Chapter Five Partygoers

To enter the main room from the entrance, Lizzy and Darcy had to descend a set of stairs, not deep but wide.

Lady Catherine stood to the left, talking still to the couple, an older man and woman, both expensively dressed. The man kept sneaking glances at Lady Catherine's body. She seemed to know it and had positioned herself for maximal display, allowing the man an unimpeded view into the depths of her cleavage. She kept her eyes on the woman, nothing in her engaged expressions or quiet laughter suggesting her subtle display to the woman's husband.

Darcy led Lizzy past the three of them. Again, although Lady Catherine did not glance at him, something about her posture, a shift of her feet, told Lizzy that she continued to be aware of him.

They moved in a crooked line across the room, bypassing knots of guests surrounding small, high tables on which were stationed delicate flutes of champagne and gleaming china laden with rich foods. On various past missions, Lizzy had been at similar gatherings, but this one might have been the most lavish she had seen. Somehow, the room and decor, the drinks, and the food all seemed to overflow just as Lady Catherine overflowed her silver gown.

Opulent. It was all opulent.

Voluptuous.

She tugged on Darcy's hand as they neared the grand buffet table where mountains of food were stacked in fable-like proportions and whispered, "Seeing all of Lady Catherine, I understand why you worried that I'm not voluptuous enough. She's like a flooded Great Lake and I'm…I'm…" Lizzy couldn't supply the comparative term. "…I'm not ."

He turned to look at her, his look undecipherable, then to look past her back to their hostess, his face barely betraying contempt. Lizzy repositioned her body to block his face from Lady Catherine’s view should she choose to glance at him again. "Yes, but—" He stopped, focused again on Lizzy, his expression complicated. "Yes, she's his type…paradigmatically his type. However, I suspect she was vulgar when he met her and thus deprived him of the pleasure of vulgarizing her." It was the first time since they'd arrived in Chicago that Darcy’s House of Lords attitude had made an appearance.

Lizzy lifted an eyebrow but did not reply. One reason for her unresponsiveness was that she was not sure what to say to that, to his use of the term “vulgar.”

The other reason was that, just as Darcy finished his remark, George Wickham entered the room. He seemed simply to materialize, but she realized he had used a side entrance coming in from a porch. She blinked, transfixed.

It was as if some alchemy had been performed on the photograph she had seen, some hocus pocus that animated and warmed the freeze frame. He was taller than she had expected, bigger than life, though not as tall as Darcy. He wore a white tuxedo coat with a black pocket square, a white shirt, black pants, black shoes and a black bow tie. Nothing black that he wore seemed any shade of gray. His movements were beautiful and taut, each motion a measured suavity, his posture perfect. He was the image of impeccably dressed, mobile rectitude.

Except that he was a terrorist, a killer.

He scanned the room slowly, confidently. Anywhere his feet were planted was his territory, a captain astride his ship's quarterdeck. At a party where the wait staff wore white coats, he was obviously not one of their number. His white coat was whiter than all the rest, whiter than white.

Lizzy shook her head slightly, involuntarily, and broke the occult spell. Wickham was handsome, but he was also a man, only a man―her mark.

As he surveyed the room, his eyes hung on her momentarily. It was only a moment, but Lizzy, woman and agent, was experienced enough to know that he had not merely seen her. He had noticed her.

The lighthouse hair had done its job. She was blonde enough.

His eyes moved past her and settled on Lady Catherine. Lizzy turned to her, and when she shifted back to Wickham, she saw an unctuous smile cross his lips, and he waved.

By now, Darcy had turned and seen him. He started. Lizzy felt it, their hands still joined, but he covered his mistake by reaching for a flute of champagne, lifting it from a tray being carried around the room by a server.

Wickham passed them as he walked to Lady Catherine. He went by Darcy without a second look but did not quite manage that with Lizzy. She felt his eyes travel along her hair, her neck, her shoulder, travel the tweed of her dress, and travel to her backside, then travel to her legs. Down, down, down. It was all done in the twinkling of an eye…and then he was opening his arms to Lady Catherine. She leaned toward him, cheek presented for a kiss, which he supplied.

