A/N: A new story. An introductory chapter.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

Chapter One: New Mission

Elizabeth Bennet stalked through the Langley hallways, her spike heels echoing in different directions at each strike, down different hallways, making it seem that not one woman but a synchronized squad of women was on the move.

It was late at night or very early in the morning, almost one a.m., and Elizabeth had been summoned to Langley by the CIA Director, Hall Kellynch.

Lizzy was unhappy about the call. She had returned from a deep-cover assignment a week before, one which had emptied her mentally and physically. She had been desperate for time off, time to be herself, no cover, Lizzy, wear her own pajamas, eat her own food, and sleep in her own bed. Think my own thoughts, do my own deeds. She had spent three months as someone else, forced to think and act doubly, always shadowing and monitoring herself. The first requirement of a deep-cover spy assignment was spying on yourself, measuring and angling your actions, and ensuring that you seemed the person you were supposed to be. It was utterly exhausting, and, worse, dehumanizing. You had to think and act in ways that you could not own but to do it for so long, and with so little downtime, that it was hard at times to remember who was the pretense and who was the pretender.

Kellynch had been apologetic on the phone but ultimately insistent. Lizzy had tried to refuse and suggested other agents, but Kellynch had not yielded. He regretted that it was necessary to send her into the field again so soon, but he had already secured the go-ahead from the Company psychologist who had overseen her debriefing after her last assignment. Lizzy had no grounds for refusal other than her preference, and she was not going to fight for her preference with her boss. She was headstrong but not obstinate. Kellynch was, at bottom, a decent man, but he was, as his position required, a hard man. The combination of traits made him brittle, glassy, driven by jealousy for the Company's reputation and standing, and by vanity about its success under his leadership. Each morning in his office, over coffee, he combed and re-combed the internet for positive press, mentions. Lizzy was his best, as he would often tell her — as he'd repeated to her on the phone earlier — and this mission required his best.

As she crossed the Central Intelligence Agency logo on the marble floor, she took a deep breath. At the desk in front of the door to Kellynch's office sat his administrative assistant, Charlotte Lucas.

Charlotte smiled at Lizzy, her smile warm but laced with subtext. While Lizzy and Charlotte were more than acquaintances, perhaps even friends, Charlotte envied Lizzy. Charlotte had been low-key in love with Hall Kellynch for all the years she had worked for him. Low-key because Charlotte was never otherwise, about anything. That did not make her love for Kellynch less real; it made it Charlotte's. But Charlotte had always interpreted Kellynch's favoritism for Lizzie as partly romantic and not wholly professional.

"Morning, Charlotte," Lizzy said quietly as she reached Charlotte's large desk. "I won't say it's a good one."

Charlotte shook her head. "I told him that you needed some time off, that it was too soon, but — " Charlotte stopped, fighting a forming frown from her face, " — but he had to have you for this."

Charlotte managed not to stress the you but Lizzy heard it with that stress and took Charlotte to mean with that stress.

Lizzy simply nodded, sighing. "I know. He said. On the phone. Thanks, Charlotte."

Charlotte was wrong about Kellynch, Lizzy was sure, and once, a year ago, Lizzy had tried to disabuse Charlotte of the notion but the conversation had not gone well. Charlotte had gotten angry — angered by Lizzy's cluelessness and by Lizzy's involuntary but clear recoil from the thought of Kellynch's interest. "He's worth having, even if you don't want him," Charlotte had hissed, red-faced — and by silent contract the two of them had awkwardly avoided the topic since.

Before Lizzy could step around the desk to enter Kellynch's office, Charlotte leaned forward, gesturing for Lizzy to lean toward her. "He's got two men in there, Agent Bingley and another man I don't know — but I think he's MI-6," Charlotte whispered.

Strange, for these whispers to seem out of place in Langley.

Lizzy nodded and smoothed her blouse and checked the slim belt of her pants. Charlotte's frown returned as she watched the gestures.

Lizzy pretended not to notice. Someone from MI-6? Who? Why? She'd had little luck with inter-agency missions.

Charlie Bingley, CIA, was familiar to Lizzy, one of the few of her colleagues she liked and respected. Her regard was not so much for his skills as an agent — adequate but no more — as it was for his remarkable good nature.

Few people could do the job long without it tainting them. Embittering them. In fact, most came to the job tainted, embittered already. The CIA did not collect the best and the brightest, as a rule, but rather the botched and the bungled. But there were exceptions like Bingley. And, Lizzy hoped, like herself. Not that she wasn't broken — a little. But she did not believe she was (yet) tainted or soured. A certain brutal cynicism was the ruling dispassion of the agency, and although Lizzy occasionally found it tempting, she had exerted herself to resist it.

She stepped through the open door into Director Kellynch's office. It was at the top of Langley, and huge, one long side, the one opposite Lizzy as she entered, covered entirely in windows. At the moment, only distant lights in the darkness of Fairfax County showed through them, and because of the dark, Lizzy could see herself as she entered.

