Becoming Lady Darcy

by Sara Smallman

  War with soon-to-be ex-wife for Williams, as he flaunts new relationship with sexy co-star, Schaffer

  It’s no secret that former Henry Jones star, Benn Williams adores women – especially his younger co-stars. Recently spotted out in LA with Rosie Schaffer, the cutie who caused his split from actress wife, Madeleine Tennant, it looks as though Benn, 42, has been trying to rekindle the extra-marital flame with his co-star from ‘Jackson’s Bane’ – the raunchy romance that saw the pair indulge in x-rated scenes, that had to be heavily cut before the film was granted a UK release. Could it be that Williams, currently slated as the leading name to star as Gainsma Quince in Jimin Jampol’s ‘Galaxy of Empires’, has fallen for Schaffer? If so, we would love to be a fly on the wall as the battle with ex-wife, Tennant, continues in the divorce courts.

  Twenty-Two

  Click.

  Her name flashed up on the screen, accompanied by a picture had taken in the summer. It was his favourite of her. Her hair pulled back, a stupid smile on her face, him in the forefront as he took the selfie next to Mr Darcy’s Pond.

  “Hello you! Only one day to go!”

  There was a silence, followed by the sound of his heart starting to drop to his feet.

  “Lizzy…is everything okay?”

  Quiet again, except for the thud of his heart pounding against his chest, pulsing in his fingertips, popping along his skin. She spoke, her voice crackling on the line. It was a bad connection.

  “I can’t hear you, is everything alright?”

  “No, it’s really not!”

  Her voice was harder than he had ever heard it.

  “Tell me, what? I feel like I have done something wrong here.”

  There was a silence again and then in cold, cutting tones she sliced through him.

  “You said you would stop.”

  “But… Lizzy…”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

  The phone clicked off.

  Benn was left with silence.

  There was already a drink in his hand.

  “It’s not like he was your boyfriend, I don’t understand why you are so bothered,” Imogen peeled a glow in the dark star off the sticky sheet of paper and placed it awkwardly on the ceiling. “He was just some guy you were shagging, it doesn’t matter how rich and famous they are, they all do it the same way.”

  “I wasn’t…sleeping with him.”

  “Don’t worry about it then, it will all be crap anyway, the stuff they write about me in the papers is always utter shit. You have to let it go.”

  Benn Williams might not have been her boyfriend, but they both had known that something extraordinary was beginning. Now it was gone, fallen through her fingers like the rounders ball she had always failed to catch, and she was staring at empty hands, standing at the far end of the field.

  “It’s not that easy, Imogen.”

  “Did you actually like him? Let someone in for once…”

  “Imogen, can you shut up for once, please!”

  “Or was it the fact that he was divorced what really did it for you? I forget that you only tend sleep with married men.” As soon as the words escaped her lips Imogen regretted them

  “Don’t you dare made snide little comments about me or my private life! I have been covering up for you for years!”

  Imogen recoiled, back on the defensive, retreating towards the couch; her heartbeat had risen to her throat, pulsing hard, visible to anyone who looked.

  “That’s what sisters are meant to do… it was alright for you,” she sneered. “Being sent away to live in the idyllic English countryside with grandad, who adored you and treated you like a princess.” Words were falling out of Imogen’s mouth now, a waterfall of hidden resentment. “Everyone loved you and you got to be normal!”

  “Normal? There was nothing normal about it all!” Lizzy screeched. “You got to live in France with your mum and dad, being brought up in a -”

  “Have you even met my mother? Ever spent more than a few days with her? She has the maternal instincts of a velociraptor,” she laughed hysterically. “Sending me away to school when I was four years old – do you know what that’s like?” She walked to the window and glanced down at the courtyard below.

  “I’m sorry that your-”

  “I was so little, Lizzy,” her voice was tiny, “so alone.”

  “I know what that feels like…”

  “No,” she said, the frustration evident on her face, “You were here tucked up in your special bed that we never hear the end of.”

