Chapter Twenty-Four Epistles

Wednesday, October 28

The next morning, Charlie brought Lizzy a secure computer, and she used her CIA email account to write her resignation.

Director Kellynch,

This confirms our phone discussion yesterday. Effective immediately, I am resigning my position as Special Agent.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Bennet

It was few words to seal a lot of years. She thought about adding something more personal but decided it would be inappropriate. The Thank you was personal enough. It acknowledged what Kellynch had been to her but did not suggest she could be talked out of her decision. She initially typed “Sincerely” and then deleted it. It seemed wrong, too pro forma.

Anyway, she would still have to visit Langley for the retirement class, the final debrief, and exit interviews. You could quit the CIA but couldn’t simply wave and walk out the door. The maze-ways never end—until they finally do. She had miles left to travel along the corridor to freedom. Casper to D.C. The myriad halls of Langley.

And then what?

She still had no plan.

When she finished typing, she found Charlie staring at her as if gauging her reaction to what she had done. He tilted his head and smiled. "You look better this morning. Your color's back. It's good to see."

"I feel…better, physically…and otherwise. Thanks for bringing the computer. I hated to text last night and ask, but I wanted to get that done."

He nodded. "I understand." It was apparent that he meant the words in a more significant sense than they initially suggested.

The two were silent as they faced each other, and then Charlie cleared his throat. "I have something for you. Darcy gave it to me before he left. It feels a little…well, romance novel, but he was adamant—and he's undeniable when he's like that."

He put his hand in the briefcase in which he’d carried the computer and pulled out an envelope. “Elizabeth” was written on the front of it. After handing it to her, he left the room, giving her privacy. She opened it to find a handwritten letter.

Dearest Lizzy,

A coward's exit, I know. I'm sorry. Strong emotions tie my tongue. There's so much I want to say to you but, as has been true since I first saw you, I'm afraid to say it. Not because I doubt myself or my feelings. That’s not the problem. Not at all. The problem is that I doubt my ability to leave you once I confess I love you.

And I do. I love you. Dearly. Ardently. You are precious to me. You’ve returned preciousness to my life. Even if what I allowed you to do, or rather what I asked you to do during the mission suggests otherwise. I never imagined I could fall like this, so fast, so far. That I could be found before I knew I was lost. I may be a fool, but I am a happy fool.

Let me write it once more: I love you.

But I don't know if I can speak the words to you and still do what needs doing. Professionally, you were right to turn me away when I came to your bedroom in Chicago. For me, there'd have been no return from that bedroom, no return to the mission. Everything between us would have become and then remained much too personal.

I've shared my doubts about what we do. You've intensified those doubts. This whole damned mission has intensified those doubts.

Checkers. I can't keep sacrificing pieces to win a game. The checkers are never just checkers. They are people, lives―now loves―and I don't want to keep pretending I know how to do calculus with lives or loves and pretending that I'm not committed to doing it even if I don't know how.

I'm sick of pretending, sick of covers, sick of shadows. I've had a bellyful of them, to put it bluntly. Who knew falsehoods could weigh so much?

Someone compromised your cover. There's a leak or a mole in D.C. or London, in Langley or the SIS Building. Wickham may be dead, but the Wicker Man lives. I fear the consequences for you as long as that is true. I fear you will never be safe. Despite what happened to you and what happened to Georgiana, I'm no longer pursuing revenge. I'm not even pursuing justice. I only want this to be over, completely over, when I walk away―no spy world remainder, no residual questions.

Beyond that, the only thing I'm sure of is you, Lizzy.

I'm no longer sure why I ever started this job. I suppose I kept at it because I made a mistaken inference from "I'm good at doing what I'm doing" to "What I'm doing is good," which is a non-sequitur of numbing grossness. My elementary logic class should have been enough to render me immune to it. But life is not logic, and the maze-ways of self-justification are endless.

I have a hunch about where to start in my hunt for the Wicker Man. Please don't search for me. Bingley's been tasked with watching over you. I expect that you are planning to resign. I hope so.

Once the Wicker Man is finished, I intend to resign. And then I hope to take you, Lizzy Bennet, on a date. A real date with me, Fitzwilliam Darcy. No Fanny, no Ned. No Elizabeth Gaskell. Just us.

