Chapter Three
"Is he amiable?"
A week after our mother's birthday party at Longbourn, Jane and I had finally arrived back in our house in London, what I considered to finally be a safe enough proximity away from both my mother and Will Darcy, whom I had had to endure a further three times during my stay because my sister wanted to see Charlie Bingley. Darcy had been as insufferable as ever and it had been as much as I could do, every time I saw him, to not rip out my hair. Yeah, he was that bad.
I had promised Chaz, my best friend, that we would meet up when (or if) I returned from Longbourn. I had known Chaz for about fifteen years now, a fact that never fails to make me feel surprisingly old. The first time I saw him, I knew that we would be best friends. He was hilarious; utterly mad and totally gay. He has, hands down, the most interesting fashion sense I have ever seen on a real life human being and today, when I met him, he was wearing glaringly pink knee length shorts. Sometimes I worry for his sanity but he is far too entertaining for me to be too concerned.
He had managed to persuade me, today, to leave the comfort of my sofa in order to meet at our favourite coffee shop, just around the corner from where I lived. It was called Bean and had, by far, the most delicious coffee for miles around. Even though it was only quite a small shop, it was always busy and Chaz and I had practically fought for the window seats that we were now lounging on.
After taking a long sip of his Frappuccino, Chaz looked at me over the top of his straw. "So; tell me about him then. Was he hot?"
I blinked. Hadn't he just heard what I had been saying? "I was just telling you about him. His name was George, he was one of the bartenders at Mum's party..."
"No, no," said Chaz, waving a dismissive hand in front of his face. "Not him. The other one you mentioned. Darcy? You were obviously attracted to him."
I spluttered into my drink and had to cough for several seconds before turning to my friend, with what I hoped was a sufficiently horrified look on my face. After coughing for a couple more minutes (without so much as a pat on the back from my best friend may I just add, by the way), I managed to splutter out a rather pitiful, "What?"
Chaz shrugged. "It's obvious. You don't normally care if people are grumpy shits. I mean, you're a grumpy shit. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see that you were only so annoyed that he was so standoffish to you because you thought he was hot."
My jaw dropped. "What?" I said again. "I mean, sure, he was pretty good looking." I saw Chaz smirk in smug satisfaction. "But that doesn't mean I found him attractive!" I insisted. Then, forlornly, I added, "Does it?"
Chaz insisted on pressing me for more information, which made me squirm in my seat – what was this, the Spanish Inquisition? Now that I was being forced into thinking about it, I suppose I had found Will Darcy just a little attractive. In looks anyway, not so much his personality. But I didn't want to admit to Chaz that he was right. His head was big enough as it was, already. To be perfectly honest though, I don't think I wanted to admit it to myself either.
"Hey, look!" said Chaz, suddenly, making me jump in my seat. "It's Georgie!"
Snapping quickly out of my Darcy induced haze, I turned to see who Chaz was pointing at. Georgie had been a mutual friend of both Chaz and I through university. We had been pretty close during those days but I didn't get to see her as often as I would have liked because she had got married and recently had a baby. When I had told my mother of this, she had seen it as the perfect opportunity to tell me how wonderful Georgie was and that I should take a leaf out of her books. "Hi, Georgie," I said, shaking thoughts of my reprimanding mother out of my head. "What are you doing here?"
Georgie waved her hand absentmindedly. "I was just doing some shopping down the road and I just popped in to get a cold drink – it's boiling out there!"
Chaz rolled his eyes dramatically. "Tell me about it," he said. "I used deodorant this morning, but I'm still a little damp."
I stared at him for a moment, in silence, more than a little disgusted, and wondered if he was joking. I couldn't be completely sure.
Wisely deciding to gloss over the subject, Georgie said briskly, "Anyway, I'm glad I ran into you. I was going to call both of you later on. I'm having a dinner party tomorrow and it's been so long since we've all seen each other. I've got a couple of other friends coming and my brother's just got back in town after a long business trip. You've never actually met him, have you? It'll be a pretty casual evening – up for it?"
