Chapter Fourteen Flames

Lizzy left Darcy's cup beside the coffee maker, climbed on a stool, and glanced out the window from her perch. Haverford and the young man she had loved there, Jim Haden, came to her mind. She hadn't thought of him―at least not to dwell on him―in a long time. As she stared unseeing out the window, she did. Dwell on him.

She had told Darcy she did not have a ton of serious romantic experience, and that was true. Jim had been the only love of her life. Despite that, she had refused to consider a future with him, always dodging his good-faith attempts to understand her future wishes for them, if any.

Her parents' marriage was responsible for her dodging. So, too―perhaps much more so―was her father's sudden death. Before that mortal Christmas Break, the holiday on which her father died, she had been anxious about her future…her professional future, not her personal one. She had told herself she would worry about the second once the first was settled. But her father's death completely unsettled her.

When she came back to Haverford, fresh from the funeral and her mother's showy weeping, Lizzy had been a mess. While she was in that messy mental state, she met Jane Simons and decided to join the CIA.

She did not tell Jim anything about her decision until she had made it. He had been stunned by it, as the decision seemed out of character. He had been deeply hurt that Lizzy had not even talked to him about it. He was not a man who would believe the decision was his or even that he was supposed to have any sizeable say in it. However, since they had been together for a while, he believed Lizzy should have at least talked to him about it, shared what she was thinking and feeling.

Instead, she had shut him out completely, just as she had during the Christmas Break. She had shut him out of her father's death, not answering Jim's calls or responding to his texts until the funeral had ended and the burial had been completed. Then she had sent him only a perfunctory text from the graveside saying that her father had died and she was sorry for being incommunicado.

She had actually texted Jim that word: incommunicado .

God, what was I thinking?

She blushed as she sat on the chair, blushed to remember that text…and that time. I lost my mind.

Jim had been kind and attentive, smart and handsome. Committed to Lizzy. She had met no one who compared to him since the gray wintry day she had ended things between them. They had stood morosely in the hallway of her dorm, both staring at the wet footprints on the worn wooden floor in silence after the words had been spoken. They parted in silence.

The few men in Lizzy's life since then were all men who were incomparable to Jim―men who had been mistakes, mistakes of loneliness and emptiness. She had regretted each fling as soon as it started and continued regretting each long after it ended. It was not that she was pining after Jim—she had gotten past that, even if it had been true for a time. A long time.

Shortly before their graduation, he started dating someone new. Lizzy had the misfortune of running into them right after graduation. The clumsy, heated jealousy of that moment had stayed with her for weeks. But she did not blame Jim. It had all been her fault―the fault of her circumstances, not his fault―and she genuinely wished him to be happy. Their relationship had been a casualty of her parent's marriage and her father's death as well as a self-doubt she had not understood.

Lizzy sighed aloud, still staring out of the window, and took another sip of her coffee.

After the last of her flings, now months and months ago, she had promised herself that she would not get involved with a man again unless she loved him. Deeply loved him . Last night, when Darcy came to her room…would she have turned him away if she had not overheard that phone call or understood her mistake? Or would she have welcomed him to her bed?

She knew the answer. She would have welcomed Darcy into her bed, passionately welcomed him, and for all she was worth―flesh and spirit, nothing held back.

The realization was a consuming fire.

What does that mean?

Before she could answer her silent question and while she was still warm all over, Darcy emerged from the bathroom. He was dressed in the clothes he had worn to Rosings the night before, but he was freshly shaved, his hair combed.

I'm not Fanny; he's not Ned. The thought did not cool her.

"I made coffee and poured you a cup," Lizzy said, gesturing toward the coffee maker. She hoped he would not see her color and read what she had been imagining from her face and eyes.

He did not look at her, though…not for long. He nodded and walked to the cup she’d indicated, fully focused on it. He picked it up, taking a long, careful sip. His back was now to Lizzy, but that was not helping her.

She lifted her gaze just before he turned around. "Thanks for the coffee," he said quietly, staring into the cup as if it held a mystery, clearly trying to avoid meeting her eyes. The heady atmosphere of last night had filled the room again.

She nodded, although he did not look up. "Tell me more about Georgiana, please. How did she end up involved with Wickham? Couldn't you warn her against him?"

Darcy did look up into her eyes then but with sadness in his. "No, you've got it backward. She warned me against him…at least in a manner of speaking."

