A/N: Onward.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

Chapter 15: Breach

Lizzy finished her coffee, stuffed her dread deep inside, and bought the Yeats book.

She pocketed the small, thin volume in her coat and walked quickly back toward her apartment. Seeing Darcy had quickened her pulse, and having him read her that poem had made her body ache.

Between the events of last night and those of today, and those looming tonight, she had managed to forget how tired she was — but the tiredness returned as she finished her walk, the wind gusting harder, forcing her to lean into it. She put her hand to the collar of her coat and held it shut, narrowing her eyes. She needed to get inside her apartment; she needed a long nap, a few hours of nothingness, of unconsciousness, before she faced the challenge of the evening, the hyperconsciousness, the double-consciousness, it would demand.

A fragment of Thoreau, of Walden, floated to the surface of her mind: to be "beside ourselves in a sane sense". That was the problem: to be beside yourself, inside and outside yourself at the same time — but without losing your mind by halving it.

As she neared the apartment, she thought again about her father and his death. She and her mother had buried him on a January day in Rochester that looked and felt much like this dark, cold October day in Chicago. As his casket had been lowered, Lizzy had felt more numb than she ever had felt, and she had felt numb since the call from her mother telling her that her father had passed. As Lizzy reached her teenage years, and especially when she went off to college, she came to see her father with increasing clarity and became more aware of his shortcomings, in particular his self-indulgence. He was a detached, distant observer, even of himself. He felt no responsibility for his shortcomings; they were simply an unfortunate fact about that man who happened to be himself but for whom he felt no more answerable than he did about his neighbors. The only thing he had ever taken seriously, taken any responsibility for, was Lizzy, Lizzy's education. Her father was a bookish man, himself once a Haverford student and later a graduate student at the University of Rochester. (He had met Lizzy's mother in Rochester. Lizzy's maternal grandfather was an executive at Kodak.)

But as bright as her father was, he had no taste for self-reflection or self-discipline. In relation to himself, he constantly chose what was easy or expedient, not what was right. It was worse than no taste for it: he seemed to have no capacity for it.

He did somewhat better with Lizzy, at least where education was concerned, not only teaching her at home but also attempting to teach her that education was intrinsically valuable, worth having for its own sake, independent of any consequences it might have.

But her father's lessons had confused Lizzy; his spoken precept and his lived example parted company. She had ended up caring about what he wanted not so much for itself but because it kept them close, kept him interested in her. Later, at college, that would change, and she would become much more interested in education itself. Or she would until her father's death derailed her, derailed her plans, sent her in another direction. The opposite direction.

Over the years, since she joined the CIA, she had refused to wonder about why she had done it, became a spy, why she had let Jane talk her into a choice so unanticipated, so radical. Jim Haden had been right; it was out of character.

But now as she walked along, head down, the wind pushing against her, she did wonder: How did I get here? Whatever the story about Jane's effect on her, Jane's salesmanship (so to speak), whatever the story about Lizzy's choice to join the CIA, she had stayed, after all, and she had worked hard, doggedly.

Why?

Her feet stopped but her thoughts raced.

She — she had worked as hard and as well as she had as an agent because Hall Kellynch had stepped into the hole left in her life by her father's death. Kellynch hadn't adopted but she had adopted him. Or maybe he had sort of adopted her too, had known how lost she was without her father.

Why hadn't I seen that before, understood it? Why now?

Darcy. He had stirred her to depths nothing had other than her father's passing. Darcy could do that. He had done it in Kellynch's office, provoked her to immediate unreasonable anger and a sensitive, wounded pride — neither of which was like her. She had made her career as an agent by means of her mastery of herself, and her carefully measured responses, both when undercover and when not. Without being icy or mechanical, she had managed to acquire a reputation for exactness and efficiency. She owed some of that, she knew, to her father. Without duplicating him, she had acquired his trick of detached, distanced self-observation. Unlike him, though, she did feel a responsibility for herself: a deep and lively responsibility.

It occurred to her as she reached the door of her apartment building that her father had, in a strange way, lacked a conscience. Not that he had no inner voice that spoke right and wrong to him, but that his inner voice spoke to him as someone else's voice. It was as if he had someone else's conscience, an inner voice whose innerness was like a ventriloquist's trick, the voice inside him thrown from elsewhere.

