Classy

Chapter Twelve

Y'know, I love Darcy ever so in P&P, but I think my ultimate fave Austen man is Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility. Knightley from Emma is also very good. Anyone got a fave Austen hero?

Love, Cam

♡ 

Madeleine Darcy

In which my nemesis returns to my life

When Gates returned from babysitting Thomas with Jane, I was trying my absolute best not to be nosy. I didn't care that Francesca was on a date. I didn't care. I didn't.

Ugh, I cared. I had no idea why. We hadn't had a good start, and we certainly hadn't progressed very much in the way of friendship. But... seeing her at her flat, being invited to her housewarming, seeing her handle her absolute nightmare of a sister... it had changed something. She wasn't just Gates' friend who had pretty eyes. She was someone in my life, who I actually thought about often, and I cared about her struggles and the things that happened to her.

So when Gates returned, I was shamelessly hovering in rooms near the entrance, so I could 'accidentally' walk into the lobby and exclaim, "Oh, Gates, you scared me! I wasn't expecting you back for a while."

Gates - and there was no other word for it - forced himself to look at me. I blinked and then shamefacedly said, "Okay, fine, I was lurking and waiting for you, I'm sorry."

"It's not that," he said, sounding hollow. "I... I need to talk to you about something."

Francesca's date forgotten, I looked at him in utter horror. Was he about to tell me he'd done something monumentally stupid, like proposing to Jane? What would I do? How would I arrange my face into something positive when I knew how stupid that was?

"Sure," I said, my voice thin. "In private?"

"Yeah," he replied, and followed me into one of the little - well, little for this place - rooms off to the side, where there were chairs but neither of us sat because we were both too tense.

"You're freaking me out," I told him. "What's up?"

Gates wasn't very good at just coming out and saying something. He surrounded a lot of his difficult conversations in flowery language and hand gestures, but it seemed he was out of that now, because he looked me dead in the eye and said, "Frankie went on a date with Maya Wickham tonight. And yes, I saw her. It's the same Maya Wickham."

I felt that sentence drop into the room like stones in a pond. The ripples were going to take me out if I wasn't careful, so I took a seat and stared at the unlit fireplace. 

After a good minute of silence, I said, "Maya Wickham?"

"Yes," he replied. "She's working for some fitness company thing now, they got talking at one of their stands on the main street, near where Frankie works. They went out for mocktails."

I swallowed bile. They went out for mocktails, after what she did to my sister? She had the utter gall to go for non-alcoholic drinks while Gigi was in rehab after Maya Wickham fucked with her life? "Right," I said, and my voice sounded very far away from me. "Fuck."

"Fuck indeed," Gates agreed, and sank into the chair beside me, as though the information had been the only thing keeping him up and now he wasn't able to do it. "What do we do?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "Did... did you say anything? Did she see you?"

"She didn't see me," Gates replied. "I hid. And to be fair, I didn't see her at first, but I recognised the voice. When I'd heard the name, I panicked, and Frankie and Jane noticed, so I told them that she used to work with you."