Chapter Ten Criminal Conversation

Lizzy hurried across the lobby to the elevator, her pink heels loud both in color and on the floor. As she reached the elevator, she took off her jacket. The activity in the back of the limousine had created residual heat, and she did not want to seem heated to Darcy during the debriefing. From the periphery of her vision, she saw the security guard at the desk drinking in her fuchsia dress with a long visual swallow. She dropped her eyes as she waited for the elevator doors to close, not wanting to meet his gaze.

No additional flustering was desired.

The door slid closed with a soft swish. When they met, Lizzy allowed herself to slump against the elevator's back wall. Though she hadn't spent much of the evening on her feet, her pink heels were hurting her, too tight. The heels…and the mission.

The Farm instructor who trained students in seduction—manipulation, pretense—had a mantra: Pretense is founded on fact.

Lizzy had raised an eyebrow (to herself) in the first class session when he first began to repeat it, amused by and a bit contemptuous of the alliterative Fs. In a rare instance of ribald mischief, out one night at a nearby dive bar with classmates, she had called the class the three Fs , and it caught on among the other students.

However, as the class unfolded―and later, when Lizzy began working as an agent, especially after her first honeypot assignment―she began to appreciate the wisdom of the mantra.

The instructor had explained, "Pretending for this job may always end up requiring that you be present on the scene while pretending and that you give a current personal performance. For example, imagine you are an agent on a so-called seduction mission, sometimes called a 'honeypot' mission. You have done various things to convince your mark that you are interested―for instance, sending suggestive emails. This is something that does not require you to be present on the scene and requires no current personal performance. The email's easy. It requires only basic computer skills and a bit of…erotic literary panache."

The instructor, a tall, gaunt man, leaned forward, finger up, eyes bright. "But when the mark is with you, then the pretense becomes a current personal performance. In this situation, pretending successfully involves your body and bodily reactions. These are changes that cannot be easily faked, if at all. Blushes, dilated pupils, accelerated breathing, swelling of the lips—those are the most easily seen changes. There are, of course, others ." The instructor nodded and raised one eyebrow, making sure everyone understood his implication, and they did.

"The goal in such a case is never— never —to have sex with a mark. The goal is to make the mark desire sex with you and to wield that desire against the mark.

"You can try to fake it all, and you might succeed, but often you won't. Luckily…or perhaps unluckily…your body has a mind of its own, as it were. It can provide the foundation of fact needed. Being desired often has the effect of arousing desire, even against a person's will. That can be disconcerting. You need to know it happens and understand that, when it does happen, you can resist it. You will have to do that— resist it! And it helps to be prepared for it. Otherwise, the seduction you intend to control may take control of you, and you will become what you intended merely to pretend to be."

Momentarily lost in her recollections, Lizzy realized the elevator was stopping. She blew out a breath as the elevator doors slid open. Their opening felt like a release, a beckoning to escape.

She had never had that bodily reaction to a mark before. The two marks in her previous honeypot missions had both been easy to manipulate, albeit in different ways. Wickham was another sort of creature altogether. A master manipulator.

Lizzy had not been taught Darcy's Pauline Principle as such, as a philosophical principle, but she was no more willing than Darcy to treat ends as justifying means. She wanted to do her job and do it well, but she did not want to have to lose her soul doing it. If she allowed her integrity to be compromised, then who knew what other compromises might be in her future? Seductions reversed had been the origin story of many rogue agents, double agents, and traitors.

Going native, so to speak, was always a danger. Pretend for too long and you lose grip on reality. The person who lies to herself eventually loses her ability to discern the truth.

But Wickham was all about his ends. He chose his means either for maximum effectiveness or for maximum amusement. Tonight he had managed to achieve both, at least so he thought . He had played her perfectly, using Fanny’s body, receptiveness, and inexperience against Lizzy. The celestial white Salon with its intimate, charged environment, the resplendent, sensual meal―every sense had been teased and tantalized into tremulous receptivity. And Wickham had added his sympathy-arousing personal history with its attendant apparent vulnerability.

All had led to the full frontal attack in the limousine, where he took advantage of everything―the kiss in the Salon, Fanny's subtle, willing, increasing proximity in the car, the disorienting strobe-effect of the passing street lights.

Yes, Wickham is another sort of creature.

