by Aimée Avery
“I beg your pardon?”
“First of all, if she’s tutoring him, he doesn’t have what it takes upstairs to keep her interested,” Mr. Bennet said as he tapped his temple. “Also, I assume he is an underclassman? That would make him too young, she prefers someone a bit older.”
Before William could offer any rebuttal, the front door opened and Elizabeth entered.
“Daddy!” Elizabeth screamed and ran into her father’s arms, dropping her bag of books.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart!”
“Lizzy!” Mrs. Bennet shouted.
“Mamma!” Elizabeth turned, and was even more surprised when her mother wrapped her arms about her and hugged tightly.
“Happy birthday, Elizabeth!” Fanny Bennet said with tears in her eyes. She pushed a lock of hair behind Lizzy’s ear. “You get more beautiful every day.”
For Elizabeth, it was the best present she had ever received.
Chapter 7
With a hug and a wave farewell, Elizabeth watched as her parents made it up to and through the security checkpoint in Heathrow’s Terminal Four. She sighed as they disappeared into the passenger area and turned back to William, who stood back, allowing Elizabeth to recover
“Did you enjoy their visit then?” he asked.
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered quietly, keeping her head down in case her tears fell. A handkerchief appeared in front of her, and she took it from William’s hand with a sad smile. The man was rescuing her yet again.
William slid his arm around her shoulders and led her to the lifts. “Come on, let’s start back.”
“I’m sorry about the Tube. My mother was determined to ride it before she left. I just didn’t think she would wait until the very last second.”
“It’s fine, Princess. I don’t mind.”
“Oh, right! The woman who boarded at South Ealing tried her best to sit on your lap, and I’m sure she had no intention of riding all the way to the airport!” Elizabeth said, still embarrassed that her mother dragged William on public transportation just so she could say she had ridden on the London Underground.
William chuckled and hugged Lizzy closer. “Well then, you will just have to protect me on the way back.” He kissed her forehead before allowing her to precede him through the turnstile. “Your father lent me this to help as well.” Elizabeth turned and watched as William donned a Dodgers’ baseball cap, making sure the bill was in the back. He then pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on.
“Oh, yeah! That will really help!” Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile at how handsome William was. He was dressed in well-worn jeans with a polo shirt, a leather jacket and trainers. The cap worked with the outfit, but did nothing to help disguise his identity.
William just stared down at her and smiled.
“It’s going to seem so lonely now. They were only here a week, but I must admit it was fun playing tourist with them. I’m going to be at loose ends today,” she said sadly as she stared at her feet.
“Well then, you and I will just have to make a day of it, won’t we?” William said as the train stopped at the platform and the doors slid open. “What shall we do?”
~ • ~
Things returned to normal for Elizabeth, and she made great strides with her schoolwork. If she kept at this pace, she would finish in early spring. The possibility gave her a sense of accomplishment, but feelings of sadness as well. The day she spent with William had made her think that there just might be a chance his emotions may be a bit more than brotherly.
She sat sipping her latte, and stared out the window, remembering the lunch they’d had after riding the Tube to Covent Garden. Elizabeth smiled, remembering the feel of William’s hand holding hers as they walked to Leicester Square, where they shared a coffee and went to the cinema. Lizzy looked into her bag and saw the photo Will used his mobile phone to snap of her with her hands in Colin Firth’s handprints, and giggled as she remembered him rolling his eyes over her gushing admiration for the actor.
“What’s so funny?” Ronny asked.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about something that happened a week or so ago.”
“You want to go to the movies?”
“Oh, thank you, Ronny, but no. It’s much too late for a film now,” Elizabeth smiled at the young man she thought might be a good match for Georgiana.
“Well, how about a short walk? I need to shake out the cobwebs.”
“Sure,” Elizabeth said, thinking maybe it would be a good opportunity to ask him some pertinent personal questions. She felt he and Georgie would look good together. She and Ronny headed along Oxford Street, looking in shop windows and talking. After a little over thirty minutes, Elizabeth felt she’d gleaned enough information to present to Georgiana and said, “Well, I’d better get going. I have some early plans tomorrow.”
“Can I escort you home?” Ronny asked, standing a little closer to her than normal. Surely, he thought, the questions she had asked had been meant to let him know that she was interested in him.
“Ah, thank you, but no,” Elizabeth answered. She hadn’t told anyone where she was now living. Frankly, she still couldn’t believe it herself. She lied and said, “It’s definitely out of the way for you, and it’s getting late. I don’t think you would make it back before the trains stopped.”
“Well… If you’re sure. I really don’t think it’s very safe for you to run around the streets of London alone at night,” Ronny teased seriously. “And it is my fault that you have to come so far out of your way.”
“I’ve been doing it a lot longer than you have, so don’t worry about it. And it really isn’t any trouble,” she said as they entered the Oxford Circus Tube station. Elizabeth smiled and waved as Ronny headed for the Central Line. She wasn’t quite sure why she felt she needed to keep where she was living a secret from Ronny. Though she didn’t think he would tell anyone if she asked him not to, it was better not to put him in that position.