"Definitely," we said and Georgie gave us more details about the evening. Then, in her usual ditzy way, she rushed off, saying something along the lines of relieving her husband, Hugh, from babysitting duties. Georgie's son was the most adorable child I'd ever met – I hazarded a guess that he was almost three now and if history would repeat itself, he loved me. (See, I really do have a way with kids!) Chaz and I waved our goodbyes as our friend hurried out of the café.
"Is she muttering to herself?" I asked, chuckling.
She had always been forgetful and scatter brained, so we weren't surprised when she came rushing back in because she had left her sunglasses on the table.
.
At 7 PM the next day, I found myself trying to make myself look socially acceptable in time for the party. Even though Georgie had said it was only a casual dinner, I suspected that that didn't actually mean that I could turn up in the pyjamas that I'd been wearing all day. I picked up my phone to stop the incessant beeping that was my ringtone. I was mid-way through attempting to neatly paint my toenails, so I had to awkwardly hold the phone somewhere between my neck and my shoulder; needless to say, not comfortable at all. "Hello?" I grunted.
"What are you wearing?" said Chaz, by way of a greeting. For some, hearing those words led onto a saucy phone call. For me, it meant the fashion police were on patrol. Chaz always tried to control what I was wearing but, tonight, I had firmly decided that I would refuse to let myself end up looking like a Wham music video extra.
"Um, just a white dress, nothing showy. Why?"
"Just seeing how I should colour coordinate with you. I have a Ralph Lauren cricket jumper and white chinos that I can wear. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Sure."
"Oh, Lizzie? I'm driving. I don't want a repeat of last time." The 'last time' I had driven Chaz somewhere, I had accidentally crashed into a dustbin while trying to park the car. I still maintain that there was no way I could have seen the bin from the angle that my mirror was at, but Chaz wouldn't buy it. "See you soon!" He said, in a sing-song voice that he knew irritated me.
I blew in the direction of my toe nails, in an attempt to dry them off. No matter how long I spent trying to dry them, I knew that they would smudge anyway, so I didn't waste too much time on it. I pulled on a simple white cotton shirt dress and dabbed on some light pink lip gloss and mascara. By the time I had done my hair, Chaz had arrived (he was persisting in knocking out the rhythm of 'Barbie Girl' on the door knocker).
"I'll get the door!" Jane called from downstairs.
"I'm almost done, I'll be down in two minutes," I yelled in reply. I slid my phone into my bag and put on my brown leather sandals. I was not a fan of these open toed monstrosities what with the obscene amount of times I'd stubbed my toes whilst wearing them, but the words of my mother on prom night always came back to haunt me; "No pain, no gain." I grimaced.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and skipped down the stairs. "I don't know when I'll be back, so don't wait up for me, Janey," I said. "I've already got my keys," I said, seeing her open her mouth and anticipating what she was going to say.
Chaz was waiting for me by his car outside the house. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm going to drive us to Georgie's place."
I pouted. "But I wanted to drive."
He narrowed his eyes at me comically. "Get in my car. And yes, I know exactly where I am going and what the address is and I need absolutely no help from you whatsoever."
I couldn't resist the urge to stick out my tongue at my friend for his dig at the fact that I'm probably the world's biggest backseat driver...possibly ever. It's the reason why Jane lets me drive us everywhere without putting up a fight because, she says, it's preferable to me trying to direct her. I can't help it – I'm pretty certain that backseat driving runs in my DNA because my mother is exactly the same. Lord help the poor human trying to drive me and my mother anywhere.
We arrived at Georgie's house in about twenty five minutes, even though I know that we could have got there sooner if Chaz had taken my advice and followed my shortcut off the South Circular. We knocked on Georgie's shiny black front door, with a gift of a bottle of wine in hand.
When the door opened, I almost dropped the drink.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I all but shrieked. "Are you following me, or something?"
Standing in front of me was Will Darcy, who I'm pretty sure, by now, was haunting me.
Chaz's eyes were darting back between me and the Annoying Asshole with some concern. "What's going on?"
