Page 61 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

She took an extended, scalding shower, standing under the pelting water and letting the steam rise and cloud the bathroom.

She was being backed farther and farther into a corner with less and less room to maneuver. Of course, she would not sleep with Wickham. She had no intention of allowing him even to repeat the liberties he had taken at Rosings, although preventing those would be harder. But either Darcy or Charlie would be listening and the other would be in her building nearby, ready if she needed him. Fanny needed to somehow send Wickham home without what he wanted while still making sure he wanted it.

How do I dothat?

She reminded herself to resist trying to plan it ahead of time. It would have to happen in the moment to be believable. Unscripted.

After she finished her shower and dressed, she decided to take a walk. Her head and her heart were spinning, and she needed to offset that spinning with external physical motion.After contacting Charlie and telling him what she was going to do, she went downstairs and outside.

Wickham had told the truth about the weather. It wascoldoutside, the temperature far below normal for Chicago at that time of the year, the wind intensifying the chill. She zipped her coat all the way to her neck and started walking, no destination in mind.

As she walked, she replayed the night before, the kisses with Darcy, the talk they had before speaking with Charlie. In the pale daylight and the whistling wind, it all depressed her.

She had feelings for Fitzwilliam Darcy.I do.Her depression forced her to acknowledge them. The feelings were nascent but already strong—and strengthening. The chemistry between them wasn’t just physical; it was personal and emotional. It had been present as early as their first meeting in Kellynch's office. That’s what had caused her to overreact to Darcy's comment about her being tolerable. The chemistry had played a crucial role in arousing her pride, causing her to trap herself in what was proving to be an intolerable snarl of a mission.

What's that quotation about the closeness of love and hate?She couldn't recall it. Whatever it was, it seemed to apply. The gist of it anyway.

She put her head down as the wind gusted.

Now that she thought about it, it would be Darcy manning the video and audio feeds while Wickham was in her apartment. He needed to be hidden because Ned was supposed to be back in New York. They could take no chance that Wickham or a wild card like Father Robyn might accidentally see Darcy. Charlie would be her guard onsite, the one present in her building.

As a result, it was Darcy who would have an electronic front-row seat for Wickham's attempt to pressure Fanny into sleeping with him. Having to endure that pressure would already be bad enough for her, but having to endure it knowing that Darcy wassuffering through it, too? It was going to be terrible. He would have to watch and listen as his enemy tried to touch the woman he would not touch. The mission was between them, pulling Lizzy away from Darcy as it pushed Lizzy toward Wickham.

Walking fast eventually quieted the riot in her mind. Pushing her hands deep in her pockets, she walked and walked…hardly paying attention to her path.

She found a small diner and ate breakfast. Heartache on top of an empty stomach was a miserable condition. Once she’d finished her food and coffee, she felt better and stronger. She left the diner and began her return to her apartment. Facing the cold was easier.

As she drew nearer to her apartment building, she noticed a small magazine shop on the next block.Covers.It was the place Darcy had mentioned where he’d bought the books he gave her for Fanny's apartment. Since she had time, she crossed the street and went inside.

As he’d told her, it was tiny. The smell of coffee, old books, and beeswax candles filled the air…half library, half church. The back wall—again, as Darcy had told her—was covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases, the shelves over-stuffed with books, volumes jammed in horizontally atop those jammed in vertically.

She ordered a small coffee from the man at the counter. He was small, bald, and red-bearded, and he had an unlit corncob pipe in his mouth, biting the bit between his teeth when he spoke. “Anything else?" he asked around the pipe as he slid her cup toward her.

"No…Well… how much are the hardbacks?" she motioned to the shelves.

Redbeard shrugged. "Look at the inside of the back cover, near the spine. A price is penciled there."

She paid and took her coffee to the shelves. The stationing of the books was careless, but the choosing of them had not been. No dead weight sat on these shelves?no pulp, no junk. It was all literary classics or genre classics. Shakespeare alongsideThe Big Sleep.

She ran a finger across a shelf at about eye level, taking in the titles. She noticed a collection of poetry by Yeats and pulled it out of its tight station. As she paged through it, she found a poem of his she'd always liked, "Adam's Curse." She read it, becoming wholly immersed by the final two stanzas:

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell

Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:

That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

---