Lizzy had withstood him, repelled the onslaught, Wickham's careful orchestration. He was both happy and unhappy about that. As much as he wanted her, he also wanted to humiliate the simp, Ned. And it would be most delicious to succeed in seducing a freshly engaged Fanny.

By this time, she was inside the apartment, where she locked the door, sat on the couch, and continued to analyze what she’d learned about Wickham. She had always been deeply drawn to intricate characters, people who were complicated enough to change, sometimes dramatically, but still somehow remain themselves. Her fascination with such characters had led to her college studies in English and Psychology. .

That fascination had been one of the gifts her father gave her; he was a studier of the characters around him and taught her to be one. It was one of their chief shared amusements. That homeschooling, along with what she learned at college and later at the Farm, made her very good at reading people. Sometimes that ability had saved a mission or saved her life.

But Wickham was a different kind of study. Intricate, yes, but so much so that he seemed impossible. He was a character out of Milton or Goethe―a Satan. His charms were undeniable but cold-blooded, his smiles for Fanny superimposed on a leer. His lust was a form of contempt.

She kicked off her heels and sighed in relief, wiggling her toes, and then changed her clothes. One hand released her hair from the bun, and she gave her head a shake, the blonde hair falling in a muss around her face. It matched how she felt.

Going back to the kitchen, she sat on a stool and opened the laptop. When Darcy’s face appeared on the screen, his eyes were intense, his jaw set.

"So?" Lizzy asked, interpreting his look as displeasure and expecting another discouraging debrief.

"You're okay, Elizabeth? He… pressed …you?"

He was displeased, but she realized that it was not with her. It was Wickham, Wickham's actions. Pressed. Darcy seemed to exhale the word reluctantly, less a euphemism than an effort at self-restraint.

She nodded slowly and kept her tone grave, matching his. "Yes, but it was what we wanted, the point of the exercise, right? He's very hungry for Fanny."

He nodded once, quick, hard, a dagger strike. "He certainly is. Very. You were good tonight. Very good. The engagement comment was perfect, the perfect way to entice him. Raise the stakes, speed him along."

Lizzy was surprised by the praise but also felt off-balance at Darcy's manner, which was not just displeased; he was angry. "I was really following your inspiration with Wives and Daughters. It's not only that he wants to corrupt Fanny―he wants to humiliate Ned. Cuckold him, in effect."

His lips were a hard, straight line. "We planted a seed with that meet-cute story, the book title." He paused and then went on, his voice quiet but edgy. "He wants to fuck me one way while he fucks you another…I mean…Ned and Fanny."

Lizzy recoiled from the screen. Darcy, with his elegant British accent, had never spoken like that to her before. He had judged and criticized but had never been vulgar. The words seemed wrong coming from him, incongruous, a low grizzly growl from a noble horse, a discord with his native dignity.

"That's true, although I wouldn't have put it quite that way." She did not clarify whether she meant his verb choice, his pronouns, or both.

His eyes lowered for a second. "Sorry. That was uncalled for. We're professionals here. Adults." She was unsure if he was talking to her, to himself, or to both.

She shrugged. "It's okay. He may think of me as Fanny and you as Ned, but that doesn't mean there's not something… personal …in what he's doing."

He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. She noticed that he was mussed himself, his stubble longer than she had yet seen it, his hair tousled. She thought about the rasp of his stubble on her skin. "He's good at that. Shoving his hands into your viscera." He stopped suddenly, staring at her, ashamed. "Sorry…again…not the right time to say that. Poor phrasing."

Lizzy chuckled. Darcy’s chagrin at himself seemed to be a novelty to him. His mortification at his phrasing revealed him to be human―a man with a Christian name.

"Not sure there is a right time. But my… viscera …remains unhandled, Fitzwilliam."

Fitzwilliam. She deliberately tried his name on for size, expecting it to seem rather a mouthful, too much. But it was… fine . He noticed her use of it, and his manner shifted. His eyes widened and he straightened, but his face softened.

"I'm fine," Lizzy continued. "Really, I am! He's not as irresistible as he rates himself."

Darcy smiled, but severity crouched in the smile's corners. "He's built up considerable inductive evidence about his irresistibility…" His smile slowly faded, severity claiming it from the sides, and he rubbed his face again. He looked up at her, taking a breath. He momentarily seemed at a loss.

