A/N: We begin the third arc of the story.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

Chapter Eleven: Parlor Games

One night to be confused
One night to speed up truth
We had a promise made
Four hands and then away
Both under influence
We had divine sense
To know what to say
Mind is a razor-blade

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no

The Knife, Heartbeats

Lizzy and Darcy had dessert, tiramisu, — Darcy ordered one dessert with two spoons. Celebration.

Lizzy could not stop smiling as she ate it and neither could Darcy. Delicious. She wasn't sure how to explain her giddiness but she was impressed by Darcy's acting skills. Anyone watching would have thought that the woman he loved had accepted his proposal, truly. He beamed at her. The other customers smiled and nodded at them.

Darcy paid and tried to lead Lizzy quickly out of the restaurant, but it took a few minutes, as they were stopped by customers who wanted to congratulate them. Ned held Fanny's hand as they navigated the phalanx of well-wishers ("Beautiful couple." "You both look so happy." "You're a lucky man.") and then continued to hold it, up the elevator and as they returned to her apartment.

On the elevator, Darcy turned to her, his smile at last gone, dropping her hand. His look was serious.

"While we were at dinner, Bingley moved some of my things into your apartment. It probably makes the most sense for Ned to be staying with you during this visit, given what just happened. I imagine knowing that he is here will motivate Wickham even more. Of course, I'll sleep on the couch and do my best to stay out of your way. It'll just be for a couple of nights — tonight and tomorrow. Ned will head back to the city the day after the Rosings party. Is that okay?"

Lizzy nodded as the elevator opened. "Yes," she said quietly, waving her hand, the ring. "I suspect Wickham will now be actively interested in our sleeping arrangements." The hallway was empty and they walked to Fanny's door, once again hand in hand. Lizzy was not sure if Darcy had retaken her hand or she had retaken his.

In the apartment, they saw a worn leather duffle bag on the kitchen counter next to the computer. Darcy gestured to it. "Bingley's been here. This is mine." He walked to the counter, picked it up, and moved it to the couch. "There's bedding in the bathroom closet, at least there should be."

He headed in that direction.

Lizzy sat down in the armchair.

She stared down at her left hand, the ring on her finger, stared fixedly at it, and shook her head.

It had all felt so real — so very, so unexpectedly real — in the restaurant. Now, she did not know how it felt, how she felt. It was all fake, a pretend proposal. The ring was real, of course, a real diamond, shining at her, small but bright. But the ring did not mean what they pretended it meant at the restaurant. A fake thing is often a real something else. A teddy bear is a fake bear but a real toy. Fanny's engagement was fake but her engagement ring was real. Ned was fake but Darcy was real.

The ring should not have made Lizzy feel happy as she had, but it did. It still seemed to hold out a prospect of happiness.

Darcy marched back into the room, his arms full. A pillow, a blanket, and folded sheets. He was smiling at her above the stacked bedding. "You were terrific in the restaurant," he said as he put the bedding down, turning to face her. "Your smile, your face…when you said yes…" He looked at her for a moment as if trying to decide something, holding himself taut, then he shook his head, grinning. "Convincing, utterly."

He stared into the distance past Lizzy for a moment, his grin lasting as long as his stare.

Finally, he sobered, giving himself a visible shake, refocusing on Lizzy. "We'll need to be as convincing tomorrow, and that dinner party is going to test us both — but especially you. I'll just need to be jealous, subtly or obviously, depending on what happens, but Fanny's got to straddle having said yes to me tonight and still wanting to say yes to Wickham. She's got to convince him that tonight only delays the inevitable."

Lizzy glanced down at her ring, the ring, again. Fanny would have to betray that ring, making Wickham believe that she was capable of both accepting it and being false to it. The thought turned her stomach and made her regret eating so much of the tiramisu, more than her half. Darcy had enjoyed it too but seemed to enjoy watching her eat it more. She put her hand on her stomach. Darcy had turned and was converting the couch into a bed, unfolding the sheet and tucking it in.