Darcy tugged Lizzy's hand and motioned to her to get something from the buffet table. She chose a few items, put them on a plate, and picked up a fancy fork. He did the same.

Lizzy ate a bite and then faced Darcy and put her plate down. "He noticed me."

"So I saw," he said, snapping out the words but managing to keep his voice soft. Then he increased his volume and continued in his perfect midwestern tone, "It wasn't just the hair." Darcy pointed to her with his fancy fork, moving it up and down subtly. "It was the whole thing, the gestalt."

"Gestalt?" She wasn't sure she had heard him correctly.

But then she heard the word echo, this time in a feminine British accent.

"Gestalt? Is that something that interests you?" It was Lady Catherine. She had moved and was now close enough to Darcy to hear his final word, and she had seized on it as her passport into the conversation. Lizzy was almost certain she had heard nothing before it, none of its context. She seemed merely curious, more so about Darcy than his word.

He turned and, putting his plate down, he smiled.

Lizzy had not yet beheld that smile, although he had smiled at her a little a few times. But this smile was charming. It provided a crosslight for Darcy's wide, firm jaw and his earnest eyes. If it was insincere—and Lizzy knew it was, it had to be—it was undetectably so, consummately professional, compensating for his amateurish start at Wickham's appearance. Cary Grant would have envied that smile. Even though it wasn’t for her, she felt it to her feet.

In that moment, she gained a visceral understanding of why Darcy was MI-6's best. She also noticed Wickham's instant displeasure at Darcy's smile, although the expression instantly disappeared.

Lady Catherine felt the smile too. She squirmed slightly on her feet, the movement slight but serpentine. "Hello and welcome. I don't believe we have met. Perhaps one of you is from the CPL?"

Lizzy raised her hand, making sure that she looked both embarrassed and overawed by the grand lady’s notice. "That'd be me. Fanny Prince. This is my plus one , my boyfriend, Ned Moreland."

"I'm Lady Catherine, your hostess.” She nodded at them both. Sidestepping to allow her companion to move forward and join them, she added, “and this is my good friend, George Wickham."

He took another step forward, extending his hand to Darcy, who took it smoothly and shook it, dimming his smile a bit but saying hello. "Good to meet you, Mr. Wickham."

Laughing, Wickham waved a hand. "No Mr. Wickham. Just call me George." His accent was British but not pronounced. Lizzy wasn't sure if that was natural to him or if he had worked to reduce it. "I'm glad to meet you.” He shifted his attention to Lizzy. “CPL, Miss Prince?"

"Call me Fanny," she said, offering her most musical laugh. Darcy gave her a look. "Yes, I work at the CPL, the Chicago Public Library. I'm a librarian at the Harold Washington Library Center on South State Street."

Wickham gave her a smile of disbelief and turned to Lady Catherine. "A librarian?" It wasn't clear if he was asking for confirmation of profession or explanation of presence.

She took it to mean the latter. "I always invite a CPL employee to my parties to show my thanks for their hard, undervalued work. The employee is chosen randomly from names submitted. Ms. Prince's name was the one chosen for this evening."

"Well," he said with smooth gallantry, "we are all lucky that she is lucky."

"Thanks." Lizzy laughed again and smiled at Wickham. "We're glad to be here. Everything's so beautiful." She made sure her “everything” included Lady Catherine.

Their hostess fixed Darcy with her blue eyes. "So, Ned, are you a librarian, too?"

He shook his head. "Oh, no, I work as an editor at a publishing house, St. Martin's, in New York. I'm visiting here for a few days. So, not a librarian, but in the book game, too, you might say."

"And 'gestalt?’" she asked, circling back to her entrance into the conversation.

"A unified whole that exceeds the sum of its parts. I was using the term"―Darcy smiled with slight embarrassment and made a small, stiff gesture―"to compliment Fanny's looks tonight. Her dress is wonderful, but she makes it so much more."

Good lie, one that crowds the truth.

