Pomp And Circumstance [COMPLETE]

Chapter Eleven

Darcy was the one holding the Bingley family up the next morning. She didn't want to let go of her brother. It wouldn't be long before they saw each other again. Only a few weeks. But still, the thought of having to attend her Great Aunt Katherine's scholarship dinner, alone that night, for the first time hit Darcy square in the chest when she spotted her brother's friend waiting down the street to pick him up.

She held up her family even longer as she stood on the sidewalk watching the car her brother had ducked into merge into traffic and fade from view.

Something he had said the night before was messing with Darcy's brain. She wasn't even sure what it was exactly but she knew that she would be leaving her family's apartment a different person, determined to be a new person, better, somehow. If only to make her brother proud.

When the Bingley's finally returned home, Darcy didn't have enough time to unpack her bags. She was barely back out the door on time after grabbing her outfit for the night. If she had forgotten anything, she didn't have time to remember and turn back for it.

Her great aunt appreciated anything other than a good modernist painting, it was punctuality.

Katherine Pemberley, CEO of Pemberley Studios, Chairman of the Pemberley Arts Scholarship Foundation (her complete title), lived with a full staff of help and a live-in nurse in the wealthy neighborhood of Newton, just outside the city.

Darcy had a feeling the nurse was more for the company than anything else as her 85-year-old great aunt was as lucid opinionated as any thirty-year-old, if only lacking the mobility. And even then, the cane she used was more a symbol of power than a true necessity.

When Darcy pulled into the long driveway in front of her aunt's towering three-story mansion, a line of catering vans was parked along the street. Inside, Darcy found the house bursting with energy as servers and coordinators scurried about in every possible direction. It was the same scene every year.

Katherine Pemberley had made a point of involving her only living relatives (Darcy and George) in the minutiae of their legacy and heritage from a very early age. Darcy was thirteen when she first sat down at the long dining room table with twenty high school seniors, all potential scholarship recipients and all at least four years older than her. George had always sat next to her. But not this year.

George had the lucky fortune of being needed elsewhere that night and so Darcy squared her shoulders, bracing herself for a night of awkward conversation and social anxiety.

As was tradition, Darcy found her aunt in the morning room, a sunny little nook tucked away from the main center of the house, warm spring light pouring through the bay windows that looked out onto the sloping lawn.

"Darcy. Good. You're here. Let's begin."

As warm and inviting as she always was, Katherine's brusque attitude kept Darcy's spine straight and her nerves focused. She sat beside her aunt on the settee surely older than the nation itself and poured them both tea.

On the coffee table in front of them, next to the pristine tea set, were laid out twenty manila folders. Flicking a stray strand of pure white hair from her face, Katherine started with the first and moved down the line.

Two hours later and Darcy's mind was a blur. She couldn't remember a single name, her mind was too saturated on grade point averages, proposed majors, extracurricular activities. She had learned from an early age to tune her great aunt out at this stage of the process. Darcy didn't actually need to know every candidate chosen by the foundation to possibly receive their full-ride scholarship to the school of their choosing.

Not yet, at least. She wouldn't take a full role in the foundation until her aunt passed and Darcy had a feeling that wouldn't be for a very long time if Katherine could help it.