He went on talking as he worked. "We need to discover why Wickham is here. He wasn't lured here only by Lady Catherine's well-preserved charms. This second visit to Rosings may give us a chance, not only for you or even me to perhaps get Wickham to slip, to reveal something but also to slip someone into the house. Bingley."

"Isn't the house guarded?"

"Not like it was the first night we were there. Most of the time, Lady Catherine relies on a state-of-the-art security system and a couple of security guards. There were more the other night, but they were there for the large party. Bingley should be able to get inside and into Wickham's room — that's the target. Once we are inside, we need to make sure that Wickham stays with us until we know Bingley is out of the house.

"We'll finish the plan tomorrow but I wanted you to know the basic idea."

Lizzy contemplated what Darcy had said. "Bingley can do that, you think?"

Darcy turned for a moment. "Yes, Bingley's a good agent."

"But what about his distractions? His girlfriend?" Lizzy asked, not giving away any knowledge of the situation, Jane.

"Bingley eventually took my advice and put all that on hold."

"Advice? He did?"

Darcy nodded but rotated back toward his bed, putting the pillow in place and spreading the blanket. "He did. He saw that it was a problem."

"Spies can't have attachments?"

Darcy stopped his work but without turning to Lizzy. "We've talked about this, you and I, Agent Bennet, when we first talked about Bingley and his girlfriend." He plumped his pillow with a hint of unnecessary violence. "The mission is what matters; everything else has to be secondary. Attachments interfere with that."

"But we need to keep each other safe, care for each other so far," she said, not entirely sure why she was continuing, insisting. Partly, it's Mom.

Darcy stood up but kept facing away from her. "Yes, but caring about the mission is how we care for each other as integral parts of it." He faced her again. "If we just start…caring for each other, then the mission's likely to fail out of dysfunction. The mission has to come first."

Lizzy knew, although she only now let herself become conscious of it, that Darcy's ultimatum to Jane worked as well as it had because of her past, the failed mission for which she was an analyst. She lived in terror of bearing such responsibility again. Darcy had tapped into that terror, knowingly or unknowingly.

Which?

"So, if I have to choose between saving you and ending The Wicker Man, I should do the latter, no second thoughts, no hesitation? And you would do the same, forced to choose between me and The Wicker Man."

Darcy's motions hitched for a second.

"Checkers," he offered by way of answer, as he tucked his blanket, again with unneeded violence.

The whole bed-making scene was now frustrating Lizzy.

The shift from Ned to Darcy, from restaurant to elevator to apartment was annoying to her. She had left the restaurant hand-in-hand with Ned; she was now expected to talk spy shop with Darcy. She could not match the shift. Her current reactions were still lingering in the restaurant, Fanny lingering over the tiramisu.

Lizzy stood up, needing movement, a change of posture. "Alright, well, I'm going to go to bed."

It was as if he didn't hear her for a moment. He straightened for a moment after finishing with his blanket, a tension in his shoulders as if he were silently arguing with himself.

"Goodnight, Fanny," he said, his voice soft, the words and the tone surprising her as he turned to her again, a partial shift back to his manner at the restaurant. "The customers were right, Ned's a lucky man." The words were sincere, as sincere as they could be in context anyway, and somehow apologetic.

Lizzy walked to her bedroom and closed the door.

Later, in her bed in the dark, Lizzy extended her hand up from the bed, catching a bit of pale streetlight from her window.

She examined the diamond, rotating her hand.

Imagining a wedding, or imagining who she would marry, had never been one of her pastimes. Even at Haverford, when she had fallen in love with a young man named Jim Haden, she had never really unlocked her imagination toward the future, toward a wedding or a life together. She had been vaguely afraid of what the future might hold and, she had to admit, more than vaguely afraid of marriage, commitment. She had grown up inhaling the unhappiness of an unhappy marriage, and it had affected almost everything in her life. It had never been choking or awful, her parents were too mismatched even for significant fights. Instead, it was a faint bad odor, permeating the house, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but omnipresent, a desolate tranquility — her mother's aggrieved, long-suffering self-pity, that she had wasted her youthful beauty on a man who did not understand her needs, Lizzy's father's ironic detachment, that he was bound to a woman who could arouse only his contempt. Lizzy had learned a brutal lesson in the subtleties of unhappiness. As a small child, she had thought of unhappiness as unbearable, as a source of weeping and wailing, but as she grew older in that house she learned to think of unhappiness as bearable, as a source of a carping dissatisfaction, efficacious enough to destroy true comfort, but not efficacious enough to rouse anyone to address it. A slow-as-molasses misery. Thinking of unhappiness as bearable, Lizzy found, was somehow worse than thinking of it as unbearable.

