Chapter Thirteen Vain

Man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.

— Spinoza, Ethics

Darcy produced a small piece of paper from his pocket and a pencil like the ones used on a golfing score card, and he wrote the number down. He stared at it for a minute. Lizzy could see the flush still on his cheeks beneath the stubble. "I'll give this to Bingley and have him pass it to the Langley analysts. It may be what we’ve been hoping for, but I'm surprised. It’s not the kind of mistake I would expect Wickham to make—assuming the number isn't just his dry cleaner."

Lizzy nodded, catching Darcy's eyes and holding them . I want you to hold me. "He was…eager…to get his arms around me, his hands on me."

Darcy's eyes narrowed and glanced away.

She continued, "Wickham doesn't suspect me at all, not yet anyway, and he did not expect me to check his pockets. My guess is that it was a mistake, that it will reveal something…"

Nodding, Darcy stood as if he could no longer remain seated, could not keep listening without motion. He walked to the laptop on the counter and opened it. He wiped his lips with his hand, either to make sure there was no tell-tall trace of Lizzy's lipstick or to force himself to forget the touch of her lips.

A moment later, Charlie was on the screen. Even across the room, Lizzy could see that he looked tired but pleased with himself. She walked over and stood next to Darcy at the counter.

"Hey, Darcy, Lizzy." Charlie’s brow furrowed. "Are you both okay? You look upset, like something's wrong."

She glanced at Darcy, who licked his lips before answering. "No. Just an eventful evening at Rosings for Fanny and Ned. Wickham managed to separate us for a few minutes."

Charlie nodded, frowning. "Oh…but you're okay, Lizzy?" He looked at her carefully from the screen.

She nodded once, a shallow nod toward Charlie without quite seeing him. She did not want to linger in discussion of the evening, the patio, and Wickham’s hands. She wanted to linger— was lingering, despite struggling to refocus—in the memory of Darcy, his lips, how good he tasted. That wouldn't do. Darcy would not want Charlie guessing what had happened when they entered the apartment. She could see the tension in his shoulders.

But the apartment was still thick and warm and fragrant with what happened, thick with their mutual desire. That kiss was the heady atmosphere in which they stood. Lizzy could feel it…and she knew Darcy could, too.

"You found tickets?" he asked, the question pertinent to the debriefing as well as an attempt to change the topic. It seemed he no more wanted to think about Wickham touching her than she did.

"Yes, airline tickets in another name— Keith Sanders . He'd printed them, probably because of the alias, although I didn't find any matching ID. The tickets were a round trip, Chicago O'Hare to Rapid City Airport."

"Rapid City? South Dakota?" Lizzy asked. "Why? Mount Rushmore? The Black Hills? The Badlands?"

Darcy glanced at her, taking in her rapid-fire questions. "That's where Mount Rushmore is?" he asked.

"Yes, the Rapid City airport is the closest to Mount Rushmore, I think. I traveled there one summer with my father a long time ago, through Rapid City."

Charlie spoke from the computer. "It's not a long flight from O'Hare. Just a little over two hours. He leaves tomorrow morning and returns tomorrow evening."

They stood silently for a moment. Then Darcy waved the piece of paper. "Lizzy found a phone number in Wickham's jacket pocket…"

Charlie smiled. "Go, Lizzy!"

He copied it down and continued to make notes as Darcy gave him instructions. "Send that to Langley and see what they can find out. We need to know about it before tomorrow. We also need someone on the ground in Rapid City ready to establish a tail on Wickham when he arrives. We need to know what he's doing there." He waited until Charlie stopped writing and had looked up again. "Did you find anything else?"

Charlie colored. "Um, yes, in a drawer in the nightstand. A Polaroid Now camera and some unopened film along with a bunch of pictures."

"Pictures?" Lizzy repeated his last word as a question.

He fidgeted noticeably. "Yeah, mostly of Wickham and Lady Catherine…" He stopped to allow what he hadn't said to sink in, and then he shrugged. "They, ah, used the self-timer a lot."

"Oh," Lizzy said after a beat.

She glanced at Darcy, who seemed to be gritting his teeth. "Were there any other women in the Polaroids?" He leaned toward the computer intently.

"One other. Much younger than Lady Catherine, younger than Lizzy. Frankly, she looked like a college girl, maybe even high school. Beautiful. Blonde hair, dyed. Dark skin. A bikini model without the bikini…but with the tan lines. I photographed the Polaroid and will send that to Langley, too." Charlie stopped. "By the way, Lady Catherine was in that Polaroid, as well."

