by Glenna Mason
“Oh, my love, just hold me tight. I have need of your strong shoulder.”
Darcy was nonplussed, but suspicious of Chapter One. A not so subtle change had come over Elizabeth just since she had sat down and started the work. He now released his great charisma to work magic on his new bride and in a short time had Elizabeth relaxed and strengthened. He began by enveloping her in his arms, continued with soft, gentle kisses on her neck and shoulders, and finished by whispering Shakespeare's sonnet, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day” in her ear.
Elizabeth, unerringly positive by nature, easily succumbed to these amorous pleasures, and willingly sank deeper into his arms and mood, wiping all semblance of Claire Evans from her mind. Finally moving up onto the couch, the pair lay side by side, quietly relaxed. After an hour or so, Darcy perceiving that Elizabeth was replenished, tilted her face up to his and suggested with a very playful curl of a smile, “Why don't we continue our rest upstairs, Dr. Bennet-Darcy?”
“A sterling idea, Mr. Darcy.”
Darcy rolled off the couch, lifted her in his arms, and once again carried her up the staircase, closing the bedroom door behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Elizabeth asserted flippantly, “I love the name Lindsay Fitzwilliam Darcy.” As she nibbled lightly on Darcy's ear, she added, laughing heartily, “Yummm.”
Darcy returned in kind, “And Elizabeth Francine when spoken in my Lancaster drawl is almost trochaic tetrameter.”
“I intend to call you all three names when we are alone in bed,” Elizabeth remarked, taking a bite.
“Ouch!” And I will call you Liz-zy. You remind me life can be a spondee,” Darcy decided, latching on to one of her curls and watching it spring back.
“There you go rhyming again. Where did you learn that?”
“Well, I got a degree in English at Cambridge University, before my dad shipped me to IU for an MBA. I insisted, if I agreed to go to IU Business School, I be allowed to continue to study Voice, while I was there. He was happy with the compromise.”
“Wow!”
That settled, they fell asleep, he with his hand still in her hair, she with her lips next to his ear.
And sleep they did. Elizabeth had refused to set the alarm Wednesday night, informing Darcy, “Charlie can take the proverbial reins tomorrow. He won't be surprised; he knows we are newlyweds.”
So quite easily, the pair slept until there was a quiet knock on the bedroom door and a quick donning of night clothes before a “Come in.”
Amelie opened the door, carrying a silver tray with coffee, chocolate and croissants. The couple looked at the clock; it was eight-thirty, practically afternoon in their world.
“I am sorry, Madame. Oh, Miss Elizabeth, I do so love calling you Madame. I hate to intrude, but I was afraid if I didn't get you started you would be late for your class.”
“You were quite right, Amelie. And thank you!”
Amelie set the tray on the tea table by the veranda doors.
“Amelie, would you open the drapes and the French doors to the balcony please?”
Elizabeth and Darcy sat up in the bed, the sheet pulled up, Elizabeth in a pretty pink negligee and Darcy in a pair of silk pajamas. When Amelie opened the heavy brocade drapes and the French doors, the morning sun, the reason Elizabeth's mother preferred this room, poured under the porch roof onto the floor.
“C'est bon!” Amelie commented, as she bowed, obviously loving the new version of her old job and retreated, backing out the door with a broad smile on her pretty face.
Elizabeth stretched her arms and then her whole body, happy to still be in bed.
Darcy knotted the sash of his paisley dressing gown and poured them both a coffee with cream.
“Mon ami,” he said, as he handed Elizabeth a cup with a croissant balancing on the lip of the saucer. Darcy sat down at the tea table with his own cup. He drank in the warm sunshine. Elizabeth downed the first cup of coffee and joined him in the rejuvenating light.
“Coffee or chocolate?” she offered, ready to refill their cups.
“Pour some of that rich, dark chocolate into the remains of my coffee, s'il vous plait.”
“Oui.”