"That's sweet, Ned —if I may?" When Darcy nodded, giving Lady Catherine permission to use his first name, she took Lizzy's hands in hers (without asking) and lifted her arms, holding her for display. "Yes, you do look lovely, Fanny."

Lizzy dropped her eyes. "Oh, Lady Catherine! It's obvious who's the belle of the ball!"

The woman smiled with satisfaction and glanced at Darcy, who nodded eagerly.

Wickham merely raised an eyebrow and smiled a quick, small, sardonic smile at Lady Catherine, who was too focused on her two guests to catch his expression. "I'm very glad you are here, Fanny. There'll be a performance later, Janá?ek's String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters ." She gave Darcy a wide, fetching smile…or at least tried to stretch as close to it as her fixed features would allow.

Wickham’s hand moved to Lady Catherine's arm. "You have other guests you should attend to, Catherine."

She gave him a ruffled, annoyed look, but quickly smoothed her face. "It was good to meet you, Ned and Fanny. Enjoy yourselves. Eat, drink, and be merry, as the saying goes. I hope to talk to you again before the evening ends." Her eyes were on Darcy. Lizzy took advantage of the moment to smile at Wickham―a gratuitous smile that she could tell interested him.

The two of them glided away and were soon hidden amid the crowd of partygoers. Lizzy noticed that the music that had greeted them had stopped at some point; she wasn't sure when. She had been so intent on the conversation, on being Fanny, Fanny with Ned.

Darcy took her hand, squeezing it. "Well played, Fanny. Well played." He did not seem happy about her success.

"What about you? Lady Catherine?"

He frowned. "That's a problem, but I didn't want to discourage her yet. We don't know how things may go, and we may need to wheedle information from her."

"Wheedle? Is that what they're calling it now?" She poked him in the ribs with her elbow.

He shook his head. "Funny." He didn't laugh. "Your boss said you were funny. I was warned." He looked around, blew out a long breath, and went on, softly, “I don't want to discourage her yet , but believe me, beyond what just happened, I won't be encouraging her. We’re not prepared for her to be the mark. My backstory's not crafted for me to be much exposed to either of them. Ned was created to be absent, not present. This is your show, Fanny."

"I get it," Lizzy said, affected by Darcy's glum, angry tone. She noticed that the servants had taken their plates. "Let's separate, move around, and see what happens. I have a feeling that Wickham's going to find a way to talk to me if he can find me alone."

He nodded once and stalked away from her.

She stood, puzzled by his simmering discontent. That had gone about as well as such meetings could go. All the boxes checked and then some. She had tempted George Wickham. Of that she was sure. And she had humbled herself before Lady Catherine. Each had been difficult. She wanted to be proud of herself, to feel vindicated, to triumph over Darcy's misjudgment. The sullen reaction he displayed left her feeling empty, ashamed of herself. His acknowledgment of how well she had done had been real but hollow. Not a sore loser but just…sore.

God, I hate honeypot missions!

Just as she turned to march in the opposite direction from him, a short man blocked her path. "Excuse me, please!" He looked up into her face with a gargoyle grin, ingenuously ingratiating.

"No problem," Lizzy said with a quick smile. The man was a priest. He wore a gray jacket, gray slacks, and a black shirt with a clerical collar. He might have stood out among all the tuxedos if he weren't so close to the ground.

As she altered her course to pass him, he mirrored her movement, and they ended up in each other's way again. They tried again on the opposite side with the same result. The man giggled. He had straight black hair that he had parted and combed over, but it had fallen onto his forehead. He looked vaguely like Moe of the Three Stooges but with a softer, rounder face and smaller features.

"I'm so sorry. We seem to be dancing, but there is no music."

She laughed and gave a shallow, ironic bow. "Pardon me, I make a poor partner."

"That's untrue." He did not move to let her pass. Instead, he bowed to her, the bow deep, slow, and awkward. "I am Robyn Collingwood. 'Robyn' with a 'y.' And you?"

"Fanny Prince. Nice to meet you."

"I don't believe I have seen you at one of these soirees before. I would remember you." No leer laced his tone. "That is the best dress."

