A/N: Caroline becomes real evil in this one. If you hate her by the end of this chapter with all your heart, then I have achieved my goal. : ) I will be posting Chapter 13 by this evening, around nine o/clock EST, so stay tuned : )

I'm not actually sure if Parliament can do that to Will, actually I'm pretty sure they can't, especially where his profits from his business are concerned, but w/e. Pretend they can.

Disclaimer: I concede defeat. I have racked my brains and I cannot find an original disclaimer. All Jane Austen's/whatever movie companies etc.

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Chapter 12

The party was ending. Caroline emerged from the study, white and shaken, hands ring-deprived, and with a face like stone. "Elizabeth. A moment?"

Elizabeth's happiness was not enough to dilute her anger toward Caroline, who had, as Will had explained, fired her father, among many other crimes. "I would prefer not to be in the honor of your presence, Miss Bingley."

"You may want to; it concerns someone now close to you."

Elizabeth frowned, but followed Caroline into a deserted hallway.

Caroline played with her fan for a moment, then took a deep breath and continued. "Your affianced. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Unbeknownst to him, his father had an extramarital affair. Yes, he cheated on Georgiana's mother. Will is actually an illegitimate child, the son of Countess Anneliese Pohl of Germany and of course Lord Fitzwilliam Darcy. If anyone finds out….the tabloids will have a field day, and all of his money would go into the pockets of a few very eager members, if anyone were to find out. The loss of his fortune would hurt him, of course, but you know the thing that would hit him the most is the knowledge that his mother wasn't really his mother and that his father did such a thing."

"You're lying," Elizabeth snarled.

"Am I, would you like to see the proof?"

She held out the hand behind her back, and with an elegant thrust of her red-lacquered fingers thrust out a paper. Elizabeth clutched it, trembling, agonized.

It was a birth certificate, declaring Will's mother to be Anneliese Pohl of Germany and his father to be Lord Fitzwilliam Darcy Junior (or the Second). There was an official stamp in the corner, a stamp even Caroline could not bribe her way in to get.

Elizabeth looked at Caroline slowly, determinedly, and ripped the paper in half.

Caroline's smug smile never wavered. "That was a photocopy, my dear, naïve Elizabeth, I suggest you break it off with Will tomorrow."

Elizabeth's graceful eyes, strangely resembling a dying deer's, looked beseechingly at Caroline. Their mute elegance, their sadness, touched something raw and ddep inside her. "Caroline- Miss Bingley- I have no hold on you. All I can do is beg you not to do this. I love Will. Will loves me. We will never be happy with anyone else. It is the most deep, beautiful feeling in the world. And even if you marry Will, you will never have a place in his heart. You will have to deal with a bitter, broken shell of a man every day, a man who will be faithful to you in body but never in spirit. Do you want that weight on your life?"

Caroline said nothing.

"Really?"

Caroline closed her blue-painted lids in frustration. "Elizabeth, you silly thing. You're playing with the big girls now. Unless you want to give Will the pain of knowing, and bankrupt him, begone with you."

Elizabeth nodded. "I will call Wil tomorrow."

"No. You will tell him now."

"Very well." Elizabeth's voice cracked midsentence. "I'll tell him now." Her eyes reddened with tears and her cheeks whitened, giving her the look of a nymph, an unnaturally graceful nymph. It irritated Caroline even further.

"He's still in the study, my dear." Caroline gave her a little prod with her fan. "I shall watch with interest."

Elizabeth wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. She walked to the big oak doors, the visible entrance to the study, like a prisoner to her death. She wrenched the door open.

Will was there, sitting in a chair, reading a book with a smile that Elizabeth was sure didn't come from reading. Her heart aching, she stared at his handsome profile, feeling worse every second as she studied in detail the beautiful firm jaw line and arched eyebrows, and how she would never see them again.

It's for his own good. Elizabeth swallowed. "Will-"

He looked up, his face holding joy. "Lizzie? I thought you were going to go home."

"Will-" The tears were flowing unchecked now. Elizabeth couldn't stop them.

His voice held almost an edge of tension. "Lizzie, what-"

"I don't love you. I don't want you. I'm never going to see you again."

She couldn't stand it. She turned on her heel and ran out.

With remarkable swiftness, Will ran out of the study and caught up with her. "Elizabeth, what did I do? Why did you-"

But she shrugged him off and ran faster, out the doors down the grass slope, and stopped for a moment to look back, then raced through the double gates of Pemberley to the lane leading to it and then down into the sleepy dimly lighted country street.