by Jessica Daw
“I thought . . . I just thought he cared,” she said heartbrokenly when I sat next to her.
“He left?” I asked.
She nodded miserably. “Carrie texted me. She said . . . she said . . .”
“Let me read it,” I said in the gentlest voice I’d ever used.
“Okay,” she whispered, taking out her phone. Her fingers shook as she tried to find the text. I slid it from her fingers and found the text myself.
Carrie: Jane I’m sorry to tell you this way but Louise and Jacob and Will and Cade and I are at the airport right now. We’re flying to LA. I know it’s short notice but Will had an emergency and the rest of us wanted to go. Meryton is lovely but to be honest you are the only person I like and I know Will can’t wait to see his sister who is very talented and beautiful. Cade has always liked her a lot. If you’re ever in LA give me a call.
I stared at the text for a long moment, as if it would make more sense if I looked at it longer. As if Carrie’s cruelty would lessen. But it didn’t change.
“Oh, Jane,” I breathed. “This is horrible. I can’t believe Carrie would write something like this and still claim to be your friend.”
“Carrie? No, she was trying to be kind. Warn me in . . . in the gentlest way she could . . . that Cade was interested in someone else . . . not me.”
“As if! She wants him to be interested in Georgia Darcy, Jane, but he is crazy about you, no matter what Carrie says,” I said firmly.
“I still don’t even have his number,” she admitted in a tiny voice. “I never got it.”
That was too bad, since now her only means of communication was through his sister. Then I remembered: “Jane! Dad has Cade’s number!”
She laughed, making a few tears fall. “He didn’t save it. Can you believe it?”
“He didn’t save it,” I repeated slowly. “Of course he didn’t.” I took a deep breath. “He’ll be back, Jane. If he’s not back in two weeks, I don’t know anything.”
Evidently I didn’t know anything. Everything returned abruptly to how it had been before that call from Cade Bingley—at least on the surface. Dad still ran the recording studio. Mom still gossiped and cooked and went on about her glory days. Mary still worked at the bank and thought herself more righteous than anyone else. Lydia and Kitty still worked at the hotel and flirted with anything good-looking and male. I still worked with Dawn and swam in the mornings and wrote music between. Jane still was off school for summer but kept busy.
But it wasn’t the same. Not for me, and especially not for Jane. I’d had dreams come closer to realization than I’d ever expected, and I couldn’t wait for the release of Cade’s movie, couldn’t wait to see if anyone heard our music. Charlotte was gone, too, leaving me lonely.
Because Jane couldn’t seem to snap back. She tried so hard it broke my heart. She got out of bed every day, and if she woke up later than she had before Cade it wasn’t as late as Lydia and Kitty slept in if they could get away with it. She dressed in her cute clothes and styled her hair, and if she tended to wear her more comfortable outfits and do the minimum with her hair she still looked gorgeous. She kept herself busy, and if she was quieter while she baked and sewed and painted the quality of her work wasn’t any less. She went on runs every morning, and if she ran at the rec center instead of on the mountain trails by Cade’s house she didn’t run any less.
I felt helpless. It had been my experience that broken hearts were best healed by activity, and Jane was active. Her heart just . . . wasn’t healing.
After three weeks of it, I accessed Dad’s phone records and found Cade’s number. I gave it to Jane without saying anything and she took it. I’d felt like I needed to. She told me she’d texted Carrie dozens of times and only received replies half the time, none of them longer than a sentence and none of them warm. It had gotten to the point where Jane said, “I guess she wasn’t my friend after all.” I hadn’t been able to reply to that.
We sat on her bed cross-legged, her phone in her hands.
“It shouldn’t be so hard,” she said, biting her lip.
“You can do it,” I told her encouragingly.
The furrow between her eyebrows stayed, but she nodded. “I can do it,” she repeated, and with sudden decision hit call. For a minute she just stared at the calling on her screen, then jumped and put it to her ear.
I listened anxiously but couldn’t hear anything.
