DISCLAIMER: I do not pretend to own any of the works by Jenny Austen or any other author and their characters. I am but a lowly servant.
This will be the last update for a while - I'm going abroad (to FRANCE...from where i live that's a long way) and thus - I won't update for a few weeks...3 i think)
THERE WILL BE AN EPILOGUE I PROMISES!
Eleanor went to school, she taught students, she had lunch with Jenny and yet none of it seemed the same. He's been so…Nice and now she felt that the thought of not having that …niceness around was terrifying. But she heard from his family. Oh, she Definitely heard from his family.
It had been a week after she'd returned home before the doorbell rang incessantly as she rushed through her place looking for her schedule. "I'm Coming!" she called out locating the schedule and walking to the door to find someone already inside. "Mrs. Debouf?"
The old lady looked at her indignantly. "So it is you then, I had hoped that my informant had by some trick of fate given me the wrong name." Eleanor stepped back and asked her 'guest' if she would like some tea. "No thankyou" was the response, "I shan't stay long." She flew across the country to not stay long Eleanor looked at the lady standing there, someone must have died or something. "I wish to talk to you about your marital status."
"My…my marital status?" Eleanor struggled to say the words. "What do you want to know about my marital status?"
"Simply this, and answer me quickly girl for I already know the answer. Are you, or are you not engaged to my nephew William Darcy?"
Eleanor reeled back, she couldn't be serious? "If you already know the answer why are you asking me?"
"I simply want to have what I know to be true to be proven so."
Eleanor rolled her eyes, "well, if you think it so impossible why come all the way over here to 'check' on something you 'know' to be a lie?"
"All I want is an answer Miss. Bennet" Lady Debouf said. "A simple Yes or No answer."
"But you think it's impossible, so nothing I say will change that."
Lady Debouf was fuming now, she still stood ramrod straight with her head held high, but the glare she was giving Eleanor could have burnt a hole through her skull if Eleanor hadn't been glaring with the same force at her. "Miss. Bennet, I will ask you one Final time, and you will answer me truthfully, are you, or are you not engaged to by married to my nephew William Darcy?"
Eleanor stood straight reaching her full height and looked the 'old bat' in the eyes. "No." she said simply.
Lady Catherine visibly sighed, "and will you promise me not to enter into an engagement with him?"
"No"
"But you are beneath him."
If that was all Lady Catherine had said Eleanor would have immediately said her answer, but that comment only added to the contempt with which she said "I will do nothing of the sort and you cannot conjure me to do so, now please leave. I have a lot of work to do."
"You will not be moved?"
Eleanor shook her head, "I trust you to let yourself out, you seem to have managed to come in easily enough."
Lady Catherine left without another word and Eleanor was finally left in peace.
Weeks went by before she heard anything from Will, who spent his time 'fixing' certain things that he, felt he had to. The first mention of him came when she was called into Mr. Deary's office and was told that D Productions had decided to use the auditorium after all and he wondered if she minded considering how much she hated the head of the company.
"I was wrong," she told his man she saw as a father since her own father's death. "I don't hate him."
"You don't?"
Eleanor shook her head smiling broadly. "I can't. Not when…I like him. I like him a lot."
Mr. Deary stared at her. "But, what? Last time he was here you couldn't stand to be in the same room."
"Things change." She told him still smiling.
"Well, I've said that yes he can use the auditorium, he's not the kind of man you say no to anyway. He's said that he doesn't need to students to leave at all."
"That's good."
"Just as long as you know what you're doing."
Eleanor nodded and left feeling that that conversation could have had a few different meanings if she'd wanted to read them that way.
That night came the second mention of Mr. Darcy, well, not Mr. Darcy as it were, more Mr. Bingley.
"Eleanor? It's Jenny." She sounded happier than Eleanor could ever remember her being and that brought a smile to her face.
"Hey, what's up?"
"I need to ask you something, now if you say no then I won't go, here it is. I had a visitor, well, he's still here in fact. Umm, actually, I'd like to do this in person, could you come over?"
