Prejudice & Pride

by Lynn Messina

  Darcy refills her glass and compliments him on the vintage.

  “At the risk of sounding insufferably ironic, I must warn you not to get used to the luxury, as that bottle is not only an anomaly for me but a one-off as well. The thanks of a grateful patron. I won’t be serving anything quite so elegant should your aunt come to call.”

  She smiles at the mention of Lady Catherine. “The poor dear. Her plan to break us up, when we weren’t even together, backfired spectacularly. After you refused to give her your word, she applied to me for the same promise, and that gave me hope. You’re so blunt—I knew you wouldn’t have hesitated to state clearly and unequivocally your lack of interest in me.”

  Bennet colors slightly and laughs as he replies, “Yes, you know enough of my bluntness to believe me capable of that. Having abused you horribly to your face, I wouldn’t think twice about abusing you to all your relations.”

  “I deserved it. Your accusations were based on mistaken assumptions, true, but my behavior was still terrible. I can’t think of it without cringing.”

  “Excellent. Now let’s quarrel over who behaved worse. The loser gets the last drop of wine,” he says, holding up the almost empty bottle, “and the winner has to go rummage through the cabinets to find another bottle. I’m fairly certain there’s a decent Syrah over the sink.”

  Conceding the game before it’s even begun, Darcy moves to stand, but Bennet quickly intercedes with a firm tug and suddenly she’s back in his arms and neither one is thinking about cupboards or contests or red wine.

  Later, after they’ve finally made it to the bedroom and Darcy has admired the bright modern painting on his wall and complimented him on his taste in books, which aligns very nicely with hers, Bennet asks how she fell in love with him. “What set it off? I can understand your going under quickly, but what made you take the plunge?”

  Darcy shrugs and rolls onto her side to look him in the eyes. “I don’t recall.”

  “My handsome face didn’t interest you—that we know from your honest assessment at the party. My manners were atrocious. On more than one occasion I was intentionally rude. That was it, wasn’t it? You admired me for my impertinence. Be honest.”

  She grins. “For the liveliness of your mind, let’s say.”

  Bennet refuses her attempt to whitewash. “We’ll call it impertinence and be done with it. The fact is, you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with men always currying favor and deferring to your opinion on everything. So much for your fine definition of a gentleman. Privately, you hated them for always seeking your approval. I roused your interest because I was so unlike them. And this is proof of your good nature—if you’d really been the miserly person you described earlier, you wouldn’t have been able to stand me.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, but I like that you think so.”

  “Stick with me, kid, and I’ll have you mounted on a bronze pedestal in no time.”

  After a thoughtful moment, she says, “It was the pimientos that set me off.”

  He’s nonplussed by the non sequitur. “What pimientos?”

  She laughs. “Yeah, that’s the thing. I don’t know. At the gala benefit, you were talking to a colleague about the pimientos in the olives and there was something about your tone that appealed to me.”

  Bennet likes this explanation so much another hour passes before he remembers to thank her for bringing Bingley and John together. “I know that was you.”

  This she denies. “I merely informed her that my opinion of your brother’s feelings for her had changed.”

  “You mean, you gave your permission.”

  Darcy decries the description and insists her friend doesn’t require her consent for anything. “It’s only that Bingley can be insecure when it comes to men—she has a lousy track record—and she sometimes relies on the judgment of others. With that in mind, I watched John closely during our visit to your office and later at the dinner party, and it was obvious how he felt. So I explained that my previous estimation of his affection was wrong, as he seemed to be utterly infatuated with her. She took it from there.”

  “And wasted no time. Whereas some people.…”

  The implication is clear, and Darcy, understanding at once, explains that she was too embarrassed to say anything. “I’m not like Bingley, jumping in with both feet. She’s always been the outgoing one. That’s why she makes such a great Golden Diamond Precious Metal Very Important Committee chair. I’m not nearly as good a host as she.”

  “You were the perfect host when we had dinner at Pemberley. And wonderfully outgoing. I was not. I was too horrified to be caught literally on your doorstep. I can’t imagine what you thought.”

