Shock is what Elizabeth Bennet felt when she discovered that she had been betrayed so horribly. However, as the saying always goes, where one door closes, another door opens. Rather than wallow in her grief, Elizabeth Bennet does what she does best: recover.

Determined to keep going with her life, she sojourns, while having another thing to face: Fitzwilliam Darcy. Both eventually decide to overcome their differences, and a unique friendship develops. But, as the case sometimes may be, an unlikely romance can form. And it does. Here comes the second chapter to another Pride & Prejudice adventure.

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Release Date: December 10, 2024
Genre: Contemporary | Christmas Romance

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Excerpt

There Mr. Darcy stood.

There, I was, crouched on the cold ground, all my spirit disturbed, and I was overcome at the sudden turn of events that shook the foundation of my current state.

Here at the beginning of all things...

Here at the end of the evening.

Here at the beginning of the Halloween festivities.

And here, at the end of my composure.

And I could not believe where I was, and where I had been.

An hour ago, I was happy, carefree, and feeling as if all my life was coming together, was forming, and shaping in the proper way.

And now, in the present, all had been overturned. I liked a man, was in the way of falling in love with him, and for me to be entirely wrong was one thing.

To be able to run off, suffer in silence, and run away from the eyes of the world, was another thing.

But for my grief to have an observer, it is mortifying.

And for the observer to be the one man who you never wanted to see you cry, was the undoing of everything.

In the darkness, on the evening of mischief and mishaps, I saw his face clearly. He was standing across the street, behind a car that must’ve been his.

Walking around it, he moved slowly, taking in my expression.

Our eyes locked. I felt all the embarrassment, the humiliation, and pain swell in my face, and it was as if he had read everything out loud and had seen the agonies in my very soul.

I didn’t want him to see me like this. For indeed, it was the last thing that I had ever wanted to happen.

“Elizabeth?” he asked, still moving slowly. To my surprise, his tone was filled with concern.

I didn’t want him to see me like this and was not going to allow it to happen.

Standing up, I took a step back.

“Please,” I declared, desperately and with much anxiety.

That was the only word that I could get out, but there was something about my tone that halted Darcy. He sensed that I did not want him to come closer, and that I meant what I implied.

“Please,” I repeated, lower and with my emotions stirred. My heartbreak was in my tone, and he perceived. “You must understand...that I did not want you to see me this way.”

We did not speak.

Rather, through the darkness, we stared at each other. Our eyes said much, but also saying so little.

With him, it was confusion, astonishment, and uncertainty of what to do next.

With me, it was alarm, shock, and feeling an added pain to an already painful evening. Not only was I betrayed, but there was a spectator for the aftermath.

Still looking at him, I stood up slowly. I felt as if there was a weight to my limbs, holding them down to the earth, and binding me to an inferno of burdens. Telling my feet to move, and my arms to defy them being too heavy to swing in the air, I turned around and began to attempt to walk back to the school.

After taking three slow and heavy steps, Darcy called out to me.

“Elizabeth,” he exclaimed, “I don’t understand. Can’t I do anything?”

I stopped.

His words were kind. His words were honestly kind, and if it had come from any other direction, I would have asked them to walk me back to the school.

But it was too late.

Everything was too late.

Gathering my courage, I turned right back to him.

I’m sure that I must have looked so heartbroken to him, and that rendered him speechless again. His tall and handsome frame had a mysteriousness to it, especially under the cover of night. But his face was like stone, except for his eyes. They did say something, but I didn’t know what that was.

“You must know something,” I began, no matter how strange I sounded when I spoke, “that no matter what happened, I would never do this one thing in front of you.”

He did not speak, but still only looked at me.

“I would never let you see me cry,” I uttered, simply and slowly. “No matter what, I would never let you see me cry.”

When hearing that, he blinked, and I detected a quiet, but present surprise.

But I did not waste time trying to find out. I had no curiosity about the matter.

I only had one instinct: get out of there. By all that was safe and secure in me, retreat was the only thing on my mind.

No longer did my limbs feel like weights. The boulder that was ‘suffering’ had been lifted off my shoulders, and I got the use of my legs back.

Turning again, I ran away, placing as much distance between myself and the phantom of my past.

 

* * *

 

And yet, how quickly I had forgotten that there were two ghosts from my history in the area.

While I had just run from the phantom of my past, there was a phantom of the present, still in the school’s walls.

Once I got close to the front doors, I stood there. If Wickham had been wise, he would have already left. But wisdom does not often coincide with worthless pieces of cheating horse crap. And that’s precisely what he was.

I was afraid to face him again—but that fear lasted for no more than ten seconds.

Instead, it was replaced by anger, wrath, and an instinctive desire for revenge in some way. Knowing that he was within the school walls would not keep me outside. Oh no! I had come here to do a job, and he must go. Not I!

Wiping the emotion from my eyes, I told myself to look happy. Going back into the school, I joined everyone and began to hand out candy.

There was only one issue: Jane was Jane.

And as a result, she was able to detect that something was wrong with me.

“What is it?  Are you alright?” she whispered to me.

“Nothing,” I rushed out, too eagerly, with a smile plastered on my face and my eyes lit up perhaps a little too much. “Just taken away by the moment.”

“First, you disappeared for more than you usually take when you go to the bathroom. And second, with you, I know when there is a real smile versus a fake one. It’s forced. What’s wrong?”

