Prejudice & Pride

by Lynn Messina

  After three days, John says to Bennet, “I’m sorry she’s coming. I wouldn’t care—I could see her and not feel a thing—but listening to Meryton settle her future with another fellow is more than I can stand. She’s not even here yet and already I can’t wait for her to be gone.”

  His brother nods, understanding the fresh torment Meryton has unknowingly inflicted. The problem isn’t his constant hawking of the fellow—neither brother believes the two will truly make a match of it—but rather all the talk of the future. Meryton’s blather has opened up a frontier, and it stretches before John just as expansively as it stretches before Xavier.

  Bennet tries to think of something comforting to say, but all the usual platitudes are inadequate to the situation. Counseling patience, the reassuring assertion that this, too, shall pass, is useless because John has always bided his time without complaint. No doubt he’ll suffer this ordeal with the same forbearance with which he’s suffered all the others in his life, and Bennet wishes that once, just once, his brother would rage against something. Or at the very least, pick up a damn phone and call the girl he’s crazy about.

  But he knows it’s foolish to wish someone would behave against their nature and cruel to create expectations where there’s no guarantee of a happy resolution, so Bennet sighs and points out the time: 3:30. They can use their discount at the café now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bingley arrives. Three days after she lands in New York—three days during which Meryton frets and fusses over the timing of his dinner party invite—she presents herself at the front desk of the Longbourn and says she’s there to see the development department. Following regular visitor protocol, Martin issues her a name tag and calls up to confirm.

  The call throws Meryton into a tizzy.

  “Quickly, quickly,” he says, rushing into the development office as if a large animal is chasing him. He dashes across the room, bumps his shin against Lydon’s desk and presses his back against a row of file cabinets. “Bingley’s on her way up. Quickly, everybody, look like you’re hard at work. We must endeavor to appear to be an institution that puts millions of dollars to good use. Bennet, pick up the phone—you should be making an important call. No, John, don’t look at me. Look at your computer screen. Type.” Although his fingers are suddenly nerveless, John complies with the order. Unsatisfied, Meryton orders him to type faster. “And wrinkle your brow as if you’re thinking over a matter of very great concern.”

  The only one in the office who doesn’t affect busyness is Lydon—an irony that not even John, in his haze of anxiety, is insensible to, for all Lydon does is affect busyness. Now, however, he runs to the door, walks out onto the landing and looks down the stairwell.

  “They’re taking the stairs,” he announces. “I say ‘they’ because there’s a woman with her.”

  “Some acquaintance or other, I suppose,” Meryton says.

  “She’s tall and has dark hair,” Lydon replies. “It looks like Darcy. It must be Darcy.”

  Meryton, whose assumed task is sorting through the file cabinets along the back wall, greets this information with mixed feelings. He’s not unaware of the estimated value of her assets, both liquid and otherwise, but he’s equally familiar with her unpleasant disposition. The former wins out. “Any friend of Bingley’s is welcome here, to be sure,” he announces.

  John, halting his pounding of random letters—he doesn’t even have the presence of mind to type the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog—looks at Bennet with surprise and concern. Knowing little of their meeting at Pemberley, he worries that seeing her now will be very awkward for him.

  Both brothers are uncomfortable. Each feels for the other, and of course, for himself, and Meryton rattles on about how busy they must look, chastising John for not typing fast enough and Bennet for not talking importantly enough, without being heard by either of them. The only one listening is Lydon, who responds to his boss’s request for progress updates with remarkable detail.

  “They’ve reached the second floor and are about to start the next flight,” he says. “Now they’ve started the next flight.”

  Bennet’s astonishment at her coming—at her coming to the Longbourn and voluntarily seeking him out again—is almost equal to what he felt at Pemberley, when she was so warm and welcoming. The color, which had drained from his face, returns briefly, giving his eyes an unexpected luster. In that moment, he believes her feelings for him remain unchanged. Reason returns quickly enough, for he knows such a development is unlikely.

