Chapter Twelve Under Influence

Lizzy still had her ring…Fanny's ring…beneath the table, her hand fisted as if holding onto it and to herself.

Lady Catherine had made a bid for Ned's attention. After glowering in Wickham’s direction, he had responded. Henry was trying to lift a frown as he watched Lady Catherine fawn over the younger, taller man. His face seemed somehow to take on the terra cotta tint of Ned's sweater as Lady Catherine touched it.

"I adore that sweater, Ned…" Lizzy heard Lady Catherine purr.

Wickham leaned toward Fanny, glancing at the other end of the table as he did so, talking to her while spying on Ned. "So, where did this consequential proposal take place?" he asked in a whisper, careful to speak softly so he wouldn’t be overheard by Father Robyn, Crispin, and Maria as they chatted amiably about a recent charity event all had attended. Lizzy could hear only scraps of their conversation, yet it was loud enough to drown out Lady Catherine’s continued cooing.

Lizzy struggled to keep her focus. Wickham's heated, mocking gaze was on her, and he waited for her answer. "At a place near my apartment. A nice little Italian restaurant." She wanted to add that it was nothing like Alinea but had no wish to lure Wickham into wanting to know more; she could imagine his outpouring of contempt on The Made Man. Just as Lizzy could not bear his scorn for her plain ring, she could not bear his scoffing at the modest scene of her proposal.

Fanny's proposal. It was ridiculous, this conflating of identities―Lizzy's reaction to Fanny's proposal, her nervous eyes on Darcy…Ned.

Wickham sighed. "Is there a place nearby that's worthy of a proposal to a woman like you?"

That pissed Lizzy off enough to make Fanny show some spirit. "What? Are you planning such a proposal, too?" She managed to serrate the edge of her scorn.

He sat back, surprised. It took him a few seconds, but he eventually smiled a slow, confident smile. "I don't need to trade rings for…other things. I can command them. No proposal necessary."

Before Fanny could answer, Maria turned from Father Robyn and Crispin, who were chuckling over some private joke, and she reacted to Fanny's exchange with Wickham.

"Proposal? I've been proposed to two times. My first husband, you know, Mr. Rushworth, bungled the words but…had the feeling right, you know, at least as close to right as was possible for him." She sniffed, self-pity and regret in one sharp inhalation. "My second husband," she glanced from Wickham to Henry at the opposite end of the table, "was, you know…agile with words, but I believe the dexterity was due to his lack of intense feeling."

Lizzy was unsure how to go on from those remarks, but she was eager to avoid yielding the conversational initiative to Wickham. Letting her own glance travel down the table to Ned, she spoke quietly but audibly. "Ned got it right. Just right. The words and…the feeling―the music , let's say―fit each other perfectly. Hand in glove." She stole a glance at her ring, not intending to but unable to resist. She lifted her eyes to Ned.

As Lizzy looked at Darcy, he fished his phone from his pocket and took a quick glance at it, careful to keep the screen visible only to himself. He pocketed the phone almost immediately, but she knew from his subtle shift that he had gotten a signal from the third member of their team. Charlie was in the house.

Her pulse quickened.

Wickham had been spooning the remains of his chowder around on the bottom of his bowl, desultory, obviously displeased with Fanny's praise for Ned. It was now apparent he had expected Fanny to be more responsive to him than she was, perhaps publicly intent on Ned while privately yielding to Wickham.

Lizzy knew she was pushing him. He might decide she was not worth the effort. At the same time, it was important to make him feel that effort was necessary. The question was the line―where it was for him, where added zest passed over into unwanted expense.

Father Robyn looked at her, seeming to notice the momentary stalemate between the two, and he came to her rescue. He addressed Wickham, mischief on his face and in his tone. "George, I was watching old movies earlier today. TCM was showing Errol Flynn. They made me think of you." There was a barb in the final comment, and Wickham blinked.

Maria responded before Wickham could. " Errol Flynn? Now that's a man who fills out his tights! No wonder he made so many, you know…period-type films. Robin Hood and, you know…pirates."

