Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star (18 page)

Elizabeth felt bile rising in her throat. She was revolted and humiliated by what she was witnessing. Her shame was made complete by the fact that Caroline and Darcy were there, seeing it all. No wonder Darcy thought Jane was using Charles. Why shouldn’t he, when clearly their own record executive did?

Elizabeth couldn’t look up. She heard Collins saying, “I’ve spoken with Ms. de Bourgh, and we agree that it would be best for you girls that I stay with the tour to lend a hand and help get you girls on your feet,” and she couldn’t take any more. Muttering a soft excuse, she went to her room and finished packing.

***

Sooner than expected, it was time to leave. Charles insisted that he was riding with Jane and Elizabeth volunteered to ride on Slurry’s bus.

A few minutes later found their baggage being stored on the bus while Jane, flanked by Alex, Elizabeth, and Charlotte, faced a dozen cameramen and reporters. Jane read a brief statement and then answered ten minutes’ worth of questions, which actually dragged out to fifteen. It was uncomfortable, but no one was rude in their questions and when it was over, Jane flashed a beautiful smile and they were off.

When Elizabeth climbed onto the Slurry bus, guitar case in hand, she was surprised by Caroline’s presence. “Don’t mind me,” she said as she flipped through a fashion magazine. She was sitting on a sofa, her legs stretched out in front of her. “I’m currently having an important meeting with Darcy.”

Darcy was across the length of the bus, sitting at the table, tapping on his laptop. As Elizabeth passed by, Richard could be heard snoring from his bunk.

“Oh,” she said questioningly.

Darcy met her eyes. “You won’t wake him up.”

“What about your meeting?”

Darcy looked at Caroline, the corner of his mouth turning up. “She is just telling everyone that to avoid Anne. You can play. Don’t worry about it.”

Elizabeth nodded her thanks and settled down on the couch. Within minutes the bus was under way and Elizabeth had her guitar in her lap.

Darcy watched her, silently, his face half-hidden behind the computer, as she played softly. It wasn’t necessary for him to hide, he soon realized. She wouldn’t see or hear him where she was. He watched as her fingers moved lightly over the strings, deftly plucking and pinning them against the neck.

He recognized something he had only seen in himself. She wasn’t rehearsing. She was healing, taking solace in her instrument and her music. He saw that she was working through the grief of the last day and making peace with herself. Suddenly she was different in his eyes. Someone who was much closer to himself now replaced the talented girl he had known. She was a peer. He had rarely found one before.

He realized he was being a voyeur, watching an intimate act. She was making love to her instrument. He knew he should look away, but he couldn’t. His eyes were locked on the way her hands caressed the strings and pulled the wooden body closer to herself. When she started singing softly, he was lost.

Her voice was rough and smoky with fatigue and stress, yet to Darcy it only added to the beauty of her song. He let her words move through him as she sang to herself.

She knew, he told himself. She knew about pain. He heard it in her voice, in her music. He knew with dead certainty that this was no innocent string of words. She was singing about something that had happened in her life, about rejection and loss.

He wondered briefly if she was singing to him but dismissed the thought. This was clearly a song she had written before, about something in her past. He wondered: Who? Who hadn’t she been good enough for? Who had failed her? The name Alex drifted into his mind, even as he pushed it away. He didn’t want to think about that, about him, about the way he touched her and kissed her and held her trust. He felt again that irrational stab of jealousy he had felt before.

He wasn’t troubled that she’d had other lovers; it was that they had not valued her. Not the way she deserved. Not the way he would.

He froze, abruptly appalled at what he had been thinking, and a wave of self-anger washed over him. He was being a fool! Admiring this woman who clearly hated him. It hurt him to admit that, but there was no denying it. The way she had looked at him in her room. The way she had reverted to her “polite” behavior. He didn’t know what he had done, but obviously there could be nothing between them, and that was the way
she
wanted it.
Besides,
it’s not like I feel anything for her!

That was a lie. He knew it, but it was not the only one he told himself as he wrenched his attention back to his work. At least no one else knows, he thought, to relieve his smarting pride.

Caroline Bingley watched him watching Elizabeth. She knew. She probably knew better than he did. She watched him and saw that he was hurting, while inside, her heart felt like it was being crushed. And just as Darcy did not have to worry about Elizabeth seeing him watching her, so Caroline knew she didn’t have to worry about Darcy seeing her. It simply wouldn’t happen; he would never see her.

Voices in the bus awakened Elizabeth. She thought she had closed her eyes for only a moment, but it was clear she had been asleep for a while. It was dark outside the bus and an overhead lamp softly illuminated the table where Darcy and Caroline sat. She could still hear Richard snoring in his bunk.

“What are you doing?” Caroline asked conversationally.

“Writing to my sister,” Darcy answered distractedly. Elizabeth heard him typing on a keyboard. His back to her, she watched him stop and look up to Caroline for a moment before returning to work.

Elizabeth suspected he must have smiled, because Caroline was grinning brightly at him. “Dear Georgie,” she said sincerely. “I miss her. You must be so proud, her finishing school and starting college. Is she excited?”

“Oh yes,” Darcy replied.

“I’m sure. How much longer until she graduates?”

“Two months.”

Caroline laughed. “I remember my senior year of high school. I think I skipped math for a whole month.”

“She better not be skipping classes,” he growled.

“Oh, Georgie is a good girl; she would never do that,” Caroline assured him.

Again he stopped typing, but Elizabeth saw that he didn’t look up this time. His shoulders dropped, and a moment later he resumed typing.

“Tell her when she goes out to Stanford I’m going to take a few days off and show her around.”

“You know, you can email her yourself.”