  He sits intently at work, striving to be composed, and glances with anxious curiosity at John, who looks a little paler than usual but calm. Fluttering at the women’s imminent approach, Lydon shuts the door and sits down, then, thinking better of it, runs back to the entrance to leave the door open. He’s out of breath and barely sitting when Bingley says, “Knock, knock.”

  Meryton closes the file cabinet drawer with an emphatic bang, turns as if surprised and says with all due enthusiasm, “Ms. Bingley, how delightful. Come in. Please come in. Our office is small but accommodating. I’m sure we can make room. If Bennet would just get off the phone—how rude of him to still be talking—you could have his seat.”

  Bennet immediately hangs up the phone, belatedly remembering to say good-bye to his fake counterpart only after he puts down the receiver, and rises to give Bingley his seat. She pooh-poohs the suggestion and insists she can stand for any number of minutes in a row. Bennet turns to Darcy to give her his seat, but she looks so serious, so cold and foreboding, with none of the warmth she had at Pemberley, and the offer dies on his lips. He sits down again to his work with an eagerness it doesn’t often command.

  Despite Darcy’s lavish fortune, Meryton greets her stiffly, his cool tone standing out in sharp relief against the warmth with which he’d addressed Bingley, and Bennet’s appalled and embarrassed. His boss has no idea that it’s only due to Darcy’s generosity that the stolen funds were returned intact.

  Darcy, after asking how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner enjoyed their cruise, a question Bennet answers with unintended curtness, says scarcely anything. She’s standing by the door—perhaps that’s the reason for her silence—but the room is so small, the distance hardly matters. While Meryton chats merrily with Bingley, asking a dozen questions about the movie she’s doing, trying to ascertain, it seems to his employee, a fundraising opportunity among the cast and crew, Bennet glances at Darcy now and again. He finds her looking as often at John as at the floor and realizes she’s reverted to form: thoughtful and brooding.

  He’s disappointed and angry with himself for feeling let down. He should’ve known better than to expect anything but sullenness from her. But then why has she come?

  Bennet doesn’t want to talk to anyone but Darcy, and yet his mind is entirely blank. He can’t think of anything to say except to ask about her brother. Then he falls silent.

  “It’s been a long time, Ms. Bingston, since you went to London,” Meryton says. “The Golden Circle Diamond Advisory Society has been languishing in your absence. It hasn’t hosted a single event since you left. Things have been rather quiet, though not entirely quiet. We did have some unseemly business recently: the theft of a considerable sum from the Longbourn’s bank accounts. I suppose you’ve heard of it. You must have seen it in the papers. It was in the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and of course everywhere online. Did you see it?”

  Bingley replies that she did and congratulates him on the recovery of the misappropriated funds.

  “As awful as the whole ordeal was,” Meryton continues, “it was well worth it to discover the scope and depth of Lydon’s—you do recall Lydon, don’t you?—heroism. Despite the danger to himself, he infiltrated a ruthless gang of criminals and valiantly brought them to justice. Honestly, I don’t know how he had the skill and daring to pull off such an elaborate sting operation all on his own. We’re very proud of him. We might even name a drinking fountain in his honor if we can find a sponsor.
Perhaps Ms. Fitzwilliam would be good enough to underwrite it?”

  Bennet gasps in horror at the unprecedented gall of the request, and not daring to look at Darcy, he glances at Lydon, who, he’s relieved to see, has the grace to turn bright pink.

  “No, please, not a fountain. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a whole gang, so, like, whatever,” the youngest Bethle chokes out honestly. The demurral only ennobles him in the eyes of Meryton, who thinks the museum’s savior is merely being modest and suggests that a fountain isn’t good enough for so gracious a creature.

  Unable to stand it, Bennet asks Bingley how long she plans to stay in New York.

  “A few weeks,” she says.

  Meryton, who knows three or four weeks is not enough time to put together a mailing, let alone a social event, devises an extension. “When you’ve finished shooting your film,” he says, “I beg you will come here and shoot something with us. John’s been working on a short documentary on the history of the Longbourn and its collection.”

