On Air: The End!

Okay, all: it’s 3:25 am Eastern Time, and I finally finished On Air: An Elizabeth Darcy Story! So, you can expect that this is a very, very rough draft! Still, I hope you enjoy this tale from 1939. If you want to catch up on the earlier parts, feel free to so do so here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6. Part 7.

On-Air (Part 8)

(An Elizabeth and Darcy Short Story)

Was it possible, in only two weeks, to fall in love?

Her parents had met on a Sunday and married the following Saturday, a cautionary tale for rapid romance, if ever there was one. Thomas Bennet had been a thoughtful and witty man—so long as a sturdy wall stood between himself and his wife. Without that barrier, his virtues had become his vices: his thoughts had darkened, and his wit had become weapons to wield against Frances Bennet. Her mother, too, had seemed happier when not in her husband’s presence; only when he had died did she bemoan his absence.

So no, Elizabeth did not believe it possible—certainly not advisable—to fall in love after so short an acquaintance. Yet here she was, rapidly losing her heart to Darcy.

“You have known him for many months now,” soothed Jane, as they rambled the meadow bordering Netherfield.

“But until two weeks ago, I hated him!”

“I doubt you hated him.”

“No, I suppose not—but he was my nemesis.” She thought of “Tales for Tots” and her uncertain fate at PBN. “Perhaps he still is.”

Then she remembered the note she had received, just a few days earlier, from Ed Gardiner, the station manager at CBS who had once worked with her at PBN: “Someone very well placed at PBN has told me you deserve better. Ring my secretary if you want to talk, Miss Bennet.”

No, Darcy wasn’t her nemesis—and never had been.

“Well, whatever you feel for him, you have known him longer than I have known Cha…” Jane stopped, hand on the gate that would allow them access to the Netherfield grounds. “Well, you have known him long enough to know your heart. That is what I think, Lizzy.”

Elizabeth placed her hand over her sister’s, their fingers together gripping the cold metal of the gate latch. “And what about you, Janey? Do you know your heart?”

“Oh, Lizzy, my heart is a wild and inconsistent thing.”

“How poetic!”

Jane laughed. “You mean to say melodramatic.”

“Well, I have long wondered how you, serene and patient as you are, could possibly be related to all the rest of us ungovernable women at Longbourn.”

“Perhaps I am the most ungovernable of us all.”

“Jane…”

“I do know my heart, Lizzy, but it does not matter: while I work for at Netherfield—while my livelihood, and Tommy’s too, depends on this job—I cannot give another thought to…well, to what we might otherwise wish.”

“We? Has he—”

“He has done nothing untoward,” she said quickly. “But…”

“But?”

“There was an evening, last week, when he had expected his sister to arrive, only she was delayed, and so when he sat down to dinner alone, he asked—well, he wondered if I would join him? And I did.” She sighed. “Stupid girl that I am, I did.”

“Did he—”

“He did nothing untoward,” she said again, and Elizabeth snorted.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“No, truly. We just talked—for hours, Lizzy.”

“What about?”

“Teaching and medicine and Tommy and…oh, everything, Lizzy, everything! And Tommy!” she said again, stopping dead in her tracks, tipping her head back and closing her eyes—against the sun, or her tears, Elizabeth could not tell. “I stayed so late that Mary had to feed Tommy dinner and…what kind of mother am I, Lizzy?”

“A brilliant one,” she replied, placing an arm about Jane’s shoulders. “Just because you stayed at work a bit late—”

“But I wasn’t working! I was talking and laughing and—”

“So you lost track of time.”

“But that’s just it,” Jane whispered. “I saw how dark it had become, I knew how late it was, but I kept listening to his stories and telling my own and”—she opened her eyes, blinking furiously—“then I thought to myself, What if I just stayed the night?”

Elizabeth said nothing, only pulled Jane closer.

“The moment the idea crossed my mind, our eyes met, and—oh, Lizzy!—I think he knew exactly what I had been thinking.”

If he did, Elizabeth supposed it was only because he had been thinking the same thing.

“I jumped up and rushed out of the house before he could say more than my name. The next day, I arrived with every intention of quitting, but I couldn’t find him. He’d left a note, an apology, swearing he would never again put me in such a position again—and he hasn’t. So here I remain,” she added, brushing her fingers along the kitchen door of Netherfield.

“And that’s…good?”

“Yes, good.” She sighed. “No, Lizzy, it’s awful. I haven’t seen him—not in the house—not since that night.”

