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Lizzy Bennet meets her nemesis at the back-to-school dance the night before the first day of her senior year of high school.

(When she tells her sisters this on the way home, mostly joking and slightly serious, they will treat her statement with all the gravity it deserves, which is to say, none at all; beautiful, sweet-tempered Jane—Lizzy’s very much non-identical twin—will shake her head and insist there must be some misunderstanding, and fifteen-year-old Lydia will roll her eyes and say “People who aren’t in comic books don’t actually have nemesises, nerd.”

Lizzy will huff and correct under her breath, “Nemeses.”)

She isn’t expecting the evening to take this turn; in fact, she, like the rest of the student body, has been pretty excited about the influx of new students. The whole county had been shaken by the tornado that swept through the nearby city of Lambton just three weeks prior and destroyed, among other things, the campus of Pemberley Prep, the most prestigious private school in the state. So everyone had been very supportive when the school board of Longbourn Academy—also a private school, but most decidedly not the most prestigious one in the state—had held an emergency meeting with its staff and students and parents to discuss the possibility of allowing Pemberley Prep to send some of its students and staff to them for the coming school year. It’s the neighborly thing to do, and besides, with enrollment at Longbourn dropping over the last few years, it’s not like they don’t have the space.

And Lizzy has been excited, these last three weeks, about the 73 new students who’ll be joining them from Pemberley (the other Pemberley students will be sent out to other schools in the area until repairs are complete). Longbourn has always had a small student body—314 students, grades 9 through 12—and new students means the possibility of new friends, new people to recruit for the debate team. And yes, she admits it, new boys to flirt with; there’s not that many guys at Longbourn who’ve ever caught her interest.

When the Bennet sisters get to the dance that night, there’s excitement in the air. The gym is beautifully decorated—Mrs. Lucas’s doing, as usual—and clumped together on one side of the room are what must be the new kids, dressed in clothing that very abruptly reminds Lizzy that Pemberley is a school for the children of the fantastically wealthy, while Longbourn is a school for the children of the only moderately wealthy. Don’t mistake her, Longbourn kids are definitely richer than many people, but the thing is, there’s rich, and then there’s rich.

Lydia doesn’t let this intimidate her at all; she’s immediately off to the refreshment table to flirt with one of the new boys, who welcomes her attentions with a pleased smile. If it weren’t so humiliating, Lizzy almost might be tempted to ask Lydia to teach her how to flirt so successfully one of these days. Her younger sister is a bit of an embarrassment sometimes, but you can’t argue with her results.

Jane isn’t a very good flirt either, but with a face like hers, she’s never had to be. They’ve been there barely ten minutes, catching up with Charlotte Lucas and Clara Goulding, when one of the Pemberley Prep boys detaches from the crowd and approaches Jane with a lovestruck look on his face. He’s tall and slender, with a mop of curly blonde hair; cute, if you’re into eager, golden retriever types. Luckily, Jane is.

“Hey,” he says cheerfully, “the point of this dance is for us to get to know each other, right? So I figured I’d better come over and get to know some new people.” He grins around at all of them, but his gaze lingers on Jane, who blushes very prettily.

“Charlie Bingley,” he introduces himself, and the girls return the favor, and they fall into a pleasant conversation. Charlie is sweet and eager, and he gazes at Jane like she’s made of stardust. For all his obvious attraction to Jane, though, he makes a concerted effort to include all four girls in the conversation, which is rare, so Lizzy decides to go ahead and like this Charlie Bingley. Which is probably wise; Jane looks nearly as smitten as Charlie does—though in her characteristically subtle way—and it’s always wise to get along with your twin sister’s future boyfriend, if you possibly can.

Charlie and Jane spend a good chunk of the evening together; she takes him around to meet all her friends, and he takes her around to meet all his, and they dance together several times. Lizzy’s evening isn’t quite as successful, but she meets a few of the new students, and catches up with her old friends, and all told it’s a pretty decent night . . . until The Incident.

It all starts when Charlie drags Jane, Lizzy and Charlotte over to meet two of his dour-faced but very well-dressed friends. The girl he introduces as his younger sister Caroline—now that it’s been mentioned, Lizzy can see the resemblance—who is a junior, and who looks particularly unimpressed with everything around her. The guy he introduces as his best friend Will Darcy.

Will Darcy is tall, broader-shouldered than Charlie, with dark hair and a very serious expression. Guys with very serious expressions are usually not Lizzy’s type, but she’ll be the first to admit that she finds Will Darcy (“‘Darcy,’” Charlie explains, “he usually just goes by ‘Darcy’”) rather attractive. And she’s just starting to get excited that her twin sister’s future boyfriend’s best friend is this good-looking when Darcy opens his mouth and ruins any interest she might have had in him.

“Pleased to meet you,” he says shortly, sounding anything but pleased, and promptly stalks away to the refreshment table, Caroline trailing after him. Even Jane, who wants to believe the best in everyone, looks a little affronted.

Charlie laughs apologetically. “Darcy’s . . . like that,” he shrugs. “Really good guy. But not always great with people.”

There’s the understatement of the year.

But Lizzy’s opinion of the guy isn’t cemented until The Incident occurs a half-hour later. Jane has gone to the bathroom, and Lizzy has found a quiet corner to call their mom and check in; their mom doesn't actually care if they check in or not, but their dad has been recovering from a minor shoulder surgery and Lizzy just wants to see how he's doing. She’s just putting her phone back in her purse when she realizes that Charlie and Darcy are standing a little ways away, talking; they don’t seem to notice her, as she’s partially concealed behind a balloon arrangement. And okay, is she a terrible person if she eavesdrops, just for a second? She just wants to know if Charlie’s going to say anything about Jane, that’s all. And anyway, she was here first; it’s their fault for coming over here and talking loudly enough for her to overhear.

So she listens for a moment. And while she is satisfied on Charlie front, on the whole she comes to wish she hadn’t heard the conversation.

Because it starts with Charlie saying, “Are you ever going to dance, or are you just going to stand in the corner all night?”

“There is no one here that it would not be a punishment to dance with,” says Darcy, who’s got sort of a formal cadence to his speech. “You’ve already got the attention of the only pretty girl in this whole school.”

“She’s amazing, right?” says Charlie in a dreamy voice. “But she’s not the only cute girl here. What about her sister Lizzy? She’s pretty, and she seems really cool.”

Lizzy is just deciding that Charlie Bingley is her new favorite person when Darcy replies irritably, “She’s not the worst-looking girl I’ve ever seen, but I’m sure I could do better.”

Charlie sighs and leads Darcy away, and Lizzy stands frozen in her corner, angry and embarrassed and glad that no one else heard that conversation.

But she doesn't feel that way for long; she’s not the sort of to mope, and anyway that guy is clearly a jerk and why should she care what a jerk thinks of her? She quickly comes to see the humor in the encounter, so she leaves her corner and tells the story to Charlotte and Clara, very animated and doing what she considers a very good impression of Darcy’s voice. 

Maybe the impression is just a little bit vindictive. Darcy glances over when he hears Clara and Charlotte roaring with laughter, and fidgets a little when he sees that all three girls keep glancing at him, and maybe Lizzy feels a bit of pleasure at the thought that he might feel even a small portion of the discomfort he made her feel. And maybe when Lizzy dramatically declares on the car ride home that Darcy is her nemesis, it’s 90% silliness but 10% truth.

But she is not going to let Will Darcy ruin her senior year of high school. She is going to ignore him, the way he no doubt intends to ignore her. Anyway, she thinks it entirely likely that they will have no reason to ever speak to each other.

She is wrong.

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Chapter Text

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Lizzy’s determination to ignore Darcy is challenged from the very first day of school, when she learns that he is in two of her classes: it’s easy enough to avoid him in her AP Chemistry class, where they choose seats on opposite sides of the room from each other, but harder in AP English, because it turns out that Lizzy, Jane, Charlie and Darcy are all in the same period. Mrs. Hill assigns seats in that class and the four of them are scattered all over the room, but Charlie lingers to chat with Jane before and after class every day, and Lizzy is faced with the option of going to lunch alone or lingering and trying to avoid eye contact with Darcy, who always waits for Charlie. At least Darcy and Charlie have second lunch, while Jane and Lizzy have first, so Lizzy has not yet been forced to endure a meal with the grouchiest person on campus.

Her determination to ignore Darcy is also undermined by a very alarming discovery: he’s smart. Like, crazy smart, as she discovers when Miss Nicholls passes back their first AP Chem test on their way out the door one Friday. “A perfect score, Miss Bennet,” she beams; she’s always been fond of Lizzy, who also excelled in 10th grade chemistry. “But I’m afraid you have a bit of competition this year; you weren’t the only perfect score.”

Lizzy raises her eyebrows in surprise and question; Miss Nicholls tilts her head in the direction of Will Darcy, currently packing up his bag at his desk. Lizzy barely suppresses a groan and stalks out of the classroom.

But now that Miss Nicholls has pointed it out, Lizzy begins noticing more hints of his intelligence. He doesn’t often raise his hand in class, but when he does, or when the teacher calls on him, his answers are well spoken, well thought out, and invariably accurate. He finishes his quizzes faster than anyone else. And Mrs. Hill goes into raptures about his essay on Ethan Frome.

And to a girl’s who’s accustomed to being the undisputed intellectual queen of every class she’s in . . . well, let’s just say that this knowledge that she has a rival does not endear Darcy to her.

Nor does the fact that sometimes she looks in Darcy’s direction and sees him looking at her with the most serious, stern look on his face, and she can’t figure out what she did to make him glare at her so often; if anything, she should be glaring at him for that comment he made about her at the dance.

Nor does the fact that he and Caroline have a tendency to lurk in the commons before first period, Caroline making perfectly audible snide remarks about everyone who walks by, and Darcy just standing there with a dour look on his face, like he can’t bear being stuck here with these plebeians. Caroline Bingley is a spoiled brat, and Lizzy cannot believe that excitable goofus Charlie is related to her. But she seems a perfect girlfriend for snobby Will Darcy.

(Jane insists that Charlie insists that the two aren’t dating, but they spend an awful lot of time together, and Caroline’s awfully clingy, for people who aren’t dating. So Lizzy can only assume that Charlie’s misinformed.)

It takes three weeks of school for Charlie to finally work up the guts to ask Jane to hang out—not precisely a date, but definitely only the two of them—which surprises Lizzy.`

“I mean, he’s been so obviously smitten with you since the day you met,” she points out.

“No, we’ve just been friends,” demurs Jane, who has always been surprisingly self-deprecating for someone so gorgeous and popular. But maybe that’s why she’s so popular: her looks ought to make her stuck-up, so when people find out she’s actually the kindest person alive, they’re extra-inclined to like her for it. “But I am . . . I’m glad he finally did something.”

She blushes, and Lizzy grins. Jane keeps her feelings close to her chest, so for her to admit as much as she did is tantamount to a declaration of undying love.

Charlie and Jane go to a movie, at which, according to Jane, Charlie is “a perfect gentleman”; in fact, the only hint that this wasn’t just two friends hanging out is that he bought her popcorn. The guy’s a slow mover, apparently, which tracks with what Lizzy has observed of him: he’s excitable and cheerful, but a little bit hesitant and unsure of himself in some ways. It surprises her that a guy as obviously wealthy as Charlie should be so modest and diffident; her experience with guys with that much money is that they’re accustomed to just doing what they want.

“This is all really new to him,” Jane explains when Lizzy points this out. “You know, all . . . this.” And she gestures in a way that seems to take in their three-story house, Micky the landscaping guy steering the riding mower past the window, the BMW parked outside. The Bennets aren’t Pemberley Prep rich, but they certainly do all right for themselves; Great-Grandfather Bennet founded the city of Meryton and built the area’s first manufacturing plant (agricultural equipment, and it has always embarrassed Mrs. Bennet and Lydia that the family fortune is built on tractors), which is still the source of the family’s wealth, even though Lizzy’s father has largely turned the running of the plant over to the board and his business partner William Collins.

“He’s new to . . . money?” Lizzy interprets. She certainly doesn’t care about about things like new money and old money, and neither does Jane; after all, with their family’s wealth coming from running a tractor company, they’re not exactly the Astors.

Jane nods. “His dad’s a computer guy; he created a voice recognition software that he sold to Apple a few years ago for a ton of money. Before that they’d been renting an apartment in Scarborough. So Charlie’s still a little . . . unsure of himself. He said Darcy’s been a lot of help in navigating things.”

That answers several questions—why Caroline is so over the top in trying to prove she belongs in this world, why Charlie seems to hang on Darcy’s every word—but brings up a new one: why does Darcy hang out with Charlie? They’re polar opposites, personality-wise, and knowing what she knows now, Lizzy would’ve thought Darcy would think Charlie beneath him.

Because of course she’d heard of the Darcy family before all this, and of course she’d gotten online to find more details on them the second she got home from the back-to-school dance. So she knows very well that the Darcys are the kind of old money that puts the Bennets to shame: banking tycoons and business moguls and real estate magnates, all part of a family empire that stretches across continents and generations into the past. They’d been rich and powerful back when the Bennets were still barely scraping by as farmers. So what does a guy with that background, a conceited snob who turns up his nose everything and everyone, see in Charlie Bingley?

The question plagues her, and she finds herself watching Charlie and Darcy before English class the next Monday. At first glance they’re definitely an odd couple: Charlie is a bouncy little puppy, and Darcy rarely cracks a smile. But after watching them for a while, Lizzy makes an observation: Darcy’s shoulders lower a little when Charlie is with him. The guy’s company seems to relax him. Maybe that’s why they’re friends.

Lizzy is so caught up in wondering about those two that she barely notices when Mrs. Hill announces that their big end-of-term project, due November 8, will be a group project, to be done in teams of four, and that they can choose their own teams. So she can’t react in time when Charlie catches Jane’s eye, when an unspoken agreement is made between them, and when Charlie beams to the teacher that they have their group formed: “Me and Jane and Darcy and Lizzy.”

Lizzy fights back a groan, but there’s nothing to do for it now. She simply avoids looking over at Darcy—the guy’s probably glaring at her again anyway—and stares determinedly at the handout Mrs. Hill just passed out. Their assignment is this: choose a playwright from the list below, read two works by him or her, then write and perform for the class a short play in the style of that playwright, on the subject of an issue facing the world today.

“The only way to get an A this term is to impress me with this project,” says Mrs. Hill. And since Mrs. Hill is notoriously hard to impress, Lizzy takes that challenge very seriously.

Charlie comes bounding up to the Bennet sisters after class, Darcy trailing behind him like a mournful shadow. “This is going to be so fun!” he declares. “I mean, not reading the two plays. And not the writing. But we’re going to have so much fun working on it!”

Lizzy steals a glance at Darcy; his expression is as implacable as ever, and she sympathizes: she’s not looking forward to this either.

“We should get together!” Charlie declares, not noticing that Jane is the only person in the group smiling. “Let’s go to my house!”

Lizzy is about to object—Charlie and Darcy both live a half-hour away in the city of Lambton, so it’d make a lot more sense for them to just stay in the school library—when Jane speaks up first and warmly agrees with him. And Lizzy can’t deny her sister the opportunity to see her crush’s house.

“All right,” she agrees, and her cheerful tone almost sounds convincing to her ears. Maybe acting like she doesn’t mind making an hour round trip to hang out with Will Darcy is good practice for when they have to act out their piece in front of the class. “Charlie’s house this afternoon.”

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Chapter Text

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Charlie’s house is insane, even by the standards of Netherfield Park, which is one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Lambton. It’s a bird’s nest of lines and angles and glinting windows, surprisingly delicate-looking for a building made out of so much steel; perched atop a hill overlooking the city, it’s cantilevered out over the slope so that it looks like a gust of wind could blow it away. A gorgeous infinity pool peeks around one edge of the building. Lizzy doesn’t even like modern architecture that much, but she would still give her left arm to live here.

Jane seems to feel about the same; her expression, when she’s turned off the car and climbed out of the driver’s side door, matches Lizzy’s open-mouthed awe.

“Well, now you’ve got to date this guy,” says Lizzy, and Jane blushes.

That’s when Charlie pops his head out of the front door (well, that’s probably the front door; how could you even tell with a building like this?) to usher them inside. He shows them to the massive open-plan living room/dining room/kitchen, and that’s when an unpleasant realization sinks in: how did it not occur to her that coming to Charlie’s house would mean running into his sister Caroline?

Because here’s the girl in question, leaning against the concrete countertop and texting, Darcy by her side; when she looks up and sees the Bennet twins approach, her face arranges itself into a smile that only Jane could fall for.

“Jane and Lizzy Bennet,” she says, and Lizzy instinctively knows that Caroline knows how insincere she sounds, and doesn’t care. “This is unexpected. Charlie, why didn’t you tell me the Bennets were coming over?”

Charlie just laughs as he grabs himself a banana and offers the fruit bowl around to everyone else. “Didn’t know I had to check in with you.”

“Well, it is so good to see you,” Caroline goes on in that unconvincingly sweet tone. “Was that your Prius that I saw pull up, then? I think it’s so great that you guys are trying to save the environment. Like, I love my Bentley, obviously, but it gets the worst gas mileage, I swear. Like, how hard is it to make a luxury car that gets good gas mileage, right? You guys made a much more . . . sensible choice.”

“Thanks!” Jane beams, her smile wide and free of guile, while beside her Lizzy curls her hands into fists and reminds herself that it would be the height of bad manners to throw her banana at Caroline’s head.

“And Lizzy!” Caroline turns her attention on the younger Bennet twin. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I totally respect that you always look so . . . comfortable. I think it’s super brave when girls are willing to go out with their hair just put up in a ponytail or whatever, and wear a comfy pair of jeans; it’s like you’re saying ‘I don’t care what people think of me, I don’t need anyone’s approval.’ Seriously, I wish I could be that brave.”

Okay, Lizzy is going to insist that they never meet at Charlie’s house again. What bugs her is that she can’t even figure out why Caroline doesn’t like her. Because it does seem to be her, specifically, that Caroline keeps shooting sharp looks at. She has literally never spoken to the girl outside meeting her briefly at the back-to-school dance.

Maybe it has something to do with Darcy, who’s leaning against the counter next to Caroline, his expression somber and growing even more stern when he occasionally locks gazes with Lizzy. Maybe she didn’t offend Caroline; maybe Darcy told Caroline the reason that he’s always glaring at Lizzy, and now Caroline hates her for it too. 

Lizzy just wishes that she knew the reason that Darcy’s always glaring at her.

Fortunately, as soon as they sit down and pull out their AP English assignment, Caroline quickly grows bored and wanders off.

“Okay,” says Charlie, pulling out the list, “if we have to write something in the style of a playwright, I think we should pick someone modern, so the language is easy.”

“No,” say Lizzy and Darcy simultaneously, and glance at each other, and glance away.

“That’s what everyone will be doing,” Lizzy explains.

“If we want to impress Mrs. Hill and gets A’s, we should pick someone else,” Darcy adds.

Jane smiles fondly at Lizzy, then turns to Charlie. “Lizzy is very serious about her schoolwork,” she says. “It’s her goal to go to Yale.”

“No kidding!” Charlie laughs. “I was about to say the same thing about Darcy. With Yale and everything.”

Again Lizzy and Darcy glance at each other, then glance away. Well, that’s great; maybe her least favorite person at Longbourn will become her least favorite person at Yale.

“So maybe Shakespeare, then?” Jane suggests. “He’d be hard to do. That’d impress Mrs. Hill.”

Again Lizzy and Darcy answer simultaneously: “Not Shakespeare,” they say, and now Lizzy is gritting her teeth.

“The people who decide not to go modern will choose Shakespeare,” she explains, as Darcy nods.

“Okay, who then?” Charlie asks.

Lizzy consults the sheet again, then glances at Darcy. He raises an eyebrow at her. She returns the look. “Sophocles,” Darcy says, and Lizzy reluctantly agrees.

Charlie blinks. “Never heard of him.”

“But if you two say so . . .” Jane begins.

“Oh, for sure,” Charlie laughs. “We should definitely listen to the two smartest people in school.”

That statement seems to please Darcy—his expression lightens just a bit, at least. Probably just pleased to hear himself complimented.

“Okay,” reads Lizzy, “the two plays we have to read if we choose Sophocles are Oedipus Rex and Antigone.” Both of which will probably horrify Jane and Charlie, but hey, it’s good for them to exposed to the classics.

They chat a little about the readings and when they want to have them done by, but there’s not much else for them to say. That means that she and Jane will have driven half an hour each way for fifteen minutes of planning. They really should have done this in the school library.

But Jane looks so serene, sitting here in Charlie’s home, and Charlie looks so happy to have her here, that it’s hard to be annoyed, especially when Charlie suggests they go down and play pool, which seems to Lizzy to be a pretty transparent attempt to keep Jane around. Jane turns a pleading look at Lizzy—well, Lizzy knows her well enough to see the pleading in her eyes, though she doesn’t know if the guys will have noticed—and Lizzy acquiesces. She can’t make Jane leave now, when things are going so well. She can put up with Darcy and Caroline for another hour.

Because Caroline does indeed appear in the doorway of the rec room, just moments after they’ve racked up the balls: an appearance so prompt that Lizzy wonders if she was spying on them. And she wonders, once again, what the relationship between Darcy and Caroline is. They spend a lot of time standing near each other, and muttering snarky things back and forth. But she can’t help but notice that while Darcy does nothing to discourage Caroline when she picks up a pool cue and stands far closer to him than is normal, he also does nothing to encourage her, not even a smile. So either he’s a very unaffectionate boyfriend or . . . they’re not together and Caroline’s just desperate and Darcy doesn’t know or care that they give off the impression that they’re dating?

They play cutthroat, and the first game is over quickly. Darcy and Caroline, it turns out, are both absurdly good at pool, and it quickly becomes a question of which of the pair of them will win. Jane and Charlie are both terrible, but they hardly notice or care, too busy talking and laughing together (Lizzy’s only consolation in having Caroline around is that Charlie’s endless flirting with Jane seems to really annoy his sister, which is entertaining to watch). Lizzy is mediocre, but at least she doesn’t embarrass herself.

“Rematch!” Charlie declares as soon as Darcy sinks the winning shot, and starts to re-rack the balls with Jane’s help.

Darcy just nods and pulls out his phone; Lizzy’s first hard evidence that maybe he and Caroline aren’t as close as they seem is that when Caroline tries to catch a peek of his screen, he subtly shifts and tilts the phone away.

Caroline is not deterred. “Who are you texting?” she simpers, leaning much closer to Darcy than is friendly.

Only now, for the first time, Lizzy suspects that Darcy isn’t entirely pleased about it.

“My sister,” he answers shortly.

She’s still not deterred. “Oh, Georgie! How is she doing?”

“Not much has changed since you asked an hour ago,” he says flatly, and Lizzy has to fight back the smirk that threatens to come to her lips. Darcy is not funny, and he will not make her laugh, thank you very much.

“His sister Georgiana is so great,” Caroline explains to Jane. “She’s, like, this amazing piano player. She wins all these contests. And Darcy is such a great brother to her.”

“How old is she?” asks Jane kindly.

“Thirteen,” says Darcy, and that strikes Lizzy more than she’d expected. She’d been picturing someone older, she supposes, given Georgie’s piano skills, and given the fact that Darcy is sitting here texting her while they’re playing pool. How many high school seniors willingly take time away from hanging with friends to exchange texts with a thirteen-year-old little sister? Perhaps, just perhaps, there’s more to Darcy than she’s always thought.

This reluctant admiration vanishes almost instantly once the second game starts. Lizzy totally messes up her first shot, and Caroline laughs with false sympathy. “Pool isn’t everyone’s game!” she consoles. “I’m sure you’re too busy reading all your books to focus on anything else.”

Which is absurd, because Darcy, aka the guy that Caroline keeps throwing herself at, is at least as much of a bookworm as Lizzy. She waits for Darcy to point this out, to put Caroline in her place, like he did when she kept trying to butt into his texting.

He says nothing; he doesn’t even look at Lizzy.

And Lizzy glowers. She was right the first time: Will Darcy is a jerk.

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Chapter Text

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“Charlie Bingley,” declares Lydia decisively, “is a 7.”

“A 7?” Lizzy repeats. “Is that all?”

“But he’s so nice!” Jane objects.

“And loaded,” adds Charlotte Lucas, ever the pragmatist.

“And hot!” declares Charlotte’s younger sister Maria.

“All accurate,” Lydia concedes. “But consider this: he’s boring. He’s so good, but he’s . . . a Boy Scout. No, a Cub Scout.”

Jane looks surprised at this, but Lizzy has to force herself not to smile. She loves Charlie, she really does. But Lydia’s not entirely wrong.

The sixth member of their group, Tom Lucas, says nothing, simply staring wide-eyed at the girls around him. He gets sucked into their group at these Bennet-Lucas dinner parties because the alternative is talking to their parents, but as the only son born to the Lucases, and with the Bennets having no sons at all, he finds himself quite outnumbered whenever the conversation turns to girl talk. Lizzy privately thinks he should thank them all; he’s getting an inside look at the workings of the female mind, which should come in handy if he ever looks up from his books long enough to flirt with a girl.

“You’re not accounting for differences of taste,” says Charlotte, reasonable as always. “He might not be what you want in a guy, but he might be exactly what someone else is looking for. “ She smiles at Jane. “Personally, I think he’s great.”

Jane looks pleased and gratified at this, and Lizzy grins at her friend Charlotte, who has smoothed everything over with her calm, sensible demeanor. And Lizzy thinks (not for the first time) that the guys of Longbourn Academy are idiots. Charlotte is kind and smart and sensible and fun to talk to, but for some reason the guys just aren’t interested. Of course, it’s not like Lizzy has hordes of guys lined up at the door either, but she does well enough. She gets asked to school dances, at least.

“I agree,” says Maria stoutly. Maria is in 10th grade, same as Lydia and a year older than Tom, but unlike Lydia, she idolizes Charlotte, Lizzy and Jane.

Lydia just rolls her eyes. “Well, he’s all yours, Jane,” she says, and goes back to texting on her phone. Based on her smile, it’s a boy, and based on the self-satisfaction in her eyes, it’s an older boy. Lydia has always had a bit of an obsession with older boys, ever since she was six years old and asked the new accountant in their dad’s office if he would marry her.

“We’re not dating,” Jane points out. “I mean, we've only been on one real date so far. Charlie’s great, but I don’t want to read too much into it.”

After observing the way Charlie looks at Jane for the past three weeks of their English project, Lizzy is fairly certain that Jane can go ahead and read a lot into it. But she knows from experience how self-deprecating Jane can be, how it surprises her when people compliment her. If she’s not convinced that Charlie likes her, Lizzy’s not going to change her mind tonight.

“What are you kids talking about over there?” Mrs. Bennet demands from the other side of the dining table, and Lizzy immediately shoots a warning glare at Lydia.

That works as well as warning glares ever work on Lydia: not at all. “Just about Jane’s boyfriend,” she says mischievously, and Lizzy stifles a sigh and waits for the fireworks.

“Boyfriend? Oh, Jane! Are you and that Charlie Bingley finally dating? Officially?”

Her expression suddenly beleaguered, Jane begins, “No, Mom,” but Mrs. Bennet isn’t listening.

“Did I tell you that Charlie Bingley from Pemberley Prep has taken an interest in Jane?” is what she beams, rather than asks, at her dinner companions.

“Charlie Bingley?” Mrs. Lucas repeats. “He’s the one whose father made all that money selling his company to Apple recently, right?” As head of the Longbourn PTA, she’s more dialed into student gossip than most other parents.

“That’s the one!” Mrs. Bennet lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Got a ton of money for it, too. According to Jane, their house is enormous.”

Mrs. Lucas dutifully attempts to be pleased for Jane, and mostly succeeds. The Lucases and the Bennets have been close friends since the Lucases bought the house next door fifteen years ago; Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Lucas have been best friends ever since, but that hasn’t kept them from being constantly locked in a polite struggle for social dominance. Mrs. Bennet has the advantage that her husband is old(er) money—unlike Mr. Lucas, who made his money by starting a chain of wildly successful Tex Mex restaurants—and that her daughters are popular at school, but Mrs. Lucas struck a decisive blow two years ago when her husband was elected mayor.

Also, though Lizzy is too sensible to ever admit this aloud, Mrs. Lucas clearly wins the unspoken Christmas lights competition every year.

“Good job,” Lizzy mutters to Lydia. “Now Mom’s going to go on about this for hours.”

“Sure is,” Lyda grins unrepentantly. “And you have to deal with it without me. Carter just texted; he’s here to pick me up for our date.”

“We have guests!” Jane admonishes quietly. “You can’t just leave.”

“Why not? It’s just the Lucases. No offense, Char. And Mom already gave me permission to leave.”

And indeed, when Lydia waves her phone at her mom, Mrs. Bennet grins indulgently and waves her away from the table. Mrs. Bennet has often said she sees something of herself in Lydia (something boy-crazy and up for a party, Lizzy imagines), and she lets her youngest get away with murder.

When Lydia is gone, Mrs. Bennet starts back in on interrogating Jane about Charlie, refusing to accept her response that they’re not dating. Jane’s discomfort must be clear on her face, because Mr. Bennet, in an uncharacteristic show of awareness, pulls himself away from his conversation with Mayor Lucas to distract his wife by asking about her plans for Thanksgiving.

If there’s one thing Mrs. Bennet cares about more than her daughters’ dating lives, it’s planning big events, and she is only too happy to be distracted with discussions about her great-grandmother’s cranberry sauce recipe. Jane shoots a grateful look to her father, and Charlotte and Lizzy trade amused looks.

Later that night, after most of the Lucases have gone home, Lizzy, Jane and Charlotte sit out on the porch swing, as they have done on so many nights. Lizzy has one of those pangs of sadness she sometimes gets when she remembers that this time next year, the three of them will be scattered across the country, and she’ll be all alone at Yale, if all goes according to plan.

Well, alone except for Darcy, which doesn’t count.

They chat idly about school for a while, until Jane gets a call. “Charlie,” she explains, half pleased and half apologetic, and steps out to stand under the streetlight and take the call.

Charlotte watches her go with amusement in her eyes. “She’s smitten, isn’t she?”

“I think so,” Lizzy confirms with a grin.

But there’s a touch of concern in Charlotte’s eyes. “If she likes him, she should show it more.”

Lizzy laughs. “What? She shows it a lot!”

“It seems like a lot to us,” Charlotte argues. “But that’s because we know her. I’ve watched her with Charlie; she’s very friendly to him, but not anymore than she is to any other guy.”

“What, you think she should throw herself at him?”

“Of course not. But she should make sure he knows how she’s interested. Even if that means showing a little bit more affection than she feels.”

“You’re as bad as Lydia,” Lizzy chuckles.

Charlotte makes a face. “I hope not,” she laughs. “But seriously: would you be confident enough to ask someone out if you didn’t have at least a little bit of encouragement? A hint that he likes you back?”

Honestly, no. But that doesn’t apply here. “She does encourage him,” Lizzy insists. “I’ve seen her do it.” Except, now that Charlotte’s pointed it out, she finds herself remembering times when Charlie has been eagerly flirting, hanging on Jane’s every word, and Jane's expression has been . . . serene.

But no, she’s being silly. Jane has been more obvious about her feelings for Charlie than she has been about any other boy, and surely Charlie isn’t so dense that he can’t pick up on that.

“Well, luckily you and I don’t have to worry about that,” she says cheerfully. “Since we’re going to be spinsters forever.”

“Roommates at the old folks home,” agrees Charlotte, then hesitates, then grins. “Although, you might not keep your spinsterhood that long.”

“Ugh, I take it you saw me and Billy Collins in the parking lot on Friday? He cornered me and explained why Jane Eyre is such an important novel. He explained Jane Eyre. To me. As though I haven’t read that book every year since I was eleven.”

“Oh, Billy,” Charlotte sighs. “But no, I was talking about Darcy.”

Lizzy blinks. “Darcy?”

“Yeah, you and Darcy. You really don’t see it? He’s always watching you.”

“He’s always glaring at me,” Lizzy corrects. “I don’t know what I did, but somehow I made him hate me.”

Charlotte quirks an eyebrow. “He does not hate you, Lizzy. That’s not how a guy looks at someone he hates.”

“Well, it’s not how he looks at someone he likes, either. Char, I love you for trying to save me from impending spinsterdom, but you’re way off base if you think Darcy likes me.”

Charlotte lifts her hands in a gesture of defeat, but her expression says she hasn’t changed her mind. Lizzy just shakes her head.

“Well,” says Charlotte, “then I guess your only hope is Billy. Just think: if you guys get married, you can inherit the factory together. And he can mansplain novels to you every night.”

Lizzy decisively slaps her hand down on her thigh. “Spinsterhood it is.”

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

By mid-October, Lizzy has reached a sort of Zen state about Caroline Bingley. The girl is still awful—snide about everyone she comes across, with a special dislike for Lizzy—but it’s so over-the-top ridiculous that it has ceased to bother Lizzy and now just kind of amuses her.

She thinks she’s figured out the reason for the dislike, too. After seeing them together quite a bit (not intentionally; this English project, and the constant driving to Charlie’s house, is going to be the death of Lizzy), she has come to the conclusion that Darcy and Caroline are not dating—not officially, anyway. Caroline is just so desperate to date Darcy that she just acts as though they’re already together; Darcy, despite showing no more interest in Caroline than he does in anyone else, tolerates her because then he has a partner for his snobbery.

And Caroline dislikes Lizzy because she perceives her as a threat: not because of anything that Lizzy has done, and not because Darcy has ever shown any interest in Lizzy, but because Caroline is the kind of person who sees everything and everyone as a competition. Lizzy is at Charlie’s house working on the English project with Darcy twice a week, and therefore Caroline sees her as competition.

Don’t worry, she wants to tell Caroline; Darcy and I could not be less interested in each other.

“Are you texting Georgie again?”

Darcy looks up from his phone at Caroline, his mouth spread in the thin line that, Lizzy has learned, is his version of a polite smile. “Yes.”

“Tell her I say hi,” Caroline gushes, and Lizzy wonders if she and this Georgiana are actually friends or if this is just another ploy by Caroline to get in Darcy’s good graces.

Darcy just gives her another polite smile.

“This is an incredible view,” Jane says, and Charlie looks so pleased and so smitten that Lizzy can’t decide if she’d rather pat his head and tell him he’s a good boy or give him a clip round the ear and tell him to step up and ask Jane out already.

They’re sitting out on the massive back deck of the Bingleys’ house, drinking lemonade and looking out over the stunning view: the house is perched up high on a hill, and the city of Lambton stretches out to the left, and to the right are trees and fields and then the lake. It’s so beautiful out here that sometimes Lizzy just wants to cry looking at it.

“It’s all right,” says Caroline dismissively. “You should see the views from Darcy’s house. It’s up even higher, and it looks right out over the lake. You don’t have to look at the city at all.”

Lizzy and Jane automatically look at Darcy, waiting for him to confirm or deny the report, and he seems surprised and a little flustered. “It’s a stunning view,” he confirms. “The sunsets over the lake are spectacular.”

“His house is amazing,” Caroline says to Jane as thought it’s some kind of secret that she’s imparting. “It was built over a hundred years ago and it’s so gorgeous—it’s like something from Downton Abbey. The gardens around it are huge. And it’s on a hill with the best views of the lake in the entire county.”

“Downton Abbey is filmed at Highclere Castle, which was built in the Jacobean Revival style,” says Darcy flatly. “Pemberley is in the Châteauesque style. They’re quite distinct.”

For a moment, Lizzy is amused that Darcy knows where Downton Abbey is filmed. But then what he just said sinks in. “Your house is called Pemberley? As in Pemberley Prep?”

Darcy shifts in his chair. “My great-grandfather founded Pemberley Prep. He named it after our family home, which was itself named after his great-grandfather’s home back in England.”

Of course Darcy’s family founded Pemberley Prep. They probably vacation with Queen Elizabeth, too.

“It’s so sad you can’t be at Pemberley Prep now,” Caroline says commiseratingly. “I hope your education won’t suffer.”

“Longbourn is a great school,” Charlie breaks in. “I’m having a great time there.”

Jane and Lizzy smile at him, but Caroline’s having none of it. “You have to admit that the facilities aren’t nearly as nice,” she insists, “and the extracurriculars aren’t very good.”

“I have no complaints,” says Darcy, but Caroline doesn’t seem inclined to heed him.

“The sports teams never win,” she says, “and the music program is underwhelming.”

Lizzy wishes she could object to that, but Caroline’s right on both counts.

Darcy’s phone beeps then, and maybe that makes Caroline think of Georgie Darcy, because she adds, “I’m sure you’d be furious if Georgie was stuck with the music program there.”

“I’m sure I would be,” says Darcy easily, and turns his attention to his text.

“Georgiana Darcy is the most talented person I ever met,” Caroline informs Jane and Lizzy. “Don’t you think, Charlie?”

“Oh, I think she’s great at everything,” says Charlie eagerly. “Makes me wish I’d learned an instrument. But then, I feel like everyone I know—at Longbourn and at Pemberley—does everything: they’re in clubs, they do music and sports, they’re in student government . . . Everyone is so talented and smart.”

Caroline makes a scoffing noise. “Joining the school choir and the German club isn’t that impressive,” she says. “I think for someone to really be ‘talented and smart,’ they need to do something out of the ordinary. You know, like volunteering, or winning a competition for sports or music. Like Georgie.”

“Like Georgie” is what she says, but Lizzy knows perfectly well that Caroline’s trying to draw attention to the fact that she takes private tennis lessons and has started a thoroughly useless charity for the sole purpose of beefing up her future college applications.

“Or debate team,” says Darcy unexpectedly. “I think that’s admirable.”

He must be thinking of people on Pemberley’s debate team; Lizzy doesn’t think Darcy knows anyone on Longbourn’s debate team except her.

“If doing all those things is what it takes to impressive, then I guess I’ll have to live with being average,” laughs Lizzy.

“Oh no, Lizzy, you’re amazing,” Jane breaks in.

“Yeah,” says Charlie loyally, “you’re so smart and you’re so good at everything.”

This just makes Caroline look irritated, and, keen to avoid her insults, Lizzy changes the subject. “Enough about that,” she says casually. “What I want to know is, when are you going to throw a party like you keep promising to, Charlie?”

It works; Charlie and Caroline are both thoroughly distracted. “My birthday’s in November, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving,” he says. “So I’m thinking I’ll do a party for that.”

Caroline’s smile has grown brittle. “You really want to throw a party?” she asks.

“Yeah, Dad’s fine with it,” he shrugs. “And we’ve never had a party with everyone from Longbourn! We’ll have them and everyone from Pemberley. It’ll be fun.” Caroline does not look convinced, and he reminds her, “You love parties, Caroline.”

