by Glenna Mason
“I have to take another shower to get the straw and hay out of my hair,” Elizabeth said, when picking at it failed.
“You'll erode one day,” Darcy joked and then said, “I too. Shall we, Mrs. Bennet-Darcy?”
Soon they were stepping into the shower together. It wasn't a big space, which only added to the togetherness.
After they were presentable and fully dressed again, Elizabeth announced, “I have some calls to make, darling. I'll be down soon.”
“That is fine. I'm going to read one of your mysteries, a Richard Jury one I think.”
“Great! Let's both curl up with a good mystery this afternoon. An Adam Dalgliesh is just the ticket for me,” said Elizabeth, knowing she had to read Claire's chapters first.
When the Darcys had arrived home this morning, Elizabeth had found the chapters in the doorway, where Jane had left them over the week-end with a one word note in bright red, “UGH!”
Elizabeth was determined Darcy would not see her reading the chapters. “I’ll just sneak them inside the cover of a hard back, so I will not upset Fitzwilliam again,” Elizabeth planned. “He is fragile right now, due to his concern for my welfare. Claire Evans will not cause my husband one more moment of grief,” Elizabeth declared. Little did Elizabeth know.
But first came some phone calls. Elizabeth believed that since today was a holiday she might find Carl, Jr. or his mother at home. She didn't require their testimony to convince herself that Claire Evans was a cold blooded murderer, but she knew it was practical to get as much information as possible, before going to the police. Elizabeth did not reach Carl's mom, but she did speak to the son, again in the guise of a detective.
The son said, “I was young when Dad died, but, nevertheless, he and I were very close. We seldom stayed around the house when Claire was there. I got the sense that he wanted to be away from her, but that is only the impression of a pampered son, who disliked his stepmother.
“There is one thing I should pass on to you, Detective Hammond. The last time we were together before he disappeared, Dad told me he was leaving Claire. He explained that he did not love her. He told me that he had always loved Mom. He wasn’t sure we could be a family again, but he wanted to try, if Mom did.
“I was thrilled. Dad told me not to tell Mom, but I did anyway. She was noncommittal, and then he disappeared. I do not know if she would have gone back with him, but she loved him. She cried herself to sleep for months after his body was discovered. I was so glad that he had told me his plan and his love for her, because she can live her life knowing she was no longer rejected by the first love of her life.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cameron. Your insight has been most helpful.”
Elizabeth added the notes from the phone conversation to her file. Then she gathered up the manuscript, pulled The Murder Room, a P D James novel, from her book shelf, and, sticking Claire's pages inside, joined Darcy in the library.
Even though it was quite warm outside, Darcy had built a fire in the fireplace; he had even thrown fragrant pine cones in it to complete a sensual aura. He’d left the windows open, so the songs of birds and the fragrance of flowers could compete with the crackling fire. The room was redolent with both summer and fall.
“I know we don't need the warmth, but a fire makes life so cozy that I just couldn't resist making a light one,” Darcy explained.
“I am glad you built one, Fitzwilliam. It is the perfect ambiance for an afternoon of reading and lounging.” Elizabeth found a comfortable chair, which was not too close to the fire, so that Darcy, reclining on the sofa, could not see what she read.
Elizabeth only skimmed the two chapters this time. She already knew they were “ugh.” It was all there of course: the wife tracking the alleged lover by the rose, the wife running the unsuspecting woman's car off the road, the wife going immediately to a car lot and trading her husband's now damaged sedan in on a new red automobile, the enlisting of the neighbor across the street, still suspected of having an affair with the husband, to solve the crime of the hit and run on an amateur basis, because the wife comprehended that by assigning the naive novice such a query, the snoopy, investigation-hungry neighbor would be less likely to suspect her.
There were great lengthy paragraphs describing the absurdities of the non-investigation of the professionals and non-professionals alike. None ever interpreted the evidence correctly, in spite of the fact that the wife arranged to have it in plain sight.
Elizabeth knew that if Darcy were not in the room, she would stalk loudly across the library, tear the pages into shreds and incinerate them in the fire. That not being possible, she instead cautiously made a couple of pages of notes and then stuck both the notes and the manuscript pages under the leather pillow of her chair, plopping back on it to secure its contents.