I put the hand that wasn't holding the bottle over my eyes, counted to three, then took it away again, hoping that this was all some kind of crazy dream; no, not dream – nightmare. I was disappointed to realise that this wasn't a dream because Darcy was still standing, smirking smugly at my obvious discomfort. I gestured towards Darcy with a shaky hand. "This is the one I was telling you about," I said to Chaz distractedly.
I heard Georgie's voice echoing down the hallway. "Will? Aren't you going to let them in, you big idiot?" I heard her footsteps approaching. Georgie pushed past the Arrogant Asshole, leant forward and kissed Chaz and I our cheeks. Still half fuming in annoyance at Darcy's smugness and half in shock, I just shoved the wine bottle towards her, rendered speechless.
"I see you've met my brother," she said. Wait, what? Darcy's her brother? "Will, this is Chaz and-"
"We've met," Darcy said, cutting her off sharply.
Georgie seemed a bit put out and more than a little confused by the awkward tension between us both. I felt that I should step in. "I met him when Jane and I went to stay with my parents," I explained. "Your...brother...and Charles Bingley were up the road at Netherfield. But wait – Georgie, your surname wasn't ever Darcy? Even before you were married?"
Georgie shook her head. "Will's a half-brother really. That's why he's so old," she said, teasingly elbowing him in the ribs. Darcy evidently had the emotional capacity of a thimble because he didn't so much as crack a smile. "And why he's got no humour, evidently." She rolled her eyes.
As we walked down the hallway to the reception room, Georgie's son Ben came thundering down the stairs, like one of those wind-up toys, wearing an adorable dinosaur onesie. Seriously, could this kid get any worse? Georgie's husband, Hugh, came rushing after him, a pained expression on his face. "I couldn't stop him," he said, panting, to his wife. "He wanted to see Lizzie."
I bent down to the toddler's eye level and gave him a big hug. "Hi Ben!"
"Hello Lizzie," he replied. The Zs in my name came out sounding like THs (yet more adorableness) because of his baby lisp.
"Are you supposed to be in bed?" I asked him, with mock seriousness.
He bit his lip, obviously having an internal debate over whether he should lie or not. "Maybe," he finally settled on, making me giggle.
I looked at Hugh, feeling more than a little sorry for him. Although he was very good with Ben, Georgie often moaned that he had absolutely no authority over his young son, made worse by the fact that the thirty year old man was an absolute sucker for puppy dog eyes. I looked at Ben and paused for a beat. "First one to your bedroom wins!" I let Ben have a head start before I began to chase him to his room that I remembered from when I babysat for Georgie a while ago. "I'm going to catch you!" I said, hearing him shriek with laughter up the staircase.
When he had settled down, I tucked him up like I used to do with Lydia when she was younger and still cute. I pulled down the blinds over the windows, and then clicked the door quietly shut behind me, noticing that he was already drifting off to sleep.
.
Back downstairs in the reception room, Hugh poured me a glass of wine. "Thank you so much for that, Lizzie," he said gratefully. "I'm hoping that this is just the Terrible Twos. He just won't do what he's told at all."
I shrugged. "If you saw some of the kids that I have to deal with at school, you would see that Ben is a complete angel in comparison."
Hugh guffawed. "An angel? Try telling that to Will." He pointed at his brother in law, who was talking to, who I assumed was, two of Georgie and Hugh's friends. "Ben wanted him to play with his toys with him in the bath. Long story short, that's my shirt that Will's wearing now. He was completely soaked by the time his son was finished with him."
I snorted with laughter. "I like the way Ben thinks." Seriously, if it had been socially acceptable, I would have greatly enjoyed soaking Darcy with a bucket of water too. Hearing our laughter and probably feeling our eyes on him, Will looked over at us, scowling slightly when he realised that he was the butt of our jokes, only making us double up even further.
Besides the two that the Arrogant Asshole was talking to, there were a few other of Georgie and Hugh's friends there, so I chatted with them for a while Georgie finished the dinner preparations. I tried to keep my distance from Will Darcy, but that plan fell apart when it came to dinner...
"Food's just about ready," Georgie said, poking her head round the door. "If you all want to take a seat in the dining room, I can bring it out. There's place cards already put down on the table, which should hopefully make things a bit easier," she said, beckoning us into a room with a long laid table.