“Lizzy,” Darcy said, when she returned to her seat, “one never knows what life will bring so I need you to know that you are well provided for, if something were to happen to me today. Lindsay Fitzwilliam, the landowner, and George Darcy, Sr., the banker, left their heirs, and, therefore, their grandson and granddaughter, well off. The Darcy stocks cover the Darcy farm easily; it is, after all, a pleasure horse establishment, not a business venture, but the ladies brought their dowry and their eventual inheritances and both were quite substantial. I am not allowed to touch the principal, which is the reason I could never sustain the foundation single-handedly, but, my dear, my share of the interest on the two trusts is very generous.”
“Oh, my darling, I have inherited nothing. I have only my wages from my two jobs.”
“Elizabeth, unless you prefer it, you need never work another day.”
“Fitzwilliam, I admire you for giving so much to so many and now to me.”
“By all means praise me when I deserve it, Elizabeth, but know that in my devotion to horses and their riders and keepers I only return a future to those who have made my life worth living. I am, Elizabeth, a fallible man—never forget it. I stole and blackmailed. Do not expect too much of me, my lovely one. I do not want you disappointed. As to the kidnapping and blackmail scheme, I took the easy route; I should have stopped driving sulkies and devoted my time to raising the funds honestly, when I found that the funds brought in by the farm itself and the donations were insufficient. I did something risky and foolish, when I should have done something that required real effort instead.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“Don't place me on a pedestal, Lizzy. As I told your sister Kitty and Sir William and Tish, you are my salvation. They know the extent I love you—more than life itself, my dear. I entered Sir William's home with two suitcases stuffed with other people's money. I laid them at his feet and begged his forgiveness. That extraordinary man, as you know, had not only already forgiven me, but had also arranged multi-millions in donations to my charity. Sir William is the one who is exceptional, not I. And I admitted that night that I was only returning the money unsolicited—undoubtedly I would have accepted their offer in any case—because of my monumental love for you and the hope that someday I might be able to share a future with you, if I did the right thing.
“I did not expect to end the night in your bed, my love. I went to Sir William's fully expecting to land in jail. Sir William and Tish and Kitty know that I am no altruist; they know I am an opportunist, who did not want to irrevocably lose the woman he loved.
“You, not honesty, were my catalyst, precious Elizabeth Francine. I love you, Elizabeth, as no man has ever loved a woman. Love has taken me by storm. Words cannot express the depth of my feeling. I'd have to be a poet.”
Seeing the need to soften Darcy's censure of himself on this fairy tale morning, Elizabeth circled the table and settled on his lap, saying with a sardonic smile, “Fitzwilliam, I know you are a man and no saint. I find it out anew every time I touch you—like this.” So saying, Elizabeth unbuttoned the top of his pajama shirt and rubbed her fingers tantalizingly down his bare chest and continued down across his stomach. Darcy enveloped Elizabeth in his arms, while a solitary tear of joy escaped from her eye.
*****
As Elizabeth showered to get ready for classes, Claire's mean-spirited Chapter One resurfaced in her mind. The chapter was filled with such vituperative anger that Elizabeth had a hard time letting it go as innocent literature. The anger was a dramatic invective of a wife's hatred for her famous husband. The wife, also the narrator, was clearly so unbalanced that her animosity flared and then increased with every new accolade, each award that the great man received; even the simple praise of colle
agues and the appreciation of fellow professors and students ignited her fury. Yet the wife dissembled; no one but the reader knew of her animosity. She hid her desperate, despicable feelings behind a facade of deceptive charm and disillusioned gaiety. Ironically, the unsuspecting spouse thought that he was the center of his wife's world. Not surprisingly, the husband was a famous expert on the works of James Joyce, much respected and in constant demand. The wife was a creative artist herself, who was ill-appreciated and little known.
Elizabeth, having scanned the plot summary before she commenced Chapter One, realized that a murder eventually occurs. The means were not specified in the synopsis, but the audience, in a Colombo-style venue, was aware of the murderess' identity. The proof was farfetched; it required the close analysis of imperfect clues by an expert detective. After perusing the character sketches accompanying the chapters, Elizabeth had discovered no such intuitive investigator, just a series of bumbling Inspector Clouseaus.
