Page 38 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

"No, nothing. I haven't checked since I napped, though. Let me look." She went into the bedroom and got her phone from her bag. There were no calls, no texts. Lizzy shook her head. "Nothing."

"Damn," Charlie muttered, his hands clenching at his sides. "She hasn't contacted me, either." He stopped and seemed to be weighing something in his mind, his weight shifting from foot to foot again like the slow balancing of a scale.

His face eventually showed resolve. "I told you not to tell Darcy, that he'd be pissed. The truth is that he'salreadypissed. He dressed me down last night for being distracted, unprofessional. And all day, he's acted extra stiff…"

"Is that possible?" Lizzy would have guessed that the stick up Darcy's ass was at the maximum northern height.

Charlie laughed without much conviction. "He's always been sort of terrifying…awful when he wanted to be. Even as a boy he used to make me nervous. Especially on Sundays when there wasn't enough classwork to keep us busy. He's never known how to relax, play. Always driven by some internalized self-demand. He handled free time about as well as Sherlock Holmes."

"A seven-percent solution?" Lizzy asked, puzzled.

Charlie waved a hand. "No, nothing like that. But he would be at sixes and sevens with himself, and he'd take it out on me. Criticize me for being too changeable, too quick. He repeated all that to me last night. I ended up telling him who I was calling, telling him about Jane."

"Why, Charlie?"

He shook his head. "Because he's Darcy, and I'm Bingley. The pattern was established long ago, and now I can't seem to break it even though I'm a grown man and not just his… sidekick."

"God, what an ass!"

Charlie shrank back and put up both his hands. "No, not really, Lizzy. No. I have to be fair. He also did so much for me in school. Lent me money and never asked for it back. Always protected me from older boys who tried to bully me. He helped me with my schoolwork and tended to me when I was sick enough to need help but not sick enough for the school to call my parents. I admire him. I just wish he had more tolerance for human weakness, human needs."

Lizzy worked to understand that. Typical male friendships had always puzzled her, been opaque to her, those curious, deepties, real ties, that grew out of and were sustained by what seemed antagonisms.

Her only close friend was Jane. Their friendship had no such dynamic and never had, although she knew women could have friendships like that?her friendship with Charlotte had a tincture of that. But she didn't think female friendships were typically that way. Maybe it was just her inexperience with them.

"I'm sure we'll find out that Jane's phone is broken or that she's been tied up with a recruiting assignment. She's the last person to leave someone she cares about waiting and wondering. Let's get through tonight. If we still haven’t heard from her tomorrow, I will do everything I can to help. Right now, with Wickham looming, let's not do something that will convince Darcy we're both unprofessional. Suck it up for a few hours, Agent Bingley!" She said it with a God-and-Country intonation but also with an encouraging smile. "Then tomorrow we'll figure this out."

Darcy's comment about his changeability was true, Lizzy granted to herself. She wondered if Charlie was projecting his own mercurial states of mind onto Jane, who was not mercurial in the least. Jane was steadfast, reliable. That made her radio silence nag at Lizzy more.

After a moment, Charlie nodded his agreement, standing straighter. "Okay, I'd better get back before Darcy knows I've been here." He reached out and took Lizzy's hand, giving it a squeeze, a friendly gesture. "Good luck tonight. You look fabulous.”

After he paid her the compliment, he seemed sorry that he had. He shrugged. “These missions suck."

She said nothing but showed him out after squeezing his hand in return.

***

As she walked to the car, Wickham waiting and watching, Lizzy wished she had a longer jacket, one that kept her legs more out of view.Short skirt, long jacket—like the Cake song. But she had gone with her short leather jacket after deciding that Fanny would leave her legs exposed.

Fanny was playing a dangerous game. Lizzy knew it, because Lizzy was playing Fanny's game.

Wickham almost licked his lips. He watched her with a feline intensity. As she neared, walking in the last sunlight of the day, she could feel his radiating appreciation of the fuchsia dress, feel the animal heat radiating from him as she stepped to him and he took her hand. His hand was as heated as his gaze, his immediate atmosphere. He allowed her to glimpse that heat before he hid it in a practiced shift of features, desire donning a mask of elegant charm.

Elegant.That was the word. His bespoke gray flannel suit and Italian leather shoes were classic Gregory Peck. In college, Lizzy had a celebrity crush on Peck and always thought of him as elegant, refined…a true gentleman. His flawless clothes were a part of him. Wickham was not a true gentleman?Darcy was right about that?but he certainly could look the part and could approach the visual standard of Peck. Wickham's face was narrower, not as strongly masculine, but the general look,the gestalt?Lizzy recalled Ned's word,Darcy'sword—was similar.

She made herself stop thinking of comparisons.Work. Don’t make it harder for yourself, Lizzy.

"Hi, George," Lizzy said as Fanny, smiling brightly.

"That dress, and with that jacket! Stunning! A feast for the eyes." He leaned close to her as he helped her into the car, much closer than when he had helped her in or out the day before.

The dress is already applying pressure.

She slid into the back seat, nodding a greeting at Rook, who nodded in his falling rock way. She did not slide all the way tothe opposite window as she had the day before. She slid halfway and stopped. When Wickham got in and seated himself, he was not in contact with her, but there was precious little distance between them. He noticed, but Lizzy pretended that Fanny didn't…that the encroachment was unnoticed.

"Alinea, Rook," Wickham said. He glanced at Lizzy's bare legs, exposed so far up that she had crossed them to make sure that she did not reveal anything beneath the dress. However, crossing her legs had the regrettable effect of exhibiting them, especially the leg across the other leg, her top calf made yet more curvaceous by resting on her other leg.

She saw Wickham swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing deeply. He put his arm on the back of the seat. She was close enough that it was all but around her except that it did not touch her. He was careful to keep it resting on the seat, not on Lizzy's shoulders. Darcy had predicted correctly?Wickham was wasting no time. His smile at her as he put his arm on the seat was possessive, even if his arm never touched her. She pretended not to object to the movement, the almost-encircling arm.

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