Chapter NINE
“CAN WE meet?”
Elizabeth woke up to the message from Mr. F – Fitzwilliam Darcy.
For a second, she stared at it like it was a glitch. The morning sun hadn’t fully warmed her apartment, and her thoughts were still fogged with sleep, but that one message cleared them fast. Her thumb hovered over the screen.
No emoji. No punctuation. Just three plain words.
She set the phone down and pulled the blanket tighter around her. Her coffee hadn’t even brewed yet, and already the day was asking for decisions.
Of all the potential people who could message her, she hadn’t expected it to be him.
Of course, they were due for a third date. That was the plan.
But not so soon—or so she thought.
And certainly not like this.
There was something about the timing of his message that made her uneasy.
A little too fast. A little too neat. After everything Wickham had told her the night before, the message felt heavier than it should have.
Like a test. Or a trap. Like Darcy somehow knew she’d spoken to Wickham and was already moving to do damage control—or worse, damage.
Her mind spun through it all again—the messages Wickham had left, the calm way he’d spoken about betrayal, the precision of his accusations.
The implication that Darcy had systematically erased him from every digital record.
That someone as powerful and calculated as Fitzwilliam Darcy had the reach to do so.
Wickham had spoken with a kind of calm that didn’t need convincing.
He hadn’t begged her to believe him. He hadn’t exaggerated.
He’d simply laid out a version of events that—uncomfortably—aligned a little too well with her worst impressions of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
And more than that, men in Wickham’s position didn’t go after billionaires like Darcy on a whim.
Not without reason—and certainly not without some truth to stand on.
Otherwise, they got buried in lawsuits. Or worse, they just disappeared.
Thinking of what she knew (and now knows) about Fitzwilliam Darcy, it wasn’t far-fetched that the accusation made sense.
Dismissive. Controlled. Intolerably self-assured.
From the moment he’d answered her question to when he looked her up and down at the gala and declared she was “not handsome enough to tempt him,” Darcy had been a masterclass in egotistical, self-absorbed billionaire arrogance.
Wickham hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t already sensed. He’d only confirmed it.
So why did part of her still want to hear what Darcy had to say?
Why did part of her still feel the pull of that third meeting—not as an obligation, but as a necessity?
Was it because, though she denied it, she’d liked her time with Mr. F? When Darcy was anonymous—just a stranger with sharp wit, surprisingly good taste in music and books, and an easy-going charm that made her feel understood.
She shook off the thought, picked up her phone, and re-read the message.
She typed:
“Depends. Is this a third date, or just another slightly-less-awkward follow-up like our yoghurt shop adventure?”
Three dots appeared almost immediately. Then disappeared. Then reappeared.
His reply came a moment later:
“That depends on you.”
She almost laughed. Classic. Evasive but polite. A mirror instead of an answer.
Setting the phone down again, she headed to the kitchen. Her brain needed caffeine, not cryptic texts. But even as she filled her mug and stared out the window, her mind circled back to the message.
Last night, after Wickham’s DM, she’d tried to find even a single photo of the two of them together—Darcy and Wickham, two boys who’d supposedly grown up like brothers.
Nothing.
No articles. No archives. Not a single tagged photo or shared memory anywhere online.
Wickham had said Darcy erased him. That privacy was his currency.
Not handsome enough to tempt me.
The words resurfaced—sharp, unprovoked. It wasn’t just a comment; it was erasure. As if she hadn’t even registered in his line of sight. It had stung then. Still did, in ways she hated admitting. So did the smugness. The control. That calm, curated detachment he wore like a tailored suit.
He hadn’t addressed the remark when they met. Then again, she hadn’t brought it up either.
And maybe she didn’t want to. Not yet.
Bringing it up now would feel forced. And Elizabeth Bennet never forced the idea that she was handsome—maybe not as classically striking as Jane, but handsome nonetheless. That was a hill she’d die on. It was a truth she measured on her own terms.
***
The duo met the following afternoon at a minimalist café tucked into a quiet corner of the Upper West Side—one of those sleek, low-lit places that served matcha in hand-thrown ceramic mugs and didn’t believe in labelling their menus.
Of course, it had to be a place like this, Elizabeth thought as she stepped in.
Curated, quiet, and discreet. Just like him.
Not flashy, but still expensive in a way that pretended not to be.
It was probably what he considered “low-key”—a space humble enough to seem casual, but still handpicked for optics.