  “I thought it was too good to be true. It was like when I was a teenager and used to imagine bumping into my latest crush in the most unlikely places, like the airport or the movie theater. Suddenly, there you were and I was ridiculously grateful for the chance to show you that I’d changed and that I didn’t resent you for rejecting me. And when that thing with your brother happened, I knew I had to do whatever I could to help—partly because I felt responsible. If I’d told people what Georgia was really like, she wouldn’t have had access to the Longbourn in the first place. But also because I hated the thought of his conviction always hanging over you. My intervention was ultimately minor. The FBI actually had a file on Georgia already—some student loan scam from a few years ago—and all I did was convince Associate Deputy Director Miller to make Lydon part of that ongoing investigation.”

  Bennet, who’s not surprised to hear Darcy downplay her involvement, thanks her again and again and again for saving his idiot brother from a miserable existence. He knows he’ll never be able to thank her enough, but he’s happy to spend the rest of his life trying—yes, he thinks, the rest of his life, even though they’ve been together for only twelve hours. He knows this is it, and as he turns off the light, he promises to take her to the best bakery in the entire city for breakfast.

  She closes her eyes, rests her head on his shoulder, yawns hugely and observes how heavenly that sounds. Then, after a moment, she adds, “Just, please, no rugelach.”

  Oh, yeah, he thinks, grinning in the dark, the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Nobody suspects a thing. The likelihood of Bennet and Darcy hooking up is so far removed from anyone’s expectations that when they both disappear at the same time neither John nor Bingley wonders if the events are related. Not even Meryton, with his endlessly optimistic schemes to bestow committee chairs on grateful heiresses, considers the possibility.

  When Bennet enters the office the next morning, a little later than usual but a whole lot earlier than he’d like, John looks at him curiously and asks where he ran off to the day before. “It’s not like you to go MIA, especially during a work event.”

  Amused, Bennet says, “I sent you a text.”

  “You mean that cryptic message that revealed no actual information?” he asks. “Yeah, we found that very helpful. Thanks.”

  Bennet shrugs and sits at his computer.

  “Darcy cut out, too,” John says. “It threw Bingley for a loop because she knew Darcy had been looking forward to the lunch. Just as she was starting to fear she’d been kidnapped, she got an apology. Very brief. Bingley worried the text was too brief, but I managed to talk her down from that. Plus, we spoke with Ms. Reynolds, who said Darcy had called to say she wouldn’t be home for dinner.”

  As his brother talks, Bennet realizes his text was even more cryptic than he’d supposed. Next time, he’ll use pronouns, although, recalling the cocktail of emotions he’d been feeling yesterday—impatient, aroused, giddy, anxious—he’s surprised he managed to communicate anything at all.

  “Darcy was with me,” he says.

  “Oh,” John says, not getting it even now. He types a line of text and then looks up again. “Where’d you go?”

  “Back to my apartment,” Bennet
replies, “to have sex.”

  His tone is so matter-of-fact, his brother assumes he’s joking. “Very funny. What’d you really do? Go somewhere else because the café had a crazy-long line? ”

  “John, John,” Bennet says chastisingly, shaking his head in exaggerated disappointment, “if you don’t believe me, who will?”

  His brother looks at him doubtingly. “You and Darcy? Seriously? But you don’t even like her.”

  “You have no idea. It’s been months since I’ve felt that way. In fact, in recent weeks, I’ve been positively pining. Fine brother you are not to notice.”

  Despite these assurances, John remains unconvinced, and putting all kidding aside, Bennet calmly and solemnly promises him it’s true. But he can’t remain somber for long and the teasing glint returns to his eye. “So what do you think? Are you happy for me? Is it as brilliant a match as you and Bingley?”

  “Bingley will be delighted. She’s been wanting to set you two up for ages, but I told her it was impossible,” he says. “I’m still not sure it is possible. Are you quite positive?”

  Darting a glance at the doorway, through which Meryton might enter at any second, Bennet suggests they go down to the café for coffee. Once settled there at a table, he fills his brother in on everything: Pemberley, Lady Catherine, Lydon. By turns, John is amazed, amused and appalled, and aside from reprimanding his brother for keeping so much important information to himself, he listens quietly.

  “I didn’t tell you some of it because I didn’t want to mention Bingley,” he says, by way of apology, “and I didn’t tell you the rest because I couldn’t figure out how I felt. It seemed better to avoid the subject altogether. But now it’s all sorted and everything’s out in the open.”

  John shakes his head. “It’s a lot to take in. I’m happy for you. Very happy for you. As you know, I’ve always liked Darcy and I think she’ll be good for you. And Bingley will truly be over the moon. But this thing with the FBI! I can’t believe that was Darcy. We owe her so much. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay her.”

