First Impressions: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Adaptation

Chapter 28

I think I've made a terrible mistake.

Liz typed the message out for Jane but didn't move to send it. The cursor blinked at the end of the sentence. She stared at it for a moment longer, sighed, and then exited out of the app. She threw her phone onto Jane's empty, neatly made bed and sighed again, putting more force into the exhalation.

She leaned back in the desk chair until it wobbled slightly, draping her arms back until they flopped back away from her shoulders. Maybe she wasn't sending it because it was untrue. Would she have said yes to Darcy if she knew the contents of the letter before? Probably not, but she also wouldn't have insulted him to his face. The mistake was not the refusal but the manner in which she did it.

And even then... The opening had been satisfactorily blunt, as arrogant as she might have dared hope. It was easy to be furious with undue pride; he held his own opinions high enough that he felt no remorse for the injuries he inflicted against Jane, whatever the actual words read. He had broken her sister's heart by proxy. But it was also true that Chip took his word without question, not bothering to ask Jane about her feelings in the first place. It was like they had both forgotten that Jane was a real, living person who would be happy to speak for herself. She was not especially shocked by Caroline's role in the separation. It was almost funny how innocently Darcy presented her in his letter. At least his intentions, misguided as they were, were out of genuine affection. Caroline knew better, but she helped him out anyway.

It was easy to keep her anger burning when she thought about her sister and Chip. It was easy to be angry when he wrote like that.

But the story about Wickham. That made her pause, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it was horrible—one of the worst things she had ever read. It was a weighty accusation to throw around, and one that definitely would not be a rumor he would want spread. It implicated Wickham, certainly, but also exposed his sister and even Darcy himself. He covered up a crime, after all. And paid in to blackmail. And he implicated his father in bribery with the letter.

And then he said she could speak to Robert about it, if she chose. Or even Bingley, for surely he would know something of the mess, if she had a way to contact him other than the phone number Jane said no longer belonged to him. It was all slightly overwhelming. She groaned and pushed herself upright, laying her arms across her desk before resting her forehead on them. Overwhelming and complicated.

What good would it do for Darcy to lie? He admitted outright that he broke up Chip and Jane. He admitted that he did not tell Chip Jane was in DC. He then exposed his sister, himself, and his father as he explained Wickham's story. The whole letter itself was almost too absurd to be false—even if he was a novelist.

Liz shook her head, rubbing her forehead and her hair against her arms, before pushing herself backwards. The wheels of the chair caught against the carpet and she nearly tumbled sideways. Standing up, she grabbed her phone from Jane's bed, unlocking it with a finger. She deleted the text. She wasn't going to send it anyway, so why pretend? She was too confused and conflicted to voice a single thought.

She jumped at the banging on her door, half turning to face it. Before she could even open her mouth to—what, let them in? Tell whomever was on the other side to go away? She hadn't decided yet by the time the door swung inward, revealing Cat and Lydia.

The letter sat, at once innocuous and conspicuous. To anyone else, it looked like a very large stack of folded paper, covered in closely written black ink. Maybe a letter from Jane or Charlotte or even Auntie Mel. To Liz, it looked accusatory. She wished she had something to place over it. Luckily, neither Cat nor Lydia had ever been especially interested in reading, even other people's mail. They made no comment or even signaled that they had noticed it.