  The embarrassment Bennet feels on John’s behalf at this patently false statement is so acute, he gladly wishes to never see either Bingley or Darcy again. His annoyance soon fades as Bingley, grateful for the subject, asks John about the film. His brother’s face turns pink at the attention, but he’s otherwise composed as he cites the year Cyrus Longbourn broke ground on the palazzo. Realizing rather quickly that the project isn’t quite as far along as Meryton’s enthusiasm suggests, Bingley smoothly switches the topic to things she knows John is interested in and, in a very short time, the two are chatting breezily. Bennet is both amazed and encouraged by how easily they’ve fallen into their earlier rapport.

  When the visitors turn to leave after a half hour, Meryton, mindful of his scheme to pair Bingley with Henry’s grandson—a scheme that seems less and less likely as he watches her interact with John—invites them to dine at the Longbourn in a few days’ time.

  “You owe me one, anyway, Ms. Bingston,” he adds. “When you left town last spring, you promised to have dinner here. I’ve not forgotten, you see, and I assure you, I was very disappointed that you didn’t come back and keep your engagement.”

  Bingley looks a little silly at this statement and says something about having been prevented by business. Then she announces she has to run because she has her first fitting for the film at three o’clock.

  “Since I’m playing, per Variety, ‘a version of myself’—that’s right: I haven’t shot a frame and already I’m quoting my notices!—I don’t see why I can’t wear my own clothes. Ah, Hollywood,” she adds with amused exasperation.

  As soon as they’re gone, Meryton disappears into his office. He reemerges ten minutes later with several sheets of paper with two rows of boxes—storyboards, so John can get to work on his film project.

  “You’re already months behind schedule,” Meryton notes sharply before inviting Lydon on a tour of the museum’s drinking fountains to identify the one most suitable for dedication in his honor. Now that Darcy isn’t present to shame him, Lydon happily falls in with the plan and suggests that perhaps they think a little bigger. A hallway, perhaps.

  As soon as they’re gone, Bennet runs down to the café to get an espresso—or, in other words, to think without interruption on a subject that makes him more jittery than caffeine. Darcy’s behavior astonishes and confounds him.

  Why, if she came only to be silent, grave and indifferent, did she come at all? No answer makes him happy, and he resolves not to think about her anymore, a resolution that’s easily kept as he spots John approaching with a cheerful look on his face.

  “I’m glad that’s over with,” he announces as he sits next to Bennet on the stone bench. “I was anxious about the first meeting, but clearly there was no reason to be. I care as little for her as she does for me.”

  “Yes, very little indeed,” Bennet says, laughing as he dips his head into the demitasse. “Oh, man, you better take care.”

  “Me?” he asks, his tone as offended as it is surprised. “You can’t really think I’m at risk of falling for her again?”

  Bennet finishes his espresso and lays a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I think you’re at very great risk of making her as much in love with you as ever.”

  John smiles weakly and walks up to the counter to order his own shot of espresso, and even though it’s only twenty-two seconds past eleven o’clock, the pleasure of the 20 percent discount is denied him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  At twenty-three years old, Xavier Trunbull Longbourn is a little young for Ms. Charlotte Bingston, but given the advantages of his education—Exeter, Oxford and now Goldman—he has many of the qualifications that Darcy had once deemed necessary to earning the title of well-rounded gentleman.

  When Mr. Goulding asks him about the worrying upward trend in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, he tries to calm the older man’s concerns about a bubble in fluent Cantonese. Although he’s less than successful in his endeavor, Goulding’s Cantonese being limited only to the ordering of General Tso’s chicken, he impresses Bingley, who compliments him on his pronunciation.

  That is, however, the extent of their courtship, for Bingley’s eyes are focused almost continually on John during the whole affair. When the large party, comfortably assembled in the courtyard, repairs to the trustees’ dining room, she waits to see which chair he takes and then snags the one next to him with such speed and grace that Mrs. Long, who was about to sit down, apologizes to Bingley for almost stealing her seat.

