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“He can change his mind. Did he make a pass at you?”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly, Lydia.” Elizabeth winced as her voice squeaked into higher registers. Everyone in her family agreed that she was a lousy liar.
“I don’t believe you!” Lydia sing-songed.
“This the president we’re talking about!” Jane scoffed. “On Air Force One!”
Elizabeth struggled to piece together her disjointed thoughts. “Nothing happened. I barely saw him.”
“Hmm.” Lydia made a moue of disappointment. “Although I guess it’s just as well. After he stole George’s inheritance like that.”
Oh no. “What about George? You met him once at a ball.”
“Yeah, sure,” Lydia agreed hastily.
Elizabeth recognized that tone of voice. “Lydia, have you been hanging around—?”
“Lizzy’s jealous!” her younger sister chorused.
“No, I’m not. But he’s a lot older than you are.”
Lydia snorted inelegantly. “Like anyone cares about that sort of thing nowadays. Besides, he’s cute. Double besides, we’re just friends.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Happy?”
She should pursue it, but instead she sank back into her seat. Nothing Elizabeth said would affect Lydia.
Double besides?
***
It was an ordinary white business envelope, with an ordinary flag stamp in the corner and hand addressed to her. That alone was enough to make it stand out. Most of the mail Elizabeth received was bills, credit card solicitations, and advertisements. However, it was even more extraordinary because of the return address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.
Everyone knew that was the address of the White House, and there was only one person who would write to her from there. Unless Fitz had sent her a customer satisfaction survey about her trip on Air Force One.
Elizabeth stood by the mailboxes in her apartment building’s lobby for a long time—staring at the envelope, not sure if she wanted to open it.
It had been a week since her ill-fated trip on Air Force One, and she’d been aggressively trying to avoid any thoughts about it. About him. The efficacy of the avoidance strategy was…limited, however. She zombied her way through the workday, her mind caught up in debating whether she should have behaved differently in the presidential suite. At night, she stared at the ceiling for hours before falling into a restless sleep.
I was right to reject him. I was. The guy was proud and difficult, seemingly incapable of navigating a conversation without insulting her family. Still, it was hard to forget the way he moved through the corridors of Air Force One…in those jeans…or that kiss…
He is pretty damn hot. But that is just a superficial attraction. And that hardly mattered since medical science still hadn’t found a way to do personality transplants.
But maybe her words had been unnecessarily harsh and unpleasant. Some nights she figured she was just one of a line of women parading through that suite. Other nights she was haunted by the wounded expression on his face and his protestations that he wanted to date her. Which William Darcy was the real one?
Every night she wished she’d listened to what Fitz had to say about George Wickham. If Elizabeth hadn’t been so angrily desperate to get off the airplane, Fitz might have said something revelatory. Of course, it wouldn’t have changed anything, but…. she couldn’t help wondering…
Chastising herself under her breath, Elizabeth took the elevator to the ninth floor and let herself into her apartment. Sitting at the kitchen table, she regarded the letter from the White House like a ticking time bomb.
Finally, she took a deep breath and tore open the envelope with trembling fingers. The letter inside was handwritten in the same scrawl as the address on the envelope. Elizabeth’s hands shook so hard that she had to lay it flat on the table to read.
Dear Ms. Bennet,
Please forgive me for contacting you this way, but a letter is harder to delete or ignore than a text or email. Do not fear that this is a renewed attempt to change your mind. You made your opinion of my character perfectly clear, and I respect your decision. I merely wanted to defend myself against some of the accusations you leveled at me on Air Force One. I am distressed at the thought that you are laboring under a delusion, and—at least for my own peace of mind—I believe it is important that you know the truth. For this reason, I implore you to read the rest of this letter.
I don’t know exactly what Wickham told you regarding his relationship with my family, but I can relay to you the truth of the matter. He is the son of my father’s business manager, and we played together as children. However, his parents indulged him as a child, and he grew up without much discipline or direction in life. His father paid for the very best private schools and colleges, but he never applied himself to his studies and left college after six years of wasting his parents’ money.
My father had always been fond of Wickham and blind to his faults. When my father passed away, he left a substantial sum of money to Wickham in his will. Naturally, I was inclined to follow his instructions despite my reservations about Wickham’s character. I was prepared to write him a check, but Wickham requested instead that I give him a property in Manhattan that my family owned. He claimed that he had fond memories of it from our childhood days. I consulted my sister Georgiana, and we agreed to give it to him even though its value far exceeded the amount my father had bequeathed him. At the time, we hoped the stability of a home in New York would help him establish himself in a career.
Wickham promptly sold the property for an enormous profit and then proceeded to indulge in years of dissolution: drinking, gambling, and other unsavory activities—supported by the proceeds of the sale. Needless to say, I was unhappy about this turn of events but felt we had done what we could for him. We were simply grateful that Wickham was banished from our lives.
