Posted on Sunday, 16 July 2000
"Join us tomorrow at nine for another three hours of continuous music on HotStuff FM. One oh six point three, Lambton."
Georgiana Darcy threw the switch, turning off her microphone, and laid her head down on her crossed arms. "Finally," she groaned.
The studio door opened and a tall skinny fellow with long greasy hair strode in. His one hand was occupied with raising the remains of a meatball sub to his lips, while the other let the door slip from his grasp and close with a resounding slap of wood on wood.
Georgiana jumped up, her heart racing.
"Oops," the young man said insincerely. "Sorry."
Georgiana merely glared at him, gathered up her things and left the room, a careless "See you tomorrow night." tossed over her shoulder.
It was the same every night. Three hours of on-air work, the slimy Bill Collins relieving her at midnight, and the long drive back home to Pemberley to be greeted at the door by her over protective older brother. Not only had she hoped that his marriage a year ago to Elizabeth would loosen him up, but now she desperately hoped that the couple would soon have a child of their own to occupy Will's stifling, suffocating attentions.
Once, only once, she had almost believed Elizabeth to be pregnant. It was, however, a false alarm... and only on Georgiana's part. She had mistaken a conversation overheard.... well, not overheard exactly, but that's an entirely different matter.... and had gone straight to her Aunt Catherine to tell her the good news. Unfortunately neither Aunt Catherine nor Will were happy to hear of her purely selfless act of announcing a completely erroneous assumption.
It was, in fact, Jane Bingley who had been pregnant, and was now safely in possession of a sweet little baby boy. Well, sweet is what Georgiana would have to call him, for with parents like Charles and Jane what other kind was there?
As for Elizabeth and Will... were there any other two people in the country more deserving of the disruptiveness that a child would bring into their lives?
Georgiana passed through the lobby of the radio station and into the dark hallway leading to the back exit. Nice wallpaper, she thought for the thousandth time. I should find out who did it and get them to come out and give Pemberley a facelift. Elizabeth is hopeless at decorating!
The door closed behind her and she gazed around the well lit parking lot, trying to remember where she had left her car. It shouldn't be hard to spot, being a shiny new BMW, two door, softop, sporty model fresh off the assembly line last month. She grinned as her eyes finally found it amongst the four or five rusty contraptions surrounding it. Will sure knows how to pick his little sister's birthday presents.
Hopping into the driver's seat, Georgiana Darcy started the engine, revved it to a higher decibel than she had her studio monitor set, and slammed the stick into first, screeching from the parking lot.
The howls of abusive language at the racket she created while people were trying to sleep were totally lost on her.
"Here's another one for that mysterious lady in the violet gown." The low, sexy voice floated from the speakers in the apartment. The lights were off, lit candles flickering in each corner of the shelves along one wall. "Who is she, you ask? I don't know. She merely signs her requests as 'The lady in the violet gown'. But she does have exquisite taste in music, doesn't she? Never disappointing, her requests. This is one of her finest selections, slow, romantic and guaranteed to warm the coldest heart. Enjoy."
The low notes of the opening strains began to fill the tiny room. Anne raised her glass to her lips and sipped at the heavy ruby liquid. She lay back on the small sofa, her eyes closing, drinking in the ambience of the candlelight and the music.
In the soft light, her gown shimmered an iridescent purple.
She sighed deeply, a smile touching her lips. A droplet of the wine sparkled on her lower lip.
"Good morning! Time to shake those cobwebs from your sleep brain and greet the day. Don't look at your radio like that. You know the week is almost over, only two more days to go... that is, if you get your butt out of bed now and get a move on!"
A hand slammed down on the radio, terminating the terminally cheerful voice of the morning man. A soft groan emanated from the pile of blankets to his right and Will collapsed back onto his pillow.
Not today. Please, not today. "Liz?"
Grunt.
"Liz, come on. You're the one who has to get up, not me. Don't make me do this every morning."
"Shut up and go away, then," grumbled a feminine voice, blurred by groggy vocal chords.
"Okay, I'll just go back to sleep, then." Will rolled over, away from her and pulled the blanket up over himself.