“Did he leave?”

“No, he must sleep and eat at home. The bed is—well, it’s made, in fact, he always makes his own bed, but there’s laundry and a few dishes, and…he must make sure to leave before I arrive and return after I’ve left. The only time I’ve seen him”—she managed a weak laugh—“I was at Burt’s General, rifling through the sale bin, looking for a can of peas, of all things, and there he was.”

“What, at the sale bin? Was he looking for peas, too?”

Jane’s smile was sad. “No, he was at the cash register, waiting to pay for a newspaper.”

“Did he see you?”

“He looked right at me, and then—oh, Lizzy, he didn’t even buy the paper! He slid it onto the counter and walked out of the store.”

Elizabeth squeezed her sister’s hand. “What are you going to do, Janey?”

“I…I just don’t know. Every afternoon, when I leave work, I tell myself I will quit tomorrow, but…Longbourn! I get home and see Tommy on the same board swing we used as kids, or I see Mary pulling weeds in the garden, or Kitty and Lydia, dancing to the radio…”

Elizabeth sighed, thinking of her own memory of dancing to the radio, two weeks earlier. Three glorious minutes, dancing at dusk, Darcy’s lips on her hair, her lips against his cheek. When the song had finished, he had pulled back and looked at her as if he wanted to dance with her forever. Instead, he’d raised her hand to his lips and murmured farewell.

She hadn’t seen him since.

But she had heard from him—just once, by telegram. The message had not been addressed to her, but to the entire “Tales for Tots” team. They had just come trudging out of the studio, yawning and grousing after their first Tuesday at 10 broadcast, when a messenger burst into the office, waving a flimsy piece of paper in his hand.

“CONGRATS ON 10PM TALES STOP SCRIPT MORE THAN TOLERABLE STOP F DARCY”*

“What does that mean, more than tolerable?” Charlotte had wondered, peering over Mr. Philip’s shoulder to stare at the typed words.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Denny had said. “Better start packing up our desks and—Wait, Lizzy, why do you find this funny? We’re about to lose our jobs, and you’re laughing your head off!”

How could she not have laughed? The telegram had told her two truths: he was thinking of her, and—more importantly—he was all right.

The morning after their dance, Elizabeth had walked Jane to work, hoping (without fully admitting it to herself) to run into Darcy—only to meet Caroline and Charles Bingley along the path instead.

“You needn’t bother with your duties today,” Caroline had waved a hand airily toward the house. “Our guest had to leave quite unexpectedly this morning, so we don’t require any additional cooking or cleaning until Tuesday.”

“I hope nothing terrible has happened!” Jane’s glance at Elizabeth had been anything but subtle. “I can’t imagine Dr. Darcy would leave unless something urgent called him away.”

“I hardly think that is your concern, Jane. Now, come along, Charles, before the insects—”

“Wait one moment.” Bingley had tilted his head, looking for once not at Jane but at Elizabeth. “You work at PBN, don’t you, Miss Bennet? Rather, Miss Lizzy?”

“What a childish way of addressing her, Charles!”

“Miss Lizzy is her radio name, Caro.”

“She is on the radio?” Miss Bingley expression would have been amusing, had circumstances been otherwise.

“She’s the voice of ‘Tales for Tots’! It’s a great show; all the kids love it. Why, Jane, do you remember that morning when I stopped by to see Tommy and—”

“Is Darcy all right?” Never mind Caroline Bingley’s huff of disapproval or Charles Bingley’s raised eyebrow. Elizabeth had to know: “Is it is sister? Or his father?”

To these questions, Bingley’s eyes had widened, just as his sister’s had narrowed. “Who are you to ask after his—”

“Caro, go on without me, will you? I’ll catch up.”

“But Charles! You promised we’d walk together—”

“I said, go on without me, Caroline. Now.“

And to Elizabeth’s surprise, his sister had stomped off, muttering something about pretentious upstarts and the foolishness of men.

“He told me,” Bingley had said, the moment his sister was out of earshot, “that if I happened to see anyone who worked at PBN, I should tell them— well, I’d thought it was an odd comment at the time, because I don’t go into Manhattan or know anyone at PBN! But now, I think I see! I had no idea he and you were—”

“Please, just tell me—what did he say?”

“Sorry, sorry. You needn’t worry. Darcy is fine, though his father is a bit worse for the—well, I’m really not at liberty to say more, but the point is, you needn’t worry, not about Darcy. He just wanted someone —presumably you—to know that he’d be away from work, likely for several weeks.”

