Page 123 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Walter Kellynch had been professionally and personally shamed by the fact that Charlotte had carelessly endangered Lizzy. He broke off their relationship and fired her summarily.

To make things up to former Agents Bennet and Darcy, Kellynch made sure that Darcy could stay in the States and expedited a visa. He also retroactively sanctioned all that Darcy had done against The Wicker Man. Bingley's request to become a Farm Instructor had been approved, and he was due to start immediately after returning to D.C. from the wedding.

Lady Catherine was able to supply a little more information about George Wickham. The story he had told Lizzy about himself and his mother was structurally true but false otherwise. He had been raised by a loving but feckless father, abandoned by his mother when very young, and watched as his father was duped and abused by a repetition of women over the years.

There was nothing Lady Catherine could reveal about Father Robyn's background. Before his time in seminary, his life was dark, unknown.

Lizzy believed Collingwood’s motivations were a question for a philosopher. She mentioned that to Fitzwilliam.

He thought a moment and then shrugged."Maybe his evil was banal. It could be that there was little more to it than his unshakable conviction that nature intended everyone to submit to him—and an unfortunate formative encounter with an old folk horror movie."

***

It was dark outside the penthouse. The landscape was obscured except in circles of light cast by streetlights. Lizzy looked out again, now wearing one of the hotel robes. The tuxedo shirt was still on the floor. Fitzwilliam, wearing a robe, too, stood behind, his arms wrapped around her, also looking out.

"So, tomorrow we fly to Chile!" she said excitedly. They had chosen a honeymoon destination neither had visited, that had never been stained by an intelligence mission. Someplace new…someplace innocent. The most convenient flight to Chile had been the morning after the wedding?hence the wedding night in the penthouse suite.

"Yes, the Tierra Patagonia Hotel and Spa, surrounded by emerald lakes and white-capped mountain ranges. We’ll be horseback riding on the Torres del Paine around Lake Sarmiento." He squeezed her. "Just the two of us together on the pleasing edge of the world. After two weeks there, we’ll be off to London to visit Georgiana—and I’ll finally be able to show you Pemberley."

***

Lizzy had been shocked to discover that she had misunderstood Fitzwilliam back in Chicago when he told her about himself and his family…his “yes and no” about privilege. He had stressedhis troubles with his father, with his father's mismanagement of money, and with his stepmother's struggle to keep his father from wasting her money.

His description had led Lizzy to believe the family was in financial trouble, but that was untrue. Although there had been some money issues, they were mostly between Fitzwilliam and his father. His stepmother had kept her husband from squandering her money and, after he died, she made wise investments to increase her fortune. She had died only a few years earlier, and her will had given Georgiana and Fitzwilliam joint ownership of her estate.

Consequently, Lizzy’s new husband definitely had money. Pemberley, the family home of his stepmother, now belonged to him and his sister. Georgiana preferred London to the country, so she spent little time there and therefore graciously ceded to Lizzy the role of mistress of the place. Lizzy was eager to see it. Pictures showed a rugged but beautiful countryside and an old, large, handsome house.

They planned to spend the spring and summer there before returning to Rochester, where Lizzy would start graduate school. Having been alerted by Fitzwilliam, Kellynch had intervened for her there and not only hastened her acceptance but convinced the English department chair that her background was worth course credit…although, of course, that background would be kept confidential. Kellynch had also talked the department chair into increasing Lizzy's yearly stipend.

Fitzwilliam applied for a management position with Xerox and had immediately been hired?he was the kind of man who interviewed well. Xerox agreed he could wait to start until autumn. As the company was located in a city in the Rochester Metropolitan Area, Webster, New York, Lizzy and Fitzwilliam intended to rent an apartment there in the fall.

***

Fitzwilliam had accompanied Lizzy to the cemetery to see the epitaph she had chosen for her father’s headstone. Although she had been otherwise preoccupied, she had never forgotten her mother’s request. It had nagged at her, especially once the business with the Wicker Man had ended.

Initially, she sought something appropriately high-minded, noble, of the sort her mother wanted, but despite searching through numerous sources, she found nothing that seemed right. Then she remembered something her father often said to her, usually quietly, conspiratorially, while making fun. She was not sure it was appropriate. It was far from high-minded, but it certainly was the man.

Her mother had begged off the trip to the cemetery, claiming to be busy at the shop and telling Lizzy that whatever she’d chosen for the epitaph would be fine. She was satisfied with the simple fact that Mr. Bennet now had one.

Fitzwilliam held Lizzy’s hand as they looked at the stone, and then he read it aloud.

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

Lizzy stared at the stone a moment longer and then faced Fitzwilliam.

“So, his epitaph is an ironic rhetorical question,” he said softly, squeezing her hand.

She nodded, squeezing back. “It was his way of being in the world.”

***

They had been standing staring into the midnight dark through the penthouse window for a while, both quiet. The momentand the feeling between them had become involuntarily serious. Lamps glowed behind them, flanking the bed.

Lizzy leaned back against her husband’s wide chest. "I'm so grateful, Fitzwilliam, grateful we're out." She shook her head lightly at everything and nothing. "Is this just the human condition, that we can't escape the necessity for the graveyard and the prison—and for Langley and the SIS Building?"

He reflected before he answered. "I suppose so. Human agency is perilous. It’s beset with selfishness, vulnerability, and mortality. We're stuck with the graveyard, probably with the prison, too.” He paused. “And maybe, maybe there's no way to do without Langley or the SIS Building—but surely we all could do better."

He bent and kissed the lobe of her ear as if to chase her question away. "Anyway, we've done our part in the darkness. Let's leave it there. Let's live in the light."

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