Then suddenly Jane said, “Hello?” Her face fell terribly. “Oh, hi, Carrie. Is Cade there? . . . My dad had his number . . . From when Cade called him about our music? . . . He isn’t? . . . When do you think he’ll be back? . . . He’ll call me? . . . Okay . . . okay . . . thanks . . . bye.” She hung up and looked at me with hollow eyes.
“Tell me,” I said softly.
“He forgot his phone. He’s with Will and . . . and Georgia. He spends a lot of time with Georgia.” A sob broke from her then, and she cried painfully. I wanted to kill Cade for what he’d done. I’d been so sure he was as crazy about Jane as she was about him. But I’d been wrong again.
Jane didn’t improve after that phone call. It got to the point where even Dad noticed and suggested Jane go visit Mom’s brother, Ted Gardiner, and his family in LA. I’d balked at the idea of sending her to the heart of the film industry, but Dad had assured me she ran as little risk of running into Cade there as here at Meryton, and possibly less, because Meryton was much smaller and he did have a house here still.
So Jane left to visit Ted and Nel’s, and not long after Charlotte called and told me her sister Mariah was coming to visit and asked if I wanted to come. Collin would cover my airfare. I was dying to see Charlotte, and being with my family without Jane was significantly less comfortable, especially considering how much time Lydia spent complaining about how boring Meryton was without the Hollywooders. And work without Charlotte was worse. Dawn had hired a girl named Ellie Clarke that drove me crazy, but she was nearly as deft with the needle as Charlotte had been.
When I asked Dawn for a couple weeks off work, she gave them to me unhesitatingly. She knew Ellie, with her gum-snapping and hair-tossing, was making me insane, and things were going slow enough I could be spared.
Dad was the only one that hesitated.
“Lilly, you’re abandoning me to them?” We sat in his “office”—it was really more of a library with the absurd number of books that lined the walls and were stacked on every available surface—and he wasn’t very excited about my trip.
“Please, Dad? I need a break, and I miss Charlotte.”
He made a face. “Do you miss Collin too? Married people tend to come in packages.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Collin’s gone most of the day.”
“And I’m sure you can’t wait to meet the famous Catherine de Bourgh.”
“Charlotte told me that I will most certainly be granted that particular honor.”
“I almost envy you.”
“Can I go, though? It’s on Collin’s dime, after all, and Mariah Lucas is too cotton-headed to make the trip alone. Please?”
He sighed. “Does it have to be two weeks?”
“Yes,” I said firmly.
“Not very nice,” he mumbled.
“Please?” I wheedled.
“Fine,” he relented. “Go. Leave me to your three ridiculous sisters and my darling wife. Careful, though—if you stay away longer than two weeks, you’ll likely come back and find me incapable of stringing together a sentence that doesn’t revolve around movie stars and fashion.”
chapter eight
“Lilly!” Charlotte cried with very un-Charlotte-like enthusiasm. She ran and hugged me fiercely, surprising me. Charlotte wasn’t much of a hugger. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” she said in my ear. I saw Collin over her shoulder and thought I actually did have a pretty good idea.
Mariah pulled up beside us, having fallen a bit behind trying to manage her four suitcases. “Mariah,” Charlotte said warmly, hugging her yo
unger sister, who shrieked and hugged her back. Mariah, sixteen, looked quite a bit like Charlotte, though the grace Charlotte’s maturity and intellect gave her features was absent; but they both had slightly frizzy tawny hair, very fair skin, thin frames, and light hazel eyes.
Collin came upon us then. “Mariah, my sister, it is the greatest of pleasures to see you again. And Elizabeth, any friend of my dearest love is welcome.” Then he shook both our hands. I had to stifle a laugh at the face Charlotte made when he said dearest love.
“We should go home. They’ll be tired,” Charlotte said in a sensible tone.
“Naturally, naturally,” Collin said hastily, shepherding us toward his car. He held the passenger door open for Charlotte, and then the back doors open for Mariah first and then me, smiling as if to say I have a nice car and it could’ve been half yours if you’d taken me up on my generous offer of marriage.
I smirked at him in an all the cars in the world wouldn’t make me want to marry you way.