  “Imogen, you don’t know anything about it.”

  The younger woman stopped. There was no point starting a war with her sister. It would be easy to blame her shitty childhood on Lizzy who had been sent to Pemberley to live with Grandad Duke, where she was looked after, and loved. But it wasn’t her fault, wasn’t anyone’s fault really. She had no reason to argue, no axe to grind. Lizzy had always done her best to make her feel cared for, tried hard to make her feel special, but Imogen knew that she was just a lost soul, flailing about and looking for something, anything to grasp onto, and that wasn’t anybody’s fault except her own.

  “You’re right,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  Imogen thought carefully about what she was going to say, she had never seen her sister like this. Usually she was so calm, so unruffled.

  “It’s okay,” she slumped down on the bed. “Carol did a really shitty thing sending you away, you should have come and lived here with me, gone to St David’s with Harry, worn a blue polo shirt and your hair in pigtails.”

  “I liked wearing my hair in pigtails,” Imogen admitted, “but it was always regulation French plaits at St Margaret’s.”

  “You were very cute in your little red blazer and straw hat. Harriet was always very jealous of your uniform.”

  Imogen lay down on the bed next to her sister, and they settled comfortably onto the feather duvet, snuggled against the plump pillows. She was always the strong one, always the one to make things right. She wondered what she could say to make her feel better, she wondered what the words would be.

  “Does he know?”

  Lizzy turned, “does who know what?”

  “Benn,” she began. “Does Benn know about your mum?”

  Lizzy turned sharply, focused on the sticky, plastic star stuck to her finger.

  “Lizzy…”

  She shook her head, “of course not, what would that achieve?”

  “Lots, of course,” Imogen cuddled into her sister, stroking her hair, the curls knotted and tangled. “It’s okay to let people in, Lizzy. You can tell him why things scare you or make you hurt.”

  “There would be no point to it.”

  “I think you’re wrong in this instance, I think if he knew he would do all he could to make it better,” Imogen pondered the thought in her mind, “and you’re in love with him.”

  “I’m not in with love him,” she dismissed.

  “Liar.”

  Imogen turned to look at the synthetic stars too. She could see that her sister’s eyes were red and puffy, that her skin was paler than usual, her hair unbrushed, her lips dry.

  “Does Darcy fathers always pack their daughters back off to Pemberley when they become too much trouble?”

  Lizzy glanced over, her arms folded over her waist. She remembered the conversation in the hallways of the hospital, where Hugh wanted Imogen away from the bad influences and drugs and the partying, where he wanted her safe and cared for. It had never been about sending them away, she knew that, it was about sending them home.

  “You’re never too much trouble, Imo.”

  “Oh, I am,” she rested her chin on Lizzy’s shoulder. “Not like you, you always do everything right.”

  “Well, having a baby at twenty understandably made everyone very proud…especially your mum, if I remember rightly.”

  Imogen tried to imagine Carol’s face when she had heard the news and it made her smile to herself, “but it di
dn’t stop you from doing what you wanted though, did it? You still became a lawyer—”

  “A solicitor, and it’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an English teacher.”

  “Still something though, isn’t it? I haven’t done anything apart from get my name in the papers for the wrong reasons and become very good at shopping and social media.”

  The words faded into something that sounded like regret. Lizzy pulled her into the crook of her arm.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Imogen. We all should have taken more care of you. Especially me.”

  “You always did. Imagine what it would have been like if I have lived here with you, we would have been like the Three Musketeers, walking home from school for fishfingers and CBBC. Think how much fun my life would have been if I had grown up at Pemberley.”

  “You have strange ideas of fun. It’s five miles to Lambton, so I don’t think you would have liked the walk very much. Although I must say I don’t envy your life in London at all. I am definitely not a society girl.”

