A Quarantined Proposal by Nicole Clarkston

How are you all holding up? It’s a wild ride, that’s for sure.

I thought you could do with a bit of laughter, so this is my very first crack at a modern Darcy and Elizabeth. (I said you could laugh, right?) You may even empathize with our dear couple’s struggles! Enjoy !

-NC

“Lizzy! You’re sucking up all the Wi-Fi!” Lydia shouted from the next room. “How am I supposed to Face Time with Denny?

Elizabeth flicked her eyes to the clock. “My chem class ends in ten minutes. Can’t you wait that long?”

A scratching, scraping noise slid along the door to Elizabeth’s bedroom—that would be Lydia, pressing her face against the wood and trying to annoy her into surrender. “He haf to go to worph at the ftation,” came the muffled response. “Come on, Lithy, pleathe? My phone ith thpazing out on data.”

Elizabeth sighed in exasperation and pulled out her own phone. “Fine. I’ll hotspot for the next few minutes, but you’re paying for my data.”

A squeal from outside, followed by the sound of her sister’s feet tripping away, was her only answer. Elizabeth touched the volume on her laptop and squinted at the professor on the screen. The video was pixelating again. Ugh! Was this isolation order never going to end? She could hardly read the notes he was putting up, and occasionally his voice broke away entirely into some mechanized garble that always stalled the class for several minutes while he repeated himself.

At last, the prof signed off, with the promise that he would post the quiz by late afternoon. Elizabeth scanned over the meager notes she had managed to take down and knew they would not be enough to study from. She was going to need help.

She stretched, closed her laptop, and unplugged her phone from the charger to send a text.

Still grinning, Elizabeth tucked her phone into her pocket and went downstairs. Will Darcy might have been the sharpest med student on campus, with the most residency opportunities landing in his lap and the brightest career rolled out before him in cardiology, but he was a giant goofball once he finally cracked a smile. Although, she recalled, it had taken a year for that to happen. Everyone expected him to go for Caroline Bingley, the daughter of a pharmaceutical magnate, and make a professional match of it.

Until, that was, he and Elizabeth got locked in the elevator for two hours. What had begun as a personality clash ended in a kiss… several, actually… so hot that she was still looking for her hair ties. Now she knew where they had ended up.

She walked into the kitchen and surprised Kitty, who was in the act of opening the very last box of Golden Grahams.

“Hey!” She poked her sister. “Those are for Saturdays only.”

Kitty stared right back at her with a defiant grin as she stuffed a dry handful of cereal in her mouth. “Wan thome?” she offered.

“Absolutely.”

Half an hour later, the box was gone, and the sisters were contemplating how their father’s Bran Buds would taste without milk when their mother came in. “Oh, girls, it is the most awful thing! We are completely out of coffee creamer, and we’ve only one tomato left!”

Kitty stifled a short, gluttonous burp. “I thought you were going to say we used up the last roll of toilet paper.”

“Not yet, but with the way Mary blows her nose—what will happen in two more days! I cannot send your father anywhere, not with his health as it is. What are we to do?”

“I’ll go out this afternoon, Mama,” Elizabeth offered. “I’m waiting on a call from Will, then I’ll go to the store…”

“You will do no such thing, Elizabeth Bennet! To think of all those people coughing on you, touching things… no, indeed!”

“Ma,” Elizabeth protested, “I’m a pre-med student. I think I know how to keep safe. I have gloves and sanitizer, and—”

“Out of the question! What would you bring home with you? I’ll order a delivery, assuming the store even has things in stock. No girl of mine is leaving this house until this entire nightmare is ended!”

Elizabeth scowled, although good-naturedly, and Kitty snickered. “The truth is, Mama, that Lizzy is going stir-crazy. She actually started sewing yesterday, and this morning I caught her counting the number of bread slices in the loaf.”

“I just wanted to know how long it would last,” Elizabeth answered reasonably.

Mrs. Bennet clicked her tongue. “You and your father are both fit to be tied. Go… just go walk around the living room or something. Do those exercise thingys or go help Jane with her puzzle.”

She tried studying, but she needed Will. Next she tried reading with her father, but he was more restless than she, and they only irritated each other. As a last resort, she knocked on Jane’s door, but when she saw the 5000 piece puzzle of polar bears playing in the snow, she refused to attempt it. No one could possibly be that bored.