Finally gathering himself, he resumed. "So, what did you make of his Dickensian childhood tale―the sainted mother, the hard times in a northern town?"

"True-ish," Lizzy said taking a few seconds to reflect, "at least in general, if not specifically. It was calculated to play on gullible Fanny's sympathy, but I don't think the overall composition of the tale was calculated so much as the use to which it was put. Probably it’s not fundamentally false. I'm guessing he did grow up in some northern town and in difficult straits. The rest—that his mother had many kids by many different men and that she worked a grinding factory job of some sort―that might be true.” She paused, and Darcy nodded. “If it is, given Wickham's good looks"―she gave him a slight grin―"I'm guessing she was a beauty, but a beauty in an industrial cage."

"It's more than we had before, assuming any of it is true. The architect part of his putative history I knew when I came to the States. MI-6 has tried to track him using it with no luck. It doesn't seem like an empty boast, but we've not found any record of him―not of anyone who looks like him or meets his description in any English architectural school."

"He's undoubtedly an educated man, and clever," Lizzy said. "The way he talks about architecture, the way he looked at Marina City, the Robie House, the interior of Alinea―all of that makes me believe that he does have some real training in and feeling for architecture. Still, he's clearly a man who compartmentalizes himself." Intricate , she thought. "The architecture, the feeling for it seems hived off from the rest of what he is. Or maybe he uses it to excuse everything else he is."

Lizzy knew something about compartmentalizing, how hard it was to resist as an agent. There was a constant temptation to tell yourself, “There is my station and its duties” and “Here is me and what I truly value.” Compartmentalizing was a strategy for hiding from yourself. Or better, for hiding yourself as if you were a pea hidden beneath one of three rapidly shifting walnut shells, only you don't know which one. And you are not only the pea, you are also the shells, and it is your hands that do the sleighting…

Darcy was nodding in agreement. "My sense of him from the beginning has been of that sort—that he's compartmentalized like a submarine. He probably believes he is, at bottom, some sort of honorable rogue, like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. Except Wickham trails blood whereas John Robie"―he smiled at the coincidence of names―"trailed diamonds."

Movies again.

Her mind turned to a different contrast between Wickham and John Robie. "Why prey on women as Wickham does?" she asked, curious to hear a man’s perspective on the question.

Charlie leaned into the screen. Lizzy had not realized he was there for the discussion. “Maybe it has something to do with Wickham's mom? The way men treated her? Women as playthings, not as people?"

Lizzy smiled acknowledgment at Charlie but shook her head. "Hey, Charlie! I'm not sure. Maybe, but that sounds backward. Makes me wonder about the details of his story. We'll have to see if Wickham will share any more with Fanny. Whatever his story is, he feels entitled to his treatment of women the same way he feels entitled to injure and kill people in terror attacks. He doesn't behave like a man with dirty hands."

"It's hard to understand anyone without a conscience," Darcy said. “We three will continue to think about it. I’ll pass the story he told us onto the analysts at the CIA and MI-6 and see if they can unearth anything new. I suspect Wickham will share more if Fanny makes it clear to him that his sharing and her sharing―" he frowned grimly―"are intertwined."

Lizzy had read a phrase in some book that referred to cuckolding as “to have criminal conversation” with the lover of another. "If he wants criminal conversation with Fanny , he's going to have to talk to me."

Just then, Fanny's phone rang. Lizzy walked to the couch and retrieved it from her purse. She put a finger to her lips and waved the phone. The two men nodded on-screen, understanding.

"George?" she pitched her voice carefully, warm but also weary.

"Fanny! It's bad form to call after saying goodnight, but I want to issue another invitation. Lady Catherine is having a small gathering two nights from now. She is finishing the guest list, and I was hoping you would attend. We'd both enjoy having you here."

The bug in Fanny’s phone enabled Darcy and Charlie to hear both sides of the conversation. The microphone on their computer had obviously been muted so the call would not be broadcast into her apartment. She could see them both listening, just as they could see her looking at them.

Darcy waved at Lizzy, held up his left hand, and pointed to his ring finger, then at himself, then at his finger again. She understood his unspoken message.

"Well," she said, drawing out the delaying word, "I just talked to Ned"― let Wickham process that― "and he seems like he's determined to visit again. The work that called him back to New York finished faster than he expected. So…may I bring him?"