The ring caught the pale light and glistened.

Of course, it had not been just her parent's marriage but also her mother's business that had made her afraid of commitment — the constant confrontation with marriage as a commercial enterprise, love reduced to the nonsense of dollars and cents. That hadn't helped her any, either.

Still, the whole scene in The Made Man, the whole pretended proposal, Darcy, had shaken her, or shaken something loose in her, some secret (even from herself) cherished hope. Love, marriage, a family. Maybe she had hidden the hope so as to keep it from having to vie with the unhappiness her parents had shown her. She wasn't sure. Maybe it was because she feared Darcy was right, that spies could not afford attachments. Few agents married, and the few who did rarely stayed married. But the ring seemed meaningful to her — or seemed as if it could be. With one last turn of her wrist in the light, she tucked her hand beneath her blanket and rested it on her chest.

A moment more and she was asleep.

She woke from a dreamless sleep, slightly disoriented, the product of Chianti and tiramisu, and she got up blinking, and stumbled toward the bathroom.

She rubbed her eyes to see Darcy standing in it, door open, back to her, wearing only boxers. He had taken a shower: the bathroom still had wisps of steam in it and the mirror was steamed over. He had taken a hand towel and wiped a small circle in the mirror. He was leaning toward it, shaving.

Lizzy gaped for a moment, her eyes and mouth wide.

His muscled back led down to a trim waist, a taut bottom, and strong, well-shaped legs. He was, head to toe, firm, manly. A man. And he was scarred: there was a round scar from a bullet wound on his upper shoulder. A long, thin scar — a knife? — ran down the other side of his back and around to his ribs. One calf carried a mottled blue scar, another bullet wound, a bad one, or, more likely, shrapnel.

Lizzy had her scars too, an occupational hazard, but they were none so severe, or else the CIA's plastic surgeons were simply better than MI-6's.

Darcy kept shaving, whistling a tune to himself. A sudden heat latched onto Lizzy. She ducked back out of sight and into her bedroom. She closed the door and took a minute to collect herself, fanning her face with her hand, then she sat on the end of the bed and waited until she heard Darcy finish and leave the bathroom. Only then did she reappear.

He was dressed, all but his shoes, and she said good morning.

He smiled and returned the greeting, then sat down to put on his shoes.

The bathroom felt different to Lizzy when she entered than anytime before.

Steamier, although the steam had evaporated and the mirror was clear. It showed her still-flushed cheeks to her clearly.

Darcy stayed long enough to share coffee with Lizzy when she finished dressing. He made it for them. They didn't talk much, except a little about how Ned and Fanny would approach the dinner party. In the space of the evening, they were going to have to bridge from announcing their engagement to Fanny flirting with Wickham, while Ned moved from lighthouse pride and joy to subtly resentful suspicion and sourness.

But the hardest part to play would be Fanny's, unquestionably. They talked about that for a while, in a general way, neither seeming to want to envisage particulars, the topic making their interaction a plod uphill, lugubrious.

A visibly downcast Darcy left shortly afterward to coordinate the infiltration of Rosings with Bingley. He had decided that Fanny would have too much on her mind to be worried about any of the details of that, and Lizzy agreed.

She was already depressed and anxious and emotional. This mission had started bad and gotten worse. How did I let my pride maneuver me into this mission? But at the same time, a part of her wanted to be where she was and was willing to face the predicament the mission had become and was still becoming. She did not explain that willingness to herself; she felt it was better to leave it alone, unexamined.