Lizzy looked down at herself as if she had forgotten what she was wearing. "This old thing?" He smiled, showing his enjoyment of her humor. She went on, “I'm a librarian, CPL, here at the invitation of Lady Catherine."

Collingwood nodded knowingly. "Ah, yes. Lady Catherine and her largesse. Well, this time the bestowal of good favor ran backward. I believe you are more a blessing to the party than the other way around." He spoke and then seemed to listen to his own words, smiling at himself when he heard them.

She gave him a friendly smirk. "That's kind of you, but I'm excited to be here. Do you know Lady Catherine well?"

"I suppose I do. She is a member of my church. I'm an Episcopal priest at St. James, a small parish nearby." He searched the room and then leaned toward her. "She is a member. But she doesn't attend. I attend her." He nodded at her as if to underline the distinction. "That's no hardship, though. I spend time in this lovely mansion, enjoy these lavish parties, and meet beautiful people."

"She has you here often?" Lizzy asked, somewhat puzzled.

He inhaled. "Yes, for various reasons. But mostly for confession. I'm here for that…often." He raised an eyebrow, but discreetly.

Unsure what to make of that, she decided to treat it as a joke. "Right. How long have you known her?"

"Several years," he shrugged as if counting would be a wearisome burden. "She's a demanding woman, but her membership in the church, her giving…Well, we couldn't do what we do without it." He shrugged again but in a different way. "As one of my seminary professors used to say, some serve God in the pew, some serve God by providing pews."

Lizzy tried to decide how Fanny should respond. There'd been nothing in Darcy's backstory about Fanny's religion or religious upbringing. She decided to treat the omission as if it were the story. "Huh. I don't know anything about that. My parents were not religious, and I had no religious upbringing as a child. A blank, really. I've been to church services, I guess a few on Christmas and Easter, but those were times I went with friends."

He was watching the other guests but listening. "Yes, religion no longer has the place in lives that it should. We've lost our sense of submission, our sense that there is anything greater than us."

"Does Lady Catherine have a sense of submission?"

He glanced at Lizzy, chuckling. "The submission of others—a lively sense of that. And of submission to her own caprice, a lively sense of that, too. But I didn’t mean submission of others or submission to self. Although I suppose the latter is as close to God as most modern people manage, treating their own choices and preferences as if choice or preference were divine."

Lizzy noticed that Lady Catherine was again talking to Darcy on the far side of the room near the door Wickham had used for his exit.

"I suppose so," she said, trying to sound engaged but non-committal.

Collingwood looked at her directly. "I'm not speaking from age or infirmity. You and I are not that far apart in years."

"True, but—"

"Ah, Father Robyn," Wickham said.

Lizzy jumped. He had approached from behind, and she did not realize he was there until he appeared beside her. She smiled and blushed, embarrassed at herself for being surprised. Agents were not supposed to be surprised. Luckily, Wickham took her reddening to be a flush of pleasure at seeing him. He smiled at her but handed Collingwood a glass of champagne; Wickham had brought one in each hand.

Collingwood smiled. "Thanks, Mr. Wickham." Neither the smile nor the thanks were enthusiastic.

Wickham either did not notice or did not care. "My pleasure."

The priest sipped at the champagne, actually slurping it a little, and the slurp changed Wickham's expression from slightly amused to slightly annoyed. There was an odd dynamic between the two men, a past that seemed present in the room although impenetrable to Lizzy.

Collingwood made a gesture of farewell with the hand holding his champagne flute, slopping the golden liquid to the lip but not spilling it. He smiled at himself as Wickham frowned at him, and then he met Wickham's gaze. "My cup almost runneth over." He nodded at Lizzy. "Fanny, lovely to meet you."

He walked away. Wickham turned in place, watching him go. "It's amazing, what’s happened to the church. Gay priests." His tone was carefully neutral, carefully placed between observation and complaint.

"Oh. Father Robyn?"

"Yes," Wickham said. "Probably the only sort of priest safe around Lady Catherine." He glanced at Lizzy, weighing her response to what he said.