Elizabeth realized her temperature was rising precipitously. She apprehended that the escalation of her complexion to scarlet had absolutely nothing to do with Darcy's embers, which were by now burning down to nothing. She was seething, exuding anger from every pore. She placed her hand against her cheek and perceived the radiant heat emanating from it. Elizabeth comprehended that she must be beet red. It would not do for Darcy to see her so.
“Be right back, darlin',” Elizabeth called to Darcy, before she hurried to the powder room in the entry hall, where she dashed water on her flushed face, bringing a coolness to its heated surface and a dose of reality to her troubled soul. Elizabeth felt better already.
“Forget it!” she demanded.
Returning to the library, Elizabeth nodded to her two dogs, lying contentedly next to the fire. The three communicated by innate telepathy, and the dogs, instinctively sensing her need of succor, followed Elizabeth back to her chair. She bent down and patted them both affectionately on the head and then stretched their ears tenderly; their heavy tails beat gratefully on the hard wood floor.
“I love you,” she said quietly. Their tails beat louder.
“I love you too,” Darcy answered, not wavering in his concentration of the dalliances of Richard Jury and Melrose Plant.
Elizabeth opened The Murder Room. It had been quite a while since she had read it. She quickly forgot that she was sitting on evidence of an actual crime, as she sifted with Dalgliesh through mounting clues. Such was the fate of a lover of mysteries—total absorption.
*****
Even as a kid helping her dad, Elizabeth had never had as much fun at the barns as she did that Monday evening alone in the Bennet Ltd. barns with Darcy. Leaving the fields to take care of themselves, tonight the couple only needed to tackle the two main barns, since the foaling barn had no activity at this time of year. And with their vibrancy for life's absurdities in full gear, they experienced an adventure maddeningly manic by the end.
Elizabeth and Darcy started their chores efficiently, carefully mucking out the four stalls that the morning crew had not gotten to before being sent home. Then they laid fresh straw in all the stalls in both barns. So far, so good. However, that mundane chore accomplished, it took the couple three or four times as long as they had expected to simply get the mares and foals safely bedded down. And they still had the rowdy yearlings and the recalcitrant stallions to go.
Finally after they got the yearlings into their stalls, Darcy volunteered to retrieve the two stallions. The two were in separate lots, two fields apart. Luckily the fields were purposely small, but the stallions were so enamored with their freedom, they raced from one fence to the other, as Darcy tried to catch them with a lead. He was not used to having trouble with any horse. Finally Darcy saddled a mare and rode into the field with the big gray. Interested in the mare, Sunny Boy, allowed Darcy to lead him back to the barn. However, in the barn, Sunny Boy revolted at entering a stall, rearing high on his hind legs.
“Fitzwilliam, for God's sake,” Elizabeth screamed, no longer amused at Darcy's hapless adventures with the stallions.
Elizabeth approached the horse, clucking gently, but persistently. The horse
calmed. Elizabeth petted him and rubbed his neck, holding firmly on the halter. She retrieved a green apple from her jacket pocket and treated the horse. He was apparently charmed and entered the stall willingly. “Good, boy,” Elizabeth spoke softly, handing him another apple. He was munching peacefully as Elizabeth closed and latched the stall door.
“You're a witch, woman,” Darcy said, fascinated by what he has just seen.
“Just more experienced, my dear. You are not as accustomed as I to sexed-up males.” Elizabeth laughed. Darcy also laughed at her apt observation.
“I'll get Come As You Are in,” she said. “You begin the oats.”
Happy not to be retrieving another full-blooded male, Darcy poured out oats for the stallions and returned to the mares' barn to do the same.
Elizabeth soon joined him, having easily secured the roan into his hotel suite for the night. Helping Darcy with the rest of the oats and the water buckets, Elizabeth perceived that Darcy could handle the mares as well as she. “Next time,” she decided, “we'll split up accordingly. Girls just love Fitzwilliam Darcy. I should know.”