“It just sounds like it’ll be a lot of people, with everyone from both schools.” Caroline’s voice is tight.

Ah, that’s why Caroline is unhappy. She’d rather party with only her Pemberley Prep friends, not with all the losers at Longbourn. That’s fine with Lizzy, who doesn’t particularly want to hang out with Caroline any more than she has to.

But Jane says, “I think it sounds fun! And it’s way nice of you to want to invite people from Longbourn too.”

Charlie ducks his head, a pleased grin on his face. “Thanks.”

“Will you be there, Darcy?” Caroline asks coquettishly.

Darcy doesn’t look up from his phone. “I’m sure I will be.”

“Well,” says Jane, “we’ll definitely be there, right, Lizzy?”

“Definitely,” says Lizzy, already dreading the thought of an evening with Caroline. But she’s not being fair; it’ll be Charlie’s party, not Caroline’s, and she loves Charlie. And anyway, there will be so many people there that she won’t have to talk to Caroline if she doesn’t want to.

Darcy looks up then, his gaze fixed on Lizzy with that stern look she’s grown so tired of. Maybe he’s regretting agreeing to go to the party now that he knows she’ll be there.

Caroline looks from him to Lizzy and then back again. And then she says, “Lizzy, have you seen the view from the railing here? It’s really gorgeous.”

Lizzy thinks the view from the railing is probably the same as the view from her chair, but maybe this is Caroline offering some kind of olive branch. So she stands and follows Caroline, who positive sashays—there’s no other word for it—past Darcy’s chair.

Ah, so that’s what it was: she wanted to make Darcy look at her as she walked past, and Lizzy got roped in to make it look like Caroline had a good reason for sashaying all over the patio.

“Want to join us, Darcy?” Caroline beckons coyly.

“I’m happy where I am,” he says promptly. “Besides, I’d only get in the way of you two chatting. I assume you asked Lizzy to look at the view with you because you two are such good friends, right?”

For a moment Lizzy’s lips twitch; Darcy isn’t stupid enough to miss the animosity between Lizzy and Caroline, so he’s got to be teasing Caroline by letting her know that he sees her unsubtle attempts to catch his attention. If Darcy was this funny most of the time, instead of arrogant and rude, she might like him more.

But that little spark of “Darcy might not be so bad” doesn’t last the rest of the visit. After checking out the view, Lizzy goes to sit by Jane and Charlie, and the three talk and laugh together while Darcy and Caroline mess around on their phones.

Charlie beams at the Bennet sisters. “It’s so fun having you guys here,” he said. “You’re just both so happy all the time. Like, it seems like you two never stop laughing when you’re together.”

Considering Charlie spends most of his time with Caroline and Darcy—the elusive father, Mr. Bingley, is almost never home—Lizzy can see why company who smile and laugh a lot would seem so different and exciting to the poor kid.

She smiles at him. “I always figure, in life you have two options: to laugh or to cry. And I’d rather laugh.”

Darcy lifts his head and looks right at her. She wonders what it was he disliked about her comment.

Caroline glances at him, then at Lizzy. “There are a lot of situations that shouldn’t be laughed at,” she points out. “A lot of people, too.”

This thing where Caroline twists every situation around to make Lizzy look bad is really getting old. “I hope I have the good sense not to laugh in those situations,” she says patiently. “And I wouldn’t laugh at a person to make them feel bad. I just like to look for the humor in life. And in the people around me. Most people are basically good, I think, but they also have their little quirks. That always gives me something to smile about.”

“You must be very disappointed in Darcy,” Caroline says, glancing at the guy in question. “He doesn’t have any quirks or flaws you can laugh at.”

“No flaws?” Lizzy repeats, raising her eyebrows at Darcy.

He shifts a little in his chair. “I have flaws,” he says. “But I do try to avoid those flaws that are . . . beneath me.”

Could this guy be any more pretentious? “Like arrogance? Or pride?” she says with all the innocence she can muster.

He frowns. “Yes, I think arrogance is dangerous. But pride—there are certain situations where it’s good to be proud. I’m proud of my family legacy and everything my ancestors built, and that makes me more inclined to do everything I can to protect their legacy.”

Of course he’d talk about his family legacy—always showing off that he’s filthy rich and everyone knows his family. Lizzy just barely keeps herself from rolling her eyes.

“Well, there you have it,” she says to Caroline and forces a smile. “I can’t laugh at Darcy, because he doesn’t have any flaws.”

“I have flaws,” he insists again.

“Such as?” Lizzy prompts, supposing that it’s always good to stay informed about your nemesis. 

He fidgets a moment. “I don’t forgive people easily,” he admits, looking at the wall behind her head. “If someone does something to hurt me, I have a hard time letting it go.”

“I consider myself duly warned,” she says solemnly, matching his formal cadence and tone.

Some emotion flashes through his eyes, but she’s not sure what it is. “I think every person is inclined to some defect that’s difficult to overcome,” he observes, and the way he’s staring at her makes his comment feel really pointed.

Lizzy doesn’t think of herself as a mean person, but being stuck here at Charlie’s day after day and listening to Caroline and Darcy’s endless insults makes her tongue sharp. “Let me guess: your defect is that you hate everyone.”

That something flashes through his eyes again. “And yours is that you willfully misunderstand them.”

For a long moment, she just stares at him. And then Caroline breaks the awkward silence. “I’m going to turn on some music,” she announces.

Charlie and Jane quickly chime in with what they want to listen to, and Lizzy tears her gaze away from Darcy, promising herself to be less openly hostile to him in the future, no matter how much he deserves it.

She just really can’t stand that guy.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Longbourn Academy encourages dressing up for Halloween, but they have some rules they take pretty seriously: no masks, no face painting, nothing too large. So Lizzy, who loves dressing up for Halloween, has perfected the art of coming up with costumes that are funny and that fall within what the school considers acceptable.

Well, she thinks they’re funny, anyway, but this year’s costume might have been a bit too obscure; only a handful of people that she sees throughout the day get the joke.

Lydia, who never dresses up for Halloween during the school day, is not sympathetic. “That’s what you get for picking something super random and nerdy,” she says as she and Lizzy stand by the main office after school, waiting for Jane to finish something up and meet them so they can all go home. “Literally nobody knows who you are.”

Lizzy instinctively glances down at her costume, even though she knows what she’ll see: tennis shoes, jeans, a mustard-colored sweater over a white collared shirt, her hair up in little buns atop her head like two little ears, the big cartoon library card she’s carrying around. “Excuse you,” she says, “but my costume is amazing. And the cool people know who I am.”

“You’re Arthur the aardvark,” comes a voice behind her, and Lizzy freezes; she’d managed to avoid Darcy all day, until now, and is not thrilled to have her streak broken. “From the library card episode.”

Though Lizzy has little interest in listening to William Darcy judge her costume, to ignore him would be rude, and if she starts being rude then she’s no better than him and Caroline. So she turns to look at him (pleased to note that Caroline is nowhere to be found). “Well spotted,” she says politely.

Darcy looks a bit pleased at the compliment, and she’s surprised at how much a positive emotion can transform his face. He almost looks pleasant for a moment. But then he opens his mouth and ruins it. “That’s a unique choice, given that it’s a children’s show that most of us haven't watched for years. Modern pop culture references seem more popular for costumes among our peers.”

First Lydia, now Darcy? She just wanted to have some fun with a nostalgic costume. She doesn’t need to stand here and listen to the biggest snob in the state judge her for it. Fortunately, a figure coming out of a door down the hall catches her eye. “Sorry, I see Jane over there,” she tells Darcy. “We’re supposed to meet her.” It feels a bit abrupt, so she adds, “Happy Halloween,” and gives Darcy a cordial smile before striding toward Jane with Lydia trailing behind her.

They reach Jane but have to wait for a minute while she rearranges her things in her backpack. And that’s where they’re standing when Lizzy hears a masculine voice behind her: “Are you dressed up as Arthur? Because that’s awesome.”

Lizzy turns to see the most attractive guy she has ever seen in real life: dirty blond hair, tousled just so; piercing green eyes; a really impressive tan considering it’s almost November; seriously great biceps. She glances around to see Lydia staring at the guy like she might jump into his arms at any moment, and even Jane looks a little stunned by the force of his good looks.

But it was her that he addressed, and she can’t help being flattered by that; she knows that Jane is much prettier than she is. “Yeah,” she laughs. “I grew up on Arthur. I loved that show.”

“And that’s the best episode,” the guy laughs. And right there in the middle of the hallway, seemingly unconcerned with what any of the passing people think, he starts to sing, “Having fun isn’t hard, when you’ve got a library card!”

She laughs aloud. “That was pretty much my theme song when I was a kid.”

She can already hear Lydia’s response in her head— “Why would you say something so nerdy to someone so hot?”— but the guys just laughs. “Hey, I like a smart girl.”

Okay, he’s gorgeous and he likes smart girls; Lizzy would swoon if she were the swooning type. For a moment she’s at a loss for words, but fortunately Jane steps into the fray. “I don’t think I’ve met you before,” she smiles. “Are you new around here?”

“Yeah, first day,” says the guy. “I’m George Wickham.”

He sticks out a hand first to Lizzy, then to Jane, then to Lydia, and they all shake his hand and introduce themselves. “So, all sisters?”

Lizzy nods. “Jane and I are twins; we’re seniors. Lydia is in 10th grade.”

“But I’ve been told I’m very mature for my age,” says Lydia in what is apparently supposed to be a flirtatious manner. Lizzy just barely stops herself from shooting an alarmed, amused look at Jane.

But this George doesn’t seem to be put off (or, worse, taken in) by Lydia’s flirtations; he just grins and chats amiably with them for a while. He tells them he’s one of the Pemberley transfers students but that he was away for the first two months of school, and they compare schedules and find that his doesn’t overlap with the twins’ at all. That means he’s not in any AP or honors classes—Lizzy is in all of them—but that’s all right. Not everyone needs to be the academic type.

The topic of how hard it is to make friends at a new school comes up, and Lydia pipes up, “You should come to Clara Goulding’s Halloween party tonight. Everyone will be there. Including the Pemberley students.”

George smiles appreciatively, but he glances at Lizzy and says, “Is this the sort of party where it’s cool to just show up?”

Okay, he’s gorgeous, he likes smart girls, and he’s considerate enough to realize he can’t just show up at every party without an invitation? Lizzy could find herself seriously smitten if she’s not careful. “Yeah, anyone from school is invited. Plus, Clara’s a friend of ours, and I know she’d be happy to have you show up. It’s always a huge party.”

“So you guys are going?” he says, and again, he’s looking right at Lizzy when he says it. She’s never had a guy seem so interested in her so quickly, and it’s a heady feeling.

“Of course!” smiles Jane. “We go every year.”

George grins. “Then I’d better be there.”

Lizzy writes down Clara’s address for him. George takes it and thanks her, then glances over his shoulder at something. “I should go,” he says. “But I’ll see you guys tonight?”

He walks away and Lydia immediately starts gushing about how gorgeous he is. But Lizzy barely notices. She has glanced down the hall, wondering what George was looking at there at the end, and she’s surprised to see Darcy standing nearly where she left him, staring up the hall at them with a thundercloud on his brow. He’s far enough away that she can’t see his face in great detail, but some instinct tells her that Darcy is giving her a look more dark and brooding than any he’s shot at her in the past.

Could that have something to do with George?

She doesn’t think about it long, riding high on meeting George and on the fact that he very clearly singled her out. Her good mood is only improved when Jane tells her on the way home that Darcy and Caroline aren’t coming to the party tonight.

“I suppose they celebrate Halloween in style,” Lizzy says in her best upper-class British accent, “at a cotillion with a live orchestra and a visit from the Queen.”

“That’s not nice, Lizzy,” says Jane, though she’s smiling. “Apparently Darcy wants to spend the holiday with his sister, and Caroline . . . didn’t want to come.”

Didn’t want to come if Darcy wouldn’t be there, most likely, but Lizzy didn’t want her there anyway so she is happy to let Caroline continue her fruitless pursuit of Will Darcy.

Jane and Lizzy arrive at Clara’s early that night to help her finish setting up, and then before long, the whole house is packed with people. Their little friend group is well-known and everybody likes them (except two certain Pemberley transfers), so Clara’s yearly Halloween party is always well attended.

Lydia, of course, disappeared as soon as she got in the house, but Lizzy and Jane hang with Charlie and Charlotte and Clara for a while, dancing and talking and eating way too many orange and black peanut M&Ms. Eventually Clara has to go take care of something, and Charlie and Jane slip away to dance to a slow song, and it’s just Lizzy and Charlotte left.

That doesn’t last long, though, when George Wickham walks in, dressed as a pirate (which should look stupider than it does, but the loose, open-necked shirt just shows off his defined chest and makes him look even tanner). His gaze falls on Lizzy and he smiles even wider and starts making his way over.

“Dang,” says Charlotte, “is that the guy you met earlier?”

Lizzy nods.

“Why are you always so lucky?” Charlotte grumbles. But she’s a good wingman; when George reaches them, she introduces herself, and then a minute later she “remembers” she promised she’d help Clara with something and she slips away, leaving Lizzy and George alone.

George seems as pleased about this turn of events as Lizzy is, and they stand there and make small talk for a while. George is funny and listens very thoughtfully to everything she says, which is great; even Billy Collins walking by and demanding “Is this guy bothering you, Elizabeth?” can’t ruin her mood.

“Friend of yours?” George asks when Billy is gone.

Lizzy grimaces. “Our dads are business associates,” she says. “We find ourselves in each other’s company a lot.”

“I know what that’s like,” he laughs.

After a few minutes of chatting, George asks her to show him where the refreshments are, and somehow they end up ensconced together on a cozy loveseat in a corner of the open-plan living space, soda and candy in hand.

“This house is amazing,” says George, looking around the Gouldings’ large and beautifully decorated home. “It reminds me a lot of—”

He breaks off, gaze falling to the ground as though he’s been reminded of something unhappy. “You okay?” Lizzy asks gently.

“Yeah,” he says, giving her a wry little smile. “I was just thinking . . . it reminds me of a place I used to live. A place I should still be living. But I guess things don’t always turn out the way they should.”

This is very cryptic, and Lizzy is torn between wanting to know more and not wanting to look like a gossip. She compromises by saying nothing but attempting to express, through her face, that she’s ready to listen if he wants to talk.

George looks at her, then hesitates, then asks, “Do you know Will Darcy?”

“Yeah,” says Lizzy, surprised. “A little. We’re in a group together for an English project. We’re not friends, though.”

George nods, looking conflicted. “I just—I don’t want it to sound like I’m badmouthing him or trying to ruin his reputation or something.”

“Believe me,” Lizzy says dryly, “he’s ruined his own reputation since he got here. Everyone thinks he’s totally stuck up.”

George chews on his lip, then leans toward her like he’s about to tell a secret. “It’s worse than just being stuck up,” he says quietly.

Lizzy leans toward him too. “What do you mean?” 

Her companion hesitates, then releases a sigh like he’s just made a decision. “Will Darcy,” he informs her, “kinda ruined my life.”

She blinks. “What does that mean?”

“Well, see, he’s . . . basically my foster brother.”

It takes a few long moments for Lizzy to process this; all she can think of is that dark look Darcy was shooting at George this afternoon. “What do you mean?”

“Well, our dads were really good friends; they’d been roommates in college, and then Mr. Darcy gave my dad a job as his personal assistant.” He chuckles a little. “I’m actually named after Mr. Darcy. That’s why I have such an old-fashioned name.”

“I think it’s a pretty cool name,” says Lizzy.

George grins gratefully at her. “Anyway, Mr. Darcy was always really good to my family; he let us live in the gatehouse on their estate for really cheap, so I grew up playing with Will.”

“Wow. I . . . can’t really picture you two as friends.”

George smiles a little, then goes on. “My mom died when I was a kid, and my dad died the summer before I started high school. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so Mr. Darcy had me move into the house with them and got himself declared my legal guardian.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss,” she murmurs, imagining a little 14-year-old George all alone in the world.

He gives her a pained smile. “It was great at first; the house is amazing. And Mr. Darcy was always like an uncle to me, but these last few years, he’s been more like another father.”

“I sense a big ‘but’ coming,” Lizzy said.

“Yeah, there was a big ‘but,’” George said, a touch of bitterness and regret in his tone. “Named Will. He liked me when we were kids, but as we got older he got obsessed with money and class and his stupid family legacy. And here’s me, with my dad basically a glorified secretary, and with my grandparents being factory workers and truck drivers. I wasn’t what Will wanted as a friend, let alone a brother. We’d been drifting apart for a while, and when I moved into the house, with Mr. Darcy treating me like part of the family, Will couldn’t take it. He turned on me and started finding ways to make my life miserable—stupid little tricks at home and telling people lies about me at school. And he turned his little sister Georgie against me too.”

“What a jerk!” Lizzy exclaims with feeling. “You were a kid who’d just been orphaned, and he was pulling petty stuff like that?”

George shrugs wearily. “That’s Will,” he says. “But it gets worse. Last summer he decided he wanted me gone for good, so he convinced his father that I’d stolen some family heirloom. His dad was furious.” He gives her a pained smile. “Do you remember earlier, I told your sister I’d been away for two months? Well, the whole story is that Mr. Darcy sent me to one of those alternative schools for troubled boys, up in the mountains. You know, where they have you get up early and go on hikes and learn to rock climb and stuff, and it’s supposed to build character.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“It wasn’t so bad,” George shrugged. “I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I knew I didn’t deserve it. Anyway, I got to canoe around and go on a lot of hikes, so it was cool. But the thing is, once I came back, it turned out they didn’t want me at Pemberley anymore. So they sent me to live with some people Mr. Darcy works with, the Forsters. And, I mean, they’re fine, but . . . I would’ve rather stayed at Pemberley with Mr. Darcy.”

“What the heck?” Lizzy bursts out. “How are you so calm about that? Darcy got you kicked out of your house and sent away to the middle of nowhere for something you didn’t do. And how’s that going to look in the future if you’re trying to get a job or get into a college or something, and they find out you were sent off to a school for troubled boys? They’ll think you were a bad kid.”

He shrugs. “I had a lot of time to come to terms with it. There’s nothing I can do about it now; I have no evidence that I didn’t steal anything.”

“Well, then Darcy deserves to be, I don’t know, publicly shamed or something. For the stealing thing but for all the other crap he pulled too.”

But George is smiling and shaking his head. “I still care about the family too much,” he says. “Mr. Darcy is still like a dad to me, and I’m hoping someday I can fix that relationship. I can’t hurt him by making everyone at school hate his son. And things aren’t so bad now. The Forsters are nice, and I’m back in town.” He gives her a crooked half smile that is devastatingly handsome. “And so far, I really like Longbourn and . . . everyone here. So I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

Lizzy shakes her head. “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,” she mutters. Gorgeous, likes smart girls, seems interested in Lizzy, and now super forgiving and compassionate: George Wickham really might be the perfect guy.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Of course she tells her two besties what she’s learned at the earliest possible moment, but neither one reacts like she expected. Sweet, loving Jane insists that there must be a misunderstanding; surely Darcy wouldn’t do anything like that.

“Besides,” she says, “Charlie doesn’t know exactly what the story is with them, but he’s pretty sure that whatever it was, George was at fault.”

“Well, of course Charlie would think that,” Lizzy grumbles. “He would have heard the story from Darcy, who would say whatever makes him look good.”

In general, Jane is not much help with anything; Charlie finally officially asked her to be his girlfriend last night, and she’s been floating on cloud nine ever since. Lizzy wishes she could get more sensible conversation from her twitterpated twin right now, but she’s glad Charlie finally stepped up. Jane deserves to happy, and Charlie makes her happy, and if the price that Lizzy has to pay for that is that Jane is super distracted right now—too busy gazing at Charlie to know which way is up—well, Lizzy can live with that.

So she talks to Charlotte instead, but she doesn't get the response she was expecting there, either. Charlotte listens very patiently to everything Lizzy says, and then she says sensibly, “That’s a pretty serious offense you’re accusing Darcy of, Lizzy. You sure you want to do that based only on the word of someone you met less than 24 hours ago? You don’t know this George guy. You don’t know if he’s trustworthy.”

“I know him just fine,” Lizzy objects. “I could tell that he’s trustworthy just by talking to him.”

“Or just by looking at him?” Charlotte asks with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t get distracted by his good looks.”

Lizzy insists that she is not distracted by his good looks; she believes George because it tracks with everything she knows about Darcy. Besides, it's not like George picked someone at random to talk about; Lizzy saw with her own eyes that Darcy hates George. There's obviously a connection there.

But she does admit that George's good looks are very distracting, and she has plenty of time to examine them, as George continues to hang out with her. At school, he quickly finds some of his old friends from Pemberley, and he also makes some new friends among the Longbourn students, but even with all these new friends, he still eats lunch occasionally with Jane and Lizzy and their group. (Only lunch; Lizzy wonders if he doesn’t hang with them outside of lunch because Jane is glued to Charlie’s side most of the time, and George doesn’t want to spend too much time with Darcy’s best friend. But Charlie and Darcy have second lunch, so they’re never around during the meal.) He also chats with Lizzy and her friends when he sees them in the hall or before and after school.

And sometimes during these encounters, it’s all Lizzy can do not to just stare at George in wide-mouthed awe at how very pretty he is.

For all that, she’s sensible: she knows that George isn’t the type of guy she’d usually date seriously. He’s fun and easy-going, but it’s possible to be too laid-back, and that’s exactly what George is. She’s such a driven and ambitious person that it’s hard for her to really respect a guy who seems perfectly happy to just coast through life.

So for now, she’s happy to be George’s friend and admire his face from a distance. (Though if he ever asked her out . . . well, she might change her tune.) 

The time for their English class presentation finally arrives on November 8. As would be expected in an AP English class at a reasonably prestigious school, their fellow students are no slouches, and all the presentations are quite impressive. But their presentation, by virtue of having been prepared by Lizzy and Darcy, blows the rest of them out of the water; according to Mrs. Hill, their work is “exceptional.”

“We need to celebrate,” Charlie says with a grin after class, bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. Despite the appearance he gives off sometimes, Charlie’s actually fairly bright, but Lizzy doubts he’s ever had a teacher quite so blown away by his work before.

“Let’s hang out tonight,” says Jane with a serene smile—her way of showing she’s equally pleased with how the presentation went. “The four of us.”

That sounds like the last thing Lizzy wants to do, but Darcy says “I suppose that sounds acceptable” and now everyone’s staring at Lizzy, waiting for her response.

This is not her idea of a good time, but she doesn’t have any other plans so she doesn’t have a good excuse. “Okay,” she says, “let’s hang out tonight.”

But then Charlie says, “Why don’t we watch a movie at your house? I still haven’t seen your place.”

Lizzy looks at Jane, alarm in her eyes, but Jane gives her a reassuring smile. “That sounds great,” she says. “My parents have a big dinner for the Chamber of Commerce tonight, and our sister is spending the night at a friend’s, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

And Lizzy droops in relief. She loves her parents, but she’s aware that her mother doesn’t always give off the best impression. She’s just not ready for Will Darcy to meet the woman and therefore have more fuel for the fire of his snobbery.

But her relief was premature; she’d assumed her parents would leave for the dinner around 6, and therefore suggested the boys show up around 7. But when she comes downstairs at 6:45, she’s alarmed to see her parents haven’t left yet. “The dinner’s at 7:30,” her mother explains. “Why do you ask?”

“They’re still here,” Lizzy hisses at Jane when she’s helping her prepare snacks in the kitchen.

“I know,” says Jane calmly.

Lizzy stares at her. “You aren’t worried that she’s going to say something super embarrassing to Charlie and scare him off for good?”

Jane gives her twin an amused, indulgent smile. “Mom’s not that bad,” she scolds gently. “Anyway, we’re dating; I can’t keep Charlie away from my parents forever. And she’s my mom. Even if she . . . speaks without thinking sometimes, I still love her and I’m not going to hide her from Charlie. And if he were actually scared off by my mom, that would mean we’re probably not a good match after all.”

That’s all very sensible, but Lizzy is not reassured. It’s not Charlie she’s worried about, not really; it’s snobby Will Darcy, who already dislikes Lizzy and who, it turns out, is not afraid to turn on someone just because they don’t match his high standards.

So she’s on tenterhooks until the doorbell rings, at which point all her fears come true.

“Is this your boyfriend, Jane?” Mrs. Bennet asks, hurrying into the front entryway where Charlie and Darcy are removing their jackets. “Thomas, come meet Jane’s boyfriend!”

Jane turns to her with a gentle smile. “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Charlie. Charlie, my mother, Frances Bennet.”

Charlie steps forward with a buoyant grin. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Bennet. And I can see where your daughter gets her looks.”

It’s the absolute cheesiest line in the world—it sounds like he got it out of a book from the 1940s—but Mrs. Bennet eats it up. “Oh, what a flatterer! No, Jane is the beauty in the family these days, although when I was her age, I would have given her a run for her money. Lucky thing, too, or the girls’ father might not have noticed me at that company Christmas party.”

“You worked for your husband’s company?” Charlie asks politely.

“Oh yes,” gushes Mrs. Bennet. “I worked as an assembler on the factory line, but I always hated it. So when my dear Thomas started chatting me up at that party, you can bet I wasn’t going to miss that chance.”

Lizzy isn’t ashamed of her mother’s origins, but at this moment she wants to sink through the floor—couldn’t her mother tell the story in a way that didn’t make her sound like such a gold digger? At least Charlie also grew up poor, so he probably won’t judge Mrs. Bennet too much. But Lizzy doesn’t dare glance at Darcy to see how he’s taking all this.

“Yes, Jane always has been the most beautiful girl in her school,” says Mrs. Bennet with a little sigh. “Poor Lizzy never could match her for good looks.”

“At least Lizzy’s got brains,” comes a new voice; their father has finally deigned to answer his wife’s summons and join them in the front entry. “The sorts of people worth knowing will value that more than looks.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” laughs Mrs. Bennet. “I’ve certainly never met a man who prefers brains over beauty. Thomas, dear, this is Jane’s boyfriend Charlie. And his friend—oh, I’m sorry, I never caught your name.”

Lizzy turns to see Darcy watching all of this with a scowl on his face. Ah, yes, with the car crash going on around them, they forgot to finish the introductions. “Mom, Dad, this is Will Darcy. He’s Charlie’s friend and he was in our English group.”

But all the extra explanation is completely lost on their mother, whose mouth dropped wide open when she heard the second guest’s name. “Darcy?” she repeats. “As in the Darcys?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Darcy in an even voice that Lizzy can’t read. “As in the Darcys.”

“You mean you’re George Darcy’s son?” Mrs. Bennet is suddenly flustered, smoothing down her hair and adjusting her necklace as though suddenly desperate to impress this teenaged boy. “I’ve met your father at a few charity events and the like, though I’m sure a man so important and powerful wouldn’t remember me. So you live in that enormous old mansion in Lambton? I toured it once, just after I was married, and I was so impressed. I said, ‘Thomas, we should get ourselves a house just like that,’ but he insisted that this old place was fine.”

“I grew up in ‘this old place,’” Mr. Bennet reminds his wife dryly.

Her mother ignores him. “The son of George Darcy, friends with my daughters! I can hardly believe it.”

He won’t want anything to do with us after this, Lizzy thinks of saying, but she doesn’t want to make an awkward situation worse.

“You must be the richest student at Jane and Lizzy’s whole school!” Mrs. Bennet exclaims, then jokes, “How clever of my girls to befriend you,” and that’s when Lizzy can’t stand it anymore.

“We should get the movie started,” she blurts out. “And you two need to finish getting ready for your dinner.”

At least Mrs. Bennet has the grace to take the hint. “Yes, of course, you four have fun! We should be home before eleven.”

Then Lizzy will be sure to have the guys out the door well before eleven, to avoid another awkward conversation. She ushers the group to the home theater, then drags Jane back to the kitchen for the snacks. “Are you sure Mom’s not that bad?” she hisses when they’re alone.

Jane grimaces, which for her is huge. “Okay, that was a little awkward.”

“A little?” Lizzy demands. “You’re just lucky Charlie already likes you or that might have put him off forever.” What she does not say is that she imagines that Darcy will never speak to either of them again.

Which she doesn’t care about, of course; in fact she’d prefer if Darcy never spoke to her again. But still, the memory of that scowl on his face as he listened to her mother’s ridiculous fawning bothers her more than she’d ever admit out loud.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

“So what are you wearing to Charlie’s party?” Clara asks.

Lizzy shrugs. “I haven’t decided.”

“And that,” Lydia announces, “is why you are perpetually single, older sister.”

“Not perpetually,” Lizzy objects. “Just . . . often.”

It is Tuesday the 26th, the day before Thanksgiving break starts and also Charlie BIngley’s birthday. Tonight is his party, the event that all of Longbourn has been eagerly anticipating for weeks, which is why Lizzy, Lydia, Clara and Charlotte are discussing it now. Jane left right after school with Charlie to help him with a few last-minute errands for the party, or she’d probably be here discussing it too.

Lizzy has been looking forward to the party as much as anyone, even with the threat of Darcy and Caroline’s attendance. Despite what Lydia’s snarky comment implied, Lizzy loves events like this, and she has been thinking about what to wear for weeks. She just hasn’t decided yet. She’s not as obsessed with her appearance as her younger sister is, but she does like looking nice, and she thinks she has a good eye for what looks best on her.

And tonight she wants to look her best. No particular reason, of course; it’s just nice to look good at a party. And if George Wickham should happen to be there and notice her looking good . . .

“Just my luck, the four prettiest girls in school.” Speak of the devil.

“Hey, George,” Lydia says coyly, twisting a lock of her hair around her finger. She runs into George a fair bit because of his friendship with her older sisters, and she flirts outrageously whenever they’re in the same vicinity. Though Lydia has turned more than one older boy’s head over the years, George only ever responds playfully to her flirting, like it’s a cute game he’s playing with a child. 

(Lizzy, keen to believe she’s the sort of person who doesn’t easily get swept off her feet, pretends she’s not glad that the hottest guy in the school hasn’t been taken in by Lydia’s flirting or dumbstruck by Jane’s beauty and instead seems to focus on her. But she is.)

He inserts himself in the circle between Clara and Lizzy and slings an arm around each of their shoulders. “Hey,” he says to Lydia, then turns to Charlotte. “Charlotte, how you doing?”

“Hi, George,” Charlotte says politely. Though she readily agrees that he’s gorgeous. she’s never really taken to George, despite being in his presence so much the last few weeks. Lizzy asked her about it in private once, but she didn’t really have a satisfactory explanation: “I don’t know,” she’d said; “something about that guy just puts me off.”

“So, are you coming to Charlie Bingley’s party tonight?” Clara asks eagerly. She is not immune to George’s charms and has been known to get a little giggly in his presence.

He hesitates.

“You have to go!” Clara exclaims. “The whole school’s going to be there.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m just a little worried—he’s best friends with Darcy.”

“Oh, because of what he did?” Clara says in tones of realization.

Lizzy is honest enough to admit that she’d been pretty surprised when it became clear that Wickham has told quite a few people at Longbourn about Darcy’s treatment of him; he’d acted like it was all very secret, and she’d been flattered that he’d shared that secret with her. But he’d never said that it was just between them, and it’s silly that it bothered her a little when she first realized that he’d told other people. Silly.

“Yeah,” says George. “I don’t know, I just don’t want it to turn into some big thing.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong!” Lydia exclaims.

“Yeah,” says Clara, “you know the truth, and the whole school knows the truth. If anyone’s going to feel weird, it’ll be Darcy.”

“You should come,” Lydia insists.

“Yeah, you have to come,” adds Clara.

George glances at Lizzy, who smiles at him. “It’d be fun to have you there,” she says.

For a moment George hesitates, and then he smiles brightly. “You’re right! I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll go, and Darcy can just deal with it.”

Everyone in the circle except Charlotte exclaims happily. In that moment, Lizzy happens to glance over Charlotte’s shoulder and notice that she can see Darcy through the windows of the main office. The office doors are closed, so he won’t have been able to hear anything they’re saying, but he’s definitely looking at them and he’s definitely scowling. He’s probably thinking how mad he is that he did his best to get George sent away but now he’s back and he’s way more popular than Darcy will ever be.

She hasn’t talked to Darcy at all since that night he watched a movie at her house; now that they don’t have the English project bringing them together, they have no reason to interact at school. And with Charlie and Jane now dating, those two are happy to be alone together, so there’s no more dragging Lizzy and Darcy along to make it look like it’s just friends hanging out. It’s made the last few weeks really pleasant.

From there, the talk turns to repairs on Pemberley Prep. The news is that the main floor of the main building has been completely repaired and declared fit for use, with the rest of the building expected to be usable by the new year. The Pemberley students will go back at the end of the semester, in mid-January, and spend the second half of the year at their own school.

Lizzy will miss George, and Jane will be sad to not have Charlie so close by, but on the whole Lizzy thinks she won’t mind having the Pemberley students gone.

“Did you hear about the e-mail?” George asks.

“What e-mail?” asks Clara.

He grins, clearly enjoying having a bit of news to share. “Well,” he says, “you know the whole student body is going back in January, right? But last night, the school board sent an e-mail to all of the students. They’re planning to partly start up sooner than that. Anyone who wants to can return to Pemberley right away, and everyone else will wait until January.”

“How soon is right away?” Lizzy asks.

“Next Monday.”

“Next Monday? That’s less than a week away!” she exclaims, surprised by the thought that so many of the new people she’s met could be gone that soon. She’s not super close to any of them except Charlie and George, but still, it’s weird.

“You aren’t leaving that soon, are you?” Lydia says.

George laughs easily. “No, I’m staying until the end of the semester. Maybe I’ll even see if I can transfer here for the last semester. I like Longbourn way better than Pemberley.”

“Good,” says Lizzy without thinking, then forces herself not to blush when George turns a pleased smile on her. He’s fun to hang out with, that’s all she’s saying. Without meaning to, her eyes fall once again on Darcy, glaring at them all through the window of the main office. A pleased thought occurs to her: maybe he’ll go back to Pemberley Prep next week. She wouldn’t mind that at all.

They begin to discuss who might decide to stay until January versus who might decide to leave early until they are interrupted by a most unwelcome voice.

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

Lizzy takes a moment to hide her grimace before turning. “Hello, Billy.”

Billy Collins stands behind her, tall and stocky and solemn. As usual, he’s dressed in an ill-fitting collared shirt and a tie, despite the fact that Longbourn doesn’t require a school uniform and has a very relaxed dress code. He wouldn’t be a bad-looking guy if he got a better haircut and learned how to dress for his body type, but Lizzy is not interested and never will be and he seems incapable of getting that hint.

“Are you going to Charles Bingley’s party tonight?” he asks her, basically ignoring everyone but her.

“Sure am,” says Lizzy. And then, because politeness demands it, she asks, “You?”

He nods ponderously. “I normally don’t go to many parties, but Charles invited me personally. I thought it would be an excellent chance to socialize with my peers.”

Lizzy doesn’t even have to look around to know that little cough she just heard was Lydia smothering a laugh. “Yeah, it should be a great party.”

“I wanted to ask you something,” he says, seemingly unaware that this awkward conversation has an audience. “Would you do me the honor of attending the party as my date?”

Another cough.

Lizzy has been expecting this question since she heard Billy’s voice, and she has her answer ready. “That’s nice of you to ask,” she says, “but I already made plans to go with my friends.”

Billy looks taken aback for a moment, like he hadn’t dreamed she would say no, but then he presses on. “In that case,” he says, “may I ask you for a dance at the party?”

Another cough, and then a yelp; Charlotte must have elbowed Lydia. And Lizzy starts feeling bad for the poor guy; she can’t reject him in front of a crowd. So she says, “Of course. I’ll keep an eye out for you there.”

Billy smiles at her, then nods at everyone else and walks away. And Lydia at least has the decency to wait until he’s through the door and out of earshot to say in her serious “business” tone, “Looks like the Bennet-Collins merger is making excellent progress.”

Lizzy turns back to shoot Lydia a quelling look, which just makes her laugh.

“Bennet-Collins merger?” George repeats.

Lizzy laughs and sighs at the same time. “I think I mentioned once that our dads work together? My dad brought his dad on as a business partner about ten years ago, so we see their family a lot at company events, Sunday dinners, things like that.”

“Dad just straight up inherited the manufacturing plant from his dad, but now he and Mr. Collins both own a big share of it, so it’s still up in the air what will happen when Dad retires,” Lydia adds. “So we’re pretty sure Billy thinks that if he marries a Bennet, they can inherit it together. Pretty romantic, right?”

“That’s not fair,” Charlotte scolds gently. “You don’t know if he’s really that mercenary. Maybe he genuinely likes Lizzy.”

Lydia looks skeptical at that, and Lizzy retorts, “I’m likable.” She hesitates. “Even if I don’t want Billy to like me.”

George just laughs. “I think you’re pretty likable too,” he says, and she forces herself not to get all embarrassed and coy about it.

She wonders if he’ll ask her to dance at the party. She thinks she’d really like that.

She glances up and sees that Darcy is still staring at them through the office window. This time, George notices her looking, and he twists his head to see what has caught her attention. He hesitates, and when he turns back to the group, his smile is dimmer. “I gotta go,” he says, and walks away.

“See you at the party!” Clara calls after him.

He doesn’t respond.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

“Okay,” Lizzy asks Charlie as he opens the door to let her into the house, “what’s the shortest song on your playlist?”

Charlie blinks at her. “I don’t have a playlist.”

“Then what . . .” She trails off as she sees a DJ setting up in one corner of the massive ground floor living area. “Wow, you’re really going all out.” Lizzy could probably afford to hire a DJ on those occasions she has parties, but it’s never occurred to her to do so.

“Caroline’s idea,” Charlie shrugs.

“If we’re going to throw a party, we’re going to do it right,” says Caroline snippily as she sails by, holding an iPad that appears to have a checklist on it. She shoots Lizzy an insincere smile. “If you’d ever like to learn how to properly throw a party, I’d be happy to teach you. I’m sure you could use the help.”

“Yes, Caroline, you’re an amazing hostess,” Charlie says, rolling his eyes.

“And such a gracious one,” Lizzy mutters under her breath once Caroline’s out of earshot.

She hears a cough behind her and turns to see Darcy standing there. “Lizzy,” he says politely. “You’re here early.”

“Darcy,” she says, equally politely. “I told Charlie and Jane I’d come help with last-minute setup.”

Darcy nods, opens his mouth as though to reply, and then turns and walks away without a word. That guy is so weird in social situations that it barely even registers on Lizzy’s Darcy Awkwardness Scale.

“So why are you after a short song?” Charlie asks as he leads Lizzy to the back of the house, where Jane is hanging up lights.

