could please her more. But Rose Alice’s message was clear: it wouldn’t happen today.
She heard Emerald stamping across the concrete service drive toward the guest house. Curtain going up, thought Darcy. Let the drama begin.
Emerald didn’t knock. She burst through the door, clanking. She wore a good deal of chain mail and a buckler and sword. Her short hair was tousled by the spring wind, and her cheeks were red as flame.
She had been at the Pecan Street Festival with her fellow members of the Medieval Society. The Medieval Society usually turned out for the event in full costume, as knights or damsels or wizards or monks or warlocks. Emerald was presently in her warrior maiden phase, which she had described as “sort of Joan of Arc without the religion or politics.”
Darcy crossed her arms and allowed herself the smallest of smiles. “This is unexpected. Why aren’t you at the fair, jousting or minnesinging or whatever you do?”
“Somebody stepped on my lute, the clod,” Emerald said with passion. “I had to go home for my other one.”
“Hmm, sounds serious. When a man breaks your lute, doesn’t that mean you’re engaged—or should be?”
Emerald flashed her a resentful look. “You always want to make a joke out of everything. This is serious.”
Darcy shrugged. “I’m sorry. Can it be restored to its former virginal state? Do you need a lute-repair loan?”
Emerald put her gloved hands on her hips. “This isn’t about the lute, Darcy. This is about Mama. I’m very worried about her.”
Darcy gave her sister a skeptical look. “Mama’s fine,” she said. “She just had her physical. The doctor said she’s in wonderful shape.”
“Mom’s in fabulous shape,” Emerald said, tossing her head. “That’s never been the problem—has it?”
“No,” Darcy admitted, but she thought, It hasn’t been much of a solution, either.
Their mother, Olivia, had been a great beauty in her day. She was still stunning, tall and shapely, with platinum-blond hair she wore in a sleek chignon.
Emerald was small and wiry and brown-haired, like her father, and she had inherited their mother’s blue eyes. Darcy had her mother’s height, but she was dark-eyed and slim like her father.
Olivia had married three times. Now she was a widow, and if she was not exactly merry, she seemed content with her lot. She’d lived in Austin for the past twenty years, but had grown up Portland, Maine. When her third husband had died last autumn, she’d waited a decent interval, then bought a vacation condo back in Maine.
She wanted to spend her summers on the seacoast she’d loved as a girl. For the past month she’d been in Portland, working on the condo with a decorator.
“Oh, God,” Emerald said in exasperation. She threw herself down in the studio’s one armchair. This caused more clanking, and her sword stuck out at an awkward angle. “I don’t even know how to tell you this.”
“Would you take off that sword? You’re going to run it through either my cushion or yourself.”
Emerald ignored her. She threw back her head and stared at the ceiling dramatically. She sighed.
“I mean,” Darcy said, brushing back a dark strand of hair, “if you went home, why didn’t you take off the sword? Why didn’t you change clothes? You didn’t have to come stomping in here sounding like a bag of hubcaps.”
“I was too upset,” Emerald said, and scowled harder at the ceiling.
“Upset why?” Darcy demanded. “You said it’s about Mother. What is it?”
“I’m trying to tell you,” Emerald said righteously. She put her gloved hand over her mailed heart. “Oh, Gad.”
Darcy cleared the scraps of Velcro from the corner of her worktable and sat on its edge. “Yes?” she prodded.
“I don’t know where to start,” Emerald said. Her voice quivered.
Darcy wanted to snap just start, dammit! But she knew this tactic never worked. Instead, she mustered her best semblance of kindly patience. “Well—why don’t you just begin?”
Emerald slumped more deeply into the chair and gazed more fiercely at the ceiling. “Do you know that laptop computer you bought Mama?” she asked. She gave the word computer a sinister fillip.
“I should,” said Darcy. “I’m the one making the payments.”
She had bought the computer so their mother could e-mail them from Maine. It was cheaper than ordinary mail and than phoning, and Darcy, who was new to the computer world and excited about it, had thought it an inspired idea.
“Well,” said Emerald, “you know how she said she had a phobia about it?”
Darcy waved away the thought dismissively. “Once she gets used to it, she’ll wonder how she lived without it. That phobia’ll fly out the window.”
“It has flown out the window,” Emerald said ominously. “And guess what’s flown in?”
Darcy lifted one brow. “I can’t guess. Just tell me.”
“A man,” wailed Emerald, sitting up straight again. “She’s got herself a gigolo! This—this e-mail Don Juan. She’s head over heels. She’s gaga—she sounds like a teenager—our mother!”
Darcy looked at her sister and shook her head. “No,” she said with certainty. “Not Mother. Not Olivia.”
“She has,” Emerald said, her cheeks flaming even more hotly.
“She’s only had the computer six weeks,” Darcy argued. “I don’t think she’s ever turned it on.”
“She took it to Maine,” Emerald said accusingly.
“Only because I nagged her. She hasn’t sent a single message yet.”
“Maybe not to you, she hasn’t,” Emerald said, her eyes suddenly glittering with tears. “But to him she’s sent plenty. I’ve got proof—she sent me one by mistake. It’s this—this steamy love note.”
“What?”
Darcy did not want to believe this improbable news. Yet Emerald’s tears were disturbingly real, and despite her sense of drama, she truly hated for anyone to see her cry.
Emerald got to her feet and began to forage in her scabbard. “Damn!” she said. She stripped off her black leather gloves and threw them to the floor. She groped in the scabbard again. “I’ve got the letter,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
“You could,” Darcy said dryly, “carry a purse, like other women.”
“Joke all you want,” Emerald retorted. “You won’t think it’s so funny when you read this.”
She thrust a folded paper at Darcy, then angrily dashed the tears