"Oh." It was Darcy's turn to say it, and he blushed. Lizzy felt her stomach twist in response to a fresh memory of Wickham's hands and this newly-acquired knowledge of where else they had been. She imagined a blinding Polaroid flash. Self-timer.

"Good work, Charlie." Darcy’s blush was fading. "It was a successful night." He glanced at Lizzy and then back at Charlie. "I'll stay here tonight." He paused and then added, as if reminding himself, "On the couch. We can talk again in the morning, early. Ned's supposed to leave in the morning."

Charlie’s pleased-with-himself smile had returned. Lizzy liked it; it was boyish and without a touch of conceit. "Sounds good. I'm tired. That security system wasn't easy to foil."

"Goodnight, Bingley," Darcy said. Lizzy waved at the screen, and it went dark.

He stared at the screen a little bit longer, as if the darkness held an answer to a question he had not asked. With a sigh, he turned to Lizzy. "I'll get the bedclothes from the closet."

She nodded, not quite able to face him. The atmosphere in the apartment was still heady, but it had been tainted by Bingley’s talk of the Polaroids. She stood and waited for Darcy to come back into the living room. He did, carrying a stack of blankets, a sheet, and a pillow that was already encased.

Lizzy smiled at him, a genuine smile, wistful. He returned the smile, matching it briefly after he put the bedclothes down. She hoped that he might touch her, take her hand, or hug her, or something. Instead, after an awkward, pregnant pause, he did none of those things. She would have been happy with any―any would have chased away the faint taint of the Polaroids. Would have recalled his taste and smell.

But he just said goodnight. The way he said it and his posture as he did spoke eloquently of his effort at self-mastery. Lizzy loved it—and hated it.

Saying good night, she retreated to the bathroom and prepared for bed.

Contrary to her expectations, she fell asleep quickly, but she woke up a few hours later. She had been dreaming of the kiss with Darcy, and when she awoke from the dream, she was intertwined with her blankets and her pillow, a silky snarl of sweaty desire.

After fluffing her pillow, she lay there staring up at the shadowy ceiling, panting. As her breathing returned to normal, as she cooled, she heard a voice from the living room, although she couldn’t understand what was said. It was Darcy's voice…one side of a conversation.

Lizzy disentangled herself from her dream and her blankets and sat up. It was 1:17 a.m. She rose from the bed, tiptoed to the bedroom door, turned the doorknob soundlessly, and opened it a crack, peeking through.

"Listen, love ," he was saying in a quiet but intent voice, emotional, "you know I'm always thinking about you. You’re always on my mind. I never forget you, I promise. I'm sorry I'm not there, too…that I’m not with you, and I can't hold you—but it can't be helped. I'm working. I shouldn't even be on the phone, shouldn't be making a personal call. That I am should show you how much I care. You know me." He was pleading, his tone all fondness and urgency.

Then he was silent for a moment, listening. He was in a T-shirt and boxers. It looked like he had yet to sleep; the sheet on the couch was smooth, the blanket still folded.

"I know, I know," he said patiently. "The nightmares are bad. But they're less frequent, aren't they? Good. That's progress. Eventually, they'll become rare, and then they'll be gone."

He was quiet again for a long time, listening, his head angled to one side. "Yes,” he said at last, “it's late here, and I do need to sleep. Find something to do, some other direction to turn your thoughts." Silence. "No, don't call me unless it's an emergency. I will try to call you again in a few days. Yes, yes. I love you too, so very much . Goodbye." His final words were so tender that Lizzy teared up as she carefully shut the door.

She tiptoed back to her bed and stretched out, trying to process what she had heard and seen. Darcy's voice had sounded familiar. The tenderness, the fondness…she had heard them before, earlier that evening. His refusal of her, of her offer of herself to him, had been spoken with that tenderness. That was why she had not felt rejected. He had said no, but it was clear how much he wanted to say yes.

That familiarity, that similarity was a two-edged sword, comforting and discomforting. Who was Darcy talking to? Who was she ? Because it was a she— Lizzy could tell that without hearing the voice on the other end of the call.

Her feelings were a jumble. She could not remember cycling through so much in so little time, a sprint through an emotional gauntlet. Blowing out a breath, she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes.

Opening them, she looked at the engagement ring on her finger, its small, bright gem. Try as she might, she could not divest the ring of significance, promise. It means something.

It was the last thing she saw as she drifted into sleep.

***

She woke to a soft rap on her bedroom door. "Lizzy, are you awake?" It was Darcy's voice, barely audible. She rolled onto her back and sat up, tugging on the blanket and holding it in place under her arms.

