Chapter Seventeen Double Effect

Darcy gave Lizzy a curious look. "What are you thinking about? Your…countenance…just shifted." He smiled at his own comment, the wording of it, ( countenance? ) despite his obvious struggles with the whole evening, all that he’d had to see and hear. Witness.

Much as she would love to tell him that she was thinking about children, family, future, and how her imagination involuntarily populated all scenes of that future with Darcy as father, husband, and partner, how could she reveal that after what she had just done?

Their situation, this mission, was all but unbearable already. By adding that, confessing it, Lizzy would make the mission irreversibly unbearable. Darcy was often stoic, but the emotion of the last few days showed on his face now, the toll it was taking plain. Lizzy could feel the same toll it was taking on her.

Besides, what do I know about his plans for his future? My own just clarified for me―epiphany in the form of a surprise.

But a not-unwelcome surprise.

Darcy had shared his reservations about his job, about MI-6, about spying. He’d had those reservations before, it seemed, and yet had continued with his station and its duties. He had feelings for her, she knew that. I do know, don't I? He had even used Yeats to suggest their depth. However, she had no reason to think that he, like her, was ready to quit, to exit the spy world and return to normalcy. Civilian life. To leave behind the constant shifting of appearance and reality, the subsistence in shadow.

Lizzy was unsure whether she could find herself after all that shifting. She’d had years of it, long periods where she had, in effect, forgotten who she was in order to be someone else. Many women…not one. And never herself. Could that sort of deliberate and sustained self-alienation be reversed? Have I condemned myself to a habitual alienation that might alienate me from the very things I was imagining?

She was sitting on the couch beside Fitzwilliam Darcy, picturing him as her husband and the father of her children, when only minutes ago she had been pinned to Fanny's kitchen counter, another man's arousal pressed hard into her middle, his lips pressing hers. The man beside her was struggling with that fact, she knew, trying to hide and control his jealousy and hurt, real jealousy and hurt, though he knew she was pretending.

If I'm going to quit, why not now? Why not just walk away?

One reason she didn't was what she had just told Darcy―she was stubborn and wanted to bring Wickham down, bring him to justice. She wanted to do it for Georgiana and for Darcy.

Another reason was that it was ridiculously early to speak of children with Darcy ( ridiculously too early to be thinking of children, imagining them, on my own ). Even though Darcy had proposed as Ned, that was not a real proposal. The engagement was a mere appearance, not a reality. They had kissed each other last night in propria persona, as Lizzy and Darcy, but they had never been on a date; they knew little about each other. There’d been no courtship…unless this was it.

She wanted to walk away from the spy world, yes, but she wanted to walk away with Darcy, or at least with the hope that he and she could be together out in the light and still want each other as much as they did now in the shadows.

Her thoughts and feelings so preoccupied her that she lost track of the moment. Darcy was still waiting for her to tell him what she was thinking about. His curious look had intensified.

Finally, Lizzy shook her head. "Nothing. Not really." She paused, disliking the dishonest answer but afraid to tell the truth. A bitter cherry topping an evening of lies. This is what worries me, that lying comes easily and truth only with difficulty . She couldn't tell Darcy the truth, not the whole truth. "I was just wondering…about you. Have you ever thought about another life?" She kept any investment in his answer distant from her voice.

His question had been deflected from her to him, she realized, and he probably noted it, too. Darcy looked lost for a second, taken aback, and then sad. His face became unreadable before he started to answer. "Yes. Sometimes. Before Georgiana, before I started chasing Wickham, I believed I was losing my…taste for it, what drive I had for it. Did I tell you how I got started?"

She shook her head again.

He sat back. "I guess we have time before Bingley's likely to return. I was recruited by one of my university professors. He had served in British intelligence in the late 1970s. After he was discharged and became a professor, MI-6 asked him to keep an eye out for… talent . He agreed. I admired him and got to know him. Attended his lectures. Typically he was a private man and hard to get to know, but he sought me out. I thought it was because of my philosophical promise—and it was, partly—but it was also because he thought I had promise for MI-6 as an agent. He knew I was unhappy, eager to be on my own."

