Day 3
Stupid cake.
Why did he have to make a cake?
These were the thoughts of Mr. William Alexander Darcy on The Third Morning. He was beside himself with doubt. What if they didn't like strawberries? What if the cake got soggy between layers? What if it turned out disgusting? What if he didn't mix the frosting right? What if—oh God—what if either of them were allergic to strawberries!?
What if, what if, what if?
"Are you going to eat your breakfast, or are you just going to admire the presentation?" a voice said, breaking through his worrying.
Oh, right.
He had been staring at his eggs and bacon for about five straight minutes before Charles decided to bring him back to the breakfast room. The fairer-haired man had taken note of his friend's mental absence and pensive air and duly attributed it to the arrival of the two eldest Bennet sisters later on that morning.
"Snap out of it, Will," Bingley said. "The world isn't going to end, you know."
Says you. Will sighed and picked up his fork, unenthusiastically toying with his food.
"I know," he said. "It's just—there are so many things that can go wrong—I don't know if—ugh. I'm working myself up over nothing, aren't I?"
"Yup," Charles answered. "Relax. You were fun to be around three days ago; just be yourself."
"Hey!"
"What? It's true. I wouldn't be your friend if I didn't think well of you."
"You know that's not what I was referring to. And besides," he said, forking some eggs into his mouth, "you're friends with everyone."
"That's not the point!"
Caroline, the other resident of Netherfield Manor, graced the room with her presence. She was clad in a beige Armani suit-skirt combo and matching heels. Yesterday with her casual attire might have been a dream, if she hadn't been holding a full plate in her hand. She sat down with them, to their pleasant surprise.
"Good morning, Caroline," Charles greeted her with a smile. William followed suit, although his greeting was not as warm but nonetheless sincere. She returned the greeting and began daintily nibbling on her small portion of scrambled eggs.
"Before you ask," she began even as her brother opened his mouth, "I'm eating all this because Erik says I need to maintain a healthy diet if I ever want to sing halfway decently."
"Yeah?" Charles asked, secretly overjoyed by the news. As it were, he allowed himself his usual grin. Caroline nodded once, a languid bob that bespoke of her hesitant agreement to the scheme.
"Unfortunately for you, you may be seeing a whole lot more of me at mealtimes!" What started out as a joke ended up making Caroline grimace at her poor choice of words.
"That's wonderful!" Charles exclaimed, heedless to any negative connotations of the statement, before resuming his meal. William watched him for a moment before glancing at Caroline.
"Perhaps it's you who are the unfortunate one," he quipped, sliding his gaze back to Charles who was eating rapidly, barely pausing for breath in between bites. She smirked and continued eating. William followed her example. His bacon was cooling off, after all. Who could abide by cold bacon?
After a moment, Caroline flicked a glance Will's way.
"You seem… very attached to that hat," she observed. He glanced down at his plate.
"Yes," he said simply. There was a pause. "I like it."
Smooth, Darcy. Real smooth.
"It appears you do."
The rest of the meal was finished in relative silence. Caroline was the first to get up, as she had the smallest portions, beating out her vacuum of a brother.
"Well, I'm needed at Louisa's—the poor woman is having a devil of a time coordinating her five-year anniversary party, and I have voice lessons at four, so I'll be out practically all day." She smiled. "Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone."
"We'll try, Caroline," William smirked. Her brother waved after her. When she was gone, Charles turned back to William, a warm glow in his eyes.
"Oh, Will," he said, his voice saturated with happiness, "did you hear that? She's going to start eating again!"
"This Erik is a miracle worker," William responded, taking a last stab at his eggs.
"I'll say!" Charles agreed. "This guy is great! Maybe he can even convince her that trying to get you to marry her is a lost cause!"
William looked at Charles. And then, they both laughed.
The appointed time was drawing near. William had gone back to worrying, despite Charles's assurances that everything would be fine and his own mind's telling him that worrying would do him no good—in fact, he knew it would probably work against him. That didn't prevent him from doing so, however.
