“I beg your pardon?”
“This bullshit might work on Matthew, but it sure as well won’t with me,” she hissed. “I know your kind, Elizabeth Darcy, pretending to be all innocent on the outside…”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
She felt cornered, wanted to push this leggy stranger out of the way and run down the stairs.
“That.”
Cara pointed at the small rounded bump slightly protruding from under the heavy jumper. Lizzy pulled her coat around her protectively and turned away slightly.
“My fiancé’s baby, I’m guessing.”
She spoke with a sneer, a condescending tone with a sadistic chord on the sharp edges of her sentences.
There was silence; it was filled with doubt and betrayal and rage. When Matthew had returned from Derbyshire after the funeral, he was different, and she knew that something had happened. It hadn’t taken much to get the information from him, a weeping confession eked out over the course of three days. He was always rubbish at lying. She made him promise never to contact this Lizzy again and he agreed, not wanting to lose her.
Cara Dalhousie firmly believed that the best way to pretend something didn’t happen is always to ignore it. She hadn’t meant to read the email, but it was there in his inbox; an important message from his sister who felt that he should know. It was as if the weight of it dropped right through her, because fucking someone else was something she could forgive – they were young, and love was fluid – but a baby? Well, that was something completely different. A baby gave the betrayal arms and legs and screams in the night.
“You really are ridiculous, aren’t you?” Cara sniggered. “Were you going to keep this a secret? Do you have any idea what this will do to your father’s reputation?”
“My father knows,” Lizzy felt unshielded, but she wasn’t going to show it. “He’s happy to welcome a new Darcy into the world, and his opinion is the only one that matters to me.”
“A new Wickham, you mean…that will be fun for the press.” She raised an eyebrow, a sadistic chortle escaping her lips. “But what about your stepmother? Your little sister? Your brothers? Don’t you care what your carelessness has done?” She circled her like a hungry hyena, waiting for her to fall, to show any sign of weakness. “I mean, it’s obvious you engineered this whole shitstorm and conveniently left it too late to have it sucked out of you.”
Lizzy digested the words. The truth was that she had thought about it, how much easier it would be to not do this; but when it came down to it, she hadn’t been able to, because the thought of not going ahead with it was much scarier.
“You know, I never understood what he saw in you. You’re mediocre at best, Darcy.” She looked at Lizzy, tilting her head to one side. “He told me about that afternoon, how he felt sorry for you. He took pity on you and you practically threw yourself at him. Did your grandfather never tell you that it’s very bad form to fuck the staff?”
Lizzy swallowed hard, bit her tongue; she had a whole barrage of weapons that she could fire at Cara Dalhousie, but there was no point; no need to cause any more pain. She softened slightly, knowing that for all her anger and insults, Cara was simply a girl whose boyfriend had hurt her.
“I know you are upset about this, but you are taking it out on the wrong person. I didn’t cheat on you, he did!”
“You let him cheat on me!” she raised her voice, then composed herself. “You facilitated it, and now we have this,” she pointed at the bump.
“We don’t have anything,” Lizzy said with a resoluteness in her voice. “I have never asked for your involvement.”
There was a moment of silence and the two women eyed each other up from across the room. Lizzy had always been taught to stand up for herself and she was not going to be bullied by a woman who was taking the moral high ground on behalf of her cheating boyfriend.
“Your issue is more to do with Matthew, and not with me. If he wants to be involved in this baby’s life, then there is nothing I can do to stop it, and neither can you.”
Cara Dalhousie was used to getting her own way. It had been the same since she was a small child and was a character flaw that had seeped like spilled ink into her adult personality. Matthew always did as he was told, always complied with her wants, needs and desires. That was what made him such a perfect partner – she set out to get him and now she had him, but the stone in her bespoke leather shoe was Elizabeth Darcy and this unborn baby. She knew full well that Matthew longed to be involved, wanted to move back north and transfer his course credits to Manchester. Cara didn’t want this, was already planning to actively object. Lizzy Darcy could stay in her mouldy old manor house in Derbyshire, but she wasn’t going to be schlepping up here every other weekend to visit a brat.