Lizzy shook her head, confused. "What?" The flames died down.

"It was Georgiana who identified Wickham as a terrorist. Or I should say she suspected him and told me her suspicions. That's how I ended up on his trail and figured out he was the Wicker Man."

"Does he know she suspected him?"

"No, he doesn't. She would be in danger if he did. He underestimated her, her ability to keep secrets. Georgiana knew from the beginning of her time with Wickham that I would never approve of him." He smiled in recollection. "She and I often quarreled about her taste in men. It was the only difficulty between us. Loser after loser, shipwreck after shipwreck…at least from my point of view. And she had been sure Wickham would not like me, either." Darcy’s smile turned slightly menacing. "So she never mentioned having a stepbrother to him, kept me a secret. That turned out to be lucky. He'd never seen me until Rosings."

He stopped. When he started speaking again, it was in a cool, anticipatory, vengeful tone as he looked at the floor, obviously envisioning Wickham. "The satisfaction I most look forward to when we finish him is telling him that Georgiana was his downfall―that a woman he toyed with and worked to ruin turned out to be his ruination. I will relish that!"

At this, Lizzy felt in her bones the mastery it had required for Darcy to swing at Wickham and deliberately miss the night before. Amazing self-control.

She heated up again.

"Does Charlie know all this…about Georgiana?" she asked, trying to force her thoughts into the daytime and out of the nighttime that might have been.

"No. He’s seen the pictures, but he never met Georgiana and I haven't told him who the blonde in the pictures is." He stared at the floor. "I didn't plan to tell anyone." His eyes flicked up to Lizzy's and back down, and then he shrugged. "I hoped to keep her out of this if it was possible. Only my boss at MI-6 and one analyst there have even seen those photographs. I asked to keep them out of circulation. My boss owed me, so he didn't ask why. She’s been hurt enough, and I'm determined―I've been determined―to protect her. She’s wrestling enough."

Lizzy had more questions about Georgiana, but she decided not to ask. "Should we talk to Charlie?" She pulled the laptop closer to her on the counter.

Darcy came around the counter and stood beside her, but he rested his hand on the top of the laptop, keeping it shut. She could smell his aftershave. Looking up into his eyes, Lizzy managed not to kiss him, discovering something about her own self-control.

After a moment, he breathed out a long, frustrated sigh. "Are we going to be able to do this, Elizabeth? Not just keep ourselves apart, but withstand the strain of your seduction of Wickham? Last night, the patio—" He inhaled. "I'm not sure I can miss him again…or witness his hands on you."

Lizzy wished she had put on more than a robe over her cami and sleep shorts. Her legs were displayed by the short robe. Darcy's eyes had not strayed to her legs, but he kept not-looking at them. He was obviously aware of them― very aware―even if he would not let himself focus on them. And she was not-looking at him not-looking at them. She turned on the stool, using the counter to cover her legs as much as she could in hopes of curtailing all the not-looking.

"I don't want him to touch me ever again," she told Darcy, inflecting him in a way that suggested that it contrasted with you, with what she wanted Darcy to do. " Ever . But the job's the job. I won't… we won't let it go too far. Who knows, maybe we're closer to being done with this than we know. Maybe Rapid City will pick up the pace." She shrugged beneath a smile and heard him laugh softly as she remained facing away from him.

She softened her voice. "We were both right last night, regardless of whether we fully understood the situation. If we give in to this "―she turned and waved her index finger back and forth between them, observing her own gesture as if someone else were making it―"there's no way we are going to be able to complete the mission. Neither of us will…" She paused before giving her head a small shake and using the words that sprang to mind. "Neither of us will have the heart to go on with this."

She lifted her head, and her eyes met his. Their gazes remained locked together for an endless moment.

He nodded―the nod eloquent on many levels. He reached out with exquisite care and ran his hand down her jaw, moving slowly and softly along her cheekbone to her chin.

Then he dropped his hand. "Okay, enough." He spoke to himself, not her, giving himself an order. His jaw clenched, and he closed his eyes. " Enough . Open the laptop, Agent Bennet." He indicated the computer with his other hand, opening his eyes, "Let's talk to Agent Bingley."

Lizzy faced the screen and crossed her legs beneath the counter.

Self-control.

A minute later, Charlie, yawning cavernously, was on the screen.

