Page 58 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Darcy stood up, managing to drape his blanket around himself, holding it with one arm. With his other hand, he gestured to Lizzy.

"You're not her?not so fragile. Still, the thought of seeing another woman I—" He stopped, pain in his eyes. "Watching him with you, it's like witnessing what he did to Georgiana while I also witness what he's doing and plans to do to you. It's like seeing the past, the present, and the future all at once, and all of it godamned awful."

He turned and walked into the bathroom, the blanket still wrapped around him.

When he shut the door, Lizzy felt tears well up in her eyes—for Georgiana, for Darcy, for herself.

The mission had been complicated enough in Kellynch's office, complicated enough before last night and this morning.

But now?

She stood, sighed, and poured two cups of coffee. She needed to talk to Darcy before they talked to Charlie.

Chapter Fourteen: Flames

Lizzy left Darcy's cup beside the coffee maker, climbed on a stool, and glanced out the window from her perch. Haverford and the young man she had loved there, Jim Haden, came to her mind. She hadn't thought of him?at least not to dwell on him?in a long time. As she stared unseeing out the window, she did. Dwell on him.

She had told Darcy she did not have a ton of serious romantic experience, and that was true. Jim had been the only love of her life. Despite that, she had refused to consider a future with him, always dodging his good-faith attempts to understand her future wishes for them, if any.

Her parents' marriage was responsible for her dodging. So, too?perhaps much more so?was her father's sudden death. Before that mortal Christmas Break, the holiday on which her father died, she had been anxious about her future…her professional future, not her personal one. She had told herself she would worry about the second once the first was settled. But her father's death completely unsettled her.

When she came back to Haverford, fresh from the funeral and her mother's showy weeping, Lizzy had been a mess. While she was in that messy mental state, she met Jane Simons and decided to join the CIA.

She did not tell Jim anything about her decision until she had made it. He had been stunned by it, as the decision seemed out of character. He had been deeply hurt that Lizzy had not even talked to him about it. He was not a man who would believe the decision was his or even that he was supposed to have any sizeable say in it. However, since they had been together for a while, he believed Lizzy should have at least talked to him about it, shared what she was thinking and feeling.

Instead, she had shut him out completely, just as she had during the Christmas Break. She had shut him out of her father's death, not answering Jim's calls or responding to his texts until the funeral had ended and the burial had been completed. Then she had sent him only a perfunctory text from the graveside saying that her father had died and she was sorry for being incommunicado.

She had actually texted Jim that word:incommunicado.

God, what was I thinking?

She blushed as she sat on the chair, blushed to remember that text…and that time.I lost my mind.

Jim had been kind and attentive, smart and handsome. Committed to Lizzy. She had met no one who compared to him since the gray wintry day she had ended things between them. They had stood morosely in the hallway of her dorm, both staring at the wet footprints on the worn wooden floor in silence after the words had been spoken. They parted in silence.

The few men in Lizzy's life since then were all men who were incomparable to Jim?men who had been mistakes, mistakes of loneliness and emptiness. She had regretted each fling as soon as it started and continued regretting each long after it ended. It was not that she was pining after Jim—she had gotten past that, even if it had been true for a time. A long time.

Shortly before their graduation, he started dating someone new. Lizzy had the misfortune of running into them right after graduation. The clumsy, heated jealousy of that moment had stayed with her for weeks. But she did not blame Jim. It had all been her fault?the fault of her circumstances, not his fault?and she genuinely wished him to be happy. Their relationship had been a casualty of her parent's marriage and her father's death as well as a self-doubt she had not understood.

Lizzy sighed aloud, still staring out of the window, and took another sip of her coffee.

After the last of her flings, now months and months ago, she had promised herself that she would not get involved with a man again unless she loved him.Deeply loved him. Last night, when Darcy came to her room…would she have turned him away if she had not overheard that phone call or understood her mistake? Or would she have welcomed him to her bed?

She knew the answer. She would have welcomed Darcy into her bed, passionately welcomed him, and for all she was worth?flesh and spirit, nothing held back.

The realization was a consuming fire.

What does that mean?

Before she could answer her silent question and while she was still warm all over, Darcy emerged from the bathroom. He was dressed in the clothes he had worn to Rosings the night before, but he was freshly shaved, his hair combed.

I'm not Fanny; he's not Ned.The thought did not cool her.

"I made coffee and poured you a cup," Lizzy said, gesturing toward the coffee maker. She hoped he would not see her color and read what she had been imagining from her face and eyes.

He did not look at her, though…not for long. He nodded and walked to the cup she’d indicated, fully focused on it. He picked it up, taking a long, careful sip. His back was now to Lizzy, but that was not helping her.

She lifted her gaze just before he turned around. "Thanks for the coffee," he said quietly, staring into the cup as if it held a mystery, clearly trying to avoid meeting her eyes. The heady atmosphere of last night had filled the room again.

---