Neither Father Robyn nor Wickham looked at her. After a pause, Wickham responded, raising one eyebrow like a headsman's ax. "Was it all the films, or one in particular that made you think of me?" The eyebrow fell. "Or was it the tights ?" Wickham's eyes flicked to Maria, who did not appear to notice the subtext aimed at the priest. It seemed obvious that she was mostly oblivious.

Father Robyn smiled suavely, calmly, smooth as a millpond. "No, it was not the tights, though I grant that Mrs. Crawford is right, you know, about Flynn's backside. Fit to withstand the gaze of millions. He was male yoga pants before female yoga pants." He gave himself a visible shake. "It was a particular movie, Don Juan, about the famously reckless womanizer. It's a part in which Flynn parodies Flynn as he plays the title character. A complicated and dizzy dance of self-celebration and self-mockery."

He let his eyes briefly move to Fanny before they moved back to Wickham. "At the end of the film, despite swearing his eternally devoted love to the Spanish queen, he blithely goes chasing a redhead in a passing carriage, remarking to his companion that all men have a little Don Juan in them, but since he is Don Juan, he must have more than most." Father Robyn's smile widened in a complicated challenge to Wickham.

Lizzy was surprised by the turn of the conversation. Father Robyn may have visited Fanny to warn her, but she would not have expected him to face Wickham down. Or try to. Lizzy felt suddenly stultified at the incongruity in his behavior.

"What are you talking about? What? " Lady Catherine demanded in a loud voice from the other end of the table. She had noticed the slight blush of anger on Wickham's face, although he exerted himself against showing it.

The priest beat the womanizer to the explanation. "I was comparing George to Errol Flynn's Don Juan. "

Lady Catherine smiled, amused and alarmed, hoping to make the moment a mere amusement.

However, Darcy seized upon it. "The heyday of toxic masculinity has passed, and no one mourns its passing." To underline the comment, he looked at Lizzy expectantly.

Following his lead, she lifted her chin and nodded with defiant agreement even as Wickham slid his foot softly against hers under the table. Lizzy left their feet in contact, feeling heat creep up her neck, torn between the two ends of the table and between what was visible above it and what was invisible beneath it, between the emotions moving inside her and the demands of the mission.

The room remained hushed until Wickham chuckled, now seemingly as self-controlled as Father Robyn. "Oh, I suspect the reports of 'toxic' masculinity's death"―he paused to make luxuriant, deliberate air quotes―"are grossly exaggerated by those who are soft, guilty of special pleading." Wickham squeezed infinite, sneering contempt into his final two words.

Lady Catherine laughed loudly, directing everyone's attention to herself and away from the suggestion of violence apparent in the postures of two of her guests. "Boys, boys! No need for this conversation now! In fact, it's barely a conversation at all." She picked up her bell and rang it again as if to send the combatants to their corners.

After another moment of tense silence, the servants entered with the entrees and sides. The interruption defused the situation. Soon everyone had been served, and the sounds of knives and forks on china replaced voices.

Wickham and Darcy each ate with studied indifference to the opposite end of the table. But Wickham's foot remained against Fanny's. Lizzy left it there― no choice― her left hand again fisted beneath the table.

Dinner continued.

As they all ate, Wickham had been mostly silent. When his plate was nearly empty, he put his utensils down and faced Fanny after flicking his eyes to Father Robyn. "When does Ned return to New York?" he asked with a neutral expression and tone.

Lizzy left her head down but lifted her eyes. "Tomorrow morning. And I'm going back to work soon."

He seemed to be thinking and then nodded. "I may have to leave town tomorrow myself. But I won't be gone long. A day trip. Do you go back to work tomorrow or the day after?"

She and Darcy had not decided this question, but she now needed to do so. "The day after."

Wickham nodded, thinking again.

Dessert came and went. Maria Crawford kept everyone drinking by repeatedly calling for more wine with Lady Catherine's indulgent blessing. She had tipped past tipsy and was launched on a half-hearted, soggy seduction of Crispin, still not realizing that he was more than just Father Robyn's friend and out of her reach, soggy or dry.