“I’ll tell you what is going to happen, Elizabeth,” she intonated carefully. “You will go and see Matthew now and you will tell him that you don’t want him to be part of the baby’s life. I think that will be the best for all parties concerned.”
“I will do nothing of the sort,” she swallowed hard.
Cara’s features were hardened now, the veneer of spiritual assuredness failing as she realised that she was not going to get what she wanted. Lizzy turned on her heel and walked into the kitchen, shouting back over her shoulder.
“Now unless you have something nice to say, I would like you to leave. For future reference, this area of the house is out of bounds to the general public.”
Cara’s footprints were heavy on the oak floorboards, her exit signalled by a loud slam of the door. Lizzy took a moment to regain her composure before sitting on the floor of the kitchen, holding her belly tightly and feeling the baby kick sharply in protest.
“No, little one, I don’t like her either,” she whispered, before getting to her feet and putting her shopping away.
It was nearly eight o’clock when Maggie knocked on the door tentatively. She had helped her friend decorate in a warm yellow colour a few months before, but the colour did nothing to brighten up this dark evening. She knew that the letter she held in her hand probably didn’t contain the words that Lizzy wanted, and she was reluctant to hand it over.
Matthew had already left a few hours before, chasing a stomping Cara as she headed towards her Range Rover. They were arguing; shrill expletives being scattered about, following by softer apologies, before escalating into shouts and screams on the driveway of the stables. Gary, the head ranger, had come out of the office and demanded in his bellowing northern tones that they take their disagreements elsewhere, and they had sped off towards the driveway and then back down the M6 towards London.
The room was freezing, and Maggie made two steaming mugs of coffee before lighting a fire in the large fireplace that dominated the room. Lizzy was cocooned in a blanket on the couch, her head resting on a pillow, her closed eyes puffy and red from where she had been crying.
She noticed that the mantel was covered in new pictures – photos of her friends from university, a picture of her little sister Imogen cuddling their even smaller brother Joe just after he was born in May, an old polaroid of Maggie and Lizzy cuddling on the grand staircase on Christmas Day, and a newer photograph of Winston from a few months before he died. Lizzy was trying to make the flat feel more like home, but she didn’t have the time, the energy or the inclination. Between travelling back and forth to Manchester, working at Pemberley on the weekend and growing a baby, she was absolutely exhausted. Jean was worried, Maggie was concerned. There was still a while to go yet. She noticed a scan picture that she hadn’t seen before, placed on top of a pile of books, the image was clear, and she could see arms and legs now, rather than the indecipherable blur that she always pretended she could identify as a baby.
“Did you find out what you’re having?”
She plonked herself down on the couch and passed Lizzy her mug of coffee from the table. The room was beginning to warm up now, the condensation on the twelve-pane windows starting to dissipate, Liz
zy leaned over, breathed on the glass and wrote ‘girl’ as she stared forlornly out of the window and out onto the lake.
“You’re having a girl?”
Maggie had really wanted a niece, had already bought some little pink bootees and a tiny romper dotted with embroidered flowers.
“I am.”
“Mum will be so happy. We haven’t had a girl in the family since I was born!”
“I’m going to be able to do this, aren’t I?”
“Yes. Of course, you are.”
“I’m exhausted already, and she isn’t even here!”
It had been an emotional day and she hadn’t felt prepared to deal the onslaught from Cara who, quite frankly, was a lot worse than she imagined. She wasn’t sure if it was the shouting, or the horrible realisation that maybe it had meant more to her than it had to Matthew. Afterwards there had been little time to talk about it, and the few conversations they had had before he went back to London were stilted and empty.
“You have to remember that your great-granny raised two children and ran this whole estate all by herself, and she didn’t have me like you do.”