He'd checked on the cake more than once after breakfast, and it had looked the same as it had last night, but who's to say something hadn't gone horribly wrong inside it?
The cake itself was simple, but quite good-looking in his opinion. He was no cake specialist, but he had gone out and gotten food coloring and different types of nozzles and bags for the icing. Through blind luck, he had managed to create a two-layered cake with real strawberries as a filling, coated with a strawberry flavored jam-like substance (this is where the fear of sogginess came into play). He'd iced it with white buttercream icing (which had turned out to be a real pain in the neck to work with, as he was not yet a Master in the Confectionary Arts) and used a special nozzle to line the cake in red.
Technically it still wasn't finished. Once he cut slices, he'd top it with some more stylized icing and a slice of strawberry. He planned to plate it, too, and with that came some more strawberry jam action, this time in the form of frilly fine-dining swirls.
He was also still contemplating Charles's unsaid suggestion from the previous day.
As he was checking on the cake yet again, the doorbell rang. He tensed. It could only be them.
He left the kitchen and meant to greet the ladies. As he grew nearer to the front door, he unconsciously adjusted his hat. His nerves had kicked in as he approached the hallway leading up to the door and was once again contemplating whether he should really be there when he rounded the corner and sucked in a breath.
Cripes.
There she was.
The two visitors turned to Will and he realized he should probably say something. He nodded towards them, like all the cool kids do.
"Hey," he said oh-so-suavely. Jane smiled serenely at him. Lizzy must've been in a good mood because she smiled as well.
He felt a familiar quivering beneath his hat.
"Hello, William," Jane, ever the picture of graciousness, greeted him warmly.
"Yes, hello," Elizabeth murmured.
"Well!" Charles said, clasping his hands together. "I hope you're hungry because I believe we have a delicious lunch prepared for you."
With the command (but really, Charles was incapable of "commanding"; "suggestion" was more like it) of, "Follow me," the four set off for the rarely used dining room. Lizzy fell into step beside Will, and he was immediately conscious of both her and himself.
"So you like the Yankees?" she asked conversationally.
What? Where'd she pull that from? He became aware of the bill of the baseball cap within his line of sight. Oh, right.
"Actually, I'm not that big of a baseball fan," he admitted. There was a pause. He then remembered that a conversation involved two people exchanging words. (It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy, whispered someone from somewhere within his subconscious. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples. Where had he heard that before?)
"You like baseball?" he asked. She seemed surprised he was talking to her. Inwardly, he winced. So the whole 'ignoring her' deal last week didn't exactly work in his favor.
"My dad's a big fan," she answered nonetheless. "I myself prefer tennis over other sports. It's the only one I can really ever watch without wanting to leave the room."
It was William's turn to be surprised.
"Really?" he said. "Me, too! I always—"
"Here it is!"
Charles had destroyed their conversation before it even started. William sighed inwardly. He fully intended to try, as Charles put it, but how could he when there were so many distractions?
The dining room was large and spacious, bedecked and beautiful, and entirely too formal for the meal he had planned. French doors connected it to a porch with a postcard perfect view of the grounds.
The table was already set for four. Charles had found out the sisters' favorite meals beforehand and had asked the cook to incorporate them into this meal. The quartet sat and the meal began, admittedly a bit stiffly and uncomfortably. At least it seemed that way in Will's mind.
Elizabeth eyed the French doors longingly.
"Charles," she began, "would you mind much if we had lunch outside? It's such a beautiful day, after all…"
"Not at all!" Charles said. "As a matter of fact, that's an excellent idea. Nobody uses this stuffy old room anyhow." Thus the group took their plates outside and sat down on the patio chairs.
Lizzy had been right; it was a beautiful day. The temperature was in the high sixties and it was mid-November. The weather was supposed to be cooling with the rapid approach of winter, but the autunmal season had been and continued to be a surprisingly mild one. The sun was out and shining brightly, throwing the fields, and further out, the woodlands into sharp contrast. To complete the image, puffs of picturesque clouds littered the sky.
It was charming, to say the least.
