AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He drained the last of the scotch and slammed the glass down on the table. “Because it was rude and inaccurate. She’s neither stupid nor ugly,” he growled at Caroline, not even caring when she drew back slightly.
Hilliard shook his head sadly. “No. You can’t apologize to her. It would be the first thing she’d mention if the media contacts her. It would be best if you didn’t have any conversations with her at all.”
Darcy thumped the glass on the table, startling Caroline. “Great. Just great,” he muttered to himself.
Elizabeth would continue to believe that he thought she was unattractive and dumb, and the whole world would think he’d insulted a woman he barely knew. And he’d been barred from speaking with the most intriguing woman he’d met in years.
Sometimes being president sucked.
Chapter Five
Elizabeth’s mother sounded frantic on the phone. “It’s a disaster! We’ll soon be begging in the streets! Starving in the hedgerows!” Elizabeth didn’t even know what hedgerows were, let alone why they would cause starvation. Every question she asked was drowned out by wailing and dire predictions until her mother claimed that a racing pulse and faint feelings would keep her from speaking. Mr. Bennet came on the line and begged Elizabeth’s presence at home, hanging up before she could ask for an explanation.
As Elizabeth navigated her Prius across Roosevelt Bridge and into the Virginia suburbs, she tried calling Kitty and Mary—the two sisters who still lived at home—but neither answered her phone.
Her biggest concern was that it had something to do with that stupid incident at
the White House three weeks ago. Was it possible that the event was somehow having repercussions now? Lydia’s tweet had been retweeted more than 1.5 million times, and Elizabeth worried that her name would be forever linked with the president’s. Her days were haunted with visions of People magazine covers showing her and the president side by side in little rectangles and cable news shows with psychological experts diagnosing her state of mind at the time of the insult.
And if the media ever learned about the closet incident…? Elizabeth winced whenever the thought crossed her mind.
Fortunately for Elizabeth, the day after the state dinner, a senator had been arrested with a prostitute and North Korea had nearly hit an American ship with a missile. So Lydia’s tweet and Elizabeth’s identity were relegated to late-night comedy show punchlines, and even that quickly withered away when no more information was added to the story.
However, Elizabeth had not escaped unscathed. On social media she was known as “POTUSdissgirl,” and her coworkers teased her about it unmercifully. She always laughed along as though she never tired of the reminder that the leader of the free world thought she was stupid and ugly.
The disastrous evening had produced one good result, though. Jane had been on four dates with Bing, and their relationship was flourishing. Jane hadn’t been lucky in love, and Elizabeth rejoiced to see her sister so optimistic.
After twenty minutes of speculating about the nature of her mother’s disaster, Elizabeth’s neck and shoulders were stiff with tension by her arrival at her parents’ house. She navigated her car between the large faux gold-leaf lion statues guarding the end of the driveway, marveling once again how she could have been raised by two people who thought they were an essential part of a “dream house.”
Another unfortunate design choice was echoing the lions’ gold leaf on the roofs of the rhomboid “turrets” at the front of the house. The shiny gold turrets, not to mention the gilt dolphins by the front door, were a rather jarring contrast to the house’s otherwise staid suburban colonial architecture with its slate gray shingles.
Elizabeth had been only thirteen when her parents designed and built the house, but when she thought of “home” she still pictured the modest split-level they had occupied in her early childhood. That house had been small for a family of seven, and the zip code wasn’t close to being fashionable, but Elizabeth still missed it.
Elizabeth was barely through the front door when she encountered Jane juggling a tea cup, an aromatherapy candle, and a hot water bottle. Yup, her mother was having another one of her “episodes.”
Jane’s shoulders sagged when she spotted Elizabeth. “Oh, thank God you’re here! Please tell Mom it isn’t as bad as it seems.” That always seemed to be Elizabeth’s role in such crises. For various reasons, the other sisters weren’t very effective during Fanny’s fits of anxiety; only Elizabeth ever managed to calm their mother through a combination of cajoling and tough love.
“No problem,” Elizabeth retorted. “As soon as I find out what ‘it’ is.” Jane nodded sympathetically but rushed up the wide marble stairs before she could answer any questions.
Elizabeth shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the front closet before following Jane upstairs and down the plushly carpeted hallway to the master bedroom. The bedroom could serve as a parking garage for at least two cars; its grand scale was matched by the adjoining master bathroom, which could have held fifteen people comfortably—although Elizabeth had no idea what good that was.
The bed was faux French Provincial with an enormous white wood canopy that was accented with gilt furbelows. In her pink bathrobe with the fake fur hood around her face, Elizabeth’s mother was dwarfed by the enormous bed, surrounded as she was by dozens of pillows and blankets. “Lizzy! Thank God you have come! Nobody understands how I have suffered. I have a nervous condition, you know.”
Elizabeth nodded solemnly. “I know.”
“Here, Mom.” Jane handed her the tea cup. “It’s chamomile. And I brought your lavender candle and your hot water bottle.”
Mrs. Bennet patted her daughter’s hand. “You are very good to me, but I doubt it will be of much use. My nerves are completely shot.”
“Have you taken your Xanax?” Elizabeth asked.
“Of course!” Fanny lifted her head indignantly. “I remember what Dr. Burgeron said. I had one right away.”
“Just one?” Elizabeth asked.
Mrs. Bennet fluttered her hands. “I didn’t want to sleep until you arrived. It’s important that you understand how we’re all ruined!”
Such words should have struck terror in Elizabeth’s heart, but her mother was prone to doomsday pronouncements, and Elizabeth had developed something of an immunity so was only mildly worried. “Mom, you can tell me later. You should rest.”