Several weeks indeed. When she returned to work on Monday, Elizabeth looked at the calendar, almost willing it to read differently: September 18—two weeks and two days since she had last seen him. Since anyone at PBN had seen him, presumably.

“Do you suppose the network is in trouble?” Charlotte asked, as she, Elizabeth, Denny, and Mr. Philips passed by the darkened corridor that led to both Darcy’s and his father’s offices. “It’s one thing for the Darcys to be gone, but I don’t think I’ve ever come into work and not seen Mrs. Reynolds at her desk—not until two week ago.”

“Now, remember,” said Mr. Philips, opening the door to the rehearsal studio, “Mr. Wickham’s memorandum said—”

“Bah!” Denny threw himself into a chair. “I don’t believe Wickham for a moment. The Darcys, on vacation? All of them, at once?”

“Well, presumably that is how families tend to vacation,” said Charlotte, shooting Elizabeth a grin . Elizabeth’s resulting smile must not have been convincing. “Wait a minute. Lizzy, you know something! What do you—”

“Note that we didn’t hear a peep from the station manager about the Darcys being on vacation,”  Denny cut in, kicking at a rain stick some previous sound crew had left behind. “Who does Wickham think he is, anyhow, sending out a memo to the entire network, as if he were running the network? You know, he used to get a drink with me at the bar downstairs, but now he thinks he’s such a big shot, just because he’s got a show of his own, which he only got by stealing our—”

“Denny,” Elizabeth cut in, staring down at her script, “let’s just rehearse now, all right?”

“Oh, who cares? No one is listening to us, anyway!”

“Dr. Darcy seems to be listening,” noted Charlotte, a smile in her voice.

“Wait, are you implying that Lizzy and Dr. Darcy—” began Denny, always the slowest to pick up on these things.

“Let’s give our girl a little privacy, shall we?” said Mr. Philips, earning Elizabeth’s gratitude—at least until he patted her on the head, as if she were five.

Somehow, they made it through the rehearsal without another utterance of the names Darcy or Wickham. Had she only been able to say the same about the rest of her day!

“Don’t stay late,” Charlotte advised, buttoning her raincoat, just as the clock struck five. “You owe me a conversation about a certain someone!”

“And then you can tell me, over lunch tomorrow, about that same certain someone,” Denny said to Charlotte, as they exited the office together.

An hour later, as she slipped her script into a desk drawer, Elizabeth smiled, thinking that, if Charlotte gave her a hard time about Darcy, she would be able to tease Charlotte about Denny in turn. All thoughts of teasing fled, however, when she stood from her desk to find George Wickham leaning, arms crossed, against the desk nearest hers.

“Working late, are you?”

Elizabeth’s mouth went dry. She could not stop herself from glancing at the desks around her. Empty, each one of them.

“Seems you’re all alone, Miss Lizzy.”

Willing her hands not to shake, she picked up her purse and strode forward, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the exit at the far end of the office.

Perhaps she would have been better off keeping her eyes on him, or perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered: when he grabbed her by the arm, he did it so quickly, and with such force, that she doubted she could have avoided it, even if she had seen it coming.

“What, am I hurting you?” he asked when she gasped.

She jerked away from him, but to no avail. He did not let go.

“I thought I told you,” he said, leaning close enough for her to feel the heat of his breath, “to keep quiet about me.”

Some part of her knew it would have been better to stay quiet, to appear as scared and meek as she felt. But her courage always had risen with every attempt to intimidate her.

“How could I stay quiet about you, George?” she asked, her tone sickly sweet. “Isn’t that your fondest wish—to be the talk of the town? The George Wickham Show!” she intoned, using her best radio voice. “Tune in every Saturday morning for charming chatter and sparkling interviews by New York’s most irresponsible parent and most accomplished liar—”

Once again, she was caught unawares, so swept up by her own bravery that she only realized he had struck her a few seconds after the fact, when tears sprang to her eyes.

He stared at her a long moment, then shoved her away from him, as if she had been the one to use force.

“It’s your fault,” he said, breathing hard. “If you you hadn’t told Georgiana—Jesus, why did you have to tell her?”

Elizabeth shook her head, wincing at pain radiating through her jaw. What could she say? Though she hadn’t spoken to Georgiana about Wickham, she had told Darcy, and he must have shared what he’d discovered with his sister.