Lizzy hesitates, then admits, “I’ve already been asked for a dance and I’m trying to figure out how to get it over with quickly.”

Charlie gives her a considering look. “Do you not like dancing, or is it just dancing with a specific person?”

“Specific person,” Lizzy says. “I love dancing most of the time.”

“Well, if you can think of a really short song, I can ask the DJ to play it.”

Lizzy laughs. “Tempting,” she says. “But I was just venting. It probably wouldn’t be very nice of me.” She hesitates. “Don’t tell Jane any of this,” she insists. “She’s too nice. She’ll tell me to ‘give the poor guy a chance.’”

“I’m not keeping anything from my girlfriend,” Charlie says loyally, but then he winks at Lizzy. “But for my girlfriend’s sister, I can promise not to say anything unless she asks me point blank.”

Lizzy was right, all those weeks ago, when she thought she’d be glad to have Jane date such a nice guy. “Thanks, Charlie.”

“You’re very welcome, Lizzy.”

They shoot grins at each other as they step onto the back patio, and then Jane is exclaiming “Lizzy! You look gorgeous!”

A half-hour later, Longbourn and Pemberley kids are pouring into the house, and Lizzy is looking around and admitting to herself that Caroline really does know how to throw a party. The DJ is pretty good and there are already people dancing; the lighting in here is really cool; the food is insane and Lizzy has to firmly tell herself every few minutes that she’s only allowed to eat a few of those little wonton things.

She sees Billy Collins walk in, clearly looking around for someone—probably her—and she figures they might as well do this now. “Hey, Billy,” she says, stepping toward him.

“Elizabeth,” he says. “You look very nice.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Should we dance?”

It’s as awkward as she’d expected; Billy steps on her toes more than once, and he spends the whole time telling her about this film he just discovered, it’s called Little Women, has she heard of it?

“Yep,” she says, fighting back a sigh. “I’ve heard of it.”

It’s a relief when the dance is over, and it’s a bigger relief when a friend of Billy’s walks in immediately after and comes over to say hi so Lizzy can leave without feeling like she’s abandoning him.

Charlotte, Maria and Clara arrived at some point during the dance, and they grin at Lizzy as she walks up. “That looked like fun,” Clara says.

“It would have been more fun if he didn’t think he’s the only person in the world who knows anything about literature,” Lizzy sighs.

Caroline walks by just then with a smirk on her face. “Your dance partner seemed really sweet, Lizzy,” she says in a saccharine tone. “I think you two make a perfect match.”

She sweeps away and Clara says, “Do you think I’ll get thrown out of the party if I punch her in the face?”

“Probably,” says Charlotte. “The rest of us would appreciate your sacrifice, though.”

Lizzy says nothing; when she turned to watch Caroline go, she noticed Darcy standing on the other side of the room, staring at her like he usually does. She wonders if he watched her dance, and she wonders if he noticed how many times she winced from Billy stepping on her feet.

She really shouldn’t get caught staring at Darcy; people might interpret it as admiration, not irritation. “So where’s Lydia?” she asks, turning back to the group. “Didn’t she come with you?”

“She already disappeared somewhere,” says Maria. 

Probably to wherever the highest concentration of boys can be found, is what Lizzy thinks and does not say. “Okay,” she says, “come check out the refreshments table. You have to try these wonton things.”

Maria goes off to find some friends from her own grade, but the other three friends stock up on food and find a place to stand and chat. Jane joins them for a while; Charlie’s busy catching up with some of his Pemberley friends who got sent to other schools in the county, plus everyone wants to come up and wish him happy birthday, plus he’s still dealing with trying to run the party.

“So he’s pretty busy,” Jane says. “I thought I’d just give him some space and try not to get underfoot.”

“Jane,” laughs Lizzy, “you’re his girlfriend. You’re allowed to hang out with him while he talks to his friends.”

“Besides,” says Charlotte, “you don’t want him to think you’re losing interest.”

“No, I don’t want to be a bother,” Jane insists.

The four friends talk to people from school; they talk briefly with Lydia when she surfaces from wherever she’s been; they dance together; they get asked to dance by other people. To Lizzy’s surprise, at one point Charlotte dances with Billy Collins; maybe he cornered her and she was too polite to say no.

Lizzy herself dances with a few guys from school, but she has to admit that there’s just one guy she really wants to dance with . . . one guy who seems to be very late to this party. After the first hour, she texts George, Hey, you coming to the party? She gets no answer.

So she doesn’t hear anything about it until the party’s been going a couple hours. Jane is back with Charlie, Clara is dancing with a boy from her choir class, and Lydia just ran through the room brandishing some guy’s phone and giggling while he cheerfully chased after her (maybe Lizzy should have insisted this party is only for people who are mature enough to behave themselves). Lizzy and Charlotte have just said goodbye to a friend from their math class when Denny wanders up.

Denny is one of the Pemberley Prep kids who’s currently at Longbourn, and Lizzy sometimes thinks that his parents are wasting a lot of money sending him to a such an expensive private school. She’s pretty sure he’s high about half the time, and he’s in one of her classes and spends every single period either sleeping or playing games on his phone. She’s not sure how he hasn’t flunked out yet, though she expects it has to do with his parents’ money.

For all that, though, he’s a really nice guy, just not one you want on your team in a trivia tournament. He’s one of George’s friends from before George got sent away to that alternative school, so Lizzy has gotten to know him a little these past few weeks. “Hey, Lizzy, Cheryl,” he says with a bright grin.

“Actually—” says Lizzy.

Charlotte shakes her head. “It’s fine.”

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says. “George wanted me to tell you something: he’s not gonna make it tonight.”

Lizzy fights to keep herself from visibly drooping in disappointment. “Did he say why?”

Denny huffs out a little laugh and nods at Darcy, who’s currently standing on the other side of the room, looking stern and forbidding.

Lizzy sighs. “I see. Thanks, Denny.”

When the guy has ambled away, Lizzy turns to Charlotte. “I really hate that guy.” She pauses. “Darcy, not Denny.”

Charlotte gives her a sympathetic smile. “Sorry. I know you wanted to dance with George.” She hesitates, looking at something over Lizzy’s shoulder, then says, “But speaking of Darcy, don’t turn around, but he’s coming this way.”

Lizzy grimaces. “Why?” she demands.

Charlotte tilts her head thoughtfully. “I bet he’s going to ask you to dance.”

“Pssh,” says Lizzy. “He’s not going to ask me to dance. He doesn’t even like talking to me; why would he want to dance with me?”

“Maybe he likes you more than you think,” says Charlotte. “Because he’s definitely staring right at you.” She grins at her friend. “You don’t like him much, but the guy’s loaded. Could be nice to have a crazy rich boyfriend.”

“If I thought you meant that, I would stage an intervention,” Lizzy says, and that’s as far as she gets before Darcy reaches them.

“Hello,” he says stiffly, not even waiting for Lizzy to turn around to greet him. “Lizzy, I wonder if you’d like to dance with me.”

“Hmm,” says Charlotte, eyebrows raised, and glances at Lizzy. “Sounds like fun. I’m going to go get more of those wonton things.”

Lizzy glares at her friend as she leaves, and then she turns to face Darcy and now she’ll have to say something. Of course she doesn’t want to dance with him, but she’s not sure how she can say that without being rude; she’s certainly danced with a lot of other people tonight, including Billy Collins, so she can’t claim that she doesn’t like dancing.

And he is Charlie’s best friend, and it is Charlie’s birthday. “Fine,” she says, which is not the most gracious way to accept a dance.

Darcy’s raised eyebrows indicate that he agrees, but he turns and gestures for her to precede him to the dance floor. The song changes right then to one that she recognizes from the radio and knows is super long, and she fights back a groan. Of course she’s stuck dancing with Will Darcy to the longest song known to man. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But it’s going to feel like the longest song known to man.)

If she thought she could get away with it, she’d go for a ballroom dance hold—as little contact and as much space between their bodies as possible—but Darcy’s already reaching for her waist with both hands, so she fight backs a sigh and puts her hands on his shoulders. It’s not how she wanted to spend this evening, but in the interest of fairness, she has to admit that Darcy has nice shoulders and he smells good. He’s a good height, too—tall, but not weird tall.

Her partner seems content to say nothing, but she’s not. So after a while, she says, “This is a great party.”

“It is,” says Darcy, and then he falls silent again.

A few more awkward sways around the floor, and then she says, “Charlie and Caroline really went all out.”

“They did,” says Darcy.

“It’s crazy some of the Pemberley students might be leaving next week,” she tries a little while later.

“It is,” says Darcy.

And they’ve only reached the end of the first chorus. She wishes she had telekinetic powers so she could short out the sound system with her mind and end this dance early.

“It’s your turn to say something, Darce,” she says as the second verse begins.

“Darce?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow as he turns down to look at her.

She shrugs, and for a moment she thinks she sees amusement in his eyes. But it’s gone almost immediately. “If you think we need conversation, tell me what to say and I will happily say it.”

She can’t decide if that’s funny or annoying. “You could say, ‘Wow, looks like the whole student body is here.’ And then I could say, ‘Good thing the architect was clearly a fan of open floor plans, or we wouldn’t all fit in here.’ And then you could say, ‘I recently read an article that said open floor plans are on their way out.’”

He blinks at her. “You think we should discuss architecture?”

She surprises herself by laughing. “We have to talk about something; otherwise I’m just standing here obsessing over whether it’s more weird to stare silently into your eyes when you’re standing so close, or to look elsewhere the whole time as though I haven’t noticed your face is twelve inches away from mine.”

And to her surprise, he laughs, the expression lighting up his face in a really unfairly attractive sort of way. “I know what you mean,” he says. “I’ve always found dancing a little awkward for that very reason.”

She can’t help the surprised little smile that touches the corner of her mouth; she’s not sure she’s ever heard Darcy laugh before. But she also can’t help but wondering: if he thinks dancing is awkward, then why did he ask her?

Lizzy thinks about voicing her question, but at that moment she hears a piercing laugh from somewhere to her right, and she turns to see that Lydia is getting a piggy-back ride on some junior’s shoulders while he runs across the dance floor, and she’s shrieking and giggling and urging him to go faster. A few feet away, Caroline Bingley is watching with a disgusted look on her face.

Lizzy feels her cheeks heat with embarrassment, and when she glances up at Darcy, his jaw is clenched tight as he stares at her sister, which only makes it worse. That’s probably not the worst thing that will happen at this party tonight, but did Lydia have to do it in front of everyone? In front of Darcy and Caroline? 

That moment of easy camaraderie from earlier is gone, and now Lizzy can’t meet Darcy’s eyes for a new reason. She imagines that no one from the Darcy bloodline has ever been so loud and obnoxious at a party. For a few moments she’s ashamed, but then defiance surges through her. So Lydia’s a teenaged girl being loud at a party; so what? If Darcy’s going to hold that against Lydia—if he’s going to hold it against Lizzy—then he’s just as big a snob as she’s always thought.

Plus, this guy ruined George’s life. She can’t forget that just because they had a little moment a minute ago. He’s the reason George got kicked out his home, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and sent away. He’s the reason George will always have that black mark on his record.

Unable to resist the temptation, she comments casually, “I recently made a new friend who says he knows you.”

Darcy’s shoulders go stiff under her hands, and after a long moment, he turns his face down to look at her. “George Wickham?” he guesses, and there’s a hardness to his voice Lizzy’s never heard before.

“That’s the one.”

“George has always been good at making friends,” Darcy observes, his gaze drifting to somewhere over Lizzy’s shoulder; she gets the impression he’s not really looking at anything. “You might find that he’s not as good at keeping them.”

To hear George criticized by Will Darcy, of all people, irritates her into further action. “Well, he’s definitely lost your friendship, hasn’t he?” she says, hearing a bit of snap in her tone. “In a way that will probably follow him around for the rest of his life.”

Darcy says nothing, but his mouth flattens into a thin line. They’re interrupted briefly when Caroline walks by and distracts Darcy from their dance long enough to tell him how much she likes his new shirt; she pointedly ignores Lizzy, who wonders if Caroline is just jealous that Lizzy is, as far as she’s aware, the only person Darcy has danced with tonight.

Lizzy watches Caroline walk away and thinks that Darcy really is an unbearable snob. How can he be friends with someone as awful as Caroline just because her family has money, but turn on an old friend like George and decide to ruin his life because he grew up much poorer than the Darcys? Would Darcy even be dancing with Lizzy now if she didn’t come from money?

And the song still isn’t over.

A thought occurs to her, and without thinking she comments, “You said once you have a hard time forgiving people.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Yes.”

“So, knowing that you don’t let go of grudges easily, I assume you’re very careful about forming grudges in the first place.”

“I never said ‘grudges.’ But yes, I am very careful.”

“You never let, you know, prejudice and bias influence you?”

His brow furrows. “What are you asking?”

She shrugs. “I’m just trying to make sense of you.”

That seems to genuinely confuse him. “I think I’m very easy to understand.”

Yes, if I assume you’re a massive snob, you make perfect sense, Lizzy thinks, but doesn’t say.

She’s never been so relieved as she is when the song finally ends.

“Thanks, Darcy,” she says, stepping back from him. It takes just a second too long for him to release her waist, so the whole maneuver is a little awkward.

“Not ‘Darce’?” he asks with a little half-smile on his face.

Which is . . . weird. “Have a good Thanksgiving,” she says, and strides away to find her friends.

When she checks the back patio, she sees Caroline holding court by the pool among a crowd of male admirers—guys who apparently don’t mind her awful personality because she’s hot and rich. “Oh, Lizzy,” she calls, “I wanted to talk to you for a minute,” she says.

Lizzy takes a deep breath, then turns to face Caroline. “Yes?”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about being friends with George Wickham,” Caroline says she steps close, away from her admirers. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but he’s not a very good person.”

“Oh?” says Lizzy as politely as she can manage.

“Yeah, I don’t know the whole story, but it wasn’t good. You know he was basically like a foster kid in Darcy’s house, right?”

And Lizzy has had it. “Wow,” she says solemnly, “I wasn’t aware that being orphaned at 14 made you a bad person. I’m glad I have you here to set me straight.”

Caroline’s nostrils flare and her mouth tightens. “Pardon me for trying to be helpful.”

“You’re pardoned,” says Lizzy in that same solemn tone, and then she turns on her heel and leaves the patio.

This has been a good party. But she’s kind of ready for it to be over.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy wakes up the next morning, excited for Thanksgiving break and excited to stuff herself with mashed potatoes the next day. But her good mood vanishes when she goes into Jane’s room around lunchtime to ask her something and is shocked to see Jane sitting on the window seat and crying.

“Jane!” she exclaims, hurrying to the window seat so she can sit by her twin and put her arm around her. “What is it?”

Jane just shakes her head and hands Lizzy her phone. It’s open to her text conversation with Charlie, whose name Jane has saved into her phone with a little heart next to it. The whole screen reads:

Tuesday, November 26, 2:12 pm

Charlie❤️: Math is boring. I wish you were in this class with me. 😘

Jane: I’ll see you after school!

Tuesday, November 26, 9:44 pm

Charlie❤️: Where are you at?

Jane: On your back patio, talking to a friend.

Charlie❤️: I’ll come find you!

Wednesday, November 21, 12:39 am

Jane: The party tonight was so fun! Happy birthday!

Wednesday, November 21, 12:05 pm

Charlie❤️: I think we should break up.

Jane: Are you sure?

Charlie❤️: Yeah. You’re a nice girl but I think we should break up.

Jane: ok

“What?” Lizzy demands, looking up at Jane. “Just like that? Over text?”

Jane nods miserably, tears streaming silently down her face.

“I’ll kill that guy!” Lizzy says. “You should call him—make him explain himself.”

As she should have expected, Jane looks alarmed at the idea. “Oh no, I couldn’t. Anyway, he made himself pretty clear.”

“He should have the decency to tell you to your face,” Lizzy insists, but Jane shakes her head. “Can I call him, then?” Lizzy asks. “Make him explain himself to me?”

Jane looks even more alarmed at this idea. “No, Lizzy, please don’t,” she pleads. “That would just make it all worse. We’d only been dating a few weeks. These things happen. People stop liking each other.”

“You’d been dating a few weeks, but he’s been head over heels for you since the back-to-school dance,” Lizzy points out.

Jane shrugs unhappily. “Maybe once we started dating, he realized he liked me better as a friend.”

“I’ll kill him,” Lizzy repeats, and Jane huffs out a little tear-filled laugh.

“Please don’t do anything,” she says. “We still have to go to school together.”

But even that turns out to be untrue; when they get to school the next Monday morning, Clara sees them across the commons and comes running up to the Bennet sisters. “Did you hear?” she says breathlessly, “Will Darcy and the Bingleys were in the first group that went back to Pemberley Prep.”

“Did George go?” Lydia demands before anyone else can respond.

Clara laughs. “No, George is around for another month and a half.”

Lizzy is glad to hear about George, but she’s too busy watching Jane to pay much attention to that news. Clara, who knows about the breakup, watches Jane’s face carefully too. But Jane is calm. “That’s too bad,” she says. “They were fun to hang out with.”

“Jane,” Lizzy begins with a sad sigh, but Jane shakes her head.

“Really, Lizzy, it’s fine.”

Lizzy and Clara exchange looks.

About half the Pemberley students who are now gone, and while it’s only 35 people who left, the halls of Longbourn Academy still feel surprisingly empty. It’s weird to walk into AP English and not see Charlie there. It’s even weird to be in AP Chemistry and to know that she is once again the undisputed smartest person there, now that Darcy is gone.

At least George is still around, and he is visibly happy to have Darcy out of the school. “Finally, I don’t have to worry about that guy glaring at me all the time,” he jokes over lunch. “Too bad about your boyfriend leaving, though, Jane.”

Jane sort of hunches in on herself, and George shoots a questioning look at Lizzy. They broke up, she mouths at him, and his face fills with understanding and he changes the subject.

“Is anyone else way excited for the new Fast and the Furious movie?”

Four blank stares answer him from around the table.

“Guess not,” he mutters, and the tension is broken as the others all laugh.

The first part of December passes in sort of a muted haze. Jane pretends that she’s fine, but Lizzy can read in her eyes and her movements and even her smiles that she’s not, and it hurts her heart to see her sister so sad. Jane is the best person in the world, and she deserves sunshine and cupcakes and fields full of flowers forever, not moping over a guy who didn’t even have the decency to break up with her in person.

Lizzy feels strangely discontent too. Maybe Jane’s quiet sorrow is contagious, or maybe it’s how strangely small their student body feels now. Or maybe it’s her unhappiness over her growing conviction that there’s more to Jane and Charlie’s breakup than meets the eye.

She’s been obsessing over that string of texts she read on Jane’s phone for a while now. How does a guy go from “I miss you when we’re apart for a single class period” to “We should break up” in less than twenty-four hours? And then there’s the fact that she knows that Caroline has never really cared for Jane, as much as she pretends otherwise to Jane’s face. Plus she can’t help remembering Darcy’s clear disgust when Lydia was being ridiculous at the party, or how he is alarmingly ready to turn on anyone he decides is beneath him. Maybe some combination of Caroline and/or Darcy decided they didn’t think Charlie should date Jane, and Charlie, being rather too trusting and easily persuaded, went along with it.

She has no proof, but she wonders.

So she’s really not in a great mood when Billy Collins asks her to the Christmas dance.

“Oh,” she said, “I was planning to go stag with my friends.”

Billy frowns. “That’s what you said about Charles Bingley’s party.” He looks down at her a long few moments, clearly deep in thought, and then says, “Look, Elizabeth, I think that we should date each other.”

And after the first moment of surprise and dismay, Lizzy’s actually kind of relieved at this. She’s known Billy’s interested for a long time, but since he never did anything about it, she never had a chance to let him down easy—it’d be pretty arrogant to say “Look, Billy, I know you want to date me, and I don’t return the sentiment”—so they’ve been trapped in this holding pattern for a long time. But now she can put a stop to it.

“That’s kind of you,” she says, “but I’m afraid I’m not interested—”

“If you think about it,” he interrupts her, “it makes a lot of sense. If you and I got married—”

“Married?”

“—then you could inherit your dad’s shares and I could inherit mine—”

“What?”

“—and together we’d have a controlling interest—”

“Billy!” she exclaims, exasperated. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel that way about you, and I don’t think I'd make you happy, and I don't think you'd make me happy.”

His brows draw together as though he genuinely can’t understand what she’s saying. “That’s not very smart of you,” he says finally—not in a tone like he’s trying to insult her, but as though he thinks she’s missed something very obvious and he is trying to help her understand. “It’s not like any other guys are lining up to date you.”

Okay, wow. “I’ll take my chances,” she says drily. 

“But Elizabeth—”

She has been polite long enough. “Billy, we’re not getting married, and we’re not going to date, and we’re not going to the Christmas dance together. Ever. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He blinks at her a few times, and then he nods reluctantly. “I understand.”

After a conversation like that, she has no interest in seeing Billy again any time soon. So imagine her dismay when Charlotte comes up to her a few days later with some news.

“Billy asked me to the Christmas dance, and I said yes.”

“Billy Collins?” Lizzy clarifies.

Charlotte nods. “We got talking in our AP History class, and we realized that neither of us had dates to the dance.”

“Yeah, but you were going to go with us. You don’t have to say yes to Billy just to not be alone. I mean, you know how ridiculous Billy is.”

Charlotte is silent a long time, and when she finally speaks, there’s a hint of vulnerability in her voice that Lizzy’s has almost never heard from her practical, even-tempered friend. “Did you know I’ve never been asked to a school dance?” she says. “Not a single one. I just want to do it once—buy a nice dress, have a boy pick me up at home, have my mom take pictures of us together. And this might be my only chance.”

And how can Lizzy object to that? “In that case,” she says, “let me know if you want company when you go dress shopping.”

Charlotte smiles gratefully at her.

So Lizzy, Jane, and Clara show up together at the dance, and Charlotte shows up on the arm of Billy Collins. Charlotte looks lovely in a new green dress Lizzy helped her pick out, and Billy must have gotten some sartorial help from somewhere because his slacks, collared shirt and vest fit him a lot better than his usual clothing. He could still use a better haircut, but it’s an improvement.

Lizzy doesn’t want Billy to feel uncomfortable, but she does want to talk to her friend. So she goes over to hug her and exclaim over how pretty she looks, and she politely tells Billy that it’s good to see him.

He waits until Charlotte is distracted talking to Clara and Jane to say stiffly to Lizzy, “You didn’t think it was good to see me the last time we talked.”

“You mean when you told me that I wasn’t very smart and that guys don’t want to date me?” she asks drily.

He looks rather embarrassed. “Point taken.”

“Look, Billy,” she says, “I don’t want to date you; I just don’t feel that way about you. But I hope we can stay on good terms; with our dads running the business together, we’re going to end up attending the same events a lot, and I don’t want it to be weird.”

Billy sighs. “I guess I don’t want it to be weird either. Friends?”

“Friends,” says Lizzy, who didn’t show up tonight expecting to make friends with Billy, but who can see the advantage of not completely alienating him. “And I hope you have fun tonight. There’s nobody in this world who’s better than Charlotte. Except maybe Jane.”

There’s an unexpected softness in his face when he looks over at his date, who’s laughing at something Clara said. “I have enjoyed her company so far,” he says.

Well, that’s an interesting development.

The five of them stick together throughout the night. Charlotte and Billy dance a lot—Charlotte valiantly hiding her winces when he steps on her toes—and the other three dance as a group and get asked by their classmates a lot. George shows up about an hour in and hangs out with all of them; he seems baffled by Billy’s inclusion in the group until Lizzy shrugs and whispers, “We’re hanging out with him tonight.”

George asks all four girls to dance—including Charlotte, who politely turns him down as she’s here with a date—but he dances with Lizzy twice. It’s a lot of fun, but the special focus on her doesn’t excite her as much as she’d expected. Maybe it's that their conversation during both dances is so shallow and, honestly, pretty meaningless. Most of her conversations with George are like that, come to think of it. He's fun, but she’s coming to realize that he’s also a bit like a fancy cake: pretty to look at, not a lot of substance.

Christmas break starts the next day; Lizzy spends it polishing her applications for Yale and her backup colleges. She’s been working on her Yale application for about a decade, it seems like, but with the application deadline rapidly approaching, she’s suddenly second-guessing everything and going over everything with a fine-toothed comb.

Jane is busy with her own applications—she’s applying to schools in their state—and focusing on the future takes away some of the unhappiness in her eyes. So the sisters have a happy, busy first few days of their break, and then a wonderful Christmas with their family, and then they turn their attention to the New Years Eve party they’re planning.

It won’t be anything like as big as Charlie’s birthday party, just friends and classmates they’re close to, plus one unexpected extra guest, as it turns out.

“Can I bring Billy?” Charlotte asks the day before the party.

Lizzy blinks in surprise. “You want to bring Billy?”

Charlotte nods, looking a little embarrassed. “We’ve been texting,” she says. “And talking on the phone. And we hung out once.”

“As friends, or as . . .”

To her surprise, Charlotte blushes. “I know you don’t like him,” she says. “But he’s actually fun when you get to know him. He’s just . . . not great in social situations so he comes off a little . . . well, you know.”

Lizzy does know, and there is a part of her that is baffled at the thought of clever, sensible, kind Charlotte Lucas dating awkward, self-important Billy Collins. But if he really is interested in her, then he’s the first guy at their whole school to have the sense to see what a gem Charlotte is, and Lizzy can’t take that away from her friend.

“Then you should definitely bring him.”

So they have their party with a couple dozen good friends. Charlotte and Billy show up together, and for once in his life, he’s wearing jeans—Charlotte’s doing, no doubt. George and his friends come and liven up the place. About half the guys there are watching Jane, starstruck and hopeful now that she’s single again. There are younger students there, too: Maria and Tommy Lucas, Lydia and some of her friends. They hang out, they eat, they play games, they listen to music. It’s fun.

And yet it’s not as magical as Lizzy had hoped when she and Jane first came up with the idea back in November. She’d imagined that Charlie would be there, glued to Jane’s side, making her smile in that way that only Charlie seemed to be able to do. Instead, Jane is there alone. 

Jane has done a very good job of pretending that she’s over Charlie; Lizzy imagines that even Charlotte and Clara believe it. But Lizzy sees the sadness that her twin sister can’t hide in quiet vulnerable moments. She’s been there for the late-night conversations where Jane admits how much she still misses him. Lizzy’s not sure what made Charlie so special, given that they only dated for a few weeks, but Jane clearly cared more about him than any previous guys in her life, and she’s clearly still heartbroken.

And Lizzy watches her sister at the party and hopes that Charlie is equally lonely and miserable and that if Darcy and Caroline had anything to do with his leaving, they feel as terrible about what they did as Lizzy feels about her sister’s heartbreak.

When midnight comes, people who are upstairs start pairing off. George is nowhere to be found, which Lizzy’s okay with; she thinks he might have tried to kiss her, and she’s not sure she wants that. Clara kisses George’s friend Denny—she has no interest in him, she confesses, but it seemed like fun. Charlotte kisses a very surprised but very pleased Billy Collins, which still seems weird to Lizzy but apparently she'll have to get used to seeing them together.

And Lizzy just smiles at Jane, who can’t hide the unhappiness in her eyes at that moment. “Happy New Year, Jane.”

“Happy New Year, Lizzy.”

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

January goes by a little faster and a little better than December. Of course it’s sad when the Pemberley students have to go back to Pemberley Prep, mostly because of George (his attempt to get permission to stay at Longbourn must have failed). But his shine has worn off the longer she knows him; he’s still ridiculously good-looking, and she still considers him a friend, but that little crush that was building up in November has vanished like the tide retreating down the shore. She’ll miss him, and she’ll be excited if she happens to see him at some event. But she’s not heartbroken. She’s not even heartsore.

(Lydia, on the other hand, complains for weeks about all the “hot Pemberley boys” leaving.)

But everything else is good. Lizzy submits her application to Yale, and she feels really confident about it. Jane and their friends are applying to places too, and it’s sad to think that most likely none of them will end up at the same school, but it’s also exciting to think that they’re heading off on their own soon.

Billy and Charlotte are officially dating now, which is still a little weird, but she’s taken him in hand and he’s actually improved: he got a much better haircut, she’s helping him dress in more flattering clothing, and he’s started doing this thing where he’ll be about to go off on one of his self-important rambles but he’ll stop and think for a moment, and then he’ll say something less obnoxious instead. And, of course, the important thing is that Charlotte seems happy. So does Billy.

And the end of January goes by quickly, because there's something that Lizzy has to look forward to: the National Leadership Seminar.

“How can you be excited about something called the National Leadership Seminar?” Lydia demands. “The name alone makes me sad and bored.”

“Because it will be cool?” Lizzy retorts. “I’m going to meet a bunch of CEOs and politicians.”

“Not changing my mind.”

“And I get to go to California for two weeks.”

Lydia hesitates. “Okay, I guess that part is cool.”

The National Leadership Seminar is put on in February every year in California by the Rosings Institute, a philanthropic institute with the stated goal to “strengthen America by building the leaders tomorrow.” Lizzy’s AP government teacher told her about the program back in September, and Lizzy submitted an application and a video but didn’t expect anything to come of it. So she was thrilled to learn that she’d been chosen. Longbourn’s principal has decided that this is such a great honor for their school—only a hundred students are chosen from the whole country—that he’s instructed all of Lizzy’s teachers to excuse her from assignments where possible and to let her turn them in late where not.

For two weeks, she gets an all-expenses-paid stay in Orange County while she gets all sorts of cool experiences: lectures and workshops and discussion groups and job shadowing days with CEOs and politicians and professors and all sorts of brilliant minds. Lizzy is thrilled at the prospect.

So on February 8, she carefully packs all her most businessy clothes and her swimsuit in a bag (just in case, as winter in California isn’t always conducive to swimming), kisses her sisters and mother goodbye, and climbs in her dad’s car so he can take her in the airport.

“Don’t fall in love with California and never come home,” he beseeches her. “With you gone, and with Jane still moping about her breakup, I won’t have a single sensible conversation until you’re back.”

He’s not wrong, so Lizzy promises to come home.

As arranged, there’s an older woman standing in front of door 7, holding a sign that says “Rosings Institute.”

“Is that your chaperone?” her father asks, peering out the window. “She looks . . . impressive.”

“Impressive” is a good word for it, but Lizzy thinks that maybe the better description would be “keen to impress.” The woman is wearing a perfectly starched business suit with a silk blouse in a loud pattern, a gold watch—Lizzy spends enough time with her parents’ rich friends to know it’s a really expensive old one—and a string of pearls. She’s got a big hairstyle that’s probably supposed to make her look elegant but mostly just makes her look like peak-80s Margaret Thatcher.

Lizzy steps out of the car and smiles at the woman, seeing from the corner of her eye that her dad is pulling her suitcase from the trunk. “Hi, I’m Elizabeth Bennet.”

The woman nods, glancing down at a clipboard she holds. “Very punctual,” she observes in a haughty tone. “I always insist on punctuality: the pride of princes.”

“I understand I’m to leave my daughter in your care?” Lizzy’s father asks, coming around the edge of the care with Lizzy’s bag.

She nods. “I am Mrs. Catherine de Bourgh, and I will shepherd your daughter through this experience.”

“Ah, so you work for the Rosings Institute?”

Mrs. de Bourgh draws herself up to her full height, bristling and huffing and resembling what Lizzy imagines a rooster would look like when getting ready for a fight. “I am not an employee, Mr. Bennet,” she says icily. “My husband and I were the founding donors.”

“Ah,” he says politely, “my mistake.” But when he turns his back on Mrs. de Bourgh to hug Lizzy, he has such an expressive look on his face that Lizzy has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. “Well,” he says, “be safe, call me if you need anything, and try not to make any of the other students feel bad that you’re so much smarter than they are.”

“I promise,” Lizzy laughs, and he nods and climbs in the car and drives away. Mrs. de Bourgh, when Lizzy looks back at her, looks very unamused; no doubt she’s still irritated at being mistaken for a mere employee.

Something must be done to salvage things, Lizzy supposes, so she says politely, “I didn’t expect one of the founding donors would be my chaperone—that’s quite an honor. Is that normal?”

Mrs. de Bourgh looks mollified at Lizzy’s blatant flattery. “No, not normal,” she confesses. “But I volunteered to do it. My nephew is the other recipient from the state.”

Another recipient from the state? Lizzy hadn’t heard about that. She’d thought she was the only one.

Mrs. de Bourgh’s eyes focus on something over Lizzy’s shoulder. “Ah, here he is now.”

And before Lizzy can even turn around, she hears the last voice she wants to hear right now: “Hello, Lizzy, Aunt Catherine.”

It’s Darcy. Of course it’s Darcy, it’s always Darcy. Why wouldn’t he be here to ruin her lovely outing? And then it occurs to her: of course Darcy got in, apparently he’s related to one of the founding donors of the Rosings Institute.

That’s not fair, she tells herself immediately. Darcy’s very intelligent; she’s big enough to admit that. And he is interested in business and leadership, so he can take over the family empire. He’s a natural fit for the program.

She pastes a smile on and turns to face him. “Hello, Darcy.” He’s dressed nicer than he usually was at school, which Lizzy doesn’t understand; she’s always been in the “dress down for a plane ride” camp. His clothes look good on him, though, and for a moment she’s quite struck by just looking at him. She’d forgotten, or made herself forget, that Darcy’s really an attractive guy. Not seeing him for two months and then just getting slapped in the face with his good looks . . . well it’s just hard to ignore, that’s all.

Good looks aside, though, she’s rather disappointed he’s here; she doesn’t want to spend her cool leadership experience fending off his snide remarks and avoiding his judgy stare. But she managed to be mostly polite to him for nearly a whole semester; she can manage it for two more weeks.

Fortunately for Lizzy, it has apparently been a while since Mrs. de Bourgh has seen her nephew, so she keeps him occupied with questions about his life and updates from hers for quite a while: as they check their bags, as they wait in the security line, as they walk to their gate. Once there, Lizzy takes the longest trip to the bathroom ever recorded, trying to kill time, but then she can’t delay anymore: she has to return to Darcy and his aunt.

When she gets there, it seems that Mrs. de Bourgh is done catching up with Darcy, and she turns her attention to Lizzy. “So you attend Longbourn Academy, is that correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

She makes a dismissive little gesture with her hands. “Decent school, I suppose, though nothing on Pemberley.”

Darcy opens up his mouth as though to say something, but his aunt doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “And that was your father we met? What does he do?”

“He runs a manufacturing company.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Anything I’ve heard of? What do they manufacture?”

“It’s called Bennet Agricultural Supply.”

One elegantly manicured eyebrow lifts. “Agricultural supply? So they make . . .”

“Tractors,” Lizzy says proudly, suddenly very defensive of her dad’s company in the face of Mrs. de Bourgh’s clear disdain. “Harvesters. Things like that.”

“Hmm,” comes the dismissive reply, and Mrs. de Bourgh looks away as though the conversation is over and she’s ready to talk to Darcy again.

“I think it’s important work,” Lizzy offers before Mrs. de Bourgh can move on. “Farmers need the equipment we make. And the rest of us need the food that farmers grow. It’s not a glamorous industry, but it’s a very necessary one. We’re part of the nation’s food supply chain.”

Now both of those elegant eyebrows are lifting. “My word,” she says, “you give your opinion very decidedly for such a young person.”

Lizzy just smiles serenely. “I imagine being decisive and well-spoken is one of the things that made the Rosings Institute select me for this program.”

There’s nothing Mrs. de Bourgh can say to that, so she gives Lizzy a wan smile. Behind her, Darcy looks amused, though whether it’s at Lizzy’s takedown of his aunt or his aunt’s disdain for the Bennet family business, Lizzy isn’t sure. All she knows is that she’s glad she brought her AP English reading assignment in her backpack, because she can pull it out now and pretend it’s really important that she get this reading done right now.

Ms. de Bourgh is in first class, so she gets to board before them. Darcy and Lizzy shuffle into coach and seat themselves in 14A and 14B, but they’ve only been there a few minutes when a flight attendant approaches. “Are you Will Darcy?” she asks, and when he nods, she says, “I have good news: you’ve been upgraded to first class.”

It’s all Lizzy can do not to break out in a grin. Not only does she not have to sit by Darcy now, but his seat might stay empty the whole flight.

Darcy glances at her, his brow furrowed. “I’m sorry,” he says. “My aunt should have upgraded both of us.”

That would have been nice, but it’s his aunt, and it’s not surprising she’d do something for her nephew that she wouldn’t do for a stranger. Plus, Lizzy is perfectly happy sitting alone here.

“Don’t worry about it, Darce,” she says politely. “I’m sure your aunt just wants to catch up.”

His expression lightens, and for a moment she thinks he means to say something else, but the flight attendant is waiting for him, so he gathers his things and leaves. And Lizzy grins. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

It’s dusk when they land and dark by the time they’ve gotten their baggage and climbed into the car that’s waiting for them. Lizzy and Darcy are stuck together in the back seat, but fortunately they don’t have to make conversation because Mrs. de Bourgh talks all the way from the airport to the hotel about how wonderful this week is and how generous the Rosings Institute is and how much of what’s happening has been her idea and was organized according to her advice.

Fortunately, she rarely requires an answer, so the occupants of the back seat are mostly silent.

The hotel they’re staying at is gorgeous: a road lined by palm trees leads up to a massive building in the Spanish mission style, all white walls and arches and red tile roofs. Through the back doors in the lobby, across the massive pool, Lizzy can see the ocean. She would have wondered how on earth they could afford to put up a hundred students here for two weeks if she hadn’t clearly seen the massive sign out front: “Rosings Resort at Hunsford Bay.” It seems Mrs. de Bourgh and her husband own the place; maybe resort development is how they made the fortune they used to found the Rosings Institute.

Darcy completely ignores the beautiful building—he’s probably been here before—and Lizzy forces herself not to gawk as the bellhop leads the way to their rooms.

They stop first at the massive suite that’s reserved for Mrs. de Bourgh and watch the bellhop unload her four suitcases. “Remember,” she tells them, “be in the Palm Room at 9 for breakfast and the seminar orientation.” Then she sweeps into her room, not bothering to tip the bellhop.

The bellhop then takes them up to the seventh floor, where, to Lizzy’s dismay, he unloads their luggage into rooms 713 and 715; apparently they were assigned rooms by state, because they’re going to be next-door neighbors. She tips the bellhop, her mother having insisted she carry cash in her pocket for this very moment; he gives her a pleased smile, but not as big a smile as he gives Darcy when he gives him an even larger tip.

Typical. He always has to show her up.