Lizzy felt a smile on across her face, Maggie was right; she had a generous allowance each month from her inheritance from Winston, who had ensured that she would be well cared for. She knew that she could afford to comfortably look after herself and the baby, as well as continuing her studies – and she had Maggie and Jean over at the stables who would be there when she needed them.
She didn’t need Matthew Wickham and his stupid face to help her; she understood why Cara was angry, but it was her boyfriend who was at fault here and if she was quite happy to let him into her bed every night, maybe she should try making him be accountable for his bullshit, maybe that would help her align her chakras or whatever crap it was that she needed to do.
Maggie could see the thoughts running through Lizzy’s head as she formulated her plan, and then she saw her face as she noticed the letter from Matthew sitting on the table; she knew his writing immediately, the spindly but firm letters imprinted on the envelope – ‘Lizard’. She had hated the nickname, given to her by Charlie and Matthew one early teenage summer as she spent almost a fortnight basking in the sunshine near the lake; the name had stuck and by the end of August even Winston was calling her it. Seeing it on the envelope she was cross that he dared to recall this earlier affection, annoyed that he dared to play on their history together. She picked up the envelope, felt the weight of the expensive paper in her hands, the inky scrawl of her name across the paper, and threw it onto the fire.
“Lizzy, what have you done that for?”
She jumped up and tried to pull the letter from the blaze with the poker, but the envelope was already ablaze, the final fragments disappearing into the flames.
“Don’t bother with that! If he had anything of worth to say, he would be here saying it to my face rather than sending a letter. The only time your brother has ever sent me letters is when he either needs to lie about something or has bad news; I imagine that letter contained both.”
Lizzy folded her arms defiantly. Maggie wasn’t sure what was in the letter, wasn’t sure what her brother felt about anything anymore, and now they would never know.
The atmosphere in the car was icy. Cara held onto the steering wheel firmly, her eyes locked on the road ahead. She hadn’t spoken to him yet, she probably wouldn’t for a few days now. He needed to learn his lesson.
Matthew stared out of the window. The world flashed by him as the landscape transformed from the built-up industrialised centres to the rolling pastures of the countryside, as the day began to fade, and everything dimmed, illuminated by streetlights, deep inside he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Happy and hopeful.
He had told Lizzy all of this in the letter he had written in his childhood bedroom, scribbling down his excitement and wonder and love with a smile on his face and an image in his head of how it would be.
He could feel the joy painted across his heart.
Eight
The bar at the top of the Beetham Tower was suitably glamorous, with tall sweeping views across the cityscape fading into the countryside beyond, the windows reached from floor to ceiling and small polished tables were dotted around the edges as all shapes and sizes of Mancunian society enjoyed the food and the fabulous cocktails.
It was on the twenty third floor that this small intimate gathering was taking place and the four figures were perched awkwardly on stools at one of the large tables that edged the centre of the room. Lizzy, befittingly dressed in something demure teamed with red sparkly shoes, was trying hard to make conversation with Carol, who was more stretched and artificial every time she saw her. Hugh was murmuring softly to Matthew, who kept looking at his watch and then at his phone before smiling up at them apologetically. They walked over to the bar together and she grazed his hand with her fingertips, noticing immediately when he brushed them away before ordering their drinks.
“Is it something I’ve done?”
“Of course, it isn’t anything you’ve done,” he dismissed, “you’re paranoid.”
“There’s obviously something.”
“Sometimes it isn’t always about you.”
They stood in silence and she felt like a hollowed-out tree.
“Maybe you shouldn’t stay at mine tonight, then.”
“Who said I was?”
“You never say you are, it’s usually a given.”
“Well tonight I’m not.”
Matthew was acting strangely tonight, she thought, constantly checking his phone, ignoring her attempts to make conversation. It was as if he was ignorant of her presence. It was weird, and she didn’t like it. He walked off in the direction of their table and she followed sullenly.