She held her breath, making herself endure the long silence after her question. Then she added, as if blurting it out but keeping her voice quiet, "He's jealous of you. I want to reassure him. So, you know, he'll know nothing's going on." But something is. Fanny knows it and you know it, Wickham. She's already lying to Ned.

Wickham chuckled, the sound cool and confident. "I'm sure Lady Catherine would enjoy that, as would I. So, shall I send Rook for you both the day after tomorrow?"

"Yes. I'll text you if anything changes."

"I'll text you the time to expect the car."

"Goodnight, George"―Lizzy made Fanny's voice breathless―"again."

"Goodnight, Fanny. Don’t forget what I told you in the car."

"I…haven't. Goodnight."

She ended the call and walked back to the counter but did not sit on the stool. Darcy turned his microphone on again. "You heard?"

"We heard. I'll get an engagement ring tomorrow so Fanny and Ned can show up engaged. It should be an interesting evening."

"Yes." Lizzy already dreaded it.

After shutting the laptop, she went into the bedroom and plopped down on the bed. She made herself breathe in and breathe out slowly, trying to discipline herself and her feelings. Although she had known Darcy…Ned…was listening to her…during Fanny's date with Wickham, the phone call had somehow been worse, seeing Darcy listen as Lizzy artfully manipulated Wickham into believing he was artfully manipulating Fanny.

She felt ashamed of herself…of Fanny.

These undercover missions get so twisted, identities so confused and confusing. Ned Moreland and Fanny Prince are both fictions—but Darcy inhabits one and I inhabit the other. We're like Method actors, not just representing the characters we play but experiencing them. That’s what we have to do if we are going to succeed in fooling Wickham and Lady Catherine. A foundation of fact.

Lizzy wondered what Darcy imagined she felt as Wickham's hand slid up Fanny's thigh.

She turned and scooted to the head of the bed, putting Fanny's phone on the nightstand and then picking up her own, fighting to regain a sure sense of herself, the weight of her own phone a small anchor. She was Agent Elizabeth Bennet. This was a mission. Darcy was her partner. Wickham was her mark.

She repeated it all again, then looked at her phone.

She had promised Charlie she would try to contact Jane. She went to Contacts and touched her friend's name. The phone rang and rang and then rolled over to voicemail. Lizzy ended the call without any message. She huffed in frustration, then shook her head when her phone rang in her hand.

Jane

"Jane," she answered eagerly as she put the phone to her ear, Wickham and the honeypot mission pushed out of her mind. "I've been trying to reach you!"

There was a long, uncharacteristic silence on the other end. When Jane spoke, her voice sounded strained. "Sorry, Lizzy, I wasn't sure what to do."

"What do you mean?"

"You're on a mission. I don't contact you on missions. I should never interfere in a mission."

"I know it's irregular, but then, this is an irregular mission. You know that Charles Bingley is one of my partners." Lizzy smiled to herself.

Jane's response erased the smile. "I do. And so is Agent Darcy." She spoke his name with an inflection almost comparable to that way Darcy spoke Wickham's name―an inflection unlike Jane.

"Yes, that's right. Do you know him? I suppose Charlie has mentioned him?"

"No. Actually, Charlie never mentioned him…or you, either. He told me he was on a mission but never named his partners or his location. He shouldn't have talked to me at all, but other than that, he didn't break protocol. He just… missed me. And I missed him. This, whatever it is between us, it's the best thing that ever happened to me!" Her words were accompanied by a sob rather than any sound of joy.

"Okay, Jane, but I still don't understand. How did you find out about the mission, about Darcy and me?"

"From Agent Darcy. He called and told me that, since he had long known Charlie and knew how weak he could be when his feelings were involved—" Her voice broke. "He guessed I would be the stronger of the two of us, that I would tell Charlie that we could have no more interactions of any sort until the mission was done and he was back in D.C."

Another pause. "He forbade me to contact him or respond to his attempts at contact…or to contact you or respond to yours. But I couldn't just leave you ignorant, worried. I was sure that Darcy would keep this from you. After all, he told me he was going to keep it from Charlie. 'Better that way.' he said. 'We have to keep Agent Bennet safe. That’s our first―no, our only priority.' That's what he said."

Lizzy was bewildered. Keep me safe? What about Wickham, the Wicker Man, the mission? "How would Agent Darcy know your phone number? Director Kellynch?"

