A Higher Education

by Rosalie Stanton

  It was his cousin, whom he didn’t get to see very much anymore, that got him the information he needed in order to make travel arrangements. They had both been unlucky enough to have been named Fitzwilliam; something over which they’d bonded as children. Fitz was the figurehead-in-training of Darcy Credit International, and though he rarely bent the rules, he’d been all too happy to give Will the information he needed once he’d learned that Wickham was involved.

  “Seriously,” Fitz had said, his voice thick with anger, “can’t this guy just die already?”

  “I looked into it. Apparently, it’s illegal to kill someone.”

  “Only if he’s human. Not sure George qualifies.” There was a moment of silence, filled only with the strokes of a keyboard on the other line. “Aha. Yes, there’s a hit. At the Clover Casino and Hotel in Atlantic City.”

  Which was how, as the sun was setting on Christmas Day, Will found himself behind the wheel and on the road to Raleigh, North Carolina to catch a plane to New Jersey.

  He toyed with the idea of phoning Elizabeth as he waited to board, then again once the plane touched down. The urge would hit him with such potency he was certain he’d connect the call, but he never got further than bringing up her number. After all, he had nothing to tell her—nothing he would, anyway. He couldn’t afford to get her hopes up when he wasn’t even sure what he would find.

  And even then, what would he say? Their relationship remained, as of yet, undefined. Elizabeth wasn’t the grand gesture sort of woman to begin with—she wasn’t impressed by his money or connections, and the fact that he’d hopped a plane on a possible wild goose chase might cost him ground that he’d regained over the last few days.

  Elizabeth was not someone who wanted to be rescued.

  And for better or worse, Will wasn’t going to let that stop him from trying. Even if he didn’t have a plan beyond show up, look around, and find Wickham.

  The Clover Casino and Hotel was unremarkable, so far as casinos went. The air was thick with alcohol, whoops of victory and the loud, drunken curses of those not currently riding a lucky streak. The faint hint of cigarette smoke wafted from the areas cordoned off for the casino’s nicotine addicts, and almost every square inch of floor was occupied by servers weaving in and out of the clumps comprised of everything from senior citizens to kids that looked far too young to be allowed entrance.

  He couldn’t explain how, while staring at a sea of faces, his eyes somehow knew where to land. But they did. Will had barely entered the casino area when he spotted her. Had he not been looking for her, he would have never picked her out. She wasn’t wearing makeup, her hair was askew, and her eyes had the swollen, puffy look that told anyone plainly that she’d been crying. Never had he seen her anything but giggling and perfectly put together.

  Will swallowed and started across the room. She didn’t look up once, not even when a server brought her a refill. Rather, she kept her glassy gaze locked on the face of the slot machine, moving only to slap the bet button every few seconds.

  He drew in a deep breath as he came to a stop beside her.

  “Hello, Lydia.”

  She sluggishly turned her head, her eyes unfocused as they found his. She blinked at him a few times before recognition dawned across her face.

  Then, promptly, burst into tears.

  39

  The casino floor was not the best place to have this conversation. While most slot-machine junkies and career gamblers were well-versed in the art of ignoring things that didn’t concern them, the average tourist typically wasn’t so focused, and Will didn’t think the situation called for rubberneckers.

  So he led her awkwardly to the check-in desk, where he managed to reserve a room despite his classmate’s increasingly loud wails and sniveling. He wasn’t sure what this might look like—a guy taking a sobbing girl to his room, and he didn’t want to think about it too much because the answer couldn’t be a good one.

  Once they were in the elevator and away from the loudest of the casino sounds, Lydia seemed to calm. At least long enough to give her surroundings a good look and ask where they were going.

  “I need to talk with you,” Will said carefully. “We’re going to my room.” Then, thinking the better of it, added, “If you’d rather not be in my hotel room alone with me right now, we can go somewhere else.”

  Lydia gave him an appraising look that made him think she was likely smarter than most people, himself included, had ever credited. “You’re a good guy,” she said. “You’ve always seemed like one, at least.” She sniffed and her eyes began to fill once again. “I am in so much trouble.”

  Will drew his hands into fists in an effort to ground himself. If Wickham had done anything to this girl… “What sort of trouble?”

  Lydia couldn’t speak for a moment for trembling. The elevator arrived on his floor, and she bolted for freedom the second the doors slid open, dragging in deep breaths. She didn’t make it far—just to the edge of the hall that led to the rooms, where she stopped and made a show of looking in either direction.

  “Coast is clear.” She didn’t look at him. “Could…could we stay here? I don’t want to go into anyone’s room.”

  “We can stay here,” he agreed. “What sort of trouble are you in?”

  “It was dumb. So fucking dumb.”

  “Is this about George Wickham?”

  She jerked. “What do you know about it?”

  “I know that he’s been telling stories about Elizabeth Bennet to anybody who will listen. And I know those stories aren’t true.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she told me and I believe her.”

  “She could be lying. It’s all over Facebook.”

  Will tightened his jaw. Maybe his first assumption had been on the mark after all, and Lydia did have cotton for brains.

  But he didn’t think so.

