On Air: An Elizabeth and Darcy Story (Part 3)

Happy (almost) New Year, Friends!

Here’s  Part 3 of “On Air” — an Elizabeth and Darcy story set in New York, 1939. If you’re interested in reading from the beginning, here are links to Part 1 and Part 2.

I’ll post Part 4 Tuesday, January 14 (edited: sorry, had to move the date back — life got in the way!). See you on the other side!

On-Air (Part 3)

(An Elizabeth and Darcy Short Story)

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It was like an infection, these feelings for her: he was in the middle before he knew it had begun.¹ As a doctor, he should have known—or would have known, if he still were a doctor—there was little to be done but wait it out.

Still, he had tried his own prescriptions: a rest cure, triggered by fourteen-hour workdays leaving him too tired to dream at night; a few painful injections of socializing, which always ended in a cold farewell to his baffled date; and, once or twice, that medication used by so many—an unhealthy dose of alcohol.

Now, on this weekend jaunt to the country, he was attempting all three at once: rest, socializing, and alcohol in equal measure. Yet there she was, too, striding across the meadow bordering Netherfield, a sudden breeze whipping the straw sun hat from her head.

She stopped, laughed, then turned back to chase the errant piece of headwear.

There were so many ways she got under his skin, but this capacity for joy made his chest ache every time he encountered her.

She ought to have looked ridiculous, racing across the grass, wearing overalls a size too large and boots caked six-inches in mud. She ought to have appeared clumsy as she struggled to grab the hat, even while holding a lunch box in one hand and a book in the other. (What was she reading?) She ought to have inspired in him the same disdainful snort that emerged from Caroline Bingley’s upturned nose.

But no: all he could think, as he stood watching her from Netherfield’s terrace, was that she was meant to be here. Indeed, Elizabeth Bennet seemed to belong everywhere.

The first time he had seen her, four months earlier, she’d come hurrying out of PBN’s Manhattan offices wearing a red rain coat, her riotous hair only partially covered by a patterned scarf. She’d carried no umbrella, which must have been why he’d noticed her: everyone else had theirs open against the April drizzle. Something about her—the ease with which she’d navigated the crowded sidewalk or the laughter in her eyes when she glanced up at him—had made him think, “She is a city girl, through and through.”

Now, as she plucked her hat from the waving grass, she looked as if she had always lived in the country. It wasn’t just the outfit: she moved through space, any space, as if it were home.

This quality ought not to have taken him aback. He had grown up among people who walked the earth with unbridled confidence: at Exeter, where almost all the boys had a cousin or a brother who had attended the school before them; in Cambridge, where most of Harvard’s undergraduates believed they were God’s chosen people; and even at Johns Hopkins, a new-money school, as far as prestigious universities went, but one proclaiming its students the best and the brightest. There was some evidence for that last claim; medical school had been devilishly hard, even for the smartest of them. And Darcy had been one of the smartest. One of the richest too, and from a family that, on his maternal side, could trace its lineage back to the Mayflower.

So why had he never felt as if he belonged anywhere?

No, that was not true. In desperate moments of crisis—in an emergency room in Brooklyn or a field hospital in Manchuria; while evacuating children from Madrid or treating dustbowl migrants in California—then and there, he had belonged. He’d had a purpose, a meaning, a reason—other than “You are Fitzwilliam Darcy”—to exist.

How did Elizabeth Bennet carry that sense of purpose in every step she took, wherever she took it?

“Stop it,” he muttered to himself, even as he continued to stare at her. She had paused in front of the meadow’s only tree, looking up at it for a long moment before settling herself against the trunk and opening her book.

“I can guess the subject of your reverie,” drawled a voice near—too near—his ear.

He closed his eyes briefly, as if this might make Caroline Bingley disappear. When that did not work, he threw back the gin and tonic he’d been nursing all afternoon, then muttered, “I doubt it.”

She did not hear, or did not care to hear, the coldness of his tone. But he heard it; he felt it, too. He hated how he behaved around his best friend’s sister. While Bingley radiated genuine warmth and good humor, Caroline reminded him of the people who frequented his father’s parties: strivers and climbers, the lot of them. Beneath their surface-level sophistication churned raw ambition, an unquenchable need to get ahead.