"Why? I assumed you had a privileged childhood, a privileged life."

Darcy nodded. "Yes and no. I've told you that Georgiana is my half-sister. My father married well. My mother was from a very wealthy family. Shortly after I was born, she was diagnosed with cancer. It took her quickly. She was the one from wealth, and she knew how to handle it…a woman of sense."

He glanced at Lizzy and went on. "My father, left alone with a small boy, did not know how to handle wealth and he was not… a man of sense. He lost most of the money in a succession of risky schemes, all of which failed miserably.

"Dad got married again before he lost it all, married another woman of sense—his one gift was choosing wives. His new wife, my stepmother, quickly got pregnant, and soon Georgiana was on the scene. She and I were close from almost the beginning and got closer over the years.

"As I grew older, I became more aware of my father's waywardness…more opposed to him. My stepmother kept us afloat financially, but it meant constant battles with Dad, who constantly came up with new schemes meant to make up for his failed ones, each one crazier than the last. Like a gambler chasing his debts. Eventually, I stepped in to resist him, too, aiding her. Our relationship was tense and bitter by the time I was at Cambridge, and I wanted to be on my own, independent of him. He was complaining all the time, complaining about tuition and my bills, about paying for a philosophy student. ‘Funding a future blowhard barista,’ he liked to say.

"I related all of this to my professor just before the end of my second year, and he quickly suggested I could be independent even before finishing at Cambridge. He chose just the right moment. I happened to have fought with Dad the day before. I jumped at the chance and, almost without realizing what I had done, what I had committed myself to doing, I was at MI-6's version of your Farm a couple of weeks later."

"So, wait," Lizzy said, paying close attention, "you became an agent while still a student? I joined right after graduation."

He nodded his acknowledgment of her comment and then answered the question. "I did. It was strange, being both a student and an agent at the same time. MI-6 didn't ask much of me during the academic year, but I had brief missions during breaks, normally mission work as part of a team, learning from experienced agents."

Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and glanced at Lizzy, then stared at the floor "I almost quit early on. My MI-6 instructors talked endlessly about the Greater Good. Some of the other, experienced agents liked that phrase, too, as if it was a blanket justification for anything we did. So long as that was our end…or we said it was, we had clean hands no matter what underhanded means we used.

"That reasoning seemed—and still seems—fallacious to me. I don't buy the Greater Good notion. Even if I did, why should I trust some politician to know what it is? Or worse yet, some unelected lifetime bureaucrat? The actions you perform chip away at your wholeness as a person, or they ruin it all at once."

To Lizzy, Wickham's visit seemed very much between her and Darcy at this moment even though she sat near him on the couch. He continued, "You tell yourself the end does vindicate all the work, the goal of the Greater Good, but all the while, you're violating yourself. That didn't work for me. For a long time, I thought maybe I had reconciled myself to the job by using Double Effect."

"Double Effect? What's that?" Although she could make a guess at what the term meant, it was new to her.

"It's the notion that you can distinguish between the intended consequences and the merely foreseen consequences of your act. Only the first is supposed to matter. It might be used to justify, say, a World War II bombing mission, the decision to bomb a munitions plant at night when some civilians might still be there working." He sat back up and faced her. "That’s an example, a stock one. For a long time I told myself that some such distinction could be used for what I did on missions. I never made myself think it through, face it." He stopped talking and used his thumbs to rub his temples. Lizzy fought back a desire to put her arms around him, pull him to her.

Instead, she wondered whether she had made such a distinction herself without knowing its name. Am I doing it now where Wickham's concerned―what just happened at the kitchen counter? Wickham's hands on her body, her breasts, and his tongue on her lips were all foreseen but not intended consequences of her mission. Therefore, she could not be blamed for it. If she could not be blamed for it, it could not affect her.

It did affect her. Deeply. It was why she had avoided seduction missions. The two she had been on before had chipped away at her wholeness ( Darcy's phrase is exactly right) , her sense of herself. The last few days of this mission had been so much worse.