The bellhop wheels his luggage trolley away, leaving Darcy and Lizzy alone in the hallway. “Well,” she begins, and that’s as far as she gets before the door across the hallway, 714, opens up and a guy their age pops out.

“Will!” he exclaims in an enthusiastic voice. “I’ve been waiting all day for you to get here!”

Darcy’s face breaks into a broad, genuine smile, something Lizzy has only seen before when he’s on the phone with his sister. “I know you only got here an hour ago,” he points out.

“Details,” the newcomer says dismissively, and strides into the hall to wrap Darcy in a hug. Lizzy has never seen Darcy hug anyone. It’s strange, like seeing your teacher in the grocery store and suddenly realizing that they’re a real person with a life you're not aware of. The guy is shorter and stockier than Darcy, with sandy hair somewhere between brown and blonde, along with bright blue eyes and an even brighter smile. He’s not as handsome as Darcy is, but his warm smile and friendly demeanor mean that she immediately likes him better.

“How’s Aunt Catherine?” the guy asks.

“The same,” Darcy says drily, and the guy laughs before turning to Lizzy.

“Is this the other student from your state?” he asks.

Darcy nods. “Connor, this is Elizabeth Bennet. Lizzy, my cousin, Connor Fitzwilliam, from San Diego.”

So Mrs. de Bourgh has two nephews in her program? Talk about nepotism.

“Nice to meet you,” Connor says, giving her a firm and enthusiastic handshake. “So now that you’ve met my cousin, what do you think?”

“We actually already knew each other,” she explains. “His school was damaged in a tornado, so he got sent to my school for the first semester.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” says Connor. “That was really nice of you guys. Well, now I’m even more glad to meet you. You’ll come down to breakfast with us tomorrow, right?”

Before she can respond, Connor turns and claps Darcy on the shoulder. “So good to see you, cuz. It’s been way too long.”

“It’s been six months,” Darcy says dryly.

Connor ignores him. “I’ve gotta go—Mom wants me to check in before I go to bed. And you two are probably tired after all that traveling. But I’ll see you both in the morning, okay? I’ll knock on your doors at 8:45.”

And with one last goodbye, Connor returns to his room.

Darcy looks at Lizzy. “He’s . . . cheerful.”

“I like him,” Lizzy says honestly. “Well, see you in the morning, I guess.”

Her room is stunning, all dark wood floors and white furnishings and turquoise accents. There’s a little balcony that overlooks the golf course; she’d have rather had an ocean view room, but she’s not about to complain. She’s stayed in nice hotels in her time—her family doesn’t travel as much as she wishes they did, but they do it sometimes, and her mom always insists on something luxurious—but nothing approaching this opulence. She’s here to learn more about leadership, of course, not to have a fancy vacation by the beach, but she’s definitely going to enjoy the digs while she can.

She unpacks her bag and Skypes her family to check in; when Lydia sees the room and hears that they’re right on the ocean, she reluctantly admits that maybe Lizzy’s leadership conference isn’t that bad. And then Lizzy happily falls asleep in the most comfortable bed she’s ever been in.

The next morning, as promised, there’s a knock on the door at 8:45. Lizzy takes one last look in the mirror and opens the door to see Connor and Darcy standing there (they’re both in collared shirts, and Darcy’s in a tie, which she’s glad of; she wasn’t sure if the pencil skirt and blouse she chose were going to make her totally overdressed).

“Looking good, Lizzy,” Connor exclaims, his smiling face a sharp contrast to his cousin’s somber one. “You ready to go?”

Apparently Connor has decided that the three of them are going to hang out—maybe he’s under the misapprehension that Darcy and Lizzy are friends—because he chats with her all the way down to the Palm Room, goes through the breakfast line with her (Darcy trailing behind them like a somber little balloon), and then finds a table with three openings next to each other. 

Part of Lizzy is not thrilled at the idea of hanging out with Darcy so much, but the other part of her—the more sensible part—is glad to so quickly have found a group to hang out with at this event. She can make friends with strangers; she’s pretty good at it, actually. But it’s less work to just let Connor sweep her along in his enthusiasm, even if it means time with Darcy. At least Connor is a really eager conversationalist; Darcy hasn’t said two words since they got in the elevator, so maybe he’ll just scowl silently in the corner while she and Connor have fun.

At 9:30, a man in a suit steps up to the microphone, and the orientation begins. He welcomes everyone, then invites Mrs. de Bourgh to speak. She gives an astonishingly long and boring talk that is ostensibly about the importance of this program but actually appears to be an opportunity to pat herself on the back for funding it. The only thing that makes it bearable is Connor making snarky comments under his breath; apparently he finds his Aunt Catherine as ridiculous as Lizzy does. Even Darcy seems annoyed with the woman; Lizzy sees him shift in his chair every time Mrs. de Bourgh seems to be reaching the end of her remarks but instead starts on a new topic instead.

When it finally ends, the suit guy comes back and tells them the schedule for the week: talks, workshops, and breakout sessions here at Rosings today and tomorrow; a trip into LA to visit a few companies and government offices on Thursday; the first of their job shadowing days on Friday; and then free time on the weekend, with several fun activities offered. The week after will be pretty much the same, then they’ll fly home next Saturday.

After that they do a cheesy get-to-know-you game with their tables; the two other people sitting at Lizzy’s table are a pair of twin sisters from Massachusetts, which makes Lizzy miss Jane. The girls are nice, but they don’t seem interested in making new friends: they already have each other.

Then it’s the keynote speech. The speaker is a CEO from some big tech company in the Bay Area, and fortunately, she’s a fascinating speaker. Lizzy takes pages and pages of notes, glad that she brought a notebook with her. Darcy does the same. Connor informs them, quite seriously, that they are both nerds.

“Finally,” Connor groans when they return from serving themselves from the buffet table and are sitting down to enjoy their lunches. “That was ridiculous.”

“If listening to people talk bores you, you might be in for a terrible two weeks,” Darcy observes.

“That’s what I said!” Connor exclaims. “But Aunt Catherine called my mom, and Mom made me apply.”

“Are you interested in leadership?” Lizzy asks.

He shrugs. “I want to be a pilot. So I guess if I’m ever a captain, I’ll be a leader? But no, listening to CEOs give inspiring speeches isn’t really my thing.” They’re distracted by getting their food then, but when they return to the table, he asks Lizzy, “What about you? Do you want to be a leader one day?”

She nods. “I’m planning to get my MBA. My dad has talked about me taking over his company one day, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Another MBA,” Connor laughs. “Just like Fitzy here.”

Lizzy blinks in surprise while Darcy tucks his chin in, just a little, like he’s embarrassed. “Fitzy?”

“Yeah,” says Connor, nodding at Darcy. “You know Fitzwilliam is his first name, right?”

“I did not know that,” Lizzy says. “I thought it was just William.”

“Well, no one ever calls me by my full name except when Connor thinks he’s being funny,” Darcy says brusquely.

Lizzy isn’t done processing this surprising revelation. “So your first name is his last name?”

“My mother gave me her maiden name,” Darcy explains. “She wanted to honor her father. She was always very proud of him.”

Lizzy starts a little at the use of past tense and wonders how she never realized that Darcy’s mother is deceased. But she’s almost immediately distracted from the thought when Connor speaks up.

“Yeah, Grandpa Thomas was cool,” he reminisces. “Used to be a senator.”

“Thomas Fitzwilliam was your grandfather?” Lizzy says, shocked. “Like, the most influential senator in the 1990s?”

Connor nods. “He had three kids: my dad, Will’s mom, and Aunt Catherine.”

She just chuckles. “Geez, your family just keeps getting more impressive. Still, Fitzwilliam Darcy. That’s a big name to give a little baby.”

“Agreed,” says Darcy. “That’s why I’ve never gone by Fitzwilliam, and why I hope my future wife doesn’t entertain similar notions about giving our children her maiden name.”

“I don’t know,” Lizzy says without thinking. “Bennet would be a good name for a kid.”

Connor, who is in the process of taking a drink, actually spits out his water. Beside him, Darcy goes very still. Lizzy stares at them, realizes what she said, and feels her cheeks grow warm. “You know what I mean,” she says dismissively. “Like, just in general.” Because if there’s one thing she can guarantee, it’s that she will never be the mother of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s children.

Connor is still laughing, but he mercifully changes the subject. Darcy keeps shooting these looks at her from the corner of his eye; he’s probably horrified at the thought that this nobody wants to have his babies.

After lunch they divide into smaller groups for a workshop on public speaking. Connor and Darcy are in her group; she imagines that she and Darcy got stuck together because they’re from the same state, and Connor got assigned to them because Mrs. de Bourgh wanted her nephews to be together.

But she doesn’t mind, because as expected, Darcy says little and Connor is a riot. It’s clear he doesn’t care about being there; when they all have to deliver a speech at the end of the workshop, he gives one about why carne asada fries are superior to nachos. He’s personable and persuasive without even trying, and when he sits down afterward to general laughter and applause, Lizzy tells him, “All right, I’m convinced. Where do I get some carne asada fries?”

“I promise we will find some before the conference is over,” he solemnly assures her.

It could be taken as a promise for a date, and Lizzy thinks about that as the next speaker goes. Connor is the type of guy she could see herself going for: he’s funny and witty and outgoing, and more than that, he’s genuinely kind. And this inner goodness just lights up his face and makes this average-looking guy suddenly look much better than average. For all that, though, she doesn’t get butterflies in her stomach when she’s near him. Maybe it’s because he’s just giving off goofy little brother energy. Or maybe the shadowy specter of Fitzy Darcy, looming over all of their interactions, is putting her off.

Of course, it’s not like much could happen in two weeks. Still, she thinks she’ll stay open to the possibility and just see what happens.

Soon it’s Darcy’s turn, and his speech couldn’t be more different from his cousin’s. He talks about the pros and cons of tariffs, and he delivers it all with his characteristic seriousness. He’s extraordinarily intelligent and well-spoken, but it’s not exactly the most riveting speech Lizzy has ever heard.

The instructor seems to agree, telling him when he’s finished that it was well done but giving him a number of tips for "a more engaging delivery.”

Darcy rejoins Lizzy and Connor in the audience, and Connor must see something that Lizzy doesn’t because he says, “Stressful?”

Darcy’s brow furrows. “I prefer to have more time to prepare if I need to speak in front of people,” he confesses, and now that Lizzy knows to look for it, she can see tension and strain in the line of his jaw. Who knew that Will Darcy could get nervous in front of crowds? She’s always assumed he was cool as a cucumber about everything.

Some part of her that she normally ignores when Darcy’s around manages to find a shred of compassion for the guy, and she finds herself assuring him, “You seemed very confident up there.”

A ghost of a smile touches his mouth. “Thank you.”

Lizzy goes soon after, talking about the importance of having women in leadership positions. It’s a topic she’s passionate about, so it’s easy to be animated and engaging. The words just pour out of her, and suddenly it’s over and everyone is applauding.

“Very good!” the instructor exclaims. “I really don’t have many notes to give you. You’re a natural at this, which should come in handy someday when you’re in a leadership position yourself.”

Lizzy is still beaming when she sits down. Connor slaps her cheerfully on the shoulder. “You were awesome!” he exclaims. “Now I feel dumb that I just talked about fries.”

Darcy’s response is more subdued. “Well done. You were very engaging.” And Lizzy can’t help grinning broadly at him, which seems to take him aback.

After that is dinner, where there’s another speaker from the California state senate, but he’s not nearly as engaging as the keynote speaker this morning. Lizzy finds her attention wandering on occasion, and a couple different times she glances around the room and catches Darcy staring at her. Ugh, is he starting this again? The best part about the Pemberley Prep kids going back to their own school was her not having to worry about Darcy glaring at her all the time.

At least Caroline isn’t here to join him in his glaring. If she were, Lizzy might have to hop into the ocean and swim to Japan.

Fitzwilliam Darcy and his endless glowering could make this seminar into a very long two weeks.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

That first evening is free to spend how they wish; there’s a movie being shown in the Redwood Room, but when Connor asks, Lizzy admits she’s not really feeling it. “I’m thinking I’ll go down to the beach,” she says. “I know we already missed the sunset, but I don’t get to see the ocean that often.”

“Sounds great!” says Connor, cheerfully just assuming he’s invited. “Should we go up and change clothes? I’m so sick of these shoes.”

“I’d like to get a jacket,” Darcy agrees.

Oh good, Darcy thinks he’s invited too. But she supposes she can tolerate Darcy’s company for the sake of having Connor’s, so she agrees. Ten minutes later, they are in meeting in the hallway between their rooms, having changed into casual clothes—or rather, Lizzy and Connor have changed into casual clothes, and Darcy is in khaki slacks and a polo shirt with a jacket over the top.

“Wrong,” Connor informs him. “Go get a t-shirt. Even if it’s just the one you sleep in.”

Darcy reluctantly returns to his room and comes back with a Pemberley Prep math club t-shirt—which honestly looks ridiculous with his khakis and with what Lizzy assumes are designer loafers—and they head toward the elevator.

The beach is accessible via a walkway down the hillside on the far side of the outdoor pool. They have to walk some distance to get there, but the walkway is clean and well-lit; apparently resort guests often want to go down to the beach in the dark. When they’re finally on the beach, Lizzy happily trots to the spot where the sand grows dark and firm and damp, then removes her shoes and heads out to get her feet in the water.

“Are you nuts?” Connor says. “It’s cold.”

“I don’t see the ocean much,” she reminds him. “I’ve got to enjoy it while I can.” He’s right, though—the air is chilly enough for her to be glad of her jacket, and the water’s even colder.

She hears Connor laugh, and then a few moments later, he’s standing next to her, his shoes off and the bottoms of his joggers pushed up so as not to get wet. A few moments after that, she’s surprised to see Darcy joining them. He’s had to roll up the bottom of his khakis, and he kind of looks ridiculous. It makes her smile.

“I love the ocean,” she says. “I could watch the waves for hours.”

She expects Connor, California native, to agree, so she’s surprised when it’s Darcy who speaks. “I agree,” he says. “Very calming.”

“And good for surfing,” Connor adds. “Not at night in February, though. Can we get out of the water now?”

So the three make their way back onto the dry sand and find a spot where the resort has a cluster of Adirondack chairs available for guests. Lizzy curls up in her chair, happy to feel the breeze on her face and look up at the stars and listen to Connor catch Darcy up on how his family members are doing.

“Okay,” Connor says when that conversational well has run dry, “Lizzy, I have been dying to ask you something.”

She sits up and gives him her full attention.

“So you were at school with Fitzy here for a whole semester, right? I’ve gotta know: what is he like at school? He’s so much smarter than me and so serious that I assume it’s like going to school with Bill Gates.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You sure you want to know? I don’t want to say anything that’s going to ruin your view of your cousin.”

“Well, now I have to know,” Connor says.

Lizzy glances at Darcy. In the light spilling onto the beach from the resort grounds above them, she can see an odd little smile on his face. “I’m not afraid of anything you can tell him.”

“Fine,” she says, and turns back to Connor. “The first time I met him was at a back-to-school dance so that we could meet all the new students.” She takes on a very formal, theatrical tone. “Try not to be too horrified, but he didn’t ask anyone to dance, all night. I don’t think he even talked to anyone but the people he came with.”

Connor laughs. “I can believe that.”

“I didn’t know anyone,” Darcy objects.

“Yeah, that was the point of having a dance where we could meet all the new students,” she points out. “So that you could start knowing them.”

Darcy tucks his chin in a little. “I’m not as comfortable talking to strangers as some people are,” he objects.

“Then I’ll give you the same advice my piano teacher always gave me,” says Lizzy. “Practice.”

Connor laughs again. Darcy just stares at her, as usual.

Still, she decides as she returns to her room that night, Darcy is a lot more bearable when Connor is around. She thinks she can manage to put up with him for another week and a half.

The next morning, Lizzy gets up early enough to go for a walk before she has to get ready for the day. Her timing is terrible, though: she steps into the hall to see Darcy just pulling his door shut, dressed like he’s planning on going to the resort’s gym. “Oh, hello, Lizzy,” he says.

“Good morning,” she says politely.

“You’re up early,” he observes.

“I wanted to go walk on the beach when it’s light out.”

“Sounds nice,” he says, and “I’ll go with you,” because apparently it doesn’t occur to him that it’d be polite to ask her whether she wants company.

Well, it’s too late to tell him no now, because he’s already leading the way to the elevator. Lizzy fights back a sigh and follows him.

She’s in no mood to make polite conversation with him, so she doesn’t; if he wants to talk, he’ll have to start. But he doesn’t; he seems perfectly content to walk beside her in silence. So, in silence, they head outside and walk down to the beach and then trek as far up the sand as they can before it narrows and disappears at the foot of a rocky headland—a mile or so from the resort—and then, in silent unison, they turn and head back. As long as she keeps her gaze fixed out over the water, she can pretend she’s alone, because the whole time, he doesn’t say a word.

When they reach the seventh floor of the hotel, he nods at her. “That was pleasant,” he says. “We’ll have to do it again some time.”

She gives him a polite smile to keep herself from responding, “Not likely, kid.”

The second day at the conference is much like the first, with a fascinating address from the lieutenant governor of California in the morning and breakout sessions in the afternoon. Lizzy has chosen the one that’s especially meant for women interested in business, so it’s the first time since she got here that she hasn’t been in Darcy and Connor’s company. It’s a good chance to get to know a few other attendees.

In the evening, they skip out on dinner so that Lizzy can watch the sun setting over the ocean, and then they grab sandwiches from the coffee shop in the lobby and eat them by the pool. Some other attendees are out there, and they all end up playing card games until bed time.

And the next morning, when Lizzy wakes early to go walk on the beach, Darcy is once again just leaving his room and once again invites himself on her walk. She forces herself not to groan.

So having unwanted company every morning isn’t ideal, but other than that, Lizzy is having a great time. Well, there’s also the fact that she keeps catching Darcy glaring at her. But really, other than those two things, she has a great time.

On Thursday they go into Los Angeles and tour City Hall and a few major corporations, and on Friday they do their first job shadowing. Lizzy’s in a group of ten—Connor’s in her group but Darcy is not—that goes to the lieutenant governor’s office for the job shadowing. They mostly spend the day being shown around the building and helping interns with menial tasks, but they do get to sit in on a meeting the lieutenant governor has with an environmental group and do a Q&A session with her at lunch. Lizzy has no interest in going into government, but she enjoys talking to a woman who’s excelled in her field.

And afterward, Connor manages to talk the Rosings Institute employee who’s accompanying them today into stopping at a taco shop to get carne asada fries. So it’s a pretty good day.

Lizzy’s been looking forward to Saturday all week, as one of the activities offered (for an additional fee) is a trip to Disneyland. Lizzy loves Disneyland, truly, madly and deeply, and can’t wait to eat three or four Dole whips and then ride Space Mountain until she pukes them back up. But as they’re eating their carne asada fries on Friday night, she learns that she’ll be doing so without the Fitzwilliam cousins.

“Mom and Dad decided to come up last minute,” Connor explains. “They want to spend time with Will, so we’re having a little family weekend—us and Will and Aunt Catherine.”

“So you’ll miss Disneyland,” says Lizzy, unable to keep a bit of disappointment from slipping into her voice.

“I know, I wish I could be there,” says Connor. “So does Will. He was telling me earlier how he excited he was to go. I didn’t know he even liked Disneyland.”

Fortunately for Lizzy, some of the girls there at the taco shop with them are planning to do Disneyland, and as they’ve all become friends over the course of the day, they invite her to join them.

So Saturday morning, about half the students load onto buses and make their way to Disneyland. It is everything Lizzy hoped it would be, and fortunately, she was right when she thought her companions—Elinor, Emma, and Cathy—would be nice girls.

They’re standing in line for Indiana Jones when the talk turns to some of the cute boys on their program. “You are so lucky, Lizzy,” Cathy says. “You immediately started hanging out with the hottest guy in the group and the nicest guy in the group.”

“Hottest?” Lizzy repeats. “You mean Will Darcy?”

“Yeah, he’s gorgeous,” Cathy says as though it should be obvious.

Emma agrees, and even sensible Elinor voices her confirmation of Darcy’s good looks.

“Plus,” says Emma, “he’s loaded. Did you know that he’s one of the Darcys? Like, the Darcys?”

“Are they famous?” Cathy says, wide-eyed and baffled.

“They’re like the Rothschilds of America,” Emma confirms.

That doesn’t help Cathy. “Who are the Rothschilds?”

“The Darcys have a lot of money and are involved in a bunch of different businesses,” Elinor explains kindly.

“Ah,” says Cathy, who is extremely kind but a little naive; as the daughter of a pastor, she grew up in a very different world from Emma and Elizabeth. (Elinor grew up rich but lost everything when her dad died, so she’s seen both sides.)

“Yeah, the Darcys are definitely rich,” Lizzy confirms, thinking of some of the stories she’s heard about the family.

“And Connor’s so nice and funny,” Cathy says. And then she says, “So, Lizzy, do you like one of them?” because apparently she’s still a little bit ten years old when she talks about boys.

“No,” says Lizzy, at the same time that Emma says, “Gotta be Darcy.”

“What?” Lizzy turns to Emma. “Darcy? Seriously?”

“Yeah,” says Emma, like she’s saying something that should be obvious. “Because he’s so into you.”

Lizzy can’t help the peal of laughter that bursts from her. “Seriously?” she says. “I’m sorry, but you are way off. The guy barely tolerates me.”

Emma shakes her head. “I’ve noticed it all week,” she says. “He’s always staring at you.”

“Ah,” says Lizzy, “I see the confusion. That’s just what he does; I think he just finds me really irritating. Believe me, I went to same school as him for a semester, and all he ever did was glare at people. It doesn’t mean anything special.”

Of course, he’s always had a particular way of glaring at her, specifically, more than anyone else; she never has figured out what it is about her, specifically, that irritates him more than anyone else does. But she has the good sense not to mention this to her companions.

Emma does not look convinced, but Lizzy isn’t surprised; she’s only known Emma for a short while, but she’s learned that the girl fancies herself some kind of matchmaker. She’s always looking for romance where there isn’t any.

Elinor and Cathy, on the other hand, accept the truth of what she’s saying, if Elinor’s quiet smile of understanding and the disappointed slump of Cathy’s shoulders are anything to go off of.

But then Cathy perks up. “Okay, what about Connor?”

Lizzy shrugs. “He’s really cool, but I just see him as a friend. Maybe one of you guys should go for him.”

Now Emma’s perking up too. “So he’s definitely single? Because there’s this girl who sat at my breakfast table yesterday I thought would be perfect for him . . .”

Lizzy just laughs.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

The second week of the seminar gets a little more exciting. They still have lots of speakers and workshops, and another day where they shadow people in small groups, but they also have an afternoon where they get to shadow people one-on-one. Lizzy requested a female tech CEO and gets to spend an afternoon shadowing an amazing woman called Anne Wentworth. She’s incredibly kind and encouraging, and Lizzy goes away more determined than ever about getting her MBA.

Darcy still follows her on her morning walks, which is still super obnoxious, but she can’t figure out how to get rid of him. He doesn’t pick up on her subtle hints, and she’s not sure she wants to be unsubtle, as she doesn’t like being rude. So she deals with it; she only has to put up with it until Saturday, and anyway at least he’s usually silent when they’re out there. At best he’ll comment on a seagull or a boat, or occasionally give her a fact about the ocean. (She never admits to him that his facts are actually quite interesting; she doesn’t want him to think she’s glad that he’s always intruding.)

Much of the rest of her time is spent like last week: always in the presence of Connor and Darcy. It reminds her a little bit of their English project in the fall: Darcy being silent and dour and his much more amiable friend doing all the talking.

Of course, thinking of that makes her think of Jane, which always makes her sad. She’s talked on the phone with Jane a few times and they text constantly, and while her twin sister is always serene, there’s a sparkle missing from her eyes and her voice. She still misses Charlie, it’s obvious, and every time Lizzy notices it, she wants to go toilet paper the kid’s enormous house.

She thinks, a time or two, about asking Darcy how Charlie’s doing and trying to get some kind of news there, but deep down she’s afraid to do it. What if his answer is that Charlie already has a new girlfriend? Then if Jane ever asks Lizzy if she’s heard any news about Charlie, Lizzy either has to lie or hurt her sister all over again. So she says nothing.

Friday is the last day of the seminar, and as a final hurrah, there’s a big fancy dinner in the Palm Room at Rosings. Lizzy sits between Connor and Darcy, with Emma, Elinor, and Cathy taking up the other seats at the table. Emma spends much of the meal determinedly trying to set Connor up with one of the other students—she is not swayed when the others point out that tomorrow they’re all going to be in different states—and Lizzy talks to Elinor and Cathy while Darcy sits broodingly beside her and occasionally gives one-word answers when Elinor tries to pull him into the conversation.

When they’re all finishing their desserts, there’s an announcement that anyone who wants seconds on the cake can go get some from the table in the back. Connor and Lizzy both immediately pop up out of their chairs.

“Anyone else want cake?” Connor asks. “Nope? Time’s up, I’m going before they run out. Come on, Lizzy.”

And Lizzy and Connor hurry back to the cake table.

“Let’s stand for a minute,” Connor says once they each have a new plate. “I need a break from Emma.”

Lizzy is happy to agree, and they stand together at the back of the room, eating their cake and chatting idly.

“I can’t believe it’s over tomorrow,” Lizzy says. “I don’t want to go back to school.”

“Hey, you’re one of the smart kids,” Connor reminds her. “You’re supposed to like school. But I’m sad it’s over too. I’ll miss you. I hope you’re ready for me to text you all the time when I’m back home and bored in San Diego.”

Lizzy just smiles. Connor seems to really like her as a friend, but he flirts with and charms her exactly the same as he does all the girls, so she's pretty certain he doesn't mean anything by it. As for her, she’s come to the conclusion that she adores him as a friend but doesn’t particularly want anything else to happen. Come to think of it, he reminds her a bit of George in that way . . . except that, as much as she likes George, she thinks Connor is just an inherently nicer person than he is. George, fun as he is, can be a bit self-centered on occasion.

“Plus,” he goes on, “if you and Fitzy both go to Yale, then you guys can stay friends and I can come out and visit you guys.”

“I think he and I would have to be friends to stay friends,” Lizzy laughs.

“You two aren’t friends?” Connor asks, baffled, and she remembers that he’s been hanging out with her this whole time because he assumed, that first night, that she and Darcy were already close.

“I mean, we kind of are. We sort of moved in the same circles for a while,” she says. “But we never hung out one-on-one. I knew his friend Charlie a little better.”

“Charlie Bingley?” Connor asks. “I met him once. Good guy. How’s he doing with the whole breakup?”

Could he have heard about Charlie and Jane? “Breakup?” she repeats.

“Yeah, Darcy mentioned it when I called him over Christmas.”

Then it has to be Jane. Lizzy told herself she didn’t want any news about it, but now that the opportunity is here, she can’t resist. “What did he tell you?”

“Well, that Charlie owes him, for one thing,” Connor laughs, and Lizzy’s blood runs cold.

“Owes him?” she repeats evenly.

“Yeah, apparently Charlie was dating this girl who was just after his money, and he refused to see it. But Will finally managed to get him to see this girl for what she really was, so he dumped her. Saved him a lot of heartache in the end, I imagine.” He turns to look at Lizzy with a look of sudden realization. “That would have been around the time you guys were all at the same school,” he says. “Did you know the girl he was dating?”

But Lizzy can barely focus on his words, so stunned is she by this revelation. She’d suspected that Darcy didn’t like Jane dating Charlie, maybe even that he encouraged him to dump her. But she never imagined that he’d straight-up lied to Charlie about Jane. Darcy is the reason that Jane’s heart is broken. Darcy is the reason that the kindest girl in the world has been sad for months. And Lizzy, not knowing it, has been hanging out and taking walks on the beach with the guy for two weeks.

“I don’t know who that would have been,” she says numbly—a lie, but she’s not sure she can have a conversation about this right now without screaming or crying or breaking a plate over Darcy’s head.

Connor’s brow furrows. “You okay?”

“I have a headache all the sudden,” she fibs. “I think I’m going to go get some aspirin from my room. Maybe sit somewhere quiet for a minute.”

“Do you want company?” he asks kindly.

“No, it’ll go away faster if I’m alone.” Connor smiles and nods, and she pushes her plate of half-eaten cake into his hands and walks unseeingly from the room.

She doesn’t go up to her room, though; she needs to be alone, but she also needs to be outside—somewhere she can really breathe and find some peace and silence. So she goes out to the pool. The whole deck is empty; it’s been just cold enough this week that no one at the resort has really been swimming. But there are lots of chairs, and from the ones on the edge she can sit and look out over the ocean, at the moon casting a long white reflection across the water and the waves shushing softly against the shore. But for once, the sight doesn’t calm her. She just sits there and feels angry and hurt and humiliated and so desperately sorry for Jane that she wants to cry.

“Lizzy?”

Well, there’s the person she least wants to see in all the world. “Darcy,” she responds tightly, keeping her gaze fixed firmly out over the ocean.

He fails to notice that she doesn’t seem to want to talk to him. “Are you all right?” he asks. “Connor said you weren’t feeling well and had gone up to your room, but I was coming back from the bathroom and I saw you out here.”

“Just wanted to be alone,” she says, putting a little emphasis on the last word.

He doesn’t take the hint. “I’m glad I found you,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you, and tomorrow we’ll be leaving, and we won’t really be able to talk on the way home with my aunt there.”

He’s really going to push forward despite the fact that she’s not even looking at him, isn’t he? With a sigh, she turns around in her deck chair. “Okay.”

Darcy’s standing by the side of the pool, looking immaculately put together as always; they were encouraged to dress up nice for this final dinner. The lights in the pool are shining blue on his face, and the soft light from the building behind him is making a halo in the edges of his dark hair. He looks soft and vulnerable in a way he usually doesn’t, and it makes him more handsome than usual.

And all Lizzy can think is how much she wants to push him into the pool.

He stares at her a long few moments, then takes a breath and walks around the pool to join her at the edge of the deck. Lizzy doesn’t like looking up at him, so she stands from her chair to even out their heights a little. He takes another deep breath. Then he speaks.

“I’ve tried so hard not to,” he begins, “but I can’t help it. Lizzy, I have feelings for you.”

She blinks, struggling to wrap her head around what he’s just said, and in her surprise is capable of only one thought: apparently Emma and Charlotte were right.

“You’ll understand all the reasons it’s a bad idea,” he says, but then apparently he feels the need to enumerate them anyway: “Your mother and younger sister are both ridiculous and vulgar, and your father doesn’t seem to care at all about how they behave. There are expectations about the kinds of girls I date; my father has made that clear. And a nouveau riche farm equipment heiress with a disaster for a family does not fit the bill.”

Her jaw drops.

He takes a step closer. “But I can’t help it,” he says, and she’s never heard so much emotion in his tone before. “You are . . . so much that I didn’t think I wanted, but that apparently I’ve always unconsciously been looking for. So I’m willing to risk my father’s disapproval. Lizzy, will you be my girlfriend?”

So there’s a lot to process there.

Part of her wants to tear into him, but another part of her says that she can be more polite about this than he’s been so far. (And a tiny little part of her feels bad for him; he’s kind of the worst, but he seems really sincere, and telling someone you like them and then getting rejected is always painful, even if you are the worst.)

So she says in a polite tone, “I'm sorry, but I’m afraid my answer is no.”

She’s about to give some cordial “I don’t feel that way about you” explanation, but he breaks in, his tone and expression shocked. “Are you rejecting me?” he demands in disbelief. And she realizes that for all his hesitant vulnerability just now, he’d been positive she’d say yes. That just irritates her more.

“That surprises you?” she asks, her tone a little sharper than she intended it to be. “Have I ever given you any sign that I’m interested?”

“We’ve been hanging out this whole trip,” he says.

“Because Connor dragged us both along with him.”

“We’ve been spending every morning together walking on the beach.”

“Because you kept inviting yourself,” she reminds him. “I never once asked you to come; you just followed me around, and I just didn’t want to be rude and tell you to stop. But apparently I should have, if you were going to read so much into it.”

He tucks his chin in, his brow furrowing. “So you were worried about being polite then, but apparently now the gloves are coming off.” His tone is defensive.

“Are you accusing me of being impolite?” she demands. “You just called me a nouveau riche farm equipment heiress with a disaster for a family!”

He folds his arms. “I believe in being honest.”

“So if I’m blunt, I’m impolite, but if you’re blunt, you’re just being honest?” she retorts. “And maybe when you’re trying to ask a girl out is the wrong time to be painfully honest.”

He shifts uncomfortably, but she’s too worked up to notice. “But even if that hadn’t been the literal worst confession I’d ever heard, I would have had no interest in dating you. Do you really think I’d go for a guy who got my sister dumped?”

He grows still. “You know about that?”

“Yeah, and where the heck do you get off? Your friend is dating the nicest girl on the planet, and you decide to lie and tell him she’s a gold digger? She was devastated, did you know that? She’s still devastated.”

“I was doing what I thought best,” he says stiffly.

“Then you have no idea what’s best,” she retorts. “But that wasn’t even the thing that first made me dislike you. What about what you did to George Wickham?”

With the pool lights illuminating him from one side, and the moon illuminating him on the other, she can see his jaw clench and his expression grow stony. “George Wickham?” he repeats.

“Yeah,” she says, and unconsciously takes a step toward him, like she wants to make sure he hears this. “You ruined his life. You lied because you don’t like him, and you got him thrown out of his house and now he’s got a juvenile record. Did you think that was what was best, too?”

All traces of the soft, vulnerable Darcy from before are gone; he’s back to the stern, forbidding guy she’s disliked from the start. “Apparently you know everything about me, don’t you?” he says with more sarcasm than she thinks she’s ever heard from him. “But maybe you wouldn’t be so upset about this if I’d flattered you and lied about my concerns about dating you. But your family is a disaster. Your younger sister is going to end up on 16 and Pregnant or America’s Most Wanted. Your mother has no tact and no manners, and she makes no attempt to hide the fact that she married for money and expects her daughters to do the same. Did you expect me to pretend I hadn’t noticed that? Would that have made you feel better?”

If Lizzy were a less principled person, she really thinks she might have socked him in the jaw right then. Instead she says, “Nope, your being an absolute jerk just means that I don’t have to feel bad about turning you down, like I might have done if you’d behaved like a decent human being tonight.”

He blinks a few times, looking a little taken aback, but Lizzy isn’t out of steam yet. “There is nothing you could have said tonight that would have made me want to date you,” she says. “From the first moment I met you, you have been arrogant and condescending and shown no concern for other people’s feelings. By the time I’d known you for a month, I knew you were the last guy in the world I would ever go out with.”

Those final words hang in the air between them, harsh and clanging, long enough for Lizzy to start to feel ashamed. It’s not that they’re not true, but maybe she went a bit too far insulting the guy. After all, she should be better than to stoop to his level.

Darcy stares at her, and then he draws himself up to his full height. “I think we’ve probably both said enough,” he says, and turns on his heel and strides back inside.

Lizzy doesn’t watch him go. She whirls back around and drops into her chair, staring out at the horizon until the view starts to swim—she is so worked up and unhappy and overwhelmed that she’s actually tearing up.

She sits there and gazes at the sea for a long, long time.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy’s so worked up that she doesn’t fall asleep for a long time that night. At least that gives her time to pack her suitcase—they’re leaving tomorrow morning.

In the morning, she doesn’t go for her a final walk on the beach, like she’d been planning; she doesn’t even go down to breakfast, having absolutely no interest in running into Darcy any earlier than she has to. She waits until she’s heard his door open and close, then counts to 30, and then leaves.

In the lobby, she hugs Emma and Elinor and Cathy and Connor goodbye, promising to text, and then she goes out to the car that’s waiting for them and pretends to be really absorbed in something on her phone. Mrs. de Bourgh is so busy talking that she doesn’t even notice that Lizzy’s head doesn’t lift the whole way to the airport. Darcy probably notices, though.

At the airport, she stays five steps behind Darcy and his aunt at the baggage check and security. And so it is that by the time they reach the gate, she’s managed to avoid making eye contact with Darcy even once.

At the gate, she pretends to be absorbed in a book until Mrs. de Bourgh is distracted on a phone call and Darcy goes to the bathroom. Then she goes to the desk and shows them her ticket. “Okay,” she says, “so I absolutely can’t sit in my assigned seat. The guy I’m supposed to sit next to asked me out last night but he was really rude about it and we had a massive fight and we both said some harsh stuff and I can’t sit next to him for the next four hours.”

The woman at the desk, to her relief, understands immediately. “We’re still allowing seat changes,” she says cheerily. “Let’s see if we can get you on the other side of the plane.”

Boarding starts not long after; Mrs. de Bourgh sweeps into first class, and then business class is called.

“Now boarding zone 1.”

Darcy stands; when Lizzy doesn’t follow suit, he clears his throat. “Are you boarding?”

She finally looks up and makes eye contact for the first time today. “Zone 3,” she says, lifting her new boarding pass.

He’s always been hard to read, but right now his expression is so guarded that Lizzy can’t guess at a single thing in it. He nods once and walks away. And Lizzy breathes easy for the first time today. It’s ridiculous that she’s so worked up about this; she’ll have to get past it at some point. But it’s been less than 24 hours since an astonishing confession and a string of rather painful insults; she thinks she’s allowed to avoid Darcy for a while longer.

She tries to watch a movie on the flight, but she can’t help being sharply aware of where Darcy is the whole time—even though he’s twelve rows in front of her and on the other side of the plane, she notices when he stands to stretch his legs, when he gets up to use the bathroom, when the flight attendant is serving his row peanuts. He doesn’t have his seatback TV on; he seems to be hunched over his tray table, doing something—maybe scribbling in a notebook?

It doesn’t matter. It’s just . . . she’s never had such a massive fight with someone before, and it’s weirding her out. She almost doesn’t know how to act now. Are they enemies forever? Or do they go back to being distant but mostly cordial to each other? And she can’t stop thinking about it, so she can’t stop thinking about (and being aware of) Darcy.

She’s the last of their group off the plane. Mrs. de Bourgh and Darcy are waiting for her out by the desk, and—bless her endless talking—Mrs. de Bourgh rambles all the way to the baggage claim about what a wonderful experience they’ve had and how grateful they ought to be.

At baggage claim, Lizzy’s bag comes out first, and relief floods through her as she pulls it off the carousel: she can just go home now. “Well,” she says, “my dad texted; he’s out front. I guess I’m going.”

Mrs. de Bourgh nods distractedly, still watching the carousel. So she doesn’t notice when Darcy takes a step toward Lizzy.

He fixes her with an intense stare; she doesn’t dare guess if it’s an angry or a longing expression, since it’s been proven that apparently she’s terrible at interpreting Darcy’s stares. “Will you read this?” he says quietly, holding something out to her.