She reminded him, in fact, of George Wickham.

Or perhaps not. Wickham was ambitious, but he wasn’t a snob. Caroline had grown up with just enough wealth to trick herself into believing she need not associate with those she deemed inferior. Wickham was more of an equal opportunist.

“I don’t like him,” Darcy had told his sister bluntly—too bluntly—one rare evening when they had been dining at home, alone. Their father had been at one of his many “work functions”— smoking a cigar in the Rainbow Room or drinking expensive scotch at the Stork Club with other would-be titans of industry. Never had Darcy been so glad his father was out on the town, for it kept him from witnessing the row that had followed.

“You know, this is exactly what George said would happen.” Georgiana’s eyes—bright blue like their mother’s—filled with tears. “He told me you’d disapprove, all because he didn’t come from money.”

“No, Georgi, that’s not—”

“Oh? Then why don’t you like him?”

“He’s obsequious, a yes-man. If you saw him with Dad at PBN—”

“I have seen him at PBN! In fact, I have to see him there, for George is almost always working! Where do you think he is tonight?”

Darcy wished he had walked by Wickham’s office before leaving, just to be sure.

“I dare you, Will, I just dare you to find fault with his work!”

Truth be told, he couldn’t. Never late, no sick days, a consistent presence in the office, Wickham was so dependable that George Darcy had quickly promoted him from an office clerk to personal assistant. “How nice to have a young man who listens to me, for once,” his father had written in one of the few letters he’d sent to his son while Darcy had been working for the Red Cross.

Was this why he didn’t like Wickham—because this stranger had done what he never could: heed his father’s wishes?

“His work is fine, Georgi, but he’s only been at PBN for a year, and already Dad depends on him for everything. Mrs. Reynolds said—”

“I love Mrs. Reynolds, but she’s jealous, Will! George is taking more responsibility from her, and why shouldn’t he? Mrs. R is nearing sixty-four, far too old to be the secretary for the CEO of a growing network!”

PBN was shrinking, not growing—a fact he didn’t know how to admit to his sister.

“Georgi, we don’t know anything about him. According to Mrs. Reynolds, he just showed up at PBN one day. Where did he come from?”

“Where did he come from? Do you even hear yourself?” Georgiana’s face had grown bright red, a warning sign he ought to have recognized, but he was still getting to know this version of his sister. In the seven years he’d traveled for the Red Cross, he had missed so much of Georgi’s youth. She had, quite predictably, grown up—from a shy girl of fifteen to a confident woman of twenty-two.

At least, she was confident around him.

“Why don’t you act like this when you’re with Wickham?”

“What?”

“You rarely say anything when you’re with him. You let him do all the talking.”

“No, surely I…no!”

“And you never argue with him, Georgi.”

“Of course not! He’s not a stubborn snob!”

“I’m not being a snob. I’m only asking about his past work history, about his life before PBN. Has he told you anything about what he used to do or where he’s from? Does he talk about his family or—”

“Why should he?” Georgiana had punctuated this question with a clatter of silverware. “Unlike you, Will, George has come to New York to make something of himself!”

Had her face paled with regret after she’d spoken these words, or had that brief look of contrition been only an effect of the deepening shadows in the twilit dining room? She had fled the table too quickly for him to be certain.

Then again, what did it matter? His sister was right: he had not come to New York to make something of himself. He’d come to New York to unmake himself. It was the only way he could remedy the mistake of leaving in the first place.

Yet as he stood under the warmth of an August sun, watching Elizabeth Bennet sit with her face tipped up to the sky, he had a hard time believing in his own plan.

Foolish, this idea that she, a woman he hardly knew, held the key to understanding himself. When he talked (argued, bantered) with her, he felt more alive than he had since leaving medicine six months ago. But what did that prove, except that he regretted the promise he’d made to his father—and to himself?

© 2024 Christina Morland

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Notes:

¹ This clause — “he was in the middle before he knew it had begun” — is almost a direct quote from Pride and Prejudice. In Chapter 60, when Elizabeth asks Darcy to “account for his ever having fallen n love with her,” Darcy responds, “I was in the middle before I knew I had begun” (Austen).

You can find Part 4 here.