An hour later, Elizabeth was lying half-asleep on the couch. Still nothing from Will, but she held her phone in her lap and dozed… or she would have been dozing, except for the hideously loud Spotify music echoing from Mary’s room. The last thing she was in the mood for right now was her sister’s Cello Masters at Moonlight playlist. She closed her eyes and waited for her phone to buzz. When it did, she snorted awake and nearly dropped it.

Elizabeth  got up and went slowly to the window. Somehow, in the few minutes she had had her eyes closed, Will had come—and not only had he come, but he had brought with him a full SUV worth of grocery bags. They were stacked on the ledge by the window, some leaning just far enough for her to catch glimpses of toilet paper rolls, eggs, milk cartons, and… and her favorite cereal.

Will Darcy stood in the center of it all—crushing her mother’s hydrangea, but Elizabeth doubted anyone would care about that. He was leaning against the outside of the glass, his eyes shaded so he could see her more clearly. As soon as she touched the glass from her side, he grinned, and those blue eyes of his twinkled like a ten-year-old boy.

“You sure know the way to a girl’s heart,” she said through the glass.

“Through the sternum wall,” he replied. “Even an undergrad knows that.”

“Don’t you have any better comebacks?”

He shook his head, rocking his forehead back and forth on the window. “I’m running on fumes. Need a refill of sassy woman to keep me going.”

“Six feet back, sir. How do I know you haven’t picked up something?”

“Oh, I did. Pick up something, I mean. Want to see?” He gave her a cheesy, lopsided grin and started to unbutton his coat.

“You do know my family is all here, right? Like, they could walk by any minute and see whatever you’re showing off.”

“I’m not that desperate. Hang on.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a wad of red satin.

“Oh, man,” Elizabeth groaned. “I thought you were just kidding about that thing. You know that won’t actually protect you from anything, right?”

“I never joke about red satin. Besides, I put a filter in it, but that’s not what I was going to show you. Here.” Reaching deeper in his pocket, he grasped something and tugged it free, then held it up to the window.

Elizabeth’s heart flipped, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of an easy conquest. She raised her brows. “A box? That will come in handy for something, I’m sure. Maybe I can prop my phone up with it.”

He turned slightly with a fake look of irritation and held the box higher as he opened the lid. “There, you irksome creature. What do you think of that?”

Her eyes popped. Good grief! The thing was bigger than that glass bauble Lydia bought from the dollar store when she was ten! She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and cleared her throat. “Uh… you know I… I can’t wear something like that, right?”

He pulled the ring from the box and held it closer to the window. “That’s why it comes with this convenient wedding band. See? Matching set. One you wear all the time, and the other you wear when I take you out on the town in that red dress you never got to wear last month.”

Elizabeth had to brace both hands against the glass—oh, Mama was going to have a fit when she saw how dirty the window was! But her head was light and she truly felt like she was going to lose her balance.

“Are you… serious? You’re asking me to marry you now? I thought we talked about waiting until I graduated. I mean, you have your residency coming, and then your internal med, and…”

“Elizabeth.” He put the ring back in the box, tucked it again in his pocket, and pressed his body against the glass. “I never liked the idea of waiting. It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time, but I want to begin my life with you now.

“When we first started hearing reports of all this stuff, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer, so I went out and bought that ring. That was a month ago—I was going to give it to you that night we planned to have dinner downtown, but… well, everything shut down the next day, and we never got that evening out. I’ve been carrying this thing in my pocket ever since, because it kept you closer to me. I think I’d rather have it on your finger. What do you say? Will you marry me?”

Her eyes were brimming by now, and she could hardly see his face. She was laughing, her fist pressed to her mouth to stop up a decidedly girlish shriek of glee. “Yes,” she choked.

“What was that?” He shook his head and tilted his ear to the window. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“Yes!” she repeated.

“Yes what? Yes, you’ll wear it, or yes you’ll marry me?”

“Yes, yes, I will marry you Will Darcy, you great goon! Come here and kiss me.”