Wickham texted Fanny that Rook would be at Lizzy's building at 7 pm to pick up her and Ned. He also told her that the evening would be casual — no need for finery. Fanny responded with a quick thanks and no more.

Finery. Falseness.

On Lizzy's phone, Bingley acknowledged Fanny's text exchange and told Lizzy that Darcy would be over to her apartment well ahead of Rook's arrival so that they could go downstairs together.

The afternoon had clouded over and wind was whipping in from the Lake, picking up intensity between the skyscrapers.

Lizzy dressed early and poured the last of the morning coffee over ice, and stood sipping it as she watched the graying, moody sky, the miniature motion of the distant street.

She wanted a stronger drink but that was a bad idea. A very bad idea. Wickham and Lady Catherine would almost certainly ply Ned and Fanny with alcohol later and giving them a headstart was dangerous. Fanny would have to walk a line all night long, no wavering, no missteps.

If the sky had been sunny and blue, it might have given her strength, been something to lean on, but as it was, it seemed to lean on her, to drain her of the little fortitude she had for facing the evening.

And then her phone rang. She walked to the counter and looked at the screen.

Mom

Damn.

Attachments.

Her first impulse was to let the call roll over to voicemail and deal with a message. It was likely more fallout from the window display fiasco. Sighing, she answered. Duties and conflicts of duties. She walked to the couch and plopped down, unladylike, as she said:

"Hey, Mom, I was supposed to call you, not you call me."

Her mother had launched on a word but hitched. A moment of silence followed. " — Sorry Lizzy, I know, but I needed to talk to you. It's about your father."

Now it was Lizzy who hitched. Her chest tightened. "Dad? What about Dad?" It felt like a ghostly visitation. Her mother never mentioned her father except to blame him for something. Dead, he was unable to defend himself. But this sounded different.

"I went to his grave today," her mother volunteered softly, then stopped.

Uncharacteristic. Lizzy did not know of her mother visiting the graveside since the service there the day her father was buried. Her mother had refused to accompany Lizzy when she went herself, as she usually did on trips home to Rochester.

"You did? Why?"

"I felt guilty, I guess, about just leaving him laying there, alone. With no one to visit."

"But he's been there…for a while, Mom. I visit."

"I know, Lizzy. But I was talking to some people at church and they mentioned visiting the graves of their loved ones. And my priest gave a homily; he quoted Shakespeare, something about 'to rot, to lie in cold obstruction'..."

Lizzy knew the lines, her mother had reversed them — they continued: 'This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod.' Measure for Measure. Claudio. It was a play her father loved and they had read it together when she was in — what? — Junior high. She hadn't thought of the lines in application to her father. Her chest tightened again. She put her hand to her forehead.

"Yes, I know the lines. So, what's wrong, Mom, how can I help?" Had her mom really visited the gravesite only out of some feeling of parish peer pressure? "What's going on?"

"One of my new friends at church, a woman named Clay — she's a dear, despite still having freckles at my age and despite a strange, protruding tooth, and this strange thing she does with her wrist. — Anyway, she asked about your father and we discovered our dear departed are both in the same graveyard. She asked me to go with her when she visited her husband. So, I went. Her husband's headstone not only had his dates and a comment about beloved husband and father, but there was a quotation on it, something high and noble, — although I don't just now quite remember it, when we came round to your father's headstone, there were only the dates. However, there's lots of blank space for more. She seemed to think it a pity that Mr. Bennet faces the afterlife without a trailing motto, and now so do I. The whole visit upset me and, well, shamed me. I should have done better by Mr. Bennet."

You mean you should have done better by his headstone. "So, how can I help, Mom?"

"Can you think of something? You and he used to spend hours reading to each other in the study, the sorts of dull, musty books that always hide good mottos." Her mother's voice contained an old resentment, an old envy.

"So you called me so I can come up with an epigraph for Dad's afterlife?"

"That sounds…harsh, Lizzy. But yes."

Lizzy knew her mother's tone. This request was not going to go away. "Okay, Mom, I'll mull it over and I will call you when I have an idea. But won't adding to the stone necessitate removing it from the graveyard so that it can be carved?"

