Page 111 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Lizzy shook her head in disbelief. "Christ? You've got to be kidding! Are you really even a priest?"

Collingwood navigated a turn, chuckling as he did. "What are any of us,really, Agent Bennet? We're all playing parts. Life's unequal stage and suchlike. Are you Agent Bennet or are you Fanny Prince…or are you Elizabeth Bennet?"

"The last," she answered decisively.

"Ah, yes," he said as if he understood all she meant, "but Elizabeth Bennet is also Agent Bennet and Fanny Prince…and all the other aliases, isn’t she? Do you really think you can separate yourself from them? After all, Wickham's hand slipped upyourthigh, Elizabeth Bennet."

Lizzy jerked at that, at his knowledge.

He chuckled again. "Rook narrated that."

Rook?

"Lizzy, isthisyour priest? Why is he talking about yourthigh? Who's this manbesideyou?Whereare we going?" Mrs. Bennet was edging toward hysteria in tipsy slow-motion.

Collingwood gave his henchman a speaking look. Before Lizzy could decipher its meaning, Leo leaped up, braced himself with his free hand on the seatback, and reached across her, using his gun to club Mrs. Bennet violently?a heavy cobra strike. Hermother slumped in the seat, held up by her seatbelt, a rivulet of blood running fast down from her temple toward her ear.

Lizzy gasped. She twisted in the seat and found herself facing the bloody gun muzzle. Leo had moved back again with remarkable speed. "You bastards! She’s got nothing to do with this!" She turned back to her mother and checked her pulse. It was weak but steady, and her breathing was shallow but regular.Unconscious but hopefully not seriously hurt.

"Now we can talk without interruption." Collingwood calmly ignored Lizzy's shout, her attendance on Mrs. Bennet. "Am I a priest?" He returned to her earlier question. "It depends on what you mean. I went to seminary, took classes, studied ancient tongues, graduated, and did all that was necessary to become a priest. So, yes, I am a priest…outwardly. But if you mean do I believe, am I a priest,inwardly? No, I'm no priest. This has been the best cover I could devise. Who is less threatening than an Episcopal priest? Especially a gay one? Who is more likely to seem of less consequence?"

"So you're not gay? That's part of the cover, too?"

His laugh was chilling. "Now, would that make mehomophobic? Let's just say that I'm serious about my pleasures, and I am willing to take them from wherever and whoever I safely can. Man or woman, young”?he looked at Lizzy?“or old”?he looked at Mrs. Bennet. I do not discriminate."

She put her arm around her mother, instinctively protecting her. "So you've been behind the Wicker Man all along? Wickham was…what?"

"A blind, a distraction. My beard, so to speak.” He laughed. “No, he was more than that. In his way, he was a help. I had the idea long ago of having an…avatar. Someone besides me who would serve as a focal point for what I was doing, allowing me to remain completely hidden. Someone who would run the risks while I would reap the rewards. Wickham was my avatar.

"Except that, unlike me, he could not control himself.Ordo amoris.He liked corruption too much, liked to corrupt young women, and I could not break his habit. He managed to keep his hobby from being much of a problem. Untilyou."

Collingwood turned the wheel again. They were in a poorer neighborhood among buildings with windows boarded. He was willing to talk, to share his cleverness, since he planned for her, her mother, and Fitzwilliam to die. He delighted in his triumph.

"You concerned me from the beginning. Normally, Wickham chooses women who are…brittle. But you were not brittle. There's an underlying strength, a fortitude, an unruliness to you that I don't think you can completely hide. And when Wickham stopped fucking Lady Catherine—and her other bedmates—after your first visit, I knew he was…too involved."

"Involved?" Lizzy asked, shaking her head, dubious.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me. Wickham was neverin lovewith you. That possibility didn't exist for him. I would never have chosen him or given him responsibility otherwise. But he becameinfatuated, completely invested in corrupting the heart and abusing the slender body of good Fanny Prince…and thereby break the heart of soft Ned Moreland. He was obsessed with sending Fanny, ruined, back to Ned. Her ruin, Ned’s ruin, was to be his masterpiece. I tried to talk him out of it, and I tried to warn you—Fanny—but I didn’t suspect you at that time. That took longer. You are very good at pretending, Agent Bennet. No, my suspicion came later. I simply wanted Wickham properly focused on the matters at hand, on the Wicker Man."

"So, the tension and contempt between the two of you?"

"All part of the act. Well, mostly part of the act."

Lizzy knew her seatbelt was still around her waist. Even after her twisting, it continued to look as though it were fastened. Slipping her hand into her dress pocket, she closed it around the ballpoint pen. She used her thumb carefully witha small motion to push the cap of the pen off, exposing the ballpoint, all the while keeping her hand and the pen in her pocket.

"So, whendidyou begin to suspect me?" She needed the conversation to keep his attention and also to divert Leo's attention at least partly to Collingwood as he listened.

The priest steered into another turn. "After Wickham's trip to Rapid City. But I was unsure. My people did not discover the Company agents tailing Wickham until he got to Vivos xPoint. I miscalculated. I thought the agents had picked him up there. Vivos xPoint, the community, is mine—or the Wicker Man's—including the security, of course. The Company team might have seen Wickham meet with Bang Fumerton. They had to be eliminated."

Another turn of the van.

"So, that place?the bunker community, Vivos xPoint?there was an explosion there recently, wasn't there?" Lizzy asked with feigned innocence. She now had a sense of events, and she wanted to push a button and check his reaction to see if she was right.

His head sank on his shoulders, and his smirk curled into a sneer. "Yes, after the mess on Casper Mountain and the loss of Wickham, I called the Wicker Man's lieutenants together. The failure with the Pow Wow, the chance that you or Darcy…or Bingley…might put it all together and suspect me…I called everyone together to regroup, retrench. To end operations until you were all dealt with, until I was sure I was?we were?safe."

Charlie is in danger, too. Or he will be.Lizzy made herself put the thought to the side and focus. One mission at a time, even if she hadn't asked for this one. The whole situation seemed impossible, artificial, staged—an evil priest in a van, a henchman with a gun—except that it wasn't.

It was Lizzy's Black Friday White Sale.

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