"This is wonderful," Jane complimented before taking another bite of her dish. Elizabeth nodded, silently agreeing with her sister. Charles grinned at them.
"Well if you like this," he said, "you're going to love what Will has in store for you."
William raised his eyes to Charles in alarm. Why did he have to preface it like that? He felt three pairs of eyes on him and realized they expected a bit of explanation. He could feel his cheeks heating up. Just a tiny bit.
"I, ah… made you both a cake."
Jane seemed pleased and Lizzy surprised.
"How nice of you, Will!" Jane said with pleasure. "You shouldn't have!"
Lizzy merely raised her brows.
"I never pegged you as the cake-making type," she said.
"Yeah, well, I'm, uh, not. Usually. But, uh…"
He was awkward. He was painfully awkward. Why was he so awkward? She must be laughing her head off on the inside. She must be laughing so hard at him.
Calm down, he told himself. Relax, be yourself, etc., etc.
He found amusement in her, eyes, but not the malicious laughter he feared. As if she would laugh maliciously at him, he thought, reason taking over once the fight-or-flight urge was gone. She was not that kind of person.
Another quiver atop his noggin.
"Well," Elizabeth said, "as I am convinced that Mr. Darcy is without defect, his cake must therefore be delicious, and I anticipate it with pleasure."
Jane rolled her eyes at her sister's antics, while William was still trying to decide whether to be amused or annoyed.
"Lizzy," Jane reprimanded gently.
"What?" Lizzy turned back to her sister, her expression one of complete innocence. "I'm being perfectly serious." She turned back to Darcy. "I'll have you know, Mr. Darcy, that I am very fond of cakes, and consider myself an expert on the subject of tasting them."
Will cracked a smile.
"Is that so?" He schooled his features into a mask of earnestness. "Then I hope my humble creation will live up to some of the no doubt fabulous cakes you have tasted."
"Alas, we shall see!"
Alas, we shall. William worried privately throughout the rest of the meal.
"I'm quite anxious to try this cake of yours, Will," Charles said lightly as they entered the party entered the kitchen. "With all the fuss you've made about it, I'd expect it to be a masterpiece!"
William resisted the urge to scowl at Charles and merely opened the refrigerator to get the cake.
"Has this caused you trouble?" Jane asked in surprise and with a bit of guilt.
"It's ah—fine. The cake itself didn't give me much trouble," William answered, "it's just that I was worried it wouldn't turn out well."
He turned, revealing the cake in all its splendor (which, in reality, was not that much, but it was more than the average cake had, and that's all that mattered). A soft, "Oh!" came from Jane while Lizzy blinked.
William didn't know it, but at that moment he quite looked like a cake-bearing angel. The white glow of the open refrigerator haloed him in an ethereal light. With the added knowledge that the cake was purposefully hand-crafted for the Bennet sisters' enjoyment alone, Lizzy found herself quite disconcerted.
She resisted the urge to shake her head.
Tsk, tsk, Lizzy. Already getting high off those cake fumes?
"Well," Lizzy said, finding her voice, "it sure looks like it turned out well."
William set the cake down on the island and briefly met her gaze.
"Looks can be deceiving."
He then acquired a (pre-selected, but he would never tell anyone that) suitably impressive knife and made several utilitarian cuts, producing handsomely symmetrical slices.
"Oh, I almost feel bad that it has to be cut," Jane said. "It's so pretty!"
William smiled at her before looking at the other male in the party.
"Charles? Plates?"
"Oh yes, of course—!" Charles procured a stack of small white plates, also pre-selected and conspicuously placed at the very front of the plate cabinet (in case he forgot which ones would go perfectly with the treat; he was actually grateful he did so, because this situation presented itself). William plated four slices as the other three watched him silently. He went back to the fridge and pulled out two bags made for spreading icing and one little Ziploc bag containing dainty slices of strawberry.
He smiled sheepishly at them.
"Not quite finished," he said.
