Prejudice & Pride

by Lynn Messina

  Just as Georgia is losing points, checks are stacking up in the Darcy column. To start with, there’s the fact of her cousin Celia, who, Bennet doesn’t doubt, is willing and capable of backing up the whole story. Darcy wouldn’t have offered her as proof if she weren’t able to give it. Another point in her favor is Bingley, who, when questioned by John, had long ago asserted her friend’s blamelessness in the affair. Lastly, there’s Darcy herself. As proud and obnoxious as she is, she’s always behaved with rigid morality. Her friends respect and admire her, and surely, if she had done the terrible thing of which she’s accused, they would know about it and judge her accordingly. Her love for her brother can’t be disputed, as even Georgia admitted she was an affectionate sister.

  All the evidence is there, even Georgia’s dropping him for a well-to-do fund manager, and as Bennet examines it, he realizes he’s been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. His discernment—ah, yes, his highly developed ability to discern on which he prides himself—has been appallingly lacking, and he’s mortified to recall the confidence of his former opinions. How easily he’d been misled by simple vanity, for Georgia had flattered his and Darcy had offended it. That, apparently, was all it took to make up his mind.

  Grasping the depth of his folly, Bennet rereads Darcy’s explanation of her treatment of John and this time begins to concede the validity in her observation that John appeared indifferent to Bingley. Lydon himself had said something similar at the ball. John’s feelings, though fervent, were not on display. And how could they be? Bennet thinks defensively. His brother is a consummate professional who’d never let his personal feelings affect his work, certainly not to the extent where he would make a declaration to a patron of the Longbourn. There’s nothing more indecorous than pestering one’s benefactor with one’s emotions.

  With this in mind, Bennet can understand the root of Darcy’s concern for her friend. He knows how Meryton in his giddy excitement over funding can come across like an eager fisherman about to reel in a huge catch and realizes the proprietary air he’d already established over Bingley’s fortune would be unsettling to Darcy, if not wholly offensive. Lydon, too, with his firm commitment to the path of least resistance, had made John’s interest in Bingley seem largely mercenary.

  The irony of all this isn’t lost on Bennet, and he smiles thinly as he imagines the distress with which Meryton would greet the information that he’s primarily responsible for losing all of Bingley’s lovely money. But the amusement doesn’t last long, and Bennet feels only sad about all that has happened.

  Although he isn’t fit for conversation, he greets Collin cheerfully when he eventually appears in the kitchen and enthusiastically falls in with his plans for the day, which includes sunbathing on the beach—with a book or without, depending on one’s preferences—and a swim in the ocean followed by another swim in Lady Catherine’s pool to wash off the sand and salt.

  “No tennis, thank gawd,” Collin says as he opens the fridge to poke around for viable breakfast options. “Celia and Darcy were on the first train out this morning, to my aunt’s both horror and delight. Horror because they left so soon after arriving but delight because they took the correct train for Sunday morning travel.”

  Bennet smiles at the dilemma such a conflict of emotions must have created for Lady Catherine and nods as Collin outlines their beach-going options, for, with his host, it’s never a simple matter of finding an unoccupied swath of sand and dropping one’s towel.

  Collin shudders in distaste at the mention of a towel. “We have beach chairs and sand chairs and reclining chairs and lawn chairs and chairs with umbrellas and chairs that look like Adirondack chairs but fold down almost to nothing. We have every kind of chair you can think of, except an electric chair, though if Lady Catherine had been able to persuade the governor, we’d have one of those, too. And of course we have a wide variety of towels, which we’ll bring to the beach, but there must be a larger barrier between my butt and the sand than a strip of multicolored terry cloth.”

  Bennet readily agrees to the irrefutable inadequacy of the cotton towel, though he’s never really found the item wanting before, and, gratified, Collin begins cataloging all the factors that go into finding the right spot on the beach. One must avoid children and smokers, of course, but also aggressive users of coconut-scented sunblock.

  The list goes on, and as attentive as Bennet seems, his mind is miles away.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bennet almost tells John the truth about Bingley the moment he sees him Monday morning. Even before he enters the office, he hears the relentless clack-clack-clack of the keyboard and knows his brother is already there, furiously typing some email or updating a spreadsheet. He opens the door, crosses the threshold and strides to his desk, but as his desk is directly across from his brother’s, separated by no more than three feet, it’s nearly the same thing as walking to John. He looks at his brother, his blond hair streaked with sun from two weeks at the beach and his bright blue eyes focused intently on what he’s writing, and decides he has every right to know the truth. He opens his mouth to speak.

  And promptly shuts it again as he realizes how little he’s thought about the consequences of such an action. Yes, it’s Bennet’s deepest hope that once John comprehends what has happened, he’ll nobly rise to the occasion and finally hop on that plane to London. Or, failing that, send a goddamn email.

  But Bennet is sensible enough to concede that what he wants his brother to do and what his brother will do are two entirely different things. Before he says anything, he needs to consider that fact and figure out if the new information will make things worse for him.

  John adds an emphatic period to the end of the sentence he’s writing and glances up at his brother. “The traveler returns!”

