A Higher Education

by Rosalie Stanton

  Well, he wanted to be near her. Now and tomorrow and pretty much forever.

  Hopefully tonight they could have the second half of the conversation. Put a name on whatever it was they were doing and make plans for the next few weeks. For the spring semester and the summer and…

  Well, Georgiana wasn’t too far off the mark. But it was too soon, Will knew; he wasn’t ready to go another round with her, even if the odds were better this time.

  Still, the difference between what he and Elizabeth had had before and what they had now was worlds apart.

  Which made the scene he stumbled upon just short of soul-crushing. Elizabeth was off the phone and doing laps around his room, grabbing random pieces of assorted clothing and stuffing them into her duffle bag. Will felt his stomach drop somewhere within the vicinity of his feet, followed by the wisps of familiar anger until he caught a good look at her face.

  “Elizabeth—”

  She whipped around, causing long ribbons of brown hair to smack her swollen cheeks. Her eyes rounded, her lips trembled. She was flushed from exertion, but still somehow managed to look pale.

  Will swallowed, fear making the hairs on his neck stand on end, but the rest of him hardened. Goddamn, he’d destroy whatever had upset her.

  “I have to go,” she said, then covered her mouth to hold back a sob.

  And that was all he could stand. Will crossed the room and took her into his arms, sighing when she went willingly. She buried her head against his shoulder, shaking, and curled an arm around his neck.

  Yeah, he was in love with her—that he’d known, but now he understood why people sometimes used the word madly along with it. The way his emotions were jumping made little sense to him, and yet somehow all the sense in the world.

  “What happened?” he murmured, doing his best to keep his voice from shaking. “Is it Jane?”

  Elizabeth shook her head and pulled away, dragging a hand across her face to wipe away her tears. “No,” she said. “I’m… I might be expelled.”

  Will just stared at her, certain he’d heard wrong. He stared a moment too long—she was back in motion the next second.

  “What do you mean, you might be expelled?”

  “I mean they’re thinking of kicking me out of Meryton.”

  “But…why?”

  “They say I plagiarized something.”

  Will snorted. “Well, they’re wrong.”

  Elizabeth slowed again, meeting his gaze with such uncertainty behind her own. “You believe that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Without me having to explain anything?”

  “What is there to explain? You don’t cheat.”

  She all but leapt back into his arms at that, kissing him like she depended on him for oxygen. Will stood still for a second before his brain kicked on and caught up with what was happening. She tasted warm and pure and too damn good to be real.

  She also tasted of tears and desperation.

  Of goodbye.

  Goodbye?

  Elizabeth pulled away, panting. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said, breathless. “Tell me how to fix it.”

  “You can’t fix this.”

  “What do they think you plagiarized?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know for certain, but I think my term paper. The letter mentioned Professor Greenfield. I have to be on campus on December 30th for a hearing.”

  “That soon?”

  “Yeah, but I have to get started now. I won’t be able to think of anything else if I don’t do something.”

  “Elizabeth,” Will said, grasping her by the shoulders to keep her from moving away from him, “there has to be a reason. Is it possible you forgot to cite a source?”

  “I…I guess anything’s possible, but I’d think that’d be easy to spot without leaping to the plagiarism conclusion.” She pressed her lips together, her brow furrowing. At least she was thinking now. Thinking Elizabeth was much better than Goodbye Elizabeth. “I had to turn it in right before I left. My dad called as I was wrapping it up.”

  “Is it possible you sent the wrong file?”

  “I… No.” Her eyes widened, suddenly bright. “I couldn’t connect to the internet that night. I was in a rush so I called a Lyft to get me to the airport and saved my paper to a flashdrive, which I gave to Lydia. She was supposed to turn in for me.” A few seconds lapsed, filled with only the sound of her breathing. “Shit. Shit.”

  “Call Lydia.”

  “I’ll try, but…” Elizabeth shook her head. “Jane said they can’t find her.”

  “What? Who can’t find her?”

  “Jane said that Kitty called to see if Lydia had reached out to her. Apparently…” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “From what Jane told me, Lydia took off with Wickham.”

  Will clenched his hands into tight fists and willed himself not to do something stupid. But of course it was Wickham. Again. Who else would it be?

  “Lydia’s not the brightest bulb in the box, but I would’ve thought she’d… Well, you know what he’s been saying about me.”

  Yeah, reason number two to kill the son of a bitch.

  “I never mentioned to anyone what happened or why, obviously. But I never thought…” She shook her head again, her face cracking. “It never occurred to me that he might start dating someone I know.”

  It hadn’t occurred to him either, though honestly, it should have. Wickham was vindictive enough to try just about anything to hurt someone he perceived as an enemy. If Elizabeth had indeed kneed him in the balls after rejecting him, Wickham would be out for blood. And Jane was far too intelligent and loyal to fall for his bullshit, leaving a short list of candidates as alternatives.