Yet—had he? Something had happened to old Mr. Darcy, presumably something to do with his health. Would Darcy, during this time of family crisis, have burdened his sister with the news of her beloved’s past? It seemed unlikely, yet perhaps he had said something, if it had been his only means of keeping her from calling Wickham to their father’s bedside.

“If you think I’ll ever send your sister another cent,” Wickham said, “you’re crazy. You’ve cost them everything! What did you think you could get out of telling her, huh? Did you think she’d pay you more?”

“Not everyone is looking for a payout,” she shot back.

At least this time she was prepared, flinching when he raised his arm against her.

But the blow never came. If she could be caught unawares, then surely he could be, too—even if his assailant was a woman half his size and twice his age.

“Mrs. Reynolds!” he exclaimed, too shocked do anything but stare down at the longtime secretary. Only when he saw who stood behind Mrs. Reynolds did he shake free of the older woman’s grasp.

“Georgiana, listen to me,” he said, his voice sliding into that rich baritone he used on air, “you don’t understand. This woman…” He shot Elizabeth a contemptuous glance, but before he could say more, Georgiana stepped around him, touching a tentative hand to Elizabeth’s arm.

“Are you…are you all right?”

Elizabeth took Georgiana’s hand in her own. “Are you all right?”

She uttered a breath of a laugh, and Elizabeth could not help but see something of Darcy—that potent mixture of hope, hurt, and humor—in her expression.

“You shouldn’t spare any sympathy for her,” Wickham spat out. “Whatever she told you—”

“She didn’t tell Miss Darcy a thing,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “I did.”

They turned to look at her, and she shrugged.

“You think because I’m old that I don’t have eyes in my head?” She glared up at Wickham. “Besides, after what Miss Younge told me—”

“Who’s Miss Younge?”

“Who’s Miss Younge?” The secretary snorted. “Only the typist you spent half your workday flirting with, you idiot! She was in the bathroom that day you first harassed Miss Bennet.”

“What? But I checked to make sure—” Wickham stopped abruptly, and Elizabeth nearly laughed. That gasp she’d heard—the sound she’d supposed she, in her fear, must have made that day—had actually been someone else, after all.

“I only wish she had come to me sooner, so that I could have fired you long before now!”

“You can’t fire me!” Wickham drew himself up to his full height, but Mrs. Reynolds only crossed her arms and cocked a brow at him, as if daring him to hit her.

He took a quick step back, but still said, in defiant tones, “I’ve given PBN everything—never once cheated the books or slacked on the job. You just wait until Mr. Darcy returns. He’ll have something to say about this!”

Only after they had watched him go—only after Mrs. Reynolds had called the security guard up from the lobby to check the rest of the office and escort the three of them to a taxi—did Georgiana murmur, “Will Dad take him back, do you think?”

“Not if he wants me to stay on,” Mrs. Reynolds retorted. “Besides, I’d say it’s your brother who’ll be making those kinds of decisions now, and after George Wickham hurt both you and Miss Bennet—well, let’s just say Wickham ought to be glad your brother is still at Ramsgate.”

“Ramsgate!” Elizabeth couldn’t help but exclaim. When Mrs. Reynolds and Georgiana exchanged a wary glance, Elizabeth said, “You don’t need to worry. I won’t say a thing.”

“Oh, I know you won’t,” said Georgiana, smiling sadly. “Will told me you wouldn’t.”

They didn’t say anything else then, for the cab driver’s glances in the rearview mirror suggested he, too, had heard of the Ramsgate Resort—a name that had not done much to dispel the rumors that it housed America’s wealthiest alcoholics.

“Dad had another automobile accident,” Georgiana explained the next day, over coffee. They sat in a diner just across the street from the PBN Building. Elizabeth kept watching the people come and go, knowing she wouldn’t see Darcy—he had promised to stay with his father for a few more days, to see him through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms.

“Luckily, he didn’t hurt anyone, but he did hit another car, not just a tree.” Georgiana stirred her coffee aimlessly. “He didn’t have a choice, this time: it was either Ramsgate or jail for him.”

“This time?”

“He, uh, well, it wasn’t his first time getting into this kind of trouble, and Will has been begging him, for a long time now, to get help, but…well, sometimes we can’t make a change until it’s so painfully obvious that we’re hurting ourselves and everyone else around us.”

Elizabeth reached across the table and squeezed Georgiana’s hand. “You can’t blame yourself about Wickham.”

