The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet Read Online Free Page A

forgive, but seriously, who wears a newsboy cap to a wedding?)
    “This is my sister, Caroline, and my friend William Darcy.”
    “Hi . . .” Caroline Lee said in a slow but polite drawl. While their friend Darcy might be a little on the hipster side, Caroline was a little on the
my-hair-is-perfectly-shiny-and-don’t-you-like-my-Prada-sunglasses side. But at least she had the decency to say “hi.”
    “Bing, the driver will be blocked in if we don’t get going soon,” said Darcy.
    Charming.
    “Right,” Bing replied, this prompting him to finally drop Jane’s hand and notice the rest of us. “I guess we’ll see you all at the reception?”
    My mother could not get to the reception venue fast enough. She made my dad weave through all the traffic, run two stop signs, and almost cause an accident just so she could get to the card
table first and fidget things around so Jane was sitting only a table away from Bing and Co.
    Meanwhile, I was happy to sit next to Charlotte.
    “I saw your mom finally managed to corner the elusive Bing Lee after the ceremony,” she said, between bites of crab puffs.
    I will say that the Gibsons really know how to throw a party. It was a beautiful room, with chandeliers, old-Hollywood table markers, a jazz trio near the dance floor, and some insanely
delicious food, as evidenced by Char’s devotion to the crab puffs.
    My eyes immediately went to the table where Bing sat. Or rather, where he leaned over to the next table, talking to Jane. She blushed and smiled.
    “And it looks like he picked out his favorite Bennet already,” Charlotte observed. “Jane has thoroughly charmed him.”
    “Jane thoroughly charms everyone,” I replied.
    “Yeah, but maybe she’s charmed, too, this time.”
    I continued watching. There was a lot of blushing and smiling and nodding going on between those two. But . . . “My sister is not going to fall immediately for a guy my
mother
picked out for her. She’s too smart for that.”
    But Charlotte just shrugged and took another sip of her vodka tonic. “I’ll bet you drinks that she spends the whole evening talking to him.”
    “It’s an open bar,” I noted. One at which Lydia had already parked herself.
    “Hence how we can afford the bet. Every hour that she spends with him, you have to fetch me a drink. Every hour they spend apart, I fetch you one.”
    “Deal.”
    Just then, Darcy leaned over and said something to Bing, which brought his attention away from Jane and made Bing’s smile slide off his face. Like he had been admonished.
    “At least Jane caught the eye of someone with manners,” I grumbled, “and not his friend. What’s his deal, anyway?”
    “Who—William Darcy?” Charlotte asked. “According to my mom, he’s an old school friend of Bing’s. Apparently he inherited and runs some entertainment company,
headquartered in San Francisco.”
    “Oh, yeah, that bastion of entertainment, San Francisco.” (I have a dry wit.) “And by ‘runs’ I assume you mean he flips through the quarterly reports in between
daiquiris on the beach.”
    “He’s a little pale to be a beach bum.” (Charlotte’s wit may be even dryer than mine.) “And a bit too serious to be a trust-funder. Also, you should consider
yourself lucky that your mother is not actively targeting him, too. The Darcys are worth twice as much as the Lees.”
    I eyed Charlotte. “Why do you know this?”
    “Mrs. Lu wouldn’t mind my marrying rich, either.” Charlotte took a final sip of her drink and held out the empty glass to me. “Oh, look, Bing is talking to Jane again.
Why don’t you go and preemptively get me another vodka tonic?”
    Charlotte was proved right about Bing and Jane. They spent the whole evening talking to each other. And when they weren’t talking, they were dancing.
    But she was wrong about something else. My mother
was
going to actively target William Darcy. I saw the moment it happened. She was sitting with Mrs. Lu, gabbing away,