First Impressions: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Adaptation

Chapter 44

Mrs. Bennet screamed.

She was in the kitchen, her yell echoing off cabinets and tile, to filter up the stairs and under the closed doors on the second floor. Almost in tandem, every Bennet sister dropped what she was doing to hurry down the stairs. Even Lydia hopped through her open door. They blocked each other on the landing, tripping over one another in their hurry. Socks slid across the wooden floor of the hallway and Cat and Liz banged into each other as they tried to squeeze through the archway at the same time.

"What's wrong?" more than one of them asked. Their words tripped over each other just as their bodies had.

Mrs. Bennet's hands fluttered. She did not look injured or upset in anyway; she was clasping a phone in one hand. "You'll never guess who has just checked in for a room at the inn!"

"The president?" Liz asked mildly, falling into a kitchen chair to nurse her bruised elbow.

Mrs. Bennet did not even look at her second daughter. She turned instead, beaming, towards Jane. "Chip Bingley! And he does not have a check-out date. He asked for an ongoing reservation."

"Oh..." She reached blindly for the back of a chair, hooking her fingers around the spokes in the back so she could pull it out and fall into it. "Okay." She settled her hands on the table.

"Jane."

"I really don't know what it has to do with me. He can stay at any hotel he wants without it having to do anything with me."

Everyone in the room stared at her. She buried her face in her hands.

Mrs. Bennet disregarded her clear distress. "Jane, Jane, you must go up to the inn. Let me—I don't know, I'll think of something for you to do up there." She glanced frantically around the kitchen, lighting on her stack of folders on the counter. "Here, here, take these! Bring them to Angie in the kitchen. It's good for you to stay involved in the event planning, actually. I think the work you were doing—"

Uninterested in their mother's shift from gossip to business, both Cat and Lydia returned upstairs. Cat stopped to snag a snack on her way out. Liz watched her mother absentmindedly, thinking about Chip Bingley. He had seemed interested at Pemberley, but not necessarily ready to run back to Meryton. She was really very proud of him; if she ever figured out what or who had made him change his mind, she would have to thank them at her first opportunity.

She looked up only when she felt pressure on her wrist; Jane had leaned in, holding her sister so hard that her nails nearly dug into the skin. "Please don't make me go alone!"

"Okay," Liz said, grinning.

Jane glared at her. Liz tried to hid her smile, but her lips twitched.

Jane snatched the folder up from the table and swept out of the room. Mrs. Bennet warned, "Elizbeth, don't get in the way."

"Mo-om, I won't! Moral support, geez." She stomped down the hallway.

"Try to get them alone in a room together!" Liz was glad Jane was already waiting on the front steps; even her tolerance might have snapped.

Jane was bouncing on her toes on the front steps. "Let's just get this over with. We can go to the back door of the kitchen and just walk around the whole building and not even go inside!"

"I don't think that's in the spirit of—"

"Lizzie! I! Do! Not! Care!" she said through a constant smile, her teeth gritted like a grimace.

"Sure, you don't, sis!"

"It wouldn't be a problem if everyone would stop bringing it up! He's allowed to go where he pleases without anyone thinking it's somehow related to me! Maybe he just decided last summer that he really, really likes the lake and wanted to come back to see it. Or he wanted to go back to hiking in the park! He has plenty of reasons to come back that aren't me."