For the entire drive back to the Williamson residence, Collin went on about how romantic and perfect his runaway marriage with Charlotte had been. They were apparently reincarnations of Romeo and Juliet, or at the very least Tristan and Isolde. The fact that both of those stories ended in death evidently didn’t bother Collin in the least—on the contrary, it seemed like he was hoping a similarly tragic, but “very romantic”, ending would find him and his dear Charlotte. Ugh. How did could she stand it?
But she didn’t look pained as I watched her face in the rearview mirror. She didn’t seem to be paying Collin any attention at all, instead watching the beautiful woodland we were passing through. Every inch of ground was lushly green, as green as the trees that stretched full towards the gorgeous blue sky. Even the soil was beautiful, dark and rich in the shade of the forest. The road wound through foothills then through a long, stunning canyon to the small, extremely picturesque town of Hunsford.
We arrived at Charlotte’s home halfway through the afternoon. Collin insisted on taking all of our luggage but had to make three trips. Charlotte watched with a slight amused look, making no move to help. She similarly stayed quiet but mildly amused while Collin gave us the Grand Tour of His Humble Home, telling us specifically about every Brilliant Suggestion Catherine had Condescended to Give him—all of which, of course, he’d promptly and exactly followed.
Finally, Collin excused himself for a Very Important Meeting (he really was capitalizing all his words, the way he was going on, making sure I knew what I’d missed out on when I didn’t marry him). Mariah was feeling the jet lag, even though our flight had only been a few hours long, and went to take a nap.
Once alone, I smiled at Charlotte. “How are you?” I asked, really wanting to know the answer.
“I’m happy,” she said seriously. I did my best not to look doubtful, but she caught me, smiling crookedly. “I don’t love Collin. But that isn’t a surprise, and it’s curiously releasing to not have to worry about how I feel towards him. I know I don’t love him, and hardly respect him, and I go from there. I make an effort to keep him happy and out of my way, and he doesn’t mind the arrangement in the least. I spend my days walking, cooking, cleaning, and always, always writing. I really am happy, Lilly.”
Privately thinking I wasn’t interested in that kind of happiness, I smiled. “I’m glad, then.”
“But I am so glad you came. I miss you.”
“I miss you too, Charlotte. You should meet the new girl Dawn hired.” I made a face. “Dawn has to schedule us separately. Honestly, she drives me crazy.” Walking towards the window, I sighed and slightly modified my opinion of wanting Charlotte’s kind of happiness. “It’s so beautiful here.”
“Do you want to take a walk?”
“You read my mind,” I said with a grin.
We set off, falling into easy conversation as we wove through the loam-scented emerald labyrinth, soft birdsong and the gentle sound of the leaves moving in the breeze filling the silences that began and ended in the natural way that is a mark of genuine friendship. I told her about my worries about Jane, about the abrupt departure of Cade Bingley and company, and she told me about her efforts to network and get her scripts out.
It was dusk by the time we returned, the shadows thick and cool and quiet, the last of the sunshine sweet and golden.
“You’ll have to go swimming at the lake,” she told me as we entered the kitchen.
“The lake?” Collin was sitting at the table, cards laid out between him and Mariah, forgotten at the mention of the lake.
I saw Charlotte hide a smile. “Lilly loves swimming,” she told him in an admirably smooth voice.
Collin’s plain face lit up and he launched into an excited description of all the marvels of Hunsford Lake. Charlotte had told me she thought of Collin’s never-ending speeches like the sound of the ocean and heeded them about that much. She started pulling out and preparing things for dinner with a complacent look on her face, saying mm-hmm and oh, yes every now and again. I joined her, shaking my head. Only Charlotte could live with the longest-winded person I’d ever met and be so content. All the more power to her, I guess.
Collin talked his way steadily through dinner and half the evening while Charlotte and I played cards. He received a call somewhere around nine thirty, after which he announced with exuberance that we would dine with Catherine de Bourgh on the morrow. Yay.
And so we did. After spending the day lazing around with Charlotte and Mariah, Collin gone to do whatever he did, we all walked out the door, crossed the road, made our way down what I thought was an excessively long driveway to the monstrosity of a house at the end.