Eleanor was at the door in a few minutes smiling. Chris opened the door for her, Eleanor wasn't surprised. "She's in the living room," he told her and went to the kitchen to make dinner while the sisters talked. Eleanor noted how at home he seemed here, or at least, he knew his way around.
"Jenny?" she walked into the room to be hugged by her sister.
"Eleanor, I'm so happy! Why can't the rest of the world be as happy as I am?" Eleanor laughed and through a very chopped up conversation she found out that Chris had turned up on her doorstep and asked her there, out on the street to marry him.
"I'm Getting Married Eleanor!" she squealed. "If only you could be this glad!" Eleanor smiled.
"I could be married to a thousand Chris's and not be as happy as you are," she told her sister as they walked through to the kitchen and Eleanor hugged her brother-in-law-to-be and they sat down to discover that Chris wasn't a bad chef.
"Now, while you're both moving around the world, make sure to invite your poor little sister along," Eleanor smiled and they spent the night laughing and planning and simply enjoying the moment.
A week later the filming was due to begin in the auditorium with several hundred of the students as extras sitting in the tiered seating Eleanor had her first glimpse of Will. He was busy; she saw that, running around making sure people were in the right places with the right props. As producer it wasn't exactly his job to do that, but he'd changed lately, she smiled to think that she had seen that. She walked backstage hoping that nobody was around, but there was Jenny and Chris talking quietly, going over his lines or something, she wasn't quite sure. But she knew that they were both nervous, tonight at a press conference they would formally be announcing their engagement to the world. Talk about pressure. She stood in the wings of the backstage looking out at the stage, lights were shining on it making it look somewhat romantic and there was a few chairs set up for the opening scene that they would be filming in a few minutes, once they found their second camera man.
She saw Will walk across the opposite side of the stage backstage, talking to the actors and making sure that everything was alright. He felt her eyes on him and turned around. He walked out onto the stage, not really caring about anything and Eleanor walked out to meet him.
Up on the seating, Lucy and Andrew looked at their teacher and the movie producer talking, they couldn't hear what they were saying, but they could guess. Then something happened which made them both smile and look at each other.
Jenny and Chris were watching their friends and smiled and hugged each other, maybe Eleanor didn't need a thousand Chris's.
"Gina misses you," he told her softly so the microphones wouldn't pick it up. "She would like you to come visit sometime…I'd like you to come visit sometime."
"I can't," it upset Eleanor to say. "My miniature allowance wouldn't allow it. I can't afford to go to England at all."
"What if…what if I paid?" she looked at him and smiled, there was kindness in his eyes, kindness she had seen a few times in England and hoped to see again.
"Then I'd say yes."
"What if I said that I'm sorry for being an amazing prick when we first met, but that I like you, really like you, and I was wondering if maybe you'd consider staying with me? In a long term sort of way?"
"Are you asking me Mr. Darcy, to move in with you?" Eleanor smiled with a twinkle in her eye.
"Well, once this part of the filming is finished and we've tied up a few things with legal stuff and….basically? Yes."
"When did you decide to ask me this?"
"When I heard of your argument with my dear aunt," Eleanor laughed and looked to the ground. "I figured, that if you Really hated me, you would have answered her straight away. But you didn't, so I thought I would ask you myself." Eleanor cracked up laughing.
"Yes, I had no trouble insulting you to your face, why would your freaky aunt be any different?" Will laughed and lifted her chin up to look in his eyes.
"One of the reasons I love you."
"You love me?"
Will nodded and Eleanor smiled and did something that usually she would never even consider doing in front of the amount of people that were there then, but she didn't care. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Will hugged her tightly and twirled her around in circles.
It wasn't until later that they realised that when that movie came out on DVD that one of the special features would be a small movie entitled "Proud and Prejudiced" where the one camera man who had been on duty had turned the microphones up in the camera so he could capture what they were saying and filmed their little exchange.
Epilogue to come!
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