Page 57 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

He blinked as he thought and calculated. Then he looked at her, suspecting he understood. "Lizzy, I know what I said earlier, about attachments, and about drinking too much, and about these missions. But I'm sober now, and you are too, and…well, it may still be a bad idea, maybe avery bad ideain the middle of this mission as we are and with who knows what still to endure but, Lizzy, I can't fight—"

She removed his hand from her shoulder and let it go. It fell to his side. His face fell with it.

"I'm sorry," she said, composing a response on the spot, the words coming to her as she spoke them and not before, "I'msorry for earlier. For kissing you. I was upset and tipsy, and I've been so tired. I'm not myself. I'm not this blonde." She touched her hair and then gestured to Darcy in his boxers. "This is flattering, and I'm grateful for the compliment, but let's just call iteven.I made a mistake, and you've made one, and we can just put both mistakes behind us and get on with Wickham…with the mission…with Ned and Fanny. We don't need to complicate our lie with the truth. It'll only make the lie harder. Worse."

Darcy's mouth opened, but he said nothing, and then he closed it. Her blanket had fallen down, revealing her lacy black cami. He did not allow his gaze to linger there; he looked her in the eye, cleared his throat, and stood straight.

"If you need to replace me in the mission, I understand. Ned is leaving town tomorrow anyway, and I believe Wickham’s swallowed the bait. Fanny will hear from him in the next couple of days. Bingley can manage as sole backup until a replacement arrives." Reluctance colored every word Darcy spoke, slowed his speech. So, too, did sincerity.

Lizzy had not expected such a dramatic reaction.Bowing out of the mission?

She pulled the blanket beneath her arms again, covering herself. "Agent Darcy, that's completely unnecessary. It would endanger everything. Fanny may need Ned again. Nothing that's happened tonight will keep me from being able to work with you. I'm as much to blame as you. Maybe more, because I acted first."

Darcy set his jaw and nodded. He was silent for a long time before he finally said, almost mechanically, "Okay, we'll pretend the kisses didn't happen. Neither kiss happened."

Lizzy kept her eyes on his, trying not to steal another glance at his boxers. The collapse of the tenting was not yet total.

He walked away from her but turned back just as he got to the doorway. "I know what I said in Kellynch's office, but you are the most tempting woman I have ever met."

With that, he left the bedroom.

Lizzy stared at the door for a moment and then threw herself back on the bed, pulled her pillow over her face, and screamed her silenced frustration into it?frustration with herself, with Darcy, with the mission, with her whole Company life.

***

Wednesday, October 21

She plodded quietly into the kitchen the next morning, yawning to herself and blinking as she tied her robe.

The little sleep she got after Darcy left her bedroom had been light and fitful, jagged with fragments of dream, all of herself in his warm arms, of him warm in her bed.

But Darcy was on the living room couch, and she had awakened alone and cold in her bedroom, her blankets on the floor, her pillow somehow at the foot of her bed.

She started a pot of coffee, and he stirred in response to the gurgle of the coffee maker. As Lizzy sat down on one of the stools, Darcy lifted his head. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. After a few seconds, he put his hands down and regarded her seriously. She started to squirm a bit, not sure how he was going to react after all that had happened…and hadn’t happened…during the night.

He carefully draped his blanket across his lap and gave her another long, speaking look. “You heard me last night, didn't you, on the phone?" It was a question, but it expressed no doubt. There was no accusation in his voice; he stated it as a simple conclusion.

Lizzy nodded and chose her words carefully. "Yes, I did. I don't have a ton…of serious romantic experience, but I'm not interested in being part of any…triangle."

There had been no accusation in Darcy's voice, but there was accusation in Lizzy's.

After he had left her room, after her muffled scream of frustration, she had found herself angry, not understanding how he could have come to her after that phone call.

The anger quickly became secondary. Mostly, she did not understand. She could not imagine him playing recklessly with what was deep in anyone else or with what was deep in himself. Lizzy had finally been able to sleep?at least such sleep as she had gotten?because she promised herself she would understand in the morning.

It looked as though Darcy had realized she did not understand. He smiled sadly and shook his head. "There's notriangle, Lizzy. You heard me on the phone with my half-sister, Georgiana. You've seen her in pictures. She was the blonde with Wickham in the MI-6 file."

"Your half-sister?" Lizzy sat quietly for a moment, replaying the conversation she had overheard. "Oh! Is she okay?"

His sad smile became a downright frown. "No, she's not. She's been…hospitalized for a while. Years ago, they might have said she'd suffered a nervous breakdown. She’s been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. Wickham used her, broke her, tortured her psychologically, and abandoned her."

Lizzy thought about the first night in Walter Kellynch's office. "That first night, in Langley, when you were talking about the kind of woman who would tempt Wickham, you were thinking of Georgiana? Of your half-sister?"

He nodded, bitter. "Yes, and at the end, when he was being as gratuitously cruel as he could to her, he told her she was simply one in a long line of similar women, women who looked like her, blonde and curvaceous, none of whom mattered. I thought he told her the truth about the women who were his type until I saw his reaction to you. Now I think it was just thecruelest lie he could come up with to tell her. He convinced her that she was not only nothing to him, but that she was…nothing.Dirt. Utterly replaceable."

"God, Fitzwilliam, the man's such a bastard! Sick! I'm so sorry for Georgiana. This is why it's sopersonalfor you? Why you hate Wickham so much?"

"Yes. She’s doing better…but it's not clear she'll ever truly be well again, be able to reclaim her life. She was always delicate, nervous, and oversensitive. Fragile. Absolutely the wrong woman to be exposed to a monster like George Wickham." He paused, his voice dropping. "He savaged her, shattered her."

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