"Yes," she whispered back, making sure her voice was loud enough to be heard but no louder. Her heart rate elevated immediately, and she rubbed her eyes as he opened the chamber door.

His wavy hair was a tangle, and his stubble had darkened during the night, black in the bedroom shadows as he walked to her. He was still in his T-shirt and boxers. She expected him to stand at the foot of her bed and tell her whatever it was that had led him to disturb her. But he walked up to stand beside the head of the bed…on her side of the bed. When she reached over and clicked on the nightstand lamp, he looked tired, wan in its dim light. His lips were pressed in a hard line, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual state.

"What is it, Fitzwilliam?" Lizzy hadn't planned to use his first name, but she did. It seemed to jolt him. His hands flexed at his sides, fingers fully extended, then fisted.

He took a slow, deep breath. There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke, a tremor that found an answer in her, head to toe. "I shouldn't be here. In your bedroom. Especially after what happened earlier tonight between us. But I can't sleep. I can't forget it. My struggle with myself has been in vain."

His eyes were dark in the shadows, but his gaze caused Lizzy to blush. She felt her chest and neck heat up. It almost felt as though they were starting to glow. “I—" He put out one hand but did not touch her, stopping just above the thin strap of her cami, just above her otherwise bare shoulder. His hand shook. She reached up and took it, her hand wrapping around the back of his, and she pressed it to her shoulder.

He inhaled sharply. "I have to tell you how, how…"―he searched for a word, trying to convey emotion and desire all at once, deep feeling and deep arousal―"...how I admire you, how much I want you. I've been in trouble since the first meeting with Kellynch, but I was too clueless to myself…"

She caressed the back of his hand. Her need for him was as great as it had been at the door. Greater now. Her skin felt inflammable, on the edge of flames, ready to conflagrate, and her breath was rapid, shallow.

He leaned down and pressed his lips ever so softly to hers, warm and wet, the kiss a marvel of mutual restraint. Her pulse deafened Lizzy, and Darcy's boxers showed that he was as affected as she, the hardness there a testament to the temperance in his soft kiss.

Then she remembered the overheard phone call. The woman. She pulled back from the kiss gently but far enough to look into his eyes, to see his face.

The gauntlet again. Her emotions. He is an intricate character.

Surprise showed in Darcy's eyes when he opened them, met her eyes, and she spoke. "Are you sure you want me …or do you just want someone ? A stand-in?"

Her voice sounded kittenish, like her mother. She hadn’t meant to sound that way, not at all, but she did a little―coy and complaining all at once. Darcy unbent, stood straight, his tented boxers slowly collapsing.

"What?" He seemed lost. "Someone? A stand-in?" He repeated her words without appearing to understand them.

Lizzy was provoked. Why is he playing dumb? He must know what I mean. He was the one talking to another woman on the phone.

He blinked as he thought and calculated. Then he looked at her, suspecting he understood. "Lizzy, I know what I said earlier, about attachments, and about drinking too much, and about these missions. But I'm sober now, and you are too, and…well, it may still be a bad idea, maybe a very bad idea in the middle of this mission as we are and with who knows what still to endure but, Lizzy, I can't fight—"

She removed his hand from her shoulder and let it go. It fell to his side. His face fell with it.

"I'm sorry," she said, composing a response on the spot, the words coming to her as she spoke them and not before, "I'm sorry for earlier. For kissing you. I was upset and tipsy, and I've been so tired. I'm not myself. I'm not this blonde." She touched her hair and then gestured to Darcy in his boxers. "This is flattering, and I'm grateful for the compliment, but let's just call it even. I made a mistake, and you've made one, and we can just put both mistakes behind us and get on with Wickham…with the mission…with Ned and Fanny. We don't need to complicate our lie with the truth. It'll only make the lie harder. Worse."

Darcy's mouth opened, but he said nothing, and then he closed it. Her blanket had fallen down, revealing her lacy black cami. He did not allow his gaze to linger there; he looked her in the eye, cleared his throat, and stood straight.

"If you need to replace me in the mission, I understand. Ned is leaving town tomorrow anyway, and I believe Wickham’s swallowed the bait. Fanny will hear from him in the next couple of days. Bingley can manage as sole backup until a replacement arrives." Reluctance colored every word Darcy spoke, slowed his speech. So, too, did sincerity.

Lizzy had not expected such a dramatic reaction. Bowing out of the mission?

She pulled the blanket beneath her arms again, covering herself. "Agent Darcy, that's completely unnecessary. It would endanger everything. Fanny may need Ned again. Nothing that's happened tonight will keep me from being able to work with you. I'm as much to blame as you. Maybe more, because I acted first."