I searched for my name on the handwritten little white cards, hoping that I vaguely knew the person I was sitting next to. Although I didn't want to complain, I detested people telling me where to sit. I can be a bit awkward with people I don't know well, especially if I'm forced into talking with them for a long time. When I saw who I was sitting next to my heart sank. Boy, did I know them alright. My name card was next to Will Darcy's; just bloody typical. I shot an appealing look towards Chaz's direction, opposite me, silently willing him to swap with me.
Needless to say, the little bugger just grinned and sat himself squarely down in the seat he had been designated next to Hugh. With an ugly scowl that just made Chaz grin even wider, I plopped into my chair. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that only told me that things were about to get a lot worse. When the Arrogant Asshole sat down beside me, I felt the hairs on my arm stand up on end and shivers raced through my body. I utterly hated what he did to me.
Unsurprisingly, I cheered up a bit when the food was brought out – that's what comes with being permanently peckish. I remembered Georgie being a good cook from our uni days and her delicious smoked salmon parcels effectively shut me up for a good ten minutes. It should be pointed out, though, that shutting me up with food isn't particularly difficult. I even began to feel a bit more optimistic about spending another hour or so sat next to Darcy, who had done his level best to distance himself from me as much as possible, almost visibly leaning in the opposite direction. It was quite relieving, actually, because I meant I didn't have to talk to the prat. It was easy enough to ignore him – he made minimal conversation to everyone, usually only sticking to monosyllables. He was acting as if he would be more at home in a mortuary than here at the dinner party.
I made it through the main course without any war wounds too, filling my time making faces at Chaz across the table and discussing Ben with Hugh who was sitting opposite me. But it was during desert that things began to get...tricky. From her position at the head of the table, on Darcy's side, Georgie decided to get my brother and me talking.
"So, Lizzie, tell me how you met Will. I don't think you ever actually got around to telling me earlier."
I could practically feel Darcy gearing up to butt in with his (completely inaccurate) version of events, so I quickly said, "He basically tried to run me and Jane over in his car."
I saw Georgie analysing my face, trying to decide whether or not I was joking. "He did?" She questioned, her head tilted in confusion.
This time, it was Darcy who managed to speak first. "Actually," he said, making me want to roll my eyes, "Elizabeth was driving slower than a geriatric snail and didn't bother to use her indicator light to show that she was about to turn. So, really, it was her who almost crashed into me."
"Excuse me!" I exclaimed in protest. "Firstly, I think you'll find that I most certainly was using my indicator light. I'm a very careful driver, for your information." I could imagine Jane snorting at that statement if she had been present, but I shook my head of that mental image. "Secondly, as I'm sure you've noticed, nobody calls me Elizabeth, except for my mother. Last time I checked, you were not my mother."
"No and I wouldn't want to be that crazy old bat," Darcy muttered, just loud enough for me to hear, although I wasn't sure if that was entirely intentional (I did have pretty good hearing).
I narrowed my eyes at him dangerously. As much as my mother pisses me off sometimes, I won't stand for anyone (except me) badmouthing her. "How dare you?" I hissed darkly, feeling myself start to shake with anger. "How dare you say that about my mother in front of me? I can't quite tell if you are incredibly stupid or incredibly rude but I have the feeling that it's an unappealing combination of both. You have no right to say that. You don't know anything about my mother and what little you do know is only good. She's been nothing but a hospitable host towards you and you know it."
Darcy decided to throw in his two pennies worth and said venomously, "She may have let me into her house, but why? It's completely obvious that she was just trying to pair up your sister with Charlie. She was bragging about it to all her friends. And then when you went off with that...bartender," he said the word as if it were poison on his tongue, "She almost died and went to heaven. I mean, how desperate must she be to get rid of you if George Wickham is all it took to get her excited?"
