“Don? Don?”
The voice nagged me out of the space into which my mind had retreated. My eyes drifted open, and I saw Eliza, my spin instructor, materializing out of the fog of pain and sweat that had been my lot for the past 45 minutes.
“Don’t leave now. You always leave before the hour is up!” she urged.
Now, in my defense, this was not me leaving. Not this time. I had been back at spin—my preferred form of intense cardiovascular exercise—for nearly six weeks ever since I had shaken that nasty upper-rez infection. Today, sure, I had stopped pedaling. Not from weariness, though, but rather because my mind had wandered as I wrestled with a knotty (or, perhaps, naughty) problem in the plot of my latest variation. Sometimes the thread vanishes in the undergrowth of all that becomes, in the moment, so interesting.
I am not a meditation adept. I cannot drop into a trance like a Zen Master. I must beat all of the noisome little creatures into submission. Almost every writer hears those little voices crying out in the darkness: their sole mission is to divert you from moving the story along.
Did you get the car rental in Seattle?
The dishes are still in the sink!
Pee-you…that litter box needs changing!
In the light of day, the story that kept you awake last night with unique and wonderful twists and turns becomes a grey and painful slog. That is when so many interesting thoughts rear their ugly little heads.
Spin class stresses every part of me: body and mind. That delicious weariness forces me to attend to only one thought thread. Competing influences, the noises of my life, are banished. Now, this fatigue is all-consuming and does not allow expansive plot structures. I usually find that my mind is allowed to wander through the garden of that which I have written, pruning, of course, but more often fertilizing.
These moments are when my mind can turn itself to the problems that have been niggling away in the background…by bringing them forward. After class, I send myself emails from the parking lot. I have copied the following emails from when I wrote In Plain Sight.
January 23
I am bound by law and honor not to speak it [my name] until I am released from my obligation to society.
January 21
You know he belongs to Aunt Catherine
January 15
Lizzy said, “I had hoped otherwise, but there is nothing for it.”
Papa replied, “Our reputation is not worth your,” and then he looked at Edward and Mary, “…none of my children’s lives.”
January 11
Have Edward and Mary talking on the wagon’s box.
Would he have thought it of the old Mary?
She breathed, “Oh no, my love. The old me would have snapped that any savage could dance. Now I realize that cavorting like this is a sign of pure joy. Recall Old King David in the Temple when the Lord saved Israel. And even our Savior loved a good party. I recollect something to do with wine…”
The fatigue of strenuous exercise opens the doors of my mind much as Mrs. Shelley’s waking dreams were those epiphanies when her inhibitions were cast off. Not everything that is released will appear in my work.
However, I believe the process offers readers a more enjoyable and involving work.
My current work—Ghost Flight: A World War II Pride and Prejudice Variation—has our lead characters following different paths to their first meeting. Both Darcy and Elizabeth—Jeeves and Madeline—are war-scarred after over four years fighting fascists. As D-Day approaches, they each come separately to direct action again—as operatives in France for Britain’s Special Operations Executive—SOE. They had earlier come into contact when Elizabeth talked Darcy—not knowing his name—down after a horrendous run-in with a German night fighter. Now, months and miles later, Darcy has connected the woman in his headphones with the one sent to be his radio operator. Being Darcy, he wants to spare Elizabeth the fate of eighty-five out of one hundred SOE women sent to Europe.
&&&&
The excerpt from Ghost Flight, Chapter Sixteen is ©2025 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.
March 1944. Elizabeth has been flown into France to serve as a radio operator and is staying at Will Fitzgerald’s/Darcy’s La Ferme de la Boissière before assuming her identity as Heloise Lopinat. Still agitated from her flight in a Lysander, she wanders the halls and is attracted by voices.
While the steps ended a few feet from the target, Elizabeth did not step forward but back, moving away from the door and around the atrium, completing a circle to arrive on the hinge side. That slight variation would let her hear what was said but reduced the chance that an inopportune glance would catch her out. Training had honed her intuition to tell her that human inclination is to peer at the opening, not the joint, and, when leaving a room, to look toward the next part of the journey—up the stairwell and not away from it—behind the door.
So situated, she listened.
If they had been at Pemberley, this conversation would have occurred in the library. The study would have set the wrong tone—that of master and supplicant—which was not what Darcy wanted. He wanted Richard to listen to reason. The rough-hewn parlor, the farmhouse’s one room that could arguably be called formal if the dusty horsehair overstuffed furniture was any indication, would have to suffice for this conference.
Richard Fitzwilliam, alias Preacher, filled his glass from a bottle on the sideboard and wandered to an armchair facing the fire. He did not sit but bent to tap the seat and admire the dust cloud rising.
His raised eyebrow spurred Darcy. “You may have thought yourself the height of wit when you designated me ‘Jeeves,’ dear cousin, but I am no butler. Please excuse the conditions: we have had only a few days to get things in order.” He swatted at cobwebs draped around the mantel. A dust-fogged mirror above gleamed dimly at the pair. “Madame Brouillard, cook before housekeeper, decided the kitchen and bedrooms were the priority.
“If and when we can restore this property to,” he paused before continuing sardonically, “its former glory, I will have to build a giant bonfire out back for all of this.”
Fitzwilliam filled his cheeks with whiskey and swished it as if trying to relieve morning breath. “Glad I saw fit to pack this in with the medical supplies, eh? Doubt if you get your hands on any top-drawer Speyside, eh, Fitzy?”
Darcy growled. “Do not call me that upon pain of my taking my stick to your backside! I recall our housemaster at Harrow often needing to apply several strokes of corrective with his Board of Education.”
