The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet (21 page)

“OMG, yes,” Lydia said. “Anything’s better than standing around pathetically staring at a door or at Darcy. Speaking of which . . .”

I followed Lydia’s gaze. To find William Darcy headed right for us.

“He’s coming this way,” Lydia squealed through her smile. “Now’s your chance!”

“My chance for what?”

“Both barrels!” she said, and she shoved me forward.

I nearly tripped straight into Darcy’s chest. But I caught myself.

“Lizzie,” he said.

“Darcy,” I replied. “Hello.”

“Would you care to dance with me?”

Out of everything he could have said, I did not expect that.

“Dance? Now?”

“Yes. If you’re willing.”

“Umm . . .” I was caught completely off guard. By the events of the party, by Lydia pushing me, and now by Darcy. That is the only justification I can give for having said,
“Okay. I mean, sure.”

As he led me out onto the patio, I glanced back at Lydia.
Don’t you dare video this
, I mouthed over my shoulder. She pouted, but she put her phone away, and then flounced off to
cause trouble somewhere else. Leaving me with Darcy.

A few other couples joined us on the dance floor. If we had been downstairs, the music would have been so loud and fast that we wouldn’t have been able to talk. But instead, the jazz trio
struck up an easy mellow number, and as Darcy’s hand came around my back, the silence had to be filled.

“You have to let me lead.”

That Darcy. Full of conversation.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t?” I asked as we began to move.

“Experience.”

Oh, yes. We’d gone through this whole farce before at the Gibson wedding.

“Perhaps it’s best to not judge a person on one dance alone. After all, if I had done that, we wouldn’t be dancing now.” In reality, I
should
have done that, but
. . . yeah, caught off guard.

“Point taken,” he said, and guided me through a turn surprisingly well. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I think we were waltzing. “However, I am glad you danced with me, and
gave me this second chance.”

I could see that he was trying his best to be agreeable, but given the fact that I was determined to hate him, I really wasn’t in the mood for it.

“I find second chances to be a very good thing. Don’t you?”

“I suppose. If they are deserved.”

“Aren’t they usually?”

“Not in my experience,” he replied.

“So in general, you find your first impression to be correct.”

“Don’t you?” he echoed.

“Yes . . . but I like to think that I give people the benefit of the doubt, initially at least,” I said.

“I am more than willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when I meet them,” he replied. “But if they show themselves to be not worth my time, I have no desire to have
them in my life.”

“That sounds . . . very clean.”

“It is.”

“And lonely,” I added, pleased to find that I’d caught him off guard for once. “So, you are willing to admit second chances are a good thing for those who deserve them,
but you don’t grant them yourself.”

“I . . . can think of very few times they are deserved.”

“George Wickham comes to mind.”

Darcy turned a deeper shade of snobby, if that’s possible, when he said, “George Wickham doesn’t deserve to even have his name spoken aloud.”

By you
, I thought.
To have his name spoken by you is too much give on your part, you conceited, suspender-wearing one-percenter
. But unfortunately, I didn’t say any of
that out loud. For some reason, both my barrels were failing me when I was smack-dab up against my target. I tried to rally. To bring the red out of my vision and return my voice to ice cold.

“You were very rude to him at Carter’s the other night,” I said, challenging. “Dare I say you hurt his feelings?”

“I’m really not concerned about George Wickham’s feelings.”

“I am,” I replied. “I consider George a . . . friend.” More than a friend, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Darcy. For some reason, the way he loomed above made
holding on to my bravery very difficult.

“George is very capable of making friends. He’s even more capable of using them.”

Spoken like someone who wouldn’t recognize a true friend if one came up and tapped him on the shoulder.

“He’s been unlucky, then, to have called you a friend once upon a time.”

I let my eyes fall to the front door again, across the lounge and inside the house.

“He’s not coming, Lizzie.” Darcy’s voice was a whisper in my ear.

“You don’t know that,” I said, whipping my gaze back to him. “I invited him. He could—”

“That man will not make an appearance. Of that I’m certain.”

And with that, Darcy confirmed my paranoid theories about why George wasn’t there at that moment. It was all his fault. Of course it was. There was no other explanation.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you? I wouldn’t think so.” One thing I would not tolerate was his pity.

Silence reigned over us then. Just moving in time to the music, and willing it to end. For me at least. Darcy, however, had his mind on other things.

“May I ask,” he said, “to what does your previous line of questioning pertain? About second chances, that is.”

“Just trying to figure you out, Darcy,” I said, suddenly tired. “You’re hard to read.”

“You’re not an easy read, either,” he said under his breath.

“Perhaps we are better off if we stop trying to read each other,” I replied. “And just say what we mean.”

I waited. Waited for the guts to come out with both barrels blazing and tell him off to his face. Waited . . . for him to say something first.

Apparently, I waited too long. Because as I was holding my breath the music stopped, and Darcy took his hand off my back and let me go.

“Thank you for the dance,” he said before he bowed (yes,
bowed
) and walked away.

I would have given anything to have Charlotte there then. To have someone to run to and talk everything over with. George would have been good, too—although, if he’d been there, I
would never have ended up dancing with Darcy. I would have even taken Mom at that moment, my desperation to not be alone with my thoughts was so acute. However, the flip side of the coin is I can
be thankful that my mother did not see me dancing with Darcy, lest she suddenly decide to stop disliking him and start planning fictitious wedding number two.

As it was, I wandered. Looking for my Jane, who would hopefully provide some relief. But she’d been missing for a little while.

She wasn’t with Bing. He was in the lounge talking to his parents, a forced grin on his face. Nor was she with Caroline, who I saw leading Darcy down a hallway, presumably to a place where
he could fake text in a corner to his heart’s content.

My last hope was Lydia. I found her downstairs, surrounded by guys, dancing—she was definitely enjoying herself too much to see me. (Luckily, Mom was not down there anymore. I think Dad
took her for a walk to get some air.) And, I decided, in about one more drink she was going to get cut off—by her big sister, if not by the bartender. I’m better at recognizing the
signs.

I wandered back upstairs, letting my feet soak in the pool for a moment. I wasn’t in the mood for a party anymore. I was sad and tired and I wanted to go home. I was even considering
roping in Lydia and getting my car from the valet, when I saw Caroline and Darcy walking quickly back into the lounge. Followed a few moments later by Jane.

“Jane!” I called out, grabbing my sister’s attention. She smiled when she saw me, but there was something a little off. Her face was a little too flushed. “Are you
okay?” I asked.

“Me?” she replied quickly. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Fine,” I said. “I guess. I just danced with Darcy, if you can believe it.”

Jane smiled. “You danced with Darcy. Willingly?”

I laughed. Jane just has that effect on me. Three seconds of her attention and the world feels 100 percent kinder.

“Hey,” Bing said, coming over to us and putting an arm around Jane’s shoulder. “There you are!” He looked like he’d really missed her. He also looked a little
tipsy. I guess I wasn’t the only one feeling a little stressed by this party. “Are you having a good time? I have to make sure all my guests are having a good time.”

“Of course we are,” Jane answered sweetly. “We’re having a wonderful time. Right, Lizzie?”

Given the lack of Wickham, the insanity of my mother, Lydia filming it, and the agitation from my dance with Darcy, there were a few choice things I could have said about this party.

But I just said, “Right. A wonderful time.”

Bing’s left town. No one can get in touch with Caroline—except for one text she sent me:

No one has any idea what happened. Least of all Jane.

One minute, she’s dropping off birthday cookies at Netherfield and the next she’s getting a message via Twitter—not even to her personally, but to social media at
large—that Bing’s gone back to LA.

And it doesn’t look like he’s coming back. Mom did a drive-by of Netherfield (okay, I went with her, I was so worried), and we didn’t even get past the gate. But at the top of
the drive we could see a moving van being loaded up with all their things.

Mom drove straight home and promptly collapsed on the couch, wailing that life was over. Not just Jane’s life, or her life, but
all
life.

As for Jane . . . she’s called in sick to work the last two days. She hasn’t come out of her room. She must be sneaking out in the night to refresh her tea supply and use the
bathroom, but other than that, I have no idea what’s going on. She’s gotten no answer from Bing. And it’s really starting to worry me.

I don’t think she ever told Bing about her forty-eight hours of worry. But if she did—and he still left? That would make him a bigger schmuck than I’d even thought
possible.

It would also certainly put a lot of other things into perspective. Such as getting stood up at Bing’s party is not the end of the world. Even when George finally called yesterday, and
told me that he’d ended up taking a friend to the hospital and his phone got stolen, I just told him it was fine, but I couldn’t really talk, since I was too busy worrying about
Jane.

How can someone be tossed aside like that, so carelessly? How can someone who I’d grown to like and respect treat anyone, but especially Jane, like something disposable?

Maybe Darcy’s predilection for discarding people rubbed off on him.

It makes me wonder if I knew Bing at all. If Jane knew him at all.

“What about this one?” Jane asked, clicking on the link. “They’re looking for a third roommate—I’d get my own bathroom. Oh, no, wait . . .
it says I’d get my own bathroom
key
.” She looked up at me. “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” I said, closing that link and going back to the search page. “Are you sure you don’t want to just stay with Aunt
Martha and Mary?”

“They only halve the distance between Los Angeles and here—it’s still going to take me over an hour to get into my new office in the morning,” Jane said. “It will
be fine for the first week or so, but I am going to find my own place.”

When Jane finally emerged from her room, and stopped pinning sad puppies on Pinterest, she still hadn’t heard from Bing. She was so confused and heartbroken, I knew this wasn’t going
to be solved with ice cream and tea. So I made the suggestion that she go down to Los Angeles to try to find him and talk to him.

What I didn’t suggest was that she transfer to her company’s Los Angeles headquarters and move there.

It’s actually a very good thing for her, career-wise. Jane and her boss had been talking about it for the past month or so—which makes me wonder if Jane was planning for the
possibility of moving to be with Bing, in an entirely different scenario.

It’s a step up both in title and salary, so Jane could possibly take her student loans out of deferment finally, provided she’s willing to live either with Aunt Martha or in a hovel.
And our parents are surprisingly supportive. Dad is happy about the new job, that she won’t just be fetching samples and coffee, and is taking her car into the shop to get it up to code. (I
heard my parents whispering about how much they can help Jane, and it turns out, not much. But Dad insisted on the car thing. He says it’s something dads have to do.)

And Mom is absolutely certain that Jane will find Bing and come back home married with toddlers. Which she would presumably have found on a street corner somewhere, considering Jane is planning
on coming home for Thanksgiving.

I’m a little less enthusiastic. Not to Jane’s face, of course. To her face, I’m the world’s most supportive sister. But I feel it’s all a little rushed. A guy
breaks up with her and a week later she’s moving. That’s a lot of life changes incredibly fast. Worse, this is the guy that she fell for—hard. That she realized she was in love
with a month before he decided to skip town. I just don’t want her to make a hasty decision that turns out to be painful or wrong.