  “Let’s just say I’ve known George Wickham a very long time. It will be a cold day in Hell before I take his word over someone else’s.”

  Lydia was still for a moment before nodding. “He was so nice to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I asked him about Elizabeth. I mean, I don’t know her very well, but she’s always been nice. A little boring, but nice.” She wrinkled her nose. “But she’s always talking about feminism and sex and I just kinda thought maybe it made sense that she was all hung up on him. He’s really nice and cute and funny and I know they’d been flirting and stuff. She gets so…” Lydia gestured vaguely. “Into things. He told me she was nuts about him, followed him around campus, memorized his schedule, kept sending nudes and stuff like that. He was worried about dating me because he didn’t wanna come around Longbourn with Elizabeth there. Thought she might get the wrong idea and start stalking him again.”

  Will swallowed. “But you came here with him, didn’t you? He’s here?”

  Lydia nodded again. “I was so stupid. I’ve always been stupid.”

  Well, that sort of talk certainly wasn’t going to help matters. “Lydia—”

  “No, I am.” She broke off with a sob, wiping at her cheeks. “My parents went on a cruise for Christmas. Wickham said he didn’t have anywhere to go and wanted to have some fun—kind of an anti-Christmas somewhere else. He said he’d find someone else if I didn’t go with him, and I really liked him so that freaked me out and I told him I’d go. We were trying to figure out what to do and…he mentioned he’s good at cards. So we decided on Atlantic City…after I told him I could pay for it.”

  Will edged a step forward. “How?”

  Lydia pressed her lips together, her facing starting to crumble all over again. “My…student loan money. I thought we’d get here and he’d just win it all back, whatever we spent. He said he could do it.”

  He could think of nothing to say, so he didn’t try for words. All he could do was stare at her.

  “Once we got here, he won five hundred dollars almost instantly. And then another three hun
dred on the slots. He made it look so easy. We’d been here maybe two hours before he had all the money back for the plane tickets and our room.” Lydia’s lower lip went into full wobble mode. “But he said he could win more. If I let him use more. He said he could win enough to pay for…whatever we wanted to do. And then some.” Shaking, she released a long breath and turned to look at him fully. “I am so stupid.”

  “Do you have anything left?”

  She didn’t answer—she didn’t need to. Her eyes were brimming again, and when she choked out a sob, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from losing control entirely. He stood there, watching her cry, thinking of how often he’d seen Georgiana dissolve into a mess over this man. The look on Elizabeth’s face when that kid from class had called her a whore during her presentation. And before that—the pain in his father’s eyes at learning who had stolen his car. That the boy he’d grown to care for had become a cautionary tale.

  “You’re not stupid,” Will said after a moment. “This is what he does.”

  “But I’m the one who—”

  “No.”

  “Coming here, using my money—I let him do that.”

  Will shook his head. “Whatever happened was all on Wickham, Lydia. I promise. He uses people and he’s very good at it.”

  Lydia trembled, considering, but there was something in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. After a long moment, she shook her head and looked down, sniffing. “I have three hundred dollars,” she said, dragging a wad of bills out of her pocket. “That’s all. The rest is gone and I have to win it back. My parents are going to murder me.”

  “Where is Wickham now?”

  “I don’t know. He took about a thousand dollars to play roulette.”

  “You let him take that much?”

  Her eyes bugged maniacally and she waved her hands, sending a twenty to the ground. Will bent over to collect it.

  “I don’t know how to play any of these games,” she said. “Wickham does. He won a lot of money when we first got here and he’s my best shot at getting the money back. All I’ve done is play the slot machines, and I won, like, forty bucks, but I need a lot more than that and he’s supposed to be helping me.”

  “Yes, well, he does nothing if there isn’t something in it for himself,” Will replied, offering a sympathetic smile as he handed back the wayward twenty. “Don’t trust him with your money. I don’t care what he says.”

  Lydia wilted, her eyes swelling again. “I was such an idiot.”

  “No, you weren’t. I told you, Wickham is pretty good at making people believe what he says.”

  “But Elizabeth didn’t. He really hates her. I guess she sent some of what he was saying to the faculty and… I don’t know what happened, but he was pissed.”

  Will swallowed. He hadn’t heard anything after he’d sent screenshots to the administration—hadn’t realized they’d acted at all.

  “He had me thinking it was because she wanted to get him kicked out of school because he’d dropped her.” Lydia paused, considering. “The way Jane was acting when Wickham kept showing up at Longbourn before break… She believed Elizabeth, but I didn’t. Or I thought maybe she was wrong or that it wasn’t as bad as they said it was. But she saw through him.”

  Will was quiet for a moment, unsure of how much to reveal. His mind took him back to the morning they’d spent on the back porch of Pemberley, Elizabeth’s eyes brimming with tears and regret, her voice thick as she related how stupid she felt. How she shouldn’t have needed anyone to point out what she now saw as obvious. And then he wondered what she would do if she were here now.

  The answer was clear. Elizabeth might not enjoy it, but her compassion far outweighed her pride.

  “She didn’t see through him,” Will said softly.

