen with you while you're wearing that shirt."