However, I will be hoping for a wife and (maybe eventually) daughters (or sons) as the finish to our story. Unlike Gaskell’s book, I want our final chapter, Lizzy.

I suppose it's absurd to admit all this before a first date, but I've already stated I am a fool.

Love,

Fitzwilliam

Lizzy folded the letter back in two and slipped it into the envelope. Joy and sorrow gripped her, each with equal force. He was full of her dreams. He hoped for the same things she hoped for.

The realization of those hopes had never seemed farther away, the dreams more vulnerable.

She wiped her eyes.

Charlie stuck his head back in the room, a question on his face. Lizzy nodded and gestured for him to come in. "Help me up, then help me walk down the hall, please. I want to visit Karen. Have you seen her this morning?"

He shook his head and smiled. "No, I came straight to your room. But a moment ago, when I stepped out into the hall, the nurse told me that they'd reduced her sedation. She’s awake and has been for a while. 'Strong like a horse,' were the nurse's exact words. Said she’s not easy to sedate."

With his assistance, Lizzy was able to make her way to Karen’s room. Just as at Lizzy’s door, two guards stood outside it.

"Can you make it the rest of the way?" Charlie asked.

The walk had left her slightly winded and reminded her that the blisters hidden by her hospital socks were not completely healed, but she nodded. "I can do it. Thanks, Charlie. I’ll see you later." She pulled her sweater tight around her, pushed the door open, and went inside.

Karen looked very different from the hooded, goggled, and booted agent Lizzy remembered from the last time she saw her. Now she wore a pink hospital gown with a profusion of wires attaching her to a horde of machines. Her face was pale and her eyes dark. But she turned her head tentatively and smiled, weak but big, as Lizzy opened the door. Her eyes were slightly glassy.

A small boy, a toddler, his striped shirt a bit too small for him, his tummy showing below the shirt's bottom, sat on the edge of the bed with his short, thick legs swinging back and forth. A small black-haired woman sat in a chair next to the bed. She turned to look at Lizzy, her eyes kind.

"Elizabeth," Karen said softly, her voice thick and raw, "come in. This is my son, Ricky, and my ex-sister-in-law, Philippa."

When Lizzy walked into the room, Philippa stood and gestured for her to take her chair. The pain in her ribs and feet made Lizzy gratefully accept the offer.

"Hi, Philippa. Nice to meet you. Hi, Ricky!"

The little boy smiled at Lizzy sweetly. He seemed to be at that age where he understood more words than he could speak. "Hi," he said bashfully.

Philippa took him into her arms and laughed as she stationed him deftly on her cocked hip―a practiced move. "He's not great with changes, new things."

Lizzy chuckled. "I understand." She realized she had used Charlie’s phrase from earlier, again with a double meaning.

Philippa looked at Lizzy appraisingly over Ricky's head while brushing his uneven bangs back from his forehead. "So you're a CIA agent…I mean the TV kind, not the office kind like Karen." She flashed a quick grin, proof that the remark was more joking than serious.

"Believe me, your sister-in-law is not an office agent! She's the real deal. I wouldn't be here if she wasn't."

Philippa’s expression changed to an impressed smile as she shifted her gaze to Karen. "She's like baklava―she's got layers! Sweet layers. If only my idiot brother had been able to see that." She glanced down at Ricky, but he was rapt, toying with the collar of her blouse, not paying attention to the adults' talk.

Karen waved her hand at Philippa. "It's not all his fault. I felt useless in the office, and I brought that useless feeling home with me too often. We're both to blame."

Judging by her frown, her sister-in-law did not agree.

Ricky twisted in her arms, wanting to get down. She released him, making sure he was balanced before letting go of him. He toddled over to Lizzy and put a chubby hand on her knee. Grinning up at her, he looked into her eyes with a purity only a child could manage. He had blue-gray eyes and white teeth, although she noted chocolate at the corners of his mouth. Lizzy put her hand on top of his. A soft feeling welled up inside her, soft but deep and strong. Daughters or sons. She patted Ricky's hand with hers, imagining Fitzwilliam’s dark eyes in a small, chocolatey face.

"So how are you feeling, Karen?" she asked.

