A/N: More characters, the party.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

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 was 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 to have positioned herself for maximal display, allowing the man an unimpeded view into the depths of her cleavage.

But Lady Catherine kept her eyes on the woman, nothing in her engaged expressions or her quiet laughter suggesting her quiet display to the woman's husband. Darcy led Lizzy past the three of them, and again, although Lady Catherine did not glance at Darcy, something about her posture, a shift of her feet, told Lizzy Lady Catherine 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 undercover at similar gatherings, but she thought this one might have been the most lavish she had seen. Somehow, the room and the decor, the drinks, and the food all seemed to overflow as Lady Catherine overflowed her silver gown.

Opulent. It was all opulent. Voluptuous

Lizzy tugged on Darcy's hand as they neared the grand buffet table, mountains of food in fable-like proportions. She 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 — " she couldn't supply the comparative term, "I'm not."

Darcy turned to look at her, his look undecipherable, then to look past her, back to Lady Catherine, his face barely betraying contempt. Lizzy shifted to keep his face from Lady Catherine's view, should she choose to glance at him again. "Yes, but — " Darcy stopped, focused again on Lizzy, his expression complicated. "Yes, she's his type, paradigmatically his type, except 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 been in Chicago that the House of Lords Darcy 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 Darcy's use of 'vulgar', but 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 — although 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 was wearing 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 of the moment.

Wickham was handsome, but he was also a man, only a man, her mark.

As Wickham 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.

But Wickham's eyes moved past her and settled on Lady Catherine. Lizzy turned to her, then back to Wickham. An unctuous smile crossed his lips and he waved to her.

By now, Darcy had turned and seen Wickham. Darcy 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 passed 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 and 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. Darcy did the same.

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

"I noticed," Darcy said, snapping out the words but managing to keep his voice soft. "It wasn't just the hair." He 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 heard him correctly. But then she heard the word echo. "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, and more about Darcy than his word.

Darcy turned and smiled, putting his plate down.

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 a few moments before. Cary Grant would have envied the smile. She felt it to her feet, though it wasn't for her.

Lizzy immediately knew viscerally why Darcy was MI-6's best. She also noticed Wickham's instant displeasure at Darcy's smile, although the expression was gone instantaneously.

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 Lady Catherine. "That'd be me. Fanny Prince. This is my plus one, my boyfriend, Ned Moreland."

Lady Catherine nodded at them both, then sidestepped to allow Wickham to join them. "I'm Lady Catherine, your host, and this is my good friend, George Wickham."

Wickham stepped forward again and extended his hand to Darcy. Darcy took it smoothly and shook it, dimming his smile a bit but saying hello. "Good to meet you, Mr. Wickham."

Wickham laughed and 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. CPL, Miss Prince?" He asked, shifting his attention to Lizzy.

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

Lady Catherine took it to be 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," Wickham said with smooth gallantry, "we are all lucky that she is lucky."

"Thanks," Lizzy said, laughing again and smiling at Wickham. "We're glad to be here. Everything's so beautiful." Lizzy made sure her 'everything' included Lady Catherine.

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

Darcy 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'?" Lady Catherine 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 Franny'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?" Lady Catherine said. When Darcy nodded, giving her permission to use his first name, Lady Catherine took Lizzy's hands in hers (without asking) and lifted Lizzy's arms, holding Lizzy 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."

Lady Catherine smiled with satisfaction, glancing at Darcy who was nodding 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, Janáček's String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters." She gave Darcy a wide, fetching smile, or tried to stretch as close to it as her fixed features would allow.

Wickham put his hand on Lady Catherine's arm. "You have other guests you should attend to, Catherine."

She gave him an annoyed look, ruffled, but then 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 walked away and were soon hidden in the crowd of minglers. Lizzy noticed that the music that 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 Lizzy's hand, squeezing it. "Well played, Fanny. Well played." He did not seem happy about her success.

"What about you? Lady Catherine?"

Darcy 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. "Kellynch 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."

"Alright," Lizzy said, affected by Darcy's glum, angry tone. She noticed that their plates had been taken by servants.

"Let's separate, move around, and see what happens," Lizzy suggested. "I have a feeling that Wickham's going to find a way to talk to me if he can find me alone."

Darcy nodded once and stalked away from her.

She stood for a moment, 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.

Lizzy wanted to be proud of herself, to feel vindicated, to triumph over Darcy's misjudgment — but Darcy's reaction 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 Darcy, 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 the tuxedos if he weren't so close to the ground.

As Lizzy moved to pass him, he mirrored her movement and they ended up in each other's way again. They tried again on the opposite side, same result. The man giggled. He had straight black hair that he had parted and combed over, but it had fallen onto his forehead, and 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."

Lizzy 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 and 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 a Lady Catherine soiree 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 at his enjoyment of her response. Lizzy 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.

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

Collingwood spoke this time. "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, 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."

"Lady Catherine 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, Lizzy 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 — 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 was trying 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; 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 partygoers 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 wasn't thinking of 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 used for his exit.

"I suppose so," Lizzy 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; Wickham had approached from behind her and she did not know 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. But 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 one in each hand.

Collingwood smiled. "Thanks, Mr. Wickham."

Neither the smile nor the thanks were enthusiastic.

Wickham did not notice, or he did not care. "My pleasure."

Collingwood 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, 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 happened to the church. Gay priests." Wickham's 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," Wickham 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." She 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, and although I didn't finish school, I have friends who let me help with projects, and keep my hand in. Although I admit 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 said, and she waved at him. Darcy waved back.

Wickham took his leave of her, and he was gone before Darcy reached them. Darcy took her hand when he was near enough to do so. He watched Wickham move away from them. 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."

Darcy 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," Lizzy 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 out of 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?"

Lizzy 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'."

Darcy 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, and after he left, Wickham told me Father Robyn was gay."

"Do you agree?"

Lizzy pondered the question, then nodded. "Yes, I do. I get the feeling that he and Wickham 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, Lizzy and Darcy arrived back at Fanny's apartment building.

The man 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.

"Bingley. It should be a computer and a phone for Fanny."

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

He motioned for her to sit beside him. After she did, he touched a button on the screen and Bingley 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 either of you is with Wickham or Lady Catherine. 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.

"But 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 be planning to spend them with me, but that I had been called back to New York tomorrow, so you were 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 him and he will call? You created a window of opportunity for him?"

"Yes, he won't chase you, but he will call, give you a chance to chase him. It may seem semantics to you, but 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.

Then Bingley spoke up. "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, Bingley."

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

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

Darcy sent it to Bingley.

He stood up. "You did a good job tonight, Agent Bennet. I was impressed. And I was wrong. You certainly can tempt — you can tempt George Wickham. I underestimated your hair — but 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 Lady Catherine, without exactly saying so, thought Wickham 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. Darcy 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 that he was wrong.

Or something.

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

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

"Goodnight," he said to her at the door, as he stepped into the hallway.

As he stepped out, one of the other tenants walked by.

Darcy stepped back to Lizzy and kissed her firmly on the mouth.

She knew it was for the sake of the cover and she 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 and then he was gone.

She closed the door and darted her tongue over her lips.

She could taste Darcy faintly there.

If you're interested, I have written a couple of period Austen pieces, Balter (P&P) and Tides of Bath (Persuasion). Check my profile.