  Lydia shook her head. “Of course she did. Elizabeth’s, like, super brainy. He wouldn’t have—”

  “Elizabeth is smart, that’s true,” Will agreed, “but that doesn’t make her perfect. And I know she didn’t see through Wickham, because I’m the one who told her about him.”

  The words had their desired impact. The self-loathing in Lydia’s face melted, exchanged for confused wonder. “You did?”

  “Not as quickly as I should have, but yeah, I told her. I told her things that he’d done to me, particularly my sister.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Will pressed his lips together and drew a step back, shaking his head. “My point is, Elizabeth found out before Wickham could take advantage of her, and he lashed out when she called him on it. But even I didn’t think he’d take anything this far.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He hesitated. “What happened to the paper you were supposed to turn in for her?”

  The change was instant. Lydia’s eyes went wide and the color drained from her face. “What do you mean?”

  “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  “Umm, no, I don’t. Sorry.”

  At that, Lydia broke into a run—or tried to. She made a mad dart toward the elevators, but Will grabbed her wrist and tugged her to a stop, the kinder feelings he’d entertained blinking out of existence.

  “Let me go!”

  “Not until you answer my question.”

  “Stop!” Lydia looked around, eyes wild. “Help! This guy’s grabbed me!”

  Great. That was just what he needed. Will growled but released her wrist and brought up his hands before any of the vacationers could pop out of their hotel rooms and intervene. “Lydia—”

  But Lydia was at the bank of elevators again, frantically tapping the down button.

  “Lydia, Elizabeth’s been expelled for plagiarizing her paper.”

  She almost lost her footing. “What?”

  “Well, she has a hearing on the thirtieth. They’re going to decide then if her academic career at Meryton is over.” He was breathing heavily, taking in her stunned expression. “Plagiarism is a big deal. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “H-how… How would they even find out?”

  Any lingering doubt evaporated. Will exhaled again, slowly, focusing on his breathing rather than on, say, Lydia’s neck, which he would very much like to wring at the moment.

  “There’s software that teachers and professors use,” he said through his teeth. “I take it your teachers didn’t rely on this in high school?”

  Lydia shook her head.

  That didn’t seem likely. Since that sort of technology had become available to educators, he’d assumed it was utilized all over the place, unless the teacher in question truly didn’t care, or if Lydia’s parents had shelled out a lot of money to keep her academic missteps quiet. But he knew Lydia’s family wasn’t particularly well off—one of the older alumni families that likely insisted on Meryton for the sake of tradition rather than practicality.

  None of that mattered. Except that Lydia truly looked horrorstruck, and she wasn’t what he’d call a superb actress.

  “Well,” he said after a moment, “it exists. And Greenfield used this software on Elizabeth’s paper and the results could have her kicked out of school.” A beat. “This is her life, Lydia. Her future. Can you tell me what happened to the paper she gave you?”

  “That’s…” Lydia turned just as the elevator arrived and slid open. She made no move to step on, every inch of her slumping in defeat. “God, this is so fucked up. He said it wouldn’t be a big deal.” She cast a longing look at the elevator, which was thankfully empty, but turned her back on it as its doors slid shut again. “He promised me it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “Wickham.”

  She nodded, her face beginning to crack a third time. However, Will was all out of patience.

  “What did he say wouldn’t be a big deal?”

  Lydia flexed her fingers. She looked over her shoulder as though contemplating making another break for it, but the defeat that had been in her face remained. She knew, plain as he did, that there was nowhere to run.

&n
bsp; So she turned back to him, inhaled deeply, and told him everything.

  40

  “Do you want me to go in with you? I will if you think it would help.”

  Elizabeth flashed Jane a grateful smile, resting her head against the wall at her back. Her left shoulder sagged under the weight of her laptop bag. “Go with me as my emotional support, you mean?”

  “More like a character witness. You would never plagiarize and anyone who’s had you in class for more than two seconds has to know this.”

  The conviction in Jane’s voice was unwavering, reminding her yet again that she had truly hit the lottery in the best friend department. Not only had Jane rushed back to campus—she’d stuck to Elizabeth like glue, prepared to launch into a rousing pep talk every time she saw an outburst on the horizon. When Elizabeth had announced it was time to make the trip to Greenfield’s office, Jane had rolled to her feet and marched to the door without saying a word.

  Elizabeth was so used to handling things on her own, she didn’t really know how to react to having such reliable support. She’d considered protesting but hadn’t been able to summon the willpower.

  Friends like Jane were forever. Even if the worst should happen, Elizabeth couldn’t fathom her life without the girl who had become her surrogate sister. No matter what happened, there would always be a way to remain in touch.

  That provided some comfort, but also served to remind her of what else she stood to lose. Beyond just the education she’d promised herself, there was Will, and the thing she hadn’t known she wanted until a few days ago.

  Elizabeth looked down. “I just want this to be over. But I’m terrified of it being over at the same time.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  She laughed. “I’d kill for your confidence.”

  “It’s easy to be confident when I’m right.”

  The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor, saving Elizabeth from trying to come up with a reply. A few seconds later, Professor Greenfield rounded the corner, dressed in a pair of ratty jeans and an oversized sweatshirt. Her face was fixed in a scowl, and when she met Elizabeth’s eyes, her own seemed to darken.