"No, not Kellynch. Spycraft, or so Darcy said. He guessed Charlie’s phone password. It’s the same one Charlie used in school years ago on his ancient desktop. Darcy found my number there." Jane paused. "You'd think a spy like Charlie would know to change his password." She laughed, the sound watery.

"Would you? Isn't that just Charlie ?" Lizzy asked, joining Jane's laugh in hopes of buoying her friend. "And Agent Darcy called you, talked to you, breaking protocol himself to prevent you and Charlie from breaking protocol?"

"He also underlined that keeping you safe was the best way of keeping Charlie safe and of safeguarding the mission. I thought… I think he’s right, but I couldn't just leave it that way, just cut you and Charlie off cold. I can't tell Charlie all this, and I don't want you to tell him. It will destroy your mission. He's not like you―he can't control himself the way you can, Lizzy. Tell him that I feel the same way I have since our first date and that I will still feel that way when he returns to D.C. I'll explain it all when he gets home. He's not to worry. And he's not to contact me until then. I will not respond. Can you do that? Will you?" She sighed and waited.

"Agent Darcy had no right, Jane. None . It's true that Charlie shouldn't have called you. But agents do these things. They have to, eventually. It's like being buried alive; you can't survive in deep cover without some attachments, links to your life. A source of air." Even calls to your crazy mother. "And Jane, you're not simply a civilian. You were an analyst, and you are a Company employee. You know how to keep a secret." Unlike my mother. Hence my…less-than-truths … to her. " Agent Darcy overstepped his boundaries, really overstepped them. Son of a bitch!"

"Don't, Lizzy. I know your temper. Don't get mad at him. That'll just make everything harder, more dangerous. The three of you need to be a team. Control yourself. Be professional. You and Darcy in particular need to be a team, since you're under cover together ."

"Wait, how do you know that?"

"Darcy let it slip. When he called, I didn't just roll over and play dead. He got an earful, and then I did. That was unlike me, but he pissed me off. We took turns. We didn't end the conversation as friends, although I am trying to think better of him, of what he did. I do think he cares about you, Lizzy, and about Charlie. The mission. He believes he's doing the right thing. He takes his responsibilities seriously."

"Too seriously."

"Really? Your lives are at stake! Yes, I'd like to smack Agent Darcy for presumption, but the truth is that it's not clear Charlie can stay focused on his own. You know how hard it is for the best agents to do it. Although he’s a wonderful man, he's not the very best agent. He's not you…or Darcy. Please do what I ask for the sake of our friendship and for the sake of my relationship with Charlie. Keep him on task. Reassure him. And get along with Darcy! Please. Take care of yourself and Charlie. And Darcy. Be safe, Lizzy!"

She ended the call.

Lizzy stared at the floor, the phone dangling from her hand, and gritted her teeth in frustration. She wanted to go and slap Darcy for Jane. Slap him repeatedly. How dare he? He should have talked to me, not Jane, and asked me to intervene with Charlie.

She stood and began to pace. Despite her lingering exhaustion, it took a long time for her to finally go to bed.

It took her even longer to go to sleep. When she did, she dreamed a whirling dream of her mother and Jane and Charlie and Darcy and Day-Glo brides and white restaurants and ringing phones.

And Wickham, his elegant, dark shadow across it all.

***

Monday, October 19

Lizzy slept late the next morning. A long hot shower woke her but did nothing to improve her mood. Standing by her coffee maker, staring at it, cup in hand, willing it to drip faster, she heard a soft knock at the apartment door.

Charlie. She now knew that knock, and she’d half-expected it. She put the empty cup on the counter beside the filling coffee maker.

At the door, she took a breath and tightened the belt on her robe in order to tighten her grip on herself. Jane was right that the three of them―Lizzy, Charlie, and Darcy―needed to get along, needed to make the mission their priority. She opened the door.

Charlie looked exhausted but eager as he stepped inside.

"Hey, Charlie," she said after shutting the door.

"Morning. Did you talk to Jane? I still can't get any response."

She delayed. "How about some coffee?" He nodded, and Lizzy went and got another cup. The coffee was finally ready, and she poured for each of them. He stood, waiting, the fingers on one hand twitching.

"I talked to Jane. Sit down, Charlie. Where's Agent Darcy?"

"He's working with the Chicago satellite CIA office to get you an engagement ring…Fanny, that is. He'll be out all morning, I expect. So…” He sat on a stool. “Jane?"