Using his glass as a pointer, the soldier shot back. “If I recall, you were frequently in the room with me, trews down around your ankles: Matlock’s bad seeds.”
“But not Wickham,” Darcy reminded him.
Fitzwilliam grimaced. “No, not Wickham: that little bastard managed to deflect all blame from his backside onto ours.
“Damn near had him in the bag a few months ago, but he did what he always does, took a bunk as soon as the temperature started rising. I only hope we catch up with him when this is over and give him his just desserts.”
Will narrowed his lips. Richard’s word games and antics were tiring. Weariness—perhaps an aftereffect of his long-term recuperation cut short his patience and, with that, his civility. He needed to get at what had been gnawing at him for hours. “What is going on, Richard?
“I understand why you would send me to France to organize a circuit. I can.
“The setup was perfect. There was a Darcy property, or, at least there was one about which I had to take your word. I had nearly been killed in the crash, although your boys did end up pushing me over the precipice so you could have a distant cousin of mine, conveniently untraceable, appear from the ol’ sod as the only heir. Adrien handled the legalities. Would anyone have suspected otherwise with a French avocat atop the process? All was in order.”
Fitzwilliam faced Darcy, nonplused. “Am I hearing a complaint? If I recall, you were chafing to be put back in the game. We did that.”
Darcy waved a calming hand. “No, I can see how I can be useful to you, SOE, and my country.
“I have looked the Beast in the eye. I have felt its breath on my neck. I have watched the ground fill my windscreen and felt that last crushing impact. I have died, Richard, and every minute of life after that is a bonus. Another death would be surplus to my requirements.
“I have nothing left to fear, making me the perfect man for the job. I am not sure if everyone can say that.”
A nagging something was bothering Darcy. The tickle began the instant Madeline had slipped off the truck’s rear. Her eyes and unbound hair filled him with a sense they had previously met. Then she spoke. That voice was familiar, a comforting calm in the center of the storm that had troubled him for months. Face and voice connected in an instant and were precisely what he had imagined she would be. Then he knew what he must do. Like Peter at the High Priest’s house, Darcy had to deny everything except the awful truth that he could never be what she deserved.
Her vitality cast a spotlight on his disabilities. His sadness was manifold because he could never hope to have her. Perhaps, though, he could save her.
She dared not try to see the men. A board might creak beneath her weight, or her body would interrupt a draft. Hearing Preacher and Jeeves was enough. Her hands, holding tight to the blanket’s corners, slid to her lips of their own volition, unconsciously stifling any gasps of outrage.
Jeeves launched the assault. “Damn you, Richard…you send me someone who is straight out of camp. Her inexperience will get her and us killed. It’s intolerable.”
Preacher’s baritone crackled as he objected. “You do realize that people experienced in this sort of thing are thin on the ground? This group of trainees is the best yet.
“Where before, our agent’s odds were one in ten, now, I think they are about even. That’s not to say that Jerry has taken his eye off our operations or the resistance, but the secret army fielded by the French is getting larger and better trained. As such, our people are lasting longer or can get out if things get too hot.
“We need to shore up the communications between F Section and these bands, especially here in Normandy, although we can be thankful that Maxim and the commandants in Le Havre and Caen are regular military.”
Elizabeth sensed that Jeeves was not convinced by Preacher—Richard’s?—argument. “From what I can tell, your Agent Rose at least has the advantage of having recently lived in France until she and her sister made good their escape in 1940. This Madeline may have lived in France, but only as a girl. She is nothing but a young woman barely out of the schoolroom. Yet you throw her into a situation where steel may be the only difference between life and death.
“She would be better off flying a desk back in London.”
The Meryton miss appreciated Preacher’s defense of her and, by extension, all of those he sent in harm’s way.
“Madeline has been as far out on the pointed end of the stick as we will allow any woman in Britain. She may not have bled, but she has seen enough bodies and blood. She may not have held a soldier’s hand as he slipped off, but she has heard a dozen confessions.
“She has made that awful final decision of who will live and who will die with a pair of words: go around.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Ordering a Wellington with no landing gear and flames streaming from all engines away from the airfield because its crash landing would block the runway for eleven others was the brutal reality of a controller’s life. Unlike some, Elizabeth never looked to the Group Captain to take the microphone and give the fell order. That was, had always been, her job. Her commanders trusted her to make the call.
The colonel—for she also knew him as that—was not finished.
“You have no choice. London has ordered this. Your objections are noted, although nobody will thank you for making them. You will live with it because you must. You are worthless without her.
“I will get Rose into Deauville tomorrow to board the Paris train. She will be on her own to make contact with the Wizard network.
“Maxim will find a safehouse where Madeline can keep her radio. She’ll pedal around visiting orchards and cellars, filling her order book, and collecting messages from couriers. Plenty of sympathetic Normans are ready to let her string her antenna and set up her bicycle generator. She’ll have to shift every week or so lest the Hun’s radiolocation vans sniff her out.”
Jeeves made one last attempt. “You know what happens. Someone will slip up. She will make a mistake. Or the circuit will be penetrated. Either way, Madeline will end up suffering the unspeakable.”
The chill in Preacher’s voice froze Elizabeth’s heart. “She has an L-Pill and is not afraid to use it.
“But I will tell you this: you will be surprised by Madeline’s ‘steel.’ Do you remember our little stress test before graduation? The two women landed tonight set the record for endurance. Rose did twelve-and-three-quarter hours.
“Madeline bested her by nearly fifteen minutes before Denden’s people gave up.”
Discretion led Elizabeth to begin her retreat as soon as Jeeves grunted in what she believed to be his grudging acquiescence. However, her anger at Jeeves’s insults to her character glowed the further she withdrew.
Leave a Reply