Page 15 of It’s You
A mory stopped by Darcy’s studio on Friday morning to give her directions to Jack’s place, with a handwritten note inviting her to join him for dinner at six o’clock.
“You and Jack, huh?” Amory teased, handing her the cream-colored note onto which Jack had scrawled the invitation, directions, and his phone number.
“You really want to go there, Am? After that stunt you pulled with, um, Faith?”
“I like Faith.”
“Yeah. But you love Willow.”
“Willow doesn’t want me, Darcy. I have to move on.”
“How do you know she doesn’t?”
“Because if a woman wants a man, eventually she’s going to have to let him know.”
“You don’t see her eyes watching you?”
“It’s not enough. I’ve tried, and she just…Believe me, Darce. She doesn’t see me like that. I’m just your little brother.”
Amory’s eyes had looked so sad and heavy, Darcy didn’t push him any further and had changed the subject, asking about Faith instead.
Amory invited his sister to join them for drinks sometime, and Darcy had smiled and nodded.
If Faith was going to stay in the picture for a while, Darcy may as well get to know her a little.
For the rest of the day, when she wasn’t completely distracted thinking about her impending dinner with Jack or frustrated by Amory and Willow’s inability to see their compatibility, she worked on her thesis.
She had set a difficult objective for herself: to find an unknown element of moss or lichen that could be synthesized into a useful herbal or medical remedy.
She made some good headway sorting her notes and even made an interesting discovery.
The olivetol she’d found in a certain form of lichen she’d discovered in New Hampshire was a cousin element of the olivetolic acid found in cannabis.
She’d chuckled at that, wondering how many college kids would run out to the woods to harvest, dry, and smoke lichen if she made her discoveries known.
She’d have to talk to Willow about it and see if the Métis had already discovered the useful properties of olivetol hundreds of years before.
Perhaps it could be combined with some other element of substance to boost its effect. Hmm…
She caught her watch face out of the corner of her eye and glanced at the time and gasping. Five o’clock. She only had an hour. She shut down her laptop and hurried back to the house to get ready.
Looking at her reflection in her bedroom mirror as she fastened small silver hoops into her pierced ears, she smiled at herself. Not bad for a quick change.
Her strawberry-blonde hair was parted to one side, and she had French-braided a small portion of the wider side to sweep it off her face.
She had used nude powder to blend the freckles that settled across the pale skin of her high cheekbones, and some dark-brown mascara to make her green eyes pop.
She opened a tube of the melon-colored lip gloss she had started wearing at grad school in Boston and swiped the foam wand back and forth across her lips, liking the sensation of the slick, thick gloss.
She chose fitted, dark-blue skinny-fit jeans and a forest green cashmere scooped-neck sweater.
Turning slightly, she surveyed her ass, wishing she was still a size eight, but she had gained a few pounds in the past few years, and the size ten jeans simply fit more comfortably now.
Darcy didn’t much care about that sort of stuff, anyway.
She hiked often, ate well, and got enough sleep.
She didn’t need to look like a supermodel.
She looked down at the offerings in her meager jewelry box.
A simple silver necklace, settled in the back of the second row, caught her eye, and she gasped softly.
Where have you been? The necklace had been a present from Willow one summer after she returned from her Nohkom ’s house.
A silver chain with a sideways figure eight at the bottom.
Willow had explained that the charm was also known as an infinity symbol and could be found on the national flag of the Métis people.
Darcy had worn the necklace almost constantly for the rest of high school, but lost it in college soon after Phillip had left her.
And yet, here it was again. Returned to her.
She smiled at it like an old friend, then clasped it around her neck, grabbed her car keys, and turned off her bedroom light behind her.
As Darcy neared Jack’s house, she was grateful for her Land Rover’s V8 engine and four-wheel drive.
She was further grateful that Jack didn’t appear to be an axe murderer because, Lord, his house was way back in the woods.
Darcy, who prided herself on knowing every inch of Proctor Woods and most other wild rambles in and around Carlisle, followed Jack’s directions and was surprised to find an easy-to-miss access road partially hidden by dense overgrowth in the north part of town.
