A/N: One final visit with our former spies.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

Epilogue: A Gala Day

The penthouse bridal suite of the Rochester Hyatt Regency commanded a panoramic view of the scenery — the winter city beneath a gray afternoon sky.

Lizzy was standing near one of the huge windows, looking out, letting her imagination mingle with the falling-tumbling snowflakes. Here, now, and everywhere, the world is always fresh, full, and alive, she reminded herself. The flakes seemed half to belong to gravity, half to caprice.

She put her warm hand against the cold window, moisture condensing around the shape of her hand, steadying herself as she tried to control her breathing. She shifted her vision, so that she was no longer looking out of but into the window. Behind her, on the suite's vast white bed, naked and still breathing deeply himself, was her husband.

He looked well-wed, red-faced, spent, and happy. She was so happy. Her last hour with him had belonged half to gravity and half to caprice, falling-tumbling.

Lizzy was wearing only Darcy's white tuxedo shirt, and it hung long and unbuttoned on her. In the window, by another shift of her vision, she could see herself, her display of cleavage, the firm downward lines of her abdomen framing her belly button and leading her eyes to the meeting point of her legs. Despite the window, the outward landscape, and the inward reflections, her consciousness nonetheless lingered primarily at the meeting point of her legs, the heat that rippled, heavy, syrupy, out from that juncture and through all the rest of her.

It felt as if her body were singing, a love song, a song of heated female satisfaction as old as Eve. A Garden Song in Rochester Winter.

"It was a wonderful day, Lizzy," Darcy said in a breathy but satisfied tone, so male, "wonderful, and it's only gotten better."

Lizzy turned to him, smiling a seductive smile, real through and through. "Don't be smug; I'm expecting better yet after we catch our breath — when we can take our time."

Grinning, Darcy grabbed a pillow and folded it, resting it behind his head so that he could look at her. He stared at her with a frank, returning hunger for a moment, then he glanced to the side of the room where her wedding dress was stationed on a hanger, hanging from the front of a carved, massive armoire. He seemed utterly unselfconscious about his complete nakedness, splendidly at ease with his wife, all covers off.

She could see his scars; she was as intimate with his scars as he was with hers. Her fingers and lips had traced them.

"Seeing you at the other end of the aisle at The Good Shepherd, that is as close as I expect to come to the Beatific Vision, at least on this side of the blue."

Lizzy stalked toward the end of the bed, enjoying her view of Darcy as he considered her wedding dress.

"I told you I would love you in it and out of it," he said, turning his face toward her.

She laughed softly. "You were as good as your word."

"Mrs. Darcy, was that a honeymoon pun?"

"Mr. Darcy, were you punning on 'love'?" She smirked, eyebrows jaunty. "The second, more recent love, the out-of-it love, seemed a bit more vigorous than the first, wedding love, the in-it love, anyway, the second seemed more flesh," her eyes grew, then her smirk, "and less spirit."

"Ahem. I will have you know there was as much spirit as flesh here a moment ago, I promise you. And earlier, at The Good Shepherd, as much flesh as spirit. Both were utterly willing, both times. I love you and I desire you in equal, infinite measure."

He said things that made her heart swell. He was a part of the innermost life of her life.

She waited for him to look at her again. "Yes, Fitzwilliam, it was a wonderful day — a gala day. And it keeps getting better."

Jane was Lizzy's maid of honor; Bingley was Darcy's best man. One bride's maid was Karen McDougal. Her son, Ricky, was the ring-bearer, his chubby red cheeks adorable above his bowtie. The other bride's maid was Georgiana, who had insisted on flying to the States for the event. She and Lizzy had bonded quickly, liking each other from the first moment, but a long evening over stiff drinks talking about George Wickham had bonded them as sisters. Darcy's sister was not vindictive — she was sweet and gentle, retiring, despite her striking beauty — but it was clear that Wickham's end brought her a sense of closure, that knowing he was out there, savoring her ruin had made reconstructing herself harder for her.

The wedding took place on New Year's Day, just over a month after Darcy's return. Mrs. Bennet, who could never quite get herself stably to believe that her daughter had been a CIA agent, and her son-in-law to-be an MI-6 agent, could not understand the hurry — but she was happy enough about the business that the wedding brought the bridal shop, and she was willing to give folks a bit of a discount. Aunt Gardiner went behind Mrs. Bennet and drastically deepened the discount or gave the items away for free.

Mrs. Bennet did eventually remember what had happened at the back door of the shop on Black Friday, but she never had any recollection of what Lizzy had done in the van, and no one ever supplied her with the full details, and she never seemed to want to know. She knew that outcome and that seemed to satisfy her. But the whole ordeal had darkened her pettiness, her impatience with the reality of others. "One learns the baseness, the wickedness, of human nature with advancing years," she now sagely liked to say, especially to customers who were, at least briefly, her captive audience. Lizzy and Aunt Gardiner began a covert campaign to reduce the amount that Mrs. Bennet was drinking, and they had been making slow progress there.

