The blog tour for the final book in the Bennet Wardrobe, The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy is nearing its conclusion. To date, I have been fortunate to have been hosted by six wonderful bloggers, each one an important voice in our genre. The final post will be on March 12 at Interests of a Jane Austen Girl which will be found at
https://interestsofajaneaustengirl.wordpress.com/
The purpose of this extra-special edition of Austenesque Thoughts is to give you the chance to read my guest posts, excerpts from the book, and to participate in the global giveaway for one of two copies of The Grail’s e-book. But, to do that, you need the links to the sites. The giveaway ends on March 13, 2022. Winners will be announced shortly after that.
Here are the links to the blogspots. One entry per blog (so you can link to six entries here).
So Little Time (guest post on the Six Loves)… https://candy-m.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-grail-saving-of-elizabeth-darcy-by.html
The Literary Assistant (excerpt) … https://www.theliteraryassistant.com/post/the-grail-the-saving-of-elizabeth-darcy-by-don-jacobson
From Pemberley to Milton (guest post on the language of the covers and excerpt)… https://frompemberleytomilton.wordpress.com/2022/03/03/the-grail-the-saving-of-elizabeth-darcy-guest-post-with-don-jacobson-giveaway/
Babblings of a Bookworm (guest post on writing a series and excerpt)… https://babblingsofabookworm.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-grail-saving-of-elizabeth-darcy-by.html
Savvy Verse and Wit (Casting the movie)… https://savvyverseandwit.com/2022/03/character-interview-giveaway-the-grail-the-saving-of-elizabeth-darcy-by-don-jacobson.html
My Vices and Weaknesses (excerpt)… https://myvicesandweaknesses.wordpress.com/
If you are looking to jump into the Bennet Wardrobe Series, your voyage best begins with Volume One, The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey. Here is the universal link to Amazon stores around the globe: mybook.to/MPKeeperwardrobe
A lot of hotlinks can be wearing, so here is another excerpt from The Grail. Please enjoy!
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This excerpt is ©2021 by Donald P. Jacobson. Any reproduction without the expressed written consent of the author is prohibited.
An Excerpt from Chapter 36
Darcy in a fever dream
A long hallway devoid of doors. A solitary window in the distance sends a glimmer down the corridor. That is how I can see an indistinct figure, almost an inky squiggle that disappears into the backlight’s shimmering. If I could only pull closer.
He never could.
Until the keepers of this demesne granted him a boon.
This time as the dream swept him along, the prelude to his entry was potent. The sensations from beyond his ken were turbulent with crisis crashing the ramparts. The mists about him frothed. The fury bore him up and threw him into that eldritch passage, not at its lip as before but, rather, near its end. The shape he had seen as a mirage on an iridescent horizon resolved into that of a woman…but not any female plucked from random millions.
Elizabeth!
He could not know whether she drew her to him or the other way around. All Darcy could apprehend was the sudden foreshortening of the corridor as if a gigantic blade had removed the meaningless interval and left him standing before her. There sat his loveliest Elizabeth, clad in an earthly form. Her sigh shivered the cathedral of silence.
Were his prayers answered? Or was this cruel comfort visited upon one who was at the very edge of extinction?
As he hung there, he peered through the window that had mocked him for so long. Beyond the panes stretched a scene of heart-aching beauty. A carpet of flowers atop rolling hillsides. Skies so richly hued as to be near purple.
He turned to face an opening now dilated in the previously blank wall. A sweet breeze, redolent of all the blossoms that had ever bloomed, greeted his senses. Atop it all was a scent—Lizzy’s Own Red Bourbons—and it tugged him toward the opening. His passage was brought up short by a familiar cough.
“You, William, are on a precipice. You must decide where you will go from here.”
Darcy found himself being pulled back into the corridor’s center. He rotated slowly, although this time controlled by the other in his ken. Elizabeth slowly swam into his sight, oddly confusing him as there was a flash of another——a filament of luminescent brown—before the figure solidified into the woman who had first captivated him in the year ten.
She regarded him with warmth and flicked her fingers at a new, but closed, door by her side that cracked open to reveal a gray mist undulating beyond. “As I said, dear man, you must choose where you will go from here.”
The choice seemed stunningly simple: between a world redolent of that which had left him or a realm of continued denial of what he sought. Something, though, prevented him from dashing into the beauty behind.
“Is this a test? Are you a sphinx? You say I must choose, but is my pick between day and night? Perhaps it is between a sip of life-giving water and a plunge into what could be endless desert?”
Her eyes twinkled. “Questions here will not bring you enlightenment. You are learning but have yet to cast in stone the meaninglessness of determinism.” A chuckle at her irony echoed. “No queries can be answered, and even those that can are of little import. You must discard notions of what you want. Only then will you be free to accept what you need.”
“But I want you! I need you!”
“Perhaps, and perhaps not. To know for certain demands that you choose.”
His spirit sank as the import of her words became clear. His life since Elizabeth came to him had shaken him from his hidebound certitude. True, his efforts had been redemptive but only in turning himself into the best man he could be in her eyes. His desire, his passion, had been to soar in her opinion. That allowed him to reserve parts of his old self, the pieces she would not know, to pay attention to those facets she would see. His acts would allow her to admire him, and in that reflected light, he could preen beneath her gentle touch. He had not used her love for him, nor his for himself, to become the person he could be. His effort to be better for Elizabeth and not himself was his failing, something yet to be perfected.
Exágoras Agápis
In that instant, if the passage of a mote across an infinite chasm could be so quantified, his resolve firmed.
Elizabeth beamed. “You do not fail to impress even here. You have eschewed the beautiful beyond. You, my one and future, have chosen difficulty and loneliness. As a result, I have a gift I am now allowed to give you. Fitzwilliam Darcy, know that I wait for you not in the rose-scented fields, but ahead—beyond the dark horizon. Pass through that door, and I will await you there. Go and seek me out.”
Never flinching, Darcy drifted past her and into the haze that enveloped him and smoothed away all care.