He laughed and bent down a little lower, then pressed his lips to the glass. Elizabeth reached up to kiss that same spot and held long enough to imagine the heat from his lips warming her own side of the window.

“Wow,” he said with a visible shiver. “You are one sizzling kisser, Elizabeth Bennet.”

“You just wait for this isolation to end and see what I plant on you, Will Darcy.”

His shoulders hunched and his whole body shuddered. “Whoa! I am all anticipation. Are you going to TOUCH me? I can hardly bear the excitement. Better bring a defibrillator with you.”

“I have no intention of stopping your heart, Will. If anything, you have made mine come alive.”

He placed his hand on the glass and waited for her to press her palm against it. “Together apart,” he said, quietly enough that she could hardly hear him.

She fought back another tear—this one of impatience and frustration. “Together apart. Oh, I can’t do this any longer! It’s so unfair!”

His expression had grown sad as well. “My Lizzy, you know I would give anything to hold you right now. Some engagement, right? Not exactly what I had planned. I would take you out to the overlook under that big full moon we just had, and turn up the car radio, and we would dance all night… if only.”

“I’m coming out, Will. I don’t care if—”

“Elizabeth, stop.” He looked like he was swallowing back his own outrage. It took him a moment to collect himself, then he offered a forced smile. “You can’t. I got the call—I start at the hospital early because they need extra help. I have to be able to tell them that I have been properly ‘social distanced’ and all that.”

Something squeezed within her and she started to crumple. “Oh, Will! You have to be careful! Please—you cannot get sick.”

“I won’t. Nothing’s going to stop me from marrying you just as soon as the order lifts. Do you hear me, Elizabeth?”

She shook her head, but she was smiling through her tears. “You’d better say it again.”

“I. LOVE. YOU.”

She leaned her cheek against the glass. “I love you, too, Will. I wish you could come in and stay.”

“Hey. Why don’t you go get your laptop and I’ll see if I can help you with chemistry from here?”

She pulled back and looked at him skeptically. “You have a hydrangea branch poking your butt. That can’t be very comfortable.”

He glanced around at the bush. “It’s not a swivel chair, but I can make something work.”

She laughed. “Just open the gate and come around to the back porch. I’ll meet you there.”

He stepped back, his hand leaving the glass last. Elizabeth backed out of the room, watching him—and giggling at his expense—as he tried to do battle with the hydrangea.

She raced upstairs and grabbed her phone charger, laptop, and her notebook. As an afterthought, she bundled her fluffy body pillow under her arm, because she had a suspicion she was going to be sitting on the linoleum by the sliding door for a couple of hours. Poor Will would be stuck with a patio chair.

She came back down to the kitchen and was starting to set up her study station when her father walked in. “Lizzy, what is all that stuff outside? And why does it look like someone has been making love to my front window? Ah… I should have known. It looks as if Will Darcy has broken into my back yard again.”

She looked around. Will was at the sliding door now, pulling up a patio chair. He waved when he saw her father. “Hello, Mr. Bennet. I got you some milk for your Bran Buds,” he called.

Mr. Bennet looked pleasantly surprised. “Really? You can soil my windows anytime. Thank you, son.”

“Be sure to leave the groceries outside to air out for a while,” Will reminded him.

Mr. Bennet shuffled out of the kitchen, waving nonchalantly. “Yes, yes. Have fun on your date, Lizzy. Home by eleven.”

Elizabeth snorted and shook her head. “Papa!”

Will had made himself comfortable on the patio, so Elizabeth cozied up to her own side of the glass and flipped open her laptop. “Okay, so… Chemistry. Reactions…”

“Inhibitor,” he said.

She looked up. “What?”

He tapped the glass. “Remember your flash cards? A substance that delays, slows, or prevents a chemical reaction. It occurs to me that we have between us an inhibitor.”

She crossed her eyes and focused on the glass before his finger. “Or we have an opportunity.”

“How so?”

“Well…” She held her hand up to his. “I would define it as merely a nonreactive container. Keeping apart two reagents until they can be combined at the proper time.”

“And meanwhile, the reagents are multiplying.” He smiled and pulled that ring box back out of his pocket, setting it just outside the sliding door. “It’s going to be an explosive reaction when they pour us together again, Elizabeth.”

“Oh, I hope so.”