“Oh, but I was so stupid! I’m so sorry he hurt you…and your sister!” Georgiana’s eyes filled with tears. “Your nephew…Tommy, right?”

Elizabeth smiled. “Jane named him after our father.”

“Will says he’s a sweetheart.”

“It must have been hard, learning about Jane and Tommy, especially when your father was ill.”

“Will didn’t want Mrs. Reynolds to tell me, not when Dad was still at Ramsgate—but then, he’ll likely be there for months, and even when he leaves, his health is so precarious that I doubt there was ever going to be a good time to tell me the truth.” She chewed on her lip. “Do you know what made me angriest? It’s silly, but—well, did you know Will hired a private detective?”

Elizabeth took a long sip of her coffee.

“I suppose he felt like he didn’t have any other choice—he had already told me, half a dozen times, that George Wickham was trouble—but oh, when I found out he had gone behind my back and hired someone to investigate George, I wanted to throw something at him!”

Again, Elizabeth raised her cup to her lips.

“It’s hard to drink when you’ve already consumed it all,” Georgiana noted with a small smile.

They laughed, but the shadow of misery did not fully lift from Georgiana’s expression. How could it? Though she told Elizabeth had begun to have her doubts about Wickham—“He never hit me, like he hit you, but he had started to tell me what I should wear, or how I should spend my time, or who I should see”—nothing could erase the fact that Georgiana Darcy had thought herself in love—and had been wrong.

Could the same be true for Elizabeth? Oh, the cases were so very different—if she was wrong about her feelings for Darcy, it wasn’t because she doubted his character—but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she had, only in the last month, started to understand him better.

When she left PBN that afternoon—five o’clock, on the dot; this time it was Charlotte who had stayed behind, ostensibly to help Denny put away the sound equipment—Elizabeth was determined to put Darcy from her mind. He wouldn’t return from Ramsgate for several days, at the very least.

Naturally he was waiting for her in the lobby.

“Has anyone ever told you,” she asked, hoping her voice sounded steadier to him than it did to her own ears, “that you are exceedingly contrary?”

“Exceedingly contrary?” He held open the door, and together they stepped out into sun. “Who uses words like exceedingly contrary these days?”

“Only pirates,” she said, grinning up at him.

“Only brave and beautiful pirates.” He stopped walking, and so did she.

“Bennet,” he said, his voice going hoarse. “Elizabeth. Lizzy.”

She blinked and glanced away (it was the brightness of the sun, only the sun). “You’ve been away so long you’ve forgotten my name.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything,” he said, and then he offered his arm.

For several minutes, they were silent, walking in sync down Fifth Avenue.

“Are you going to the train station?” she asked suddenly, wondering if he had only returned to the city for some urgent matter of business.

“God, I hope not; I just came from the train station. In fact, I’m done with train stations.”

“That’s too bad,” she said, smiling up at him. “I rather liked running through Grand Central with you.”

“Let’s run through Grand Central after dinner.”

“Who said anything about dinner?”

“I did, just now.”

“I suppose train travel makes you hungry.”

“Very hungry,” he said, glancing at her.

They turned down 42^nd, and she smiled.

“As hungry as Patience and Fortitude there?” She nodded toward the lions guarding the public library.

“Much hungrier. They’re made of stone.”

“And you’re not,” she said, running her hand down his arm, shivering at the warmth of his skin.

“Definitely not,” he replied, taking her hand in his.

“Well then, do you know what you need?”

She brushed her thumb along the base of his wrist, and he sighed.

“Yes, I know exactly what I need. But go on,” he said, smiling, “tell me what I need, Bennet.”

“No, we’ll say it together, on the count of three. One, two…ready? Three!”

“Pasta!” she said, just as he said, “Steak.”

“Maybe you were right,” he acknowledged, ten minutes later, when they sat across from each other, each with their own steaming bowls of spaghetti.

“Of course I was right!” She twirled the noodles onto her spoon, then shoved the spoon into her mouth and sighed.

He laughed. “Yes, you were definitely right. I don’t think I could get enough of watching you”—he leaned forward, swiping her nose with his napkin—“slurping spaghetti.”

“I don’t slurp! And look at you, using a knife to cut up the noodles. That’s cheating.”

“Remember, I was hoping for steak.”

“Poor Darcy. I suppose you’re just going to have to be grateful for what’s in front of you.”

