“Mr Darcy! I am surprised,” Lizzy owned honestly. “I did not think humour was something you would seek out.”
“Rarely, it is true. But I can enjoy a joke from time to time. Did you hear the one about the…?”
At that moment, the hooter went for the competition to start. All around, groups fell into immediate action, like lots of rabbits, scooping out, burrowing down, sending sand flying, building sand up, hunting for pebbles and seaweed for decoration.
To Mr Collins’s surprise, Lady Catherine produced a deck chair from nowhere, sat down, told him to take off his shoes, roll up his trousers, and get to work. With the help of Lottie, he was soon digging a deep hole and piling up the sand in an effort to create a great mound, which was required before any skilful artistry could be employed.
Lizzy’s team were, it has to be said, caught out by the hooter.
“Let us start to dig, at least, while we try to think of an idea,” suggested Colin.
Darcy grabbed a small red spade and set to with a vengeance. The sun was up, and his vigorous activity meant he soon felt the heat. He had some time ago removed socks and shoes, and now removed his shirt, revealing a muscular torso and leaving him only in his shorts. Still he worked on.
Lizzy had let her hair loose and had stripped down to her bikini top, although, for modesty’s sake, had kept her shorts on. She looked, in Darcy’s opinion, just like a mermaid—and he made the error of murmuring his thoughts aloud.
“A mermaid?” repeated Colin loudly. “A mermaid is a good idea, Darcy,” he continued, mistaking Darcy’s train of thought, “but hardly humorous.”
“Unless,” Lizzy chipped in with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “unless the mermaid were a man! You enjoy a joke, Mr Darcy. You said so yourself but a minute ago. Why don’t you lie down, and we can cover you to the waist in all this sand and shape it into a tail, then make a bikini top for you out of shells, and you would look divine with long seaweed hair.”
“I don’t think—”
“Stop protesting, Darcy! Lizzy’s idea is a splendid one. Come on! Lie down!” insisted Colin, delighted.
Before he knew it, Darcy was lying down on the sand and, despite his initial misgivings, began to enjoy unexpected benefits.
“I fear my fingers do not move in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do,” said Elizabeth as she piled up and patted sand over Darcy’s taut lower stomach and down his firm thighs towards his toes in an attempt to make a mermaid tail. “They have not the same force or rapidity and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising.”
Darcy, who was finding the experience alarmingly satisfying, smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. Although,” he added, “I feel you have a natural ability and sensitivity in such matters, which may belie your lack of experience.”
They were interrupted by Lady Catherine calling out to see what they were talking of. Lizzy immediately got to work collecting shells for the mermaid’s top to avoid further conversation, while Colin busied himself searching for long trails of seaweed to make lovely waves of floating hair. The shells and seaweed found, Darcy lay in perfect contentment as Colin spent time at the tail end, making fishlike indentations, and Lizzy busied herself arranging the shells on his chest and the seaweed around his face until he looked as delightful as he felt.
During this time, Lady Catherine had been giving artistic direction to Mr Collins and Lottie as they endeavoured to build a sandcastle in the shape of Rosings, which Lady Catherine knew would win the hearts of the judges. It was a challenging task, as Rosings lacked the turrets which generally so clearly identify a traditional sandcastle. Miss de Brrr was forced to sit through it all, looking white and pale under the shade of an umbrella, feeling too ill to contribute, which had she been able to—as Lady Catherine later commented—would have been a great help, as Miss de Brrr would probably be one of the finest traditional sandcastle makers in the country if she had ever had the chance to learn. As it was, when the final hooter went, Mr Collins’s efforts looked merely like a pile of sand rather than a castle, and the judges passed their effort without awarding any prizes. Lady Catherine was frozen in fury. It took her five minutes to recover her good humour, whereupon she enquired, “Where is Darcy?”
Her good humour was to disappear again for several hours on finding Darcy.
“Over here!” came the voice of her nephew, and there to her horror she saw him. Darcy was lying on the sand, a beautiful mermaid’s tail covering him from the waist down, his fine chest adorned in a skimpy shell top, and long, flowing seaweed hair surrounding his handsome face. Worse still, he was smiling and looking quite content. Even worse, he was gazing adoringly at Miss Elizabeth Bennet. And to cap it all, gently placed above his ear in a most becoming manner was a red rosette. First Prize. It was all too much. Lady Catherine stormed off, leaving Mr Collins to carry her buckets, spades, deck chairs, umbrellas, and Miss de Brrr, who would have walked herself so beautifully if she ever had been in the habit of walking for herself.
Chapter 32
The following day, Mr Collins, Lottie, and Maria had set off by boat to Kingsbridge to purchase some items, so Lizzy took the chance to pop down to the small ribbon of sand below Little Rosings on the Rocks to read her latest blockbuster and to text Jane. She had just started her novel, which made her blush, even though alone, by the racy contents of its opening chapter, when she was startled to see a figure jump down the rocks onto the beach, making no use of the steps, and was more startled to see that that figure was Mr Darcy. He seemed, too, astonished at finding her alone and, although he apologised for disturbing her, did not leave. Instead, he spread out his multicoloured beach towel beside her and sat down, staring at the sea.
Lizzy was perplexed. She tried to continue to read but found it impossible with him sitting so close, and besides, the contents of her book were making her uncomfortable. She must speak.
“How suddenly you left Salcombe earlier, Mr Darcy! I trust Bingley is enjoying himself still in London?”
“Yes.”
“And does he have any plans to return to Netherpollock?”
“It is unlikely.”
At that moment, the Kingsbridge party returned, and Lottie and Maria made their way to the beach. They were much surprised to see Lizzy and Darcy there alone, and Darcy made haste to leave.
“Lizzy! What is the meaning of this?” cried Charlotte as soon as he was gone.
“He loves ya! He loves ya!” chanted Maria, who stopped only when Lizzy, laughing and denying any such thing, picked up the screaming Maria and dumped her in the sea.
Chapter 33
It seemed strange to Lizzy that in her ramblings over the next few days Darcy always seemed to pop up by some remarkable coincidence: while she was drinking Pinot Grigio with Lottie in the secret garden of the Victoria Inn, Darcy was sitting at the next table, nursing a Bells; as she walked over to Bolt Head, he appeared in a gorse bush; on a cliff-side walk to the Pigs Nose Inn at East Prawle, Lizzy was followed not only by Parsnip, the inn’s friendly little dog, but also by Darcy; as she watched the boats sail by from the sun-kissed terrace of the Dick and Wills waterside bar and brasserie, he could be spotted, also out on the terrace, hidden behind Yachting World; during her fishing trip off the coast of Hope Cove, he happened to swim by. Even whilst Lizzy scrambled over the rocks at Mill Bay, Darcy seemed busy with his net in the very next rock pool.