The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy: A Pride & Prejudice Variation (The Bennet Wardrobe Book 8) by Don Jacobson

Author:Don Jacobson [Jacobson, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Meryton Press
Published: 2022-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

June 30, 1840, Miami House

Locusts tuned their wings in the heavy afternoon air, a portent of sunset storms already building above Indiana. Maddie Johnson strolled between stands of roses behind Miami House. Like every Gardiner woman as far back as Christopher Bennet’s wife, this daughter of Pemberley found solace in patches of Rosa chinensis. Her ancestresses left carpets of thorned canes crowned with red, yellow, tangerine, blush, and white waiting to embrace those fortunate to have been given leave to move through their gardens. How like home this bloomed expanse looked! Of course, that was to be expected as Caroline Johnson—Mama Caroline—had exchanged cuttings with Elizabeth Darcy throughout the twenties and into the thirties.

The young Mrs. Johnson, her spirit roiled, craved the comfort she found in the long sloping beds. Standing alone, she was surrounded by the whispery shadows of those she needed but could not embrace. She imagined her mama and aunts. The women, all married save for Aunt Georgie, would be clad in crisp white linens and bonnets tied with emblematic ribbons. Together they would chat while they filled their baskets with a master gardener’s bounty. Little by little, they would winkle out that which disturbed her and pour balm upon her troubled soul.

My mad husband and Bedlamite father are acting like town fools. The young pup is determined to drive me all distracted with worry that he is going to get himself shot. The old hound, who has spent his entire life as stiff as a starched neckcloth, suddenly discovers a friskiness that ought to be pathetic in a man his age. They simply had to sweep in like avenging angels to defend the family’s honor. I would dearly love to dose the pair with laudanum and ship them back to Derbyshire.

In truth, Madelyn’s fears rose from more than concern for her two beloved men. Despite his name, her husband was not one to engage in risky tomfoolery. Tom was unlikely to be engaged in anything more dangerous than trying to eat his food left-handed given that he had a broken right wrist. As for her father: she had lived under his roof long enough to realize that he held the levers of power in his capable hands. He was the prime mover in this drama. She, like Mama before her, knew that Papa’s natural inclination was to organize the world and the lives of those within it to fit his vision of how all ought to be.

Mama had explained that, while it seemed insufferably grandiose, acting thus gave him inner comfort. Maddie divined that this was Papa’s response to his irrational belief that he could have kept both Grandmama Anne and Grandpapa George in this world. How do you explain to the twelve-year-old boy buried deep in a fifty-year-old man’s psyche that all men and women have their season? Yet his efforts at managing their world in the years after Mama died struck Maddie as terribly incomplete. Perhaps he did achieve an illusion of peace when players stood on their designated squares.

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