Page 35 of A Recipe for Love
Darcy pointed towards the door in the side wall. ‘That goes through to a bathroom. Like a…’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘Is it Jack and Jill? En suite to two rooms.’
Bella nodded.
‘And then through the other side is officially my room.’
‘You didn’t share a bedroom?’ Bella asked the question before she checked herself. ‘I mean that’s fine. Whatever works…’
‘No. We shared this room.’ Darcy giggled slightly. ‘Veronica doesn’t know. I’m thirty-eight years old and I spent my whole marriage pretending to my husband’s mother that we slept in separate rooms and then sneaking through here.’
‘Every night?’
Darcy nodded. ‘I used to mess the sheets through there up, but after about three months Flinty told me not to bother cos it was only making laundry, and Veronica would never dream of just charging into someone else’s boudoir.’
Bella frowned. ‘So the whole bedroom thing? You could stay in here and me and Adam could go in your room?’
‘Oh no. Not sharing a room is apparently key to a healthy marriage.’
‘How do these people ever produce heirs?’
Darcy giggled. ‘I think they have a butler carry a little sample through on a velvet pillow.’
‘And the lady just lies back and thinks of England?’
‘Scotland.’
‘Right.’
‘Of course we never did.’
‘Sorry.’ She was a second behind.
Darcy wiped her eye. ‘Produce an heir. Or rather spare.’
Bella winced at her own insensitivity. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK. We wanted to.’ Darcy shook her head. ‘It never happened, and Alexander wasn’t keen on having doctors poke into all of that. He said that if it was meant to happen it would.’
Bella wasn’t sure how, or even if, to fill the silence that followed.
‘It’s a ton more straightforward with horses. Just send them off to stud and they come back in foal.’
‘Right.’
Darcy rubbed her hand across her cheek. ‘Do you want to come out to the stables with me?’ She looked around the room. ‘I thought it would be easier in here. I thought I’d feel closer to him.’
‘You didn’t?’
Darcy half-smiled. ‘I did. It just wasn’t easier.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Darcy pulled herself up to her feet and they made their way down the stairs and out across the courtyard – through a door Bella would happily have sworn wasn’t there yesterday – towards the stables. ‘Oh, is your ankle OK for this?’
Bella nodded. ‘It’s improving.’
‘It’s such a joy to live somewhere I can keep horses. I could only dream of it growing up.’
‘In New York?’