"Yes," her mother said in a whimpering way, "but it's not that expensive."

"Alright. How's the bridal shop, the front window?"

"Boring, boring, boring. I drive the other way through town so I do not nod at the wheel."

"Well, give my best to Aunt Gardner."

Her mother made an ambiguous huffing sound, non-committal.

"I'll call you when I have an idea. Bye, Mom."

Lizzy ended the call. Her mother calling her was bad enough but now to have this task on her mind along with everything else. She had grieved her father for a long time. Perhaps he had not been the very best of fathers, but they had enjoyed one another's company, she was a daughter after his own heart (as he liked to say) and she had learned a lot from him. Not all of it was good, she knew, but much of it was. She did not want to lift the lid on the cold obstruction of her father's death, risk loosing the viewless wind of grief again.

The first time and last, it had blown her into Langley.

Thanks, Mom.

At least she didn't ask me about meeting anyone. Lizzy glanced down at her ring finger.

Darcy arrived at her apartment in the mid-afternoon with his game face already on. He seemed reluctant to talk to her, reluctant ever to look at her for long.

She modeled the emerald sweater and jeans she planned to wear, the soft green suede boots. He nodded without any comment. Since Darcy was with her and Bingley would be otherwise preoccupied, she wore a different set of earrings and a necklace, plain gold.

Darcy was wearing a shawl collar sweater, terra cotta colored. it looked handsome on him but she knew, almost immediately, it was inspired by the same thought that had inspired Wives and Daughters. It was a bit too much, a bit too fine, and the cable stitch a bit too noteworthy. Not effeminate but soft. (She realized the effect of the sweater was muted for her; she could recall his scars as he stood in front of the steamy mirror, the hard muscles of his back.) Otherwise, he wore faded blue jeans and his brown loafers, and he had a green car coat folded over his arm.

Their limited color coordination had not been planned, but she thought it might have its use.

He put down his coat and picked up the copy of Moby Dick and started reading. She made them coffee. Her stomach felt knotted, tense, and she was glad of the silence; she was sure he knew that, was silent on her behalf; and maybe he was glad of the silence too. She did not want to have to start imagining the evening ahead of time. Visualization was typically counterproductive undercover; it either sped responses and reactions up too much or slowed them down too much. Believability was largely a matter of tempo, of saying the right words with the right tune, but, most importantly, saying them at the right time. The most believable conversations were like jazz improvisations. Better to stay blank and let the moments come to her, their demands to be met without any prejudice. Trust her first impressions.

She poured them both a cup of coffee, gave Darcy his, and took hers back to the window. She let her mind wander, watching the gray clouds billow, form and reform.

They spent the afternoon like that together, apart, drinking coffee until the pot was empty and it was nearly time for Rook to arrive and drive them to Rosings.

Darcy sighed and stood and put on his coat. He looked at her. She was still at the window, now curtained up and closed. He crossed to her and, unexpectedly, put out both his hands. She took them without hesitation. They were warm.

"I'll be there with you, all night. Bingley will be nearby part of the time. You and I will leave together, no matter what. Just focus. It's like American football players never tire of saying: One play at a time. I'll be following your lead. Remember, don't be with Wickham anywhere I can't see you. That will be in character for Ned tonight, a show of his mounting jealousy. Are you ready?"

She nodded once, picked up her leather jacket and put it on, and grabbed her purse.

They entered the elevator hand-in-hand, although Lizzy wasn't sure who had initiated the hand-holding outside the apartment..

Rook was already standing outside the car, the rear door open, when Ned and Fanny approached, holding hands. Lizzy thought she saw one eyebrow twitch on his stony face, and then she was careful to rest her left hand on the top of the door and Darcy helped her in.

She was almost sure Rook saw the ring, but then she was sure after he came around and got inside. A smirk cracked his face in the rearview mirror.