Darcy set his jaw and nodded. He was silent for a long time before he finally said, almost mechanically, "Okay, we'll pretend the kisses didn't happen. Neither kiss happened."

Lizzy kept her eyes on his, trying not to steal another glance at his boxers. The collapse of the tenting was not yet total.

He walked away from her but turned back just as he got to the doorway. "I know what I said in Kellynch's office, but you are the most tempting woman I have ever met."

With that, he left the bedroom.

Lizzy stared at the door for a moment and then threw herself back on the bed, pulled her pillow over her face, and screamed her silenced frustration into it―frustration with herself, with Darcy, with the mission, with her whole Company life.

***

Wednesday, October 21

She plodded quietly into the kitchen the next morning, yawning to herself and blinking as she tied her robe.

The little sleep she got after Darcy left her bedroom had been light and fitful, jagged with fragments of dream, all of herself in his warm arms, of him warm in her bed.

But Darcy was on the living room couch, and she had awakened alone and cold in her bedroom, her blankets on the floor, her pillow somehow at the foot of her bed.

She started a pot of coffee, and he stirred in response to the gurgle of the coffee maker. As Lizzy sat down on one of the stools, Darcy lifted his head. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. After a few seconds, he put his hands down and regarded her seriously. She started to squirm a bit, not sure how he was going to react after all that had happened…and hadn’t happened…during the night.

He carefully draped his blanket across his lap and gave her another long, speaking look. “You heard me last night, didn't you, on the phone?" It was a question, but it expressed no doubt. There was no accusation in his voice; he stated it as a simple conclusion.

Lizzy nodded and chose her words carefully. "Yes, I did. I don't have a ton…of serious romantic experience, but I'm not interested in being part of any…triangle."

There had been no accusation in Darcy's voice, but there was accusation in Lizzy's.

After he had left her room, after her muffled scream of frustration, she had found herself angry, not understanding how he could have come to her after that phone call.

The anger quickly became secondary. Mostly, she did not understand. She could not imagine him playing recklessly with what was deep in anyone else or with what was deep in himself. Lizzy had finally been able to sleep―at least such sleep as she had gotten―because she promised herself she would understand in the morning.

It looked as though Darcy had realized she did not understand. He smiled sadly and shook his head. "There's no triangle , Lizzy. You heard me on the phone with my half-sister, Georgiana. You've seen her in pictures. She was the blonde with Wickham in the MI-6 file."

"Your half-sister?" Lizzy sat quietly for a moment, replaying the conversation she had overheard. "Oh! Is she okay?"

His sad smile became a downright frown. "No, she's not. She's been…hospitalized for a while. Years ago, they might have said she'd suffered a nervous breakdown. She’s been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. Wickham used her, broke her, tortured her psychologically, and abandoned her."

Lizzy thought about the first night in Walter Kellynch's office. "That first night, in Langley, when you were talking about the kind of woman who would tempt Wickham, you were thinking of Georgiana? Of your half-sister?"

He nodded, bitter. "Yes, and at the end, when he was being as gratuitously cruel as he could to her, he told her she was simply one in a long line of similar women, women who looked like her, blonde and curvaceous, none of whom mattered. I thought he told her the truth about the women who were his type until I saw his reaction to you. Now I think it was just the cruelest lie he could come up with to tell her. He convinced her that she was not only nothing to him, but that she was… nothing. Dirt. Utterly replaceable."

"God, Fitzwilliam, the man's such a bastard! Sick! I'm so sorry for Georgiana. This is why it's so personal for you? Why you hate Wickham so much?"

"Yes. She’s doing better…but it's not clear she'll ever truly be well again, be able to reclaim her life. She was always delicate, nervous, and oversensitive. Fragile. Absolutely the wrong woman to be exposed to a monster like George Wickham." He paused, his voice dropping. "He savaged her, shattered her."

Darcy stood up, managing to drape his blanket around himself, holding it with one arm. With his other hand, he gestured to Lizzy.

"You're not her―not so fragile. Still, the thought of seeing another woman I—" He stopped, pain in his eyes. "Watching him with you, it's like witnessing what he did to Georgiana while I also witness what he's doing and plans to do to you. It's like seeing the past, the present, and the future all at once, and all of it godamned awful."

He turned and walked into the bathroom, the blanket still wrapped around him.

When he shut the door, Lizzy felt tears well up in her eyes—for Georgiana, for Darcy, for herself.

The mission had been complicated enough in Kellynch's office, complicated enough before last night and this morning.

But now?

She stood, sighed, and poured two cups of coffee. She needed to talk to Darcy before they talked to Charlie.