She was wearing green, her blouse a light green, her pants a dark, forest green. She knew that green made her eyes more intense, making their brown more earthy, richer. She habitually wore spike heels to Kellynch's office, as she had tonight, a brown pair. The heels were her way of compensating for her height. She was not short, but she was not tall, not physically imposing. She could hold her own, and had on numerous occasions (she had scars to prove it), but she never liked seeming…diminished…in Kellynch's presence.

His implicit confidence in her, his reliance on her, — these were cornerstones of her self-respect. She knew she was a good agent, intellectually, but she only felt a gut certainty that she was when Kellynch said so. And that gut certainty was what kept her alive, and allowed her to endure missions like her last one. Had doubt crept in, she might not have lived to return to Langley.

Kellynch stood as she walked farther into the office. The two men did too. Bingley, and the stranger from MI-6.

Bingley looked as he always did. Medium height, medium build. Medium in every way. He had dark blond hair and pale blue eyes, good teeth — he was displaying them now — and a perennially eager posture, always seeming vaguely as if he were about to leave the room. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a white dress shirt, no tie. Like Lizzy's, his shoes were brown — but not high heels.

The other man was tall. Lizzy actually had to tilt her head a bit to look into his face. His build was athletic but square — powerful — much more wrestler than gymnast, although he was not heavy. Husky was the word that came to mind, large and energetic. He had very dark eyes, so dark that his pupils were lost in his irises. Because of that, at first glance, his eyes gave the impression of infinite depth, bottomlessness. His face was impassive when Lizzy first looked into it, but then he smiled.

The smile was not warm but it wasn't false. Wary, or maybe uncomfortable. The smile returned the pupils to his eyes somehow, and he seemed more flesh and less marmoreal. He nodded to her once, lightly,

"Hey, Bennet," Bingley began, striding to her and extending his hand.

She shook it and gave him a grin. "It's been a while, Bingley."

Kellynch cleared his throat. "Welcome, Agent Bennet. Glad you could join us so quickly and on such short notice." His slight smile was apologetic. "You know Agent Bingley. Let me introduce Agent Fitzwilliam Darcy, MI-6. One of their best, if not their best."

Darcy walked to her, his stride, like his earlier nod, lighter than she expected. In fact, his movement was almost balletic, surprising for a man that large.

When he drew closer, she whiffed aftershave, a very faint scent of Bay Rum.

"Good morning, Agent Bennet." He didn't extend his hand to shake hers but there was nothing hostile in his tone, nothing unfriendly in his manner. He didn't seem to intend any discourtesy. He seemed simply to have returned to impassivity.

"Please," Kellynch said, gesturing to them all, "everyone, sit. We have a few…items…to talk about." Lizzy noted a Babel of files stacked on Kellynch's desk.

When everyone was seated, Kellynch tented the fingers of his hands, assuming an almost prayer-like posture, leaned back in his swivel chair, then exhaled.

"Agent Bennet, Agent Darcy is here because of a mission of his, one begun under the auspices of MI-6 but that now has migrated, we might say, to us. He will explain that to you in due course. When his superior contacted me with a request for help here in the US, and told me about the nature of the help needed I immediately thought of you. I have been telling Darcy about you, your record. Making sure he understands you are the woman for the job."

Bingley smiled at Lizzy but Darcy gave her an appraising sidelong glance that suggested that, even if he didn't entertain explicit doubts, he wasn't yet fully convinced.

Kellynch continued. "I have brought in Bingley because the mission requires logistical support, a third to oversee what is happening, to keep up with equipment, and so on. Also, odd coincidence though it is, Bingley and Darcy know each other from years ago. They were in boarding school together in England."

England. Lizzy remembered Bingley once mentioning that he'd spent his childhood abroad, the only child of a diplomat father. The conversation had been at an impromptu Langley Christmas party, and many people had been talking at once, almost all to some degree inebriated, and Lizzy had not had a chance to ask Bingley anymore about it. But it made sense at the time and made sense now. There was something stereotypically British, something a dash BBC, in Bingley's quick good manners, his easy formality.

Bingley was American, to be sure, but with an across-the-pond polish.

But if Bingley was a dash BBC, Darcy, now that Lizzy had a better look at him, was all House of Lords.

There was something imperial about him, held himself, about how he sat in his chair, his back ramrod straight and not resting against the chairback at all.

He sits beautifully but uncomfortably. She leaned back for the sake of contrast.

"That's right," Bingley added, excited. "We lost touch for many years and only came back into contact accidentally when a mission of mine in Istanbul crossed wires with a different mission of Darcy's there at the same time. We couldn't believe that we ran into each other at all, much less that we were both…in the same line." Bingley's tone seemed astonished still. Darcy's face as he listened did not change, although he did shift his eyes at one point, staring into the distance, as if perhaps bored or as if he were recollecting the story Bingley told.

Bingley grinned. "I'm pleased to have the chance to work with him. With both of you. I expect to learn a lot from you."

Technically, Lizzy and Bingley had never been on a mission together. Normally, Lizzy worked alone. It was how she liked it. She trusted her own spy instincts implicitly and found the necessity of consulting someone else's trying. Her first impressions were rarely, if ever wrong, and she hated having to justify them to others. Better to simply act on them. She had been doing it for years and she was still alive. More than alive, the best.