Darcy slid her close and put his arm around her, chatting merrily and emptily, telling a funny cover story about stopping for coffee on his way to the office in New York. He had been behind an older woman at a Starbucks, the woman a tourist, clearly out of place and flabbergasted. When the barista asked her for a name for her coffee, she balked. "Why do I have to name it to drink it? Back on the farm, we never named the chickens we ate." Ned and Fanny chuckled together, and Fanny kissed Ned's cheek and snuggled into his arm, tight against his body.

Rook stared at them in the rearview as if he knew Fanny's actions were, if not outright lies, some form of hypocrisy.

At Rosings, instead of servants in white jackets, it was Lady Catherine herself and Wickham who were standing, waiting for Ned and Fanny.

Lady Catherine wore a white silk blouse under a blue sweater, blue pants. Her low heels were navy. Wickham had on a black shirt, its long sleeves rolled up tightly over his ropey forearms, and a pair of khaki corduroy pants. He was rocking on his feet as Rook stopped the car, and he vaulted down the stairs eagerly.

Ned got out first after Rook came around to open the door, and he helped Fanny. Lizzy glanced up into Wickham's face and gave him a weak, nervous smile, her first salvo of the evening. Something passed between Ned and Wickham after Wickham looked at her, but whatever expression Darcy made was gone by the time Lizzy could see his face.

"Welcome. You're the last guests to arrive. We're a small party, but intimate," Wickham said, inflecting the final word with relish.

"George, let the guests come up the stairs, and let's get inside. It's chilly out here, and it may rain again."

Lady Catherine put out one hand, the other holding her sweater closed. Ned took her extended hand and she led them inside, Ned and Fanny side-by-side and Wickham bringing up the rear. Ned was holding Fanny's left hand, swinging it gently, happily, and holding it so that her engagement ring was facing Wickham. Fanny thought she heard a soft inhalation from behind them, a sign that Wickham had spotted it. She glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw a small smile on Darcy's face but it passed immediately.

Inside the door, they were met by one servant, an old man Fanny did not recall from the previous party, and he quietly and efficiently took their coats. Lady Catherine waved for them to follow her, smiling.

The large front area of the house where the party had been before was not brightly lit as it had been. It was subdued, shadowy. A light shone down a hallway that had been blocked at the party, and Lady Catherine led them into that hallway, toward that light.

"It's just a few of us. I think everyone's face will be familiar, though perhaps not everyone's names."

They stepped into a small dining room dominated by a large oak table, the top gleaming from reflecting the light of the many candles in the candelabra hanging above it. Standing around the table were Father Robyn and a slim, middle-aged but youthful-looking blond man. Beside Father Robyn and the man was the couple that Lady Catherine had been talking to at the previous party. She had seen them when she first entered that night, and as then, they were again expensively dressed but this time in expensive casual clothes. The man's eyes immediately latched onto Lady Catherine.

"This is Henry and Maria Crawford," Lady Catherine said by way of introduction. "I didn't get to introduce you the other night but you must have seen each other. This is Ned Moreland and Fanny Prince."

Henry pulled his eyes away from Lady Catherine for long enough to look at them. He was a small man, handsome, with a quick bright, mischievous smile that age had not dimmed. His eyes swept Fanny from head to toe. His wife did not look at Ned or Fanny immediately, instead, she watched her husband look at them. She frowned, the expression sinking into her double chins.

"Hello, yes, I remember seeing Fanny — and Ned," Henry said. His wife nodded her agreement.

"And you know Father Robyn from the party," Lady Catherine went on. Father Robyn stepped forward to take Fanny's hand, giving her a quick, smiling look of secrecy. Fanny nodded. "Yes, I remember him from the party certainly. We had a conversation — about submission, I think."

Wickham laughed from behind them. "Father Robyn's hobby horse. Let's hope we can keep him from climbing on it tonight." Father Robyn rolled his eyes at that but turned and shook Ned's hand, finding a smile for him too. Father Robyn motioned to the blond man, who stepped forward. "This is Crispin Smith, my friend." Crispin gave a quick, shallow bow.

"Let's sit," Lady Catherine commanded, "notice that I've put names on plates so that we can break up the group a bit. Here, I will sit at one end of the table. George will sit at the other. Ned will sit at my right, Henry at my left. Robyn can sit next to Ned, and Crispin next to Henry. Fanny can sit beside Crispin, and Maria next to Robyn."