"Sorry!" He put his hand in front of his mouth and spoke through it and the yawn. "I was up late and slept later than I intended because of it. But I have news. First, a team of two agents is on the ground in Rapid City. They’re ready to tail Wickham when he lands. He should be in the air by now." He paused and looked at his watch.

"And second ?" Darcy asked with a hint of impatience, the lingering cost of his self-control.

Charlie smiled. "And second, we found out something about that phone number. Not everything , but something."

"What do you mean?" Lizzy asked.

"The number is for a burner phone. But"―Charlie held up his hand, palm facing the screen—“We have an educated guess about whose it was. Fenton Fumerton."

" Bang Fumerton?" Lizzy recognized the name. Although she had never met the man, she had heard the name months ago in a general briefing.

"Yes," Charlie said. "The analysts believe Wickham's searching for explosives, a topflight bomb maker."

Darcy snorted. "Lord! Bang Fumerton and the Wicker Man . Is it now a necessity for villains to have ridiculous names?"

Charlie chuckled but grew serious. "It's the TikTok age. Why does Wickham use that name, anyway, other than its overlap with his? Is it just ego? Wicker furniture is…well, the opposite of scary."

"Not furniture. No doubt that it is ego, a kind of signature on his…work. But it's also meant to be threatening. It's from a 1973 British horror film, a folk horror film called The Wicker Man. Long plot very short―pagan islanders lure a virgin policeman to their island and eventually burn him and a bunch of animals to death in a giant hollow Wicker Man statue. A sacrifice. The islanders surround the burning statue and sing "Sumer is Icumen In," a Middle English folk song. Meanwhile, the policeman recites Psalm 23 until he is engulfed in flames."

"Jesus!" Charlie breathed.

" Not Jesus , " Darcy responded. He shook his head again. "Precisely not Jesus. The film's about the death of innocence, or of an innocent—it turns out the policeman is not only a virgin, but he's a Christian, hence the Psalm. A pagan victory over Christianity."

"Damn!" Lizzy said after a moment, appalled at the fresh memory of Wickham's hands on her, the Wicker Man's hands. "I've never seen that movie." She was glad she hadn't.

Charlie cleared his throat, changing the subject back to the day's situation. "Yes, well…okay, the guess at Langley is that Wickham's planning to use a Fumerton explosive. But it's not clear if his target is near Rapid City or if the bomb maker―Fumerton or whoever―is there. I hope the team in Rapid City can figure that out."

As Darcy started to respond, Fanny's phone rang from the bedroom. All three of them, Charlie included, jumped. Lizzy made a be-quiet gesture and ran to answer it, her bare feet slapping the floor in the living room on her way to the carpeted bedroom.

It was Wickham.

She made herself stand and wait before answering, trying to calm her breathing. He's supposed to be in the air. She tried to recall how Fanny had departed Rosings, how she ought to react. Why isn't he in the air?

She finally picked up the phone. "George?" she asked timidly.

"Is Ned still there?" Wickham’s voice was quiet.

"I thought you were going out of town today." She deliberately avoided answering his question and allowed a tincture of challenge to creep into her voice.

"I am," he replied with an unfazed chuckle, "but the cold weather's evidently affecting the plane's engines. It's much colder than last night. There's a delay. Not long, though. We board in a minute."

"I didn't know it was colder. I haven't been out. Why are you calling me?"

"Is Ned still there?"

Darcy had shut the computer. He walked softly into Lizzy's bedroom, coming close to her, so close that she could again smell his aftershave. She angled the phone so he could hear Wickham.

"No," she said, "He’s not. He left earlier."

"I'll be back late this afternoon, and I want to see you." Wickham’s tone suggested that he was confident of her response, of her agreement.

"George, Ned and I—"

"I felt you beneath my hands last night, rolled you between my fingers. You want to find out where that goes…how it ends…what I can make your body feel. What I can make your body feel that Ned can't."

Lizzy wanted to scream at the man, call him a bastard, but Fanny inhaled. "George, I can't do that."

He ignored her protest. "Let me come to your place tonight. I can be there by 8 p.m. We can have drinks, talk, and keep each other warm."

"No, George."

Wickham was quiet. Lizzy heard the airport intercom in the background but not what was said. "My flight is boarding—finally! I will be there at 8 p.m. Wear something…comfortable. By the time I arrive, I will have had a long, hard day."

Lizzy let a moment pass, stretching it out. Fanny swallowed audibly and responded meekly. "Okay."