It wasn't just that she started the mission fatigued, although that hadn't helped. It wasn't even her quickly developing feelings for Darcy, although her feelings toward him magnified all that was happening, causing her to be happy, miserable, and ashamed all at once. It was primarily the experience, for lack of a kinder way of putting it, of prostituting herself. One part of her was consenting to and even inviting what another part of her (the better part) deplored, being groped and fondled by a man she loathed. Self-objectification.

And those things were the very means of the mission―not its consequences, intended or foreseen. That's why it was called a seduction mission . She, her very person, was the honeypot.

Darcy was looking at her again. She saw guilt in his eyes that mirrored her own feelings of guilt. "When I did think it though, I turned to checkers for answers, but it only presented my problem to me anew. How can you win the game without the sacrifice of pieces?"

Lizzy could feel the anguish he felt and knew it was because of her. He went on after a moment, his voice low. "When Wickham came to the United States and I followed, I went to Kellynch expecting to be supplied an agent of a certain kind. Female agents who've been at this a long time, for years, usually are…" He searched for the right word or phrase but Lizzy knew what he meant. Hard.

"I know," she said, ending his search without supplying the word or phrase. The female CIA agents that Lizzy knew who had been with the Company as long as she had were rarely women she found personally appealing; she had no friends among them. They were entirely closed off. Perhaps I avoid them because they show me my future. It's only a matter of time until I am one of them.

"Given who I asked for, I never imagined Kellynch would assign…you." Darcy smiled at her, a smile wide with recollection, and she felt lighter immediately. She blew out a breath, releasing much of the tension she had been carrying since Wickham visited.

"You didn't seem thrilled with me."

"I wasn't. And I was. You weren't what I pictured for the mission but you…affected me."

Lizzy reddened. "You made me blush, and you keep doing it, and I told myself I rarely do that. I was wrong."

He put his hand on her leg, just above the knee, and she rested her hand on his. Perhaps in the long run, the handholding would prove to be a bad idea. Right now, it made Lizzy feel better, lighter still. Darcy stared at her hand atop his, opening his fingers so that she could entwine hers with his. She did.

When she looked into his face again, he had grown serious. "Elizabeth, I want to capture Wickham, dismantle the Wicker Man. I want to him to pay for the pain he's caused, particularly Georgiana's pain—but risking you to do that, now that I…now that I… know you, I don't want any of it that much. We can shut this mission down, all of it. I'll take the blame, tell Kellynch that I've made Wickham suspicious, tell Kellynch something. You'll bear no blame, neither you nor Bingley. You can go back to D.C., and I'll go back to London. Maybe I'll manage another chance at Wickham."

She gazed at him for a moment before speaking, not sure what to say. As much as she wanted to escape from the clutches of the Wicker Man, she did not want to take her hand from Darcy’s. If the mission ended and Darcy went back to London, she might never see him again. That would be true even if she planned to stay with the Company, but she didn't. It became even more likely that they’d lose each other if she returned to civilian life and he remained with MI-6.

However, staying with the mission, staying with Darcy, required facing Wickham again out in the world in an uncontrolled environment and subjecting herself and Darcy to more of his disturbing advances.

She decided to try to express some of what she felt, her confusion, when his phone vibrated. He had to let go of her hand to pull the phone from his pocket.

"It's Bingley. He'll be on the computer in a minute. Can you get it out?"

Lizzy swallowed what she was going to say and got up, going to the bedroom closet to retrieve the computer where she had hidden it. While she was there, she turned on the phones in her drawer. When she returned to the kitchen counter, Darcy was standing at the window looking out of the same window Wickham had looked out when he complained of his long day. Darcy seemed lost in the lights of the city.

The computer came on. A moment later, Charlie appeared. "Hey, Lizzy. Where's—" He stopped his question and gave a little wave as Darcy stepped into view, then seemed to regret the gesture. He cleared his throat and dropped his hand. "Well, Wickham didn't go straight to Rosings. He was headed that way, but he made a U-turn and headed back to the city. He ended up ringing the bell for a while at an apartment a few miles away. No one answered. I was able to have analysts check on the address. Turns out it belongs to the young woman I saw in the Polaroid photo with Wickham and Lady Catherine."