She accepts it automatically. It appears to be a few pieces of paper ripped out of a notebook, folded together like a letter.

He nods once and walks away to join his aunt, and Lizzy can do nothing but shove the letter into the pocket of her coat and go out to find her dad.

She manages to ignore the letter on the drive home, where her dad wants to hear all about her trip; she manages to ignore it when they get home and when her family takes her out to dinner and wants to hear all her stories again. She manages to ignore it while she and Jane and Lydia watch a movie together that night.

But as she’s going to bed, curiosity overcomes her, and she pulls the letter out of her coat pocket and climbs into bed to read it.

Lizzy, it reads in Darcy’s tidy handwriting,

Don’t worry that I’m writing to ask you out again or try to get you to change your mind; I think we both said plenty last night and that we don’t ever need to discuss that subject again. But you accused me of two things and I want a chance to defend myself, if I may.

The first is that I lied to Charlie to get him to break up with Jane. That’s only half true. I did encourage him to break up with her, but I wasn’t lying, or at least I wasn’t aware I was lying; I thought what I was telling him was true.

Charlie was smitten with your sister from the moment they met. He talked to me about her often, because as long as I’ve known him, he’s come to me for advice. He grew up in very humble circumstances, and being suddenly thrust into so much wealth was really disorienting for him. He relies on me for everything from how to tie a bow tie to how to tell when people are only pretending to like him for his money.

Unfortunately, I felt absolutely certain that your sister was one of those people. I watched them together, and she never seemed particularly pleased when he was around; he was always deliriously happy, while she always just looked placid.

“That’s just what she’s like!” Lizzy exclaims aloud.

My suspicions were confirmed at his birthday party. Your sister spent almost no time at his side, and every time I saw her, she was talking to some new lovestruck boy. Charlie asked me about it after the party; he’d noticed how little time she spent with him and was full of self-doubt. I gave him my honest opinion: that she didn’t give the impression that she liked him that much, so if she was dating him, the only logical explanation was that she was only after his money. He accepted my assessment and broke up with her right away. I don’t think I was wrong to answer the way I did, given all the evidence, but you know your sister better than I do. If you think she really liked him, then I'm sorry to have given him bad advice and to have made your sister unhappy.

“That’s ridiculous,” Lizzy grumbles.

The other accusation you made is much more serious. The only way I can think of to absolve myself of guilt—and perhaps to protect you in the future—is to tell you the history of my family’s connection with George Wickham. Our fathers were roommates in college, and when they graduated, my father hired Mr. Wickham to be his personal assistant. When Mr. Wickham got married, my father let him rent the gatehouse at Pemberley, so George and I grew up as neighbors, almost as brothers.

And when we were kids, we got along really well; I've never been good at making friends, so I was glad to always have George around. As we got older, though, George changed. Based on things that he’s said,  I think he resented that I came from money and he didn't. He didn’t think it was fair that I got everything I asked for and he didn’t, so I suppose he felt justified in doing whatever he wanted to me.

I’ll spare you the tales of George stealing my things and tripping me in hallways and spreading rumors about me to our classmates; suffice to say, my life became rather unpleasant. I could never get anyone to take me seriously, though; he was so charming that most people refused to believe he could do anything wrong. Even my own father never believed me.

Mrs. Wickham died a long time ago, and Mr. Wickham died when we were fourteen. My father had been named George’s legal guardian, and he brought George to live with us. He had this idea that he would pay for George to go to college and study nonprofit management, and someday George would take over the charitable side of my father’s business, though I’ve heard George say more than once that he has no interest in any of that.

You can imagine I wasn’t thrilled about the arrangement, but I tried to be understanding, as he was now an orphan. We were in high school by then, and George just got worse. He was still finding ways to torment me, but he was also developing a lot of bad habits: cheating on tests, drinking heavily at parties, eventually doing drugs. I was worried about having him and his similarly unprincipled friends in the house with my younger sister, but as always, my father wouldn’t listen to my concerns.

Last June, it was discovered that an heirloom brooch had vanished from a case in our house. It was both an expensive and a sentimental piece, but my father was convinced that it had somehow just been mislaid. I felt instinctively, though, that it had been taken by George—I’d heard him talk more than once about how expensive the drugs he and his friends buy are—and I was desperate to prove it so my father would finally see what George is really like. So I took it upon myself to watch hundreds of hours of security camera footage; the room it was stolen from is one that the public can tour, so we keep it monitored.

I’ve gone back and forth a thousand times about whether to tell you this next part, but I know that I can trust you to be discreet. Around this time, George turned his attentions on my younger sister Georgiana. She had just turned thirteen and had only ever seen the fun, charming side of George, so it was easy for him to convince her that they should date. He said they had to keep it secret, though, and though she objected at first, she was so carried away with having her first boyfriend—especially when it was a handsome boy four years older than her—that she agreed. I still don’t know how much of his motivation in dating her was to torment me and how much of it was to make sure that he had her firmly on his side. I think he suspected that he was going to get caught for stealing the brooch eventually, and I imagine he was thinking that if I managed to find evidence, but he had my father and my sister on his side, then I’d be outnumbered and maybe he’d be able to slither out of trouble again.

In early July, I finally found the video from March that showed him stealing the brooch. I took it to my dad and showed him the video, and it was finally a piece of proof that he couldn't just dismiss. To our surprise, Georgiana overheard the conversation and came rushing in to insist that her boyfriend could never do such a thing, and that's how we learned about the relationship. She showed us the texts that he had sent her, so even my father couldn’t ignore the fact that George had convinced a girl who'd just barely turned thirteen to date him—he was four months shy of eighteen by that point—and that despite her protests, he had pressured and even manipulated her to keep it a secret from her family. (Fortunately, after seeing our reactions, Georgiana came to realize on her own that her relationship with George was troubling and that it was for the best that it ended; she doesn't resent us for our part in the breakup of the relationship and will, I believe, be more careful the next time she dates someone.)

My father was alarmed and called George in for a serious discussion. Even here, though, George managed to talk his way out of things. He confessed to taking the brooch, but insisted that it was because of the influence of bad friends and he was really innocent in all this. He also claimed that he genuinely had feelings for Georgiana and that he’d let those feelings get the better of him. 

And my father, as always, believed him. He still thought there needed to be some kind of punishment, though, and of course he wasn’t going to let George keep living in the same house as Georgiana—after all, George claimed he had feelings for her that he just couldn’t suppress. So my father sent George off to an alternative school for a few months so he’d get away from his bad friends for a while, and then arranged for him to live with a friend of the family when he got back.

My father is convinced that this was enough for George to see the error of his ways, but as George apparently started spreading lies about me as soon as he got back from his alternative school, I don’t imagine he’s changed much at all. I should have said all of this a long time ago so that he couldn’t take advantage of anyone at Longbourn, but George was so much more popular than me that I didn’t think anyone would listen, and anyway I knew that we’d all be leaving soon.

I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell you all of this last night, but I wasn’t really thinking straight at that point. I know this is a lot to take in; if you doubt whether it’s true, ask Connor. He was visiting last summer and was there when I found the video proof and when we learned about Georgiana. He’s also always been one of the few people that isn’t taken in by George’s charm. He can confirm everything I’m telling you. I know you don’t like me much, but you seem to like Connor, so maybe his word will carry more weight.

I wish you all the best, Lizzy.

Fitzwilliam Darcy

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy has no intention of believing the letter; she shoves it in her nightstand and turns off her light and tries to go to sleep. But two minutes later, she’s turning her lamp back on and pulling the letter back out to read it again.

“Ridiculous,” she says, and shoves it back in the drawer. The part about Jane just shows Darcy’s arrogance, and the part about George doesn’t even bear considering. That fun, happy George is secretly Darcy’s lifelong bully, that he stole from his guardian to feed his drug habit, and that he manipulated a thirteen-year-old into dating him just to shield him should he get caught? Ridiculous.

But a few moments later, she’s pulling it out to read it again, and this time, she has to admit that a few things pop out at her. Jane did spend very little time with Charlie at his party; it was because she didn’t want to be a bother, but Lizzy admits she can see that it might look odd to an outside observer. In fact, didn’t Charlotte say something about how maybe Charlie would think that Jane wasn’t interested in him anymore if she she didn’t hang out with him much at his own birthday party? And weeks before that, she’d said that someone who didn’t know Jane well wouldn’t be able to tell, from watching her with Charlie, that she really liked him.

Darcy was wrong, and he should have encouraged Charlie to talk to Jane. But Lizzy reluctantly admits that she can see why he might have been concerned.

And speaking of Charlotte, she never liked George; she always said there was something about him that put her off. And Lizzy has always thought Charlotte is a good judge of character. Is it possible that it’s all true, and that Charlotte somehow saw through George’s disguise?

And then something else occurs to her: the one friend of George’s that she knows well is Denny, and she’s always thought that guy is a druggie. So Darcy’s claim that George’s friends were into drugs seems reasonable.

Still, that’s very thin in the way of evidence. She reads that portion of the letter again. It’s basically exactly the story George told, but with one twist: when George told it, Darcy was the villain. When Darcy told it, George was the villain. Which is true? There’s no way to tell; it’s their words against each other.

Except . . . Darcy did say Connor could confirm his story. It could be a big bluff, but Darcy knows that Lizzy has Connor’s number. That would be quite a big risk to take, assuming that Lizzy won’t actually text him to check. And Lizzy trusts Connor; she thinks he wouldn’t lie. But she can’t bring herself to text him, because then he might ask why Darcy spilled this big family scandal and then she’d have to admit he asked her out and they got in a massive fight and it’s all sort of embarrassing.

Still, the fact that Darcy suggested that she confirm with Connor . . . that says a lot.

And then there’s the Georgiana thing. Lizzy has seen enough to know that Darcy adores his sister; he lights up—well, as much as Darcy ever lights up—whenever he gets a text from her. He takes time out of hanging out with his friends to talk to her. Would he really embarrass her and besmirch her good name by making up a story that makes his beloved sister out to be a painfully naive child who was taken advantage of by her foster brother? Would he really say that unless it was true?

Lizzy doesn’t come to any conclusions that night. But when she finally falls asleep, it’s with a little doubt in her heart about George.

At school on Monday, Lizzy pulls Charlotte aside and says without preamble, “You never liked George, right?”

Charlotte shrugs. “Not really,” she admits.

“Why?”

Charlotte peers at her, clearly confused.

“I mean it,” Lizzy says. “I’m wondering if I misjudged him. I want to know what you saw that I didn’t.”

“Okay,” says Charlotte. “Well, to start, he always struck me as insincere. Like everything was an act he was putting on. Like he planned everything he said as part of some big elaborate scheme.”

Interesting, but it’s just conjecture. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” says Charlotte. “I thought it was super weird that he insisted that he loves Mr. Darcy like a father, but he went around telling the entire school this story about how Mr. Darcy was completely taken in by his son’s lies so he unjustly punished George. It makes Mr. Darcy look like a weak-minded, stupid old man and a terrible guardian. Is that something you’d say about someone you actually love? Like, even if it’s true, do you go spreading it around to anyone who’ll listen? Because seriously, George was spreading that around to literally anyone at school who would stand still long enough to listen. I mean, I know you get frustrated with your mom, Lizzy, but do you go around telling every single person you see that she’s a terrible person? Of course not, because you actually do love her. George’s story never added up.” 

Lizzy is reeling as she processes this. “That’s a really good point,” she says slowly. “And I can even add to it. When George told me the whole story for the first time, he said that he ‘couldn’t hurt Mr. Darcy by making everyone at school hate his son.’ But then he . . .”

“Did exactly that,” Charlotte finishes. “He made everyone hate Will Darcy—exactly what he said he wouldn’t do.” She shrugs. “The guy’s full of it. So, what’s your conclusion?”

Lizzy stares at her a long time. And then she says quietly, “That maybe George is full of it.”

She pays very little attention at school that day, turning Darcy’s story over and over in her head. Charlotte is right: George’s own actions prove that he is not the dutiful, loving ward to Mr. Darcy that he always claimed to be. And if he was lying about that—possibly to gain sympathy—what else might he be lying about?

It’s driving her crazy; she can barely think about anything else. So that night, she does something she told herself she’d never do: she talks to Jane about the Pemberley Prep kids. 

Not the bit about her and Charlie, of course; it would only make Jane feel terrible to think that it was her own reserved nature that might have prompted Charlie to dump her. But she says, “Do you believe everything George Wickham said about Will Darcy?”

Jane, being the loving person she is, immediately shakes her head. “I never believed Darcy could be that bad; he seemed too, you know, upright, and underneath all that seriousness, I think he has a really good heart. Plus . . . plus, Charlie wouldn’t have been friends with someone who could be that cruel.”

“So you think George lied?”

But Jane can’t abide that thought either. “No, I can’t believe he would make up a lie that big,” she says. “Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding? George thought it was Darcy who falsely accused him, but really it was someone else?”

Lizzy stares at Jane’s bedspread a long time, turning everything over in her mind. And then she says, “Darcy asked me out on Friday.”

Jane clasps her hands in delight. “Really? I always thought you two would be cute together.”

Lizzy fixes her with an amused look. “I said no, obviously. I’ve never liked the guy, and he—well, I thought he never liked me. And anyway, do you remember what he said to me at the dance?”

“That was a long time ago,” Jane says reasonably. “So how did he respond to you turning him down?”

Lizzy bites her lip. “It was . . . let’s just say I don’t think either of us is proud of how it went down, and all the stuff we said to each other.”

Jane’s eyes are wide. “What did you say to each other?”

So Lizzy tells her about what she said about George, and then she tells her about Darcy’s letter—at least, the parts that don’t involve Jane. She hesitates before telling her about Georgiana Darcy, but she knows that Jane is incapable of betraying a confidence, and Darcy didn’t say not to tell anyone, just to be discreet. So she swears Jane to secrecy, and then tells her the whole thing.

Poor Jane, who would have happily gone through life believing that no one in the world could be that bad, is shocked. But she doesn’t question the letter’s veracity for a moment. “That lines up more with what we know of George and Darcy than George’s story does,” she says reasonably when Lizzy presses her. “Darcy is way too principled to lie about something that big, and George does resent super rich people; I’ve heard him say stuff like that more than once. And . . . and it fits with some things Charlie said to me. He never gave details, but he hinted a few times that George has always treated Darcy badly. And he’s seen them at school together a lot, so I think he would know.”

Lizzy flops back on Jane’s bed with a sigh.

“What do you think, Lizzy?” Jane asks gently.

She can’t believe she’s saying this, when she used to consider George such a good friend, but Darcy’s letter has been worming its way through her brain all day. Now that she thinks of it, George’s charm did sometimes have an air of performance, like it was a show he was carefully putting on. And he did immediately contradict himself when he claimed he loved Mr. Darcy too much to turn people against his son. And apparently Charlie and Connor will back up Darcy’s story. And Darcy wouldn’t make up lies about his sister like that. “I think . . . Darcy might be telling the truth.”

“I think so too,” Jane says softly.

“Ugh,” Lizzy groans. “If it’s all true, that means George was lying to me from the first day I met him, and I never even suspected. He was so attractive and charming, and I was so glad that he confirmed I was right to dislike Darcy, that I just never even questioned it. I like to think I’m so smart, and so good at not letting my feelings cloud my judgment, but clearly that goes out the window when I decide I don’t like someone.”

Jane pats her knee comfortingly.

“In that case,” Lizzy says, staring up at the ceiling, “do you think we should tell people about George? Let them know what he said about Darcy isn’t true?”

Jane considers this. “I don’t think so,” she says. “George isn’t at our school anymore, and we won’t have a reason to see him any time soon. Besides, we promised not to say anything about Georgiana Darcy, and if we start spreading this story around . . .”

“It could somehow lead to that detail getting out,” Lizzy agreed.

“And if Darcy wanted the whole school to know, he would have told them,” Jane concludes.

Lizzy flops her head to the side to look at her sister. “What would I do without you, Jane?”

“Probably get a lot of stuff wrong,” laughs Jane.

It’s still a lot to take in, but by the end of the week—and after multiple rereads of the letter—Lizzy has come to completely believe Darcy. (This is helped by the fact that when she casually asks around to some of the Longbourn kids who got close to George, they confirm that he and his friends were heavy partiers and drinkers and into party drugs, all of which confirms Darcy’s story.)

She doesn’t text Connor for confirmation; she doesn’t feel like she needs to, and it would just open up the door to talking about her rejecting his cousin, and she doesn’t want to do that. 

So now she just mostly feels ashamed of herself. Not for all of it; she was right to say no, because she didn’t want to date Darcy and because his confession was really quite insulting. And she was justified in accusing him of meddling with Charlie’s affairs; it might be true that Jane’s reserved nature was the source of Charlie’s concern, but a sensible friend would have recommended that Charlie talk to his girlfriend about it, rather than just assume that they know everything about the situation and get Charlie to dump her without so much as an explanation.

But she was spectacularly wrong about George, it seems, and if it’s all true, then she can’t imagine how much that conversation hurt Darcy; not only did the girl he likes reject him, but she also made it clear that she believed the lies that his tormentor had told her about him. So, yeah, a fair bit of shame there.

On Friday, as the Bennet sisters climb into their car to go home for the day, Jane’s phone beeps, and she glances down, then stares. “It’s from Charlie,” she says faintly.

Lydia and Lizzy both promptly shriek. “What does it say?” Lizzy demands.

“Is he apologizing for dumping you?” Lydia says at the same time.

Jane reads it a few times with a sort of dazed look on her face. “He wants to talk. He asked if he can take me for ice cream tonight.”

“What are you going to say?” Lydia demands.

Jane lifts her face up to her sisters, and Lizzy reads fear there. “What if he just wants to tell me all the reasons he dumped me? What if he wants to make sure I’m not still pining for him?”

“You don’t buy someone ice cream to do that,” Lydia says reasonably.

Lizzy is thinking of Darcy’s letter, parts of which she now has memorized: If you think she really liked him, then I'm sorry to have given him bad advice and to have made your sister unhappy. The timing is awfully coincidental, unless Darcy, having learned that he was wrong about Jane, told his friend as much. “I think you should go,” she says.

Jane looks at Lizzy, then Lydia, then nods. “Okay,” she says, and visibly steels herself before typing out a reply.

The sisters spend hours in Jane’s room, helping her prepare for this maybe-date; Lydia does Jane’s hair, and Lizzy gives her pep talk after pep talk. And then Jane leaves and the other two wait. For once, Lydia doesn’t have plans—or maybe she canceled them so she could be here for her sister—so she and Lizzy watch a movie together, interrupting it every few minutes to speculate about how the date’s going.

When the door opens at nine, they scramble to their feet and run upstairs, where they’re shocked to see Jane and Charlie, holding hands and wreathed in smiles. “We’re going to try again,” Jane tells them. “And we came to see if you guys want to watch a movie with us.”

Jane looks truly happy for the first time in weeks, and Charlie is back to staring at her like she hung the moon. Lizzy’s heart is singing, so glad is she that Jane is smiling like that again.

Lydia fixes Charlie with a firm look. “So you finally came to your senses, Chuck,” she says, and he looks appropriately embarrassed. 

They watch the movie together, Jane and Charlie holding hands the whole time, and late that night, after he’s left, Lydia and Lizzy crowd around Jane and demand an explanation.

“He never stopped liking me,” Jane says breathlessly, a megawatt grin filling her face. “But at his birthday party—you remember, Lizzy, I didn’t spend much time with him because all his old friends were there and I didn’t want him to feel like he had to stay with me the whole time. But he thought that was a sign I didn’t actually like him very much.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Lydia says. “He should have talked to you before dumping you.”

“And we had a talk about that,” Jane agreed. “The next time there’s a problem, he can’t just turn and run. He agreed.” She hesitates, and then she glances discreetly at Lizzy before adding in a casual tone, “He said it was Darcy who convinced him to try again. Apparently Darcy had agreed with him that I wasn’t interested, but eventually he decided that maybe he’d been too quick to think that, and he thought Charlie should actually talk to me about all this.”

“Darcy?” says Lydia, who has missed the subtext of all of that. “That grouchy guy?”

“Yeah,” says Jane. “He can be pretty grouchy and snobby, and he’s made some mistakes, but I think that deep down he has a good heart. Don’t you think, Lizzy?”

Lizzy is quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” she says finally. “I think he might.”

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

The March that follows is a bittersweet sort of month. There are good things that occur, and there are bad, but no matter what’s happening, there’s just a gray cloud over Lizzy that she can’t seem to shake.

Charlie starts spending a lot of time at the Bennet house. He confesses that Caroline is not at all happy about him getting back together with Jane, and he’s sick of her constant badgering, so if she’s going to be home, he tries not to be. (Their father is always busy with his important business stuff, so he’s rarely around.) Lizzy can well believe that Caroline could drive someone away from their own house, so she always assures Charlie that they’re glad to have him.

Which is true of the whole family—once Lydia forgives him for hurting Jane, she’s very friendly with him, and their dad likes him well enough, even if he makes a comment here and there that tells Lizzy that he thinks that Charlie isn’t very bright. As for Mrs. Bennet, she is thrilled to have her daughter’s rich boyfriend back, and whenever she says something that hints at that, Lizzy thinks of Darcy’s unflattering words about her mother and feels a wave of humiliation wash over her.

But it’s not all embarrassing; after Charlie makes an off-hand remark about how his dad’s rarely around and his sister’s often off with friends so he eats takeout alone for a lot of meals, Mrs. Bennet takes him under her wing like a protective mother hen. When he’s over, she stops asking if he wants to stay for dinner and starts just always setting an extra place for him. She fusses over him and tells him he needs to eat more and asks about his day and fixes his hair like he’s her own child. And Charlie, whose own mother died years ago, positively glows under all the attention.

See? she wants to tell Darcy. Some people like my mom the way she is.

(It should go without saying that with Charlie always around, and with that confession and letter still taking up a lot of real estate in Lizzy’s head, Darcy is an unseen but very present specter in Lizzy’s life. Charlie isn’t seeing much of him lately, because of him spending all this time with Jane and also because of Darcy being really busy with the end of his senior year. But Lizzy finds herself listening with an intense curiosity to everything that Charlie does say about Darcy. She suddenly understands the phrase “living rent-free in my head.” After what passed between them, she just finds herself always curious about the guy. She just can’t decide which emotion is foremost when she thinks of him: anger at his rudeness or shame at how completely wrong she was.)

On the list of negative things that happen (or don’t happen) in March: Connor never texts her, despite his insistence that he would. She doesn’t blame him; it’s hard to keep in touch with people who are far away. Not to mention, she wonders whether Darcy told his cousin about his awkward confession, Lizzy’s rejection, and their fight. If he did, then maybe Connor’s just avoiding her to try to keep it from being awkward. So she doesn’t text him, and he doesn’t text her. She doesn’t blame him for it, but she is sorry.

There’s also the fact that she’s worried about Lydia. Lydia’s always been a social butterfly, constantly flitting from party to party and date to date, but it seems to be increasing in intensity to the point that it feels like she’s barely home. It worries Lizzy—not that Lydia’s such a partier, but that her parents don’t seem to see any need to keep tabs on her. On more than one occasion, she has asked them where Lydia is, and her father has answered with a noncommittal shrug and her mother has simply chuckled that she’s off somewhere, she’s probably at a party, what an outgoing girl our Lydia is, I was just like that at her age. But nobody actually knows. Lizzy worries sometimes that if something actually happened to Lydia, it could be hours or days before somebody realized she was missing, because no one ever knows where she’s gone or when she’s expected back.

But on the whole, the good things outweigh the bad in March. Toward the end of the month, Lizzy receives her acceptance to Yale. This prompts tears in Mrs. Bennet, who goes on and on about how her babies are growing up and going off to college and how glad she is that Jane only applied to in-state schools. It’s her way of showing affection, so Lizzy just smiles at her mother.

(She wonders more often than she’d admit whether Darcy got into Yale as well, and she kind of wishes she had the guts to ask him. If he did get into Yale, and if they see each other at new student orientation in the fall, will he admit to knowing her? Will they be cordial simply because it’s nice to see a familiar face when you’re a long way from home? Or will they refuse to acknowledge each other? She wonders if he’ll date someone there, and if he’s dating someone now. She wonders if he still carries a torch for her. And she wonders if it’s weird that she thinks about him so much.)

“Is it weird?” she demands of Jane one day.

Jane considers this. “I don’t think it’s weird,” she says. “You get along with most people, so to have such a huge fight with someone—of course it’s going to stay on your mind. Plus, you feel guilty about misjudging the George thing so much. I don’t think it’s surprising at all that you keep thinking about it.” She hesitates. “Do you want me to ask Charlie how he’s doing?”

“No,” says Lizzy immediately, for reasons she’s not sure she could articulate. If word got back to Darcy that she’s been asking about him—it would just be weird and embarrassing. “Don’t tell Charlie about any of this, okay?”

Jane agrees, but her brow is furrowed in confusion. “So you don’t want to talk to him, and you don’t want him to know that you’ve been talking about him, but clearly you think about him a lot. What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Lizzy says helplessly, which is utterly true. As the weeks have passed, her irritation at him has begun to fade, but the shame she feels for so thoroughly embracing George’s lies is still strong, so now she when she thinks of Darcy, she just feels bad and confused. “I just . . . I can’t stand the idea of him being out there somewhere and thinking badly of me.”

Jane just smiles and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

The other piece of good news that arrives is that Lizzy has been named valedictorian of her graduating class. She’d been fairly sure that was the case, since it’s based on students’ GPAs at the end of first semester and she knew hers way up there at that point, but still, it’s nice to finally get official confirmation.

The principal of Longbourn Academy invites her into his office to give her the good news in person, and he grins heartily when Lizzy exclaims her pleasure at being named.

“So,” he says, “you’ll be giving a speech at graduation,” and then he teases, “I hope you don’t get nervous about public speaking.”

“No, I’m pretty comfortable with it,” she assures him.

“Good, good,” he says. “We’ll also want you to be on our graduation committee—help plan the whole event.”

“Sounds good,” says Lizzy, who’s been expecting it. It sounds like fun, really; the adults will make all the important decisions, but she and other student members of the committee will get to have some input.

“And there’s one more thing,” he says. “We’re going to announce it tomorrow. I’ve been speaking with the head of Pemberley Prep, and with both of our graduating classes being so small, and with us having hosted so many of their students this year, we’ve decided to combine our graduation exercises.”

She blinks. “With Pemberley Prep?”

“Yes, I think that’ll be nice, don’t you? Strengthen the bond between our schools. But this means that there will be two valedictorian speeches—you and Pemberley’s valedictorian.” He frowns and murmurs “Now, what was his name?” as he shuffles through the papers on his desk, presumably looking for where he’s written it down.

“Will Darcy?” Lizzy guesses quietly.

“Yes, that was it! How did you know?”

She shrugs. “Just a guess. He seemed like the smartest of the Pemberley students.”

“Well, it was a good guess. You don’t mind sharing the spotlight, do you?”

“No,” she says, and means it. She can’t decide whether she wants to see Darcy again; sometimes she does, just so she can apologize about what she said about George (and see if he’ll apologize about what he said about her family), and sometimes the thought of seeing him again makes her want to crawl into a dark hole and never come out. But she can’t resent him getting to make his valedictorian speech. He worked hard. He deserves it.

“Good,” he says. “I know you’ll make us proud with a killer speech. Show Pemberley Prep the kind of minds that Longbourn Academy can turn out, eh?”

She nods and the meeting ends, and she slips outside, still processing this news.

Apparently she will see Darcy again.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

The first big planning meeting for graduation comes in mid-April. The Longbourn committee has already met twice, but now it’s time to go meet with their Pemberley Prep counterparts.

(Lizzy tells herself that she doesn’t care whether or not Darcy is included on the Pemberley committee. But she still thinks about it all the time.)

She’s pretty chill about it until she hears that Mr. Darcy is the head of the school board at Pemberley Prep, so he’s hosting the meeting at his house. That means that she is finally going to get to see the famed Pemberley estate. And she’s going to see Darcy at his own house. The thought makes her nervous.

Mrs. Lucas, as head of the Longbourn PTA, will also be going to the meeting, and she offers to drive Lizzy up there. Lizzy’s capable of driving herself, but having a friendly face with her when she arrives makes it all seem much more manageable, so she agrees.

The day before the meeting, though, there’s a slight change of plans. It’s a Friday afternoon, and Lizzy is hanging with Jane in the Bennets’ kitchen (Charlie is unavailable for once) when Mrs. Lucas comes and lets herself in the kitchen door, as she often does.

“Lizzy!” she exclaims. “I’ve just had a great idea. The meeting tomorrow is at noon, right?”

“Yeah.” It’s a lunch meeting, and Lizzy is looking forward to seeing what the richest guy she will ever meet serves for lunch.

“Well, you know that Pemberley is a historic mansion, right? It turns out that they give free guided tours to the public on Saturday mornings at 10. I’d love to see it—I love old buildings—and we’re driving up there anyway. What if we go to the tour at 10, then go into Lambton and shop a little, then come back for the meeting at 12?”

The thought of coming to Darcy’s house as a tourist sounds like the worst thing Lizzy can imagine. What if he saw her? What would he think of her, turning him down in the strongest possible terms and then coming to peer and marvel at all his wealth? “I don’t know,” she says feebly, “is it weird to tour a house that people actually live in? Doesn’t that bother them?”

“The Darcys are never there,” Jane pipes up unexpectedly. “Charlie told me about the tours a while ago. He said the family offers them since the house is on the National Register of Historic Places, but they always leave while the tours are happening. Usually they all go out to breakfast together or on a bike ride or something.”

“And of course,” says Mrs. Lucas, “they only show you the grounds and some of the public rooms. They stay out of a lot of the living areas.”

And now curiosity is stealing over Lizzy. It would be interesting to see a mansion on the National Register of Historic Places. And apparently Darcy will never know she was there. “Okay, let’s do it.”

So the next morning, they present themselves at the front gate of Pemberley at 10 and join a group of about ten people who are all there to tour the house. A kindly older woman introduces herself as Martha Reynolds and leads them through the gate, up a road through some trees, and around a corner, and now they can see the house.

And okay, wow. This place looks like a European castle. (Or a French chateau, she thinks, remembering Darcy’s saying once that the house was in the chateauesque style.) Just the facade of the house is the size of four of her house put side by side, and she’s willing to bet it stretches out for quite a distance in the back. It’s made of a warm sandy-colored stone with steeply pitched dark roofs, and there are arches and ornately carved gables and railings everywhere. The space between where they stand and the house itself has a curving drive, a beautifully manicured lawn, and a fountain.

And okay, Lizzy has always understood that there’s rich and then there’s rich, but she’s not sure she ever quite understood, until this moment, how much more wealthy the Darcys are than the Bennets. She still thinks Darcy was a jerk to call her a farm equipment heiress in that dismissive way, but she thinks she can understand why a guy who comes from this world would feel the weight of expectations about the kind of girl he dates.

But he wanted to date me, she thinks, and can’t help the pleased little smirk the thought provokes.

Mrs. Lucas misinterprets her smirk. “Isn’t this the most beautiful house you’ve ever seen?” she whispers as they follow the tour group up the drive.

“It’s amazing,” Lizzy whispers back.

The inside of the house is as beautiful as the outside would suggest, all molded ceilings and graceful columns and soaring arches. Mrs. Reynolds tells them about how all the furniture they’re seeing is antique, and all the art has been collected by generations of Darcys, and how the house was built a hundred and thirty years ago, back when the Bennets were still shopkeepers and farmers. (Mrs. Reynolds doesn’t say that part. Lizzy just thinks it.)

They pass through a room filled with cases full of vases and jewelry and knick knacks the family has collected, and Lizzy wonders if this is the the room that George stole the brooch from. There’s so much stuff in here that she can see how he thought he’d get away with it.

They see a massive dining hall that could easily seat seventy people and a library with so many books that Lizzy thinks she could happily lock herself inside and never come out. Mrs. Reynolds tells them stories about the Darcy family hosting diplomats and senators and kings at this house, and about lavish dinner parties with oil barons and Hollywood actresses, and about the time the British prime minister’s dog got loose and destroyed an antique rug and the prime minister sent the Darcy family this beautiful one as a replacement.

Their last stop in the house is a conservatory, all glass walls and ceilings that allow for plants to be grown indoors, including several palm trees. Comfortable-looking chairs are clustered in various spots throughout. “Dang,” Lizzy says to Mrs. Lucas, “I should have insisted Darcy let us work on our English project here. Charlie’s house is cool but it doesn’t have indoor palm trees.”

Mrs. Reynolds overhears. “Do you go to school with Will?” she asks, clearly delighted.

“For a little while,” Lizzy says. “I’m at Longbourn Academy, so after the tornado . . .”

“Ah, yes, he spoke very fondly of his time at Longbourn,” she beams. “I’m glad he had good friends there.”

Unfortunately, Lizzy wasn’t one of them.

“I’m on the Longbourn PTA,” Mrs. Lucas explains. “Lizzy and I had to come up here for the graduation committee meeting, so we thought we’d come early and get a tour of the house.”

“I’m so glad you did,” says Mrs. Reynolds kindly.

“You know the family well?” Mrs. Lucas asks.

“I was Will and Georgiana’s nanny when they were young,” she explains. “I still drive Georgie to school and her lessons, but the children don’t need me as much as they used to, so Mr. Darcy promoted me to head of community outreach. I lead tours, host school field trips, deal with people who want to come consult the special collections in the library, things like that.”

“What a delightful job!” exclaims Mrs. Lucas. “So, tell me: Will Darcy was an excellent student when we had him, but always so very serious. Was he that way as a child as well?”

Mrs. Reynolds laughs. “Will has always been a serious person. But I’ve never known a kinder one, except maybe his sister.” She sighs. “He’s always been so careful and studious and conscientious. I think he needs to learn to laugh more.”

Lizzy thinks of the few times she’s seen Darcy laugh, and how it transformed his face, already handsome, into something spectacular. And then she thinks of how much in his life has given him reason to be somber: his mother’s death, George’s bullying, his father’s favoritism toward his ward, the events of last summer. “Yeah,” she agrees. “He needs that.”

“There was another student with connections to this house,” says Mrs. Lucas. “George Wickham, right?”

It’s amazing, the change that comes over Mrs. Reynolds’ face. “He grew up here,” she confirms, frowning. “I hope he didn’t cause any trouble for you. He’s caused a great deal of trouble here.”

Mrs. Lucas looks at Lizzy in surprise. Lizzy just shrugs. 

The interior tour finished, Mrs. Reynolds leads them out behind the house. There’s a massive back veranda leading into a series of carefully kept formal gardens with statues and arbors and beautiful spring blossoms; beyond the gardens, a huge lawn slopes gently downhill, growing wilder until it disappears into the trees. This must be the famed view down to the lake, but they’re low enough that Lizzy can’t see any water. Apparently you’d have to be up on one of the balconies to get that view.

The tour group is wandering the largest of the gardens, Mrs. Reynolds talking about rosebushes to Mrs. Lucas and few other people, when Lizzy wanders around a corner and finds herself in a lovely, secluded little walkway with a canopy of vines tangled around the arbor overhead. She’s gazing up, enjoying the way the sun casts dappled light through those vines, when she hears her name.

“Lizzy?”

Her heart drops to her shoes. He’s not supposed to be here; Jane said the family always left when there was a tour. What must he think, finding her touring his house? She takes one long breath to regret every choice she made that led her to this moment, and then she turns to him with a smile pasted on.

“Darcy. What a surprise.”

What a surprise? What a stupid statement. She’s at his house; why would it be surprising that he’s there? She tries again. “I just thought I’d heard that you normally leave during house tours.” Oh, that’s even better; now he knows that she wouldn’t have come if she’d thought she’d see him.

Whether any of this has occurred to Darcy is hard to say; he’s staring at her with an expression she can’t read.

“I—normally,” he says. “We stayed home today because of the competition. Piano competition, I mean. Georgie’s. Next week. She wanted to practice.”

He’s flustered, she realizes, and that makes her feel flustered. Is he just surprised, or is his heart pounding like hers because the girl he likes—used to like?—is in his garden?

“Ah,” she says uselessly. “We’re coming to the—graduation committee meeting.”

Darcy’s expression warms. “I heard you were valedictorian. Congratulations.”

She finds herself smiling. “You, too.”

And that’s the moment when Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Lucas round the corner. “Oh, here you are!” exclaims Mrs. Lucas. “And Will! Good to see you again.”

“You too, Mrs. Lucas,” he says politely, tearing his gaze away from Lizzy.

Lizzy looks away too, in time to see Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Lucas exchanging a look. “The tour’s just about over,” Mrs. Lucas says.

“Oh, are you leaving?” Darcy says, looking back at Lizzy. “I was hoping I could introduce you to my sister. She’s heard about you—about everyone I met at Longbourn, I mean.”

Lizzy looks up at him, then nervously away, just in time to see Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Lucas exchanging another look.

“You know, I need to lead the tour group back to their cars,” says Mrs. Reynolds, “but then I promised to take Margaret here to talk to one of our gardeners about the roses.”

“I was going to ask if you minded indulging me, Lizzy,” adds Mrs. Lucas, “but you don’t care about roses. Why don’t you go with Will, and I’ll go talk about roses, and we can meet back up at the meeting in—” she looks at her watch— “forty-five minutes?”

The two women don’t even wait for confirmation before leaving again, and Lizzy’s alone with Darcy. Her only consolation is that he seems as ill at ease as she feels. “So,” he says, “do you mind? Meeting Georgie?”

“I’d love to,” Lizzy says, partly because she is curious about meeting Georgiana and partly because then they’ll have something to do other than stand here and slowly die of awkwardness.

So Darcy leads her through a side door into the house. They’re in a part she didn’t see during the tour; this must be where the family lives. The thought makes her nervous again, and she finds herself saying, “I’m really sorry about intruding. I really thought you guys wouldn’t be here.”

His shoulders lower a little. She’s not sure what that means. “It’s fine,” he says. “We open the house to the public; there’s no reason you wouldn’t be allowed to take advantage of that.” He hesitates. “What do you think of it?”

“The house?” she asks as they climb a flight of stairs. “It’s extraordinary. Now I’m mad we always went to Charlie’s to work on our English project. We could have been sitting under a palm tree while we talked about Sophocles.”

A quick smile plays over his face, like a flash of lightning. “I should have thought of that.”

They reach a closed door, from which muffled piano music can be heard. Darcy opens it to reveal a beautiful music room, filled with instruments both antique and modern. In the center of the room is a grand piano, and seated at it is a girl.

Her face lights up when she sees Darcy enter, and then her gaze falls on Lizzy and her smile dims a little—not displeased, Lizzy thinks, but confused.