However, it was when Elizabeth and Darcy got to the loft to throw hay down into the horse's cribs that the pandemonium returned and at Elizabeth's instigation. Elizabeth, with a pair of shears, snipped the string holding a bale of hay together. She asked Darcy to do the same, starting at the far end. So they each grabbed a pitchfork and tossed hay into the proper bins. It was when they performed the same scenario on the second side of the barn that the fun began. Eventually the two met in the middle, almost finished. As Darcy bent to toss hay into the last stall, Elizabeth pitched an entire pitchfork of hay on Darcy, which floated into his hair, down his neckline and blanketed his shoulders.
“Hey, doll, watch out!” Darcy shouted, spinning, only to be blasted with a fresh forkful in the mouth.
Sputtering, Darcy dropped his pitchfork and lunged for Elizabeth, who slung her pitchfork away and scrambled to avoid Darcy. Darcy, trying to tackle Elizabeth, tripped and sprawled, grabbing her leg on the way down, so that she was pulled down with him. The two rolled and tumbled on the boards, again padded with hay and straw, gleefully and spontaneously silly.
A draw for some time, Darcy finally pinned Elizabeth's shoulders to the floor, sitting astride her. He quickly rolled off and pulled her instead over on him, fearing his weight too much for her slender frame, but holding her tight, both breathless and full of the joy of nonsense.
“You are no witch after all,” Darcy said, loosening his hold, his lips almost touching hers.
“No?” she queried, squirming.
“You are a sorceress, Elizabeth Francine Bennet-Darcy.”
“Oh!”
He lifted her up between his legs, rising to a seated position himself. Their lips touched softly. Their tongues licked playfully. They pulled each other up.
“Well,” Darcy said, “now we know what it is like to really roll in the hay.”
Darcy brushed her shoulders and shook his own head, sending sprigs of straw and hay flying. She followed suit.
“Come, we will have to shower again.”
With that, Darcy spun, finding that he was teetering at the top of the stairs. He barely avoided tumbling down the skinny, but steep loft staircase.
“My God, woman, you do have me in a trance.”
“No, quite the contrary. If I'd put a hex on you, you'd be sprawled at the bottom of the steps right now. There is the proof of my innocence.”
They locked arms and bumbled down the narrow steps haltingly, laughing all the way, covered head to toe with sticky straw and itchy hay.
Starting for the house, shedding hay by the seeming bale load as they walked, Elizabeth suddenly started. She placed her hand on Darcy's arm. They both stopped. He glanced at her inquiringly.
“Oh, no, Fitzwilliam. We didn't give the stallions any hay.”
Laughing so hard they cried, they sat in mid-lot, bent double.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Sitting relaxed with Darcy on the back veranda, the cats curled in both of their laps, the dogs at their feet, once again showered and straw-less, watching the last streaks of sun disappear into the night sky, Elizabeth said, “I'm putting an extra hundred in the lads pay envelopes this week. I now appreciate how very valuable they are.”
“And I'll spot you another hundred,” Darcy said.
“I've a busy day tomorrow. Tuesday is ‘Back to Labor’ Day for me. I've classes from ten to four and pre and post class rounds at the barn,” Elizabeth reminded Darcy.
“I'm going to spend most of the day in Lancaster, the part you are in class, working myself and the stallions. Next week I'm investing in the rink up here. I've hired the builder. It should be finished in a couple of weeks. I'll house a couple of stallions in the stallion barn and leave the rest in Lancaster.”
“Good, sweetheart. It isn't that far, but it does add up to an hour and a half on the road.”
Elizabeth's mind wandered to Claire and the novel. Claire would be back from NYC by Wednesday. Elizabeth would waste no more time before she confronted Claire. Thursday was the day. On Thursday Elizabeth would have Darcy do the evening barn duty. She intended to take the dastardly chapters back then, right after she returned from school. Elizabeth knew that she should mail them, but she wanted to be sure that Claire understood in no uncertain terms that all communication between them was over.
Elizabeth had been vacillating in her mind about whether to let Claire publish her book, providing additional proverbial rope to hang herself with, or whether to go to Chief Clem with her suspicions now. After skimming those last chapters this afternoon, Elizabeth had decided the latter was the preferred course of action. She had the scraping it was true, but Claire would certainly scrub the truck clean or run it into the Kentucky River before the novel was published—possibly any day now. Time was suddenly of the essence.
