A/N: Umm...don't really have anything to say, but I do love rambling anyway. Oh yeah, thanks for the reviews, those of you that have been kind enough to leave them. Bla bla bla. Yeah. LEAVE ME REVIEWS! IT'S WHAT INSPIRES ME TO KEEP GOING! Thank you.

The next afternoon the four sisters – Jane, Lizzy, Kitty, and Lydia – sat outside on the terrace enjoying a late brunch.

"Are you sure you should be eating all that, Lydia?" said Jane, eyeing the massive mound of eggs and corned beef hash piled onto Lydia's plate. "You were pretty sick last night…"

"Lucky I don't remember it then! Ha ha. Yes, Jane, I'm sure. Though I wouldn't entirely mind if I did happen to puke it all up. Would save me a lot of calories, wouldn't it!"

Kitty laughed, but Jane raised her eyebrows with mild alarm. She was about to launch into a lecture about the dangers of eating disorders, but Lizzy interrupted.

"So, Jane, I have to say, I was a little surprised to find you back at the dorm so early last night. And all alone!"

"Why would that surprise you, Lizzy?" said Jane, turning light pink.

"Jane, how do you always manage to look so much prettier when you blush? I'm sure when I do it I look like a speckled tomato, but somehow it makes you even more delicious. It's really not fair."

Jane was beginning to look rather like a speckled tomato by this point, as the three other girls burst out laughing.

"Well," said Lydia after a moment, "you might as well come out with it right now. No use hiding anything from us. Obviously there's some boy involved. Who is he?"

"Is he hot?" asked Kitty.

"Of course he's hot, you retard, it's effing Jane we're talking about here. Do you think she'd have an ugly boyfriend, seeing as she could pass for a movie star herself?" Lydia asked.

"I swear to God, if you call me a retard one more time I am going to smack you. It's so lame, honestly, I know you're only fifteen, but still you'd think you could really come up with something slightly better."

"Ok, let me try. Hmmm. Got it! Fat-ass bitchwhore. How's that?"

"Whatever."

But a moment later the girls were leaning together whispering excitedly as some boy they had danced with at the party last night walked by.

"Um, we're gonna go home now, see you guys later! Mwah!"

And with that, Lydia and Kitty ran off in the direction of the boy, while Jane futilely called out to them, begging them to drive safely. Lizzy was not overly sorry to see them go, as she was dying to hear about Jane's night with Charles. In a moment it was all out. They had danced together all night, he had been so nice, such a gentleman, especially compared to – but she wasn't going to mention him – he had walked her back to Lizzy's dorm before it got too late, kissed her on the cheek, and that was it.

"That's it?" Lizzy asked.

"Why do you sound so surprised? It's not as if I'm the type of girl that would go home with a boy the night I met him!"

"Well I know you aren't that type of person, but Charles is a frat boy, and he's best friends with that odious Will Darcy… I'm just surprised he turned out to be as nice as he seemed. That usually doesn't happen. Although I guess he could still turn out to be an ass."

"I don't think so," said the ever optimistic Jane. "And what's so bad about Will Darcy? He seemed nice enough at the party."

Lizzy laughingly related the story of the gypsy dance to Jane.

"That's so strange!" Jane said. "I wonder if there could be another reason why he left so abruptly. There must be. No one is that fickle. Not that I think Caroline Bingley would lie…"

Lizzy shrugged. "Whatever, I'm just sorry I wasted ten minutes of my life dancing with him. Let's not waste anymore time talking about the pathetic creature."

But Lizzy was not so reluctant to talk about Will Darcy with Charles later that week. Now that they knew each other, they had begun sitting together during their Religion of Ancient Israel class. Though Charles did genuinely like Lizzy, it must be confessed that he might have had one or two slightly ulterior motives in befriending her so hastily. Lizzy, of course, was fully aware of this, but for Jane's sake she was determined to be friendly towards him, and after a short time, found herself liking him very well for his own sake. Indeed, no one who met Charles Bingley could really help liking him.

"So, you and Will sure seemed to hit it off at the party last weekend. And I was sure you'd hate him forever after the incident with the football!"

Lizzy knew better than to bash the best friend of the person she was talking to. So, she replied nonchalantly, "Who told you we were hitting it off?"

"I can't remember the specific people; you know what a scatterbrain I am. But rumors are circulating that you danced with him for half the night at the reggae show. Although my sister Caroline said it was more like five minutes – but she never believes any rumors about Will, unless they have something to do with him being in love with her."

"Well, I think in this case she was right. It was probably five minutes – ten at the most. I'm really not the sort of girl to waste the night dancing with only one person."

"Ah, I see. Anyway, how's your sister?"

Later that day, George Wickham came to visit Lizzy during her break at the Daily Grind – the campus coffee shop where she spent far too much of her time making far too little money. He brought her a single red rose.

Lizzy had become very tight with George Wickham since the night of the party. They weren't exactly dating – it was commonly known that George Wickham wasn't the type of boy to tie himself down with any one girl – but they were having a fun time of it anyway. And Lizzy, who had been through several crappy relationships since she came to college, told herself she was relieved that George wasn't looking for anything serious. She certainly wasn't in the mood for commitment – after all, this was college – you're supposed to have fun in college, not tie yourself down with one person all the time.