After the call ended, Darcy left quickly, telling Lizzy he was going to use the tunnel between the parking decks to get to the other apartment. He and Charlie would prepare for Wickham's visit to Fanny, double-checking the cameras and listening devices that had been off since they’d been put in place.

Lizzy knew his swift departure was because he did not want to make matters harder for her. But that also meant she now faced a long day by herself leading up to a very personal encounter with Wickham―an encounter he would believe was taking place in private and free him to pursue what he wanted from Fanny. Not that being in public had acted as much of a brake on him.

She hoped the Rapid City team would discover what Wickham was doing and take him into custody, thus preventing his visit from happening at all. Unfortunately, she knew that was unlikely. The team might discover something, but despite the mistake of the phone number in his jacket pocket, Wickham was a clever, careful man.

He would be at her apartment at 8 p.m., and he would expect to sleep with her. “ Sleep with” has never seemed so euphemistic to me before. He wanted to bed her as close to her engagement as possible, she realized, to prove how little Ned's ring really meant to Fanny and twist her yes to Ned into a no .

She took an extended, scalding shower, standing under the pelting water and letting the steam rise and cloud the bathroom.

She was being backed farther and farther into a corner with less and less room to maneuver. Of course, she would not sleep with Wickham. She had no intention of allowing him even to repeat the liberties he had taken at Rosings, although preventing those would be harder. But either Darcy or Charlie would be listening and the other would be in her building nearby, ready if she needed him. Fanny needed to somehow send Wickham home without what he wanted while still making sure he wanted it.

How do I do that?

She reminded herself to resist trying to plan it ahead of time. It would have to happen in the moment to be believable. Unscripted.

After she finished her shower and dressed, she decided to take a walk. Her head and her heart were spinning, and she needed to offset that spinning with external physical motion. After contacting Charlie and telling him what she was going to do, she went downstairs and outside.

Wickham had told the truth about the weather. It was cold outside, the temperature far below normal for Chicago at that time of the year, the wind intensifying the chill. She zipped her coat all the way to her neck and started walking, no destination in mind.

As she walked, she replayed the night before, the kisses with Darcy, the talk they had before speaking with Charlie. In the pale daylight and the whistling wind, it all depressed her.

She had feelings for Fitzwilliam Darcy. I do. Her depression forced her to acknowledge them. The feelings were nascent but already strong—and strengthening. The chemistry between them wasn’t just physical; it was personal and emotional. It had been present as early as their first meeting in Kellynch's office. That’s what had caused her to overreact to Darcy's comment about her being tolerable. The chemistry had played a crucial role in arousing her pride, causing her to trap herself in what was proving to be an intolerable snarl of a mission.

What's that quotation about the closeness of love and hate? She couldn't recall it. Whatever it was, it seemed to apply. The gist of it anyway.

She put her head down as the wind gusted.

Now that she thought about it, it would be Darcy manning the video and audio feeds while Wickham was in her apartment. He needed to be hidden because Ned was supposed to be back in New York. They could take no chance that Wickham or a wild card like Father Robyn might accidentally see Darcy. Charlie would be her guard onsite, the one present in her building.

As a result, it was Darcy who would have an electronic front-row seat for Wickham's attempt to pressure Fanny into sleeping with him. Having to endure that pressure would already be bad enough for her, but having to endure it knowing that Darcy was suffering through it, too? It was going to be terrible. He would have to watch and listen as his enemy tried to touch the woman he would not touch. The mission was between them, pulling Lizzy away from Darcy as it pushed Lizzy toward Wickham.

Walking fast eventually quieted the riot in her mind. Pushing her hands deep in her pockets, she walked and walked…hardly paying attention to her path.

She found a small diner and ate breakfast. Heartache on top of an empty stomach was a miserable condition. Once she’d finished her food and coffee, she felt better and stronger. She left the diner and began her return to her apartment. Facing the cold was easier.

As she drew nearer to her apartment building, she noticed a small magazine shop on the next block. Covers. It was the place Darcy had mentioned where he’d bought the books he gave her for Fanny's apartment. Since she had time, she crossed the street and went inside.

As he’d told her, it was tiny. The smell of coffee, old books, and beeswax candles filled the air…half library, half church. The back wall—again, as Darcy had told her—was covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases, the shelves over-stuffed with books, volumes jammed in horizontally atop those jammed in vertically.

