Page 10 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

She took off her clothes and began trying everything on. It all fit, looking even better on her than they did in the bags. She wasn't sure she could have chosen as well for herself. Clothes mattered to her, but not enough to court decision fatigue or to spend much time shopping for them.

The trying-on took a while, and Lizzy did it slowly…enjoyed it. In the past, the clothes she’d been supplied for CIA missions, while typically nice enough and mission-appropriate (she chuckled slightly bitterly at the phrase) were also always cookie-cutter; they fit but did not fither.Of course, that was often an advantage. When undercover, it helped her keep a firmerdivision between herself and her pretense, herself and who she was pretending to be. But these clothes would blur the line; she'd have liked to own them all. She felt like herself in them, an even better version of herself. More attractive, more put together.

Mine but not mine. Not mine but mine. Fanny’s clothes, my costumes.

After re-folding the items she’d tried on and returning them to their bags, she walked to the closet wearing her bra and panties and took out one of the Versace bags. She cleared a spot on the bed, put the bag down, and unzipped it. Inside, she found a fuchsia-colored sheath mini dress, the color soft but insistent. The fabric was patterned with small diagonal stripes inside longer vertical stripes, but the pattern was background to the color. The dress had shoulder straps decorated with small, ornate gold inserts that connected the tops of the straps to the bottoms.

She lifted it out of the garment bag and held it against her. The color certainly rhymed with her new blonde hair. She carefully slipped it over her head and had just taken a step toward the mirror to get a better look when she heard a soft knock at the door. Changing direction, she went to the door, looking through the peephole.

Darcy.

She had lost track of time. Brushing her hair down with her hand, she opened the door.

He looked up and then stood there.

Since she was not wearing a strapless bra, her white bra straps showed beneath the fuchsia straps of the dress, marring its effect. She suddenly felt her bare feet…and the distance that separated her from her last pedicure.

Under the low-wattage light of the hallway and beneath his blue stubble, Darcy momentarily seemed to reflect the color of Lizzy's dress. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Sorry to interrupt.I had thought you'd be finished by now." He waved a set of files clutched in his hand. His comment seemed a correction, as if Lizzy had done something wrong.

Annoyed, she stepped back. "I was just finishing up. It takes time to try all these things on."

He walked past her, and she shut the door. He stopped at the foot of the bed, looking at the garment bag that still hung in the closet. "You haven't tried on the black one?"

Lizzy's annoyance caused her to sail past him and snatch the other bag. "Hold on, I'll do it now," she huffed. She carried the garment bag into the bathroom and closed the door, growling to herself.

She unzipped the bag and took the dress?the black dress?out of it. It was another mini dress, but this one was tweed with an inlaid, slightly floral pattern, the inlaid pattern translucent. The back of the dress was dark, fine mesh but quite transparent, dipping in a shallow “V.” The shoulder straps were of the same design as the fuchsia dress with similar golden inserts. The bottom of the skirt had a horizontal brocade stripe of small spikes in silver and gold. Far from making the dress busy, however, the metallic accents seemed to make it blacker, sexier.

She took off the fuchsia dress, put it in the garment bag, and donned the black one. Once again, she brushed her hair. Then, without any conscious deliberation, she pushed the dress straps down her arms and undid her bra, taking it off and pulling the straps back up. She touched her hair again and left the bathroom.

Darcy stood where she had left him but now faced the bathroom door. When she came through it, he stiffened, but a slow smile grew on his face. It spiked her annoyance that she agreed with him. Lovely as the fuchsia dress was, the black dress wasthe one.

He held up his hand, index finger down, circling, motioning for her to turn. She did, taking her time. With her back to him, she thought she heard an intake of breath. By the time she was face-to-face with him again, she realized she must have been mistaken. He looked almost as impassive as he had when she first met him, but the impassivity now seemed an achievement.

"That's the dress," he said with a closed matter-of-factness. "That dress and that hair and—" He stopped speaking, although his eyes rapidly descended and then ascended. "Well, that's the dress."

Although he spoke monotonically, Lizzy felt the implied, reluctant compliment, and her ire receded. "Thanks. All the clothes are great. Who chose them?"

He looked at her for a moment, blank, and then mumbled, "CIA somebody. I don't remember her name."

She headed back to the bathroom after picking up her clothes, the ones she had worn into the room. "Give me a second, and we can get started." As she walked away, she had the strongest conviction of his eyes being on her…down from her blonde hair…down her back and backside…down her legs…of his eyes exploring her north to south. The conviction gave her prompt goosebumps. She closed the door. The goosebumps vanished as she took off the dress and returned it to the garment bag.

Lizzy came back into the room dressed but still barefoot. She'd have to live with her embarrassingly ancient pedicure. Darcy was seated in the room's lone armchair, a file open. She walked to the end of the bed and sat there facing him.

"Would you be more comfortable in the chair?" he asked, closing the top file and lifting himself from the chair.

She waved him back down. "No, this is fine. What do you have there?" she asked, gesturing to the files.

"Some notes. Thoughts." He shuffled the files like a short deck of large cards. He handed her the new top one. "This is a reproduction of the MI-6 file on Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Since we've already looked at Wickham's file and it will beherparty we’re attending, we should start with her."

Lizzy nodded and opened the file. Like Wickham's, on top of the papers was a photograph. Unlike the photograph of Wickham, this was a headshot?not from surveillance, but a professional photograph. She was unsurprised but irked to see that the subject was blonde, her hair stacked on her head.

Lady Catherine was a woman of unrecognizable age but recognizable plastic surgery. Her features showed a tightness that had nothing to do with her expression. Any expression. The smile in the photograph was at odds with the eyes and the brow, as if it fought against them. Still an attractive woman, she had obviously once been beautiful. She had narrow, neon white teeth and wore deep red lipstick. Her eyes were gas-flame blue. The bottom of the photograph showed a pearl necklace, the pearls duller than her teeth. Despite her lipstick, her wide smile, and intense eyes, a coldness hovered around the photograph.

Lizzy looked up. "She looks like a problem. Is she with Wickham?"

Darcy shrugged. "It depends on how you mean ‘with.’ There's no doubt they've slept together, and likely they still are sleeping together. But I doubt either of them expects…fidelity. I'm almost sure that they expect,preferinfidelity. Each seems more devoted to his or her pleasure than to the other or to any other. That doesn't mean that Lady Catherine's incapable of possessiveness or jealousy, particularly of a younger woman. She may even love Wickham in some inordinate sense of the term. So you will have to manage her as well as Wickham."

"And how do I do that?" Lizzy asked, rifling through the other papers in the file. They were mostly a history of LadyCatherine's recent travels as well as a copy of her financial records. She looked over the latter twice and then whistled low. "She's crazy rich."

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