Recognizing that he was heartsick, Lizzy put her hand on his arm. "You're not going to like this, but it's not as bad as it sounds. She wants me to tell you to focus on the mission, nothing else. She said she still feels exactly the same about you, but that she needs to break off communication until you're back in D.C. Then you two can pick up where you left off. It's obvious to me that she loves you, Charlie."

The hurt in his eyes lessened. "She said that? Used those words?"

"No, not exactly, but you must know her by now. Cautious. She’s undemonstrative, especially about what she feels deeply."

He shook his head, but the movement indicated agreement. "Yes, she is. It took me a couple of dates to figure out that she liked me. Later, she told me that she fell for me on the first date. It was news to me."

"Jane's not the type of woman to fall in love easily. She knows you are a wonderful man—and those are her words. She just doesn't want to distract you while you're here. She's fine. And she's the last person who would be…inconstant. You know that."

He studied his coffee, swirled it in the cup, and then looked up. "I do. And I guess I understand. I have been distracted." A sip of coffee provided a pause, and he heaved a deep sigh. "But it's going to be hard to stop communicating with her at all. I guess Darcy will be happy about it, though. He's been…hard on me."

You have no idea. Lizzy bit her tongue to keep from saying it aloud. They drank their coffee together as she continued to reassure him. He finished his coffee, checked the hallway before stepping into it, and left. Lizzy poured herself another cup and sat, thinking.

The day passed in silence. Lizzy rested and fretted…about the mission, about Jane and Charlie, about Darcy. She did not go out, not even for a coffee. She read Moby Dick , the copy Darcy had bought her, but she found Ahab unbearable. That was a man on a mission, single-minded. Purity of heart, but of the wrong kind.

A couple of hours passed as she stood and stared out her window. She saw Darcy come to stand in the window across the street. He did not see her or, if he did, he pretended that he didn't.

In the middle of the afternoon, Darcy…Ned …called Fanny. He asked her to go to dinner with him at a small cafe nearby. "Ned and Fanny are going out. We will be seen, so we will need to sell it―the proposal. No need for fancy clothes, though. It doesn’t matter whether or not Wickham witnesses it himself. It only matters that there are witnesses and that he can confirm that it happened. He can talk to staff, if not to customers, or he can check on-site security cameras."

Lizzy accepted the necessity for the ruse, but she barely said anything during the call.

When Darcy ended it, she got up and carefully gathered some clothes. It wasn't every day that a woman got proposed to. Fake proposed to. She was curious how it would go. Curious.

She refused to notice the rapid beating of her heart.

The cafe turned out to be a clean, well-lit Italian place called The Made Man . Stills from gangster movies as well as photographs of Chicago's actual gangster past covered the walls. Tall candles in faceted crystal stood in the middle of each red and white tablecloth. Sinatra sang softly on secreted speakers.

When Darcy had arrived at her apartment door, Lizzy felt her chest tighten and her annoyance with him peak. Then she thought of Jane and Charlie, and she bit her tongue. For Jane, for the mission—for the proposal—she would do her best to avoid the topic of Darcy's interference. And Lizzy had called her mother against protocol. She didn't want to be guilty of hypocrisy, even if she felt that Darcy was.

The waiter led them to a corner table. "This is the table you asked for, Mr. Moreland?"

"Yes, this is it. Thanks,” he answered in Ned’s American voice. “Fanny?" Darcy gestured to a chair at the small table and moved to pull it out for her.

She looked at Darcy, craning around as she took her seat. The restaurant was mostly empty, but it was early. "You've been here before?"

"I have. I was in Chicago on a mission in the States years ago. I ended up here. The food's wonderful, despite the kitschy decor. Guess it's not the Alinea Salon." He shrugged concessively, almost apologetically―as if Ned were losing yet more to Wickham.

The shrug annoyed her, a stab. "No, but I hope never to see that place again or eat another meal like that, fancy though it was. The attempted dessert turned my stomach."

He stared at her hard, as if testing her words against her expression. "I take it you don’t mean the deconstructed banana split you had.” There was a beat of silence between them. “Wickham's charms are real, I grant that. Not real in the sense that they reveal the deeper man, but real in the sense that they are present and effective.”