So Elizabeth decided that Friday after class she would swing by the Richmond Police Department and clue Chief Clem into the murder weapon in the barn. She would take him her file of notes on the novel and the interviews. Those should present enough evidence for a search warrant. After that let Claire find out just how incompetent the police really were. She might well be surprised.
Those two decisions completed, Elizabeth planned a stress free Tuesday and Wednesday, concentrating on her work, her animals and her lover. Elizabeth, having been momentarily lost in these thoughts, resurfaced mentally and turned to Darcy, only to find that he too sat silently, sipping his merlot, obviously far away in his own contemplations. She watched him briefly, her breath catching at her overwhelming love of this man.
Elizabeth arose from her chair, placed the cat on the porch floor, picked up the wine bottle and poured more wine into Darcy's glass, which rested in his hand on the arm of the wicker arm chair. She lightly touched his shoulder with her free hand, as she twirled to fill her own glass.
Darcy, attuned to Elizabeth's every gesture, looked up. He could not help but notice the slight rise in color on her cheeks and the flashing sparkle of her eyes. “I'm sorry, my love,” Darcy apologized. “I have not been giving you the attention you deserve.”
“Nor I you.”
“I was just visualizing in my mind's eye the new rink in the field over there, with you beside me in the sulky, barreling around the circle, just as we did in Lancaster, the first day we met.”
Pulling her chair closer to Darcy, Elizabeth plopped casually down, but then leaned toward her husband. She clicked her crystal wine glass against his and said, “Let's drink to a future of extremes and everything in between.”
“To merriment and solace!”
“To mirth and solicitude!”
“To rolls in the hay and kneeling together in church!”
“To us!”
“To our life together!”
Elizabeth left the doctor's office two days later in a state of euphoria. She had been confident, but now it was confirmed. Elizabeth and Darcy would h
ave a baby in less than seven months. “I wonder if I got pregnant on our second wedding night, July 14. Nope, doesn't add up. I must have already been pregnant on that wedding day.” She smiled in happiness.
Elizabeth drove home, top down, but more cautiously than usual. “I guess my speeding days are over.”
Elizabeth was lightheaded with excitement at her news for Darcy. She sipped one glass of wine during their cocktail hour, waiting for dinner for the announcement. Her skin tingled with anticipation as he seated her.
Even though it was mid-week supper, which was usually simple dress and casual fare, Elizabeth had spent extra energy on her makeup, matching her eye shadow and liner to her pretty dress, all an especially appealing shade of sea blue, Darcy's favorite color on her, since it sent her blue eyes off the scale. She had asked Amelie to do something French tonight and so she knew it would be delicious and savory.
“Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth said, after Peter placed a lovely salad in front of them and retreated to the kitchen, “I'm not going to be able to ride in the sulky with you for at least seven months.”
“I'm sorry, Elizabeth,” Darcy answered, surprised. “I'd counted on our going around together first thing.” He placed his hand on hers, smiling, “Why the sudden hesitation? I didn't scare you that badly in Lancaster, did I?” He smiled, his dimples flashing.
“Well, Fitzwilliam, I did mention a specific time frame you know—seven months.”
“Seven months, Lizzy, I do not . . .” Darcy stopped in mid-sentence, staring at her, noticing the glorious smile spreading across her face.
He rose and came around the table, where he sank on his knees beside her, asking, “My darling, are you . . .? Is it . . .?”
“Yes, my precious dad-to-be. We are two months pregnant.”
The rest of the evening was spent with Darcy being totally solicitous of Elizabeth's every whim. He plumped her pillows in the library, built a lovely small fire and sat with her beside it, reading some of her favorite poetry in his beautiful tenor voice. Then he led her to the grand piano where he played several love songs, singing to her as he played. They did a duet or two, songs Elizabeth was comfortable playing and singing. When bedtime arrived, Darcy carried Elizabeth up the stairs and, after he laid her carefully on the bed, stayed way on his side to be sure he didn't bump her stomach.