  Bennet shrugs off his messenger bag and drops it next to his desk. Then he slides into his chair and boots up his computer. “Traveler hell. I just went out to the Hamptons for a couple of days. You’ve been gone for two weeks. How was the Cape?”

  “A little soggy, very lobster-y. I learned how to stand-up paddle board,” John says with a gleam in his eye.

  As expected, his brother winces. “Oh, no.”

  “It gets worse. I can do yoga on the paddle board. That’s right, on the water, my friend.”

  “What about our pact to avoid any and all hipster activities?” Bennet asks, then gasps as something truly horrifying occurs to him. “Dear God, next you’ll tell me you did it all while wearing a fedora!”

  John laughs. “Please, I still have some soul left. I promise you, I will remain fedora-free and continue to resist growing a bushy beard, even though that’s what our people do now.”

  “Our people?” he asks with curiosity and suspicion.

  “Fellow Queens dwellers.”

  With rents continuing to soar in Brooklyn, parts of Queens have indeed become ridiculously trendy as well as pricey. “Yeah, well, those accomplishments aside, I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive the stand-up paddle board yoga.”

  “You’ll get over it as soon as you see how cool it is. We can do it on the Hudson at Pier 40. I’ve already investigated. But enough about me. How was the Hamptons?” John asks.

  “Entirely devoid of paddle boards,” he says for starters and then launches into a description of the Parsonage and Rosings and the beautiful sand dunes and coastline stretching for miles.

  “And Lady Catherine? Is she all that Collin promised?”

  Bennet grins as he recalls the imposing matron with her grand empire and micromanaging ways. “She’s what human resource managers around the world call a detail-oriented self-starter. She has a carefully considered opinion on every conceivable topic and a strong disapproval of anything that seems the least bit modern. If she approved of stand-up paddle boarding, she’d still be horrified to see you do it in a bathing suit.”

  “She sounds awesome,” John says. “I’m sorry I didn’t meet her. Do you think Collin will manage to get her here
one day?”

  His brother glances meaningfully at the tiny office, with its practical furniture and worn carpet, and says, “I sincerely hope not. This room offers so much opportunity for improvement—and telling people how to improve is her most favorite thing in the world—it might make her head explode. But we don’t have to worry about that just yet because Collin is spending the rest of the summer out there. He said he’d check back in some time after Labor Day.”

  John nods, says he’ll miss their volunteer’s entertaining if not very productive presence and asks what one does for fun in the Hamptons.

  Bennet pauses, then decides it’s better to admit everything than to try to hide some things. “I played tennis with Collin’s cousin Celia, although played rather overstates the case, as my game never rose to that level. Celia is also cousins with Darcy, who was there as well. She and I”—Bennet lowers his voice to make sure Meryton, if he’s in his office, won’t hear a thing—“had an interesting conversation. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she has developed feelings for me and proposed a dating situation so we could get to know each other better.”

  John raises his eyebrows. “A dating situation?”

  “Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t know what else to call it.” Determined to preserve some of Darcy’s dignity, as it’s only the gentlemanly thing to do, Bennet gives his brother just the broadest outline of the conversation, saying merely that he rebuffed her advances in the strongest possible terms.

  Immediately, John is full of sympathy for the proud woman who put herself on the line by forthrightly stating her feelings. Bennet, already defensive, for he now knows how badly he mangled it, assures his brother that even as she was making the declaration, she was still trying to talk herself out of it.

  Although Bennet’s tone indicates amusement, recalling the way Darcy chose to make her proposal continues to infuriate him two days later. That indignation, however, is immediately eased by the memory of how coldly and unfairly he’d condemned and upbraided her. Now the anger turns inward as compassion for Darcy kicks in. She was not only disappointed by his refusal but blindsided by it as well.

  Ever since Bennet read the email, his emotions have been swinging from anger to pity and from pity to anger, and because he can’t get a handle on how he feels, he has yet to respond. He knows it’s wrong to remain silent. An email as detailed and honest as the one Darcy sent deserves to be acknowledged. But how? That’s what he can’t figure out. A brief note thanking her for the information seems almost as bad as saying nothing, and he can’t imagine what he’d write in a longer message. Each hour that passes, the likelihood of his responding grows less and his guilt grows more.

  Ultimately, all he knows is, he doesn’t want to see her again.

  To take the focus off his own faults, Bennet relates with surprising detail the information about Georgia contained in Darcy’s email. Even faced with this devastating truth, John strives for even-handedness and posits that they’re still missing some vital piece of information that would clear both women of all wrongdoing.

  “No,” Bennet says firmly. “You’ll never be able to exonerate them both. Be decisive: Pick a horse and lay down your money. I choose Darcy.”

  Although John’s reluctance is keenly felt, he eventually decides against Georgia. “But it’s difficult to accept. Georgia is so likable.”

  “I know. And Darcy is not.”

  “I never thought Darcy quite so unlikable as you did.”

  Bennet knows this is true because his brother has never found anyone to be entirely unlikable. If he knew how Darcy had intentionally removed Bingley from New York to save her from his evil clutches, he’d immediately argue that his clutches, while in no way wholly evil, do have an element of evilness about them.