The dirt road she traveled was rough and windy, and she wondered, fleetingly, how in the world she was ever going to find her way home without overhead lights.
Luckily, her SUV had bright brights, but still, she’d have to take her time to ensure she was staying on the road and not trailblazing her own dangerous path back to downtown Carlisle.
She enjoyed the woods around her and appreciated that very few trees had been cut down to make the road.
Instead, the road weaved in and around the trees, messy but inoffensive.
As Darcy cleared a small ridge and rounded a bend, she found the most beautifully situated house she had ever seen. She gasped, braking, as she took in the sight before her.
Enchanting. It was simply enchanting.
A babbling river, acting almost as a moat, maybe six or seven feet across, lay between Darcy and the house, and a rustic-looking bridge offered the only conveyance between the woods from where she’d come and the modest semicircle driveway which presently held one Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Behind the driveway, there was a large lodge, the size of a small hotel, built of ancient logs covered in lichen and vines; it almost appeared embedded into the woods, as though it had been there forever.
There were mature trees within inches of the house footprint, signifying its age, which Darcy guessed at one hundred fifty years old or more.
The lodge itself appeared to be one story, but Darcy noted four half-sized gables, roughly hewn, creating peaks in the roofline, and implying a second floor, perhaps with eave bedrooms. The windows were ablaze with soft gold and yellow light that shined through gleaming windows, and the front of the house had been prettily landscaped with flowering bushes and a modest lawn in the middle of the semicircle driveway.
A sprawling porch that spanned the entire north side of the lodge had several rocking chairs and a split rail fence to keep people from toppling into the river below.
Ivy climbed around the front door, and smoke rose warmly from one of three stone chimneys.
Darcy put her car back in drive and crossed over the bridge, pulling up behind the Jeep she assumed was Jack’s.
Off to the left, and a little behind the house, she noticed the log-cabin-style barn-slash-garage that Amory had been working on.
He’d done a nice job incorporating it into the style of the house, although there was no mistaking its newness.
But the lighter wood wasn’t visible before a visitor crossed the bridge, maintaining the illusion that the lodge had existed in its place forever as the woods grew up around it.
Amory had mentioned that Jack’s place was grand.
Darcy just hadn’t expected it to be so entirely charming, so much a place that she would choose for herself, down to the last detail, had she the means and the need.
It was almost unnerving to come face-to-face with your dream house, with an enchanted lodge buried deep in the north woods.
Darcy took a deep breath, checking her reflection in her rearview mirror and wishing that her pounding heart would calm down. She grabbed her bag and opened her door, only to be greeted by Jack, who offered her his hand and a beaming smile. She hadn’t noticed him approach her car.
“Where’d you come from?” she asked.
He wore a white button-down shirt untucked, the first two buttons undone, and worn-in jeans with bare feet.
She looked at the wiry hairs peppering the tanned skin pulled taut over the well-defined bones beneath.
She loved that his feet were bare and suddenly wished hers were too.
Even his stupid feet made her heart beat faster. Geez!
She lifted her head to find him staring at her with raised eyebrows and an amused grin. “The house.”
“Some house! ” Darcy exclaimed.
She looked back at his offered hand, remembering the way her insides had turned to lava when he had unfurled his fist and laced his fingers through hers at Honoria’s wedding. Keep your head on straight, Darcy. No feet, no hands. You need discussion, not distraction.
“Thanks, I’ve got it.”
His eyes narrowed as he withdrew his hand, stepping back so she could stand up.
She turned around slowly, taking in the bridge and woods from where she’d come, the river, more woods, Amory’s barn-style garage, a flagstone pathway between the two buildings, then the corner of the lodge.
The facade of the house was built of large boulder-like stones, mismatched and misfit into a grand entry, which had a proper front door flanked by windows, and a gabled roof with a copper weathervane that had a crescent moon in place of the usual rooster.
At the northwest corner of the house, the porch started and curved around the side of the lodge, following the same path as the river.
Finally, Darcy’s eyes returned to the bridge again.
This wasn’t so much a house as a compound.