by Lynn Messina
“My team has been impressed with your organization and clear-sightedness,” Julian says, taking a break from eating to shake hands. “We’ll set up an appointment next week to nail down the numbers.”
“That’s wonderful news. I promise you, this exhibition is a great fit for Venture,” Bennet says as a little cash register in his head goes ka-ching. It’s rare for one of their shows to be solidly funded so far in advance.
After staying long enough to confirm that the toro is indeed remarkable, Bennet leaves the couple to their enthusiastic sushi consumption. Aside from a few hiccups—I’m looking at you, Mr. Carl Bingston—the evening is going well. Important new contacts have been established, vital existing ones have been reinforced, and significant commitments have been made. And as if that’s not enough good stuff for one night, his brother is well and truly on his way to falling in love with a wonderful woman. It’s as plain as the besotted grin on his face.
It’s so obvious to him, he’s startled to discover his younger brother, who he finds near the check-in table a half hour later, can’t see it.
“If John wants to snag an heiress,” Lydon says thoughtfully, “he really needs to step up his game. You know, invest more in the situation. He’s playing it too casual, like he can take it or leave it, and that doesn’t fly with women.”
Bennet doesn’t know which part of this statement to address first, and deciding Lydon will never believe their brother isn’t trying to snag an heiress, devotes himself to the second half. “John’s totally invested in the situation. If he were any more invested, his eyes would be shaped like cartoon hearts.”
Lydon shakes his head doubtfully. “I don’t know. He seems pretty chill to me.”
“That’s because you’re too busy trying to figure out how to sneak loot from the gift bags without anyone noticing,” Bennet says with a glance at the long table covered end to end with leather satchels. “Trust me, it’s obvious how John feels and I’m sure Bingley knows it.”
Even if Lydon wants to argue his point further, he’s too busy affecting outrage over the unfair charge of swag theft to bother. “How dare you, sir! I’m not trying to sneak loot, as you so coarsely put it. I’m helping out the fine men and women who are manning the check-in table. It’s hard work, and we deserve your respect.”
Bennet isn’t fooled, but he’s amused by the amount of heartfelt indignation his lazy brother is able to muster. “Hard work, huh?”
“Hard work,” Lydon repeats firmly. “Some of these people checking in don’t even know their own name. One guy said Sinjin, but it was clearly St. John.”
“It’s English,” Bennet explains.
“Yeah, I know it’s English. Yo hablo los Ingles,” Lydon says with an eye roll.
“I mean, it’s British.”
Lydon wrinkles his brow as he digests this information.
“I hope you weren’t rude,” Bennet adds.
“It isn’t rude to correct a mispronunciation,” Lydon says defensively. “In fact, it’s rude not to.”
Bennet shakes his head and, wondering how much offense his brother has given during the course of the evening, asks him to leave check-ins to the staff Sasha hired to oversee them. Then he suggests Lydon go mingle and enjoy the party. Even as the words come out of his mouth, he knows it’s a bad idea and yet his options are limited. He can’t let his brother steal from the bags, and he can’t have him thrown out of the party.
“Hey, they need me here,” Lydon protests, “and my intentions are pure.”
Sighing, Bennet pulls a pristine white box with a Fitbit logo from Lydon’s pocket and points to the stairs leading up to the ballroom. “Go.”
Smart enough to cut his losses, Lydon smiles winningly at his brother and shrugs as if to say, You can’t blame a guy for trying. Then he saunters up the stairs to find a new challenge.
“Thank you, Mom,” Bennet mutters as he looks at the table and wonders which one is missing a Fitbit. It could be all of them or none of them, depending on how much time Lydon had and his method for filching swag.
Defeated, Bennet hands the box to a member of the check-in crew and apologizes for not knowing where it belongs just as another guest arrives—a tall, heavy-looking man of about twenty-five who announces himself to be Collin Parsons. His name can’t be located on any of the lists on five clipboards, even though the staff checks under C and P and even B for the first letter of his middle name, which, he admits, he didn’t supply when he replied to the invitation.
As Collin Parsons waits for someone to straighten out the misunderstanding, his air is grave and stately, and his manners are very formal. His attire, though elegant and pristine, is striking, with its elaborately tied cravat, high collar and sage-and-salmon-striped waistcoat.
Unable to find his name or to decide who should eject him from the foyer, the check-in team calls Sasha, who promptly turns up to handle the situation. With smooth efficiency, she discovers Mr. Parsons to be a relation of Darcy’s and kindly requests that he wait another few minutes while she confirms that information.
He graciously agrees.
Bennet also waits. Although he knows it’s none of his business, he can’t turn his eyes away.
Two minutes later, Sasha, convinced of his lineage, waves the gentleman through, and Bennet follows him up the stairs. Spotting Darcy at once, Collin snags several orchids from a vase, wraps them in a light-blue linen napkin and boldly strides up to her with the flowers on offer.
Fascinated, Bennet stays a few steps behind and watches the exchange.
Collin prefaces his speech with a solemn bow, but before he can launch into his purpose, Darcy says with curious weariness, “I’m not marrying you.”
