Katie Oliver - What Would Lizzy Bennet Do?

‘It was a beautiful ring,’ Holly finished. ‘I was deliriously happy. But then I found out he didn’t really love me,’ she added, and fidgeted with the stem of her water glass. ‘Not one jot. It was all to do with money.’ She looked up. ‘My family’s money.’

‘God, I’m sorry,’ Harry said, and scowled. ‘He’s an arse. It seems some things never change. Take what he did to Phoebe, for instance…’

‘It’s most distressing,’ Lady Darcy cut in quickly. ‘ All of it.’ She gave her youngest son a quelling glance. ‘But there’s no need to go into personal family matters at the dinner table, Harry.’ She turned back to Holly. ‘I’m just relieved that you realised your fiancé’s true intentions before you actually married him.’

‘Yes. I count myself very lucky.’ Holly smiled at Hugh’s brother. ‘That’s why I’m glad Harry confronted Ciaran. You prevented her making a very big mistake.’

‘That’s me,’ he said wryly, ‘defender of virtue. Champion of teenage girls everywhere.’

‘Hardly that,’ Hugh retorted.

Holly pushed her chair back. ‘I think it’s wonderful, what Harry did. Now, if you’ll all excuse us, I’m taking him into the kitchen to have that eye looked after.’

‘The kitchen?’ he echoed, surprised. ‘Don’t you mean the local A&E?’

‘No. That eye needs an ice pack on it, and straight away,’ Holly said firmly. ‘A bag of frozen peas will do nicely. Come along, you can show me where the kitchen is.’

Harry grinned, then winced. He glanced at Hugh as he stood to follow her. ‘Your fiancée is a bit bossy, isn’t she?’

‘What about our plans to ride?’ Hugh called out as Holly headed towards the door. ‘Elizabeth’s arranged to meet us at the stables later this morning.’

‘And we’ll be there,’ she informed her fiancé firmly, ‘ after I take care of poor Harry’s eye.’

***

‘Good morning, Daddy,’ Charlotte said, and leaned down to kiss his cheek as she entered the kitchen. ‘Did you sleep well?’

Mr Bennet looked up from the table, where he was sitting with a cup of tea – which had gone cold now – and the newspapers.

‘I slept very well, thank you,’ he replied evenly.

‘Fab. I slept like a top,’ she confided as she reached into a cupboard for a mug and switched on the kettle. ‘What does that mean, anyway, to “sleep like a top”? Tops don’t sleep, after all; they spin.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know.’

If his daughter noticed his lack of enthusiasm for the topic at hand, she gave no sign.

‘I’m surprised Lizzy and Emma aren’t up yet. I’m usually the last one out of bed.’ She plunked a tea bag in her mug. ‘I thought I’d go to Longbourne again today,’ she added, her words casual, ‘and hang out with the girls. We had such a good time yesterday.’

‘Evidently. It seems you had such a very good time,’ Mr Bennet went on, and lifted up one of the newspapers on the table, ‘that it made the front page of the Tattler .’

‘What…?’ Charlotte turned, mug in hand and surprise on her face. ‘What are you talking about?’

But as her gaze came to rest on the photograph of her, and Ciaran, and Harry, and a smaller one of her and Ciaran snogging on the aft deck, her words trailed away and her eyes widened in horror.

She suddenly remembered the sandy-haired bloke with the Nikon, madly snapping photos of Ciaran and Harry fighting from another yacht docked nearby.

‘I think I can safely say,’ Mr Bennet pronounced as he tossed the offending paper down and regarded her balefully over the top of his spectacles, ‘that you’re not going anywhere today, Charlotte, nor for the remainder of the month – because you’re not leaving this house.’

Chapter 14

‘What?’ Charlotte cried in outrage. ‘You can’t do that!’

‘I most certainly can. What were you thinking ,’ he snapped, his face dark with anger, ‘visiting that film star on his private yacht… alone?’

‘He invited me out for an afternoon cruise, that’s all! It was nothing.’

‘Nothing? Then why didn’t you tell me about it?’ her father demanded. ‘Why did you not ask my permission before you went gallivanting off to Longbourne to spend the day with that womanising scoundrel?’

‘I – I didn’t think you’d mind.’ Which was nonsense, of course. She had known Daddy would mind horribly, so much so that he’d never have let her go off to meet Ciaran.

‘Of course I mind!’ Mr Bennet scraped his chair back and stood. ‘I very much mind. I’m disappointed in you, Charlotte. Not least because you snuck off to meet that lying Lothario; now you’re dissembling in an effort to absolve yourself of any wrongdoing. Well, it won’t do.’

‘What’s going on?’

Charlotte looked up to see Lizzy and Emma, still in their T-shirts and pyjama bottoms, crowded together at the kitchen door with startled faces.

‘Nothing,’ she snapped. ‘Daddy and I are having a… disagreement, that’s all.’

‘We’ll say no more about it,’ Mr Bennet said, his face grim as he gathered up the papers and made his way to the back door. ‘I shall be on the terrace, reading the rest of the newspapers in pursuit of the peace and tranquillity I’m so rarely afforded. Kindly do not disturb me, any of you.’

And with that he left, slamming the door behind him, leaving his daughters staring after him in astonishment.

***

Lizzy Bennet hurried across the field and climbed over the stile that separated her father’s property from Cleremont. She was nearly as anxious to put distance between herself and the tension she’d left behind at Litchfield Manor as she was to see Hugh Darcy…

…and Holly, too, of course.

As she strode towards the house, her battered Dublin tall boots making quick work of the trip, Lizzy smirked. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth today as she furthered her acquaintance with Darcy’s fiancée.

She planned to keep her promise to her father and be all that was agreeable to Holly – and then some.

And if, in the process, she happened to show Miss James up in the saddle – which, given the fact that the girl was a Londoner, shouldn’t be difficult – then so much the better.

Good thing she’d had free use of the Cleremont stables since she was a girl. It afforded her plenty of opportunity to ride, and their father had even plumped up for riding lessons for a couple of years. She could soar over a jump, post a trot with ease, and canter and gallop with the best of them.

Holly and Hugh might be engaged, she thought now as she neared the kitchen entrance where they’d all agreed to meet. Holly might be more fashionable, and more adept at making conversation and clever remarks.

But I , Lizzy thought smugly, can ride like a dream, and I have a bedroom full of ribbons and trophies to prove it . Hugh loved nothing more than a good bracing gallop across the fields.

She smiled as she brushed a bit of grass from her breeches. She might not have Holly’s money or connections. She might not have her fashion sense or even, at the moment, a job.

But she had determination in spades. And she intended to do everything she could to unseat Miss Holly James, and make Darcy see that he’d chosen the wrong girl.

***

As the morning sun inched higher in the sky outside her window, Charlotte rested her elbows on the sill and gazed down into the garden below, chin in hand, and scowled.

It wasn’t fair.

Look at them down there now, she thought resentfully, Emma and Daddy, sipping their coffee and tea and reading the newspapers in companionable silence. As if everything were wonderful and right in the world. As if her own world wasn’t ruined, thanks to the unreasonable and unjust actions of her father.