Page 39 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Rook pulled the car into traffic with an amused glance in the rearview mirror that was not a check of oncoming cars. He was estimating the come-on.

Lizzy made herself focus, biting the inside of her lower lip to force herself into wary full awareness.

Alinea was indeed fancy. They were shown into the Salon, where most of the walls, the fixtures, the tables, and the seats were white. The non-white walls were pale blue, and some of the white walls were covered with abstract paintings. Other guests, pairs, were seated at some of the tables. A lovely brunette waitress pulled out the table so that Lizzy and Wickham could be seated.

Wickham gave Lizzy a commanding smile. "I've been told the best experience here is to yield yourself completely to the meal, give yourself over to the presentation, and sink yourself into the details."

Lizzy nodded and looked around. She could not meet Wickham's gaze after his thinly veiled salacious advice. She glanced at the other couples. It may have been the honeypot mission, or Wickham's aroused vocabulary, or the room itself and the other pairs of customers, but the air seemed charged with an eerie erotic electricity…as if they were all about to commence a comestible orgy.

She did her best to concentrate on Wickham and ignore everyone else. But Wickham took her attention to him as permission to attend to her in turn. His eyes kept slipping from her eyes, down to her dress…its tell-tale fuchsia revelation of her body, every curve and line…and from there to her legs, her ankles, her pink heels.

After an uncomfortable few minutes for Lizzy, during which she studied the abstract paintings to no effect, the waitress returned, followed by two waiters. They began carefully serving the first course and its accompanying champagne.

The pairing of food and drink was perfect. Upon completion of the first course, the plates were whisked away, and the couples talked among themselves quietly.

Wickham sighed. "Never imagined that I would one day be able to eat at a place like this, with company like this. Eleven hundred dollars a table." He added the last in an even softer voice.Darcy was right again?Wickham made sure to mention the cost.

"You haven't always been…comfortable?" Lizzy asked.

He glanced at her with a hint of suspicion, but it passed immediately, and he sighed again. "No. When I was young, I often woke up with no idea if I would eat that day. My motherraised us alone, trying to feed herself and seven children on a meager factory wage that would hardly have fed her alone or kept her warm. Damn northern towns. She often didn't eat so that we could…wrapped us in her clothes and coats when we had no heat, her teeth chattering."

Lizzy listened without shifting her posture or reacting. She felt like he was telling the truth, or close to it, and that it was a truth he did not often tell, if ever. Her intentional lack of reaction was both to avoid disturbing the moment and to be sure Darcy heard.

Unfortunately, the waitress and waiters were back to serve the next exquisite course before Wickham could continue. They ate and drank in silence, savoring the flavors.

After the table had been cleared again, Lizzy leaned toward Wickham and softly put her hand on his arm, trying to rekindle his reflective mood. "I'm sorry about that, about how hard things were when you were a boy. Your mother must have been wonderful."

"She was." Wickham’s eyes were harder than his intonation. "She kept her head up even as the world beat her down. If this were a remotely just world, she would have had servants and been celebrated. Instead, she had a long series of worthless men who only made her plight worse, including my father. Each got her pregnant a time or two and then disappeared, abandoning us. She kept hoping one of them would turn out to be a good man.”

He redirected the subject. “When I was small and we had meals, the meals were often enough just boiled potatoes, a little salt."

"Is your mother still alive?" Lizzy kept the question pertinent, innocent, the kind of thing Fanny would ask.

"No, long dead. Worked to death. Dead before I was old enough to help her, lighten her load."

Lizzy had left Fanny's hand on Wickham's arm. She squeezed it and stared into his eyes to express her sympathy. He put his free hand on top of hers.

Then the next course arrived. He moved his hand, and she moved hers. The meal continued, a heady procession of rich and amazing courses, courses all with names Lizzy forgot, lost in the welter of tastes and smells and wine pairings.

Wickham did not revert to the subject of his mother or his childhood again. He was intent on his food and on helping Lizzy to enjoy hers. At one point in the meal, he fed her himself. She knew that this was upping the intimacy between them, but he wanted it, clearly, and the public setting was safe enough.

As the remains of dessert were cleared, Wickham sighed again, this time contentedly. "I never eat so much, but the way they serve it, the pace, the small size of the individual courses…it keeps you from realizing how full you've become."

Lizzy agreed. Her stomach was full, her senses all hyped and buzzing. "This dress will show that I've had too much."

"No," Wickham said firmly, "all that dress shows is that you're perfect. That hair…and that dress…and those eyes! I don't know that I've ever had a more resplendent dinner companion." He leaned toward her to kiss her cheek again, a gallant act after gallant words.

Lizzy seized the moment and turned her lips to his. She let him kiss her there, although only for an instant. Then she smiled shyly at him as he leaned back, surprised.

She spoke in a husky whisper. "Thank you for an…extravagantly memorable evening. I've never experienced anything like this."

"Not even with Ned?" Wickham asked.Ouch.

"No, this is…beyond Ned. Beyond his means, I mean. He's been saving—" She stopped herself. deciding to adlib and raise the stakes. "I think he's hoping to propose to me."

Wickham raised one eyebrow slightly at that.Two can play this game,Lizzy thought to herself.

They left Alinea and got back in the car. As before, Rook let Wickham handle the door. They seemed to have agreed to that ahead of time. Lizzy slid across on the bench an even shorter distance than when Wickham had picked her up. When he got in, his leg was pressed against hers, and she saw one corner of his mouth lift.

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