“Grateful indeed.” Again he leaned forward, this time brushing his fingers along the edge of her jaw. “I wish to God I had been there. I wish I could have stopped him, helped you, done something—”

“Stop.” She took his hand and kissed the palm, quickly, before she could think better of it. “I’m glad you weren’t there. You would have killed him.”

“Good.”

“Not good. Spaghetti isn’t nearly as tasty in jail. Besides, I can take care of myself, you know.” Then her lips quirked. “Or Mrs. Reynolds can take care of me.”

“She takes care of us all,” he said, his face softening. “Still, I wish—”

“It’s over.”

“I doubt it. Next week, I’ll probably receive a letter from his lawyer. Well, at least George Wickham is predictable. George Darcy on the other hand…” He shook his head.

“How is he?” she ventured, after a long moment of silence.

“Well enough, for now, but…I don’t know, Elizabeth. I just don’t know.”

Something about her name, about his uncertainty, unravelled a bit of her own uncertainty. Did she love him?

How could she not?

“Thank you for taking my sister out for coffee,” he said. “That meant a lot to her—to me, as well.”

“I enjoyed it. I just wish she didn’t have to suffer through heartbreak—she and Jane both.”

He raised a brow. “Does she still love him?”

“Wickham? Goodness, no! But Bingley…”

Their eyes met, and he sighed.

“You still don’t approve,” she said.

“I never said I didn’t approve. But it’s a difficult situation.”

“You don’t need to tell me that!”

“Well, what else is there to say about it, then?”

“I don’t know. I just wish…I just want—”

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you?”

“I know you want your sister to be happy, just as I want mine to be happy.”

She stared down at the two strings of spaghetti still in her bowl, then glanced at his bowl, completely empty. If she ate that last bit of pasta, they’d be done…and then what?

“What about you?” he asked quietly.

She glanced up at him. “What about me?”

“You spend a lot of time wanting other people to be happy. What about you?”

She returned her gaze to the almost-empty bowl. “I received a note from Ed Gardiner last Friday.”

Darcy said nothing.

“But I suspect you already knew that,” she added, smiling wanly.

“I didn’t know for sure he’d contact you…but I hoped he would.”

“Hmm, what does it mean that the nominal head of PBN is trying to shove me out of the door?” She tried for a smile, but felt her lips falter. “It was kind of you, truly, but—”

“I don’t want to lose you.” His face reddened. “The network doesn’t want to lose you, Bennet, but we both know Tuesdays at 10 pm—it’s a waste of your talent. If Gardner—if CBS—can offer you something better, you need to take it.”

“Are you going to run PBN, then? Now that your father is—are you going to run the network?”

He turned and stared out the window.

“What about what you want, Darcy?”

His gaze snapped to hers.

“What about your happiness?” she whispered.

“I have an idea about that,” he said, swallowing.

She felt herself flush, and then told herself to stop, to think not of herself, but of him. “You want to practice medicine again.”

His face went hard for several long moments, and then crumpled, just for a second, before resuming its stoniness.

“It doesn’t matter what I want. PBN needs someone to run it, and—”

“What about Gardiner?”

He stared at her. “Gardiner?”

“You were so busy trying to push me out—”

“Stop saying that. I’m not trying to push you out.”

“—that you didn’t stop to ask yourself, Why don’t I try to hire him instead? You need a better manager. Then you can be less involved in the day-to-day running of the network.”

“You don’t think deBourgh is effective?”

“Lewis tries, but—well, I hate to admit it, but even Wickham is better when it comes to organizing things. Now, if Cathy deBourgh, Lewis’s wife, could lead the radio station, she’d have a better shot of it. For now, though, all we’ve got is Lewis’s affable laugh and Cathy’s weekly inspections.”

“What inspections?”

“Hasn’t she come to your office to tell you how to arrange your desk? She has very useful advice, you know.”

He smiled. “So…Ed Gardiner.”

“If you can afford to get him back.”

“And if I can’t, you’ve got to think about his offer, Bennet. Promise me that you will.”

She nodded.

“Promise,” he insisted.

“What, are we children? Should we prick our fingers and sign our names in blood?”

He took up her hand and kissed it. “Just promise, Elizabeth.”

She let out a long, shaky breath. “I promise.”

“Thank you.”

He didn’t let go of her hand.

“Will you promise something, then?” she asked, squeezing his fingers.

“For you?”

“For you,” she said, meeting his smile with a frown. “Tell me truly: do you want to practice medicine again?”