  Lizzy was always Lady Darcy in Derbyshire, and that was fine. She could pop on her fake pearls, her Cath Kidston scarf – the aristocratic armour that allowed her to play the role in the way that people expected. But in London, at the important black-tie events with the daughters of the friends of her father’s where she had to wear a tiara and an evening gown, she always felt inadequate and out of her depth, because they were all fully aware that she was faking it.

  She knew that they sniggered as she walked away, mocking her in derisive, well-enunciated tones; their delicate but barbed laughter chiming against their crystal champagne glasses as their expensive heels click-clacked on the marble dancefloor. Lizzy had always been the odd woman with last year’s dress and weird accent; a square peg desperately trying to wedge herself into a round hole.

  “No-one should ever envy my life. It wasn’t how it looked on Instagram,” Imogen said. “It was very lonely.”

  “You always seemed to be having so much fun.”

  “The internet lies. Newspapers lie. Photos lie,” she stated. “I lied. I always told you what a wonderful time I was having.”

  Lizzy faced her sister, sitting cross legged on the bed now, holding her hand. She had never wanted to ask this question, but she knew that she wanted to know that answer, however much it might hurt.

  “Did you mean to do it?” They both knew what the ‘it’ was. “Or was it an accident.”

  Imogen swallowed hard, tried to remember that night, tried to think back to what happened, tried to pull the memories out of her head and into her mouth. But she couldn’t. He had been there, because she could see him flitting across her mind, and they had gone to Beaufort House, because she had seen Percy Wallace and his new girlfriend. She remembered that. And then they had gone back to her flat in Soho, catching an Uber. She fell out of the taxi. There was nothing else. But she knew he had been there because he had phoned the ambulance and occasionally, she saw vivid flashbacks of him bent over her with a worried look on his face.

  “I didn’t want to die, Lizzy,” she said with a tremble on her voice, “I just wanted to feel safe. I suppose I’ve never felt like I really belonged anywhere.”

  “Well, you’re home now.”

  “Do you mean it? Can I stay here with you?”

  “For as long you like. You have as much right as I do to be here.”

  “I do?”

  “You’re Lady Imogen Darcy,” her sister said, “I think you need to remember that.”

  Imogen had returned to the flat that afternoon after being pandered and flattered and generally made to feel very special indeed. The ladies in the tea room had presented her with three tiers of cakes and sandwiches, and she could hear the whispers from behind the counter about ‘Little Lady Imogen’, who used to sing Crocodile Rock and twirl about the tables. Imogen liked the way that people remembered her, how they had fixed her in their minds as a happy, dancing girl who laughed and sang and span around. She hoped that being back at Pemberley would make her feel like that girl again, would allow her to discover who she was trapped behind this façade of who people expected her to be.

  “Is dinner nearly ready?”

  “Tea will be ready in about ten minutes, you’re in the north now, Lady Imogen!”

  The flat was warm and toasty, the smoky smell of chipotle pepper exuding from the slow cooker where the chilli con carne for dinner – tea - was simmering gently. She started to leaf through some papers in a cardboard box on the coffee table – there was half a box of macarons, and she quietly stole one thinking it wouldn’t be missed, and a letter folded up tucked away in the myriad of tissue paper. Curiosity always got the better of Imogen; she was the kind of girl who would purposely seek out hidden Christmas presents, would always slow down on the motorway to look at accident scenes. The writing was loose and flowing, the letter addressed to ‘my lovely Lizzy’. Oh, she thought, it was a love letter.

  She had never known her sister to date, apart from the on-off extra marital with Matthew who had been an ever-fix’d mark upon the Darcy household for as long as she could remember. And then there had been David, who she had met twice in London – her sister gleefully clinging onto the arm of the man who had a haunted look in his eye and a faint mark on his finger where his wedding ring should be. Lizzy had been so happy with him – feasting on the scraps of attention he had thrown her way. Imogen always found it very sad that her sister kept her feelings so close. She guessed it was due an inherited stiff upper lip.