She made herself shut off her thoughts of her father and her past and she strode to the security desk, unbuttoning the top button of her coat and smiling. "Hi, I'm Fanny Prince, 1019. I'm expecting a visitor tonight at around 8 p.m., George Wickham." The name tasted bitter on her tongue but she made herself go on smiling. "Please send him up."

The man nodded, jotting down the name. 'I'll be off-shift by then but I'll tell my replacement."

He smiled up at her from his seat. She gave him a small wave and walked to the elevator.

Another thought struck her as she waited for the elevator doors to open, making the indoors feel outdoors cold. She had given a vampire permission to enter.

The nap did less for Lizzy than she hoped. Much less.

Instead of a blissful loss of consciousness, it was as if her consciousness had become runny and distorted but not lost, and she dreamed strange, episodic dreams, always beginning with her in Darcy's arms, taking off her clothes in a rush, with Darcy's help, eager, both so eager — but always ending with her naked and ashamed in Wickham's arms, staring up through hot tears into his malicious and supercilious smile, a smile of cold possession so total that Lizzy felt a new rush of sympathy and horror for Georgiana.

She got up and went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face trying to chase the image of Wickham's smile from her mind. But it lingered, Cheshire Cat, not only in Lizzy's mind but in the bathroom and the bedroom and the whole apartment, as if waiting for him to arrive, pluck it from the air, and put it on.

Her nerves were taut and vibrating, like hard-strummed guitar strings, and they would not stop buzzing. Her nap had made her feel worse, not better. Demoralized. She put coffee on hoping it might help, and as it brewed, she went to the bedroom and began to consider what she would wear for Wickham's visit.

It was a delicate question, terrifying even. Until now, she had seen Wickham only in public places — parties, restaurants, dinners. She had dressed to be in public. But tonight he would be in her apartment, alone with her, at least as he understood the situation. He was expecting her to expect him to make love to her. No doubt he was also expecting a show of resistance, but he would expect that show to end, and for the curtain to go up and not down when it did.

She was not going to take Wickham's pointed advice and dress comfortably. Hell, no. He was probably hoping for pajamas, for something that suggested the bedroom while not conceding it immediately, as lingerie would. But clothing that foreshadowed Fanny's eventual surrender.

Lizzy was standing in front of her closet when her phone rang. Not Fanny's phone. Her work phone, her CIA phone. Not the least of the demands of the mission was the phone jugglery, Fanny's, Agent Bennet's (her work phone), and Lizzy's (her personal phone). She would have to make sure two of the three were off and hidden before Wickham arrived. She did not want to commit her version of his forgotten phone number mistake.

She ran around the bed and opened the drawer of her nightstand. She grabbed the phone and looked at it, expecting the call to be from either Darcy or Bingley, but it was from neither.

Kellynch. Kellynch's private number was on the screen

The number had appeared on her phone the night she was called to Kellynch's office in Langley, called to meet with Darcy and Bingley. That appearance of the number had started all this.

Lizzy exhaled as the phone rang again, this time in her hand.

Kellynch doesn't call me on missions, not in deep cover. If he needed to call, he'd call Darcy, the Agent In Charge.

What's going on?

She glanced around the room, surveying it, for no good reason other than that the number on the screen spooked her. The apartment was empty, and quiet except for the ringing phone.

"Agent Bennet, sir."

"Hello, Agent. My apologies for calling you but I understood that you were not to meet with your mark until later this evening…"

"Yes, sir, that's right. 8 p.m. Still a while from now." It didn't feel that way to Lizzy but there was no point in saying so to Kellynch. "May I ask why you're calling, sir?" She hazarded the question, knowing that Kellynch would expect it from her. The call was too unusual not to awaken perplexity.

She was surprised by his pause before answering. Kellynch was rarely at any loss for words. "Um, yes, well — yes, you may. I'm calling to find out how things are going."

"Things, sir?"

"The mission. I'm not second-guessing Agent Darcy's leadership, or not really, but this is all odd — and has been from the beginning. Darcy's superior at MI-6, my counterpart there, promised me more information, and I've waited patiently for me, but I've gotten almost none.