Lizzy kept careful tabs on her own drinking, doing her best to give the impression that it was more than it actually was. She was sure Darcy was doing the same. Still, she drank too much; there had been no avoiding it. She felt a beat behind the conversations around her, and one beat behind was actually two beats behind. Given the mission, she needed to be a beat ahead, maintaining an anticipatory receptivity. Unfortunately, she was slowly sinking into a simple passivity.

Wickham was jabbing at Father Robyn again, this time about the absurdity of organized religion and the uselessness of priests. Darcy was listening to them, as was Crispin. Lady Catherine had finally consented to pay attention to Henry, who was alternating between long tips of his head backward to sip wine and long tips forward to stare into her cleavage.

Lizzy desperately wanted to go, to be out of that house and out of contact, eye or foot, with George Wickham. But the evening stretched on. More wine―the dining room growing warmer as it grew smaller. Wickham seemed closer. Everyone did.

She assumed Charlie had come and gone. Darcy had not looked at his phone again. None of the guests had left the table.

Fanny stood. Ned stood, too, but Fanny smiled, wobbly, and announced to the room that she needed a breath of fresh air. She stepped around the table behind Wickham and toward the French doors that opened onto a dim patio.

Henry was by now gently snoring over his wine. His wife was nodding too.

Lady Catherine reached out to take Darcy's hand. "Fanny will be fine. Give her a moment. An engagement ring one night and a party like this the next? Her head is probably spinning. Why don't you let me show you the library? It's just down the hall."

Ned looked at Fanny as she reached the door. He nodded reluctantly, sending a look after her. Their hostess took his hand and led him from the table.

Lizzy saw the quick scene play out in the reflective glass of the French doors before she opened them. She had not intended it, but she had created a situation in which she was out of Darcy's sight, and he was out of Lizzy's. The thought of Lady Catherine alone with Darcy felt like an icicle in her chest.

She stepped outside into the bracing cold and wind, and her teeth almost immediately chattered. The cloying, claustrophobic warmth of the dining room was inhaled by the night and exhaled, vanishing.

Putting her arms around herself, she stepped into the deeper darkness of the patio, the tall bushes and short trees of the garden rising before her past the end of the patio like sage mummers in a poorly lit parade. She stood alone for several minutes. Despite her chattering teeth, her head felt clearer. She glanced back into the bright lights of the dining room through the French doors and saw Wickham stand.

She had not noticed a sports jacket hanging on the back of a side chair. It must have been there when she and Darcy came in and she’d missed it during the introductions. Wickham walked out onto the patio, the jacket held in one hand by its collar. "Here, Fanny. The change of temperature will make you ill." He extended the jacket toward her, changing his handhold on it so she could slip into it.

She did. As she turned to do so, she checked the dining room again. Lady Catherine and Darcy had not returned.

Turning her back to Wickham for the jacket had made her trembling worse, but he slipped it around her shoulders as she put her arms into it. A moment later, he had tugged her backward against him. His arms encircled her. One was high around her shoulders, the other low around her waist. He opened his hand and splayed it out, large and warm, against her lower stomach.

She tensed, unsure what to do…what he was about to do. He slowly slid his hand up her stomach, slipping it beneath his jacket and firmly cupping her breast. Her breath involuntarily caught, and he gently pinched her hardening nipple.

She deplored his hands on her, but her body reacted to his touch. The three F’s.

She could remember few things quite as humiliating as this, her own body's betrayal of her actual desires, even though her body's reaction kept the mission alive. In no other honeypot mission had she been touched so intimately.

Wickham's breath was hot on her ear and neck, warm while the wind was cold. "Good girl. You know what you want, what you truly want." He rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, exerting a calculated pressure. Her breath caught again. Time passed, and her consciousness contracted to the space between Wickham's fingers, concentrated in the sensitive flesh of her nipple. She was unsteady on her feet.

The French doors opened behind them. She had not realized she was holding her breath until she released it as she spun around. Lady Catherine was standing with Ned, a smirk on her face.