“I am not now to learn,” Collin replies, with a formal wave of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the address of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favor?”
Darcy eyes him with unrestrained wonder and tells him in a cool tone not to be a fool.
Undiscouraged, Collin continues in the stiff, affected voice he has adopted for this proposal, which bears no resemblance to the more-relaxed tone he’d used downstairs. “As I must conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.”
She scoffs, but Collin blithely ignores her contempt.
“I know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application,” he says, “and perhaps you have now said as much to encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female character.”
“Collin,” Darcy says warningly.
Now the gentleman shrugs and laughs, and the stiff pomposity with which he made his proposal vanishes as quickly as it appeared.
“My apologies,” he says easily, “but I’d be very grateful if you’d reconsider. You’re the only woman I can bear to face every morning over breakfast as long as I don’t have to face you at night over the pillows.”
Darcy shakes her head. “If you’d just tell Aunt Catherine you’re gay, she’d stop trying to marry you off.”
“You adorably naïve child,” he says with a fond smile. “It’s precisely because I am gay that the dear old battle-ax is so determined. She wants me married with children like any properly repressed homosexual of 1952. Our aunt has very old-fashioned notions. She wants you to get hitched, too. An unmarried woman of a certain age is a scandal.”
As much as Bennet wants to hear Darcy’s response to this provoking comment, he can’t shirk his duties and when Meryton calls his name, he immediately answers the summons.
His curiosity about Collin Parsons, however, is appeased a half hour later when John introduces him as Darcy’s cousin by marriage. He’s the son of Catherine de Bourgh’s late husband’s sister, which clears up the legality of his proposed union, if not the moral and ethical concerns.
“He wants to volun
teer at the Longbourn,” John explains.
Using the pretentious tone with which he proposed to Darcy, Collin says, “It is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honor of calling patroness—and, yes, that is sarcasm you hear in my voice—that I find some useful occupation. Since the family is appallingly rich, she doesn’t mean work work but rather some genteel distraction that will make me appear to be a useful member of society while actually requiring very little effort.”
Amused by how easily the gentleman pivots from full-bore pomposity to down-to-earth friendliness and back again, Bennet asks, “Your patroness?”
“My aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She isn’t actually of the British aristocracy, but she carries herself with such nobility that it’s impossible to think of her in any other way. I’ve even observed to her that she seems born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.”
Now Bennet smiles. “That sounds like a lot of work.”
Returning again to his normal, conversational tone, Collin says, “Not at all. The old bat doesn’t appreciate anything but herself. But she administers my trust fund, so I do what she tells me to do. You will let me come into the office, won’t you, and do office-y stuff like—I don’t know—order cappuccinos for the boardroom?”
“We don’t have a boardroom at the Longbourn,” Bennet says, “only one slightly rundown conference room that we fight over like cats and dogs, and the cappuccino budget was diverted years ago to pay for new door handles in the bathroom. But if that doesn’t discourage you, we’d be glad to have an extra pair of hands.”
“It sounds fantastically shabby. Sign me up. When Lady Catherine ordered me to donate my time to a high-minded cultural institution, she meant the Met or the philharmonic. My working at a little nothing place on the outskirts of Queens will drive her crazy. No offense intended, of course,” he hastens to add.
Bennet assures him none is taken. “We’re happy to be a weapon in your ongoing war. Can you swing by on Monday?”
Collin nods and salutes as if addressing a superior officer. “Yes, sir. I shall be there at noon sharp. And I promise you’ll regret this only a little.”
Knowing he can’t possibly regret anything more than agreeing to take on Lydon, Bennet tells him he’s not worried.
It’s on the tip of Bennet’s tongue to ask Collin about Georgia Wickham. As a member of the family, he’s more likely to be informed of the details than Bingley. But he can’t bring himself to be that forthright, not with someone he’s just met. Perhaps after he’s worked in the office for a few weeks, Bennet will feel comfortable asking a few leading questions.
Now, however, he thanks Collin for his willingness to serve and requests that he pass along his gratitude to his patroness.
Collin’s eyes twinkle. “We’re going to get along so well. Would you mind greatly if I continue most perseveringly by your side to ensure the rest of the evening brings you little amusement?”
To Bennet’s relief, Collin is joking and after a few minutes, he excuses himself to say hello to a friend he spots loitering by the bar. It’s easier to spot loitering friends now because the crowd has started to thin.
The Longbourn party are the last of all the company to depart, and thanks to a maneuver by Mr. Meryton, they have to wait for their car service a quarter of an hour after everyone else is gone. Fifteen minutes is just enough time to see how heartily some members of the family wish them gone. Hurst and Carl, who open their mouths only to complain about how tired they are, repulse every attempt Meryton makes at conversation. Meryton, whose triumph can be measured in actual dollars, is incapable of resting on his laurels and continues to pitch the museum to the exhausted company.
Bennet wishes them gone, too, and suggests more than once that they wait in the lobby. Bingley, however, insists they’re perfectly fine exactly where they are. What she means, of course, is that she is perfectly fine exactly where she is—only inches from John, whose head is close to hers in conversation.
