Page 41 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Going native,so to speak, was always a danger. Pretend for too long and you lose grip on reality. The person who lies to herself eventually loses her ability to discern the truth.

But Wickham was all abouthisends. He chose his means either for maximum effectiveness or for maximum amusement. Tonight he had managed to achieve both,at least so he thought. He had played her perfectly, using Fanny’s body, receptiveness, and inexperience against Lizzy. The celestial white Salon with its intimate, charged environment, the resplendent, sensual meal?every sense had been teased and tantalized into tremulous receptivity. And Wickham had added his sympathy-arousing personal history with its attendant apparent vulnerability.

All had led to the full frontal attack in the limousine, where he took advantage of everything?the kiss in the Salon, Fanny's subtle, willing, increasing proximity in the car, the disorienting strobe-effect of the passing street lights.

Yes, Wickham is another sort of creature.

Lizzy had withstood him, repelled the onslaught, Wickham's careful orchestration. He was both happy and unhappy about that. As much as he wanted her, he also wanted to humiliate the simp, Ned. And it would be most delicious to succeed in seducing a freshly engaged Fanny.

By this time, she was inside the apartment, where she locked the door, sat on the couch, and continued to analyze what she’d learned about Wickham. She had always been deeply drawn to intricate characters, people who were complicated enough to change, sometimes dramatically, but still somehow remain themselves. Her fascination with such characters had led to her college studies in English and Psychology. .

That fascination had been one of the gifts her father gave her; he was a studier of the characters around him and taught her to be one. It was one of their chief shared amusements. That homeschooling, along with what she learned at college and later at the Farm, made her very good at reading people. Sometimes that ability had saved a mission or saved her life.

But Wickham was a different kind of study. Intricate, yes, but so much so that he seemed impossible. He was a character out of Milton or Goethe?a Satan. His charms were undeniable but cold-blooded, his smiles for Fanny superimposed on a leer. His lust was a form of contempt.

She kicked off her heels and sighed in relief, wiggling her toes, and then changed her clothes. One hand released her hair from the bun, and she gave her head a shake, the blonde hair falling in a muss around her face. It matched how she felt.

Going back to the kitchen, she sat on a stool and opened the laptop. When Darcy’s face appeared on the screen, his eyes were intense, his jaw set.

"So?" Lizzy asked, interpreting his look as displeasure and expecting another discouraging debrief.

"You're okay, Elizabeth? He…pressed…you?"

He was displeased, but she realized that it was not with her. It was Wickham, Wickham's actions.Pressed.Darcy seemed to exhale the word reluctantly, less a euphemism than an effort at self-restraint.

She nodded slowly and kept her tone grave, matching his. "Yes, but it was what we wanted, the point of the exercise, right? He's very hungry for Fanny."

He nodded once, quick, hard, a dagger strike. "He certainly is. Very. You were good tonight. Very good. The engagement comment was perfect, the perfect way to entice him. Raise the stakes, speed him along."

Lizzy was surprised by the praise but also felt off-balance at Darcy's manner, which was not just displeased; he was angry. "I was really following your inspiration withWives and Daughters.It's not only that he wants to corrupt Fanny?he wants to humiliate Ned. Cuckold him, in effect."

His lips were a hard, straight line. "We planted a seed with that meet-cute story, the book title." He paused and then went on, his voice quiet but edgy. "He wants to fuck me one way while he fucks you another…I mean…Ned and Fanny."

Lizzy recoiled from the screen. Darcy, with his elegant British accent, had never spoken like that to her before. He had judged and criticized but had never been vulgar. The words seemed wrong coming from him, incongruous, a low grizzly growl from a noble horse, a discord with his native dignity.

"That's true, although I wouldn't have put it quite that way." She did not clarify whether she meant his verb choice, his pronouns, or both.

His eyes lowered for a second. "Sorry. That was uncalled for. We're professionals here. Adults." She was unsure if he was talking to her, to himself, or to both.

She shrugged. "It's okay. He may think of me as Fanny and you as Ned, but that doesn't mean there's not something…personal…in what he's doing."

He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. She noticed that he was mussed himself, his stubble longer than she had yet seen it, his hair tousled. She thought about the rasp of his stubble on her skin. "He's good at that. Shoving his hands into your viscera." He stopped suddenly, staring at her, ashamed. "Sorry…again…not the right time to say that. Poor phrasing."

Lizzy chuckled. Darcy’s chagrin at himself seemed to be a novelty to him. His mortification at his phrasing revealed him to be human?a man with a Christian name.

"Not sure there is a right time. But my…viscera…remains unhandled, Fitzwilliam."

Fitzwilliam.She deliberately tried his name on for size, expecting it to seem rather a mouthful, too much. But it was…fine. He noticed her use of it, and his manner shifted. His eyes widened and he straightened, but his face softened.

"I'm fine," Lizzy continued. "Really, I am! He's not as irresistible as he rates himself."

Darcy smiled, but severity crouched in the smile's corners. "He's built up considerable inductive evidence about his irresistibility…" His smile slowly faded, severity claiming it from the sides, and he rubbed his face again. He looked up at her, taking a breath. He momentarily seemed at a loss.

Finally gathering himself, he resumed. "So, what did you make of his Dickensian childhood tale?the sainted mother, the hard times in a northern town?"

"True-ish," Lizzy said taking a few seconds to reflect, "at least in general, if not specifically. It was calculated to play on gullible Fanny's sympathy, but I don't think the overallcompositionof the tale was calculated so much as theuseto which it was put. Probably it’s not fundamentally false.I'm guessing he did grow up in some northern town and in difficult straits. The rest—that his mother had many kids by many different men and that she worked a grinding factory job of some sort?thatmightbe true.” She paused, and Darcy nodded. “If it is, given Wickham's good looks"?she gave him a slight grin?"I'm guessing she was a beauty, but a beauty in an industrial cage."

"It's more than we had before, assuming any of it is true. The architect part of his putative history I knew when I came to the States. MI-6 has tried to track him using it with no luck. It doesn't seem like an empty boast, but we've not found any record of him?not of anyone who looks like him or meets his description in any English architectural school."

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