Ned's face was a black cloud. "Fanny?"

Wickham stepped toward Ned and Lady Catherine. "Fanny got chilled. She was putting on my jacket."

Lady Catherine looked sideways at Ned, assessing his reaction. Fanny blushed. She jammed her hands into the pockets of Wickham's jacket.

Ned stepped toward Wickham, reducing the distance between them to arm's length. Wickham's sneer was visible in the light from inside. "I've had enough of…whatever…this is Wickham. Fanny's engaged to me. She said yes, and you owe her―and me―respect. I understand that you and Lady Catherine live by other rules, in some Noel Coward fantasy, Eyes Wide Shut. Well, Fanny and I are no part of that world. We don't live by your corrupt rules, this sexual vanity…"

As Ned jabbed his finger at Wickham, Fanny felt a piece of paper in Wickham's right-hand pocket. Lady Catherine was focused on the two men, as were Father Robyn and Crispin from inside the dining room.

Lizzy summoned the presence of mind to peek at the slip of paper. The faint light from inside made some numbers on it barely legible―numbers in blue ink, a phone number. Lizzy immediately committed it to memory and shoved it back into the pocket. She glanced around. So far as she could tell, no one had noticed what she had done.

"Noel Coward ? Really, Ned, that's the best a supposedly educated man can do? I was only… assisting …Fanny. Warming her. She has a mind of her own, you know. An engagement ring is not a ring through her nose."

Lizzy knew enough to remain silent. This scene was Ned's to play, and Fanny's reaction needed to be…ambiguous. For Wickham's sake.

"You son of a bitch!" Darcy cried. He swung heavily at Wickham's smiling face, but he missed; Wickham had ducked easily. Lizzy knew Darcy’s miss was intentional. The scars she'd seen told a story of violence endured and proved that he could more than hold his own with Wickham or anyone else.

Wickham sprang up after ducking and saw Darcy had overbalanced from his savage but ineffective swing. Grabbing his shoulder, Wickham pushed him up against the French doors, causing Father Robyn and Crispin to jump back.

Lady Catherine threw up her hands, palms out. "Stop! Enough! George, release my guest! This is intolerable!"

Wickham stepped back. Darcy turned toward Lizzy and put out his hand, fingers extended, inviting. "Fanny?"

The cold wind and Wickham's warm hands had broken the spell of the wine, and she was in full possession of herself. She delayed for just a beat and then reached for Darcy's hand.

Once Fanny stepped to him, Ned glared at Lady Catherine. He bowed shallowly and ironically. "Thank you for dinner. We'll take our coats now and go."

Wickham chuckled disdainfully as Lady Catherine opened the French doors, walked to the table, and rang her bell.

Fanny shed the jacket and handed it to Wickham as she passed him, meeting and holding his eyes for a second.

In her head, Lizzy repeated the phone number again.

***

As they watched Rook drive away in front of Fanny’s apartment building, she breathed out a long breath. Darcy looked at her and nodded sharply. "That went badly—and well."

She swallowed hard. She could still feel Wickham's hand on her, his fingers rolling her delicate flesh. It made her queasy. "Can we go inside?"

He nodded and took out his phone as they turned. "Bingley found airline tickets in Wickham's room."

Lizzy took his hand for the cover, squeezing it as they walked to the door. "Wickham said something about leaving town briefly tomorrow. I found a piece of paper with a phone number in his jacket pocket.”

Darcy slowed and smiled at her, although there was reservation in the smile. "You're damn good, Agent Bennet."

On the elevator, the wine Lizzy thought she had overcome on the patio of Rosings returned, and her head began to swim. Maybe it was the safe feeling she had on the elevator, still holding Darcy's hand. It was as if she had surfaced from the wine, gotten a quick breath, and then submerged, sank again.

