Will spent the last five minutes of a dreadfully horrid meeting checking the messages on his phone, sent in steady progression from Georgiana as she watched an array of movies that she felt compelled to tell him about. He made sure to give his assent to proposals and remarks with a steady grunt, which somehow managed to fool the lot of them into thinking he was paying attention.

The very last message came at the end of his meeting and caught his attention wholly.

btw, Lizzy is here. Did I mention?

Will thought a wry, 'no, Georgie, you happened to neglect that' to himself before he scooped up his things in a mad dash, smiling politely to the various property management specialists about him who were helping to procure him a very lovely house, the sort you might 'start a life in' as the saying went.

"Sorry lads, I've got to dash," he apologised with a polite smile that somehow managed to still be icy despite his very best efforts. Then, Will really had little use for them outside of the office and all they could do was help him with a home. Georgiana, however, could help him make amends with Elizabeth as she always seemed to have her finger on the pulse of what he'd done wrong and what he had to do in order to fix it. Just as he was hurrying to make it to his car and drive to home, his mobile began to ring.

He paused in the lobby to answer, a desperate, "Georgie?" on his lips.

"Sorry to disappoint," came Charles' bemused reply. "I don't think she and I have looked alike since that one Halloween though."

Will sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair, debating whether to politely cut off the reception and argue that he'd gone through a tunnel, but no matter what, he had to at least find out what was the matter. "What's going on?"

"We need to talk, Will," Charles said, all that joking gone from his voice and Will didn't need to look him in the eye to know that something was going on. "It's long past time." He was nearly grave. William Darcy was almost worried, truth be told, and he set aside his desperate plans to woo Elizabeth back for the moment.

"Name the place."

Will closed his phone the moment Charles told him to come home iimmediately/i and that they had something extremely serious to discuss. He toyed with the mobile, debating calling Georgiana and telling her to make sure to keep Lizzy for as long as possible, but he didn't need to appear desperate.

Halfway home, he changed his mind on that point.

He was pulling into the drive of the townhouse and speaking quietly to his sister as he did, glancing up at the home before him. "I promise I'll be there as soon as I can. Charles needs to talk to me about something." He slowly juggled the mobile and his briefcase, dodging out of the car. "Yes. Yes, Georgie, yes of course I want to see her, just don't tell her. I will be there soon, for the love of God, just don't let her leave."

She sweetly promised him that she would do her very best and left him with a dead line and a conversation ahead.

He felt utterly torn apart lately. Between George Wickham reappearing in their lives and making a gambit at the Bennet family and Charles' near-brush with marriage into the family while Mrs. Bennet still seemed to wish for nothing more than money, he didn't really know what to think.

Although, that wasn't entirely true.

The moment he got out of his car and saw the dire and serious look on Bingley's face, he knew that something serious was afoot.

'We need to talk' was no longer apparently a monopoly held by longstanding relationships and best-friends also had the right to send shivers of dread into each others' hearts with those four words. And Charles Bingley looked very much like he wanted to talk.

His fingers cramped down on a piece of paper and Will gave him a weary look as he ascended the steps to the townhouse and locked the car. "This won't go too long, will it?" he asked brusquely. "Lizzy is with Georgiana and I want to see her before Wickham somehow interjects himself in our lives again."

"I told Jane about that," Bingley offered as they entered the house. "About all of it."

"I expected as much," Will commented, giving a nod. "Well? What did you want to talk about?"

Bingley looked him up and down and flashed that mad smile he had, the one he got when there was a scheme afoot or when he wanted a favour out of Will or perhaps some combination of the both at once. It was also the smile that happened to grace his face whenever Jane happened upon the room and Charles lost all sight of the world around him. Fools in love, Elizabeth had once called them. "Utterly adorable, wonderful fools in love", she'd put it with a look of love in her eyes.

"Hopefully about you becoming my best man, once more," Bingley remarked. When Will looked up from his thoughts, he found that the mad grin had yet to fall away from Charles' face and for a very long moment, Will thought that he was in the possession of a joke.

Except Bingley wasn't laughing.

And the engagement ring was back on his finger.