"I don't like being made to feel like I'm a mere tool, Agent. And I'm beginning to feel that way — and to fear that you are being made a mere tool too. Darcy's tool."

Lizzy might have found this darkly funny some other day, a day after a different night, a day with bright sunlight and without the expected evening advent of Wickham, she might have found it a bit of shadowy irony, since Kellynch made tools of people constantly; that was another name for his job.

"Yes, sir," she said when he paused, careful not to make it clear if she was agreeing or only indicating that she understood.

He continued. "I know you don't like these missions and I don't like feeling as if the mission's not mine, not the CIA's. Darcy's been no more forthcoming than his boss at MI-6. Is there something about the mission or his involvement in it I need to know?"

Kellynch had intuition but Lizzy was now sure, only his intuition. Something about the mission felt off to Kellynch, and that feeling had finally spurred him into the unprecedented action of calling Lizzy.

Georgiana.

That was what — who — Kellynch intuited. But Darcy had so far managed to keep her out of view. Darcy's boss was cooperating and had so far managed to keep Kellynch and almost everyone else in the dark. Loyalty tugged at Lizzy, her old loyalty to Kellynch, reaching back to her earliest days in the Company. Loyalty. At any other time, in any other situation, she would have told Kellynch. But not now, not in this situation. She would not expose Georgiana, not give up Darcy's secret. Lizzy would protect Darcy's step-sister.

Protecting Georgiana now was personal to Lizzy.

"No, sir, nothing. Darcy has been good — very good. He's not only overseen the mission effectively, but he has participated in the cover assignment even more effectively. He understands Wickham and he knows how to draw him in."

"To draw him in…draw him to you?" Kellynch asked slowly, rhetorically.

"Yes, sir, to me," Lizzy answered as if the question were genuine. "Agent Darcy's been completely convincing as Ned Moreland, and Ned has been crucial to Wickham's…fascination with Fanny Prince."

"You have no reason to think that Darcy is compromised on this mission? Somehow?"

She had never lied to Kellynch before. Doing so made her take a silent breath and close her eyes; she was a practiced liar but not to him. "No reason."

He said nothing for a minute. "You're sure?" He had never questioned her before; or, he had never questioned her for years. Maybe he had, back at the beginning when she was still fresh from the Farm. But it had been so long ago she no longer remembered it; it seemed like the first time.

"I'm sure. Darcy — he's an unusual agent." She let herself talk, honest about everything but the crucial item "He's not like most agents, most of us. He takes what he does seriously. I don't just mean that he wants to do what he does well, skillfully. He's also concerned about doing right, about virtue, old-fashioned sounding things like prudence and justice and courage and temperance." Temperance. Self-control.

A smirk colored Kellynch's voice. "He comes off as a smug ass. That night when I called you in, the night when he was in my office, — after you left he basically told me how the mission would go, what I would need to supply. He didn't ask; he demanded. I chalked it up to him being a Brit, an aristocrat."

"Is he?" Lizzy asked, "an aristocrat?"

She realized she still knew little about Darcy. Boarding school with Bingley, Georgiana as step-sister, philosophy student at Cambridge, MI-6 agent. That didn't add up to much, although it was more than nothing.

When she first met him, she had thought of him vaguely as The House of Lords, but she had meant it more as an insult than an actual description.

Kellynch chuckled at her question, perhaps a bit at himself. "To be honest, I'm not sure, but he has pull with my counterpart at MI-6, serious pull for a mere agent. And, well, you've spent time with him: he's not the kind of man you refuse easily."

No. The earlier ache reclaimed Lizzy's body. Yeats and immediate heat, Darcy in her bedroom.

No — he's not.

She sat down on the bed, crossing her legs tightly. "I suppose," Lizzy made herself say aloud, lightly, to Kellynch. "Is there anything else?"

Kellynch's fingers drummed his desk in the background. "No, nothing else. But, as this call makes clear, I'm breaching protocol, and permitting you to do the same. If anything happens that bothers you, that suggests Darcy's compromised, let me know. I'll get you out of there, you and Bingley. — And Darcy too, save him from himself, if need be."

