Page 2 of Without Pride and Prejudice
I shrugged noncommittally, not wishing to think about her leaving. The past year and a half had been the best of my life—not that I would admit it. I didn’t do well with emotion—it was a family trait. I’d been attending boarding school since I was eight, and sneaking out to visit Monroe and her dad almost every evening made me feel like I finally belonged somewhere. “I’ll be preparing to attend Oxford,” I reminded her.
She rolled her pretty eyes. “I think you’ve been prepared to attend Oxford since birth. Come on, you have to visit. We canwatch all the old musicals I have on DVD—some even on VHS. My grams has an old VCR we can use.”
Monroe and her obsession with musicals. I’d watched more musicals with her than I’d ever cared to, but there was something about seeing her face light up or hearing her sing along that made it worth it. Well, most of the time. I could have done withoutStarlight Express.
When I said nothing, she continued. “And I can introduce you to some of my cute friends. Oh, wait,” she giggled. “I forgot you can’t be with an American because we don’t appreciate history,” she mocked.
I’d only said that in order to keep my feelings for Monroe at bay. I figured if she never thought we had a chance, she wouldn’t tempt me. But it hadn’t worked. She tempted me like no girl ever had. “Exactly,” I lied.
“Okay, fine, but you should still come. Grams would love to meet you, and we can go to the OZ Museum.”
“That sounds riveting,” I said dryly.
“Listen, Fitz,” she emphasized the nickname she’d given me—I was less than fond of it, but I’d come to terms with it, only because it was she who had given it to me. If anyone else called me Fitz, they would rue the day. “We takeThe Wizard of Ozseriously in Kansas.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I like your laugh. You should laugh more often.” She turned and went back to playing the piano, her delicate fingers gliding across each key with grace. You could tell she felt every note.
It was maddening how she knew exactly what to say—not because it was necessarily profound, but because she made me see things about myself that no one else noticed, not even myself. She was the first person in my life who didn’t seem to want anything from me other than my company. She didn’t even care that I was part of the peerage here in the UK, other thanasking me to teach her how to curtsy. Monroe was the oddest, most wonderful person I’d ever met. And I was going to miss her.
I flipped some hair off her shoulder. “I’ll see if I can come in August.”
Instantaneously, she threw her arms around me. “Yay! I can’t wait.”
Admittedly, neither could I. Cautiously, I hugged her back, trying not to breathe in her sweet scent or think about her soft skin or how my heart raced every time we touched.It’s just boyhood infatuation,I would tell myself. We were only seventeen and from two different worlds. Friends was all we could ever be.
“I can’t either.” Those might be the most frightening words I had ever spoken.
Seven Years Ago
MONROE
“YOU SOUND TIRED,” FITZ’S SEXY voice echoed through the phone.
I immediately reminded myself not to think of the wordsexywhen it came to him. Our friendship was too important for me to go messing it up with those kinds of thoughts—thoughts I knew Fitz would never have about me, and ones I had long buried deep inside the most precious parts of my heart.
I pressed the cell phone closer to my ear as I sprawled out on the motel room bed, not caring that it squeaked something awful and smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. “We played two gigs tonight.”
I’d gone on the road with a supposedly up-and-coming band out of the Kansas City area as a backup singer and piano player. I’d thought it would be an adventure to tour the countrythe summer after I graduated from college. It was certainly adventurous, sleeping in dives and traveling in a beat-up bus from city to city, hardly knowing what day it was.
“I’m exhausted,” I admitted. “How are you? It’s early for you.”
“I’m working on a paper about the influence of Victorian morality in the works of Charles Dickens.”
“Of course you are,” I laughed. Fitz had graduated from Oxford in May. I’d been there to cheer him on, to the dismay of his dear mum and dad, who refused to even sit by me during the ceremony. Then, at their request, a maid followed me around the graduation party they’d thrown on their large estate in the village of Blackhaven, ensuring I didn’t help anyone or break anything. Sheesh. You shoot one arrow through a window and bleed on a carpet gifted by the Queen, and no one trusts you again. Okay, so I totally understood it. Admittedly, I could be a hot mess, unlike Fitz, who was starting his doctoral program at Oxford in October. He was anything but a hot mess. Except for thehotpart. Dang it, I needed to stop that line of thinking. Anyway, my not-thinking-about-how-hot-he-is best friend was taking some summer courses at Cambridge because not studying all summer seemed like a travesty. Hence the paper. Not to say he wouldn’t write the paper just for the fun of it.
“I sent a collection of books to your father’s house that I believe Mr. Darcy would have read,” he rushed to say, as if his thoughtful gesture embarrassed him.
“Aw, look at you being sweet. And here I thought you believed my obsession with Mr. Darcy was ridiculous.”
“It is. He doesn’t exist.”
“Excuse me—just because he lives in my head and heart doesn’t mean he isn’t real.”
“Actually, I think that’s exactly what it means.”
“Agree to disagree,” I giggled. “Anyway, are you doing anything fun this summer besides studying and writing papers that will no doubt be published in some fancy journal that I’ll read only because you’re in it?” He’d already had a few papers published, which was a pretty big deal for an undergraduate student. “What about Jocelyn?” She was his latest girlfriend. “Don’t you have any fun plans with her?” I could ask these questions now without jealousy, even though Jocelyn was perfect and demure and she knew what it was like to kiss Fitz and hold his hand and who knows what else. So maybe there was a prick of ouch there, but definitely not jealousy. Fitz was my person, and I wouldn’t jeopardize that with unwanted notions about us being more than friends. Especially considering I wouldn’t do well in his world, even if Fitz ever were to see me as an option.