“I don’t have the time.” She laughed. “I email for business, not for pleasure, I’m afraid.” Her eyes flicked over to the couch and she noticed Elizabeth. “Oh, you’re awake. Did you have a good nap?”

Elizabeth sat up and rubbed her face, nodding in response. She stood up, stretched, and stiffly walked to the table, where Caroline moved to make room for her. “How much longer to the hotel?” she asked.

Caroline looked at her watch. “Few minutes.”

“Oh!” Elizabeth’s eyes flared. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I had slept so long.”

“It’s okay; you needed it after last night,” Caroline told her.

“I did,” she agreed, “but you were up just as late, if not later, Caroline, and I didn’t see you taking a nap.”

She smiled, touched by her thoughtfulness. “Yes, but I’m not performing, and it wasn’t my sister at the ER.” She shrugged. “I’m one of those people who just doesn’t need a lot of sleep. But I guarantee you, I’ll sleep tonight.”

Elizabeth smiled and nodded in agreement. “Do you have any sisters?” Elizabeth asked.

“No,” Caroline shook her head, “it’s just Charles and me.” She looked at Elizabeth, carefully weighing her. “It must’ve been nice growing up in a big family like yours. Like
The Waltons
on TV.”

Elizabeth smiled politely. She had heard this before. “It wasn’t like TV, but it was nice. There was always someone to do things with, so we never felt bored or lonely. But it wasn’t perfect; there was a lot of fighting too.”

“Oh, with five girls I’m sure there must’ve been.”

Elizabeth grinned. “Yes, we were always arguing over clothes or makeup or books.” Her eyes flicked to Darcy’s again, and she noticed him watching her with that deep stare of his. She could see he wasn’t enjoying her stories of her family, and she thought again about how cold he could be.

Luckily, at that point the bus pulled up to the hotel. A few minutes later found all of them in the hotel dining room. Elizabeth took a seat next to Charlotte, who was joined by Richard, and then by Darcy.

“How was your ride?” Elizabeth asked Charlotte after they ordered their meals.

“Good,” Charlotte answered. “I slept.”

“Me too,” Elizabeth admitted. “But I got some practice in first. How’s Jane? Did she sleep too?”

“No,” Charlotte rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Charles and her spent the whole ride playing and singing together.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte muttered. “You know what a perfectionist Jane is, and she wanted Charles to know the songs for your set, so they started playing your songs, then they started on her songs, then they were playing their favorite songs.”

“Eighties music?” Richard interrupted her.

Charlotte nodded, her eyes bugging out in mock annoyance. “I swear they were doing Prince when the bus finally pulled up.”

Everyone smiled. “That’s Charles,” Richard confirmed.

“Oh my God! I was ready to gnaw off my arm and beat them both over the head with it.”

Richard laughed. “A one-armed drummer? Now who’s living in the eighties?”

“Shut up!” Charlotte laughed and threw her napkin at him.

Richard retaliated with a dinner roll and before it could turn into a full-fledged food fight, Elizabeth yelled, laughing, “Stop! Stop! Talk about something else!”

“What?”

“I don’t care! Anything else!” She grinned and looked to Darcy for help. “Will! Tell me about your tattoos,” she chuckled.

Richard wiggled his shoulders and leered. “Oh yeah, Will, tell her about the lyre.”

Elizabeth and Charlotte laughed, and even Darcy smiled as he slowly unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt and pulled it aside. “This?” he said confidently.

Elizabeth and Charlotte giggled and clapped. Charlotte asked, “Did they spike our drinks?”

“We’re just punchy from the bus,” Elizabeth replied playfully. She looked back to Darcy. “So why a lyre?”

“It’s the lyre of Orpheus,” Darcy explained.

“Orpheus is Darcy’s personal myth,” Richard added in an affected voice.

Darcy’s eyes flicked to Richard and fixed him with an annoyed look before he turned back to the girls. “Orpheus was the son of Apollo, the sun god, and Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry,” he explained. “His father gave him a lyre, and his music was magical in its power. It could move trees and rocks, as well as affect people. He traveled with the Argonauts—”

“That would be us,” Richard interjected.

“To retrieve the Golden Fleece, and he overcame the sirens—”

“Oh, that’s us!” Charlotte added, holding up her hand.

“With his playing,” Darcy finished, grinning with a look of amused disbelief at Charlotte and Richard.

Elizabeth smiled. “It’s a lovely tattoo, and it’s a pretty unusual story behind it.”

“Why is it unusual?” he asked.

“I just don’t expect a rock guitar god to be familiar with classical mythology.”

“When I studied literature, I never expected to be a rock guitar god,” he said, dropping his voice to a more personal level.

“What did you expect to do?” she asked, intrigued.

“Work with my father, run Darcy Technologies.”

“Why would you need literature for that?”

“I didn’t study it for my career; I studied it for my soul.”

Elizabeth paused, surprised at his admission. His contradiction puzzled her. He was so stony at times, so serious and businesslike. But then, he would say something like this, reminding her that he was a musician, an artist like her. She had found it was easier to think of him as a businessman, even though he usually behaved like an ass in that mode. When he behaved like a musician, she found him too approachable, too much like her. She found the differences between the two personalities too disquieting.

Realizing he was still looking at her, she smiled politely and turned her attention to her food.

***

It was dark as Charlotte leaned against the wall of the hotel, watching the luggage as it was unloaded from the buses. She smiled to herself as she heard the familiar footsteps and took another drag off her cigarette.

“I was wondering,” Richard said casually as he took his usual place beside her, pulled out a cigarette and lit his, “if you had any plans for tonight.”

“Again?” Charlotte asked in a mockingly aggrieved tone.

“Well, you do know that I’m scared of the dark.”

“I think you just don’t like to sleep alone.”

He smirked. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”