Maybe he thought it would impress her. It wasn’t working.
Darcy was already seated when she arrived, a cup of something green in front of him and a coat slung neatly over the chair beside him. He stood as she approached, politely—not warmly—and gestured for her to sit.
She pulled her coat off and approached, brushing wind-tangled hair from her face.
“Hey,” she said simply.
Darcy stood to greet her. “Thanks for coming.”
She slid into the seat across from him. “I had a free afternoon. Figured I’d burn it doing something legally binding.”
That earned a faint flicker of a smile from him. “Coffee? Tea? They have some… very green drinks here.”
“I’ll risk the green,” she said, flagging a server. “If this turns out badly, at least I’ll be caffeinated.”
Once her drink arrived—something murky and herbal-looking in a mug that felt like it weighed a full pound—she took a cautious sip, then fixed her gaze on him.
“So,” she said. “This is our third and final contractual date.”
He gave a small nod. “If that’s how you’d like to see it.”
There was a pause. Comfortable wasn’t the word. Familiar, maybe.
And then, instead of launching into anything damage-control-ish or about their not-quite-romantic, not-quite-investigative entanglement, he said, “Bingley mentioned your father used to do stand-up.”
Elizabeth blinked. It was not what she expected.
“That was his side hustle. He runs a small chain of grocery stores in Shelburne, Vermont. Still does.”
Darcy gave a small nod. “That’s… unexpected.”
“Most things about my family are.”
He gave a quiet breath of amusement. “We chatted a lot, but now that I think about it… you never said much about them.”
“Well,” Elizabeth said with a small smile, “remember we agreed to save that for in person.”
He nodded, as though the memory had just come back. “We did. However, we didn’t get to it last time.”
“We were locked in a frozen yoghurt shop.”
That earned a real smile from him—and for the first time, Elizabeth noticed how it softened his entire face.
It made him, annoyingly, almost twice as handsome.
She hadn’t registered it the last time, even though he’d smiled then too.
Maybe she hadn’t been paying enough attention. Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to.
“So,” he said, leaning forward just slightly. “Tell me.”
Elizabeth leaned back slightly, eyeing him. “Well. You already know Jane. Easton Ridge School, eighth-grade teacher. Too kind for her own good.”
“I can believe that.”
“Then there’s Kitty. She works at a marketing firm but mostly posts TikToks about her coworkers.
Lydia is in nursing school, or so she says—jury’s still out on how many classes she’s actually attending.
Mary is our resident philosopher. Took a year off after her theology degree and now critiques YouTube content from a moral standpoint. ”
He arched a brow. “You’re not joking.”
“I wish I was. They’re all... chaotic. In their own way. But we grew up with laughter and weird food combinations and yelling over the TV. It wasn’t neat, but it was ours.”
Darcy’s silence wasn’t uncomfortable. He was listening, properly. Eyes focused, attention undivided.
“And your mother?” he asked.
“She’s with her husband,” Elizabeth said, then added with a wry smile, “and very much committed to the art of being over-involved.”
Darcy tilted his head slightly, amused.
“She spends her days managing Dad’s stores without actually managing them, calling her daughters ten times a day, and reminding each of us—at least once a week—that we’re not getting any younger. You know… as mothers do.”
Darcy gave a short breath of amusement. “Sounds like a force.”
“She is,” Elizabeth said, sipping the drink. “A full-blown, well-meaning, husband-hunting hurricane.”
He smiled again. “And your dad copes with this how?”
“By making deeply inappropriate jokes at the dinner table and pretending he doesn’t hear half of what she says. It’s a system.”
Darcy leaned back slightly. “A functioning one, apparently.”
Elizabeth grinned. “Survival is a kind of function.”
Darcy studied her for a moment, then said, “You look pretty young to me. Why would your mother already be pestering anyone with marriage?”
Elizabeth chuckled into her drink. “Let’s just say my mother married a bit older than was the norm in her time—and now she’s on a mission to make sure none of her daughters repeat the ‘mistake.’”
Darcy raised an eyebrow. “The mistake?”
“She considers thirty a deadline, not a milestone,” Elizabeth said dryly. “According to her, every year after twenty-five is just waiting to expire on the shelf.”
Darcy blinked. “That’s...dramatic.”
“You haven’t met her.”
He gave a soft laugh. “Fair.”
She looked at him now, the teasing edge still in her smile. “Enough about me. Let’s talk about yours?”
“Me?” His eyes widened slightly.