Lizzy headed for the Victoria Line, and boarded the train heading for Brixton by way of Green Park, Victoria and Pimlico. She looked down the platform and noticed that Ronny hadn’t taken the Central Line after all, but followed her and boarded the next carriage. Her nerves bristled, and her heart started to beat with a bit of fear. Ronny was following her, but why? Was he just worried about her making it home? He had never done that before. Something wasn’t right.
There weren’t enough people on the train for her to hide among the masses, so she might not be able to head back up to Bond Street after she changed to the Jubilee Line at Green Park. If there weren’t enough people there, she would have to wait until Westminster, pray there would be enough people to camouflage her, and change to the Circle Line and ride it until she could change back to the Central Line and make her way to Holland Park. She liked Ronny, but she didn’t like the idea that he was following her.
As luck would have it, a large group of tourists entered her carriage at Green Park, and she was able to slip out onto the platform before the doors closed. She noticed Ronny trying to see through all the heads in the carriage she just exited. She ran for the way out before he could turn and see her on the platform.
Elizabeth managed to make it to the Jubilee platform just as a train headed for Stanmore arrived. She changed lines at Bond Street and headed home. As soon as she appeared from below ground, she knew there was no way that Ronny could have caught up with her, even if he doubled back at the next stop, but she still felt the need to run the rest of the way home. She checked her watch as she made her way up the steps to the front door. Midnight. The last train would have been through by now, but the thought didn’t ease her mind. She sighed and thought that she must be missing her parents since they had departed for home, and it was the day before Thanksgiving, an American holiday definitely not celebrated in the United Kingdom. She shook her head and slipped her key in the door.
~ • ~
William had grown accustomed to having Elizabeth in his home. Many
of the things that he enjoyed about her as a child, he still admired in her as an adult. She was smart, funny and clever; and she was still just as beautiful as she had been as a teenager, even more so. He knew he needed to be careful. No matter what her father said, there was still something that kept her distant. He couldn’t figure it out, but whatever that something was, it had made her run that day he saw her just outside the park. He needed to take things slow.
He changed into a pair of pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, and took a book with him into the lounge. He stretched out on the sofa, and planned to read as he waited for Elizabeth to return home from her tutoring session, only the book couldn’t hold his interest. His mind kept wandering back to his Princess. He smiled as he remembered the night he found her in the woods, and how the little girl had held his little boy hand and made him feel ten feet tall. He wondered if she would ever be that comfortable with him again. Oh, she was comfortable when Georgiana was with them, but when it was just the two of them, that something always intruded.
He wondered what her student was like. No, he didn’t particularly like the idea of her spending time with another male, especially that one, and the sessions didn’t usually run this late. He was a bit worried, but she was a grown woman, and if she wasn’t home by midnight, he would ring her on her mobile. Her father’s guarantee that Elizabeth couldn’t possibly be interested in the young student didn’t tame his jealousy one iota.
He again attempted to read, but drifted off to sleep instead. A smile curved on his lips as he dreamed of his Princess and their children. During a rather pleasant moment that featured Elizabeth and him kissing, a noise at the front door woke him.
“Elizabeth? Is that you?” he called sleepily.
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered as she peered into the living room. “Were you waiting up?”
“Well, I tried. Seems I fell asleep,” he smiled and got up from the sofa. “I was beginning to get worried about you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. We had a lot to cover and, well, this week is a special American holiday, and I’m afraid I was commiserating with my fellow countryman.”
“Thanksgiving?” William asked quietly as he strode up to Elizabeth.
“Y... yes.” She was a bit surprised that William realized the holiday.
“Well, in honor of Thanksgiving, my beautiful princess, I give thanks that you’re home safe.” They stared at each other for a moment before William continued, “Goodnight, honey. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips and then headed up the stairs to his room. After he closed the door and flipped off the light, he realized what he had just done and uttered, “Oh, bloody hell!”
Wide-eyed and his head spinning with so many emotions, mostly self-recriminating, he tripped his way into his en suite and stared at himself in the mirror.
“Aren’t you a wonder, Darcy?” he chastised. “What the hell did you do that for? You’re supposed to be going slow! But no! You fall asleep and dream you’re kissing her, so what do you do?”
William closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before looking at the reflection in front of him again. He could resist one last jibe, “Idiot!”
Elizabeth’s hand moved to her mouth, and it was a few minutes before she could manage to move toward the stairs. With a sudden bright smile, she took the stairs two at a time up to her own room.
She took a quick shower, pulled on her pajamas and crawled into bed. Maybe her dream was more than an extenuated fantasy. Perhaps it would happen. She looked around her room. Okay, so may be the bed itself was the fantasy part. After all, she had dragged Charlotte down to the antique store to ogle the damn thing through the window. So what if the room wasn’t as big. The thing was, William kissed her. He kissed her. No, it wasn’t the romantic woods scene where he pushed her against the tree; but it was a kiss that he initiated and, though it wasn’t exactly passionate, it surely wasn’t brotherly!
