Page 63 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Lizzy was left alone with her singing Yeats, her cooling coffee, and her deepening dread.

Chapter Fifteen: Breach

Lizzy finished her coffee, turned away from her dread, and bought the Yeats book. Pocketing the small, thin volume, she walked quickly back toward her apartment. Seeing Darcy had quickened her pulse, and having him read her that poem had made her body ache.

With the events of last night, those of today, and those looming over the coming night, she had managed to forget how tired she was. The tiredness returned as she finished her walk with the wind gusting harder, forcing her to lean into it. She put her hand to the collar of her coat and held it shut, narrowing her eyes.

She needed to get inside her apartment, and she needed a long nap, a few hours of nothingness, of unconsciousness before she faced the challenge of the evening, the hyperconsciousness, the double-consciousness it would demand. A fragment of Thoreau fromWaldenfloated to the surface of her mind: to be "beside ourselves in a sane sense." She was facing the problem of needing to be beside herself?both inside and outside herself at the same time—and not lose her mind by halving it.

As she neared the apartment, she thought again about her father and his death. She and her mother had buried him on a January day in Rochester that looked and felt much like this dark, cold October day in Chicago. As his casket had been lowered, Lizzy had been more numb than she ever had felt, and she had felt numb since first learning that he had passed.

As Lizzy reached her teenage years, especially once she went off to college, she had become more aware of her father’s shortcomings?in particular, his self-indulgence. Despite his brilliant mind, he was a detached, alienated observer even of himself. He had no taste for self-reflection or self-discipline and took no responsibility for his shortcomings. He constantly chosewhat was easy or expedient, not what was right. It was worse than having no taste for it: he seemed to have no capacity for it.

The only thing he had ever taken any responsibility for was Lizzy. He did somewhat better with her than himself, not only teaching her at home but also attempting to teach her that education was intrinsically valuable, worth having for its own sake independent of any advantages it might offer.

Mr. Bennet’s lessons had confused Lizzy, who realized that his spoken precepts and his lived example were contradictory. She had cared about what he wanted because it kept them close, kept him interested in her. Later, at college, that changed and she became much more interested in education itself.

…Or she did, until her father's death derailed her, derailed her plans, and sent her in another direction. The opposite direction.

Since joining the CIA, she had refused to wonder about why she had done it, became a spy?refused to reflect on why she had let Jane talk her into a choice so unanticipated, so radical. Jim Haden had been right; itwasout of character.

As she walked along now, head down, the wind pushing against her, she did wonder.How did I get here?Whatever the story about Jane's effect on her, her salesmanship, whatever the story about Lizzy's choice to join the CIA, she hadstayed, after all, and she had worked hard, doggedly.

Why?

Her feet stopped, but her thoughts raced.

She…she had worked as hard and as well as she had as an agent because Walter Kellynch had stepped into the hole left in her life by her father's death. Kellynch hadn't adopted her, but she had adopted him. Or maybe he had sort of adopted her, too?had recognized how lost she was without her father.

Why hadn't I seen that before, understood it? Why now?

Darcy.

He had stirred her to depths nothing had other than her father's passing. Darcy could do that. He had done it in Kellynch's office, provoked her to immediate, irrational anger and a sensitive, wounded pride—neither of which was like her.

She’d made her career as an agent by means of her mastery of herself and her carefully measured responses, both when undercover and when not. Without being icy or mechanical, she had earned a reputation for exactness and efficiency. She owed some of that, she knew, to her father. Without duplicating him, she had acquired his trick of detached, alienated self-observation. Unlike him, though, she did feel a responsibility for herself, a deep and lively responsibility.

She shut off her thoughts of her father and her past as she entered her apartment building and strode past a couple of others loitering in the lobby. She stopped at the security desk and smiled. "Hi, I'm Fanny Prince, 1019. I'm expecting a visitor tonight at around 8 p.m., George Wickham." The name tasted bitter on her tongue, but she made herself go on smiling. "Please send him up."

The man nodded, jotting down the name. 'I'll be off-shift by then, but I'll tell my replacement." He smiled up at her from his seat.

A bit of CIA theater.

She gave him a small wave, walked to the elevator, and waited for it to arrive. As she stood waiting, another thought struck her that made the indoors feel outdoors cold.

She had just given a vampire permission to enter.

***

The nap did less for Lizzy than she hoped. Much less. Instead of a blissful loss of consciousness, it was as if her consciousness had become runny and distorted but not lost.

She dreamed strange, episodic dreams that always began with her in Darcy's arms, taking off her clothes in a rush with his help,eager, both so eager…but always ending with her naked and ashamed in Wickham's arms, staring up through hot tears into his malicious and supercilious smile. It was a smile of cold possession so total that Lizzy felt a new rush of sympathy and horror for Georgiana.

Getting up, she went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, trying to chase the image of Wickham's smile from her mind. But it lingered,Cheshire Cat-like.Not only in Lizzy's mind, but in the bathroom, and the bedroom, and the whole apartment. As if waiting for him to arrive, pluck it from the air, and put it on.

Her nerves were taut and vibrating, hard-strummed guitar strings, and they would not stop buzzing. Her nap had made her feel worse, not better.Demoralized.

In hopes it might help, she put coffee on. As it brewed, she went to the bedroom and began to consider what to wear for Wickham's visit.

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