Chapter 9 #3
“Hmm…you play it safe with me. Coffee, never dinner. And I saw you with Darcy.” He looked at her closely. “You know him far better than you led me to believe.”
She bit back her anger. I knew nothing about him when you saw us talking. Now I know too much, you nasty little man.
“Do be careful, Liz. Don’t get too close, or he’ll toss you aside just like all the others.”
Elizabeth could take no more of his false attacks on a good man. “Oh, I’m an independent thinker. I like to delve deep and come to my own conclusions. So as much as I appreciate your smearing of Darcy’s name and reputation, I’ve concluded he’s a pretty good guy.”
“Have you now?” George leaned back and eyed her speculatively. “Delved underneath that mask he wears? Maybe he’s giving you a peek inside to hurt me because he knows you and I are so close.”
Elizabeth pushed back her chair and stood. “Actually, George, you and I are not that close.”
He grabbed her hand. “We could be.”
“No, we couldn’t. I don’t date liars. In fact, I’m not even friends with them.” She yanked her hand away. “Goodbye.”
Her legs shook as she strode out the door.
The angry mortification on George’s face was well worth the uneasy fear she felt all afternoon.
It was almost a relief to feel anger at him instead of her self-directed regret and sadness.
She thought it odd to have discovered a late-blooming talent for leaving good-looking men shocked and ashen.
Although spring had passed slowly and painfully, as the temperatures rose and early summer dawned, even Elizabeth’s mood lightened in the face of Jane’s overflowing happiness.
Elizabeth Bennet might have kicked a good man to the curb, she might have one book sitting stalled at the publisher’s and another one shoved into the back of a desk drawer, and she might have gained three pounds from her culinary experiments, but her sisterly affection could override all of the bad stuff.
How could she not smile and laugh when Jane came home with a five-carat engagement ring?
If any Bennet was going to be happy and make a wonderful marriage, it was Jane.
Elizabeth could even feel optimistic when, late one night, unable to sleep and still feeling the effects of too much wine at her tell-all confessional dinner with Charlotte, she recalled her friend’s half-drunk warning: “If you’re maid of honor, then you know who is going to be best man. Can you handle that?”
An autumn wedding was months away. Ages.
She’d be fine. She and Darcy would both have moved on.
They’d both have dates or be in serious relationships by then, right?
Right. Yes, Elizabeth was just fine, right up until the moment when Jane and Charles announced that they were inviting both families to Darcy’s house in the Hamptons over Memorial Day weekend to celebrate the news…
and that Sylvia Bennet-LaRue wanted to sing at the wedding.
Perfect. The mother who flew the coop now wants to command center stage.
Even as she reeled from the double-whammy impact, Elizabeth couldn’t help but beam at Charles. “I’ve always wanted a brother. But you haven’t yet met your future mother-in-law. If she scares you off, I’ll have to hunt you down and hurt you.”
Even happier than his usual ebullient state, Charles laughed and said he knew all the best hiding places at Netherfield and a few good ones at Darcy’s house. “If you are a very nice sister, I might show you some of them.”
Noting the shadow that crossed Elizabeth’s face, he leaned over and casually mentioned Darcy wouldn’t be joining them for the weekend.
Work, of course. He added that Darcy was dealing better with Coco’s passing.
He’d been freed up a little, and he was traveling more.
The previous month, when Charles told her Coco had died suddenly a week after she’d practically spit in Darcy’s face, she’d sobbed quietly in her bed and then managed, finally, to write him a long overdue apology.
Looking back, she couldn’t recall a worse moment in her adult life.
Jane assured her that Darcy had offered his beach house for a family celebration but had personally begged off due to a business trip.
So, I will be surrounded by the man, immersed in all things him, but he won’t be there.
She sagged in relief but still felt disappointed.
“How is he, really?” she wanted to ask Charles.
But she didn’t. Charles, the most transparent person she knew, had been oddly evasive on the subject of his friend.
Does he know what happened between us? Does he know what I said to Darcy?
Elizabeth finally asked Jane about it during a sisterly moment at the nail salon.
“Did you tell Charles about Darcy and me?” God, I sound like a five-year-old. “Or did Darcy?”
Jane paused, glancing up from a magazine. “Are you sure about this shade of pink, Lizzy? It’s a bit loud.”
“It’s fine.”
“Okay,” she answered doubtfully, staring at her half-painted toenails.
She looked up in the mirror and met Elizabeth’s eyes.
“Darcy told Charles the same thing you told me. He asked you out, you declined, he asked why, and you argued.” Jane took a breath.
“Is there more to it? More you’d like to share? ”
“No.” Elizabeth had kept everything that happened at Netherfield—and nearly everything since—to herself.
Only Charlotte knew any of it, and even with her, she hadn’t shared all the details.
Jane didn’t need to carry the baggage of her sister’s stupidly awful behavior into her relationship with the poor man’s best friend.
“But I can tell you’re uncomfortable whenever his name comes up. Are you sure you can handle the weekend? Is it too soon? Remember, the wedding isn’t until October. You have months to buck up for that.”
“Exactly. He won’t be there. I’m fine.”
“Are we there yet?” piped up a small voice.
Elizabeth hadn’t dared to speak the same thought.
Sitting in the backseat with her young cousins had distracted her from a pervading sense of doom, but her ears and her patience were worn out.
Still, it had been preferable to riding with Jane and Charles in a car packed with Caroline’s “extra luggage” sent ahead of her next-day arrival.
The lovebirds had discovered a shared passion for singing old commercial jingles, and Elizabeth, already suffocating under their happiness, hated to think she might scare them with the fierce, angry face she’d shown so freely to Darcy.
Elizabeth was grateful to have a day and night without the rest of her family or Charles’ sisters.
Louisa’s unexpected—and seemingly unwanted—pregnancy would delay them for a day.
Leave it to a Bingley girl to have “evening sickness” and thus plan an early morning car trip.
The father of the bride, Barbara, and the girls would likely arrive by noon if they could roust Lydia from her bed by then.
Bingley’s Lexus slowed down as they crested the hill.
His arm emerged from the window and he gestured for Uncle Joe to pull alongside him.
“There.” He pointed at a sprawling, shingled, low-slung mansion on a cliff above the beach.
“That’s Pemberley.” Elizabeth was speechless.
It was stunning. It was beautiful. It was his.
The family followed Charles into the house and dropped their bags. “Hmm…” He looked around the vast open space. “Let me go find Mrs. Reynolds. Darcy promised me she’d be here.”
Elizabeth grabbed a water bottle from her bag and wandered outside with the children and her aunt.
The kids raced to a swing hanging from a huge oak, but Elizabeth set off to clear her head and see the grounds.
A generous sandy beach stretched out behind the house, waves lapping gently at the shore.
She didn’t see another house for miles. A copse of trees stood at the cliff’s edge across the road, and seeing gardens beyond, Elizabeth decided to explore.
She was walking through a meadow of lavender and goldenrod when she heard a noise.
She turned around and looked up. It was him.