"We're so tired of pretending," Charles commented. "And especially with the baby on the way, there's so little reason to keep going on like this and I know you think I'm an idiot for not signing a pre-nup and I know that you think her mother just wants Jane to marry me so she can get at my money and we'll divorce at the first ill turn, but it's not like that and Will…well, I'm tired of you directing my life and hiding behind your advice when you can't even manage your own," he snapped in a very un-Charles-like way.

Will could only assume that Wickham's presence was driving everyone to the bounds of madness.

"Charles, take a moment and think about what you're saying," Will entreated.

"We're getting married," Charles said firmly. "And you can either stand up there and be my best man or you can continue to think ill of the family of the woman I love. The same family that your Lizzy belongs to."

They stared at each other for a very long moment at this impasse, neither willing to budge. Will wouldn't give in when he still held the belief that Charles should sign something that protected his assets and Charles seemed determined to fly on the hope of love alone.

Charles shook his head and pushed the paper his way. "I hoped you wouldn't be like this," he muttered. "This is the baby."

With that, he departed the front hall and left the fight as it was. Neither diffused nor resolved.

"Fuck," Will swore uncharacteristically when the upstairs bedroom door slammed shut and Caroline Bingley came calling to find out what was wrong and he was decidedly not in the mood to deal with her at that precise moment.

His phone buzzed at his hip again and he dragged it out to see the message.

get over here NOW! She's leaving!

Will glanced upstairs for a moment longer and, car keys in hand, he turned and made his way out the door. If Charles wasn't going to listen to reason (even if he had the sinking feeling that he was ignoring reason a good deal, himself), then he wasn't going to linger about any longer to see what was going to come of this disaster.

--

It took him less time than usual to reach his childhood home and even though it was raining, he paid little attention to the slickness of the roads as he was determined and bound to do one thing and one thing only: Reach Elizabeth. He had to convince her that Wickham was not the dashing prince that she thought he was and if she had yet to open his letter, he would use as many persuasive words he had in him until his breath left his body.

He was soaking wet by the time he made it inside and first heard the crystal clear sounds of laughter coming from the den.

"Will!"

"Oh god, Will," Elizabeth gasped to match Georgiana's worried cry of his name. He was creating something of a puddle on the floor as he stared in consternation at the both of them and found himself drawn to staring at Elizabeth and wondering just what she thought of him. It seemed he would not have to wait very long to discover the answer to his wonderings as she was on her feet and crossing the distance between them in scant seconds, pressing her lips to his and mouthing a soft 'I'm sorry' against them. "I read your letter," she hurried to explain. "Will, I should have given you the benefit of the doubt, I'm sorry…"

"She's been telling me all afternoon," Georgiana reinforced quietly from just behind. "I keep saying she had absolutely nothing to apologize about. Does she, Will?"

He ignored his sister for the moment and clasped Elizabeth's hands within his own, giving her another devoted kiss. "Lizzy, come to the country with me," he pleaded desperately. "Just for a day or two to get away from this all and to help us patch things…"

"Of course," she agreed instantly. "Of course. I have enough things that we can leave from here. Will, I'm still sorry."

"You needn't apologize. Georgie is right," he remarked ruefully, as came all admissions of his sister's tendency to be right in all matters. "Come on, we can make it to the cottage before nightfall if we hurry."

Elizabeth seemed to positively glow and for a moment, Will could forget that while he was mending ways in one place, he was harming them in yet another area of his life.

"Let's go," he insisted once more.

--

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Jane remarked, her normally calm demeanor high-strung and tense. "Yes, and I can't get a hold of Lizzy. Her mobile is out of range or off or…Charlie, I don't know what to do," she got the words out with a heavy amount of distress in her voice. "Lizzy is the one who takes this sort of news and who manages to make a clear plan out of it. I…"

"Jane," Charles commented evenly. "Let's go talk to your mother and see if Kitty is just elaborating a story. Then we'll send a telegram out to all of …all of Darcy's places," he said with a bit of bitterness to his tone, "to get ahold of her. Okay?" He rubbed his palms up and down her shoulders, trying to coax a smile from her with a nervous one of his own. "It'll be fine. It'll all be fine."

"For Lydia's sake," Jane murmured, "I do hope so."

tbc