Georgie, who had been silent in shock up till this point, gasped at the same time as I did. I rarely cry in public. Heck, I hate crying in privacy too; my face goes all puffy and red and whatever makeup I have on just dribbles down my face until I look like the racoon from Pocahontas. But at that moment, I felt the bitter sting of tears welling up behind my eyes and I had to bite my lip hard to try and stop them flowing over. The fact that my mother was getting even more insistent in regards to my boyfriend-less state had been a concern niggling away in the back of my mind for some time; to have it voiced by Darcy, of all people, was particularly painful.
I pushed my chair back sharply, gaining the attention of some of the other dinner party guests, and swiftly left the room to get away from the suffocating presence of Will Darcy. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Chaz getting up from his seat to in order to come after me. His eyes were blazing and through my tears that were now flowing down my cheeks, I truly appreciated him acting as my knight in shining armour after all these years. I leant against the wall of the hallway by the front door after having picked up my purse. I tried to take a couple of deep calming breaths to suppress my crying but I only succeeded in giving myself hiccups. I could have punched something in my frustration. Georgie and Chaz came out into the hallway.
"Do you want me to take you home now?" Chaz asked me kindly, rubbing a reassuring hand up and down my arm.
"Yes please," I said pitifully through my sniffles. "I'm sorry to have to drag you away. You can stay if you want and I'll just grab a cab. I don't want to ruin your evening. And Georgie, I've messed up your lovely dinner.
"Don't be silly," said Georgie, squeezing my shoulder gently. "You can rest assured that I'll be having very strict words with my brother. I'm absolutely mortified at what he's said, completely appalled, honestly. I've never been so ashamed of him."
"I think if I had to stay in a room with him for much longer, I may end up socking him for making you cry," Chaz said, looking scarily murderous. "No offence," he added as an afterthought to Georgie.
"Absolutely none taken," our friend said, waving off Chaz's words. She leaned forward and gave me a tight hug. "I'm sorry my brother's been such a prat," she said, rubbing my back sympathetically. "We'll meet up again sometime soon on our own, alright?"
I nodded pathetically and allowed Chaz to lead me out of the house and into his car.
.
Later that evening, in his central London townhouse, Will Darcy mulled over what had happened that evening, while nursing a large glass of whiskey in front of the news channel. He wasn't quite sure why he'd said those words out loud and mused that it was as if they had just somehow slipped off the tip of his tongue. He hadn't even realised that he'd voiced his own internal thoughts out loud until it was too late and he'd seen the tears of embarrassment well up in her big green eyes. He felt like the world's biggest bastard. Hell, he probably was. He'd barely spoken for the rest of the evening after Elizabeth's swift exit from the dinner party and he was certainly in the dog house where his sister was concerned. Her few choice words about how Lizzie was one of the sweetest girls she knew and how she was so ashamed of his behaviour had had the desired effect. He felt terrible but didn't know what to do about it.
After all, it wasn't as if the girl knew how he felt about George Wickham, the man who he'd walked in on, eight years ago, when he was twenty four, banging his (now ex) fiancée, just two weeks before their planned marriage. He had sworn to himself that he'd never see or speak to his former best friend again, so it had been quite a shock to the system to run into him at the Bennett party, causing him to hide in the gardens for the rest of the evening. He had taken comfort in the fact that he was obviously a good deal more successful than Wickham (who becomes a bartender after taking a degree in engineering?) but his feelings were confused when he saw how well Wickham and Elizabeth were getting on. The scumbag didn't deserve happiness after playing a significant role in destroying Darcy's own. He winced as he remembered how he had snapped at Elizabeth when she'd found him in the garden, probably helping her come to the conclusion that he was a complete and utter prick.
The mother wasn't even that bad, really. She was slightly eccentric, maybe, but actually rather endearing. It was probably just because the whole idea was quite alien to him, having grown up without a mother figure for most of his life, instead being brought up by a strict, often absent father.
And yet, despite Georgie's threats and coercions and his own guilt, Darcy just couldn't bring himself to apologise to Elizabeth. He had too much pride for that; egotism causes enmity after all.
.
Author's note:
Hi Wattpad users! Just to let you know that if you are reading from Chapter 3, I have updated the previous two chapters – there's a couple changes to the storyline so it would help if you re-read them.
Enjoy x