She ordered a small coffee from the man at the counter. He was small, bald, and red-bearded, and he had an unlit corncob pipe in his mouth, biting the bit between his teeth when he spoke. “Anything else?" he asked around the pipe as he slid her cup toward her.

"No…Well… how much are the hardbacks?" she motioned to the shelves.

Redbeard shrugged. "Look at the inside of the back cover, near the spine. A price is penciled there."

She paid and took her coffee to the shelves. The stationing of the books was careless, but the choosing of them had not been. No dead weight sat on these shelves―no pulp, no junk. It was all literary classics or genre classics. Shakespeare alongside The Big Sleep.

She ran a finger across a shelf at about eye level, taking in the titles. She noticed a collection of poetry by Yeats and pulled it out of its tight station. As she paged through it, she found a poem of his she'd always liked, "Adam's Curse." She read it, becoming wholly immersed by the final two stanzas:

We sat grown quiet at the name of love; We saw the last embers of daylight die, And in the trembling blue-green of the sky A moon, worn as if it had been a shell Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears: That you were beautiful, and that I strove To love you in the old high way of love; That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

"Fanny?" She looked up, the Celtic spell of Yeats broken.

Darcy stood beside her, coated and smiling, an olive drab watch cap pulled low on his head and his coat's collar standing up. "I didn't expect to find you here."

The poem was too present to her for her to return his smile in kind, although she was delighted to see him. "Ned, hey! I just happened to find this place."

"I'm going to get a cup of coffee." He pointed to a small high-top table in the corner that was unoccupied, one of only two or three inside the already-crowded shop. She nodded and took her Yeats and coffee to the table. She had closed the book, and her heart thumped in her chest.

Just before he ordered, Darcy looked over his shoulder at her, and she gave him the smile he deserved. Once he returned with his coffee and sat next to her, Lizzy forced herself to think of him as Ned. He had not taken off the watch cap.

"You didn't mention the red beard and the unlit pipe." With her head, she indicated the man behind the counter.

He chuckled. "I should have told you about the local color, but I was too excited about the books I bought you."

Leaning closer to him, she whispered. "Is it okay for you to be out and about? Ned's in New York."

Darcy nodded. "I know, but it was a calculated risk. We know Wickham's traveling. I left my building the back way and came here largely via alleys. Bingley and I have everything ready for tonight, but I was restless. Besides, I wanted to give him some privacy."

"Privacy?"

He looked into Lizzy's eyes. "After last night, I couldn't bear my own hypocrisy. I called Jane and apologized to her after I apologized to him. We chatted. I…Well, let's say I better appreciate their situation. Her situation … her past. He's promised he won't be distracted. But, hell, we're all distracted, all three of us. Better to just own it and cope with it at this point."

Lizzy wanted to touch his hand. If they had been just Fanny and Ned, she would have. But they weren't, despite the covers, and they'd decided not to act on what was between them. Palpably between them…a third presence.

"So…Yeats?"

Lizzy looked down at the book on the table. "Yes, always been a fan. 'Always' meaning ‘since college.’ I took a course on the history of modern poetry, and Yeats was a key figure."

He picked up the book and idly turned some pages, then stopped and looked up at her. "Do you know this one? I've always liked it. 'He Tells of the Perfect Beauty.’” Darcy read softly but with feeling:

“O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes, The poets labouring all their days To build a perfect beauty in rhyme Are overthrown by a woman's gaze And by the unlabouring brood of the skies: And therefore my heart will bow, when dew Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, Before the unlabouring stars and you. "

He finished reading but kept his eyes on the page, moving, as if reading it again to himself. When he finally lifted his eyes, he stared into hers. " Overthrown by woman's gaze , by dark eyes."

Lizzy blushed. Darcy closed the book and pushed it toward her with a frowning sigh. "I'm going to leave. Bingley and I will go over everything with you an hour or so before Wickham is due. Be sure to alert the security guard that you're expecting him. I'll be on comms, and Bingley will be in your building. He'll get there as soon as Wickham's in your apartment. But we'll talk about all this again later."

He reached up and adjusted the watch cap. He was trying to sound professional.

She let him see the dread in her eyes. "Ned, I—"

"I know, Fanny. I'm sorry." Darcy’s voice was thick and his eyes downcast. He turned quickly and left.

Lizzy was left alone with her singing Yeats, her cooling coffee, and her deepening dread.