Another beat. “Kellynch explained that you were recently back from a deep-cover assignment with no time to decompress. Facing someone like Wickham when you're…not at your best, it isn't easy. You've done a good job. But then, you have charms, too, real in both senses, although Wickham will never know that." Darcy seemed to be predicting and promising. It seemed like a genuine compliment might be lurking in all his words.

She smiled, and her annoyance lessened. They chatted for a while about the debriefing the night before, about Wickham…all in low voices, intimately. Lizzy continued to relax. The restaurant began to fill.

They ordered, and the meal came. The food was delicious, simple, and hearty. Not showy like the food at Alinea. No Eyes Wide Shut undertone of creepy debauchery that Wickham had orchestrated.

"I chose the location of Fanny's apartment partly to be close to this place," Darcy noted after a lull in the conversation and a long, oddly jerky sip of Chianti. His hand seemed to be shaking, but Lizzy considered it to be just an illusion from the candlelight. "What do you think of the food?"

"I like it better than tobacco-cured potato crisps I ate last night," she said, chuckling. "No, seriously, these cannelloni are wonderful! The sauce is perfect."

Darcy smiled. "Good." He tugged on the lapels of his jacket, his hands fidgeting, straightening. His fidgeting was not a trick of the candlelight. A scan of the room preceded a determined nod. "Okay, we have an adequate audience. Are you ready?"

"Now? Before dessert?" Lizzy was surprised both by his timing and by his real agitation over a fake proposal.

"Yes, I want to do it while I still have Ned's proposal in mind. I wrote it out today. I’m often better on paper than in person.”

Shocked, unprepared for his preparation and nervous energy, Lizzy watched, her lips parted, as he stood, straightened his jacket again, and then produced a small blue box from his pocket. He looked at her with warm, enveloping adoration. She could feel her heartbeat, her whole body registering her pulse.

In a moment, gracefully, he was on one knee beside her. Knee bent but back straight. Everyone in the restaurant had noticed him standing and then kneeling. Darcy and Lizzy had their audience. The sound of dining died down as the customers listened. Sinatra warbled I See Your Face Before Me.

He spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Fanny Prince, from the first time I saw you, I was smitten. You didn't know that, of course, but I was. I didn't know it either…not at first. I’m sometimes slow to understand myself. We quarreled, remember? But we got past the quarrel. And we now happily share ownership of that disputed copy of Wives and Daughters." Lizzy laughed. Darcy did, too. He looked younger and more carefree than she had imagined he could, as if the proposal was revitalizing him.

"Here's what I know: I can't stop imagining a life with you. I want to stop merely imagining one and start living one. Fanny Prince, my darling Fanny, will you marry me?"

He opened the box. The ring was small and plain, but bright and shining.

Will you marry me? Her heartbeat almost made her deaf to the final words, blood whooshing in her ears.

All around her were big anticipatory smiles. Red and white checks. Votive candles flickered happily, arrayed like stars, glorious. Gangsters glared down from the walls as if gently extorting her answer. The universe organized itself around their small table.

At the center of it all, Darcy smiled up at her, the ardent emotion on his face absolutely convincing, the most method of Method actors, his acting undetectable. Perfect.

"Yes, Ned," Fanny said, rising, her voice quiet at first and then louder. "Yes, I'll marry you."

She extended her left hand as she spoke, a pledge. Lizzy’s.

No, Fanny’s.

Ned reached out and took Fanny's hand. Lizzy felt the dampness of Darcy's palm. He had the ring in his other hand, and he slipped it deliberately on her ring finger. It fit her as exactly as all her cover clothes did. She suddenly knew who had arranged for them to suit her and Fanny as perfectly as they did.

Darcy stood, lifted Lizzy to her feet and into in his arms, and kissed her. He sold the kiss to the restaurant, and he sold it to Lizzy. It felt real. The other customers broke into applause around them, but she was only distantly aware of it, auditory background. In the tactile foreground were the touch of Darcy's lips on hers and the touch of Darcy's ring encircling her finger. The two touches shaped her world.

He kept her hand as she seated herself again. She reached for her Chianti and took a quick sip between swollen lips. She felt the breathless, fiery blush on her face and hoped he did not take it for anything but embarrassment at her part in the charade.

Darcy studied her again. "That went well, don't you think?" he asked in a whisper as he sat down, leaning toward her and gently releasing her hand.

She nodded, unable to speak.

A foundation of fact.