Lizzy and her aunt grew much closer even than they were. Darcy admired and respected the Gardiners, and they admired and respected him. No longer having secrets from her Aunt allowed for the greater closeness she and Lizzy had both craved over the years.

Mrs. Bennet, as Lizzy predicted, found Darcy too unbendable for her liking. Too cool. "Give me true warmth of heart, Lizzy, even with a little of that extravagance of feeling which misleads judgment, and conducts into romance…" Lizzy tried once to tell her that Darcy was, in private, a deeply passionate man, warm and extravagant and romantic, but her mother waved her hand and refused to believe.

Lizzy sat down on the end of the bed and Darcy sat up.

She glanced at his lap then looked up. "If you don't want an immediate sequel, you may want to cover yourself."

Darcy grumbled and grabbed a blanket, spreading it across his lap. "See, this is some kind of inequality. You can wear my shirt, and claim to be covered, but, to me, you look somehow more naked in my shirt than you look with nothing on — at least it affects me that way."

Lizzy rolled her shoulders and Darcy's tuxedo shirt fell to the bed. "Is that better?"

Darcy groaned. "No, yes — oh, God, Lizzy, I want you!" The rising tent of the blanket in his lap testified to his sincerity, although she did not need testimony.

"You want me? Elizabeth Bennet?" She teased. "You know, the woman you have married, Mr. Darcy, is a fascinating but faulty creature."

"I'm not sure I can claim to be fascinating — but I can claim to be faulty," Darcy responded softly with a slight smirk. "Your mother told me this morning when she saw me in my tux that I need to be less stiff."

She glanced at his lap. "I'm not sure that's ever true, Fitzwilliam, but it was false this morning and it's certainly false right now." Lizzy reached for the blanket and more.

Kellynch had been professionally and personally shamed by Charlotte's careless endangerment of Lizzy. He broke off his relationship with her and fired her summarily. To make it up to Lizzy and Darcy, he worked to make sure that Darcy could stay in the States, to expedite a visa. He had also retroactively sanctioned all that Darcy had done against The Wicker Man. He granted Bingley's request to become a Farm Instructor, and Bingley was due to start after returning to DC from the wedding.

Lady Catherine had been arrested in Rosings, and officially charged with tax evasion, but quickly shifted from the hands of the IRS to the hands of the CIA. Although her reasons for choosing to ally herself with The Wicker Man were never entirely clear. They did not seem political. Lizzy suspected that, in Lady Catherine's plastic, twisted way, her motive was love for Wickham.

And she did supply more information about George Wickham. The story about himself and his mother that he told Lizzy was structurally true, but false otherwise. He had been raised by a loving but feckless father, abandoned by his mother when very young, and had watched as his father was duped and abused by a repetition of women over the years.

Lady Catherine seemed to know nothing about Father Robyn's background, and, before his time in seminary, his life was dark, unknown. Lizzy thought that his motivations were a question for a philosopher. But when she mentioned that to Darcy, he thought and then shrugged.

"Maybe his evil was banal. Maybe there was ultimately little more to it than his unshakable conviction that nature intended everyone to submit to him — and an unfortunate, formative encounter with an old folk horror movie."

It was dark outside the penthouse, the landscape now obscured except in circles of light cast by streetlights. Lizzy was looking out again, but now wearing one of the hotel robes. The tuxedo shirt was still on the floor.

Darcy, wearing a robe too, was standing behind her, arms wrapped around her, also looking out.

"So, tomorrow we fly to Chile," she said excitedly. They had chosen a honeymoon destination neither had visited, that had never been stained by an intelligence mission. Someplace new, someplace innocent. The most convenient flight to Chile had been the morning after the wedding; hence the wedding night in the penthouse suite.

"Yes, the Tierra Patagonia Adventure and Spa Hotel, emerald lakes, and white-capped mountain ranges, horseback riding on the Sierra del Toro, around Lake Sarmiento," he squeezed her, "the two of us together on the pleasing edge of the world; and then, after two weeks there, on to England, to London to visit Georgiana — and to show you Pemberley."

Lizzy had been shocked to discover that she had misunderstood what Darcy meant when he told her about himself and his family (in Chicago). His yes and no about privilege. He had stressed his father's troubles with his father, his father's mismanagement of money, and his stepmother's struggle to keep his father from wasting her money.

Lizzy had thought the family was in financial trouble — but that was untrue. There had been money troubles, but they were mostly between Darcy and his father. His stepmother had managed to keep his father from squandering her money, and after his father died, she had made wise investments, increasing her fortune. When she died (only a few years ago), she simply split her estate between Georgiana and Darcy. Darcy had money. Pemberley, his stepmother's family home, now belonged to them both, although Georgiana, preferring London to the country, spent little time there. She had graciously ceded to Lizzy the role of mistress of the place.

