A Photo of Love

Sourcing a View from a Room

A year ago in April, Pam & I traveled to Italy. We started in Rome, went to Florence, and then returned to Rome. Sort of a tasting menu.

I am now going to include you in story development.

Our first three nights at the Hotel Abruzzi (huge rec for this wonderful place) on the plaza in front of Hadrian’s Pantheon. We were up on the fourth floor. The bell captain was a wonder, lugging our stuff up the narrow stairwell.

This was the view from our room. Note the white marble steps in the lower right corner. These are part of the Fontana del Pantheon commiccioned by Pope Gregory XIII.

Ever the tourist, I loved leaning out our window to watch the crowds.

One evening after a remarkable dinner and enough wine to to make the four storey climb challenging, I was trying to clear my head to the sound of a remarable singer seranading the plaza (at about 11PM). Then I was arrested by an image that held my attention for the entire 20 minute aria.

Photo is ©2024 by Donald P. Jacobson.

The two couples left me with an indelible image and the thought that I was a privileged observer to a love that flourishes beyond this world.

Your eye is, of course, drawn to the woman in white. What she and her partner are experiencing is obvious to every one of us in the #Austenesque World. There are questions: were they just married? Is this the afterglow of a proposal?

But, look up and slightly left. There you see an animated conversation by another pair. Their body language speaks of love. But, about what are they talking?

I would love your speculation about one or both. What stories are we seeing? Who in the #Austenesque realm are these people?

Speculate, dear friends, in the comments. I look forward to your thoughts. I will not tip what I’m thinking.

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Excited! My short story, The Last Gift (4,700 words in e-book only), commemorating Jane Austen's 250th birth anniversary is now available for preorder across all Amazon platforms. The story will release on April 15, 2025 across all Amazon storefronts.

Discover for yourself what Sophia did when she wrote: "The Last Gift proved to be moving, funny, and brilliantly situated in a well-written domain, where Jane Austen’s universes coexist and her characters are aware of their ending, their partners, and foibles, yet find happiness.

"Though I will admit to shedding more than one tear as I read - both for the sadness and the jubilant nature of this novella.

"This universe reminded me a little of C.S. Lewis’s universe of Narnia - where people who care for each other reunite, creating a sort of in-between world or plane."

https://mybook.to/A7Ayt4

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Now for another taste from my Work-In-Progress. We are swiftly approaching D-Day. Darcy and Elizabeth are now in France. Elizabeth (Heloise Lopinat/Madeline) overhears Darcy/Jeeves and Fitzwilliam/Preacher talking about her.

©2025 by Donald P. Jacobson. All rights reserved. Reproduction is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.

Chapter Sixteen

Two things about her host, Jeeves, bothered Elizabeth. His attitude, if she was honest, rankled. Whether he spoke in French or English as had been their conversation in the barn, his cut-glass accent came through telling her of Harrow and Eton followed by terms at Cambridge. True, he tried to hide it with a Derby tinge that could have fooled most outside of the British Isles. No, he was no Yorkshireman with sod dropping off his syllables, but to the uninformed ear, he could be Mr. Fitzgerald from somewhere around Dublin in the Republic.

The accent was the tip of the berg. The mountain was his words exacerbated by his chin-up way of looking down his nose, certainly in disdain. After meeting the man, Lizzy now had the context to understand his comment about avoiding the drop zone. Jeeves was uncomfortable with needing a cane’s assistance. Yet, she could not leap to a slur about his person from a reference about his inability to cross an uneven field in the dark. Knowing Preacher as she did, she could not imagine anything he said—especially to a prior acquaintance—would be elevated to an insult.

Having experienced the loss he had, any feeling person would have found sympathy for those less fortunate than he had been before his injuries. Jeeves seemed immune to that transformation. Instead, he was an aloof, prickly man.

Sensitive is understating the case threefold. Look at how Jeeves jumped at me when I asked about power for my radio. You would think I had walked into Buckingham Palace and said, ‘Nice place you have here. By the way, King, do you have a flush WC?’ Only in the reverse: his reply betrays something from his other life. Preacher did imply that Jeeves owns La Ferme, so maybe he is uncomfortable that the farm is more rustic than what he is accustomed to.

There was something else, less bothersome but more curious, about Mr. Jeeves. He seemed strangely familiar—in appearance and voice—as if Elizabeth had seen him from across a crowded room or heard him speak, although likewise from a distance. The two senses, though, were split from each other.

His image was faded, grainy, and ill-formed, flat. But his voice struck a chord in her, a unique resonance that lingers after the most intimate conversations, a profound sharing of souls. No, not the sort of pillow talk leading to WAAF giggles in the barracks after lights out, but that which was found in dark moments when all came undone and hands reached out for solace and strength. In the corners of her memories, sound was king, although one with a fragile grip on the throne.

The shimmering recollection’s gossamer wings flittered and whispered along the corners of her mind, untouchable, barely out of reach.

Elizabeth huffed, her breath visible in the single candle’s light. Eileen—she had to forget her friend’s name for the disguising Rose—had burrowed under her blankets and soundly slept. For Agent Madeline, she feared this short night would hold little hope for any rest. Her agitated spirit would not allow a trip to Morpheus’s realm.

Lizzy threw back the covers, shivering as the room’s chill slid beneath the nightgown’s hem. She slid her feet into Mademoiselle’s Lopinat’s sturdy shoes—the rough-hewn floorboards promised splinters—and pulled a blanket from the bed as a wrap. Softly making her way from the room, the curious young woman and the cautious agent searched for something. Thick leather soles—her uncle Edouard was a successful merchant, after all—quieted her movements from the bedroom into the upstairs hall. She could not imagine riding her bicycle around Normandy, watching, while limited by the latest French ‘style’ of shoes with carved wooden soles, all leather being appropriated for the Reichswehr’s marching boots. Her mission, ostensibly searching out the region’s best Calvados and filling her order book, but really collecting messages from sub-circuits for transmission back to London, would have been doubly difficult if her feet could not flex as she pedaled.

Elizabeth whisperwalked along the gallery framing the central hall. Here, again, Denden’s little Kentish house of horrors has prepared me well. Although the doors were bolted and blackouts pulled, the building had not gone to bed. A soft glow shined through the crack left by a partially closed door on the main level. Conversation’s murmur was a stream gurgling through riverbed pebbles.

A moth to the candle, Elizabeth was drawn and secretively found her way past closed doors behind which snoring Maquis lay. Weeks of harsh lessons had schooled her to allow the world to tell her its story while she, fly on the wall, collected specimens that, when puzzled together, would make the tale’s picture. Stairs posed little challenge for an SOE agent, her recent passage through a man-made Hell had sharpened her skills to a fine point that would have done proud armies of long-dead Spartan boys.[i]

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 agents’ 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.”[ii]

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 flared brighter the further she withdrew.

---

[i] Not necessarily the final exam, but Spartan youth were sent out to sneak into an enemy camp to learn their plans. If they were discovered, the enemy killed them. If they came back with nothing, they were severely beaten by the Spartan homoioi. If they returned with useful information, they were fed, armed, and sent out with the raiding party. The most industrious would sneak under a tent’s hem and hide amongst the feet of drunken enemies to hear their table talk (Apologies to Oliver Wendel Holmes).

[ii] Jeff Bass painted Virginia Hall, Diane, sending a message with a bicycle-powered generator. (CIA Fine Arts Collection).