She hadn’t wanted to come to this tonight, and she found that, once she sat down, she was swinging her legs petulantly like a spoiled child, banging her heels off the metal of the stool, and sipping her Old Fashioned through the tiniest of straws. Matthew kept glancing at his phone and then up at her as they made small talk with her father and Carol, who had already annihilated a bottle of Merlot.
Hugh Darcy didn’t want to be here tonight; he had better things to do than sit in a bar with his wife, who would get drunk and then pick an argument on the way home. Lizzy looked equally bored, and Matthew was scrolling through his phone. Wickham was an alright sort, he guessed, the pair of them muddled through with their unconventional set up, and Harriet was loved dearly, which was the most important thing. Hugh wanted to see his daughter settled though, wanted her to find someone with a good heart, and a wicked sense of humour. Someone who was clever too, or who at least could hold his own in a conversation – she was too sharp sometimes and she needed someone to smooth her edges. Darcys were always ridiculously unlucky in love, it seemed; he was no exception.
He watched his wife start flirting with the cocktail waiter as she ordered her weight in gin and wondered where he had gone wrong. Benn Williams was forty minutes late now and they were all running out of things to talk about deemed suitable for polite conversation.
Benn parked the car near the Museum of Science and Industry, stumbling past a group of lads on the street who accosted him for selfies and bought him a beer, chatting jovially with him and then letting him continue on his way. He always found it important to take time to speak to fans, never being dismissive as he found some of his peers did. It was never his intention to be late, in fact he hated being late for anything, and as he looked at his watch, he realised that he had kept the Duke of Derbyshire waiting now for over fifty minutes.
He was immediately recognised in the lift, the two women in the corner mumbling and giggling, before taking sly photos with their phones thinking that he wouldn’t notice and slipping out of the lift laughing out loud and turning back to look at him, just to make sure. Matthew waved him over impatiently and he plastered on his smile, holding out his hand and greeting the Duchess with a kiss on the cheek,
the Duke with a firm handshake and Lizzy with a semi-reticent smile.
“And how are you finding Derbyshire?”
Hugh tried to engage Benn in conversation as the starters were placed on the table. The service had been quick for this VIP group, the chefs in the kitchen advised that not only did they have Benn Williams in house, but also Lady Imogen’s mum and dad, and Lady Liz, who always tipped well.
“I find it charming, although I am a northern boy by birth,” he stabbed a juicy prawn, and shoved it in his mouth. “Despite what my agent would have you believe, I’m not actually from the Home Counties.”
“Oh, but you play the gentleman so very well. You were a brilliant Heathcliff – that was your big break, wasn’t it?”
“It was actually ‘Praise to the Skies’.”
“I love that film,” Carol exclaimed. “Steven Malis was a delightfully devilish cad,” she purred at him, leaning over and placing her hand suggestively on his arm. “Whereabouts are you from? Cheshire? We have a lovely set of friends in Wilmslow, perhaps you know them…”
“I very much doubt that.”
“Benn is rags to riches story all by himself,” Matthew dragged his eyes away from his phone to participate in the conversation.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “I grew up as poor as a church mouse in a tiny council house. My mum still refuses to move.”
“A council estate?” Carol enunciated snottily, retracting her hand quickly and sniffing her wine with unmitigated pretension.
“I do take some responsibility,” Matthew interrupted, “if my little film hadn’t plucked him from obscurity, then you would be all be running in very different circles.”
“Really?” Carol said with a strangely haughty tone, that made Matthew and Lizzy look at each other knowingly. “But you always seem to be so… well-bred.”
Lizzy guffawed before eating her bruschetta, crumbs falling over her dress. Benn glanced over, a smile crossing his lips as he addressed the Duchess directly.
“It’s all a façade, I’m afraid.” He flashed his charming smile, before whispering conspiratorially, “all cheap trickery and posh accents, but don’t tell anyone, it can be our secret. Although I hear the slight hint of a Yorkshire twang there, Your Grace, are we both faking it?”
Becoming Lady Darcy Page 12