There was a moment of awkward, music-less Musical Chairs, and then everyone was seated. Lady Catherine gave Wickham a quick significant look and he nodded.

She picked up a small bell beside her plate and gave it a soft ring.

Almost immediately, the soup was brought in. The older man who met them returned with a large silver bowl of soup. An older woman was with him and together they served.

"Boston Clam chowder," the man announced as the service started.

Lady Catherine smiled beneficently. "Just the thing for a cold, Chicago evening."

Henry was staring at Lady Catherine's chest as if he had another prescription in mind. Maria was the first to slurp her soup.

Desultory conversations began around the table, talking interspersed with spoons of chowder.

Wickham carefully scooted his chair a bit toward Fanny. She was seated so that her left hand was toward him. He was staring at her ring.

Ned had been watching, waiting. Before Wickham could say anything to Fanny, Darcy pushed his chair back and cleared his throat. As he stood, he spoke.

"We don't know you all well but tonight is a night of celebration for Fanny and me, and we would like to share that celebration with you. Yesterday, at dinner, I asked Fanny to marry me; she said yes. Ned smiled big at the assembled group, his smile settling on Fanny.

Darcy looked so lovely standing there.

Fanny held up her hand, back of her hand out, fingers down, so that everyone could see her ring.

As Lizzy shifted in her chair to display her hand, she felt Wickham's foot settle secretly on top of hers. She smiled at everyone in turn as they congratulated her, then she last faced Wickham for a moment, holding his eyes so as to acknowledge the contact below the table.

She did not smile but she did not move her foot. Wickham's eyes flashed and he grinned at Ned and picked up his glass to toast.

The parlor games had begun.

The toasting ended and everyone recommenced conversation and soup. Wickham leaned close to Fanny after noting that Ned was talking to Lady Catherine, presumably about his and Fanny's plans. Father Robyn, Crispin, Henry, and Maria were talking about the change in the weather, the plummet in temperature, and the ominous gray skies.

"So, engaged? You were right. I see Ned was careful to guard against ostentation when he chose your ring."

Lizzy gritted her teeth. Wickham could talk about almost anything but that ring. She put her hand on her lap. "It's beautiful. I love it."

"I'm glad. How long is Ned staying?"

"Why does it matter?" Fanny asked ingenuously.

"Because I want to know when I can see you again. Alone."

"I don't think that's going to happen," Lizzy said softly. "Last night changed everything."

Wickham's foot pressed hers beneath the table. She left them in contact. He smiled. "I don't think it changed anything. You may marry Ned, or not, as you choose." He ran a finger languorously around the top of his wine glass, but you will welcome me to your bed one way or the other." He leaned even closer, taking advantage of Father Robyn's loud laughter. Lizzy did not know what the laughter was about. "You are still waiting for my hand to finish its trip up your leg."

Lizzy looked up. Darcy had turned toward them, saw the end of Wickham's gesture with his glass, his head near Lizzy, and he glowered at them.

Fanny ducked her head, blushing. It was a real blush. Her earlier flirtations with Wickham had seemed, like all her honeypot assignments, intervals of self-betrayal. But now, this time, Wickham's foot still on hers, his words heatedly echoing in her ears, the remembered image of his slow-moving finger, it felt like a betrayal of Darcy.

Of Ned.

By Fanny.

But there was no Ned and there was no Fanny and the ring was fake.

Except she felt like it was all real, too real. The ring felt heavy on her finger and the continued contact with Wickham's foot felt like being true to the mission and false to everything else.

Everyone else.

Ned went back to conversing with Lady Catherine, although he turned frequently to look down the table, trying to control himself, and his features. Darcy was good, very good.

Fanny lifted her head and separated her foot from Wickham's, but she gave him a watery, submissive smile, bile rising in her throat, burning. She took a spoonful of chowder and blew on it.

And Mom wants an epitaph for Dad.

More of the dinner party soon. Still recovering from my illness.