  Bennet, with triumphant satisfaction, looks at Darcy. She bears it with noble indifference, and he would’ve assumed Bingley has received her permission to be happy had he not seen her eyes also turn toward Darcy, with a look of half-laughing alarm.

  Throughout the meal, Bingley is attentive and lively, balancing her interest in John with her social obligation to appear interested in everyone, and observing her behavior, Bennet is convinced that, if left wholly to themselves, the couple’s happiness would be speedily secured. Although he knows better than to take anything for granted, the prospect makes him happy, thereby brightening an otherwise cheerless evening. Darcy is at the other end of the table, seated on one side of Meryton, which is, he knows, an arrangement that makes neither one happy nor shows either to advantage. He’s not close enough to hear their conversation, but he can see how little they talk to each other and how impersonal and abrupt their manner is when they do. His employer’s ungraciousness makes Bennet more keenly aware than ever of how much they owe her, and he longs for an opportunity to express his gratitude. Surely, their only conversation for the entire evening won’t be the polite greeting they’d exchanged upon arrival.

  Anxious and uneasy, he waits for a moment to approach, but when she’s finally free, sitting quietly by herself in the lull before dessert, he’s deep in conversation with Mrs. Long about a plan to build a Ferris wheel as large as the London Eye on Staten Island.

  “I see the appeal, of course,” she says. “All those tourists—some 1.5 million each year and counting—taking the ferry out and turning right back around because there’s nothing to do. It’s a smart business decision, and I’d support it if it were just about the Ferris wheel. But it’s not.”

  “It’s not?” Bennet asks.

  “It’s not,” she says confidently. “The Ferris wheel is a horse.”

  “A horse?”

  “A Trojan horse to get us used to seeing an eyesore in the harbor. Then, when we’ve grown accustomed to the lumbering monstrosity, the city will push for its real objective: wind turbines.”

  Her theory’s ridiculous, but Bennet loves a good conspiracy as much as the next person and listens patiently as Mrs. Long outlines the mayor’s eight-point plan to foist wind power on the unsuspecting people of New York City. By the time she’s finished, dessert is being served and Darcy is nowhere to be seen. Bingley is also missing and he assumes the two have gone off together, presumably to the ladies’ room. While he waits for their return, he picks
at the impeccably turned out tarte tatin with lavender ice cream.

  Darcy reappears just as the waitstaff is clearing the table and offering a second round of coffee. Bennet flicks a finger, securing a refill for himself, and decides that this is it: He will talk to Darcy now. He stands, leaving the coffee on the table to grow cold, and takes two determined steps in her direction. Before he can take a third Lydon is at his side, inviting him to go clubbing with him and Xavier.

  “The party’s in a super secret location in Brooklyn,” Lydon says. “You need, like, a password to get in. Xavier has the hookup. We’re heading out soon.”

  The offer’s preposterous—why in the world would he want to hit the hipster scene with a couple of recent college grads?—and yet it has some appeal. His youngest brother is less likely to get into trouble with him hovering nearby. Meryton, who’s abandoned his scheme to marry off Bingley to Xavier, is delighted by this promising new alliance, for a confirmed hero who’s firmly attached to the institution is better than a beautiful heiress who’s intermittently devoted.

  “I’ll think about it,” Bennet says, his eyes trained on Darcy, whose attention has now been claimed by Mrs. Goulding.

  “Cool. Lemme know,” Lydon replies before walking away to issue the same invitation to John, who wastes no time in declining.

  Bennet returns to the table, and as he drinks his coffee, wonders if he’s being a fool or a deluded idiot to believe Darcy might still have feelings for him. She had put her heart on the line and been refused in the cruelest way possible. How could any woman, regardless of how proud she is, get past such a crushing blow? Indeed, the only way to handle the humiliation would be to act entirely unaffected by the event, which would explain Darcy’s extraordinary affability at Pemberley.