As if I weren't under enough pressure, stretched too far already, now I'm stretched between Darcy and Kellynch.

"I'll let you know, if anything happens, if anything worries me."

Another moment of silence. "You can work with him, then, you respect him?"

"Yes." I do.

"Thanks, Agent Bennet. You know I've always counted on you. You're more than…you've always been special."

"Thank you, sir."

Lizzy waited for Kellynch to end the call, and then she balanced her phone on her knee. Leaning forward, exasperated, she ran her fingers through her hair, shaking her head gently as she did so.

Darcy, Kellynch Wickham.

Shit, Wickham.

She still hadn't decided what to wear.

It was 5:30 p.m.

She eventually chose a long, oversized red sweater and a pair of black yoga pants.

She stood for a moment in the bathroom, barefoot, looking at herself. The outfit looked appropriate for loungewear, and comfortable, but no arrow to the bedroom. It was on the margins of what Wickham would be hoping for.

She pulled her hair into a loose, messy ponytail. It would do.

Her reflection smiled at her, the smile uninviting. The bathroom counter felt cool against her hands as she leaned against it. On a whim, she bowed, resting her forehead against the counter, letting it cool her head. She felt feverish but tension, not illness.

A knock on the door straightened her up immediately. She walked to the front of the apartment, noting the time before she peeked out. 6 p.m. She was worried that Wickham might have changed his schedule, and arrived early, although surely the security guard would have called her.

But it was Darcy. He didn't seem to think about her peeking through the door, and he stood in the hallway, looking like she felt. Care-worn, depressed, frazzled. But when she opened the door, he had corrected his countenance. He was smiling. She noticed then he was carrying a small box.

They stood and stared at each other, each unsure what to do. She thought they both had the impulse to embrace, maybe to kiss, but each had second thoughts. Beside ourselves in a sane sense?

"Hi," Lizzy said softly after a moment, "I didn't expect you." The comment struck her as truer than she intended, an uncanny backward prophecy, divining the past.

He nodded as if struck as she was but he did not comment.

Checking the hallway, he slipped in as she stepped aside. "I brought you a weapon. Bingley will be nearby; I'll be across the street; but I want you to have recourse to something at hand." He put the box down on the counter next to the computer. "It's your usual. Bingley checked. There's ammunition inside, and a silencer."

"Thanks," she said, "I hadn't worried about needing a weapon."

Darcy sat down with a sigh. "I don't think you need to worry about it. Wickham's no rapist, not as rapists are normally understood. Georgiana helped me to understand that."

Lizzy stepped closer, listening, her chest tightening. "I don't understand."

Darcy stared at his empty hands. He sighed again. "I've been coaching you, and creating Ned, as a result of what she told me. When Wickham found her, she was working at a boutique in London, modeling on the side. Her real love was music — she's a gifted pianist, a talented songwriter — but, although she moved to London hoping to make it in music, it never happened. People were more interested in looking at her than listening to her. Men — in the music business. Club owners would sometimes hire her, but almost always in hopes of sleeping with her. Eventually, she stopped hoping to make it and took a regular job. A man saw her there, selling dresses in the boutique, and he offered her a modeling contract. It turned out to be a genuine contract, and the man was a decent man. She began to make money not only selling clothes but wearing them on the catwalk.

He looked up at Lizzy and then back at his hands. "He saw her at a fashion show. He was there with another woman — and, yes," he smiled to himself bitterly, "she was blonde and voluptuous but no match for Georgiana. At the time, Georgiana was in a serious relationship. She had been dating a man she met online, another musician. He played in the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Paul. A violinist.

"After seeing her, Wickham pursued her with vigor, more seriously when he found out about Paul. He pursued her with vigor — but he never forced her, physically. Oh, he touched her," Darcy glanced up again, "but he always seemed to know how far he could push that. What's the American baseball flirting metaphor? Second base. He would get to second base and stop while talking about more. The same thing he's done with you. As I mentioned to you, he wants to sleep with you, he wanted to sleep with Georgiana, but he wants it to be self-betrayal, and a betrayal of someone else, someone you care about. That's what he did to Georgiana and Paul. He destroyed everything between them, by making sure that Georgiana…slept with him while still with Paul. He kept her sleeping with him and with Paul and kept her lying to Paul about it for as long as he could.