“Can I interrupt your practicing for a minute?” he asks. “I wanted to introduce . . . a friend of mine.”

Lizzy doesn’t take offense at his pause. She totally gets it.

“I could use a break,” the girl—Georgiana—says softly. She stands from the piano bench, and Lizzy sees that, like her brother, she’s quite tall. In every other way, though, they don’t look similar; Darcy is dark-haired and dark-eyed, while Georgiana has white-blonde hair and blue eyes.

“Lizzy, this is my sister Georgiana,” says Darcy. “Georgie, this is my friend Lizzy, from Longbourn.”

“Oh!” Georgiana’s face lights up again. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She doesn’t say anything else on the subject, though Lizzy rather wishes she would. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The smile on her face is sincere but tentative, and she speaks in a timid voice. If Lizzy had to guess, she’d say Georgiana is rather shy. Fortunately, Lizzy’s very good at bringing shy people out of their shells.

“And I’ve heard so much about you,” she smiles. “Your brother and I were in an English group together, and when we were working on our project, any time you texted, he’d drop everything to answer.”

As expected, Georgiana looks pleased and surprised. “Will!” she says in a laughing scold. “You should have been paying attention to your project.”

“I can pay attention to two things,” he objects.

“I’m jealous of you having a brother,” Lizzy says. “I only have two sisters.”

“I always wanted a sister,” Georgiana says shyly.

“Honestly,” says Lizzy, “they mostly just steal your clothes and hog the bathroom when you need it.” But she’s smiling, and Georgiana laughs.

They fall into a silence that Darcy doesn’t seem inclined to fill, even though bringing her here was his idea, so Lizzy supposes the burden of conversation will fall on her. “That song you were playing was beautiful.”

“Piece,” Darcy and Georgiana simultaneously correct her.

Lizzy magnanimously decides to ignore their pedantry. “I hear you have a big competition coming up. Is that what you’re playing?”

Georgiana looks down. “Yeah. Chopin.” She hesitates. “I like playing, but being in front of an audience makes me nervous.”

“Okay,” says Lizzy, “I’ve got an idea. I’d love to hear your whole piece, so why don’t you play it again, and Darcy and I will sit right here in your line of sight and pretend to be very serious judges, so you can get practice playing this piece in front of an audience?” Georgiana agrees, and Lizzy and Darcy sit—why didn’t she think before volunteering to sit right next to Darcy?—and they listen to her play.

She’s extraordinary—not just for a thirteen-year-old, she’s extraordinary in general—and Lizzy gets lost in the music, enough to forget to feel weird about how this whole morning has gone. When the song (that is, the piece) ends, she jumps to her feet and applauds enthusiastically.

“If I had flowers, I would be throwing them at you,” she says, and Georgiana blushes and looks down at the keys with a pleased smile.

“Do you play the piano, Lizzy?” she asks softly.

“I took lessons as a kid,” she says. “I never got very good. But I can play ‘Heart and Soul.’”

Georgiana blinks in confusion.

“You know, like the duet. Like the first thing anyone learns on the piano.” She walks over and plunks out the first few notes. Georgiana still looks baffled, and Lizzy laughs. “You’re so busy learning Chopin that you never learned ‘Heart and Soul’? Okay, scoot over.”

Georgiana obediently makes room on the piano bench, and Lizzy shows her the lower part—she picks it up immediately, it’s only about eight notes—and then, with Georgiana playing her part, Lizzy plays the melody over the top. It’s a very simple song, but Georgiana watches Lizzy’s hands intently.

“Okay,” she says when it’s over, “switch me places.”

Lizzy obeys, and this time she plays the bottom hand while Georgiana improvises an incredible variation on the melody over the top of it.

“What?” Lizzy demands while they’re playing. “So you can improvise too? Are you just good at everything?”

“My piano teacher makes me practice doing it,” Georgiana calls back. “It’s never actually come in handy before.”

“What next, are you going to build a rocket while you play?” Lizzy asks. Georgiana just laughs and follows along gamely when Lizzy makes things harder by playing her part faster, then slower.

By the time they finish, both of them are laughing breathlessly, and Lizzy nudges her companion with her shoulder. “Pretty good playing.”

Georgiana grins at her, all traces of her earlier shyness gone. “Thank you.”

Lizzy suddenly remembers that Darcy is in the room, and looks up to see him watching them both intently. It makes her cheeks grow warm, and to hide it, she looks at Georgiana. “Okay, what else can you play?”

Twenty minutes later, she’s saying goodbye to Georgiana and Darcy is leading her to the small dining room where the planning meeting is happening. “Thank you,” he says quietly as they walk. “Georgie has trouble making friends. She’s very shy, and that makes her reserved, and between that and her last name, most of the people she meets assume that she’s stuck-up.”

“She’s adorable,” she assures him, and he gives her a little smile, and she’s struck by how sweet he can be when he’s not being a snob.

They reach the meeting then, so there’s no more time to talk. Lizzy goes to find her friends from the Longbourn Academy graduation committee, and Darcy goes to sit by an older man who must be his father; they look a lot alike.

Mr. Darcy is very friendly as he welcomes everyone to the meeting and gestures for lunch to be brought in—really delightful chicken pastries with a side of salad and fruit—even if he does have a sort of authoritative way of speaking that tells Lizzy he’s accustomed to being obeyed.

Lizzy eats her pastry, and she watches Mr. Darcy, and she thinks about his children: shy, affectionate Georgiana and stalwart, serious Fitzwilliam. Both of them were victimized by George Wickham, but their father refused to believe it for years and then, when faced with irrefutable proof, still chose to believe that George hadn’t done anything all that wrong. It’s good to give the people you love the benefit of the doubt, but there’s a point where it stops being admirable loyalty and starts being willful ignorance.

She’s not entirely sure she likes Mr. Darcy.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

When the meeting’s over, Lizzy doesn’t have time to do much other than nod goodbye to Darcy before Mrs. Lucas is bustling her out; she’s got to get home for a family event. And maybe that’s why Lizzy keeps obsessively turning the whole encounter over in her head for the next week or two. She saw Darcy again, and it wasn’t as awkward as she’d worried it would be; he doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge against her. But she wasn’t able to get any closure with a proper goodbye, so she’s still not entirely sure where things stand with him.

It’s just . . . she never wanted to date Darcy; she never even wanted to be his friend. But things have morphed lately, and somehow she just . . . wants him to think well of her. That’s all.

She also wants to apologize to him for believing George. She has his phone number; she could text him. But he probably wouldn’t want to be reminded of George, and he definitely wouldn’t want to be reminded of that disastrous conversation by the pool. She still remembers the opening of his letter: I think we both said plenty last night and that we don’t ever need to discuss that subject again. So she’s not going to say anything. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to apologize to him for believing George.

There’s another meeting at Pemberley on the last Saturday in April. This one isn’t a lunch, as it’s in the late afternoon. It should be short and sweet, and there won’t be any reason for her to see Georgiana or talk to her brother. Which is fine, of course.

Then she gets an unexpected text from Darcy, two days before the meeting—the first time he’s ever texted her.

Hi Lizzy, it says, this is Will Darcy. Maybe he forgot that she has his number in her phone. Or maybe he assumed she would have deleted it.

Georgie has been saying she’d really like to see you again. I know you’ll be coming over here for the meeting on Saturday. Would you like to stay for dinner after? My father will be at a business dinner, so it would just be the three of us.

Lizzy stares at the text, and then she smiles; it would be fun to see Georgie again. So she goes to reply, and then she stops herself—he only just texted; she doesn’t want to appear too eager. So she waits ten minutes, and then she responds, On one condition: I want to visit your palm trees again.

And then she waits on tenterhooks for his reply.

It occurs to her, somewhere along the way, that in this whole texting exchange, she is behaving very much like someone with a crush. Which is ridiculous; she does not have a crush on Will Darcy. She has just . . . she’s intrigued by this new side of him. There’s more to him than she ever realized, and she wants to see more of this new Will Darcy. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was a total snob when he was at Longbourn, that he insulted her behind her back at the dance and that he just sat by and did nothing while Caroline insulted her again and again to her face. It doesn’t change the fact that his know-it-all meddling led to months of heartbreak for poor Jane. It doesn’t change the fact that he once called Lizzy a nouveau riche farm equipment heiress with a disaster for a family.

And besides, even if she did develop a crush on him, what would be the point? Surely he’s gotten over her after having two months to ruminate on that awful fight. We don’t ever need to discuss that subject again.

She’s just glad to see Georgiana again, glad to see their gorgeous house again, and glad to have a chance to unravel more of the mystery that is Will Darcy.

I agree to your terms, comes the reply. I’ll make sure the palm trees are looking their best on Saturday.

She fights back a grin.

When Mrs. Lucas hears that she wants to take her own car to Pemberley because Darcy asked her to stay for dinner, her eyebrows lift very high. “Please don’t say anything to my mom,” Lizzy pleads. “All she knows is I’m hanging out with friends. She’ll make such a big deal of it if she hears who those friends are. And there’s really no reason to make a big deal—Darcy’s little sister wanted to hang out with me. That’s it.”

Mrs. Lucas’ expression warms, and she puts a motherly hand on her shoulder. “Of course,” she says. “Anything for my Charlotte’s best friend. You’ve always been so dear to our family.” That just leads to one of those “my baby is growing up!” conversations that Lizzy is becoming so accustomed to lately; Charlotte has been accepted to an excellent school that’s in the state, but it’s still far enough away for Mrs. Lucas to get emotional.

So Lizzy’s mother stays blissfully unaware that Lizzy is having dinner with the Darcys, and only bids her an absent-minded goodbye as she leaves.

The meeting at Pemberley is short; they’re just checking in on how everyone’s doing on their assignments. Lizzy says little, and Darcy, seated once again next to his father, says even less. He barely even looks at her, and for a moment Lizzy half-wonders if she invented the dinner invitation.

But when the meeting is over, Darcy says goodbye to his father and his classmates and walks to the door, and before he slips through, he catches Lizzy’s gaze and lifts his eyebrows. So she didn’t make it up. Maybe he’s not been showing her attention because he’s giving her the opportunity to be as discreet as she likes about her plans this evening, or maybe he doesn’t want his classmates to know that he’s socializing tonight but they’re not invited. Both of those are nicer ideas than the tiny little suspicion that springs up in her mind that he doesn’t want his schoolmates to know that he’s hanging out with the farming equipment heiress.

She nods at him, then takes her time saying goodbye to her classmates. Darcy’s waiting for her out in the hallway, and he gives her that look—a softening of the eyes, the tiniest lift of his lips—that she’s coming to learn is his version of a small smile. No wonder she always thought he was mad at her, if his smiles are so subtle.

“Georgiana is so excited you’re eating with us,” he says. “She’s cooking now.”

“Do you guys do your own cooking?” she asks, surprised. Pemberley is large enough to have a community outreach coordinator; surely it has a cook.

“We have a cook,” Darcy says, confirming her suspicions. “But Georgie’s in a Home Ec class at school and wanted to try cooking something herself.” He hesitates. “Do you like to cook?”

She wonders if what he’s really asking is whether they keep a cook at the Bennet home; does selling tractors bring in enough money to have hired help? But then she tells herself she needs to stop assuming that he’s always thinking about how much richer he is than her. “Yeah, I help my mom a lot,” she says. The Bennets do have some hired help—they hire out their gardening, and they have a cleaning service come in once a week—but Mrs. Bennet prides herself on creating Instagram-worthy meals so she does a great deal of the cooking.

“Well, then perhaps you’ll be able to offer advice if Georgie needs help.”

He leads her to a much smaller kitchen than Lizzy was expecting, considering they have a dining hall that seats seventy people. But Darcy explains that this is the second kitchen, outfitted because the first was too large for everyday use. Georgiana is busily trying to mash some potatoes while the oven timer beeps, and when Lizzy sees her looking flustered, she hurries over to help. Georgiana is glad to have her; Lizzy is glad to help, but she also makes Darcy, who’s just watching them, come over and lend a hand.

“You probably won’t have hired help when you go off to college,” she points out. “It’s good for you to get some practice cooking now, so you don’t have to eat out every meal.”

“Speaking of college,” Darcy says as he washes his hands in preparation, “have you decided where you’re going?”

Lizzy grins proudly. “I got into Yale. So that’s where I’m going.”

“Oh, Will’s going to Yale, too!” Georgiana exclaims. “You guys can be friends there!”

Lizzy glances at Darcy. He glances back. She would love to know what he’s thinking. “Well, it’s a big school,” she tells Georgiana. “I don’t know if we’ll cross paths that much.”

“So you call each other to hang out,” Georgiana says reasonably. “That’s what friends do.”

That is so much more complicated than Georgiana realizes. Lizzy glances at Darcy again, and to her surprise, he gives her a tiny hint of a smile. She stares, and then she gives him a tiny smile back. Maybe Darcy isn’t as against the idea of them hanging out in college as she imagines. Maybe he’s even okay with the idea of them being friends.

When the food is all ready, they each grab a dish or two, and to Lizzy’s surprise, Darcy leads them to the conservatory, where a table has been pulled under the palm trees and set for dinner. “We’re eating under a palm tree?” she asks with a laugh.

“That was your condition for coming, was it not?” Darcy asks.

“I just wanted to see one at some point,” she grins. “But this is awesome. I’ll take it.”

“Do you like the beach?” Georgiana asks timidly. “Is that why you like palm trees?”

“I love the beach,” says Lizzy. “But I don’t go there very often. My mom loves to travel but my dad doesn’t, so we don’t very often.”

“We went to the Bahamas last July,” Georgiana offers.

“I’ve always wanted to go to the Caribbean!” Lizzy exclaims. “What was it like?”

Encouraged by Lizzy’s enthusiasm, Georgiana tells her all about their trip, staying at one of Aunt Catherine’s resorts and hanging out on the beach and enjoying the sunshine.

“That sounds so fun!” says Lizzy. “You’re so lucky.”

“Yeah, my father just wanted—” Georgiana hesitates. “He just wanted us to have some family time.”

That would have been just after the George fiasco, Lizzy realizes. Mr. Darcy may have refused to believe anything bad about George, but at least he recognized that his children needed a little TLC. That’s a path Lizzy doesn’t want the conversation to go down, so she asks, “So where else have you been?”

Talking about the places they’ve been and the places they want to go lasts all through dinner. The Darcys have been all over the world, and Lizzy can’t hide how much she envies that. It turns out to be a subject on which Darcy can wax quite eloquent; Lizzy’s not sure she’s ever heard him say so many words together. He’s always been very formal in his speech, but considering how many of her peers can barely string together a sentence without a lot of “uh”s and “like”s and slang, she had to admit that she likes listening to him talk. And he’s got an eye for detail—maybe always standing in the corner has made him observant—and a way of describing things that makes him an interesting storyteller. If his talk about tariffs had been like this, she would have liked it a lot better.

When they’ve cleared away the dishes, Georgiana shyly asks if she wants to play a board game. Lizzy agrees—she’s got no other plans tonight—and Georgiana happily produces Ticket to Ride, which has been tucked away under her chair. 

“Oh, you’re in trouble,” Lizzy says. “I’m really good at this game.”

“So is Georgie,” says Darcy with a smile. “This should be interesting.”

“Does your family play a lot of board games?” Georgiana asks. She’s focused on setting up the board, so she doesn’t notice that Lizzy’s smile flickers. But Darcy does, if his concerned expression is anything to go off of.

“We used to,” Lizzy says, pasting her smile back on. “And my dad and I love to play chess. But we haven’t done a lot of stuff with the whole family lately. We’re busy with school, and my little sister is off with her friends a lot.” It surprises her how much it hurts to think of how their old board game evenings have dropped off. But with Lydia never around, and with their father retreating into his study and his books more and more with every passing year, they just don’t do things like that much anymore.

Darcy’s still looking at her with his brow furrowed, but Georgiana still hasn’t noticed. “Will and I have board game nights a lot. And when my cousin Connor is in town, he loves playing them with us.” Then she gives a little start. “Oh, you met Connor, didn’t you? Will told me you were at that thing Aunt Catherine’s foundation did.”

“I did meet Connor,” Lizzy agrees.

“Isn’t that resort beautiful?” Georgiana gushes. “Did you have fun?”

Lizzy is carefully not looking at Darcy. “Yeah, it was cool.”

Georgiana doesn’t seem to pick up on her sudden stiffness. “Did you hang out with Will while you were there?”

And now Lizzy can’t help it; she flicks a glance at Darcy, who has gone very still. He meets her eyes and she sees dismay in his. “I did hang out with him and Connor, yeah.”

“That must have been so fun,” Georgiana says enviously, and grins at her big brother. “Connor’s so cool. And Will’s the best, isn’t he?”

Lizzy blinks, but is saved from responding when Darcy speaks. “I’m not sure Lizzy saw me at my best on that trip,” he confesses, his gaze on Georgiana. “I was . . . very caught up in my own concerns.” There’s a long pause, and then he drags his gaze to meet Lizzy’s as though doing so actually pains him. “In fact,” he says quietly, “there was one night we were there when I was . . . unforgivably rude. I’ve thought about that night a lot since then and come to realize how awful I was.”

She meets his gaze steadily.

“I’m sorry, Lizzy,” he concludes.

She’s always appreciated a person who knows how to apologize. The corner of her lips quirks into the tiniest of smiles. “Thanks,” she says quietly.

“You were rude?” Georgiana asks, her brow furrowed.

Darcy pulls his attention back to his sister. “Very much so. You would have been very disappointed in me if you’d been there, Georgie.”

She looks distressed at the idea that her beloved brother could do something wrong, and Lizzy can’t help but say, “But you can be proud of him for giving such a good apology.”

“I guess I am,” Georgiana says, who seems a little confused by this conversation that she’s understood none of the subtext of.

Lizzy takes pity on her and changes the subject. “It’s sweet that you’re so close to your brother,” she says. “My little sister just thinks she’s cooler than me. Which, honestly, might be true.”

Her teasing tone banishes the quiet intensity that filled the room during Darcy’s apology, and Georgiana grins. “I haven’t heard much about your younger sister. What’s she like?”

This is a subject on which Darcy probably has a lot to say; Lizzy glances at him, and he looks embarrassedly down at the table. “Lydia,” she says. “She’s fifteen—sixteen in the summer. Really outgoing. Always the life of the party.”

“I wish I could be more like that,” Georgiana says wistfully. Darcy’s jaw tightens—he’s probably thinking about how little he wants Georgiana to be like Lydia Bennet—but he says nothing. “I’ve never been very good at parties,” she goes on. “I’m not great at talking at people.” Then she gives Lizzy a rueful smile. “Not that I get invited to very many.”

And in that moment, something that’s been swirling in the back of Lizzy’s mind this whole time coalesces into a decision. “Then let me invite you to one now,” she says. “Next Friday is me and Jane’s birthday, and we’re having a party that night—really small and chill. I would love it if both of you came.”

The Darcy siblings don’t look much alike, but the expressions of shock that they turn on her are identical. Georgiana reacts first, breaking into a shy smile. “Really?”

“Yeah,” says Lizzy. “It’d be way fun to have you, and you’d love my sister Jane. Plus, she’s dating Charlie Bingley, who I think you know, right? He’ll be there.”

“But . . . would it be weird?” Georgiana asks. “I’m so much younger than you.”

“Not at all,” Lizzy assures her. “My friend Charlotte’s younger sister and brother are coming. Tom’s only a year older than you, and Maria’s only a year older than him. And I don’t know if Lydia’s coming, but she’s Maria’s age. Plus, it’s not like going to be one of those where, you know, anyone can show up and people will just be dancing and hanging out and stuff. We’re bringing in one of those painting parties where they give you all the supplies and teach you how to do a painting.”

 “Really?” Georgiana sounds delighted at the prospect.

“Yeah, maybe it sounds kind of dorky, but Jane and I wanted to do something chill. Plus we always wanted to go to one of those with our friends but never got around to it, and we’re graduating soon so we’re almost out of time. So we figured, why not do it for our birthday?”

Georgiana looks at her brother, who Lizzy has carefully been avoiding eye contact with. “You’re sure?” he asks, and she knows everything that’s hiding under the surface of that question.

She makes herself meet his gaze calmly. “Yeah. Charlie will be there, and we haven’t all hung out since last year. And . . . I’m sure Jane would be happy to see you.”

She chickened out, there at the end; there was a part of her that wanted to say “I’d enjoy having you there” but she couldn’t quite work up the courage. After all, it’s kind of nuts, inviting a guy to her birthday party who she’s never liked and who once asked her out, resulting in the biggest fight of her life.

But . . . she was wrong about him, in a lot of ways. And even though she was right in others—he really is kind of a snob sometimes—she has come to believe, especially with that apology just now, that Jane has always been right when she has insisted that he’s a good guy deep down. He adores his sister. He’s fiercely loyal to his friends. He’s conscientious and thoughtful and intelligent and amusing. He’s being really kind to her despite her having said some pretty harsh stuff to him (what she said wasn’t unwarranted, but still, she wouldn’t have expected kindness after that).

And if he’s bit of a snob . . . well, as he once said, maybe every person is inclined to some defect that’s difficult to overcome, and maybe his is that, as the son and heir to one of the richest and most powerful men in the country, he’s occasionally got an overinflated sense of his own importance. That’s not ideal, but he can change. In fact, she thinks that he has changed since she first met him; he hasn’t done anything truly snobby in a while. Even in California, he was awkward, but generally he wasn’t stuck up. And his confession was poorly done and got even worse when he became defensive after her rejection, but his apology just now was heartfelt and sincere, and Georgiana’s reaction indicates that kind of rudeness is out of character for him.

Maybe she does like him. Maybe, after six months of knowing the guy, they’re finally friends.

“Can we go?” Georgiana asks.

Darcy looks at her, then turns back to Lizzy with one of those little smiles of his, the one that’s mostly a warmth in his eyes and the tiniest lift of his lips, the one that she’s rather proud of herself for learning to identify. “We’d love to come.”

Georgiana wants to start the game then, so Lizzy doesn’t have time to freak out over what she’s done. But after they’ve played two rounds (Georgiana won one, Lizzy won the other), and Lizzy has bid Georgiana goodbye and Darcy is walking her out to her car, that’s when she starts to freak out a little.

“Are you certain?” he says quietly.

She nods. “Yeah.” That’s all she can find words to say. It seems to be enough for Darcy.

“Thank you for the invitation,” he says quietly.

She doesn’t quite know what to say, but fortunately she’s distracted from her thoughts when they run into Mrs. Reynolds just leaving the house.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “Georgie told me you were coming to dinner tonight, Lizzy. Did you have a nice time?”

“I had a great time,” said Lizzy. “Though I’ve learned to take Georgiana seriously when she says she’s good at a board game. That girl is ruthless in Ticket to Ride.”

Mrs. Reynolds laughs delightedly at that. “It’s always made me laugh that she’s so quiet most of the time and so competitive in board games. Well, I’m off. Travel safely, Lizzy. Good night, Will.”

She climbs into her car, which is parked next to Lizzy’s, and drives away. Lizzy watches her thoughtfully, and a question that’s been on her mind since she met the woman pours out of her without her quite meaning to say it. “Did she believe you? When you told her about George?”

Darcy is quiet a long few moments. “She believed me,” he says finally. “But my father never listened to her, no matter how much she tried, and I think she was afraid to push too hard—I don’t think my father would have fired her, but still . . .”

Lizzy nods. She reaches into her pocket and gets her car keys. She glances up at Darcy; like that night by the pool, he’s half lit by the moonlight, and the lights from the house behind him are catching in his hair like a halo, and the reminder makes her breath catch in her throat. “I believe you,” she says.

Darcy is very still for a long few moments. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

Lizzy gives him a small smile and climbs into her car. When she pulls away from the house, he’s still standing in that same spot, watching her go.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

“You invited Will Darcy and his sister?”

Lizzy shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah, is that cool?”

“It’s great!” Jane exclaims. “I thought about inviting him, but I didn’t know if it would be weird for you.”

Lizzy shrugs. “Well, I wanted to invite Georgiana—she was talking about how she doesn’t get invited to a lot of parties, and I felt bad for her, and she’s so sweet—and I couldn’t really do it without inviting Darcy.”

Jane tilts her head. “Is that really why?”

Lizzy is quiet a long moment. “No,” she says finally. “I think you were right. I think he’s a good guy.” She hesitates. “He apologized for all the stuff he said when he asked me out.”

“Oh?”

Lizzy nods. “And maybe it’s too late for us to be close friends, but . . .” She shrugs. “It’d be good for us to be friendly, since he’s going to be the only person I know at college.”

Jane smiles in a way that speaks of many things she’s thinking and not saying. It doesn’t matter, because Lizzy hears everything she’s not saying. She rolls her eyes fondly at her sister, whose grin widens.

“Well, my party news might be less welcome,” Jane says.

Lizzy raises eyebrows.

“I invited Caroline Bingley.”

“What?” Lizzy demands. “Why? Neither you, nor I, nor Charlie likes her.”

“Charlie likes her,” Jane objects. “He just gets frustrated with her. And I don’t think she’s . . . so bad. But she’s Charlie’s sister. For his sake, and for the sake of our relationship, I think it’s important for me to at least try with her.”

“Fine,” groans Lizzy, “but you have to give me all your presents to make up for it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” comes Jane’s sweet reply.

(At least now Lizzy thinks she knows why Caroline has always disliked her. She must have seen, all those months ago, that Darcy was paying too much attention to Lizzy, and she must have been eager to keep her competition down. Hence the constant insulting. It doesn’t make her like Caroline any better, but somehow it does make her presence a little easier to tolerate.)

So in the end, it’s Charlie and Caroline, Clara Goulding, Charlotte and Maria and Tom, Billy Collins, Georgiana and Will Darcy, and a handful of other friends from school. The Bingleys, the Lucases, and Clara all show up early to help set up, and fortunately Jane, knowing how Lizzy feels about Caroline, runs interference with her and manages to keep them out of each other’s hair. It sounds like a miserable way to spend your own birthday party, but Jane seems to think it’s important to have Caroline there, so Lizzy shrugs and leaves her to it.

Darcy and Georgiana show up precisely at 7:00, Georgiana looking simultaneously eager and terrified and holding a gift bag in each hand. “I wanted to get you a present,” she explains to Lizzy, “but then I thought it would be rude to get one for you and not your sister, but I’ve never met her, so I asked Will to ask Charlie, and he said she likes crafting so I got her a DIY macrame kit. Is that okay?”

Lizzy fights the urge to laugh at the torrent of words pouring from Georgiana. “She will love it,” she assures her. “And that’s very kind of you. Also, it turns out there’s someone else here that you might know; Jane invited Caroline Bingley.”

The furrowing of Darcy’s brow is so subtle that Lizzy’s not sure she would have seen it if she hadn’t gotten to know him better recently. So maybe she was right, all those months ago, when she concluded that any affection between them was all on Caroline’s side.

Well, it would have to be, wouldn’t it? He asked Lizzy to be his girlfriend. Apparently he never asked Caroline the same question.

Georgiana’s dismayed reaction is not so subtle, and Lizzy laughs. “Sorry,” Georgiana says. “She’s your guest. I shouldn’t . . .”

“She’s Jane’s guest,” Lizzy corrects her wryly.

Charlie comes bounding into the front entry then. “Darcy! Georgie!” he exclaims in genuine delight. “So glad you’re here. Pizza just arrived; help me carry it?”

Darcy, at whom he directed the question, agrees, and the two go outside, leaving Lizzy and Georgiana alone. “Sorry,” Georgiana says again. “Caroline’s just . . . she’s always pretending like we’re good friends, but I can tell she doesn’t care about me at all—she’s just trying to get Will’s attention. She ignores me if he’s not in the room.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Lizzy says resignedly.

“I’m glad Will has never dated her.” Georgiana hesitates, then says in a tone that is not half so casual as she’d probably like to believe, “He deserves someone nice. And, you know, really smart.”

Very subtle. “Does he?” Lizzy asks with amusement in her voice, lifting an eyebrow at Georgiana.

Georgiana grins. “I’m just saying.”

They have pizza and an amazing side salad made by Mrs. Bennet, who’d insisted, “I want your friends to know that we feed you properly!” She is taking herself out to dinner (Mr. Bennet is out of town for the week), having promised to give her daughters space for their party. But she’s coming back in time for cake and ice cream; Jane and Lizzy are feeling sentimental and want their mom there for their last birthday at home.

And there’s one other person who’s missing. “So Lydia’s just bailing on our birthday party?” Lizzy asks when they go into the kitchen to refill the water pitchers.

Jane shrugs. “I got a text from Penny this morning,” she says. “She said Lydia has a date tonight.” Penny Harrington is one of Lydia’s friends; Lydia slept over at her place last night and then stayed there all day—there was no school today because of a teacher in-service—but as far as Lizzy is aware, the plan was for both Lydia and Penny to come to the party.

“Typical,” says Lizzy. “It’s our last birthday at home and she can’t even be bothered to show up.”

Jane answers in her usual Jane fashion: “I’m sure she had a very good reason for not being here.”

When they return to the dining room, Lizzy sees that Caroline, who’s sitting across the table from the Darcys, is trying to make conversation with Georgiana, who doesn’t look thrilled. So when Caroline is briefly distracted with Jane handing her the water pitcher, Lizzy introduces Georgiana to Tom Lucas, who’s sitting on the other side of her.

“You told me you’re really into Brandon Sanderson books, right?” Lizzy asks.

Georgiana nods.

“Then you are in luck, because Tom here loves Brandon Sanderson.”

Georgiana turns to her neighbor with a pleased look on her face; Tom is looking back at her with the same expression. “What’s your favorite of his books?” Georgiana asks. “Mine’s Elantris.”

Tom looks thrilled to have a conversational partner with whom he can discuss books, and within moments they are too deep in conversation for Caroline to butt in. Darcy glances up at her and gives her one of his little hints of a smile. She returns it.

It’s a good meal. The conversations run freely and fast, mostly giving Caroline no chance to pipe up and say something rude. Even Billy Collins, after months of dating Charlotte and learning better conversation skills, is very tolerable; Lizzy almost can’t remember why she used to find him so annoying. There’s a part of her that’s sad to look around this table and think that four months from now, many of the people here will be scattered across the country, so she decides to focus on the here and now and not worry about the future.

After dinner, they move into the rec room in the basement, where the woman they hired has set up a bunch of easels and canvases. “Welcome!” she exclaims cheerfully. “I’m so excited to be here and teach you how to paint ‘An English Country Lane,’ which is the design that Jane and Lizzy have chosen for tonight. Now, can everyone find their way to an easel?”

Lizzy and Jane sit right in the middle of the room with their friends ringed around them. Lizzy is pleased when Darcy chooses an easel near her—then rebukes herself for being pleased—then lets herself go. He’s a nice guy. Why shouldn’t she be pleased he’s sitting by her?

The painting activity that follows is the most fun that Lizzy’s had in a while. (Nearly) everyone in that room is someone that Lizzy cares about, and they’re all having a good time. Georgiana stuck by Tom’s side, and they seem to be getting on like a house on fire. Caroline is too focused on doing well on her painting to be too obnoxious. Billy keeps shooting Charlotte these fond looks, and Charlotte beams back, and it warms Lizzy’s heart to see her friend so happy. Clara and Maria and their other friends are ribbing each other mercilessly about their paintings. Jane is beaming around at everyone. Lizzy’s painting is absolutely terrible, but Darcy’s is even worse, and Charlie (who’s surprisingly good at this) laughs himself sick every time he looks at either of theirs. Darcy takes it all in stride, and Lizzy thinks again and again that inviting the Darcys was the right call.

Caroline does manage to make things awkward once, when they’ve finished their paintings and are all standing around admiring (or laughing about) each other’s work. Caroline seems to think that she hasn’t caused enough mischief for the day, because she turns to Lizzy and says in a saccharine (but loud) tone, “You know, there’s someone I’m surprised not to see here.”

Lizzy blinks. “Is there?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I thought you were really close to George Wickham.”

There’s a clatter behind Lizzy, and she turns to see that Georgiana has dropped her paint palette to the ground—luckily she hasn’t splattered any paint anywhere—and is looking pale and stricken. A glance back at Caroline shows that she seems not to understand what’s going on. She doesn’t know the truth about George, Lizzy realizes, and decides they’d better keep it that way.

“Oops!” she laughs cheerfully. “Looks like you got a bit of paint on your hands there, Georgie. Come on, I’ll show you where the bathroom is. Darce, can you grab her palette?”

Trusting that he’ll obey, Lizzy puts a hand on Georgiana’s arm and gently guides her to the nearest bathroom, then pulls her in and shuts the door.

“I don’t have any paint on my hands,” Georgiana says weakly.

“I know,” Lizzy says softly. “But you looked like you could use a minute.”

Georgiana stares up at her, her brow furrowed. “It’s not true, is it? Are you . . . really close to George?”

Lizzy shakes her head. “Caroline’s just trying to make me look bad in front of Darcy; she knows he doesn’t like George, but I’m not sure she knows why.” She leans against the bathroom counter. “I was friends with him when he was at Longbourn; he hung out with me and my friends sometimes. But we drifted apart when he went back to Pemberley, and I haven’t seen him for months. And now I’m ashamed I was ever friends with him.”

Georgiana is quiet a long moment. “Will told me he told you.”

“He did.” Lizzy’s voice is gentle.

“I was so stupid,” Georgiana says, staring at the ground. “I was so convinced that we were so in love. I thought he was such a good guy. I had no idea what he’s really like . . . and how horrible he’s always been to Will.”

“He was very charming,” Lizzy says softly. “And a very good liar.”

“I just feel so stupid and naive.”

“Hey,” says Lizzy, putting a hand on her shoulder, “I fell for it too. So did most of the students at my school. And I’m four years older than you—I’m supposed to be smarter and more mature. If I couldn’t tell he was lying, you shouldn’t feel bad that you couldn’t tell he was lying either. Nobody who cares about you will hold this against you.”

She’s silent a moment. And then she says, “I think my father thinks I was silly and naive.”

“Well, your father has believed every lie George has ever told him,” Lizzy says wryly. “He doesn’t really have a leg to stand on here.”

“Oh,” said Georgiana, in a tone that says that this has never occurred to her before.

“Believe me, Georgiana, you’re not at fault here.”

Georgiana hesitates, then looks up at her. “You called me Georgie earlier,” she says shyly. “Could you—if you wanted to—people I’m close to call me Georgie. So I’d like it if you . . . did.”

Warmth courses through Lizzy. “Then I would love to call you Georgie,” she says. And then, as she would if Lydia were upset, she steps forward and wraps her arms around Georgie, who promptly reciprocates. The girl needs a sister, or a mom. Maybe when Lizzy’s off at college, she’ll tell Georgie to come to the Bennet household for dinner, and Mrs. Bennet can fuss over her and stuff her full of food.

There’s a gentle knock on the door, and before Lizzy can move, the door opens to reveal Darcy. He catches sight of the two of them hugging, and he grows still, just gazing at the both of them with an intent look that makes Lizzy’s pulse accelerate. Six months ago she might have thought he was just glaring at her in distaste, but now that she knows him . . . well, it’s a positive sort of look. Of that she’s certain.

Her heart pounds.

And that’s when Georgie notices him there. “Oh, hi, Will,” she says, turning around.

“Jane sent me to tell you two it’s time to come up for cake,” he says, his gaze still fixed on Lizzy, whose face is starting to heat up under that look.

“Then we’d better go,” she says, because she’s getting flustered under that gaze and Georgie is watching her curiously and this is getting awkward. All the way up the stairs, she’s incredibly aware of his footsteps behind her, his gaze on her back, and she’s glad of Georgie chattering away next to her, keeping her grounded.

Upstairs, she is greeted with the sight of her mother putting candles into their cake and with a piece of excellent news: Caroline Bingley has gone home. “The best birthday present ever,” she murmurs, and succeeds in actually making Darcy snort with laughter.

The gathered crowd sings to Lizzy and Jane, and then Mrs. Bennet cuts the cake and serves it up on plates. The guests start mingling and enjoying the cake.

And that’s when there’s a knock on the front door. Lizzy is closest and goes to open it; there, she sees Penny Harrington, Lydia’s friend, looking wide-eyed and anxious. “Is your mom here?” she says.

Lizzy ushers her in and goes to find her mom, then watches their exchange out of the corner of her eye. Penny says something quietly to Mrs. Bennet, who looks surprised, then leads Penny down the hallway toward the study.

Something is wrong; Lizzy can feel it in her bones. She excuses herself and heads toward the study; Jane must have found the exchange strange too, because she follows Lizzy out. Charlie follows Jane, as he always does, and when they reach the study, where Penny and Mrs. Bennet are, Lizzy is surprised to see that Darcy also joined the group somewhere along the way.

Penny barely seems to notice the knot of people at the door, being too busy staring at Mrs. Bennet with tear-filled eyes. “It’s Lydia,” she says. “I think she’s missing.”

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Bennet asks. She glances back, sees the group at the door, and motions them into the room. Lizzy and Jane step in carefully; Charlie and Darcy stay at the door.

Tears begin pouring down Penny’s face. “We didn't actually hang out last night,” she confesses. “She just asked if she could tell you guys that’s where she was. She went to some big party in another city, but she was supposed to be back to my place last night, or at least this morning. But she never showed up. I’ve been calling her all day, and trying to look her up on Find My Friends, but I guess her phone is off. I’m really worried.”

“So when you said she had a date tonight . . .” Jane prompts.

“I was covering for her,” Penny admits tearfully. “I kept thinking she’d be back any minute.”

“So she’s been gone for a full day? Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Lizzy demands.

“I promised her I wouldn’t,” says Penny, as though that explains everything.

“If you thought she’d gone missing, you should have broken that promise sooner,” says Darcy from behind Lizzy.

Mrs. Bennet looks back at the others, uncertainty on her face. “Do you think something’s really wrong?”

“She went to a big party out of town then dropped off the map,” Lizzy says sharply, sitting down by Penny. “And she’s been gone for a full day. Yeah, I’d say we should be worried.”

“She’s only fifteen,” Jane says quietly, fear in her tone. “She can’t even drive.”

“Where was the party?” Lizzy demands of Penny, since Mrs. Bennet doesn’t seem to be of very much use in this situation.

“I don’t know,” she says tearfully. “Somewhere far. She thought it would take a while to get there.”

“How was she going to get there?”

“She had a friend who was taking her.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Yeah,” says Penny. “Do you guys remember George Wickham?”

Lizzy’s stomach falls all the way to the floor. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I remember him.”

“I didn’t even know that Lydia was still hanging out with George,” says Jane, a little desperately. Lizzy turns to her sister and sees that Charlie has come up and put his arm around her shoulders. Behind them, Darcy stands in the doorway, his expression as stern and intense as Lizzy has ever seen. She’s coming to learn the shadings of his stern expressions, and this is an especially serious one.