  As the hour wears on, the café starts to grow crowded, and although they could spend half the day in conversation, they relinquish their table to a family of tourists hovering nearby. They decide as they climb the stairs to the third floor that they have to confess everything to their parents about Lydon’s heroics. The elder Bethles deserve to know the truth.

  Meryton is waiting for them when they return to the office, his expression thunderous as he takes them to task for abandoning their posts. Neither has done anything that Lydon doesn’t do every day of his life, but while they were gone, their benefactor had stopped by to commend them on several recent large donations and Meryton, unaware of their absence, could provide Henry with no information about his staff’s whereabouts.

  Although the site of the matronly Meryton in a rage is pure comic entertainment—his cheeks puffy, his nose red, his eyes feverishly blinking—Bennet offers up his relationship with Darcy as a balm to his temper. He expects his boss’s state of mind to brighten immediately, but the news has the unanticipated effect of making his mood more tragic. One employee dating an heiress is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but two?! Two tips the scales into potential desertion. With one brother tethered to the economic realities of employment, Meryton had hope of holding on to them both. Now the cause feels lost.

  As there’s nothing remotely humorous about a maudlin Meryton, John and Bennet do everything they can to cheer him up, including a spot-on imitation of Collin doing Lady Catherine by Bennet. Their antics have no effect and they change tactics, assuring him with all due sincerity and earnestness that neither has any intention of leaving. He refuses to believe them, and it’s only the appearance of Lydon, whose honorary spigot has been upgraded from drinking fountain outside the third-floor men’s room to a trickling water feature in the rose garden, that raises his spirits. No one whose name is actually affixed to a slab of marble at the Longbourn could ever bear to abandon it.

  The logic seems faulty to Bennet, especially given Lydon’s track record, but he’s far too smart to say anything, and eventually the office settles down. The youngest Bethle manages to put in a record sixty-four minutes at his desk before going on a caffeine run. As much as Bennet wants to say something snarky to John about it, he knows his own level of productivity, marred by a lengthy text exchange with Darcy, is hardly a model of office efficiency.

  By the time Lydon returns an hour later, Bennet’s plans for the evening have been firmed up, and he invites everyone to dinner at Darcy’s. He even includes Meryton, hoping that seeing the glories of Pemberley firsthand will assuage some of his disappointment at having an employee who’s free to run tame among them.

  The dinner is Darcy’s idea, an opportunity to demonstrate how thoroughly she’s changed, and although it’s not at all necessary, he’s grateful for the gesture.

  At least, he was grateful when she made the offer, but now, as he stands on the threshold of her house waiting for her assistant to answer the door, he feels nothing but anxiety—anxiety at seeing her again, anxiety that the dinner will be a disaster, anxiety that she’ll realize her aunt is right. He feels so much anxiety, he actually considers turning tail and running. But before he can succumb to his cowardly impulse, she’s at the door, not Ms. Reynolds, and she’s giving him a kiss on the lips. It’s a nice kiss, a soft kiss, and it’s imbued with all the lovely implications of familiarity: intimacy, warmth, anticipation of what’s to come. His heart rate slowly returns to normal; the need to flee subsides.

  As it turns out, he has nothing to worry about. Dinner goes wonderfully. Darcy isn’t the sort of person whose happiness overflows in mirth, but she’s kind and welcoming and interested throughout the meal, and later, when they retire to the lovely drawing room overlooking Central Park for coffee, she sits on the arm of Bennet’s chair rather than assuming her own. The scene—Bingley and John laughing, Lydon listening intently, Meryton too much in awe to do little more than stare blankly—is beyond anything he’d imagined, and all of it strikes him as far too beautiful to last.

  And a few months later, when his parents are there and the Gardiners and Lady Catherine unbends enough to stay for cocktails—not the whole meal, mind you, just a glass of wine before the theater—he’s struck again by the sensation of profound contentment and thinks once more that something so perfect can’t possibly last.

  And yet somehow it does.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lynn Messina is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the best-selling Fashionistas, which has been translated into 16 languages. Her essays have appeared in Self, American Baby and the Modern Love column in the New York Times, and she’s a regular contributor to the Times Motherlode blog. She lives in New York City with her sons.

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