A rustling of the bedclothes announced her surrender to the inevitable. "I'm going to have a shower," Elizabeth announced.
A pause.
He waited for it.
"Will?"
Here it comes....
"Make me a coffee?" she wheedled.
Groan! "Yeah, okay." He threw back the blanket and placed his bare feet on the icy tile floor, cringing at the thought of frostbite before he was even awake enough to spell the word.
Every step to the wardrobe was torture. Who said that this part of the country wasn't bad in the winter? Shoot the liar.
The hallway wasn't much better, although the carpet runners offered a little protection from the frigid floor. The kitchen would be the worst. Will knew why his wife (oh, what a delicious creature she was!) wanted him to make the coffee. She was well aware of his aversion to standing in the chilly air, waiting for the coffee to percolate through the machine. So, by the time it was done, he'd be resolved to carrying the entire lot back upstairs to their room, complete with the toast, jams, pastries and bagels that he would have inevitably assembled during his wait in order to stave off hypothermia.
Breakfast in bed, without having to ask.
Every day.
Well, why not?
He trundled back up the stairs, tray in hand, and paused outside the bedroom door to place it on the small table just for that purpose while he opened the door. Once through, he kicked the door closed once again and laid out the breakfast things on the table under the window.
"Oh, how sweet of you!"
She said the same thing every morning, as if she didn't expect him to bring their breakfast up here.
"You shouldn't have. I would have gone downstairs to eat alone. You need to sleep in when you can."
Yeah, right. "I love to be of service, you know that." Will gave her one of those dangerous smiles that always worked.
Elizabeth demurely nibbled on a corner of her toast and pretended to misunderstand. "Oh, is that the time?" she asked, glancing at her watch.
"No, it isn't," Will answered calmly. "It's always wrong. You never remember to wind it." He pointed at the clock by the bedside. "You still have a whole hour before you have to leave."
"So I do," she whispered, her eyelashes batting ever so slightly.
"Nobody does it like the people at Grand and Watson. Stop by today for your own free estimate on a full refit. Don't be misled by other claims. Grand and Watson is your best choice for value.
"Now, coming up on seven o'clock, Kate Bennet will be here with the news in just a minute, but first it's Roving Rick with the traffic. Rick?"
"Thanks George. Traffic is moving well through the central core over to the east of metro. Most collectors are flowing quickly, but watch out for Steele and Park. It's started to back up there due to an earlier accident that has just about everyone annoyed. Danged moronic drivers out there, some of them. Who gives them licenses, I'd like to know?"
"Thanks, Rick. Over to Lydia on the other end of town."
"George, it's just a lovely day in the west end. Hardly any traffic to speak of. Mind you, it might be because the westbound lanes of the Sartrey Expressway are closed, and have been for the last three hours. But apart from that, not much in the way of congestion, if you don't count that huge standstill on the 403 between Sweetley and ..... oh... Hampstead. About a ten mile backlog I'd say. Nobody moving there for the rest of the morning, I'm sure!"
"Yeah, thanks Lydia. News is next." George Wickham pushed the button to start the commercial and rolled his eyes heavenward. "Oh Lord, please let me get that job in Newcastle. Please!!!" Apart from the steady attentions from Lydia Bennet, traffic reporter extraordinaire (and only because she had no idea what traffic was, or cared), there was nothing to hold George in this backwater of a city. His idea of getting Will Darcy to foot his expenses had gone down the drain when Darcy had fallen for Lydia's sister. What a sucker he turned out to be!Now, why hadn't George thought to back that runner last year when his childhood friend had seemed to be so immune to the charms of the likes of Caroline Bingley? He should have known that Will Darcy would eventually fall for a pair of batting eyelashes on legs. Not that Caroline didn't have eyelashes that moved, but they didn't move in quite the same rhythm as Miss Elizabeth Bennet's had. Hoooeeeeee! Had Will taken a fall, or what? Who could have predicted it?
Well, if Georgiana had been there, she could have prevented it, that's for sure.
But she had been sent off to London, away from the likes of George Wickham, Esquire. What a mess he'd made of that little number! It could have been so good, too.
Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.
Patching the newsroom feed through the board and cuing the announcer that he was now on air, George left the studio to go outside for a nicotine fix.