“Yeah, when she can,” Penny says. “She really likes him.”

“I remember her flirting with him, but she flirts with everyone,” Jane says. “I didn’t realize she was genuinely into him.”

“He kissed her on New Year’s Eve,” Penny volunteers.

“In our house?” Lizzy asks. “At our party?” She remembers both George and Lydia disappearing at midnight, but she never imagined they were somewhere together making out. She thinks of him targeting Georgiana Darcy; does he have a thing for younger girls? Does he like that they’re easier to manipulate?

“George Wickham,” says Mrs. Bennet. “Isn’t he a friend of yours? So there’s nothing to worry about, right?”

“Was a friend of ours,” Lizzy corrects grimly, pulling out her phone, “and there’s a lot to worry about. He’s not a good person.”

“Oh,” says Mrs. Bennet, subsiding somewhat.

“Do you know anything else?” Darcy asks Penny.

She shakes her head. “That’s all. It was a party with George, they had a long drive, but she thought she’d be back by morning.”

Lizzy pulls up George’s number and calls it, but it goes straight to voicemail; his phone must be off too.

“Are you calling George?” asks Penny. “I already tried that. He hasn’t been answering all day either.”

Lizzy stares helplessly at her phone a moment, then pulls herself together and jumps into action. “Darcy,” she says, “can you get me the Forsters’ contact info?”

He nods and pulls out his phone.

“Jane, call Dad and tell him what’s going on.”

Jane nods and pulls out her phone.

“Mom, call the cops.”

She looks taken aback. “Do you really think it’s that bad—”

“Yes,” says Lizzy firmly.

So Mrs. Bennet nods and pulls out her phone.

“Now,” she says to Penny, “do you remember anything else? Were you there when he picked Lydia up? Was anyone else in the car?”

She gets a description of Lydia’s outfit and learns that George picked her up in his car and no one else was in it. There’s a touch on her shoulder, and she turns to see Darcy offering her a piece of paper on which he’s written the Forsters’ phone number and address.

“Dad’s not answering,” says Jane.

“The police will be here in ten minutes,” says Mrs. Bennet.

“I guess the party’s over,” Lizzy says in a weak attempt at humor.

“Do you want me to clear everyone out?” Charlie says. “I can be discreet.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jane says wearily. “It’d be nice to thank them all for coming.” They squeeze past Darcy, who’s still standing in the doorway, staring at Lizzy.

For a long moment, Lizzy and Darcy lock gazes, and then she droops. “I should have warned her,” she says. “I could have prevented this if I’d just told her George is bad news.”

Darcy’s brow furrows, and he shakes his head—at what, Lizzy doesn’t know. But all he says is, “Georgie and I should go.”

Something about that feels really final, and Lizzy feels dismay creeping through her. “I’ll come say goodbye,” she says, turning to Penny and her mother. “Penny, can you stay to talk to the police?”

Penny nods.

“Mom, try Dad again.”

Mrs. Bennet nods. And Lizzy follows Darcy from the room.

In the front room, she finds that Jane has been telling people there’s a family emergency and apologetically but efficiently ushering them out of the house. Everyone is extremely understanding; they don’t press for details, instead just expressing fervent wishes that things will be sorted out soon and wishing Lizzy and Jane a happy birthday.

Lizzy finds herself stuck in a long conversation with Billy, who, as a long-standing friend of the family, apparently feels the need to express his concern at length. By the time Charlotte has gently pried Billy away, the room is almost empty. Lizzy turns to the front door just in time to see Georgie and Darcy disappear through it.

It feels frighteningly final, watching them walk out like that; there is a part of Lizzy that suddenly feels certain that she will never see Darcy in this house again.

She didn’t even get to say goodbye.

But there’s no time for that. Penny and Charlie stuck around, and the five of them sit anxiously together in the living room, calling every friend of Lydia’s they can think of—no one has anything useful to tell them—until the police arrive.

It’s relieving to hear how seriously they seem to be taking things; the two uniformed officers agree that Lydia disappearing with a classmate who has a history of drugs and heavy drinking and then not answering her phone for twenty-four hours is alarming. They take down everything Penny has to say about the party, and everything Lizzy and Jane tell them about Lydia and George, and they accept the Forsters’ contact info very gratefully.

And then they leave, promising to reach out when they know something, and now there is nothing to do but wait.

Mrs. Bennet seems to have finally grasped the gravity of what’s happening, and she’s pacing and silently weeping and trying Mr. Bennet’s phone every few minutes (maybe he already went to sleep; it’s only 10:00, but he’s always been a morning person). Jane is sitting on the couch and wringing her hands, and Charlie is next to her, rubbing her back and murmuring in her ear.

Lizzy looks at them and feels a sudden pang of regret that Darcy left . . . then promptly shoves that thought away. This is not the time for it. Instead, she comforts Penny, who is feeling wracked with guilt for her part in all of this.

After forty minutes, they get a call from the cops, who say the Forsters could give them no useful information about the party, but who gave them the names of George’s closest friends, so they’re going to talk to them next. By this point it’s nearly eleven, and Lizzy tries to send Penny home; Penny refuses to leave, but she does call her own parents to let them know where she is.

Minutes tick by, turning into hours. Mrs. Bennet alternates between sitting and pacing. Lizzy burns off her own nervous energy by offering everyone leftover cake and ice cream and pizza. Penny takes her upon the pizza offer—apparently she skipped dinner—and Lizzy is absurdly pleased to have something to do. 

Midnight comes and goes. Charlie and Jane are leaning sleepily against each other on the couch. Penny dozes off in an armchair. Mrs. Bennet tries her husband on the phone every few minutes.

And Lizzy just sits and thinks. She thinks of how frustrated she gets with Lydia sometimes, and how much she’s going to regret that if it turns out something has terrible has happened to her sister and she has to live with knowing that there was so much friction between them while she was still alive.

At the same time, though, she’s frustrated with Lydia at this moment—she’s started lying to her parents about where she is so she can go to out-of-town parties. But then, she didn’t know what George is really like; Lizzy never told her, not realizing she was still in contact with him.

Lizzy walks in circles in her mind for what feels like hours. She imagines a hundred scenarios: Lydia killed in a car accident. Lydia overdosing in some dingy warehouse. Lydia sailing through that door any minute now and laughing at them for being so worried about her.

If that third one happens, she’s going to cry with relief, and then she’s probably going to kill Lydia anyway for making them worry so much.

(And if her mind ever manages to wander away from Lydia for a moment, it jumps straight to fixating on Darcy leaving without saying goodbye. She remembers well his words about Lydia in February: that she’s going to end up on either 16 and Pregnant or America’s Most Wanted. What must he think now that she’s gone off partying with George Wickham and the police had to be called to find her? He’s probably congratulating himself that Lizzy turned him down, or otherwise he’d be caught up in their family mess right now. What was it he called the Bennets? A disaster? Maybe he’s right.)

At 1:15, Mrs. Bennet’s phone rings and they all jump, suddenly wide awake. “Unknown number,” Mrs. Bennet says as she goes to answer it.

“Put it on speakerphone,” Lizzy requests.

Her mom obeys without question, so they all hear the quiet voice that comes out. “Mom?”

Mrs. Bennet bursts into tears. “Lydia, we’ve been worried sick! Where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” says Lydia, but the voice coming through the speakers doesn’t sound like her—instead of bold and brash and larger than life, she sounds exhausted and timid, and that terrifies Lizzy. “I’ve been in Youngetown. I’ll be home . . . maybe after 3?”

Youngetown? That’s two hours away. “Did the police find you?” Lizzy demands.

“I’m with an investigator,” Lydia says. “He’s bringing me home. Don’t worry, I’m safe.”

“Don’t worry” sounds like a pretty tall order right now, but Lydia is alive; she’s safe, and apparently she’s with the police.

“And I’ve got . . . a friend with me,” says Lydia. “So I’ll be fine.”

A friend? Not George, Lizzy hopes. She wants to demand more answers, but Lydia sounds tired. “I’ve gotta go,” she says. “I’ll see you guys soon.”

She hangs up. Mrs. Bennet drops her face into her hands and cries, and her daughters quickly move to embrace her, and they all stand together in a little knot and weep together.

When they finally break apart, Lizzy’s gaze falls on Penny. “She’s okay,” she says. “You don’t need to stay. You can go sleep in your own bed.”

Penny sleepily agrees.

“Did you walk?” Lizzy asks.

She nods.

“Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

When she returns from taking Penny home, she sees that her mother and sister have each dozed off on one of the couches, and Charlie is stretched out on the floor below Jane’s couch. That seems like the right idea, so she curls up on the open loveseat and drops off to sleep as well.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

A little after three, there’s a rattling at the doorknob and voices outside, and Lizzy launches into wakefulness; she sees her mother, Jane, and Charlie do the same. The door opens and there’s Lydia, still wearing what Penny said she left in and looking exhausted and a little bedraggled. Based on the puffiness of her face, Lizzy would bet her sister’s been crying recently.

Mrs. Bennet immediately bursts into tears and runs to hug her daughter. Lizzy and Jane are just a few steps behind.

When they finally step back from their embrace, Lizzy finally sees the man standing in the doorway. He’s middle-aged, of medium height and medium stockiness, with a receding hairline and craggy features, wearing a trench coat. He doesn’t look like a cop.

And it turns out he isn’t one. 

“Are you with the police?” Mrs. Bennet asks when she notices the man.

“Frank Epsom, PI,” he introduces himself.

“This is the investigator who found me,” Lydia explains wearily.

“PI?” Mrs. Bennet repeats. “You’re not with the police?”

“No, ma’am,” he says. “I was brought on by a private client.”

“Brought on?” Lizzy says. “By who?” It’s only been six hours; who could have found out and then hired the man that quickly?

“I prefer to keep my clients anonymous,” he says politely.

Lydia rolls her eyes, the movement surprisingly fond-looking. “You know I’m just going to tell them, right?”

Mr. Epsom smiles back at her, which transforms his face into something much friendlier. “Yes, but it won’t be me who spilled the beans. Now, Mrs. Bennet, I’ve been in communication with the local police about finding your daughter, but you should call them and let them know she's home. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Lydia shakes her head. “Thanks for everything, Frank.”

He gives her another smile, nods at the rest of them, and leaves. He’s heading for a serviceable, neutral-colored sedan sitting outside; for a moment Lizzy thinks she can see another person in the car, but then Mrs. Bennet shuts the door and ruins Lizzy’s view.

“Lydia, dearest, where have you been?” she demands.

Lydia glances briefly at Charlie, who turns to Jane with a smile. “I should go,” he says. “This seems like a time for family.”

He kisses Jane goodbye, claps Lizzy and then Lydia on the shoulder, then gathers up his things and leaves. And now it’s just the Bennet women in the house.

“Let’s go sit down,” Jane says kindly, and ushers them all back into the living room. Mrs. Bennet takes a moment to call the police, and then she joins them.

They end up with Lydia in the middle of a sofa with Jane and Mrs. Bennet on either side of her, comforting and fussing, and Lizzy sitting in a nearby armchair. Lydia is looking down and wringing her fingers together, and Lizzy can’t help staring. Lydia’s . . . embarrassed. Lizzy has never seen her sister embarrassed before; she wasn’t even sure Lydia knew how to feel shame.

“Are you all right, Lydia?” Jane asks gently.

Lydia nods, her gaze still fixed on her knees.

Lizzy is wild with impatience, but she channels her inner Jane and asks gently, “What happened?”

Lydia takes a long, deep breath. Jane starts rubbing her back, and that seems to help her speak. “George asked if I wanted to go to a party out of town. I didn’t know he meant Youngetown until we were already driving.”

That doesn’t seem very sensible to Lizzy, but she reminds herself that there was a time when she might have happily climbed into George Wickham’s car and not asked too many questions about where they were going. So she bites her tongue.

“We got there and went to this crappy part of town,” Lydia says. “The party was in this big warehouse. We walked in and it was . . .”

“What was it, sweetheart?” Mrs. Bennet prompts.

“I don’t know,” says Lydia, looking up at her mother. “Grimy. Dark. Everyone was a lot older than me. It just . . . it just gave me a really bad feeling. I didn’t want to stay there. I told George I wanted to leave, and he got really mad at me. He said he’d wasted his time bringing me if I was going to ‘be so immature about it.’”

“He’s wrong,” Jane says immediately. “Immaturity would be doing something you know you shouldn’t just because someone pressured you into it.”

Lydia shoots her a grateful smile. “He kept trying to make me stay, but the more he tried, the more I knew I wanted to go. He finally drove me a couple blocks away to a motel. He got a room and left me there and said he’d be back when the party was over. So I waited. I stayed up until 3, then I finally fell asleep. When I woke up it was the afternoon and George still wasn’t back, so I walked outside to look for him. It was . . .” She shudders. “It was a bad motel. It was really dirty and gross, and there were a lot of scary looking people there. I think there were a lot of prostitutes. And it was in the middle of nowhere—there were just warehouses all around us.”

She seems to shrink on herself then. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “George was gone, and my phone was dead because I didn’t bring a charger, and there was nowhere I could walk to for help. I didn’t even want to stay outside the room because everyone was looking at me and they were all so . . .” She breaks down in tears, and Jane and Mrs. Bennet immediately embrace her.

“Oh, my poor Lydia!” Mrs. Bennet exclaims.

“I was so stupid,” Lydia weeps. “I thought I was so cool, going to this big party out of town with George. I thought he really liked me. But he abandoned me right away and left me in that scary motel and . . . I was so stupid.”

And Lizzy feels the last of her irritation with her sister fall away. Lydia is right—she made a lot of stupid choices—but listening to her terrified retelling of her ordeal, Lizzy is reminded that she’s just fifteen and fairly sheltered. She probably imagined this would be just like the parties she goes to all the time, thrown by her friends and classmates in respectable houses. Even if sketchy stuff happened at those parties, there was always a safety net—trustworthy people around and her family not far away. She probably had no idea what she was getting into, agreeing to drive to Youngetown—rundown hellhole that it is—to go to this party with George. She probably had no idea just how hard George partied.

“It’s okay, Lyddie,” she says softly. “We all make mistakes. And you’re safe now.”

Lydia looks up and shoots her a grateful smile.

“What happened then?” Jane asks softly.

“I didn’t know what to do except wait for George,” Lydia says. “So I went to the office and told the guy ‘We’re staying another night.’ Luckily he had still had George’s credit card number and he didn’t ask any questions. And I went back and locked myself in my room and waited. And finally, around midnight, Mr. Epsom knocked on the door.”

“Weren’t you afraid to open it?” Mrs. Bennet asks. “You didn’t know who he was.”

“I was scared,” Lydia admits. “But I knew it was okay because then I heard Will say that he was there too.”

Lizzy blinks. She can’t mean—can she? “Will?”

“Yeah,” says Lydia. “Will Darcy was there. And his dad. They’re the ones who hired Mr. Epsom.”

“What?” says Jane, while Mrs. Bennet demands “George Darcy was there? Seeing my daughter in such a state?”

But Lizzy is silent, struck mute with surprise and confusion and disbelief. Why in the world would the Darcys have hired a PI to track down Lydia, and why in the world did they go with him to fetch her?

“Apparently Frank is Mr. Darcy’s usual guy for, like, background checks and stuff,” Lydia goes on. “So he said he didn’t mind working in the middle of the night when Mr. Darcy called. Anyway, I never liked Will, but at least I knew who he was. So I opened the door, and when they said they’d been looking for George and me, I went with them. I told them where the party was, and Mr. Epsom and Mr. Darcy dropped me and Will off at a cafe to get some dinner, and then they went looking for George.”

“I’m glad they made sure you ate,” Jane says kindly. “And that Darcy stayed with you so you wouldn’t have to be alone.”

“I thought he would lecture me,” Lydia observes. “He was always so strict and boring. But he didn’t say anything. He just sat with me while I ate.”

“Will Darcy,” Lizzy says, finally finding her voice. “Will Darcy came to Youngetown to get you?”

“Yeah, I was way confused at first,” says Lydia. “Like, why would he care? But it turns out I guess he actually wasn’t there for me. His dad is George’s legal guardian, so they were there looking for George. Mr. Darcy pays for George’s credit card, so he can login to the account. When they heard about what happened, Mr. Darcy got on George’s account and saw the charge from the motel. So they got Mr. Epsom and drove down to Youngetown. And when they got to the motel, they just kind of found me by accident, I guess. But they were nice and took care of me.”

“Did they find George?” Jane asks gently.

Lydia nods. “Mr. Epsom came back around 1. He said they’d found George passed out in a warehouse.” Her brow furrows. “They think maybe he overdosed. They took him to a hospital, and Mr. Darcy stayed with him, and Will and Mr. Epsom brought me home.”

“Will came home with you guys?” Lizzy demands, her gaze irresistibly drawn toward the front of the house, even though the neutral-colored sedan is long gone.

Lydia nods wearily. “Not that we talked or anything—we both mostly slept on the way back, and Mr. Epsom drove.”

“But he didn’t want to come in when you got here?” Mrs. Bennet demands, looking a little miffed, as though she’d personally offered him hospitality and he’d turned her down.

Lydia shakes her head. “He just said he ‘ought to stay out in the car.’”

Mrs. Bennet frowns a moment longer, then shakes her head. “We’ll need to thank them. George Darcy! Coming to my daughter’s rescue! Of course, I wish you could have met him under less embarrassing circumstances.”

Lydia looks pained again, and Lizzy stands to distract her mother. “It’s been a long day,” she says. “Lydia probably wants to get some sleep. I bet we all do.”

Lydia shoots her a grateful look, and the Bennets all move up to their rooms. Lydia decides to sleep in her mother’s bed—obviously still shaken from her ordeal—and Jane and Lizzy both embrace her tightly before going to their own rooms.

But Lizzy doesn’t go to sleep right away; instead she sits on her bed and stares at the darkness outside her window. She's so thankful Lydia's okay, of course, and she could hug the Darcys for their help. But still, she can't help frowning as she sits there. She thinks about Darcy leaving with barely a word of goodbye, and then having to go home to tell his father that George had run off with some too-trusting girl and disappeared. She thinks of him driving in the middle of the night to Youngetown and finding Lydia trapped in a scummy motel because she foolishly agreed to go with George. She thinks of him sitting in silence while Lydia ate. She thinks of him refusing to even come into the Bennet house, electing instead to sit outside in the dark and the cold.

He must be disgusted with her. He must be congratulating himself that he dodged a bullet when she rejected him.

Lizzy doesn’t fall asleep that night for a long, long time.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy thinks about that night obsessively for the next few weeks.

It’d be hard not to, really. She’s reminded of it all the time when she’s home, what with Mrs. Bennet fussing over Lydia more than normal. Also, Mr. Bennet apparently woke up the morning after to forty-one missed calls and was convinced someone had died; the experience seems to have shaken him, and he’s been a more attentive and present father lately.

And Lydia, poor girl, still isn’t quite back to normal; that experience shook her confidence, and she’s still a little fragile. Lizzy, who once thought she would have loved a calmer, quieter Lydia, actually kind of hates it; Lydia should be larger than life, not retiring and reserved.

But Lydia’s slowly regaining her confidence, and anyway, one good thing came of it; since Lydia isn’t going out with friends nearly as much as she used to, and since Mr. Bennet is suddenly so attentive, the family’s been spending more time together. They even reinstate board game nights. Lizzy hopes Lydia finds herself again soon, but also, since the twins are leaving for college in just three months, she’s glad that the family’s having so much togetherness time.

That night is constantly on her mind at school, too. Nobody knows what happened to Lydia, other than Penny who has promised that she won’t say anything, but word got out that George Wickham got pretty messed up at a party and ended up in the hospital and now his guardian is making him go to rehab. The whole school liked George, so everyone’s talking about him.

So, with all of this a result of that terrible night, of course it’s on Lizzy’s mind. She’s glad that Lydia is okay, glad that it wasn’t worse, and utterly confused as to what she’s supposed to make of Will Darcy’s part of in all of this. 

She goes over that night again and again in her mind, trying to leave her emotions out of it and just focus on the facts: Darcy left her party abruptly without telling her what he planned to do next. He drove home and convinced his father to use George’s credit card to track him down. They called a PI, then decided to accompany the PI to Youngetown. Darcy sat with Lydia while she ate, then rode home with her. He got to the Bennet house but said that he “ought to stay out in the car.” He hasn’t said a word to Lizzy since.

And Lizzy has no idea what she’s supposed to make of all this—how to explain his behavior. Lydia believes that they were never looking for her, specifically; they were always looking for George, and when they stumbled across her instead, they had the decency to deliver her safely home. And this makes a lot of logical sense. Mr. Darcy is George’s guardian; of course he’d leap into action when he heard that George had been missing for more than twenty-four hours. So maybe it had nothing to do with Lydia—or Lizzy—at all. Maybe that’s why Darcy hasn’t said a word to her.

But, just maybe, it’s possible that Darcy was there for Lydia. He did seem concerned when Penny was explaining everything. And if they were going to Youngetown to look for George, why would Darcy have gone with them? He doesn’t like George, and he wasn’t needed. But maybe if he thought Lydia Bennet needed a familiar face . . . maybe that’s why he took such a long trip in the middle of the night and why he sat with Lydia while she ate; maybe that was his way of showing her friendship and support. 

But the idea doesn’t hold up under much scrutiny. If he did this for Lydia—if he did it for Lizzy—why is he keeping his distance now? Why hasn’t he reached out in some way? She wishes she could ask Charlie what Darcy’s up to, but Charlie’s been home sick with a serious case of strep throat; he often isn’t even up for texting Jane.

And she has no reason to see Darcy; the graduation committee only has one more meeting before graduation, and that one’s only for the adults to confirm the last few details, so Lizzy and Darcy aren’t invited.

She supposes she could reach out to him via phone or e-mail. Really, that’s something she ought to do anyway; she wants to thank him for his help, because without him, they would have had to rely on the cops, who didn’t have the same insider information and would have taken much longer to find Lydia. But she can’t bring herself to do it. The fact that Darcy wouldn’t even get out of the car long enough to come inside and say hello . . . well, that speaks volumes. She suspects he has been reminded of what he thought all along—that her family is a disaster—and is no longer interested even in being her friend, let alone anything else.

So, she’s made up her mind: she needs to thank him, but she’s not going to call him or anything; he probably wouldn’t like that. So she’ll find a moment to say something to him at graduation. He’ll probably just nod gravely and walk away, but at least she’ll know she did the right thing by thanking him.

And in the meantime, she’ll keep obsessing over that night.

The last few weeks of school tick by so quickly that Lizzy barely remembers them. She spends a lot of time working on her valedictorian speech, a lot of time setting up her housing at Yale, and in both of these endeavors, Darcy is always at the back of her mind. When she picks an apartment at Yale, she wonders if he’ll be living close by. When she practices giving her speech, she’s very aware that on the stage she’s imagining in her mind, Darcy is sitting only a few seats away.

Before she knows it, it’s the last day of school. Lizzy spends the day getting just about everyone at Longbourn to sign her yearbook; in the evening, someone she knows has a party for all the graduating seniors, and she dances and talks and poses for a whole lot of photos with friends. 

Some time after ten, she finds herself sitting out in the grass in front of the house with Charlotte, Clara, Jane, and Billy, enjoying their final night as high school students. (She doesn’t mind anymore that hanging out with Charlotte often means hanging out with Billy; he’s much more tolerable these days, especially as he’s no longer trying to impress Lizzy.)

Charlie’s there too, having come with Jane despite not being a Longbourn student, and the thought crosses Lizzy’s mind that she could ask about Darcy if she wanted. But she immediately dismisses the thought; she has this terrible and irrational fear that if she so much as mentions Darcy’s name, everyone will know that she’s been kind of fixated on him lately, and that just feels unbearably embarrassing. So she doesn’t say anything.

“You have to promise,” Clara says for the fortieth time that day, “that we’re all going to stay in touch.”

“Video chat once a month,” Lizzy confirms, referring to the plan they’ve made. “We promise.”

“You’re my best friends,” Jane says softly. “I can’t forget you guys.”

Charlie’s been holding her hand, and he lifts it to his lips. “I could never forget you.”

“Okay,” says Lizzy, “there’s such a thing as being too cute.” But she’s laughing, and Charlie and Jane see it for the joke it is and laugh as well. The two lovebirds are going to the same university; Jane’s top choice happened to be high on Charlie’s list as well, which worked out perfectly when they both were admitted. Lizzy knows that high school romances don’t often last long-term, but when she sees the dreamy smile on Jane’s face—when she reflects that Charlie has come to feel a bit like the brother she never had—she hopes that theirs turns out to be one that lasts, maybe even one that goes all the way. Maybe she is, even now, looking at the future Mr. Jane Bennet.

“We’ll still all be in the state,” Charlotte says reasonably. “It’s Lizzy who’s going off to Connecticut and leaving us all behind.”

“I’ll be back when I’m finished with my MBA,” Lizzy shrugs. “You’ll just have to miss me until then.”

Charlotte grins and leans back a little more comfortably against Billy, who has his arm around her waist. Lizzy never thought she would say this, but they’re cute together. She thought Charlotte was crazy when she started dating him, but clearly she saw something in him that Lizzy missed. Those two are going to different universities in the same city, so their current plan is to continue dating in college, unless something crazy happens over the summer.

And Lizzy, looking at the two couples currently cuddling, feels a pang of longing in her chest. She doesn’t envy Jane and Charlotte their boyfriends—she doesn’t want to date Charlie or Billy—but she does envy that they have someone to hold them like that. It’s been a long time since she had a boyfriend, and even then, those relationships were always fun, fleeing, youthful sorts of affairs. She’s never had what Jane and Charlotte have now: relationships that feel like they have the potential to become something serious and long-term.

Clara must be reading her mind. “I just feel really single right now,” she confesses to Lizzy, eyeing the two couples. “You think there’s a boy inside who wants to cuddle with me?”

“It’s a tiny graduating class,” Lizzy says resignedly. “If there were boys worth having in there, we’d have already found them.”

Clara slaps her hand down on her knee. “That’s why we’re going to college, right? New boys, new dating pool.”

“An education is just an afterthought,” Lizzy agrees solemnly.

“If I thought you meant that,” says Charlotte, “I’d stage an intervention.”

It’s a bittersweet night—the end of an era; the end of a lot of friendships, because Lizzy’s smart enough to know no matter your intentions, you just drift away from people over time. She’ll stay in touch with Charlotte and Clara, of course. But a lot of people at that party—maybe she’ll see them on social media, or run into them at the grocery store when they’re all home for Christmas, but it won’t be the same.

She’s still pensive when they get home. Her dad is sitting on the sofa, reading. “Did you wait up for us?” Jane asks, and comes over to kiss him on the cheek.

“I had to,” he says. “I won’t have many more chances to do this.”

“We’re still here for the whole summer, Dad,” Jane laughs. “And now, I’m going to bed. We have graduation tomorrow.”

“And you don’t want to be tired, or you’ll doze off during my boring speech,” Lizzy agrees.

Jane laughs again and goes upstairs, and Lizzy smiles down at her dad. “Have you been reading all night?”

“Part of it,” he says. “Lydia came home about an hour ago, and we talked for a while. She only just went upstairs.”

“I’m glad you were spending time with her,” Lizzy says. “I worry about her when we’re gone. But at least she’ll still have you guys.”

“Spending time with your parents,” he jokes. “Just what every teenager wants.”

“I mean it,” says Lizzy.

“I know,” her dad says quietly. “I . . . haven’t always been there for Lydia like I should have been. I am working on that, I promise.”

“Good,” says Lizzy. “She needs that. And even if she doesn’t always show it, she’s glad to have you.”

“Very sentimental tonight, Lizzy.”

She shrugs. “It’s been a sentimental sort of night.”

She hugs him good night, then goes upstairs and gets ready for bed. That bittersweet feeling from the party lingers: it’s her last night as a high schooler, after all. Everything will be different after tomorrow. They’ll still have the summer to hang out, of course, but after that, her friends will be scattered to the four winds, and she’ll be alone.

Except for Darcy.

Her arm slows, then stops, leaving her teeth only half brushed.

She has been trying very hard not to think about Darcy all day and has failed catastrophically. She misses him, which is weird, considering that they were only just starting to become friends before the whole George thing happened. And as graduation grows closer, she grows more nervous; she’s still determined to talk to him tomorrow and thank him for his help with Lydia, but she has no idea what to expect. Will he give her that warm look that she only learned to recognize as a smile when it was too late? Or will he grow still and uncomfortable, unhappy to be reminded that he once confessed to having feelings for a farm equipment heiress with a disaster for a family?

The uncertainty is killing her, and she rapidly finishes brushing her teeth and then knocks on Lydia’s door.

Lydia answers promptly; clearly she wasn’t asleep yet. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” says Lizzy, who is now kicking herself for starting this conversation. She promised herself she wouldn’t upset Lydia by asking her about that night, and here she is about to break her promise. So instead she says, “How was your last day of school?”

Lydia tilts her head and examines her thoughtfully. “Same as it was when you asked me at dinner,” she says drily. “Is that really what you came here to ask me?”

Caught without an explanation or excuse, Lizzy hems and haws for a minute.

“Just say it,” Lydia commands, then hesitates. “Is this about what happened to me in Youngetown?”

Lizzy’s surprised silence must be enough of an answer, because Lydia sighs. “You can talk to me about it,” she assures her older sister. “Everyone’s been so careful around me lately, and I appreciate that, but I’m not made of glass. I can talk about it.”

She sounds very earnest. So Lizzy finally says, “Can I come in?”

When she is seated on Lydia’s bed, she takes a deep breath. “It’s just . . . Will Darcy’s the other valedictorian, so I’m going to see him and talk to him, and I just . . . I don’t know what that’s going to be like. Is he going to be unhappy that he got dragged into fixing George’s problems? I guess I was just hoping that you had some insights about what was going through his head that night.”

Lydia considers this a few moments. “He honestly barely said anything,” she says. “Frank knocked on the door and said he was a PI and asked if I was in there, and I was freaked out so I didn’t answer. But then Will said, ‘Lydia, it’s Will Darcy from school. Do you remember me? I know your sisters. I’m Charlie Bingley’s best friend.’ I did remember him, so I opened the door. But after that he didn’t say much; he just stood back and let Frank and his dad do most of the talking.”

That doesn’t tell her much. “Did he seem unhappy? Concerned?”

Lydia ponders this. “Maybe concerned is a good word for it. He did look kind of worried. I figured he was worried about George.”

That doesn’t tell her much either; Lizzy is fairly certain he wasn’t worried about George, as he doesn’t like George, but that doesn’t prove anything. Darcy’s a decent person; he could have been worried about Lydia just out of principle, all the while thinking how glad he was not to be dating Lydia’s sister.

“You mentioned you thought they were there for George,” Lizzy notes.

“Yeah, because when we were leaving the hotel room, I told Mr. Darcy thanks for finding me, and he said, ‘George is my ward and therefore my responsibility.’” She smiles at that. “Who says ‘therefore’? But anyway, I figured that meant he was there looking for George.”

Lizzy is struck silent. She hadn’t heard what Mr. Darcy said before, and despite what Lydia thinks, Lizzy thinks that it does not necessarily mean that he was there looking for George. He could have been looking for Lydia because of his responsibility for George’s actions. Maybe he was there for Lydia’s sake. Maybe his son was there for Lydia’s sake.

Maybe his son was there for Lizzy’s sake.

This is all conjecture, she reminds herself sharply. “Anything else?”

Lydia shakes her head. “They took me to their car and they didn’t really say anything to me; they were talking about how to start looking for George and then they were calling the local cops. Then they dropped me and Will off at the diner and he didn’t say anything except when he told me to order whatever I wanted, and when I offered him some of my food and he said he wasn’t hungry. He just sat there and looked out the window; I think he didn’t want to make me feel weird by staring at me. Then he got a call from his dad and told me that they found George.” She shrugs. “He’s really hard to read. But I think he was relieved they found him alive? Which surprised me, with all the weirdness between him and George.”

“Darcy didn’t do any of the stuff George said he did,” Lizzy says more firmly than she’d intended.

Lydia looks surprised. “I know,” she says. “I didn’t mean that I thought Will was too heartless to worry about George.” She looks down at her bedspread, tugging restlessly at the yarn ties on it. “I—I liked George so much. I believed everything he said to me. But when he got so mad at me at the party, I saw this other side to him that I didn't even know existed. And then he just abandoned me, and I realized I didn't really know him at all, I think. I think he was really good at pretending to be something he wasn't.” She looks up at Lizzy. “And then Will Darcy shows up and spends all this time sitting with a girl he doesn't really know or like, just so that she won't be alone. I thought it was pretty clear which one was actually a decent guy. I don’t think Will could do all that stuff George said.”

She shrugs. “Anyway, Frank came to get us, and that was the last time I talked to Will. He didn't really say anything on the drive back, and I was mostly talking to Frank and sleeping. So honestly, I have no idea what he's thinking, or what he'll be like when you see him tomorrow.” She’s quiet a few long moments. “But I do think that I should have been a lot nicer about him. He’s still super serious and kind of boring, but I think Will Darcy is a really good guy.”

Lizzy gives her a sad little smile. “Me, too.” And then she hugs Lydia. “I’m going to miss talking to you. You have to call me every day when I’m at college, okay?”

“I’ll be way too busy being awesome,” Lydia says, but she hugs her sister back tightly.

Fifteen minutes later, Lizzy is sitting on her bed in the dark, knowing she needs to be well rested for her speech but unable to shut her mind off enough to sleep. She thinks of that image that Lydia painted, of Will Darcy sitting in a diner with a girl he barely knows or likes just so that she won’t be alone, of him staring out the window so that she won’t be uncomfortable. And she admits something to herself that she’s been determinedly ignoring for a long time.

She likes Will Darcy.

She likes Will Darcy.

She flops back on her bed with a groan. What awful timing. What awful . . .  everything.

As she stares up at the ceiling, her heart and her mind a maelstrom of emotions, one thought floats to the surface: she wasn’t wrong to turn him down at Rosings. She didn’t like him then, and he had broken Jane and Charlie up and his confession was really insulting and he genuinely was a snob, and maybe if she hadn’t pointed out his bad behavior, he’d still be running around thinking it’s okay for him to treat people like that.

But he’s changed since then, become warmer and sweeter and kinder. Or maybe—more likely—he’s always been warm and sweet and kind, it’s just been buried under a layer of snobbery and social anxiety (because looking back on their interactions, she’s realized that he’s not nearly as confident in company as his cool demeanor would suggest). But after that awful conversation, he seems to have been making a concerted effort to fight his snobby side and let his good qualities show through. And maybe he wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t turned him down.

So she doesn’t regret that she rejected him, precisely; she just wishes that . . . oh, that everything had been different. That he hadn’t been in such a bad mood at the back-to-school dance, and that she hadn’t overheard what he said and been so offended by it that she went into the school year determined to find reasons to dislike him. She wishes that he hadn’t spent so much time with Caroline Bingley—especially now that she knows that he doesn’t even like her—because maybe then Lizzy wouldn’t have assumed that Darcy agreed with every bratty thing Caroline said. She wishes he’d tried to be a little kinder when they were at school together; she wishes she’d made more of an effort to get to know him, or at least to start taking what he said at face value instead of always assuming there was a hidden insult in there.

She wishes George Wickham had never come to Longbourn (for several reasons).

She wishes that Darcy hadn’t made such an absolute mess of things when he asked her out, and she wishes she had answered with less vitriol so that maybe they could have stayed on good terms.

And she wishes, more than anything, that Darcy would ask her out again.

But all she can think of is that letter he wrote, saying he wasn’t going to ask her out again. She thinks of that tan sedan sitting in front of the house, of Darcy telling Lydia that he oughtn’t come inside. She thinks of the fact that he hasn’t contacted her once since then.

And she thinks of how ridiculous it is that she only started liking Will Darcy once he’d stopped liking her.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy wakes up nervous on the morning of her high school graduation. It’s not the speech; she’s utterly confident about that. It is that she will see Fitzwilliam Darcy there, and she has finally admitted to herself that it matters massively to her what he thinks of her.

So she dresses and does her hair and makeup with extra care that day, enough that Lydia catcalls at her when she comes down the stairs and Mrs. Bennet says, “Why, Lizzy, you look surprisingly pretty today!”

The event’s at 2, but Lizzy’s supposed to be there at 1:15, so when she’s finished lunch, she checks and rechecks that she has her speech with her, and then she drives herself to Longbourn.

(Both schools have traditionally held their graduation services on their own campuses—Pemberley on their lawn, Longbourn in their auditorium—so in another year, deciding where to hold this combined graduation could have caused some contention. In this case, however, it was an easy decision: the Pemberley grounds still aren’t restored, and half the parking lot is still filled with construction equipment. So Longbourn it is.)

There’s a lot of hustle and bustle with people setting up chairs and flower arrangements, but Lizzy seems to have been the first student to arrive, which surprises her; Darcy and the other two students who are giving speeches were also supposed to be here at 1:15. Mrs. Lucas bustles over and shows Lizzy which seat is hers up on the stage, gives her a printed program, then hurries off to see to something else.

And Lizzy smooths down her hair, takes a deep breath, and waits.

She’s about to see Darcy for the first time since that awful night, and she can’t decide if she’s more excited or apprehensive. If Darcy’s happy to see her, then she’ll be excited. But if he’s decided he dislikes her now, then she’s happy to put off that discovery as long as possible.

The other two speakers arrive. No sign of Darcy.

At 1:30, students start trickling in and finding their way to their seats up front, while parents start to fill in the back of the auditorium. Lizzy sees her family and the rest of the Lucases arrive; she sees Clara’s family, then Charlie and Caroline with a tall, rangy man who must be the elusive Mr. Bingley. Charlie catches Lizzy’s eye and waves enthusiastically, while Caroline barely puts any effort into making her smile look convincing.

And still, no Darcy.

At 1:50, Georgiana comes in the back of the auditorium, accompanied by Mrs. Reynolds. She sees Lizzy looking and waves even more enthusiastically than Charlie did, then takes a few quick steps forward as though she intends to come up to the stage to say hello. In that moment, however, Mrs. Lucas gestures for the student speakers to huddle together for one last set of instructions, so saying hi to Georgie will have to wait.

“Where is Will Darcy?” she asks, looking around.

“I’m here,” comes a voice from the other side of the stage, and Lizzy looks up to see Will striding toward them in his dark blue cap and gown. His eyes meet Lizzy’s for a moment, and then he turns all his attention to Mrs. Lucas, his expression and tone apologetic. “I’m so sorry for my tardiness. I arrived on time, but my father had a number of people he wanted me to talk to.”