She kept her face as neutral as his tone and let a few seconds pass. Then she faced him. "I thought Lady Catherine was your… friend." She allowed herself a deliberate teasing ritardando, producing the final word almost independent of the rest of the sentence.

"Yes, we are friends. We will remain friends."

"Really? No matter what?"

He seemed unsure how to take her question—and that had been her intention. Her face was still neutral. But he nodded. "Yes, I think so. We've been many things to each other over the years. We've proven we're seaworthy, storms and dead calms."

"What's the current weather?" she asked lightly.

"Dead calm," he said without looking at her. He was watching Father Robyn talking to a young man at the buffet table.

"It's hard to imagine. She seems so…impressive, so full of vigor." Lizzy hadn't intended it, but the comment seemed like an indulgent comment about someone elderly.

Wickham huffed a laugh. "Indeed, she is that. Where's your boyfriend, Ned?"

"I thought he was over by the far door. Last I saw, he was talking to Lady Catherine."

"Ah, divide and conquer." He said with a smirk as if it were a joke, but it did not feel that way to Lizzy, perhaps because she could only see him in profile.

"So, what do you do, George?"

He paused before he turned to her. "Travel, mostly. I have money—not like Lady Catherine, but I'm comfortable. I do work now and then. I studied architecture for a time. While I didn't finish school, I have friends who let me help with projects and keep my hand in. I admit, though, I am here in Chicago entirely idle."

"It's a great city, still with some of that Sandberg common grandeur."

"Sandburg?"

"Yes, his poem, Chicago." Lizzy dredged up some words from memory:

" They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

“And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

“And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

“And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

“Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

"That's a few lines of it, although not perhaps the most famous ones."

He stood silently, thinking. "I like that. A librarian with a ready quotation. Sandburg must be too American for us to be exposed to him in England. But I like that. '...Lifted head singing so proud…and coarse and strong and cunning.'"

Lizzy smiled, but the words about the gunman lingered with her. She needed to remember who she was facing. The danger.

Darcy reappeared then. She saw him halfway across the room, making his way to her, staring at her and Wickham.

"Oh, there's Ned!" She waved, and Darcy waved back.

Wickham took his leave of her and was gone before Darcy reached them. Once near enough to do so, Darcy took her hand as they watched Wickham move away. Then he steered them both into an empty corner of the room.

"So?"

"He's definitely interested. I think that conversation was testing, toe-in-the-water."

He nodded, his jaw clenched. "Lady Catherine cannot pace herself. She all but propositioned me when we stepped off the porch to see some of the garden."

"The garden?"

"Yes, she's very proud of her garden."

"I bet," she said, not intending to sound testy but doing so.

Darcy looked at her. "I was able to fend her off, basically by playing dumb, as if I didn't quite understand or quite believe what she wanted. Luckily, a tipsy, disheveled couple emerged from the very bushes Lady Catherine was walking me toward. I used the interruption as an excuse to escape, to come back to you."

"I met the gardener's priest." Lizzy offered.

"Priest?"

She craned her head and looked around. She was unsure if Father Robyn had left or if he was obscured by the crowd. "He was here. His name is Robyn Collingwood."

Darcy's eyes widened. "What?"

"Do you know him?"

"No, but there was a philosopher at Oxford, philosopher-famous, who was named R. G. Collingwood. Robin George."

"Odd. This man was an American Episcopal priest. And he's 'Robyn'…with a 'y.’"

He shook his head. "I knew she gave money to the church. I didn't know she hobnobbed with a priest. Do you think they…?"

"I doubt it. Wickham knew him, spoke to him. After he left, Wickham told me he’s gay."

"Do you agree?"

Lizzy pondered the question and then nodded. "Yes, I do. I also get the feeling that those two don't care for each other."

"Let's circulate a little more but as a couple," Darcy suggested. "Then, let's get out of here—before we get trapped into listening to Intimate Letters. "

***

Later, the couple arrived back at Fanny's apartment building. The CIA employee at the security desk had a package for Fanny and gave it to her as she and Darcy crossed the lobby. When they were on the elevator, she held it up.