“It’s not that simple, Bennet. There’s PBN and—”

“Forget PBN!”

“I already tried that!” He pulled his hand free. “For seven years, I tried that, and now everything’s falling apart.”

“But if it weren’t—”

He made a sound, low in his throat. “Bennet, just…stop. Even if PBN weren’t a factor, there’s Georgiana and”—he looked at her for a long moment—“there are other people involved.”

“Why would they…” She took a deep breath. “Why should we mind if you practice medicine?”

“We?” He smiled a little. “Do you really want to know what I’d do, if I could do anything?”

She leaned forward. “Of course!”

“I’d go to England and enlist.”

She stared at him.

“I’d join their General Medical Counsel,” he continued, swallowing hard. “I’d go to war, Elizabeth.”

She tried so hard not to blink, not to cry. “If that’s what you…if that’s what you want…”

“It’s not what I want—and it is,” he said, reaching across the table and brushing his thumb beneath one eye, then the other. “I’m not going to enlist. Given my responsibilities here—I can’t. I’d be joining only for my pride, my sense of self…”

“And doesn’t that matter?” she asked, her voice tremulous. “Your sense of self does matter, Darcy. I don’t want you to go, but—and I know I don’t have a say—what you want does matter…Will.”

He smiled. “Say my name again.”

“Which one?”

“Whichever you want—whenever you want.”

She flushed. “I…don’t want you to die. I don’t want to stand in the way of your dreams. I…oh, I don’t know what I want!”

“Believe me, I don’t, either. Look, I’m not going to war, Bennet…yet. But, well, it’s coming—whether we want it or not, it’s coming. In the meantime”—he laughed, more breath than sound—“I have a network to run.”

“So…that’s it, then? No more medicine?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes, I think about…what if I went to Meryton?”

“Meryton!”

“Bingley keeps urging me to be his partner, to—”

She clapped her hands together. “But that’s perfect!”

He laughed. “Perfect, eh? We’ll just go run off to the country together, and hide away in Netherfield, leaving PBN and Georgiana and all our responsibilities behind?”

“You’re being rather presumptuous, Dr. Darcy.” She waggled her eyebrows. “I said nothing about running away to the country with you.”

“Good, because you need to start your own show at CBS—or stay at PBN. You’re too good a writer and actor to give it up.”

“But what if that’s not what I want?”

“Do you know what you want, precisely? Because I sure as hell don’t.” He looked at her, his expression grave. “That’s the worst of it, Bennet. I’m a man—a human being with more money and opportunity than almost every other person in this world. And still, I don’t know…for the most part.”

“For the most part? Maybe that other part…maybe that’s enough?”

“I’m hoping it is.” He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded down to her bowl. “Aren’t you going to finish that?”

“I suppose I should, but…” She let out a sad little laugh. “I don’t want this to end.”

“Now who’s being presumptuous?” he asked, tipping her chin up so their eyes met. “Who said anything about ending?”

An hour later, after they had wandered their way uptown, they sat on a bench in Central Park and watched the sun sink below the trees.

After a long stretch of silence, he pressed a kiss to her temple, and then said, quietly, “One thing, at least, I know for certain.”

“Oh?”

When he said nothing else, she pulled back to look up at him.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”

His smiled. “You’re too clever not to know, Bennet…Elizabeth…Lizzy.”

She laughed. “There’s no hope for us, Darcy…Will…doctor. We don’t even know our names for certain. How can we know anything el—”

“I love you.” He looked at her and smiled. Then laughed. “God, I love you. That’s what I know for certain, Elizabeth Bennet.”

Her lips parted, but what good were lips, when there were no words to pass through them?

Quite good, for she did not need to speak, not then. One hand, in his; the other, in his hair; and then she pressed those wordless lips to his, telling him, in no uncertain terms, that she loved him too.

Would that be enough? It was 1939, and the storm clouds were gathering. Could a love born of banter and train rides, a single dance and two steaming bowls of spaghetti, radio and medicine—could these ephemera carry them through that perilous sea, tomorrow?

I certainly hope so, but then, what do I know? Only that the world grows dark—and still there is light.

© 2025 Christina Morland

Author’s Note: Well, that’s it! I’m like a teenager, pulling an all-nighter. Definitely going to come back and edit for real! But this has been fun. Thanks for reading. It means so much to me! Update on July 24: Thanks to Adelle Stavis for catching a typo when Jane is talking about Bingley leaving the house before she arrives to work each day!