It was huge, glutted with columns and balconies and statues and stained glass windows, rambling on at each side without rhyme or reason. It was the gaudiest, showiest, ugliest mansion I had ever had the misfortune to see.
I’d sort of stumbled when the monstrosity came into sight.
“Ah, Lilly, do not be ashamed of awe,” Collin said when I hurried forward. “It is truly a sight of grandeur.”
I choked back a laugh, saying, “Yeah.”
The door had a massive, dragon-head knocker, and Collin actually used it. I thought that we’d all graduated to using fists to knock if there wasn’t a doorbell, but apparently not.
The woman who answered the door was thin and colorless. “Collin. Charlotte. Guests. Welcome,” she said in a dry-leaves-rustling voice.
Okay, I’ll confess—I’d googled Catherine de Bourgh and her stepdaughter, and this was neither. Were we somehow at the wrong house?
Oh, no. Mrs. Jenkins was Catherine’s “assistant.” She had a freaking servant.
Mrs. Jenkins led us into the house. The ground was covered in excessively rich rugs, the walls plastered with huge, fancy-looking, mismatched paintings, the ceiling covered in chandeliers, and the rest of the house full of statues and potted plants and fancy little tables and vases full of surprisingly fresh flowers and decorative clocks and anything else that was expensive. I got the claustrophobic feeling I got in overflowing secondhand stores as soon as we walked in.
Fortunately, Catherine de Bourgh was waiting for us in a room enormous enough to compensate for the luxurious garbage that cluttered it. And the floor-to-ceiling, forest-and-mountain-view windows didn’t hurt.
“Collin,” said a sharp, carrying voice. “Introduce your guests to me.”
“Of course,” Collin said with a thicker layer of servility than I’d ever heard him use. “Elizabeth Bennet and Mariah Lucas.”
“Lilly,” I corrected automatically, which earned me a slightly taken-aback and certainly irritated glare before Catherine resumed her examination of us. As she looked us over, I returned the favor for her and her stepdaughter, seated next to her.
Catherine de Bourgh had been beautiful. I knew she had, from my earlier googling. I also knew she was fifty eight years old. I couldn’t decide how old she looked. The planes of her face were less defined than they had been, but her
cheekbones were still visible, and her proud jaw quite clear. Her body hadn’t gone saggy or soft, and her clothes were certainly not those of an older woman, flamboyant, flowing floral prints that were fashionable but not attractive. Her eyes were sharply attentive, nearly black and shrewd.
Princess de Bourgh in no way resembled her stepmother. She barely looked twenty, though I knew she was twenty five, my age. She was very pretty, in a limpid, underwater way, with silky straight pale blond hair, pale skin, a pale mint green watered silk dress, and a heart-shaped face with soft features, complete with full lips and overlarge pastel blue eyes. She didn’t say anything to us, other than a sulky, “Hello,” to Charlotte when she was directly addressed, revealing her voice to be high and breathy.
“Well, Charlotte, your friend is pretty enough, but your sister looks too much like you to be beautiful,” Catherine said as she finished her examination.
Indignation flashed through me at Catherine’s blatant insult of Charlotte. I would’ve said something rash, but before I could open my mouth, Charlotte placidly said, “Lilly’s always been very pretty.”
I couldn’t help thinking how spineless, but after a moment of mixed emotions stirring, they settled and I realized this was Charlotte. She would be polite to Catherine in hopes of using her to get ahead. Which meant I had to be as polite as I could manage. However much Catherine de Bourgh irked me—and she grated after two minutes—I couldn’t ruin things for Charlotte like that. Not after what she’d given up to get this opportunity.
So I gritted my teeth and smiled like I was grateful for the non-compliment.
“Sit,” Catherine commanded, gesturing grandly at the array of chairs and couches before her.
Collin obeyed the order quickly enough that I wondered if he’d been trained, Pavlov’s-dogs-style, to respond to the old actress’s voice. Charlotte followed her (gag) husband, sitting on the loveseat he’d chosen with him. Mariah sat almost as quickly as Collin in the nearest chair, her eyes large, clearly speechless.