Finally, Meryton’s phone chirps, alerting them that their car has arrived. Rising to leave, Meryton says with disconcerting firmness that he hopes to see the whole group soon at the Longbourn.
“Particularly you, Ms. Bingston,” he says. “You must come by whenever you want. We’ll have an informal dinner in the trustees’ dining room. Please don’t feel as though you have to wait for an invitation.”
Bingley, who’s flying out to London in the morning—no, Bennet thinks with a glance at his phone, in six hours—promises to call as soon as she gets back.
“It’ll be a short trip,” she says, with a sidelong glance at John. The besotted look he gives her in return speaks volumes. Bennet darts a glance at Lydon to see if he caught the exchange, but his younger brother is in the middle of violent yawn. “Lord, how tired I am,” he exclaims.
Meryton is perfectly satisfied and leaves the hotel daydreaming happily of John’s future as the fabulously wealthy Mr. Charlotte Bingston. He concedes the necessity of a prenup and calculates how long it will take the lawyers to hammer out a settlement. And the wedding, too. Planning something that immense can’t be done overnight, but the template for the party has already been established, and it would be folly itself to move all that furniture back into the Netherfield ballroom only to have to move it out again a few months later.
Three months, he thinks as the car drops him off first at his little house less than a mile from the Longbourn, before everything is set.
Four tops.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bennet starts to measure time in units of Bingley.
Every day that passes without word from her is another Bingston. Today, the first official day of summer, although the weather has been unbearably hot for two weeks, marks four dozen Bingstons.
A month ago, he would have bet everything he had—his apartment, his first edition of David Copperfield, his right arm—that they wouldn’t reach this milestone. And yet here they are: 48 days without any contact from Bingley.
It doesn’t make sense. The look on her face when they’d left the Netherfield after the ball had said, I’m all in.
And now she’s out, without a word of explanation. A few texts to John, a giddy email describing a misunderstanding with a flight attendant on the way out (“And then I said, ‘But I named the frog Templeton!’”) and one brief telephone call had dwindled into resounding silence. The cursory email John sent, ostensibly addressing Gold Circle Diamond Society matters but really a desperate plea for connection, was answered by her assistant, Mitzy.
No, it doesn’t make any sense at all.
But it does make sense, Bennet thinks as he climbs the stairs to their office. It makes perfect sense because clearly snobbery has prevailed over sentiment, with Carl somehow convincing Bingley once and for all to sever her ties with a suitor whose lineage doesn’t befit her pedigree and whose career—professional beggar!—ill-suits his pride.
Bennet doesn’t have proof, but he knows he’s right. He can feel it in his bones.
John won’t talk about it. As Lydon says, he’s a very cool customer and sometimes even seems surprised that he once knew someone named Bingley. “Who?” he’ll ask when Bennet brings up her name. “Oh, yeah, right.”
When Bennet backed him into a corner—at mark 28 Bingstons—John irritably announced that he’s not so naïve as to mistake flirtation for infatuation.
But he is naïve, Bennet thinks with frustration, for his brother can’t conceive of a person such as Carl, who would ruin his sister’s happiness merely to satisfy his own vanity. No, it’s far easier for him to believe Bingley never felt anything at all, and he steadfastly refuses to try to get in touch with her again. He can’t imagine anything more mortifying than playing the jilted lover or accosting her with his emotions. It’s
beneath his professional dignity. When Bennet suggests he fly to London, he turns white and then red and then excuses himself from the room.
That was 13 Bingstons ago.
Meryton, of course, is entirely oblivious to the anguish unfolding directly in front of him and continues to discuss Bingley daily. If he’s not lamenting her departure, he’s speculating about her return. Sometimes, when things are quiet, he’ll step into their office and fondly recall a small detail about the Netherfield ball, some aspect of the event so minor and negligible—“The silver serving platters were so well polished I could see my reflection”—that it doesn’t need to be mentioned at all.
It’s during these moments when John’s composure slips and Bennet glimpses his brother’s suffering. It bothers him to distraction that there’s nothing he can do to alleviate it. Not even fulfilling his own fantasy of meeting Carl in a dark alley and beating him senseless can improve the situation.
Of course, if John would just call Bingley….
Given that it’s been almost fourteen days—a full fortnight of Bingstons—since Bennet last told John to get in touch with her, he resolves to bring it up again. All John can do is blanch and blush and leave.
But Bennet doesn’t mention Bingley now because the office is full. Lydon and Collin, stuffing envelopes at his desk, have exiled him to a folding chair in the corner. He thinks about going down to the café to work for an hour or seeing if the conference room is empty for once, but he doesn’t want to upset the delicate balance of productivity. The intern and volunteer are for once crushing their assignment, folding, stuffing, licking and stamping as if they’ve known how to do menial office tasks all along.
John notices it, too, and darts a puzzled glance at him, as if to say, What’s going on?
Bennet shrugs and continues entering new contacts into the data management software.