A photo from a student ID came on the screen, replacing Charlie. It showed a blonde, dark-eyed young woman with a shy smile. "She's a UIC student, Teresa Sanz. A sophomore. Her parents pay for the apartment. It's not clear how she and Wickham or Lady Catherine met each other, but it seemed to me he was there hoping for…what he didn't get at Fanny's."

Lizzy looked at the photo more closely. She wondered what the story was for the young woman, how she had found herself in a Rosings' bedroom Polaroid. "Does she have a record?"

"No, none." Charlie’s face reappeared on the screen. "The analysts sent me what they had. High school and college transcripts. Good student. Other than that, there's not much. I'll send copies to you, Lizzy. Anyway, after Wickham got no answer, he drove straight on to Rosings. He had borrowed one of Lady Catherine's cars to go to the airport, to Fanny's, to Teresa’s, and then, eventually, to Rosings."

Lizzy sighed in frustration. "Do we still have no clear picture of how Lady Catherine is involved with Wickham…I mean other than the bedroom way?"

He shook his head. "No, nothing concrete, specific. It doesn’t seem possible that she doesn't know who and what he is, but the Company hasn’t been able to find any financial record linking them. I doubt she's just handing him piles of cash over dinner in Rosings, but"―Charlie shrugged, smiling grimly―"who knows?"

Darcy looked from the screen to Lizzy. Annoyance colored his comments. "I've told them we need to know! A dedicated team, both Company and MI-6 analysts, have been scouring Lady Catherine's finances since we got to Chicago. Whatever she’s been doing, she's hiding it well."

"Do you think that Father Robyn might have seen anything between them or noticed anything odd?" Lizzy suggested. "He doesn't like Wickham―hates him, in fact. Maybe if Fanny talked to Father Robyn…"

Darcy shook his head. "No, not yet. The man’s not discreet, and his dislike of Wickham might make it hard for him to keep Fanny's visit and questions a secret, even if she requested it. Hell, even if he tried to be quiet. He might feel the need to wax eloquent about Errol Flynn and tights again, and who knows where that might lead."

Lizzy shrugged. "OK, but we should keep him in mind. He's not an idiot, even if he is indiscreet."

Darcy nodded. "Yes, we will. I'll be over in a few minutes, Bingley. Anything else?"

"The detectors implanted in Lizzy's door frame showed that Wickham carried no gun into her apartment, carried nothing questionable. He took nothing with him when he left."

Flicking his eyes to Lizzy, Darcy responded, "Well, he took something with him when he left, and he brought it to Ms. Sanz, but she wasn't there for him to give it to." The comment started half-jokingly, but by the time he finished, he was speaking from between clenched teeth. "We need to know more about her. Sanz. Bingley, you're going to find her tomorrow, meet her cute if you can manage it, undercover, and see if you can get a better sense of her. Is she only what she seems to be in Polaroids―a dalliance―or does she somehow matter to the Wicker Man?"

Charlie did not look enthused about his new assignment. "Ok, Darcy, I'll do it. You're on your way back?"

"Yes, soon." Darcy shut the computer. When he looked at Lizzy, she thought he might revive the conversation Charlie had interrupted, but he didn’t.

He just stared at her, his eyes full of emotion. What she had said during their conference with Charlie had made it clear she was going to pursue the mission, and Darcy seemed to accept it. "Take tomorrow, stay inside, and rest. If Wickham calls, try to get some indication of where you're going the next day so we can plan, get ahead of him. Remember, if he calls during the day, you'll be here, but Fanny will be at work. Bingley'll make sure the fake phone tree's in place so Wickham will believe he’s called the library.”

"Right," Lizzy said, feeling tired again, heavy. She had chosen the mission. Precipitously. For all sorts of reasons…all sorts of confusing reasons.

She walked to the door with Darcy, who stopped before he opened it. Gently, he put his hand behind her head and tugged her lips to his. "We're committed," he told her when their lips parted. "Together."

He closed the door, and she wiped tears from her eyes. She had kept them from forming until the door shut. Fitzwilliam.