"Loopy. Still druggy, I guess. I had it in my head that Agent Darcy was in my room…"

"He was here, Karen,” Philippa said. “But it was the other day. One of the nurses told me he came in as soon as you were out of surgery and stable. According to her, he talked to you, although she only saw him through the window in the door. She didn't hear anything he said."

Karen nodded, squinting as if that would bring back the memory. "Oh, I do…kind of remember that. He was thanking me." She glanced at Lizzy, blushing. "Either he looks as good as he sounded on the phone or those drugs were working on me even more than I knew. It was like he was surrounded by light."

"Yeah," Philippa said, her voice tinged with dreaminess, "I saw him after I arrived. In the hall. Even haggard, upset, he looks as good as you remember."

Karen blinked as she considered Lizzy, who had said nothing during the exchange but had looked away while the others spoke. "When you said he was taken …You?"

Lizzy nodded once with a small, sad smile. He loves me, and he's gone.

"Lucky girl," she said, and her sister-in-law nodded her agreement.

Picking up Ricky again, Philippa announced, "We're going to leave now. This one needs a nap, and so does his mom. We'll be back this afternoon, Karen." She held the child close to the bed so Karen could kiss his cheek.

"Be a good boy, Ricky. Behave for Aunt Philippa!"

Philippa smiled goodbye at Lizzy and carried Ricky from the room. He waved at her and his mother over his aunt’s shoulder as they went out the door.

Karen settled back, a load groan escaping her lips. "I’m trying to be brave for Ricky to keep from scaring him, but my abdomen and my thigh…Jesus, they hurt! Getting shot isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm no Vin Diesel! Can't get shot and go on like it was a bloody mosquito bite."

Lizzy reached for her friend's hand and squeezed it. "I meant what I said, Karen. You saved me up there. I was coming to help you when Wickham attacked me."

"What happened?" Karen gave her a returning squeeze of the hand and then grimaced at the pain in her stomach.

"He…tried to make sure that the seduction mission ended…happily…as he wanted it to end. To make me, or Fanny―my cover―do as he planned." She told Karen the details, reeling them off like a list, keeping her emotions in check, her tone clinical.

Nevertheless, Karen shuddered. "Christ. What a fucking monster. So Darcy shot him?"

"Yes. At the last moment."

"He deserved it, and worse. So what's for you now? Back to D.C.?"

"Yes, but not to Langley. I resigned this morning. I'll have the usual exit ceremonies to suffer through, the career transition service stuff, but then I'll be done."

If Karen was surprised, she hid it. "What will you do?"

Lizzy shook her head. "I don't know. Before I joined the Company, I planned to be a teacher, a professor. Literature. That's been on my mind again. Books. I hadn’t thought about books in a long time, but they've been coming back to me lately. On my mind. Partly, it was because of my cover as Fanny, a librarian, and Darcy's as Ned, an editor at a New York publishing house. Bookish covers. But that wasn't all of it. Part of it was just me―Lizzy. Maybe I'll go to graduate school. What about you?"

Karen shrugged delicately. She seemed a bit more lucid than she’d been when Lizzy first entered. “Return to the office. Return to reading stale chatter. It's not that bad, and with the little guy counting on me, I've now seen enough of gunfights. But I know now, you know? I know I can do this job, the job they trained me for and then tacitly decided I couldn't do before they shelved me in Casper. And that satisfies me. I can live on that for a long time! Knowing I helped Agent Bennet. Although I think I need to carry a smaller purse, maybe with pockets…something with better organization."

Lizzy laughed and Karen did, too, before she inhaled and braced her hands on her stomach. "Oh…oh! It hurts to laugh. Shit!" She leaned her head back on the bed and took a slow, careful breath. "When will you leave the hospital?"

"In a couple of days.” She shrugged. “Dr. Williams wants to run a few more tests, and we're still waiting on the results of some of the ones that were part of the…kit."

Karen's face was grim, worried. "Nothing so far, though?"

"No. Thankfully, no."

Karen closed her eyes. Lizzy squeezed her hand again and stood up carefully. She was tired again, too.

Fitzwilliam’s letter was in the pocket of her sweater. She wanted to read it again and then cry herself to sleep. The only thing I'm sure of is you.

That was how she felt about Fitzwilliam. It was like he was surrounded by light.

Sure of him.

Everything else was unsure.

Doubtful .