“But he had been asleep…” Elizabeth said out loud. “My luck, he was dreaming I was model-beautiful Caroline, and kissed me with her in mind! Ugh! I’m hopeless.” She pulled the pillow over her head to muffle the screech she emitted in glee and confusion.
Giving up on the idea that she could figure out what was going through Will’s head, she drifted off to sleep. A whistle alerted her to the precognitive dreams she had become accustomed to having, and soon she stood on one side of a misty window and watched as she saw herself demanding to go home, and then she saw herself standing in the airport handing off a boarding pass and walking down a jet way.
Chapter 8
William tossed and turned all night, thinking that Elizabeth might make his kiss into an excuse to run away again. There was nothing to do for it now, except not to make a big deal out of the happening. If he didn’t mention it, and acted as if it were any other morning, perhaps she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. And so he readied himself as he would any other weekday.
Dressed in a business suit, William made his way down to the kitchen to start the coffee maker. “Keep to the routine,” he kept reminding himself. “Don’t act any different.” The two commands repeated over and over in his mind as if they were a mantra that would help him bring upon world peace if he concentrated hard enough. He kept up the mental chant as the coffee dripped into the carafe, and as he poured the java into his cup. He was able to take one sip before his mobile trilled, knocking him back into consciousness.
He heard Georgiana and Elizabeth chattering from the upstairs hallway, and seemed torn between the sounds demanding his attention. The trill of the phone won the battle and he answered it with a brisk, “Darcy.”
~ • ~
“I’m sure he is nice, Lizzy. But I would still feel better if Will met him first.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Lizzy asked.
“Yes, I do. It’s just, well… You see, not long after my father had his second heart attack and died, there was a guy who… well, he’s the stepbrother of my cousin’s wife, and I thought he was nice. And I suppose he was, but he cared more about his personal needs than any real relationship with me.”
“Well, I understand, Georgie. But you are older now and…”
“No, you don’t understand. He made me believe that I was in love with him and we… well, I got pregnant, Elizabeth.”
“What?” Lizzy seemed a bit shocked, and stopped dead in her tracks at the top of the stairs.
“I miscarried at sixteen weeks. But as hard as it was on me, it was equally hard on Will. I was only fifteen, Lizzy. He was my guardian. He’d known Terry for a while, and would never have approved of my dating him. Terry’s more your age, so that would have made him old enough to know better.” Georgiana explained. “I remember Will with such a heart-wrenching expression on his face and saying something about how right father had been. It wasn’t easy for him to take the responsibility for a teenage girl.”
“What about this Terry? Didn’t he…”
“Take responsibility?” Georgie finished the question then answered, “No. He didn’t. And he hasn’t since. You see, I’m not the only one. Terry hasn’t changed much over the years. He has five children by five different women. He doesn’t know any of them, nor does he want to.”
“Okay. Terry is a creep. You made a mistake seven years ago. I don’t see what that has to with Ronny.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Ronny. It has to do with me. If my father were still alive, I would want Ronny to meet him first. I don’t have a father now, I have Will. And in many ways, Will is even better than my dad. He’s my brother, and easier for me to talk to than my father… about those things anyway.”
Elizabeth nodded, and the two women made their way to the kitchen.
“When did this happen?” Will asked into his mobile phone just before taking a sip of coffee from his cup. He turned just in time to see his sister and Lizzy enter the room. Without even trying to protect his coffee cup, he immediately surrendered it to Elizabeth, who finishe
d off the contents and poured more into the mug.
The two women looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.
“Get all the information together. I’ll be there as soon as I can!” Will said gruffly.
“Uh oh, something’s gone wrong,” Georgie whispered to Lizzy.
“I don’t care! I want that information on my desk by the time I arrive. Do you understand? … Good!” Will’s voice was even sterner as he barked his orders into the wireless.
“Must be nasty. The vein in his temple is pulsating,” Georgie pointed to her brother’s head. She waited a moment and then added, “And he’s grumpy!”
“Have everything ready. I’ll be there as soon as I can. See you then.” Will snapped his phone shut. “I am not grumpy!”
“Yes, you are,” Elizabeth contradicted and then tried to lighten the mood by adding, “You always are in the morning.”
William growled and thought If you woke up every morning with a raging hard-on, you would be too, before saying, “Unless the two of you want to ride the Tube during rush hour, I suggest you grab something to take with you in the car. I need to leave now!”
~ • ~
Elizabeth climbed into the back seat of William’s Honda, allowing the front to Georgiana, and wondered what William thought of the kiss they shared the night before. It was obvious that something at work had taken over his mind. They surely wouldn’t have discussed it in front of Georgiana, but she did so want to know what had been going through his mind. Was he interested in her? Or was it just one of those things not meant to happen but did, things that didn’t have any meaning? It looked as if she would have to wait until that evening to find out now.