  From what he’d seen of Lydia, she was sweet but, as Elizabeth had said, not what he’d call smart. She had all the markings of a girl from a formerly affluent family who had come to Meryton to husband hunt—she wasn’t dedicated in her studies, she didn’t contribute much in class, and the few times he’d seen her outside of class, she’d been three sheets to the wind.

  To Wickham, she’d be an easy target.

  And if he’d learned she was in possession of Elizabeth’s final…

  But Will didn’t say that. It was a radical leap and he didn’t want to put the bug in her ear until he had more time to mull it over.

  However, from the look of things, time was one thing that wasn’t on his side.

  “I have to go, Will,” Elizabeth said, taking a step back. “I need to be there the second the offices open to see what happened and if there’s anything I can do to fix this.”

  A hard mass took residence in his throat, fortified with a thousand objections and pleas. He couldn’t abide the thought of Elizabeth stepping out of his room without knowing when or where he’d see her again, but he was sensible enough to recognize that this wasn’t something he could stop.

  “I’ll come with you.” The words were out of his mouth before he could reconsider.

  “No. I won’t let you leave Georgiana on Christmas.”

  “Then what can I do? Tell me how to help and I’ll do it.”

  She favored him with another of those heartbreaking smiles. “Thank you, but I don’t even know all the details and I need some time to get my head wrapped around this.” A pause. “Will, these past couple days—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is you want to say now. Wait on that too.”

  He met her eyes and held.

  Don’t say goodbye. We’re not done.

  Elizabeth hesitated but nodded. He wasn’t sure what that nod meant and he didn’t want to ask.

  “Call me when you can,” he said.

  She nodded again. “I will.”

  But he knew she wouldn’t. There was distance between them now that hadn’t been there before. The sort of distance he didn’t know how to scale.

  All he knew was this wasn’t goodbye. Not fo
r him.

  He’d do whatever he could to keep her.

  38

  Elizabeth wouldn’t hear a word about Will driving her anywhere. She had her rental, she’d said.

  His lips still tingled from the sensation of her parting kiss, and the ache in his chest had yet to abate. The second Elizabeth had closed the door, he’d turned to Georgiana and asked her to give him a few hours to himself.

  “Are you going to fix whatever happened?” she’d asked. The light in her eyes had dimmed as well, and it had struck him then just how deep a mark Elizabeth Bennet had left on Pemberley. Not that he was surprised. Elizabeth had an easy way with Georgiana that he envied, and god knows Georgiana could stand to have another woman around.

  There were things he knew his sister wouldn’t share with him, even now, as close as they were. She needed someone else to rely on, and though it wasn’t fair to shove Elizabeth into that role, he could tell it was where Georgiana wanted her.

  He couldn’t blame her. He wanted her here too. Just this side of forever would be enough.

  “Yes,” he’d replied, not knowing, in that moment, what exactly he planned to do.

  “Then take all the time you need.”

  The list of resources at his disposal was considerable. Will had contacts in virtually every field, thanks to his father’s insistence that he attend networking events with him almost as soon as his voice stopped cracking with puberty. He didn’t much care for interrupting them on Christmas Day, but this was important to him—more important than potentially inconveniencing a bunch of his father’s old friends.

  The quickest thing he could do—the easiest—would be to call the Meryton College board of directors and make a sizable contribution to the college in exchange for expunging Elizabeth’s record, but he also knew that would not do anything to endear him to her. Elizabeth was passionate about her education, as she was about everything, but she’d never be satisfied knowing her integrity had been questioned. The only way to make this right in her eyes would be to clear her name of the accusation.

  And the only way he could think to help in that regard was to track down Wickham. Hell, even if he had nothing to do with the bomb lobbed at Elizabeth’s academic ambitions, it would feel damn good to sock the asshole.

  But Wickham had to have something to do with it, particularly if he’d stolen away with the person responsible for turning in the term paper in question.

  Will locked himself in his study.

  Christmas or not, he had phone calls to make.

  * * *

  Elizabeth experienced a brief rush of guilt before pressing the phone icon on her screen. She brought her cell to her ear as she flipped on the turn signal with her free hand. The debate on whether or not it was appropriate to call a professor on the largest holiday of the year had lasted all of thirty seconds. Enough time for her hasty reply to Professor Greenfield’s initial email about the allegation—buried under thirty some-odd other emails—to bounce back with an auto response.

  And since the professor had included her cell phone number for emergencies in the copy… Well, Elizabeth thought this qualified.

  The phone rang four times before someone answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello,” Elizabeth replied, then cleared her throat, her voice somewhat scratchy. She transitioned into the right lane and tried to wave at the car behind her, but found herself out of hands. “Professor Greenfield? This is Elizabeth Bennet.”

  The line went silent for an uncomfortable stretch of seconds.

  “Professor?”

  “Being that you are a reasonably intelligent person, I assume you are in possession of a calendar and know what day it is.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to call you now—”

  “Somehow I doubt that, Ms. Bennet. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have called.”

  “Please, Professor, I only now received your email. I’m panicking and couldn’t wait.”

  “Forgive me if I seem unsympathetic, but—”

  “I didn’t plagiarize anything.”