She led them off the elevator and into her apartment. Wickham's hands, his breath on her neck, came back to her, the memory so vivid as to almost seem the reality. Despite her body's response to Wickham's hands, it had been—and she had felt it as—a violation, a transgression of her integrity. Those natural responses might not be wholly under her control, but it was up to her to decide whose hands prompted them, creating those natural responses. Even in high school, in college, in sometimes hasty, unplanned, hand-beneath-the-blouse make-out sessions, she had never let anyone touch her that she did not want to touch her.

She had been lucky, she knew. Tonight she had endured something she had so far avoided.

After taking a couple of steps inside, Lizzy pivoted. Darcy had shut the apartment door, and when he turned to face her, she slammed herself into him, her lips on his, her arms hugging his neck.

The act was spontaneous, unpremeditated―unless her continued, agitated fascination with the ring Darcy gave her or with his proposal counted as premeditation, and neither did. Nothing moving inside her had risen to the level of conscious reflection, of thought she shared with herself. She simply needed to be touched by someone she wanted to touch her.

Not just someone. Ned. Darcy. She wanted Darcy's hands to erase the fleshly memory of Wickham's.

The truth was that she had been addled since the proposal, and the addlement had deepened the previous night when she saw Darcy and his scars. Though she hadn’t fully realized it as he spoke, his proposal had contained a vulnerability that had touched her. It was a vulnerability that seemed real, really real , not pretense. And then, seeing his scars, real scars…they had made him seem more vulnerable still.

She had seen past the stiffness, formality, and pride, and she had finally glimpsed the man. Or perhaps―at least during the proposal―he had stepped out from the stiffness, formality, and pride, and he had allowed himself to be seen. The woman in her had responded. She had been responding to him all along, although the pace and intensity had been accelerated by the proposal and the sight of his scars.

Darcy fell back against the door. His hands at first hung at his sides as Lizzy held herself against him, her body in full-length contact with his, her lips with his lips. He tasted good, as Darcy should taste, wine-dark and male. She opened her mouth, imploring deeper intimacy in the kiss.

His hands rose then and wrapped tightly around her waist, his grip almost but not quite painful in its intensity. She had been pulling herself against him, but he now pulled her to him. One hand slid up her back, to her neck, the side of her face, gently cupping her jaw, caressing her. The other slipped around her waist. Darcy's mouth opened, and she could feel the accelerating bass drumbeat of his heart against her chest. She put her hand on his face, his rough stubble, and opened her mouth even more, her tongue exploring his mouth, touching his tongue.

The dinner party evaporated like a bad dream, the touch of Wickham's hands banished.

It was the finest kiss she had ever had.

And then Darcy gently pushed her away. His eyes lifted from her lips to her eyes. He was panting, his eyes almost swallowed by their pupils. "Elizabeth. I…Agent Bennet, I…"

Lizzy kissed him again lightly. "It's okay , Fitzwilliam. Please ," she said, unsure what exactly she was pleading for.

He returned her kiss but soon pushed her away, determinedly and carefully. His cultured British voice was shaky. "We both drank too much, and it was an exhausting, emotional night. These missions! Wickham—"

"I don't want to think about Wickham for a little while." She leaned her head on his chest.

"Did he touch you?"

Lizzy nodded into his chest, and he stroked her hair tenderly. "I'm sorry. Lady Catherine maneuvered me so that Wickham could maneuver you. I returned as fast as I could."

"It's okay, but I…I want you." There, I said it.

She felt him tremble at her words, his desire racking his body, moving hers. He did not echo her words, but she knew he wanted her, too, and that he spoke to himself as much as to her. "It's a bad idea. Attachments…" he whispered thickly.

Lizzy glanced up and saw his eyes were closed. "I know," she muttered into his shoulder, the scent of him everywhere around her. She buried her face in his sweater.

She felt him kiss her hair.

Then Darcy slipped past her, walked into the living room, and sat on the couch. "We need to debrief, talk to Bingley."

She did not feel exactly rejected, but that did not make the moment easier. She could still taste him and smell him. He was all around her. She lifted her head, walked to the living room, and sat in the armchair.

She sighed. "So, I found a phone number in Wickham's jacket."

Darcy looked up, and Lizzy rattled the number off.