Still smiling, I handed out some food to some of the last students who were in the lineup.

“I can’t tell you,” I said, barely moving my mouth. “Because, if I do tell you, then I might just break down. I cannot do that. Not in public. I refuse to do that. All that I can tell you is that something terrible has happened. Give me the right to not cause a scene. Because, under the circumstances, I can forget myself and do just that.”

Jane looked alarmed for a moment, but she replaced her look with a mask of fake nonchalance.

“Okay. Got it.”

We continued to hand out the last of the candy until all the students were done and were filing into people’s vans, where they would travel around in shifts.

Once the last child left, Jane leaned into me.

“Whatever is going on, you don’t have to hand out candy to trick or treaters.”

“No,” I rushed out. “I know that you want to take Josie and Killian out. I don’t want to be that person who makes you stay inside and take my place. It’s fine,” I stressed. “I’ll still be at home. I’ve got enough composure to hand out candy.”

Jane gave me a sympathetic look.

“Once I get done taking the children trick or treating,” she said, “we can talk all you want about whatever is going on.”

“You’ve gotta have an ear that will put up with a long story.”

She tapped her ear. “Earlobes for days.”

 

* * *

 

Jane drove us home, parked the car, she and the kids got out and immediately went trick or treating, while I manned my station. That meant that I was going to sit in the living room, keeping an eye out for children coming by for candy.

When I went inside, I was met by hearing the song ‘Jack’s Lament’ from the movie ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’, and I was met with a rather anachronistic sight. In the living room, Kitty was wearing a sexy sorceress costume, Lieutenant Fitzwilliam was dressed as Sherlock Holmes, and they were slow dancing to the song. Since the music was very loud, they didn’t hear me come in, and for a second, I halted.

Standing there, I could not help but watch them as they slowly danced to a song that didn’t match their romantic mood—but it also did. There was something about them both that were so wrapped up in each other, there was blatant comfort between the two, and I was not watching a forced romantic moment.

No. They fit.

Kitty’s eyes were closed as she pressed her face under Richard’s neck. He rested his head over hers, and there was a desire for them to touch the other. To be one with the other.

Kitty really did love Richard Fitzwilliam.

And he loved her.

It was real. Everything about it was so real.

For a second, I wondered about it. It was as if I was floating out of my own grief and realized that a person actually could find happiness in another person, and it could be a long-lasting sensation.

Did Wickham ever look at me that way?

Wickham!

His face returned to me, and so did the deception, the cheating, and the fact that I clearly meant nothing to him. All the pangs of being lied to had rendered me blind. Did I willfully not notice all the signs that were there?

This was just another moment where I felt the proverbial rug being pulled out from my inner security, and I felt as if I never knew myself.

So close we humans come to discovering who we are, and then for that discovery to never have been a discovery at all. Rather, it was just another bump along the road that unravels to a great unwinding.

And I was undone.

Taking my eyes away from Kitty and Fitzwilliam, I tiptoed up the stairs, went into my bedroom, and found the comfort of solitude.

With my door closed, having shut out the entire world, in my belongings, I belonged. I sunk down to the floor, pressed my knees against my chest, wrapped my head around them, and placed my face on my knees.

Then I gave way fully. I wept. Truly, I could not recall if tears came or not, but it signified nothing. My body shook as the shock had gone away, and it gave way to the after-effects of heartbreak.

Downstairs, Halloween songs blasted, and it led to me being able to drown out my grief, and the world was given a break from the racket that I had made.

How could I have been so blind? So completely taken in, as it were. I mean, I knew that Wickham and I had only just started dating, and that we had never actually said that we were monogamous. In a world of people living off implications, time has taught us that people must communicate everything, and spell everything out, for it to become cemented in stone.

Simply put, if you want to be in an exclusive relationship, you must tell the person that you are wholly committed and that you don’t want an open relationship. That you want it to be a one-on-one sort of thing.

Wickham and I never actually spoke about it, so maybe he was unsure of—

What was I doing?

Was I about to justify this? At first, I wondered if I had completely forgotten my pride, but I didn’t. I was merely trying to justify Wickham’s betrayal, because it would alleviate my pain. I could explain away the embarrassment that I felt at being deceived. But you know what? I needed to confront this. I needed to call this what it was. Wickham knew that we were together, and I felt that way about him. He had betrayed me, and even could be described as cheating on me, if it had gone on further. And if we had dated longer, it would have been cheating. After all, it was evident that Wickham was going to continue seeing this other woman while he was with me. They were clearly attached and heavy about it.

No, it was better to know now and face the music.

It was better to feel this pain, rather than for it to get even worse, and I would want to kill him. Or for my dad to find out, and then he would kill Wickham instead.

But I was safe now, in the sanctuary that was my room. After the weeping subsided, I removed my clothes, threw on my pajamas, went to bed and did everything in my power to resist playing sad music to match my mood. In truth, I was very tempted to put on the song ‘King of Sorrow’ by Sade, but I managed to resist the impulse.

At first, I remembered that I had to wait at the door for trick-or-treaters, but luckily, Kitty and Richard were clearly staying home. That left me the freedom to pass my job down to them, and they could man the door.

My eyelids grew heavy, and I was willing to let the matter rest, and decided to think about it tomorrow morning.

And so, it was.

So, it would be.

Tomorrow would bring me the strength to confront it all and know what to do next.

Finally, I fell asleep and let the world fade away.

 

 

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