She took the rose with a laugh, as they sat down at a table outside the Grind, asking him what the occasion was.

"Do I really need an occasion to give the most beautiful girl alive a single rose?"

"I suppose not. I'll have it delivered to my sister Jane straight away when I get off work."

Wickham laughed and leaned over in an attempt to kiss her. Lizzy playfully ducked, so he ended up with a mouthful of thick brown hair.

"Really, Wickham (for she had taken to calling him Wickham like everyone else on campus), you know how I feel about public display of affection. Just because you got me a rose you can't expect me to – "

But he cut her off by grabbing her and forcing her into a kiss, to which she submitted, laughingly, without much resistance. At that moment Will Darcy happened to walk by. He recognized the sound of Lizzy's laughter and turned around to see her playfully, though not very intently, trying to release herself from Wickham's embrace, while he planted kisses all over her face.

"Can't expect you to what?" Wickham asked her between kisses.

But Lizzy, who was suddenly aware that someone was standing nearby, this time removed herself from him successfully, and turned around to meet the cold gaze of Will Darcy. She was surprised to see that Wickham was smirking.

"Will, old boy, how's it going?" he said, and if Lizzy had not been so smitten by him, she might have detected a faint hint of embarrassment in the tone of his voice.

Will clenched his jaw and turned very pale, but after a moment, inhaling deeply, he seemed to relax. He nodded slightly in their direction and continued walking. Lizzy looked at Wickham, expecting an explanation. He laughed nervously and then, quickly recovering himself, began relating to her with great animation the various hardships Will Darcy had inflicted upon him.

He had lived in Savannah, Georgia with his mother until she died when he was ten years old, at which point he had been adopted by his step-uncle Darcy, who lived on Long Island, where all the Darcy's were brewed. Wickham's mother had been briefly married to William Darcy Sr.'s younger brother, a marriage which had come to a sudden halt when she became pregnant with a child that was not his. Unfortunately, Wickham's true father had also died shortly after Wickham's birth, leaving him with no other relatives except his mother. So when she died, all he had were the Darcy's.

"Oh my God," Lizzy cut in, "that's so terrible! What a hard life you have had. I had no idea."

Wickham nodded solemnly.

"It wasn't so bad, though. The Darcy's were very kind to me, even Will. We were actually best friends," he said, with a bitter laugh.

"What happened?" Lizzy asked incredulously.

"Will's parents both died in a car accident the year before we went away to college. It was a really hard time for me…I'd always thought of William Darcy as my dad, and he treated me like a son. I imagine Will must have felt it too, but you wouldn't have known by the way he acted. He completely changed, almost overnight – started acting all self-important, like he thought he was better than everyone – myself included – because he was a Darcy. I guess he was better in a way – after all, he has money, and money's what makes the world go 'round, right?

"Anyway, we both applied to William & Mary. That's where all the Darcy's have gone – they can actually trace the lineage back to the 17th century. I know, too much damn time on their hands, right? Who would actually care about such a stupid thing? They even claim that one of the Darcy ancestors was a peer of Thomas Jefferson.

"Well, I wasn't the most studious person, and I know the only reason I got accepted was because of my connection with the Darcy's. But Will seemed to resent that. I'll give him some credit – he's a decently smart guy. He might have even made it in without being a Darcy. At any rate, he became a total ass, refused to hang out with me in public, that sort of thing. So things were already fairly strained between us, when his sister came into the picture."

"Will has a sister?" Lizzy said with surprise. For some reason she had always thought of him as an only child.

"Yep. She's two years younger than him, but by the way he treats her, you'd think he was her dad. Her name is Georgianna, but I always called her Anna. Who names their kid Georgianna, anyway, in this day and age? Seriously? Leave it to the freaking Darcy's. Whatever, she and I had always been really close. I used to play with her almost as much as I did with Will when we were kids. But that summer before we went away to college, something changed. She was having a really hard time coping with the death of her parents – I mean she was so young, only 16 at the time. And Will of course had more important things to do – like making appearances at important people's parties, being your typical wealthy bastard, you know how it is – than comforting his little sister.

"So I stepped up. We spent nearly every waking moment together that summer, and I'm not gonna lie, Lizzy, I know I have a reputation around here as being somewhat of a ladies-man, but with Anna, it was different. I fell in love with her, and she loved me too. Or she said she did. Anyway, she was the only girl I cared about then. But I was so stupid; I should have known how Will would react. I guess I thought that there must be some good left in him – seeing as he was William Darcy's son – and that that tiny good part would be happy that his sister had fallen for his former best friend. But all he could think about was the fact that I was a bastard. A poor bastard, at that. When he found out about it, he made her swear never to see me again. This was the morning before we left for school. And that's when she showed her true colors. She had sworn nothing would ever take her away from me – we were gonna keep dating long distance when I went to school, but I planned to visit her every weekend – but when Will made her promise, she didn't hesitate. I thought she was different, but she's not. She's Darcy to the core. And there you have it. I haven't spoken to Anna since then, but I have to see her brother nearly every day, and I can never look at him without thinking of what he took from me."

Lizzy shook her head slowly. She was truly taken aback. She figured Will was a jerk, but she would have never guessed it was this bad. To treat your best friend that way! Your adopted brother! She couldn't imagine it. He heart reached out for Wickham, and when he leaned over to kiss her that time, she didn't resist.