"Paul eventually guessed she was with someone else and ended it. It didn't take long after that for Wickham to begin to lose interest in Georgiana. He went on sleeping with her until he tired…of her body, and then he began to mistreat her. Not physically but psychologically. What she had done, her compromise of herself and of Paul, her broken promises…" Darcy paused and Lizzy thought about the word 'compromise', "...had already sunk her self-esteem, filled her with guilt and self-loathing. He tapped into that and added to it. In the end, he abandoned her in Manchester, in a dingy hotel. That's where she was when she called me. When I arrived, I barely knew her."

He laced his fingers together and faced Lizzy. "So far, his pattern with you has been the same as his pattern with Georgiana. I've patterned Ned on Paul. The point of all of this — and I know I've said it before, or some of it — is that I don't believe he will try physically to force anything on you, not tonight, maybe not ever. What ...arouses him isn't physical power, it's moral power, the power to cause you to act against what you know to be right, the power to make you choose what you know is wrong. He wants to exploit weakness of will, not physical weakness.

"But, still, I'd feel better if I knew you had a firearm when he is here." His eyes left Lizzy's face and took all of her in.

He seemed to see Lizzy's outfit for the first time. He had been too preoccupied when he came in.

"Is that what you're going to wear?" he asked, standing up.

Lizzy wasn't sure who was speaking. Agent Darcy or Fitzwilliam or Ned. "Yes," she said, turning on her bare feet. "I thought it was…as close to just right, given the situation, as I could find."

Darcy's eyes swept up and down, ending their movement at her feet, her red toenails. All-day permanent red, Ned had texted.

"Was I wrong?" she asked during his silence.

"No, you look casual and wonderful, and I have to live with that."

"It's Fanny dressing for Wickham, not me — or not really me if you know what I mean. I'm dressing myself as if I were someone else."

He nodded, his lips pressed in a thin, grim line. "I know. But he has to touch you to touch Fanny. He has to stare at you to stare at her."

Lizzy started to respond when Darcy's phone beeped. He took it out. "It's Bingley," he said, puzzled by the call.

Darcy walked to the computer and opened it. Bingley appeared on the screen; he looked pale and upset.

"What is it, Bingley?" Darcy asked, tension suddenly manifested in Darcy's posture and voice.

Bingley spoke as if he could not quite own his own words. "The CIA team that was trailing Wickham, the Rapid City team…One of the Company analysts just called. The South Dakota Highway Patrol found them, shot to death inside their car, the car tangled in a destroyed section of fence alongside a deserted stretch of road."

Neither Lizzy nor Darcy spoke for a moment. Like Bingley, they had to come to grips with his terms, what he had said.

"Where, exactly?" Darcy asked, his voice hoarse suddenly.

Bingley looked down. "The nearest landmark is Vivos xPoint."

Darcy turned to Lizzy, his face blank. Lizzy stepped to him and stood beside him. "The bunker community?"

Bingley nodded. "Yes."

Darcy looked at the screen then Lizzy. She shrugged. "I don't know much about it but it was part of a briefing we had a couple of years ago, about preppers. Doomsday preppers. It was the Black Hills Army Base, built by the Army Corps of Engineers, a fortress of bunkers to store bombs and munitions. In use from the early 40's until the late 60's, roughly. There are over 500 bunkers. The land area's like three-quarters of Manhattan."

Darcy shook his head in disbelief. "Americans." He did not elaborate. "Did Wickham do it?"

Bingley shook his head. "We don't think so. He may have been involved somehow but it's unlikely he pulled the trigger. The team was found not that long ago. As soon as the South Dakota trooper called it in, Langley heard. Langley was worried because the team had been expected to report earlier.

"The trooper found the team not that long after they'd been killed, although long enough for the scene to have been swept — no shells, no tire tracks. Wickham was on the security cameras at the Rapid City airport, and had been for a couple of hours before his flight — and it's about an hour and a half from the airport to the scene. He was on camera just after the trooper called it in. There's no chance he was there when it happened. The timeline is wrong. He had to have help."