  “Did you steal a macaron?” Lizzy placed a mug of hot tea down on the table.

  Imogen grinned guiltily, “I did, they are my favourites.” She observed her sister, “he sent these, didn’t he?”

  Lizzy nodded. She had been so excited to receive the parcel, which had also contained a tiny bee pin that was currently attached to her coat. It had meant a lot, she had told him, that he remembered these little things. He said that he had missed so much, that he wished he hadn’t been going back to LA, but that he would make it up to her when he got back.

  “Will you be standing at the gate waiting for me with a sign?” He said it jokingly, but seriously would have loved for her to be standing there with her bee shoes and mischievous smile.

  “Only if you promise not to judge my terrible sign-making skills and poor lettering!”

  “Of course not, as long as you’re there I won’t have any issue with your bubble writing. I have to warn you though, Miss Lizzy,” he said with mock sternness, “I will be removing my sideburns.”

  “Oh, no!!” She laughed for the first time in a week, “I might have to rethink this whole thing.”

  Benn had laughed too, happy to hear the lightness return to her voice, and then in a low growl he said, “you had better not, you cannot even begin to imagine the things I want to do to you.”

  She had felt herself blush and was glad that he was two hundred miles away, so he couldn’t see her face turn pink. “Surely it all depends on the effects of the sideburn removal on whether or not I permit you to do such things,” she teased him, matching his low voice with one of her own.

  “Do you even know what you are doing to me right now?”

  “I could tell you what I want to do to you,” she murmured, hiding her face from Kate from the ticket office, who was casually eavesdropping, “but I don’t think it would be appropriate, do you?”

  She could still hear his laugh.

  1858

  The paper was slippery, the ink thickened by the cold weather of the winter months and he found that it flowed slowly from the nib of his pen. The office at the front of the house was warm, heated by the fire that spitted and crackled, throwing out the scent of woodsmoke and covering the books on the shelves closest to it in a fine layer of dust that was swept away once a day by one of their many housemaids. Over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of his wife that was painted a few months after they wed. He could remember the day so vividly, she had worn a simple yellow dress mad
e from a daintily embroidered muslin that had been part of her wedding trousseau, posing for the Italian artist in the drawing room of their house in Grosvenor Square. He would have gladly paid for a grander selection of gowns but found that his new bride had chosen a modest selection of fabrics and dresses, all of which she looked beautiful in, and all of which he loved taking her out of.

  Thinking back to those first heady days of marriage, he could remember the scent of violet and bergamot – it was a fragrance that could immediately take him back to dancing with her on the front lawn, falling about laughing on the soft grass, lying there with her nestled in the crook of his arm looking up at the stars over Pemberley as they twinkled and shone in the night sky. A soft chuckle escaped from him as he continued to write his letter, thinking of those summer afternoons where they drank their fill and danced the dances of their youth on the grass, much to the hilarity of their children who would watch, laughing and teasing from the balcony.

  Fitzwilliam Darcy was an old man now, nearly seventy-eight, and his hands – once firm and full of strength – were mottled with spots of age and wrinkled more than his vanity liked. Even though his fingers were still agile enough to complete the letter, they ached with the fatigue of holding the quill so tightly.

  Elizabeth was always waiting for him in the drawing room, reading, or perhaps teaching their granddaughter how to play her instrument most ill, and then they took supper together in the intimacy of the stag parlour as they did every night when not entertaining. He had always been amazed at how much a look from her across the room thrilled him, how he loved to argue and debate with her on issues, still trusted her more than anyone else in the world and those fine eyes still shone brighter than any star in the sky. The Darcys had grown up holding each other’s hands – he had been the proud, arrogant gentleman, still fumbling around with insecurity and the weight of the greatest of expectations; she had been the impertinent Hertfordshire Miss whose main defect was to wilfully misunderstand everyone, but together they were an unstoppable force; an ideal match of love and intellect.