"...with a high of twenty-seven. It's currently eighteen degrees. I'm Robert Denny, HotStuff News. And now with more of the best in Lambton's rock, here's George Wickham, your man in the morning."
Charlie Bingley threw a piece of soggy breadcrust, scoring a perfect ten for precision as it bounced off the power switch of the radio and landed on his mother's plate.
"Sweetums, is that an editorial comment on Wicked Wicky?" Jane picked the soggy bread from her eggs and placed it on a clean napkin beside her plate. Almost mechanically, she tore the crust from another piece of her toast and handed into her son's eager grasp. He immediately stuffed it into his mouth, chewing on the crispy treat with delight.
"Is this mine?" Charlie Senior enquired, pointing to a lunch bag with an impeccably neatly folded top.
"Yes, dear," Jane responded. There was only one lunch bag on the counter. Her husband was the only one who left the house for the entire day, every day. Yet she never wondered why he asked, nor did she stop to think about how strange it was that he didn't realise that any lunch on the counter obviously was his.
Charles Bingley was perfect. The perfect husband, the perfect father and the perfect man.
That's all that was important.
To Jane.
Except that their son was also perfect.
And he was now tossing his newly acquired breadcrust at the birdcage. The canary was flitting about as if it was under fire, but Jane had eyes only for her husband at that moment.
Charlie Senior was placing his lunch into his briefcase, and she loved to watch him do that. He was so meticulous. So meticulous in everything he did. That would come as a surprise to some people (namely Mr. and Mrs. Darcy) but Charles M. Bingley of Netherfield, husband of Jane, nee Bennet, and father of Charles William Reginald Walter Bingley was a met-i-cu-lous man.
Jane smiled as she thought how her sister, Elizabeth, would never comprehend how exciting that was for her.
"I'm off now."
Jane raised her lips to meet her husband's, their ritual morning goodbye so eagerly anticipated.
BONK!!
"You little devil!" Charlie Senior laughed, trying to stare down his son after that sneak assault with the spoon.
"Isn't he so sweet?" Jane crooned.
What a delightful picture the three of them made, as they hugged one another in the morning sunshine of their breakfast room.
"If you've just tuned in, we have a standoff in progress at Benton and First. All major arteries to the neighbourhood are cordoned off by police and you will have to find an alternate route if you plan to attend the Pomegranate Festival -"
"What an annoying man! I don't see what our Lydia sees in him!" Franny Bennet wielded a kleenex about like a machete.
"He's tall," her husband offered weakly, ducking to avoid decapitation.
"Yes, but ... oh! He's not even rich!" moaned Franny.
"What do you mean, not rich? He's the morning drive man, for goodness sakes! Nobody makes more money at the station than him."
She pooh-poohed that immediately. "Oh, but what a station! Now, if he was at a big market area, like London, or Birmingham, that would be something! But Lambton? No, the money just isn't there, my dear." She shook her head, sympathising with her husband's lack of sense when it came to matters of finance. Some people just came by it naturally, and her dear, darling hubby was not one of those. Not one iota of money savvy in his little noggin.
"Still," she continued. "If he gets that job in Manchester that I saw advertised in the WebLink, and, I must add, made a point of mentioning to George, then he might be worth catching for our dear Lydia."
"Yes, dear." Her husband was a 'yes' man. He knew when to keep his opinions to himself. Usually. "Still, Lizzy has done the best of all of them, yes?"
Franny snorted contemptuously. "The best financially, certainly. But I'm not so sure about Will's business acumen. He seems to rely too much on his advisors and not enough on his own business sense. One would think, after so many years looking after that empire after his father died, that he would have a handle on it by now. And Lizzy may well prove to be more of a distraction than a benefit. I shall have to watch those two very carefully."
"You do that, dear," her husband sighed. This was really all too much for him to process. When Franny got started on that financial gibberish he just tuned right out. He turned his attention back to his paper. This week's 'Blondie' was promising to be really funny.
Franny Bennet frowned, her mind turning over endless possibilities in rapid succession.
Yes, I think what Lizzy needs is a few children to keep her in order. I must find out what Will is doing on that score.