Page 69 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

He did not protest but sat back on the couch.

She poured more whiskey into Wickham's glass and only added fresh ice cubes to her own. His agitation was causing him to drink a great deal, incautiously, and her gut told her she was better off with him tipsy than with him sober. The whiskey seemed to slow his advances.

During the time it took Lizzy to freshen their drinks, Wickham had moved and now stood on the opposite side of themarble counter. The CIA laptop was hidden away, but Fanny's phone rested there. He climbed on a stool, and she slid his drink across to him, keeping the counter between them.

He took another long sip, looking at her over his glass. "There must have been men in your life before Ned." He put the glass down. His words hovered between assertion and question. It was clear Wickham was asking specifically about sexual partners, not about romances, attractions.

Lizzy had been taught since the Farm that, when creating lies for a cover, it was best to crowd the truth, to stay near to it. Doing so made the lies easier to remember. "Not as many as you might think. Certainly not as many as my friends." What Fanny said about herself was true of Lizzy…but not the bit about friends.

The truth was that Lizzy's only true close friend was Jane. Until Charlie, Jane had dated rarely and never seriously. Like Lizzy, but for a different professional reason, Jane traveled constantly. Also, she was too diffident about herself to put herself out there, to spend time at clubs or bars. When not traveling, she was a homebody.

Pretending to sip her drink, Lizzy brought her mind back to the problem at hand. "I guess I'm sort of old-fashioned," Fanny said, "I've never—"

Wickham cut her off, smiling that smile again…the one from her dream…the one that seemed to free-float in the apartment when it was not on his face. "But you should. A woman has a right to her pleasures, deserves them. Anyone who claims otherwise is gaslighting you."

The master gaslighter speaks.

Fanny shook her head doubtfully. "No. People make commitments, promises…vows. Thosemeansomething. And part of their meaning is that they divide pleasures…into permissible and blameworthy." Lizzy hadn't read Marx orSartre, but she had taken an ethics class; she recalled the vocabulary.

Wickham waved a dismissive hand. "Nonsense! Vows are nonsense! Fake boundaries to enhance an illusion of safety. Love isn't anything but 'sex' misspelled, Fanny, and duties are a trap for those who cannot embrace shamelessness." His tone had become coercive, impatient.

Lizzy looked right into his eyes. "AndNedis weak? But then what amI?"

Wickham put his glass down and walked around the counter. Lizzy tracked him with her body as he moved, keeping her gaze directly on him. He stopped when he was standing against her, the front of her, pinning her softly against the counter. She could feel the cold hard marble against her lower back and his warm hard erection against her stomach.His intention.

She had not drunk much of the whiskey and wasn't drunk, but what little she’d had seemed to sour inside her. The kitchen started to reel.

He put one finger on her lips and slid it slowly to her chin, his finger an obvious stand-in for what was standing against her belly. He kept pressing himself harder against her, pinning her even more tightly.

"You, my dear Fanny, are a woman who believes she is as weak as the man she plans to wed. You are wrong. You are far, far stronger than he is. All you need to do to confirm that is act on your desires, free yourself." He leaned toward her, his mouth beside her ear, and he whispered to her. "You won't have to be quiet with me, librarian. I promise you won't be. Shameless."

She knew he didn't want her to believe him, not really, but only tothinkthat she believed him long enough for her to surrender herself to him. Later, he would want Fanny to realize that shehadn’tbelieved him?to realize that she had destroyedand betrayed herself, and she had destroyed and betrayed Ned. To feel the shame she would incur. He wanted her to believe she was shameless when she was not.The same strategy he used against Georgiana.

The odor of whiskey hung between them. Strong. Peat and wood. It was on Wickham’s breath as he turned to claim her lips, pinning her still harder against the counter. She felt its marble chill more intensely, and goosebumps formed on her skin.

Out of nowhere, almost randomly, it occurred to her that shehadread Sartre—a novel, in a literature class, not a philosophy class.Nausea.The title sounded in her mind even as its topic slid an oily finger down her throat, choking her.This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.Sartre—Roquentin, the narrator ofNausea. The kitchen spun faster.

Wickham's lips were on hers, his plump tongue sweeping over her lips and awaiting entrance even as bile rose in her throat. She fought the bile down, the fear and loathing, and she put one hand on Wickham's chest, pushing against him, trying to unpin herself. She could feel his growing erection, feel him pushing it against her as she pushed back against his chest.

A vortex was closing around her, round and round, reeling, spinning, contracting toward a black nothingness at the axis of the fast-wheeling circle—

And her phone vibrated on the counter.

Wickham jumped, his nerves on edge, the whiskey inhibiting his ability to hide the fact. He took an involuntary step back, hastened by Fanny's hand, and glared at the phone.

Lizzy turned, stepped to the side, and picked it up, grabbing it with desperation comparable to that of Ishmael grabbing the coffin life-buoy after it shot lengthwise from the sea and fell over beside him, the remnant of the Pequod.

When she looked at the phone, the nausea lessened, the revolutions of the kitchen slowed, and she managed a controlled, deep breath. "It's Ned. It's from Ned."Darcy.

Wickham frowned deeply and swallowed the liquid contents of his glass in one quick gulp. The glass made a sharp sound as he slammed it down on the marble counter. “What’s your bride-to-be have to say?"

Lizzy ignored the barb and read the text.

Lonely here without you

Wish you were in my arms

Lizzy felt tears form in her eyes…and so in Fanny's.

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