The wife, according to the plot summary and the character sketches, apparently relished the thought of getting caught. In her disjointed thought processes, she yearned for such front page status. However, the buffoons in charge had no clue; there was, therefore, no Perry Mason expose' at a trial. What was designed as a showcase for a maniac wife instead turned into a perfect unsolved crime. As Darcy had observed, the premise and its execution were brilliant.
Elizabeth understood why Darcy recognized only the dramatic virtues of the chapter. This would be no dime novel, but rather potentially great literature, poetic even. Darcy also did not know the principals or the story of their lives. But what she had read so far had rendered Elizabeth particularly uncomfortable. Once again Elizabeth wondered why Claire had sought her out at Sir William's. Was she, Elizabeth Bennet, to play one of Claire's buffoons for the novel? Was Claire doing a character study by watching Elizabeth bungle detection? Or was Elizabeth enlisted to find out about Minerva's wreck to set up a straw man just in case? Did Claire run Minerva off the road and then trade that car in on a new one? Was Claire, like her disturbed narrator, a woman jealous of a famous, well-liked, well-respected husband? Was she perhaps driven by that jealousy over the edge to insanity? Or was Claire simply a talented writer, who was combining the trauma of her experience with the details and actors in the real life scenario to write the great American novel? Probably the latter, but Elizabeth still could not shake the lurking suspicion that Claire did not really love Jimmy Joyce and considered herself a greater talent, living in his giant shadow.
“One thing is certain,” Elizabeth concluded, as she dried off with her blanket-sized towel, “if I had to select someone to instigate and carry out a perfect murder, I'd nominate the ice-water-in-the-veins Claire Evans Carstairs. She has the qualities necessary: cold, hard mental strength combined with ingenious, imaginative mental agility. Claire's the perfect type to instigate a murder, advertise it in a novel and get away without so much as a suspicion.
“But, Elizabeth,” she reprimanded herself, “this is probably just another one of your increasingly numerous desires to solve a real life mystery. You invent clues and motives where none exist.
“You are a brand new bride, gal. Cool it! Concentrate on your man,” Elizabeth insisted, then qualified, “Or at least wait to see what the subsequent chapters reveal, before agonizing any more over this maddening dilemma.”
With that decision firmly planted in her conscious psyche, Elizabeth emerged from her bathroom wrapped in a towel, to find Darcy standing in front of the French doors, looking out at the April beauty, attired in similar fashion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Oh, to be in Kentucky now that April's there” Elizabeth said, taking a Robert Browning thought and giving it a local twist, as she lolled in Darcy's handsome eighteenth century tester bed amidst its deep rose colored damask silk covers and hangings. She lay admiring the spectacular vista from his windows, where Darcy had tied back the rose damask drapes. The windows were open and the sounds of nature, songs of birds, whinnies of horses, chatter of squirrels, invited in.
Reflective, Darcy, standing by the window, looking out, noticed the sheen of the elegant drapes. For the first time he realized that their color was fading somewhat.
“Lizzy,” he suggested, turning, “the decorations are my mother's. I am sure you will want to put your own touch on our home here in Lancaster. I want you to know that you may feel free to slash and burn. I am not much of a decorator myself, so I have been satisfied with the choices. However, they are getting—well—old.”
“In my vernacular old is synonymous with antique. And antique is the equivalent of valuable. I love your mother's choices; her taste was exquisite. How charming to awake to the dawn with dusty rose.”
“I know that you admired her sapphire blue bedroom, when you did your first, shall we say, walk-about. We can move across the hall to that room, if you like. My mom liked to sleep in and enjoyed reading in her room in the afternoon sun. I prefer the morning sun and so this side of the house. But it is up to you, my love.”
“I'm rather into morning sun myself. Let's stay here, or, my precious darling, we can move from room to room and initiate them all,” Elizabeth joked, her eyes full of mischief as she slid out of bed. “Oh, pooh, I have to get a move on, or I will be late to my own class.”
The plan for the day was for Darcy to practice his harness racing on his home track while Elizabeth was at EKU. Then when she returned, they would both break for a late lunch together, after which Darcy had some important official duties. He had ten plus personal and significant letters of gratitude to write. He wanted each to be in his own hand on his own stationary with each designed especially for that particular recipient. It was a small price to pay for such large contributions.