Lizzy was eager to see it. Pictures showed a rugged but beautiful countryside and an old, large, and handsome house. They were going to spend the spring and summer there, before returning to Rochester so that Lizzy could start graduate school. Kellynch had intervened for her there, after a call from Darcy, and not only hastened her acceptance but was able to convince the English department chair that Lizzy's background should be worth course credit, although, of course, that background was to be kept confidential. Kellynch had also helped her by convincing the department chair to increase Lizzy's yearly stipend.

Darcy had applied for a management position with Xerox and he had immediately been hired; he was the kind of man who interviewed well. Xerox agreed he would not start until autumn. In 2018, Xerox moved from Rochester to a city in the Rochester Metropolitan Area, Webster, New York, and Lizzy and Darcy intended to rent an apartment there in the fall.

They had been standing staring into the midnight dark for a while, both quiet; the moment and the feeling between them had become involuntarily serious.

Lamps glowed behind them, beside the bed.

Lizzy leaned back against Darcy's wide chest. "I'm so grateful, Fitzwilliam, grateful we're out." She shook her head softly at everything and nothing. "Is this just the human condition: We can't escape the necessity for the graveyard and the prison — and for Langley and the SIS Building?"

Darcy reflected before he answered. "I suppose so. Finitude is costly: selfishness, vulnerability, and mortality. We're stuck with the graveyard, probably with the prison. And maybe there's no way to do without Langley or the SIS Building, — but surely we all could do better." He bent to kiss the lobe of her ear as if to chase her question away. "But, anyway, we've done our part in the darkness. Let's leave it there. Let's live in the light."

She turned in his embrace to face him, smile bravely at him, and, as he looked down at her, she saw his grave expression brighten, his eyes brimming with love for her. "You're my light, Lizzy."

"I love you, Fitzwilliam Darcy. And you are mine." She trembled in his arms, and kissed him again and again, gratitude transfiguring kiss-by-kiss into needy, joyful excitement. He scooped her into his arms and carried her from the darkened window to their well-lit marriage bed.

He was a man who kept his promises.

Here, now, and everywhere, Lizzy thought again, the world is fresh, full, and alive.

A/N: And so ends the epilogue. Many, many thanks to those of you who read the story, especially those who read it and who took the time to provide reviews. I've been lucky to have quite a few readers who were willing to gift the story their deliberate attention and appreciation. Illness and death slowed the story; I'm glad so many stayed around and waited patiently.

I will leave this story up for a while but then I will take it down to rework it for publication.

As I've mentioned, I have a new novel out with Meryton Press, The Vanishing Woman. You can find it on Amazon, in electronic and paperback forms. It's a contemporary Christmas tale, Dickensian in its way, fast-moving and dialogue-driven, full of trains and old movies.

NB: Writer stuff, skip if not interested. It's no apologia for the book, just some thoughts on what I was doing. The story either works or doesn't work on its own.

The narrator of Austen's Mansfield Park famously writes: "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest." I conceived of this story as Austenian, but as an Austenian story that admits of guilt and misery (as Mansfield Park does, after all the narrator says only that she will not dwell on it, but it entered Mansfield Park with the Crawfords). I do dwell on it since I wanted to write an Austenian story that retains what F. R. Leavis called Austen's "intense moral preoccupation" but refocus it on the typically amoral spy world, on pretense (the abstract noun I added to Austen's title). I chose to complement Pride and Prejudice with Le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl because his novel features a woman who volunteers for/is coerced into a honeypot mission. I admire his book, and particularly like the notion of the theater of the real, and I hope I used it to good effect here. Unlike Le Carré, however, I wanted to tell my story from the impassioned, involved point of view of 'the drummer girl' herself, not from a dispassionate, distant third-person point of view. I'm only half-joking when I say that the book is an Austenian 'correction' of Le Carré.

I kept as much of the gross anatomy of Pride and Prejudice as I could, kept the themes of pride and prejudice (while adding pretense), and kept motifs as well as echoes or variants of crucial scenes. Mostly, I imagined an Elizabeth who might plausibly have become a CIA agent, and a Darcy who might have become an MI-6 agent. Both needed to be conflicted, professionally about their jobs and personally about each other. Wickham was to be a catalyst of change and a source of mounting pressure. The Chicago mission is Lizzy and Darcy's courtship, in all its brevity, and with all its aliases and obscurities and confusions.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the writing was keeping the spy plot in play and coherent even while also keeping most of it 'off-camera', at least until the shift to Casper. At that point, the spy plot moves 'on-camera' but it remains the secondary plot. The primary plot is the journey of Lizzy's inner self, shared by the reader, and of Darcy's, witnessed by the reader, and of their effect on each other, their discovery of love in the darkness.