"From Bingley,” Darcy said. “It should be a computer and a phone for Fanny."

When they got into the apartment, Lizzy went into the bedroom and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt. She padded out barefoot to find Darcy with the computer set up on the marble counter and a phone beside it. He was seated on a stool and motioned for her to sit beside him.

After she did, he touched a button on the computer screen, and Charlie was looking at them from it. "Hey Lizzy, how was the party? Darcy said it went according to plan."

"Yes, I think so. What have you been doing?"

"Just making sure our equipment is ready. From here on out, you'll be on comms when Wickham or Lady Catherine is in your apartment. The phone is set up. You have a personal number for Fanny, and her CPL number will transfer to that phone."

"CPL number?"

Darcy answered. "Yes, we've got a site piggybacking on CPL's. If anyone searches for you there, they'll be redirected to a CIA server with a personal page for you, information about you at CPL. There's also a number, the one Bingley mentioned. That way, if Wickham decides to find you, he can."

"But what if he goes to the library looking for me?"

"He won't." Darcy smiled. "It's not his style. It would look like he was chasing you. And the place is too big, too public, too many employees. Also, before Lady Catherine tried to lead me down the garden path, I told her you were planning to take a few days off, that you'd intended to spend them with me but I had been called back to New York tomorrow. She believes you’re just going to spend the time on stay-cation, resting and perhaps seeing some of the sights of Chicago you'd yet to see."

"Oh, so the thought is that she will tell Wickham and he will call? You created a window of opportunity for him?"

"Yes. He won't chase you, but he will call and give you a chance to chase him. It may seem like semantics to you, but they’re not to him. The corruption is deepest when you choose it, not when he coerces you."

"He wants me to want to cheat on you, though I know it's wrong?"

"Yes. He's the sort of man who finds your guilt sexy, although he feels none himself."

That comment brought the discussion to a temporary halt.

Charlie broke the silence. "By the way, Lizzy, take a photo and send it to me. I don't have one of you blonde, and I need it for your personal page."

"Okay. Night, Charlie."

"Night, Lizzy. See you in a minute, Darcy."

Once he turned off the computer, Darcy picked up her phone and pointed it at her. She straightened and fluffed her hair. He took a picture, then turned the phone so she could see it. She was surprised at how good it turned out. Darcy had a good eye. "That'll do."

He sent it to Charlie and stood. "You did a good job tonight, Agent Bennet. I was impressed. And I was wrong. You certainly can tempt—you’ve tempted George Wickham. I underestimated your hair. Much more than that, I underestimated you. I can be pigheaded, sure that I'm right. And Wickham…" He paused, shifting his weight, softening his voice. "I didn't see Wickham make any effort to talk to any other woman after he met you. And without exactly saying so, Lady Catherine thought he was taken by you. Taken enough for her to try to press herself upon me."

Lizzy accepted his praise with a nod. She was beginning to reckon with what the next few days likely held for her and whether or not she could endure them. Now that the party was over and she had seen Wickham, now that the lights and music were done, the prospect ahead was bleak: working Wickham up close, trying to get him to shed his secrets while she kept her clothes on.

Her acceptance of the mission had been driven by anger at Darcy, a desire to prove him wrong. He seemed sorry to have been proven wrong, but he seemed sorry for her sake, not his. Or at any rate, he seemed more sorry that she was right than he was at being wrong.

Or something.

It was not her sort of mission, even if, so far, it had gone…according to plan.

The uncertainty that she felt when Darcy left earlier in the day returned and filled the room like indoor weather. He felt it too.

He headed toward the door. "Goodnight," he said to her, stepping into the hallway.

As he walked out, one of the other tenants walked by. Moving quickly back to Lizzy, Darcy kissed her firmly on the mouth. She knew it was for the sake of the cover and reacted, putting her arms around him.

"Night," she said again, this time in a whisper, moving her lips to his ear. His returning stubble rasped her cheek. Then he was gone.

She closed the door and darted her tongue over her lips. She could taste Darcy faintly there.