  There was another long silence—long enough for Elizabeth to wonder if the call had dropped.

  “This isn’t exactly my first rodeo, Ms. Bennet,” Professor Greenfield said a moment later, her tone cold. “I can expect a few false flags here and there. The software we use isn’t perfect and can be overly sensitive, but when I can Google entire paragraphs in your paper and hit a perfect match, that’s when I stop blaming the software.”

  “Professor—”

  “Please do not insult my intelligence and do not call here again.”

  “I just want a meeting. I don’t know what happened—I had a friend turn it in for me—”

  “Yes, I am aware.”

  She sighed, willing herself to not start screaming. “I left Meryton in a hurry after I received an emergency call from my father.”

  “I am not interested in excuses.”

  “I’m not… This isn’t an excuse. I saved my paper to my flashdrive and gave it to Lydia to so she could get it to you. I just want to see what she turned in—maybe I saved the wrong thing, I don’t know.” She didn’t think so, but she was grasping at straws. Plausible alternatives eluded her for the moment, though something about this whole situation felt off for reasons beyond the obvious. “Professor, I just want to see it. I don’t know if there’s an explanation—”

  “I can think of one.”

  “In my life, I have never so much as cheated on a pop quiz. I don’t plagiarize. And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it in such a way that a simple Google search could give me up. Let me send you the paper I have on my laptop. I’ll screenshot it so you can see when it was created and last modified.”

  Another pause. She didn’t know whether or not that was a good thing.

  “Please,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know what happened but I need to. You have nothing to lose. I have everything.”

  “Well, that’s certainly dramatic.”

  “Please—”

  “Ms. Bennet, you may cease with the begging.” There was a long sigh. “Email me in the morning and I’ll set up an office visit for you so we can discuss this in person.”

  Relief hit her so hard the car nearly swerved. “Thank you—”

  “Now if you don’t mind, my wife just finished cooking dinner. I am going back to my holiday.”

  “Yes, Professor. Merry Christmas!” Elizabeth fumbled so frantically with her cell that she nearly dropped it, but somehow managed to disconnect the call one-handed without causing a pile-up.

  It was such a little thing, getting that meeting, but already she felt lighter. The flare of hope that she had done her best to smother sprouted again, and this time she didn’t fight it. Right now, it was all she had.

  Elizabeth gave her phone, which now rested in the passenger seat, a considering side-eye before redirecting her attention to the relatively empty road ahead of her. Seconds lapsed into minutes, each one making the air grow thicker with silence, contrasting hard against the cacophony happening in her head.

  She tapped the steering wheel, fighting off a shiver. It took longer than it should have to identify the new sensation in her gut, the reason she felt the urge to pick up the phone again.

  She missed Will.

  Shit. It had only been a couple hours since she’d left and she missed him. She wanted to give him an update, tell him that she’d managed to get a hold of Greenfield and there was a chance—albeit not a large one—that this could blow over within the next couple days. While she and the professor hadn’t had the easiest relationship, Elizabeth had definitely grown to respect Greenfield over the course of the semester. The woman wasn’t unreasonable. If a simple error had been made…

  But whole paragraphs of plagiarized text? There was no accounting for that.

  Elizabeth eyed the phone again but tightened her fingers around the steering wheel. Calling him would accomplish exactly nothing, except to make her want something that might
not be logical in a few days. If she lost her position at Meryton, she’d have more to rethink than where she’d sleep, and she couldn’t afford to bring Will into that conversation. She couldn’t form her future based on a new quasi-relationship, and she couldn’t tie herself to this location—which was known primarily for the college—when there might be opportunities elsewhere. Will couldn’t be a factor. It wasn’t fair to him and it certainly wasn’t fair to her—she would not put her life on hold for a man.

  No matter how she felt about him.

  No matter if she thought she might be in love with him.

  No matter if the thought of never seeing him again made her hurt in ways she hadn’t known the human body could hurt.

  Elizabeth blinked hard, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She gave her head a firm shake and switched on her headlights. She’d be back on campus soon. While she wouldn’t have a way of knowing what to look for without Lydia around or the copy of the paper that had been turned in, being at Meryton at the very least provided the illusion of control, and with it, the lingering hope that perhaps she wouldn’t have to think about the end of her relationship with Will.

  But life had never been in the habit of handing out breaks. After her mother’s recent string of exceptional luck, Elizabeth doubted there was any left for the remaining Bennets.

  * * *

  While others might try to play coy, Will would never deny that there were definite perks to being wealthy.

  One being that no one yelled at a Darcy for interrupting Christmas dinner. Every phone call he placed had been complete with yes sirs and I’ll get on that right away and my wife knew I might have to go into the office. No one paused to question the nature of his requests or even asked if it could wait. He’d had several counterarguments planned, but didn’t have to so much as raise his voice.

  Will remembered the way his father seemingly got whatever he wanted with as little as a look. That afternoon, he found himself grappling with the uncomfortable reality that the legacy had been well and truly passed on, and that likely no one who spoke to him knew he had returned to complete his education or gave a damn. Money talked plenty for him.