  “So the question is, do we tell people the truth about Georgia?”

  John is taken aback by the query. “Tell what people?”

  “The people here,” he says. “You know how the Longbourn is—it’s like a small, rural village. Gossip spreads like wildfire and everyone talks about the same four things. The building is buzzing with Darcy’s awfulness. Shouldn’t they know the truth?”

  His brother is unconvinced of the necessity. “Exposing Georgia to gossip and ridicule doesn’t serve any practical purpose, does it?”

  “No,” Bennet concedes, “it doesn’t, and Darcy would not want me to say anything about her brother. Darcy is so unliked around here, I don’t think anyone would actually believe me. I guess I’ll just let the matter rest. Georgia will be gone soon enough—Redcoat is putting the finishing touches on the redesign of the Smithson. That’s their last project with us.”

  “I’m sure she regrets her actions, and the fact that she’s taken a steady job indicates she’s turned over a new leaf,” John says sensibly. “We shouldn’t ruin that for her.”

  Having talked it through with John, Bennet feels much better about the Georgia situation and returns the conversation to the matter of stand-up paddle boarding, a concept he still can’t wrap his head around. John defends it stridently, gleaming with smug confidence, because he knows his brother will enjoy it just as much as he does.

  They’ve only just settled down to work when Meryton arrives, eager to hear all the details of Bennet’s visit with Mrs. de Bourgh, of whom he has great expectations. Despite his young employee’s insistence that the grand dame would never give her time, much less her money, to a backwater institution that features nonrepresentational art, Meryton refuses to have his high hopes dashed and disappears into his office to compose a follow-up letter for Bennet to send with a box of moderately priced gifts from the museum store.

  Bennet rolls his eyes in his boss’s general direction but doesn’t make the added point that Lady Catherine would never donate time or money to any institution that employs him, so strongly does she disapprove of his freethinking ways. He holds his tongue because he doesn’t have time for an extended lecture on the importance of toadying favor with rich New York patrons.

  Two hours later, Lydon strolls in, and he checks his swagger when he sees his two brothers back in the office. “Hey, homies, good to see you safely returned from parts unknown.”

  John wrinkles his brow. “I was in Cape Cod and Bennet was in the Hamptons. The parts don’t get much more known that that.”

  Although already apprised of their whereabouts, Lydon acts as if it’s the first time he’s heard it and attributes his possible forgetfulness—he’s still not willing to concede prior knowledge—to his very busy couple of days. Since he’s clearly itching to share some interesting information, John asks him what he’s been up to.

  Bennet would never have been so obliging.

  “Oh, you know, nothing much,” he says with aggressive casualness, “just hanging with movie stars and world leaders.”

  Naturally, Bennet is intrigued by this remarkable tidbit, but he knows better than to gratify Lydon with a follow-up question. John isn’t as circumspect. “What?” he asks, his eyes popping in surprise.

  “It was the craziest thing. Friday night, I went out with the Redcoat crew for happy hour. We hit one of the bars on Continental, the one with the big blue question mark over the door. It’s pretty divey, very low-key. We’re hanging and having a good time, and then the door opens and in walks Johnny Rumba. He’s filming a movie down the block in some empty warehouse—a comedy called Mr. Chamberlayne about a military officer who has to dress up as a French chambermaid to catch a killer—and swung by for a drink. He’s got his boys with him, a pretty big entourage, both in size and number, which is hardly surprising because, hey, international action star! One of the Redcoats, Pen Harrington, is fearless. This guy, he marches right up to Johnny, past all the huge dudes surrounding him, plops himself down at the table and asks Johnny what he’s drinking. And Johnny goes for it, impressed, I guess, by the bluster, and before you know it, Georgia, Forster, Pen and I are pounding beers with him, and Georgia is telling him all about the Longbourn, you kno
w, the turrets and the balconies, and he has to see it. So we all come back here but it’s late now so it’s all locked up. Johnny says he’s got to take off, he has a party he has to go to, and Georgia says, ‘Aw, can’t we come, too?’ and Johnny’s like, ‘Sure,’ so we all climb into his limo—a sweeeeet ride, let me tell you—and wind up in Brighton Beach at a birthday party for a Russian oligarch who owns half of Siberia. Total open bar and celebrities everywhere. It was fresh. And that was just Friday.”

  Indeed, that was just Friday. Lydon still has a whole weekend to relate and, assisted by selfies, tweets and Pen Harrington’s Tumblr, he does so in minute detail. Bennet listens as little as he can, but there’s no escaping the frequent mentions of Georgia’s name.

  “We’re going back to Brighton Beach tonight,” Lydon adds when he finishes describing the pool party at Soho House the night before. “The oligarch’s daughter’s BFF likes Forster and invited all of us to dinner at her uncle’s restaurant. Georgia’s coming, too, Bennet, and—you probably don’t know this—she’s no longer seeing that investment banker. He was relocated to Liverpool, which is hardly a bustling financial capital, so clearly his reassignment was a demotion of sorts. I’m glad Georgia is done with him because she can do so much better.”