Lizzy smiled at Bingley. "Thanks, Charlie. I'm sure we'll make a good team."

Darcy cleared his throat. He spoke to Kellynch. "Director Kellynch, I am sure that Agent Bennet is a fine spy, but, well…"

"Hold on, Darcy," Kellynch said. "Why don't you tell us all what it is you need to be done, so that Agent Bennet," Kellynch held her name by the edges, imitating Darcy, "so that Agent Bennet can decide whether or not she's a good fit, and inform us of her decision."

Darcy lifted his eyebrows but his shoulders sank almost imperceptibly. Lizzy noticed it and thought she saw a flicker of frustration in his dark eyes.

"Yes, Director. I have been trailing a terrorist for several months. His real name, unknown to almost everyone, is George Wickham, but his other name, his alias, is well-known: The Wicker Man."

Lizzy sat up straight at the name. She did know it. Virtually anyone who worked in intelligence did. The Wicker Man was a terrorist's terrorist, a killer who plagued the dreams of other killers. He was responsible — at least reputedly responsible — for some of the most disturbing, lethal attacks of the past decade. Women dead, children dead, sometimes by the scores. He murdered so as to maximize fear and insecurity, to make victims of everyone who heard the news, not only those, say, in the radius of the bomb blast. But no one, so far as Lizzy knew, had ever identified him, ever had a scrap of creditable intel as to his identity or his whereabouts.

Bingley was shaking his head. "It's amazing, Darcy, that you've figured out who he is. Not one had a guess."

Darcy looked grim. "Knowing his identity is something, yes, but he can change that easily. The man is not a chameleon by comparison, he's a chameleon by nature. If he realizes we know who he is, know the name, George Wickham, he will kill that name, that identity, and resurrect himself as someone else, perhaps after extensive plastic surgery. This man is not attached to his own face if you understand my meaning. He only cares about his…work."

"He's come to the States for reasons that are unclear. Right now, he has no idea that I have identified him, that I am trailing him. I've followed him from Berlin to London to here, DC."

Lizzy sat farther forward in her chair. "If you know who he is, and where he is, why haven't you taken him?"

Darcy turned to her. "Indeed. But The Wicker Man is not only George Wickham. The Wicker Man is an international network of terrorists and double agents and informants, a ramiculated web of weapons, money, and death. I'm not hoping only to capture George Wickham, I want to bring The Wicker Man to heel." Darcy showed his white teeth, not a smile. "I want to destroy the whole web. To do that, I need to get close to him; or, rather, I need someone to get close to him."

"Close to him?" Bingley asked. Lizzy felt her heart chill. She understood who that someone was to be.

"Yes, close to him. Wickham has only one real weakness. Women. I've discovered this in the time I have surveilled him. He's a womanizer — but, odd to say, cautiously so. I need a female agent who can infiltrate his circle. Arouse his interest. Hold it."

Lizzy shifted in her chair, looking at Kellynch and ignoring Darcy. "Just to be clear: you want me…for a honeypot?"

Kellynch untented his hands and put his feet, his heels and not just his toes, on the ground.

"Yes, I do. We need you to get close to Wickham, gain his trust, and allow us to identify at least the key figures in his network. Discover how the network is funded. And so on. I know this isn't your favorite sort of assignment, and I know you're just back from deep cover, but I believe you're the woman Agent Darcy needs."

Darcy cleared his throat again. "Director, all due respect, but I have been studying Wickham, observing him as much as possible, as close to around the clock as possible. I know him better than anyone in the intelligence community. Anyone." He paused to look the Director significantly in the eye. "Wickham prefers his women blonde…"

Lizzy turned to Darcy, annoyed by the drift of his remarks. "I can be blonde by morning!"

Darcy went on stubbornly, still looking at Kellynch and not at Lizzy. "Blonde, sir, and…voluptuous." He finally turned to Lizzy as if daring her to claim she could be voluptuous by morning.

Lizzy felt her face redden. She could not remember the last time that had happened. She did not blush. "I…I — " She looked at Kellynch.

"Director Kellynch, again, sir, all due respect, but Agent Bennet…while tolerable, pretty enough, isn't handsome, isn't sexy enough…to tempt George Wickham."

Lizzy stood, almost jumped to her feet, turning to face Darcy. She forgot her distaste for such assignments in her embarrassment and indignation.

"Whether I can tempt George Wickham is not to be decided by surreptitious, side-eyed assessments of my tits or my ass, Agent Darcy. Seduction begins between a woman's ears. It's about how she handles herself, not about what the man sees to handle! I can tempt George Wickham; I guarantee it!"

Darcy sat back in his chair at last, overwhelmed, surprised by her incandescent anger.

Lizzy realized with a sinking feeling that Kellynch was chuckling behind her. Damn! He had goaded Darcy into baiting Lizzy, and Lizzy had taken the bait. "So, Agent Bennet," Kellynch said in a smooth, final tone, his question rhetorical, "I take it you've accepted the assignment?"

"Yes!" she said, supplying the unnecessary answer, then closed her mouth, hooked.

"No!" Darcy protested.

But Kellynch had already stood and had picked up his phone.

More soon, if it seems folks are interested.