He started with the plate decoration, adding a few strawberry flavored swirls here and there around the cake. He then planted dollops of red icing atop each slice, providing the foundation for the strawberry garnish. Finally, he added the piece de resistance—a neat slice of strawberry precariously tilted at a 135° angle.
He thought he wouldn't encounter any problems with the strawberries (at least he hoped so)—he hadn't seen any of them react negatively when he first brought out the baggie containing the fruit.
He them placed the plates before the victims, along with sleek silver forks.
"Bon appétit," he said with a flourishing bow, his bravado effectively smothering any anxiety that might have otherwise made itself known. He took his own plate and quickly took a bite of cake. His whole body flooded with relief.
The cake had felt his anxiety and heeded his silent pleas. The naturally absorbent cake layers had resisted the urge to suck up the strawberry jam and remained blessedly unsoggy. Nothing was wrong with the actual cake itself, and he hadn't even worried about the icing—after all, all he did was mix food coloring into it.
With the test piece passing quality control with a good sound 'Satisfactory,' Will allowed himself to relax and watch the others. It was quite fascinating, he thought, idly taking another bite of his own slice of cake. Elizabeth first approached the strawberry decoration. She scooped it up with her fork, red base and all, and stuck it into her mouth before tackling the actual cake. Jane began by popping the strawberry on top in her mouth and then tipping the slice over for easier access to the filling which she ate with decorum. Charles was all frosting first.
And himself? He ate systematically, starting from the inside tip of the triangle and working outward.
"So why did you make this cake for us?" Lizzy finally asked. "Forgive me, but I was under the impression you didn't like us very much!" Her tone was teasing, but the underlying truth in the statement struck Will. She really thought that?
He'd really have his work cut out for him, then.
He decided to reply lightly.
"Not like you! How could you suggest such a thing? You wound me, madam, truly you do." He hoped she would understand that although his manner was joking, he truly meant what he said.
Her face bespoke surprise, but not of the negative sort.
"And actually… I made it as an apology," he admitted, "for my abominable behavior since the start of our acquaintance."
Now Elizabeth was all astonishment. Jane looked from Will to Lizzy, and then shared a conspiratorial glance with Charles.
"But you've been nothing but a gentleman since we met!" Jane protested, knowing full well what he was referring to, and that this apology was not for them as sisters, but for Lizzy herself. William merely smiled at Jane.
Lizzy took another bite.
"Are all your apologies this delicious?" she asked, her eyes twinkling.
Quiver, quiver.
"I'm afraid not," he answered with a wry smile.
"They're not all this pretty, either," Charles quipped, deciding that he had remained quiet for long enough.
"Would anyone like another slice?" Will offered, noting everyone's empty plates. Each person accepted, but he himself did not take another, intending to save the final piece for later. Charles eyed it.
"So, you gonna eat that?" he asked, his motives for doing so blatantly obvious.
"You hog," William grinned. "I'm saving it for Caroline."
"Caroline? Cake?" Elizabeth raised her brows. "Since when?"
"Well, she hasn't actually had any cake lately," Will admitted, "but she's eating real meals now! Who's to say she won't want some?"
Charles nodded.
"She didn't seem all that averse to it last night," Charles conceded. "Alright, then."
Next on the agenda was scheduled amusement for the fair maidens in the form of competitive recreation held in the game room.
Now that the whole nerve-wracking cake business was over and done with, Will didn't know how to feel. Some of the games there were only multiplayer, and William was quite good at all of them (not to toot his own horn, of course, but facts were facts). Charles was good for the occasional competition, but the novelty of facing him had worn off long ago.
He hoped either o the Bennet girls would be willing to face him at something, anything. But, he wondered, how would their game be? Did they play like girls, as the saying went? Or could they really present a refreshing challenge?
He would have to wait and see.
The others finished eating. Then, they set off for the magical land within the manor that was the game room.
A/N—I had to split this chapter in two, or else it would be too long. Unfortunately, the second part of it does absolutely nothing to further the plot. And I'm sort of pushing Caroline to the side for now, but she'll play a bigger role in later chapters (and that's when her claws will come out lol). R&R C: