The Pride and Prejudice of Musicians

by Jessica Daw

  She really did. Four days after that dinner, Lydia was gone, off to cavort indefinitely with Gia and Company. Kitty pouted for three full weeks after that, but then she started to . . . come into herself. She made new friends who weren’t quite as silly as the friends she and Lydia had made together, and even started dating a guy who didn’t make me wince every time he opened his mouth.

  In fitting with Lydia’s character, she kept up minimal contact with Mom and Kitty and none at all with the rest of us unless we happened to walk in during one of her infrequent and often short Skype sessions with Kitty. I wondered if I should miss her more but didn’t dwell on it too long. If I thought about Lydia, it was usually a vague, nagging worry that she would come to harm.

  And life went on. Dad went on being sarcastic and Mom went on not understanding him. Mary worked religiously at the bank and saved practically everything she earned for heaven knows what—probably so she’d be a billionaire when the rest of us figured out dreams don’t feed you. Kitty got decent-ish grades and started listening to country music, which Lydia had always expressly forbidden. Jane started smiling more, though she unhesitatingly turned down every guy who asked her out and winced if anyone mentioned Cade.

  I went on working for Dawn at the Garden Boutique and playing with my sisters at small events and almost never thought about Will Darcy. Of course, I couldn’t always control it—I’d go to a new movie and know he was the composer without even seeing his name, or he’d pop up in a dream and smile that disarming smile—but for the most part I’d moved on. Not that I needed to move on, since we hadn’t been in a relationship, but . . . I’d moved past our acquaintanceship and all its consequences.

  I certainly didn’t miss him. He was an arrogant jerk, and just because his face sometimes popped into my mind when other guys asked me out didn’t mean I’d changed my mind about that. He wasn’t a villain, but he wasn’t anywhere near perfect. Neither was I, but that was beside the point . . . at least mostly.

  Then in December, Mom interrupted one of our recording sessions. It was just four Bennet sisters now, joined by Mariah Lucas, who had turned out to have a voice that blended very well with mine.

  “You will never guess who your father just got off the phone with,” she panted, her hair flyaway.

  “Who?” Mariah asked in her wide-eyed, excited puppy way, apparently not realizing Mom was referring to our father, not hers.

  “A Mr. Robinson who is interested in having you sign on with his label!” she screamed. And I really do mean scream—it hurt my ears, which began ringing when Kitty and Mariah joined in the screaming.

  My head started to spin as it sunk in. This was it. This was our break. This was it.

  My head didn’t stop spinning for the next month. Mr. Robinson worked quickly, but he said it would be six to twelve months before we could get an album out. An album. It was so surreal. It was like I was watching myself when he told us the impressive percentage we would receive after our initial offer was passed; when we went to a photo shoot in April for our album cover; when we called Lydia and she refused to come back to live what I thought had been the dream we all shared.

  It wasn’t until May, when there wasn’t much left for us to do, that my life stopped feeling hectic. In fact, it sort of felt . . . flat. I’d quit working with Dawn during the race to get our recording finished—the initial offer was enough that I didn’t need the money, and I couldn’t spare the time then. Now that I was frankly bored, she didn’t need me.

  Jane was busy with teaching—her school had held her job through the hectic months because she was the most requested teacher at the elementary school, no contest—so I couldn’t just hang out with her. I didn’t have a boyfriend, and Charlotte was not only busy but in Canada. I swam and went for walks and read, but it wasn’t enough. I itched for something . . . more.

  Which was why I didn’t hesitate for as much as a second when the Gardiners offered to take me to England with them.

  Aunt Nel called me. “We have to leave next week, so I understand if you can’t come—”

  “I can come,” I interrupted.

  She laughed. “Ted kept warning me not to pressure you, seeing as you’re a Paid Artist now.”

  I laughed too. “As if I’d need to be pressured into a free trip to England.”

  “You haven’t been, have you?”

  “I’ve never been further from the States than Canada,” I lamented.

  “Then you have to go! And no, Ted, that wasn’t pressuring,” she said. I heard Ted’s mild voice reply, and Nel laughed. “Ted wants to make sure you know you’d actually have to spend time with your aunt and uncle, not just cute British boys.”

  Will flashed into my mind. I shoved him aside. “I don’t really like cute British boys,” I said, the words stiffer than I’d wanted them to be.

  “Oh, that’s right. I remember that man who was so unkind to—who was it? He had a Russian name.”

  “Yuri,” I supplied dully.

  “Jane told me you went on a few dates,” Nel said, not noticing my tone or maybe assuming it was leftover resentment for Will.

  “He didn’t turn out so great,” I said, for once incapable of finding the humor in the situation.

  “Probably for the best. Too handsome for his own good, doubtless,” she said with a laugh.

  Still nothing funny. “When are we leaving? Can I fly out from here?” I asked, trying to regain my enthusiasm for the trip. It wasn’t too hard—I’d always loved traveling.

  “You’ll fly here and then we’ll head to London together,” she told me. “It’ll mean flying backwards for you, but I think it’ll be easier to meet in an airport we’re familiar with than Heathrow.” Ted said something inaudible, and Nel laughed. “Ted said it’s easier to meet anywhere than Heathrow.”

  “Perfect. And what day?”

  “Our flight leaves for England on, let’s see . . . the seventeenth. So . . . you could fly here on . . . the sixteenth, is that okay?”

  “That’s fine. That’s perfect. Thank you so much, Nel,” I said seriously.

  “Did I tell you why we’re going, by the way?” she asked.

  “No, you didn’t,” I said, smiling. It was so Nel to think of that last.

  “Oh! There’s a director, Bree Davies, that we’re friends with, and she’s asked us to come consult on costumes, help out and such. We’ll arrive a few days before she needs us, though, so we can sightsee, but I hope you won’t mind coming and hanging out on location with us.”

  “Not at all,” I said automatically. It so figured that I was finally going to England and as part of the bargain would to have to reencounter the film industry. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. Of course Ted and Nel, a pair of brilliant costume designers, would be doing something for work. Wanting to change the subject before she asked how I felt about Hollywooders, I asked what her kids were doing.

  “We’re paying a sitter,” she said distastefully. “We tried to think of another way, but we can’t have them with us in England, especially little Emily.”

  “They could come out here and stay with Jane,” I suggested. “She works during the day, but Mom’s here too.”

  “They’d love to see Jane,” she said, but her tone was doubtful. I knew she didn’t particularly like Mom, who was nothing like her brother Ted, but I also knew her kids adored Jane, and so did she.

  “I mean, assuming the airfare wouldn’t be a problem,” I said, giving her an out.

  “No . . . I’ll have to talk to Ted,” she said distractedly. “Well, I’m so excited, Lilly! I’ll buy your ticket and you can print off the boarding pass there, okay?”

  “That’ll work just fine. Thanks, Nel. I can’t wait!”

  She laughed. “I can’t wait either, Lilly.”

  chapter twelve

  “What did you say?” I asked, praying I’d misheard.

  Ted looked up curiously. His omnipresent brown facial hair, trimmed though it was, somewhat obscured his mouth, b
ut his warm brown eyes were expressive enough that it was never difficult to read him. Nel’s expression was just as curious as Ted’s, in sync with him as she always was. She had brown hair just a shade darker than her husband’s, but where his face was roughly shaped hers was delicate, almost childlike, her beauty not at all diminishoftyshed by her complete abstinence from makeup, particularly her intelligent hazel eyes.

  “I said we’ll need to go to Pemberley tomorrow, so we need to finish our London sightseeing today,” Nel said, watching for my reaction with interest.

  We were sitting in our tiny shared hotel room, me cross-legged on my technically-a-twin-bed-but-feels-more-like-a-cot, Ted folded comfortably onto the floor and leaning against Nel’s legs, dangling off the queen-but-nearly-a-twin bed, deciding what to do that day. We’d already seen the main sites—Westminster, Big Ben, Hyde Park, even the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe—and were narrowing down our list of possibilities for the day.

  My mouth felt dry. “Pemberley?” I asked, hoping either my memory or hearing was faulty, though I seriously doubted the former. How do you forget a word like Pemberley when it’s the name of a pompous rich person’s house?

  “Did we not tell you?” Nel asked, glancing down at Ted for confirmation, who shrugged. “Oh. Bree’s friends with the owner of Pemberley, or acquainted or something, and got permission to film there. It’s an old English manor house, gorgeous judging from the pictures Bree sent us. We’ll just be on the grounds, though. I’m sure the owner wouldn’t want a film crew traipsing through their house.”

  She didn’t know. She didn’t know who the owner was. Why was I panicking? I tried to laugh at myself for my reaction but my heart was too tightly wedged into my throat. Instead, I said, very lamely, “Oh.”

  Ted’s brown eyebrows rose. “What’s wrong, Lilly?” Ted had this voice, mild and soothing and deep, that made me almost understand how he controlled his four opinionated children without ever disciplining them.

  “I, um . . . I think I know who the owner is,” I confessed.

  Nel’s eyes went wide. “That British man?”

  “Will Darcy,” I confirmed, wondering what she saw on my face.

  She considered that for a moment. “Well, I’m sure we won’t see him,” she said finally. “Bree said he’s hardly ever home. Did you know him very well?” she asked.

  Does receiving a confession of love from him count as knowing him very well? I thought, making me smile. “A little. He . . .” I hastily tried to think of something that would explain my smile, and came up with, “he saved Jane and I once when our car was stuck.”

  “Oh?” Nel asked, a smile pulling at her mouth.

  “Not very gallantly,” I said, getting into story-telling mode. “We’d been driving up to meet Cade to talk about the music for his film and it started pouring rain. The road leading up to his house is dirt and it turned straight into mud, and as per usual I didn’t want to call it a lost cause and turn around, so we got stuck. I ran through the rain to the house. Cade was there and immediately wanted to go rescue Jane . . .” My enthusiasm for the story petered out right then. How Cade had acted that day came back into my mind, making me angry all over again at Will for what he’d done, and then angry at Cade for letting himself be manipulated. I shook my head, trying to focus. “Will was there too, and just stood there. Didn’t even say hello, just asked where the car was and told me she’d have to walk. Then . . .” I remembered how he’d worldlessly handed me a jacket and wondered if he’d loved me then—or thought he did. He was so handsome, I recalled a little wistfully.

  “Then what?” Ted prompted.

  “Sorry. Lost in thought,” I said with a half smile. “Then he let Cade and I go by ourselves, not making a move to join us. So I guess he didn’t really save Jane and I,” I concluded reflectively.

  “Well, then I think I can say I hope we don’t meet him,” Nel said with a smile. “Now about touring, I’m thinking the British Museum. Interested?”

  We left shortly after that, stopping by our hotel’s buffet breakfast and getting toast and fruit. My mind felt stuck on Will Darcy. What was wrong with me? It had been months since I’d seen him, months since he’d sent me that email. I realized with a jolt that the last time I’d seen him in person had been when I’d rejected him. I couldn’t draw myself out of abstraction, nodding and smiling vaguely when Ted and Nel pointed something out, following them to the next location without registering where it was we went.

  I wished Jane were here. I wanted someone who understood why butterflies, rare for me, erupted in my stomach every time I thought about tomorrow. I was going to Pemberley. Will Darcy’s fancy British home, probably as stuffy as its name.

  The next day, I discovered Pemberley was certainly not stuffy.

  We packed up quickly and checked out and took a bus into the English countryside, verdant and lovely.

  Then we got off the bus and met Bree in one of the confusing wrong-side-driver’s-seat cars that populated the country. Bree Davies was tiny, plainly but fashionably dressed, with wild reddish-brown hair carelessly clipped out of her dancing green eyes, and one of the most energetic people I’d ever met. She talked nonstop as she drove us down a winding road, then through a pair of gorgeous wrought-iron gates and a somehow ever-increasingly beautiful park, greener and more fairytale-like than anywhere I’d ever seen before.