And since George Darcy is, well, George Darcy, everyone just shrugs and that’s the last anyone says about it.

After a few instructions, Mrs. Lucas sends everyone back to their seats. Lizzy glances at Darcy, whose gaze locks with hers for a brief second before he turns to find his seat; they’ve got all the Pemberley Prep folks to the left of the podium and all the Longbourn Academy folks to the right, so they won’t be sitting anywhere near each other.

That’s okay, she decides. Graduation is starting in just a few minutes; it’s not like they’d have time for the lengthy expression of gratitude that is needed. It’s okay if her thanking Darcy has to wait until after the ceremony is over; then they’ll have a lot more time.

The lights dim, the crowd hushes, and Mr. Darcy steps to the podium. “Welcome,” he says, “to the graduation ceremony for Pemberley Preparatory School and Longbourn Academy.”

He speaks for a while, then the Longbourn choir sings, and then the speeches begin. The two students who applied to give talks go first, and then the principal from Longbourn goes, and then the Pemberley orchestra does a piece. And now it’s Lizzy’s turn.

She feels her heart rate increase as she looks out over the crowd—she doesn’t mind public speaking, but she’s never done it in front of so many people before—but her mind stays calm; her talk is good, and she’s practiced this a hundred times.

“Isaac Asimov once said, ‘Your assumptions are your windows on the world,’” she begins. “‘Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.’”

Once she starts, it’s like the words flow out of her like water. She forgets the size of the crowd, and she just talks, as calmly as anything.

Okay, that’s not entirely true; she spends the whole time vividly aware of where Darcy is in relation to her and wondering what he thinks of her talk. But other than that, she forgets everything around her and just speaks.

“And so, graduating classes of Longbourn Academy and Pemberley Prep,” she concludes, “move forward with the strength of your convictions, but remember to be open to the possibility of new information and new perspectives. As the playwright George Bernard Shaw said, ‘Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.’ And I know that we, as graduates of two excellent schools, have the potential to change the world.”

The applause that follows her speech is enthusiastic. She wishes she could sneak a glance at Darcy to see what he thought of it, but she has to turn right to return to her seat and he’s coming from the left. So she’s out of luck.

His speech is about the importance of learning from our failures and building on them to find success, and Lizzy enjoys it immensely. He must have listened to their instructor in that public speaking workshop, because he’s a bit more at ease and engaging than he was then. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s had weeks to write and practice the talk; she remembers him saying that he dislikes public speaking when he hasn’t had time to prepare.

Or maybe it’s just that Lizzy has finally admitted to herself that she likes the sound of his voice and the careful, formal cadence of his words and the brilliant way his mind works, and that’s why she finds his speech immensely enjoyable.

She applauds firmly when he finishes. He turns left to go back to his seat. She doesn’t see his face.

The principal of Pemberley Prep speaks after that, and finally, he presents the graduating classes of Pemberley Prep and Longbourn Academy.

The students on stage head off the join the lines of students waiting for their names to be read; Lizzy finds her way to Jane, who gives her a quick hug and whispers that her speech was amazing. 

Then the reading of the names begins. Longbourn Academy goes first, and there aren’t that many students graduating, so the Bennets get to the front of the line quite quickly. Lizzy and Jane have already gotten special permission to walk together; Mrs. Hill is reading the names and she quite likes them, so she was easily persuaded.

“Elizabeth and Jane Bennet,” comes the announcement, and the sisters step out onto the stage arm in arm. There is applause—half of it the dutiful applause people give strangers at these events, half of it enthusiastic applause from their friends and family—and over the top of it, Lydia yells “Those two sexy ladies are my sisters!”

It’s something old Lydia would have done, and it makes Lizzy and Jane both smile broadly.

They receive their diplomas, shake the principal’s hand, and pose for pictures, and then Lizzy reclaims her seat on stage and Jane joins the other students back down in the audience. Now she can relax and applaud for her friends, saving her most enthusiastic cheers and applause for Clara, Charlotte, and—partly out of loyalty to Charlotte, partly because she’s actually coming to like the guy—Billy.

Now it’s Pemberley Prep’s turn. When Charles Bingley’s name is read, Lizzy sees his father and Caroline clapping politely. But Jane is applauding enthusiastically, a blinding smile on her face, and Lizzy cheers for him, and Lydia, who has grown rather fond of him in recent months, catcalls loudly. He breaks into a bright grin at that.

And then they get to the Ds. “Fitzwilliam Darcy,” the announcer reads, and Lizzy hears the girl next to her mutter, “Fitzwilliam?”

Charlie cheers from the audience, and Lizzy, guessing that Georgiana will be too shy to join him, cheers as well. For a split second as he’s walking across the stage, he glances over at her, clearly surprised, and she smiles at him. She just thinks the guy deserves some cheering, that’s all. 

He reaches the principal then, so his attention is pulled away before he can react to her smile. She wonders if he would have smiled back, or if he thinks she’s making a spectacle of herself. But now he’s taking his seat, her view of him blocked by a massive flower arrangement, so apparently she’ll never know.

They wind through the rest of the Pemberley students with two notable exceptions. George Wickham is not there; maybe his recent issues prevented him from completing his coursework. Or maybe he was always really far behind. Lizzy finds that, other than a general benevolent sense of concern for his welfare—the same as she’d have for any acquaintance—she doesn’t particularly care what’s happening to George Wickham.

The second exception is Denny; apparently even his parents’ money couldn’t buy a diploma for a kid who was asleep or high through every class.

Finally it’s over, and as planned, Lizzy walks up to the microphone. “Congratulations, graduating classes of Longbourn and Pemberley. Please join me in the turning of the tassel.” She and all the students move their tassels to the other sides of their caps. This was suggested by the graduation committee in hopes that it would be enough of a celebration to prevent the students from throwing their caps in the air, which they worry is a health and safety risk.

It doesn’t work. After Lizzy sits down and George Darcy thanks everyone for coming and wishes them a good afternoon, about half the students throw their caps in the air. The other half promptly follows suit. Lizzy and the girl next to each other exchange looks, grin, and throw their caps as well.

And that’s it: Lizzy has officially graduated from high school.

She’s excited, of course, but most of her attention is taken up with thinking about Darcy. The ceremony is over, and hopefully now she’ll have time to pull him aside and finally tell him thank you for what he did for Lydia. (And then maybe she’ll finally learn whether or not he really dislikes her now.)

But that is just not in the cards. All the Longbourn staff up on stage bustle over to tell her and the other speaker what an excellent job they did, and by the time that’s over, Lizzy sees that Darcy is being herded off the stage and down into the audience by his father, no doubt to go talk to people. She gathers her things and follows, but as soon as she reaches the audience, she is bombarded by friends and well-wishers who want to tell her what a great job she did on her speech and congratulate her on graduating and ask her about her college plans. Clara, Jane and Charlotte run over to get pictures—pulling Charlie and Billy in for some of them—and by the time Lizzy is free to look around, Darcy and his father have vanished.

Disappointment pulses through her, and she curses George Darcy for being so chatty. But it seems there’s nothing to do now but pose for a lot of pictures with friends, hug a lot of people, shake a lot of hands, and then follow her family out onto the Longbourn grounds for even more photos.

The Bingleys follow them; the plan is for the two families to go out together afterwards for a celebratory dinner. It was Mrs. Bennet’s idea, pointing out that after all these months of their daughter dating Charlie, they should probably meet his dad at some point. Lizzy would be unhappy at the idea of Caroline ruining her graduation dinner, but Caroline informed them, when invited, that she had other plans and would not be able to make it. Lizzy’s not sure whether she really had plans or she just lied to avoid the meal, but she’s thrilled either way.

So they go out to the manicured lawns for photos. Caroline sticks around long enough to be in a few pictures with her father and brother, and then she leaves while the others stay and take at least a thousand more pictures: some individual, some with Jane and Lizzy, some with Jane and BIngley, some with all the Bennet daughters. It’s fun, it really is, but Lizzy has to admit that no small part of her attention is taken up with figuring out what to do now. She missed her chance to talk to Darcy at graduation; will she have to text him now? Call him? Ask him to meet her somewhere so they can talk?

In the end, it turns out she doesn’t have to do any of those things. Some friends of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet wander by and they all start chatting, and Lydia runs into a friend, and Jane and Charlie are talking to his dad, leaving Lizzy momentarily unoccupied. And she’s just thinking that she’ll pop back inside and get a drink when she hears her name being called.

It’s Georgiana, accompanied by Mrs. Reynolds, and Lizzy is simultaneously happy to see her and disappointed her brother’s not with her.

“Your speech was amazing, Lizzy,” Georgiana says warmly. She’s fidgeting like she’s holding herself back from something, and Lizzy, genuinely pleased to see her young friend for the first time since their heartfelt conversation in the bathroom, goes ahead and hugs her. That appears to be the right thing to do, because Georgie hugs her back enthusiastically.

“Is that Lydia?” Georgie asks quietly, peering over Lizzy’s shoulder.

“Yeah, do you want to meet her?”

“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt her conversation,” Georgie says. “I just—I was wondering how she’s doing.”

She must know at least part of what happened to Lydia, Lizzy realizes. “She’s doing well. Thanks, I hear, to your dad and brother.”

Georgie smiles quietly. “They were glad to help. And I think they’re glad that this means they’re finally getting George some help.”

“Is he . . .”

“Still in rehab,” Georgie confirms. “Will says he’s not thrilled about it, but I guess ending up in the hospital freaked him out, so he’s cooperating. For now.”

“Where's the rest of your family?” Lizzy asks as casually as she can manage.

It must not be very convincing, because Georgie fixes her with an amused look. “My dad is still off talking to people. Will thinks he dropped something back in the auditorium, so he’s looking for it. Mrs. Reynolds and I wanted to come see the grounds, so that’s what we’re doing while we wait for them to be done.” She lifts her eyebrows in an innocent expression. “I bet you could catch Will inside. Alone. You know, if you had anything you needed to say to him. And I bet Mrs. Reynolds and I could keep your family busy for a while if you wanted to make sure you weren’t interrupted.”

Lizzy can only laugh in surprise. “You’re very devious.”

“I just like being helpful,” Georgie says serenely.

Lizzy hesitates. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she recommends. “But . . . I do need to talk to him.”

“Go,” Georgie grins. “I’ll tell your family you’ll be back soon.”

So Lizzy takes off her cap and gown and places them on the grass, and with one last smile for Georgie, she hurries away.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy’s in luck: she runs into Darcy as soon as she turns down the hall that leads to the auditorium. He’s walking toward her; he must have already visited the auditorium and found whatever it is he lost. Like her, he has shed his cap and gown, so she can see that he’s sharply dressed in a vest and tie and just looks unfairly handsome.

“Lizzy,” he says, sounding surprised, and comes to a stop.

“Darcy,” she replies, stopping in front of him. “Great job on your speech today.”

He looks quietly pleased. “Thank you,” he says. “You did a great job as well. I found it very thought-provoking.”

She wonders if he guesses that he was the inspiration for her speech on being willing to reconsider first impressions and preconceived notions. “Thank you,” she says, and then, while her courage is still high, asks, “Do you have a minute?”

He blinks. “Of course,” he says, sounding a little surprised, “but Georgiana and Mrs. Reynolds are expecting me. Perhaps I should—”

“Actually, Georgie is the one who told me where to find you,” Lizzy says. “I ran into them outside. She said they’re happy to wander the grounds a little while longer.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

A door opens nearby, interrupting their solitude, and Lizzy looks around. “Come with me,” she says, and leads the way to a small hallway nearby. It leads to a rarely-used side door that opens to the outside; no one will bother them here.

Darcy follows her silently, and when she comes to a stop, he tucks his chin in a little bit, as she’s come to learn he does when he’s feeling a little awkward or anxious. “What do you need?”

“To say thank you,” she says promptly, not wanting to make him wonder any longer. “For Lydia—for tracking George down and hiring Mr. Epsom and going down to Youngetown. That has to have been your idea, right? I still don’t know exactly what happened, but you have to have been the one who got your dad involved, right?”

He gives her a tight, unhappy smile—she gets the sense he’s uncomfortable being thanked. “It was George’s fault she was missing,” he says. “Tracking her down was the least we could do.”

So they were after Lydia, not George, Lizzy thinks. Or at least Darcy was looking for Lydia; his dad and the PI were probably looking for them both. The thought makes her chest grow warm.

“Thank you,” she says again. “It would have taken the cops much longer because they didn’t have that credit card access, and who knows how long Lydia would have been hiding in that terrible hotel? We owe you so much.”

His brow furrows, as though he’s surprised or confused.

“What?” she asks.

He hesitates a few long moments, then confesses, “I’m a little surprised. I thought you’d be upset with me.”

Now it’s her turn to be surprised. “Upset?”

He looks down then, at some point past her left knee. “Right before I left your party,” he says, “you were angry with yourself because you could have prevented it if only you’d warned people about George’s true nature. I was certain it was only a matter of time before it occurred to you that the same thing could be said of me. Maybe if I’d warned more people at Longbourn about George’s character . . .”

She stares at the top of his lowered head in shock. Is this the reason he hasn’t contacted her since it happened? “That never even crossed my mind,” she says.

He looks up at her and she can see that he’s not convinced.

“I mean it,” she says. “I never once blamed you for any of this. And if the thought had crossed my mind, I would have ignored it. You know why? Same reason I stopped blaming myself after I came to my senses: I knew I’d done what I thought was best. I didn’t have any reason to believe that telling Lydia or anyone else would matter—I didn’t know she liked him so much, and I thought he was out of our lives for good when he went back to Pemberley. And I was trying to protect . . . certain people . . . by not spreading George’s story around. If I’d known there was any reason to be worried, I would have done something about it. But I didn’t, so I made the best decision I could based on the information I had. What happened was unfortunate, but it wasn’t my fault. And if it wasn’t my fault, then it wasn’t your fault either.”

“I should have tried harder to do something about George,” he insists; his dark eyes are fixed on her, and there is pleading in their depths.

She’s happy to reassure him. “You’ve been trying to do something about George for years,” she reminds him. “You found video evidence of him committing a crime. What more could you have done?” She gives him a soft half-smile. “Darce, it’s not your fault, and I’m not mad at you.”

He goes very still, and then he nods slowly. “Thank you,” he says softly.

Her smile grows, and then a thought that’s been on her mind for a while now comes to the fore. “How did your dad feel when you told him that George had taken Lydia and disappeared? Did he take it seriously? Or did he just keep insisting George could do no wrong?”

His sad little smile tells her everything she needs to know. “He was inclined to believe that there was some kind of misunderstanding. But I . . . put my foot down. I insisted that he pull up the credit card account. And when he saw that George had booked two nights in a row at a hotel in the bad part of Youngetown, he finally started taking it seriously.”

The mental image of Darcy putting his foot down with his dad makes her smile a little. “So you finally got your dad to confront something he didn’t want to be true,” she observes quietly. “You stood your ground and changed his mind. I’m proud of you.”

He stares at her, and the corners of his mouth turn up in a pleased little smile. “Thank you.”

“So is this why you haven’t talked to me? And why you didn’t come into the house when you dropped Lydia off? You thought I was mad at you?”

The smile drops and he shrugs uncomfortably, then nods.

“Honestly, I’m kind of relieved,” she admits.

His brow furrows. “Relieved?”

Now it’s her turn to shrug uncomfortably. “I thought—after what happened—maybe you just didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

“Why wouldn’t I . . .?”

This all very awkward all the sudden, but she can’t unsay what she just said. So she admits, “I thought maybe this whole thing had just reminded you—I know you think my family’s kind of a mess . . .”

He winces as though her words have caused him physical pain.

Now that it’s half out of her mouth, she finds she wants to continue her thought, to maybe finally get answers about where his head’s at. So she finishes, “I thought maybe you were thinking you were glad I rejected you in February.”

He shakes his head, his brow furrowed. “I am so sorry about what I said about you and your family that night. It was inexcusable and unkind and unfair. I just . . . I was hurt, but that’s no excuse for my behavior. Especially since I wouldn’t have felt so hurt if I hadn’t been so arrogantly convinced you were going to say yes. I was so caught up in my own worries about what my father would think if I started dating you that I never stopped to consider whether you wanted to date me . . . and whether my behavior for the months leading up to that would have made you at all inclined to like me. But, Lizzy—” He hesitates, appears to run out of steam, and ends on a mumble, looking down past her left knee again. “I could never feel glad that you rejected me.”

Oh.

Oh, good.

Because it looks like Darcy is not as over her as she feared.

Lizzy takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with a bright sort of hope that makes a smile spread across her face. “I don’t think I’m sorry I turned you down,” she says, and Darcy stiffens, his gaze still fixed on the ground. “We never would have worked at that point,” she goes on. “I needed to learn a lot more about you, and you needed to learn some humility and consideration for other people.”

Darcy hasn’t moved; he just keeps staring down at the ground.

She can hear the smile in her voice as she continues. “But do you know what I will be sorry about? If you never ask me out again.”

There’s a long moment of stillness. And then Darcy slowly lifts his head to look at her, a painful, uncertain sort of hope in his eyes.

She smiles at him.

He stares back. “Lizzy,” he says.

“Darcy,” she replies when he doesn’t go on.

A long, agonizingly silent moment passes. “Lizzy.”

She bites back a laugh. “Darce.”

He takes a deep breath. “Hold on a second,” he says, and she waits, confused but obedient, while he seems to ponder for a moment. “I just want to do it right this time,” he explains. “You deserve better than my insults last time.”

Relief floods through her. “I can’t disagree with you there.”

He takes a step forward so that she has to look up to see his face. His handsome features are serious, but she’s seeing uncertainty and hope in there too. “Lizzy Bennet,” he says formally, “I like you. Even more than I did back in February, which I didn’t think was possible. I always knew you were brilliant and funny and you never let anyone push you around, but now I know that you’re also kind and warm and forgiving and loyal.” He takes a bracing breath. “Is there any chance you would consider going out with me?”

Her heart is a balloon, so filled with the warmth of his regard and with the joy of knowing that he still cares about her that she thinks there’s a real chance it’s going to float right up out of her chest.

She could answer him, but there’s something else she’d really rather do right now. She gestures for him to lean in close, which he obediently does, still looking a little uncertain. And then she cups his face in her hands, goes up on her toes, and presses a gentle kiss to his mouth.

“Yes,” she says, falling back onto her heels and beaming up at him while he looks utterly stunned. “I would consider going out with you. In fact, I would like to go out with you.”

He’s still just staring at her like he doesn’t quite comprehend what she’s saying. So she figures she can be even more clear. She drops her hands from his face and takes a step back to make sure he’s really paying attention to what she’s saying. “I like you, Fitzwilliam Darcy,” she says. “I think I have for a while, even though I only admitted it to myself recently. You’re brilliant and loyal and kind and dependable and just so . . . good.”

He takes a deep breath. “You’re sure?”

She nods firmly. “I really thought we’d missed our chance, and it hurt so much. But if you’re really willing to give this thing a go after all the terrible things I said about you . . .”

A tiny smile quirks up the corner of his mouth. “In a case like this,” he says, “I think a good memory is unpardonable.”

She laughs, and he laughs, and then a intent look comes over his face. He steps toward her and gently cups one hand around the side of her neck and jaw, and then, looking nervous but determined, leans down. She tilts her head up in invitation, her eyes drifting closed, and a moment later, his lips brush against hers.

The way he kisses her is sweet but cautious; she wonders if he’s ever done this before. But it doesn’t matter; even with the tentative way he kisses her, she feels a delightful swooping sensation in the pit of her stomach, like she’s just jumped from a plane, excitement and joy and nerves all at once.

Maybe Darcy feels the same, and maybe he’s overwhelmed by it, because he breaks off the kiss but stays close, his forehead pressed to hers and his breath brushing over her lips. “Lizzy,” he whispers fervently.

“Darce,” she responds with a grin, wondering if he’s always going to just repeat her name when he gets overwhelmed.

“I—just—you—you really want this?” His fingers curl against the back of her neck, leaving a trail of tingling awareness across her skin, and Lizzy has been sure that she wants this for a while now but in this moment she is absolutely positive.

“I really want this,” she confirms, and feels him let out a shuddery breath, which makes her grin grow.

“Even with . . . everything I did . . .”

“Like you said, this is the wrong time to have a good memory. I think you and I should promise to only remember the parts of our past that make us happy,” she jokes, leaning back to look him in the face. He reluctantly opens his eyes to meet her gaze and drops his hands from her face. She misses the contact immediately, so she reaches out to catch his hands in her own. “I will forget that you were prideful if you forget that I was a very prejudiced know-it-all who refused to take the time to get to know you.”

“I didn’t give you any reason to want to get to know me,” he begins, but she shakes her head.

“Forgetting, remember?” she grins.

He hesitates, then a smile spreads over his face. “I will try not to focus on it.”

She smiles softly and squeezes his hands. “Darcy,” she begins.

His brow furrows for a moment, and then he asks, “Will you call me Will?”

“Will?” she repeats, surprised. Not even his best friend calls him Will; it seems to be reserved for family.

He gives her a little smile. “I started going by Darcy back in junior high; George was turning all my classmates against me, and just being so . . . and it was like a shield. A reminder to everyone that I was . . .” A self-deprecating, bitter little smile twists his lips. “Rich. Important. That they should leave me alone. But I’m done with that. George isn’t going to give me any more problems and I don’t want to keep insisting everyone call me Darcy.”

A sad little smile has taken up residence on her face, but it grows warmer as he gets to the end of his speech. “I’ve always liked the name Will,” she says, and he grins at her, broad and genuine, and it makes him so absurdly handsome, and how can she resist temptation like that? So she tugs on his hands to pull him closer, then reaches up to loop her arms around his neck and draw his face down to hers. He comes very willingly, and she goes up on her toes to kiss him.

His hands go to her waist, and the feeling of it makes her heart race, and Lizzy can’t help grinning into the kiss and pulling him closer. It’s looking like this might just be the smartest idea she’s had in her whole high school career.

. . . . . .

Chapter Text

. . . . . .

Lizzy would happily have spent another hour or two in that hall, learning the feeling of Will’s mouth against hers, but they really only get a few more moments before the buzzing of his phone in his pocket brings her back to reality and she reluctantly breaks away just far enough to say, “My family’s waiting outside.”

He sighs. “Mine too.” He hesitates, then lifts his face to press a kiss to her forehead, and okay, that’s adorable. He pulls his phone out, reads the message, and informs her, “My father says he’s going outside to meet Georgie and Mrs. Reynolds.”

Lizzy freezes. “And if they’re still with my family . . .” Then disaster will strike when Mrs. Bennet starts fawning over “that rich George Darcy,” is what she thinks and does not say.

Will seems to know what she’s thinking, and he gives her a smile. “It might be a little early for our families to meet each other,” he jokes, and she grins. “But . . . I don’t see any reason to actively avoid it.”

“You sure?” Lizzy asks. “Because there’s a 95% chance my mom’s going to do something embarrassing.” She hesitates. “And I know you were worried about what your dad thinks, and his expectations, and then he had to go rescue Lydia—”

“I don’t care about any of that,” he informs her firmly. “You’re amazing, and your family made you who you are today, and if my father doesn’t care for that, he’ll just have to learn to deal with disappointment.” He takes her hands in his and squeezes them gently. “I’ve wanted this for too long to let my father’s disapproval frighten me off now.”

Her grin grows.

“What?”

“You’re adorable,” she informs him, and he tucks his chin, flustered but clearly pleased. “If you’re sure . . .”

“I’m sure,” he says confidently. “I want to go tell everyone—” And then he halts and splutters a little, his confidence vanishing.

“That we’re dating?” she finishes helpfully.

He looks at her, his expression soft. “Are we?”

She squeezes his hand. “I hope so.”

“Me too,” he says. “So . . . we’re dating. You’re . . . my girlfriend.” He sounds like he’s trying the words out for size, and he must like how it sounds, based on how his grin brightens by a few megawatts.

“Yes, I am,” she informs him cheerfully. “So, boyfriend, should we go find our families?”

He grins back and agrees, and hand in hand, they walk outside.

The group is where they left them; Mr. Darcy has joined the group and seems to be chatting amiably with the other adults. Charlie, who’s talking to Jane, Lydia and Georgie, sees Lizzy and Darcy first and must notice their joined hands because his delighted shout of “What?!” carries across the lawn. Georgie turns and exclaims “Finally!” and Lydia says, in a self-satisfied voice, “I knew you liked him!” 

The adults turn then to see what the fuss is; Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Reynolds look delighted and Mr. Bennet looks amused, but Mr. Darcy just watches them approach with a calm expression on his face. Lizzy can’t tell if he’s just politely waiting to hear their news or if he’s very good at hiding his disgust.

“Father,” Will says when they’re close, “you remember Lizzy from the graduation committee, right?”

Mr. Darcy nods.

“Well . . . we are dating.”

And to Lizzy’s immense surprise, Mr. Darcy smiles kindly. “That’s excellent news. I enjoyed your speech today, Lizzy.”

And that’s it. After all that worry, Mr. Darcy doesn’t seem to care at all that she’s not as rich as the Darcys or that the family fortune was made from farm equipment or that he personally had to rescue Lydia from a trashy hotel in a seedy town. Lizzy had been so ready to bear his disapproval that his friendliness is almost a disappointing anticlimax.

Well, Lizzy thinks, give it time; her mom will say something embarrassing soon enough, and then Mr. Darcy will have reason to think less of her.

Georgie hurries over and grabs Lizzy’s free hand. “I’m so glad you two are dating,” she says. “Will likes you so much. He’s always so happy when he’s going to see you.”

“Georgiana,” Will hisses, and Lizzy glances at her boyfriend to see him looking unusually flustered.

And now Georgiana looks flustered. “Sorry, Will,” she says, sounding distressed. “I just got carried away.”

“Don’t apologize,” Lizzy laughs. “I enjoy hearing how much he likes me.”

And Will gives her an embarrassed but pleased look.

Mr. Darcy has been watching this exchange with an amused expression. “Well,” he says to the group at large, “it seems to me like it’d be cruel to break up the group now. Do you all have plans for dinner?”

“We have reservations with the Bingleys at Salmagundi at 5,” Mrs. Bennet says a little anxiously. “Of course, if you wanted to dine with us, we could make other plans—”

“Not to worry,” says Mr. Darcy. “I’m an investor at Salmagundi, and close friends with the chef. If I show up, they’ll make room for us.”

So it’s decided just like that—George Darcy doesn’t mess around when he’s decided he’s going to do something, clearly.

Before they go, Mr. Bingley wants to get some photos of Will and Charlie together; Mrs. Reynolds quickly jumps in to take a few of her own. Lizzy ends up standing next to Mr. Darcy, a little distance from the others.

“I hope you don’t mind that we invited ourselves along to your dinner, LIzzy,” he says cordially.

Lizzy glances over at Will and can’t help the bright grin that crosses her face. “I won’t complain about getting to spend more time with Will,” she says.

“Young love,” Mr. Darcy says with a chuckle.

She glances up at her boyfriend’s father. “So . . . you approve?”

Mr. Darcy smiles at her. “It’s not the 1800s; you don’t need my permission. But if it were, I’d have no complaints about you. You’re clearly intelligent and poised.” He hesitates, and when he goes on he sounds a little uncomfortable, as thought he’s not accustomed to being so open about his feelings. “And anyone who makes my Fitzwilliam smile like that is someone I am inclined to think well of.”

She can’t keep her surprise from her face, and her companion clearly sees it and seems startled. “You expected me not to approve?”

She shrugs. “Will was . . . concerned, when he first thought about asking me out. He felt like there were expectations about who he dates, and he wasn’t sure I’d pass muster.”

Mr. Darcy is quiet a long moment. “That’s my fault, no doubt,” he says. “I’ve been learning a lot about myself these past few weeks, and the ways I haven’t always prioritized my children. It would not surprise me to learn that I’d given Will the impression that he needs to choose the right girlfriend to please me. That is . . . something I’m going to need to work on.” A pained expression crosses his face, but then he turns to her with a little smile. “So, I have no intention of disapproving or interfering.”

“Thank you,” she says, surprised and pleased, and then she observes, “You didn’t seem very surprised when we showed up.”

He chuckles at that. “I’ve been expecting this for a while. I knew Will had you over for dinner and that he went to your birthday party, and then he insisted in the firmest terms that I help find your sister. I already suspected something was happening there. I’m glad he worked up the courage to ask you out.”

She smiles. “Me too.”

Soon they have to leave for their reservation at the restaurant. Lizzy would have liked to have Will ride with her, as she’ll be alone in her car, but he brought his own car too, so she ends up driving alone to the restaurant.

Once there, Mr. Darcy catches the attention of the maître d', who recognizes him immediately and is all smiles and warm welcomes. Though the restaurant is full, they have the entire party—the Bennets, the Bingleys, and the Darcys—seated together at a large table only a few minutes after their arrival.

The whole group talks together at first; Mr. Darcy, as the person in the group least acquainted with the others, wants to hear all about the Bennet sisters and Lizzy and Jane’s future plans.

“A Yale woman!” he exclaims happily when he hears that’s where Lizzy is going. “I’m a Yale man myself. Met my wife there too. Excellent school. I knew I liked you.” And then realization crosses his face. “So you’ll be there with Will.”

“Yep,” Lizzy agrees, and squeezes Will’s hand under the table. Mr. Darcy seems pleased.

In time, though, the talk breaks into smaller groups; the adults fall into conversation, and at the kids’ end of the table, Lydia and Georgie demand the story of how Lizzy and Will finally got together. Lizzy has to tell the story, because the question makes Will grow taciturn in the way that she’s come to understand means that he’s feeling embarrassed and shy. Georgiana sighs, starry-eyed, when Lizzy tells about Will’s rather sweet confession, and Lydia exclaims “Took you two long enough!”

Charlie and Jane are no less invested in the story, and the conversation turns into a lengthy discussion of the entire history of Lizzy and Will’s relationship. “I knew they’d be good together back in the autumn,” Jane informs them.

“It only took me six months to realize you were right,” Lizzy jokes.

“I’m just glad we got here eventually,” says Will, and squeezes her hand.

Salmagundi has an extensive dessert menu, but when their plates are cleared, Mrs. Bennet informs them that Mr. Darcy has invited them all back to the Pemberley estate for dessert.

Will manages to look pleased and concerned at the same time. “But Marcel—”

“I called him when we were leaving Longbourn,” Mr. Darcy says. “He’s had plenty of time to prepare for extra guests. Our cook,” he explains to Mrs. Bennet, who looks dazzled by the fact they have a French cook.

So twenty minutes later they are all at Pemberley, marveling at its massive and beautiful facade, and Lizzy feels a moment of awe to know that she’s dating the guy who lives here. It’s basically the American equivalent of dating a prince, and for a moment she is very intimidated. But then Will comes up next to her and takes her hand in his, slowly and tentatively like he’s still not quite confident that he’s allowed to do this, and her worries melt away. It’s Will, and he’s adorable, even if he is unreasonably rich. So she squeezes his hand and tells herself she’s not allowed to be intimidated.

The Darcys and Mrs. Reynolds give the rest of the group a tour; this one goes to a lot of areas the public tour didn’t, and the Darcys all tell a lot of stories about growing up here. Mrs. Bennet, who has really been remarkably well-behaved so far, finally loses whatever self-control she was employing because she starts exclaiming about how old and expensive everything in the house must be.

Lizzy is so focused on valiantly hiding her winces that she’s almost startled when Will squeezes her hand. When she looks up at him, his expression says everything: he knows what she’s thinking, and he doesn’t mind her mother. She decides to trust that look, even if she can see a hint of dismay filling in the space behind Mr. Darcy’s polite smile.

After all, it’s her mother, and Lizzy has learned to love what’s good about her and ignore what’s embarrassing. Will seems willing to do the same, so Mr. Darcy will just have to learn to do so as well.

Dessert is set up in the conservatory, under the palm trees—Will’s doing, no doubt, based on the self-satisfied look he sends Lizzy—and they all enjoy the most amazing chocolate tart with ice cream that Lizzy’s ever had. She’s amused to see that during the meal, Lydia and Georgie strike up a conversation; she would have thought that they had absolutely nothing in common (other than George, of course) but Lydia appears to be giving Georgie tips on surviving high school, and Georgie is paying close attention.

Lizzy looks around the table at the people she loves so much—her family, Charlie, Will and Georgie—and smiles in contentment. This is one of those memories she’ll carry with her to keep her company when she’s away at Yale.

But she’ll also have Will, and the thought makes her smile.

They talk and laugh until finally the party breaks up; Mr. Bennet and Mr. Bingley both have early mornings tomorrow, and Charlie wants Jane to come by his house and see his new car—a graduation present from his father.

Will looks at his watch. “It’s nearly sunset,” he observes.

“Probably,” Lizzy agrees.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

And since Lizzy drove her own car to the house, she’s at liberty to stay. So she bids her family and the Bingleys goodbye, and smiles at Georgie, then follows Darcy out of the conservatory. 

He leads her up more staircases and down more halls than she can count, until finally, in a large sitting room, they step out a set of French doors and onto a massive balcony. Stretching out before them is the back gardens and grounds of Pemberley, and over the trees, the lake stretches out, placid and mirror-like. Above it, the sky is a riot of color—vivid oranges and reds fading to a gentle purple, so the wispy clouds over the horizon glow like embers, and the lake below reflects the wild fire of the sky. It is breathtaking.

“I told you,” Will’s voice comes from beside her, and she blinks and looks at him. “Back in the fall,” he reminds her. “I told you the sunsets over the lake are spectacular here.”

She laughs. “You did say that,” she recalls, “and you were right. This is the best view in the valley.” He looks pleased, and she tilts her head at him. “You really wanted to make sure I saw this view?”

“I thought you’d appreciate it,” he says, then admits, “and also I didn’t want you to leave yet.”

She grins. “Good. I didn’t want to leave yet either.”

There is a comfortable outdoor sofa on the balcony, and they curl up on it, her head on his shoulder and their arms entwined—alone for the first time since they finally came to an understanding.

There is so much to talk about. She admits that, looking back, she first noticed she was developing feelings for him when he invited her to have dinner with him and Georgie. 

His memory is not so precise: “I was in the middle of falling for you before I knew I’d started.”

He admits he tried to avoid her back in the fall so as to avoid falling even deeper—so worried was he about expectations of who he dates—but that he couldn’t help himself at Charlie’s party; he wanted to know what it was like to dance with her, at least once, so he asked her despite all the reasons he worried it was a bad idea. And once he’d gone back to Pemberley, he found himself missing her constantly, desperate to see her again.

“So when you were at the leadership seminar, it felt . . . providential.”

“Which I think I disproved when I rejected you with extreme prejudice.”

“Yeah, I didn’t like that,” he says bluntly, and Lizzy laughs hard, even as she curls in closer to assure him that her mind has completely changed since then. “But even so, by the time I finished writing you that letter, I was done being mad. But that meant I just had two months to fixate on everything I’d done to make you dislike me.”

“You reunited Charlie and Jane,” she points out. “And you changed—you improved. You’re . . . I don’t know. You don’t have such a defensive wall around you anymore. When I showed up unexpectedly at this house and you were so nice and welcoming, even though I didn't think I deserved it, I started getting to see the real Fitzwilliam Darcy. And I fell for that guy pretty fast.”

“Thank goodness,” Will jokes. “Think of how awkward it would be seeing you at college if you still hated me.”

She presses her lips to his shoulder and rubs his arm with her free hand. “I’m sorry I was so harsh when I turned you down. And I’m sorry if I something I did made you believe I wanted you to ask me out then.”

He hesitates.

“There was something?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Well, like I said then, I read too much into our early morning walks. But also . . .”

“Also?”

Another shrug. “You’d started calling me ‘Darce.’ It seemed like your special little nickname for me. And I thought . . .”

Her heart sinks, remembering how often she said that name in a mocking manner. “I’m sorry that was confusing,” she says. “But I had come to mean it affectionately by the end.”

He grows still. “Really?”

At her nod, he goes on, “Well, I wouldn’t mind—if you wanted to call me that—now and then—”

She chuckles. “Good,” she says. “I’ll save it for special occasions.” Then she nudges him with her shoulder. “Darce.”

Will admits that he’d planned on trying to talk to her at graduation, but that he hadn’t planned on doing more than wishing her well, not daring to think she’d be anything but unhappy to see him. He also admits that his speech, about learning from failures, was inspired by his colossal failure when he asked her out that night at Rosings.

“Really?” Lizzy laughs. “My talk was inspired by you.”

He laughs as well, and with her head on his shoulder she can feel that laugh reverberate through him, and she makes a silent vow to make him laugh as often as possible. He’s been through enough already; he deserves some laughter in his life.

“So,” he says as the sun finally slips entirely below the horizon, “Yale.”

“Yale,” she agrees.

“And are you and I going to—I mean, once we’re there . . .”

“I hope so,” Lizzy says. “I guess we can’t know what will happen over the summer. But as far as I’m concerned right now, I hope I can still call you my boyfriend when we head off to Yale.” Then she jokes, “Although Clara Goulding has been talking a lot about the new dating pool we’ll all have when we go off to college. If you want to be free to check out all the Yale ladies—”

“No,” he says, simply and firmly and so assuredly that a tiny little part of her that she didn’t realize was a bit anxious breathes a sigh of relief. “Like I already told you, I’ve wanted this for too long to give it up so easily. Besides—” He hesitates, squeezes her hand, turns his head to drop a kiss on her hair. “Everything’s better when I’m with you.”

She can feel the silly, besotted grin growing on her face. “For someone who can be a little uncomfortable talking to other people,” she observes, “you’re really good at saying cute things.”

“Only because I’m saying them about you and they’re true,” he argues. “Lizzy—” He sighs, then continues. “I’ve been a selfish person my entire life. My parents taught me good principles, but they also focused so much on our name, our image, that I grew up . . . kind of a snob. I cared about the people close to me, but I wasn’t very good at reaching out beyond my own circle. And who knows how much longer I would have been like that if I hadn’t met you? You rejecting me felt awful, but I grew from it. I was finally humbled. You showed me that all my wealth and my family name weren’t enough to impress the kind of girl I really wanted to impress. You didn’t care about my money; you cared about who I was as a person.”

“I think you’ve always been a good person,” she assures him. “You just let it get hidden under other things for a while. And it’s not like I’ve been flawless this whole time.”

He turns his head so he can gaze down at her, a soft smile on his lips. “Well, I guess I’ll need you to tell me if I start slipping again.”

An answering smile grows on her face as she looks up at him. “Sounds like that’s a job that would require me to be around for a long time.”

“Ages,” he agrees promptly.

Her smile fully blooms. “Sounds good to me.”

And he kisses her again, while above them the stars twinkle into being and the riotous sunset darkens into a gentle night.

. . . . . .

fin