Meanwhile Elizabeth had designated the time to wade through Chapter Two of Claire's yet unnamed mystery and then presumably write the author some notes of praise and/or suggestion.
The couple had brought Gypsy over on Friday night in her van, hoping for a moonlight ride on Saturday evening. “I want Gypsy to meet her new friends at my stable and get the feel for her new home too,” Darcy had said, as he was loading Gypsy. “There will be little time soon.”
Darcy was right. Keeneland races commenced in two weeks and then Churchill’s. Invitations were pouring in for the new couple. Everyone included Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy in his or her party list as this year's dynamic duo. Elizabeth and Darcy were not the least bit sorry. They enjoyed dressing up and going out together. They were exceedingly proud of their love and delighted to show it off to friends and acquaintances.
Dressed for work, Elizabeth joined Darcy in the kitchen for coffee and cereal. “I haven't met your parents or Jane or Mary or Lydia or the nieces or nephew yet,” Darcy remarked. “And you have not met my sister, my cousin or my dear friends in Lexington. And we've known each other almost two weeks and been married about half that long,” he continued, counting on his fingers, his eyes dancing with merriment.
“I've been stingy. I've kept you all to myself. They are all clambering to meet you. On Monday night, we will go to our weekly family supper at Maria's. Bless her heart! She's taking my turn again.” Elizabeth answered.
“Will Sir William be there?”
“Most likely. You see, he and Maria are considered part of the family.”
“Good, I want to clasp him in my arms,”
Elizabeth smiled at the picture of the elegant Fitzwilliam Darcy hugging the even more elegant Sir William Lucas.
“As for your friends and family,” Elizabeth said, grabbing her purse and keys, “bring them on, please.”
*****
Mid-afternoon, sitting straight up, having purposely chosen the most uncomfortable chair in Darcy's den, Elizabeth tackled Chapter Two of Claire Evans' novel. She had small hope of appreciating it, none of enjoying it.
When she finally slapped it down, completed at last, on the Evans’ stack of papers, Elizabeth remarked aloud to the empty
room, “No one needs a play with a Hamlet 'Mousetrap' scene to ensnare Claire Evans. She discloses all her gruesome actions and thoughts in graphic black and white for, I presume, the entire world to see. Surely she's not going to all this trouble to torture a former friend.”
Chapter Two was even more bizarre than Chapter One. There was no actual murder yet, but all the manic machinations were in place for the inevitable. And the hate of the wife for the husband, which poured from every page, was searing. Elizabeth searched her mind for another work of literature so ravaged with dismembering desolation and could not think of one—Dostoevsky perhaps.
It was the intensity of the murderous vision, so uninhibitedly insane, which led Elizabeth to the conclusions that this was fiction pure and simple, and of a magnitude beyond her expectation and perhaps comprehension. Claire probably did not despise Jimmy Joyce, but had been rather escalated by his death into a state of emotion so raw and revealing that she, with her poetic mindset, had been positioned by fate to create a potential masterpiece of fiction, a probable Pulitzer Prize winning fiction. “Fiction,” Elizabeth reminded herself. “That is the consummate word.”
Nevertheless Elizabeth had no taste for the task of commenting on Claire's work, masterpiece or not. She concluded that she should not embroil Darcy in Chapter Two. He had more important business than Claire's novel on his mind. Darcy needed to concentrate on his letters of contrition and commendation. “I will not burden Fitz with this vitriol.”
Elizabeth decided to mail the chapters back to Claire on Monday with a curt reply, hoping that such actions would dissuade Claire from seeking her opinion in the future. Elizabeth really had no desire to talk to Claire at this time or perhaps ever again. Juvenile? Perhaps. But realistic.
“I do not like her. If she maliciously killed Jimmy Joyce to inspire a masterpiece, I despise her for her cruelty. If she is innocent of his murder and just using Jimmy Joyce's death as a boon to her fame and fortune, I despise her for her effrontery. And even if she is simply a woman bereft, writing through her emotion, I still despise her for her callous disregard for a good friend's memory.”