  And then the house came into sight. If anyone said anything after that, I didn’t hear it.

  This was where Will Darcy lived? This huge but not ostentatious, lovely, warm stone and columned house? Where I could be an honored guest, maybe even a resident, even now if I hadn’t . . . I couldn’t quite finish that thought. I couldn’t let myself imagine waking up and stepping to one of the dozens of windows and looking out over the sea of green, seeing the golden sunset reflected on the river we’d driven across, breathing in the clear morning air of the countryside.

  Unbidden, I imagined Will coming up behind me, hearing his voice say good morning, feeling his arm slip around my waist . . .

  The car stopped just then, yanking me into reality, and I took a deep, steadying breath. I wouldn’t see Will. I wouldn’t even think of this as his house. I wouldn’t imagine him climbing the century-old oak we walked past, or pulling into the elegant converted carriagehouse garage with the top down, or swimming in the incredibly tempting manmade lake behind the house.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Nel said softly under the steadily flowing cover of Bree’s conversation, and I berated myself for imagining all that stuff I’d just told myself I wouldn’t.

  “Very beautiful,” I murmured back.

  She looked at me thoughtfully but didn’t say anything. I smiled faintly at my own evidently failed attempt to conceal what I felt. Not that I thought Nel guessed what I was thinking—I was fairly certain that she’d been sufficiently prejudiced against Will that she wouldn’t guess what I was thinking, at least specifically. Maybe she thought my mind was trending towards Yuri—I remembered then that he’d spent time here when he was younger too. The thought made me vaguely uncomfortable.

  We met up with the rest of the crew, set up temporarily behind the house by the lake. I was introduced to a few people but Bree left us after showing Ted and Nel to the small costume team. Ted and Nel were immediately caught up in conversation with people they were already clearly friends with.

  “I’m going to go look around,” I said quietly to Nel. She nodded distractedly at me, talking on with her friends, and I left.

  My thoughts wandered as I walked through the shade of ancient trees arching over winding paths; over delicate stone bridges that crisscrossed the various streams that flowed through the grounds; past wrought-iron benches with weathered but sturdy seats. I’d completely lost track of where I was when the house came back into view.

  I was on the side, out of sight of the film crew or anyone else. A strong impulse propelled me forward and I tried the door, small and of polished wood. It opened, and withou
t thinking I slipped inside.

  The interior was as breathtaking as the exterior. Every wall was painted with soft, perfectly chosen paint and hung with just the right number of gorgeous, original paintings; the floor had tasteful carpets with luxuriantly long pile laid over inlaid tile; the ceiling had light fixtures that were works of arts themselves, even those that weren’t chandeliers.

  I walked in something of a daze up a grand Cinderella staircase, which explains why I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone.

  “Lilly?”

  I gasped and spun and found myself face to face with none other than Will Darcy. “Will. I’m so sorry. I didn’t break in, I swear. I was just—I’m with Bree’s crew, or my aunt and uncle are, and I came with them, not because I can design costumes or anything, but I wanted to see England.” I forcibly stopped myself before I tried any more senseless explanations. This is a pretty funny situation, Lilly, I told myself, but I couldn’t believe it, not then, not with Will Darcy staring down at me.

  He hadn’t gotten any less handsome. In fact, I’d apparently managed to forget just how very attractive I found him, between his tall swimmer’s frame and beautiful dark hair and sculpted features of a Greek god and deep blue eyes.

  And he was staring. His eyes were fixed on me, though I couldn’t read his expression. Surprise? Irritation? Indifference? Did his mind, like mine, leap back to his confession and my rejection like it had just happened? Did it awaken a wave of emotions that he couldn’t name like it did in me?

  “I don’t think you broke in,” he said.

  A semi-hysterical laugh burst from me. “Good. I didn’t.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed before he asked, “How long have you been in England?”

  “Um, I got here last week. Not here here, but London, and we stayed in London until today when we came out here. Your house is beautiful,” I blurted.

  He smiled, and I discovered that his smile still made my stomach twist and flutter at the same time. “Thank you. It does have a stuffy British name, though.”