Darcy stood for a moment, his shoulders hunched. "Like I said when this started, the Wicker Man is not just George Wickham. The Wicker Man's a network. So, did Wickham visit this fortress of bunkers?"

Bingley shrugged slightly. "Unclear, but it seems the likeliest explanation for the team's being there. After all, their orders were to trail Wickham. I'm guessing he made them and then called for reinforcements. But the team did not report being there. Maybe they intended to mention it when they were scheduled to call in. The Company has already stepped in and claimed the scene. We'll get full details from the cleaners after they've finished. There's a security team employed by Vivos xPoint, and they keep watch. They claim they can spot anyone within three miles of the property. There's just one road in and out. The analysts have a call in to Vivos but they aren't known for easy cooperation with the government."

Darcy looked at Lizzy and she looked at him. He turned to the screen again. "Anything else?"

"No, except I ran the tests on the bugs in Lizzy's apartment a little while ago, before I got the call from Langley. Everything's working as it should. They'll go back on at 7:30 p.m. I need you to come back, Darcy, so I can get into position in Lizzy's building. It'll be time for Wickham soon. His flight's on time and I have a feeling he'll hurry to Fanny once he's on the ground.."

Darcy held Lizzy's eyes. "Okay, I'm going to go. Don't think about this. Just think about what's going on here, in your apartment. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof — and unto the location. When Bingley and I trade places, I'll keep up with what's happening in South Dakota and I'll share it after Wickham leaves."

Bingley nodded and Darcy shut the computer. He turned to Lizzy, putting his hands on her shoulders, gripping them tightly, urgently, but not hurting her. "Stay focused. Whatever the Wicker Man came to the Midwest for is underway." She nodded. His face was so close to hers, his lips.

He loosened his grip and stepped back, the step deliberate, a gesture of self-denial. He looked down at her feet. "Do me a favor, put some socks on before Wickham's arrives. It's cold out."

"Cold in too," she said. He gave her a mournful look and left the apartment. When he left, she felt the return of Wickham's Cheshire Cat smile.

At 7:58 p.m., Lizzy got a phone call from the security guard on duty. A Mr. George Wickham was on his way up to her apartment.

Lizzy walked to the door in her stocking feet. She stood there, taking control of her breathing. In (slowly), out (slowly).

The doorbell rang. Lizzy was startled by that. Bingley and Darcy both knocked when they came to the door. She took one last breath and opened the door.

Wickham stood there. He looked fresh for a man who had traveled, hardly showing a wrinkle. His smile was nearly at full power, but there was something feral deep in his eyes, a mostly concealed wildness that she had not seen or at least not noticed before.

"Fanny," he breathed, seduction in his tone.

"George," she said quietly, trying her best to sound conflicted, mixing anticipation and dread in her tone. She must have succeeded because his smile reached full power. The smile from her nightmare.

She stepped aside and he walked into the apartment.

He was inside.

Lizzy reminded herself that Darcy could see and hear all that was happening, all that was about to happen, whatever that was.

Wickham turned to face her. "I hope you've had a good day. I've spent mine thinking about you, about tonight. I've been imagining the way you move, the way you say words." He reached out and put his hand on her cheek. "You look lovely. Your sweater compliments your hair."

She reached up and took his hand in hers, hoping the gesture did not seem like an attempt to stop him from touching her. "Thanks, George."

He turned and surveyed the apartment, his gaze lingering on the books Darcy had bought her. She realized that she had left the Yeats on her bed.

"Lovely, just as I imagined." He faced her again. "So, Ned's back in the Big Apple?"

Lizzy dropped her head, Fanny. "Yes, he's there."

Wickham lifted an eyebrow, his smile tensing toward a leer. "And I'm here."

"Would you like something to drink?" Fanny offered.

"Yes, some whiskey if you have it, over ice."

"On such a cold night?" Fanny asked, walking to the kitchen.

"Cold outside," Wickham said, "but I expect it to be warm inside. Very warm."

Fanny ignored the studied, salacious ambiguity of Wickham's 'it'.

A/N: More soon. Love to hear from you. This was a difficult chapter to write, as the next will be. Sorry to end it here but I was sort of exhausted.