Mister Darcy's Dogs

by Barbara Silkstone

  Crickey, was there no limit to her uniform-lust? “Hold yourself in check, Lydia, or you shall find yourself on the next train to Hertfordshire.”

  The young man spoke, “I will take the hounds. Mister Darcy instructed me to obtain your card for Mister Charles Bingley, who will ring you up and arrange a time for the limousine. Bingley is Mister Darcy’s most trusted friend. He will afford you safe conduct.”

  Why would I not be safe? I’m a dog psychologist, not a diamond courier.

  I ferreted in my bag and came up with one bent card. Why do I always fail to bring a stack of my business cards? “This is my home and my dog school, Pansy Corners.” I pointed to the rumpled address. I had moved from our family home at Meryton to be closer to my clients in London and to wean my mother from her dependence on me. Her faux illnesses, a blatant attempt to control her family, were driving me further from any warm feelings I might have once held for her. I needed to stand free for a bit.

  Jane dashed to my side, her hand shielding her face from the cameras. Lydia waved at the press like Taylor Swift on tour.

  “Let’s go home,” I grabbed Jane, caught Lydia lost in the crowd, and we made our way out the service entrance. One short walk to the tubes, a solemn train ride and a short trek through the village, and we were at Pansy Corners.

  Jane shared my renovated farmhouse slash pied-á-terre in Maidenhead. One hundred years ago, it would have been considered unseemly for two unmarried sisters to live alone without a male relative in residence. But thank goodness for the 21st century and all the liberation it afforded. Jane and I found Pansy Corners to be our haven.

  Our quietude was recently trammeled when our two youngest sisters were placed in our care. Lydia and Kitty were birds of feather who hunted romance together. Their boy-craziness had become all but unmanageable for my parents. Our father’s health had been sorely taxed by the girls’ antics and our mother had taken to hypochondria hill to avoid dealing with their behavior. The two hormonal singletons were in my custody for the summer. I was knackered from sister-sitting, and it was barely May. Would I last until September?

  Chapter 3

  Charles Bingley arrived just before eight the next morning. The chauffeur-driven Maybach pulled onto our gravel drive sending my whippets and rescue hunting hounds barking.

  Currently we have fifteen dog guests looking for permanent homes. We so rarely have visitors at Pansy Corners that despite the soft purr of the luxury automobile, the dogs set to noisily greeting our guests. I raised my hand and they quieted.

  I’d never seen a Maybach outside of society magazine photos. The subtle logo on the boot confirmed I was looking at an extremely expensive automobile. It appeared to have driven straight from the 1920’s, unblemished and dust-free. The car slid to a stop, and the chauffeur stepped around, holding the rear door for his passenger.

  I took an instant fancy to Charles Bingley. I’m not in favor of blond gents, but in his case, he was blessed with the most pleasant blue eyes, a lop-sided smile, and a dimple in his left cheek. His manner was that of a gentleman, a most considerate gentleman. He introduced himself, presenting an old-fashioned calling card with only his name in simple black script on ivory-colored paper. To think he was a mate of the pompous Mister Darcy. But opposites do attract even in friendships.

  “How is your sister Jane this morning?” he inquired.

  “It was a tumultuous evening. I believe she’s still asleep.”

  “Well, do give her my best.”

  “Are you acquainted with Jane?”

  A blush crept up his cheeks. “Only by sight. It is a pity about last night.”

  “Can you share the events leading to the howl-off?”

  Bingley lowered his voice. “Please keep this confidential, but my sister Caroline does not like dogs. I am afraid the loathing shows in her eyes. Derby and Squire sense it. I know you can’t imagine someone not liking dogs.”

  I grinned. “My youngest sister is terrified of all four legged creatures. She barely sets foot outside the cottage and walks huge circles around our indoor dogs. I understand and sympathize.”

  The chauffeur held the passenger door. I slipped into the seat, tucking my loose trousers around my thighs. Charles Bingley followed.

  The front seats were fully enclosed and separated from the rear compartment by a powered divider window. The chauffeur’s area was finished in black leather while the rear compartment was white with piano black, and bore gold-flecked black granite inserts. The car was a combination of the smell of new leather and old money.

  The driver pushed a button, and the window rose up and closed, the opacity gradually fogging, so the chauffeur became invisible. I imagined we vanished on our side of the glass.

  I wished Jane was awake to see me off, but the poor thing cried herself to sleep last night. Her sensitive nature made her unable to bear the humiliation of the riotous ending to the first and last Churchill Hounds Best of Show at the Royal Albert Hall. I’d yet to see the news and follow up, but I imagined Jane might be seeking employment elsewhere.

  I settled back in the seat determined to enjoy the moment. I might never have another client like Mister Darcy.

  The surrounding streets and squares of Knightsbridge have long harbored pieds-á- terre, occasional residences for the very rich, but in the old days the owners were landed gentry, old money, English. Now foreigners populated these small but luxurious apartments. London had become a mecca for the international super rich, and much of its charm was diminished. I felt as if I were looking at an old maiden aunt about to sell her soul for a facelift.

  We approached One Snyde Park, generally touted as the world’s most expensive residential building. It towered above the Victorian hotels and apartments on Knightsbridge, three towers of glass, metal, and concrete, the tallest being twelve stories. It was a futuristic abomination in my beloved London.

  For common folk, struggling to buy or rent the most modest of dwellings, empty apartments bought as occasional bases for shopping trips represented a particularly offensive—and damaging—form of extravagance.

  Rumors were that many of our new residents were tunneling under their portion of the cityscape in order to build underground bowling alleys and indoor swimming pools. Carpetbaggers I thought, finding the word from Gone with the Wind most appropriate. My city, our city, was being nibbled away like a piece of cheese in a mice-laden cupboard.

  The Maybach cut across traffic and disappeared into a tunnel under One Snyde Park. Darcy lives here? A shiver of premonition swept through my body. Another reason to despise the man. I must have made an audible groan as my seatmate responded by chuckling.

  “Darcy feared you would run in the opposite direction when faced with the Snyde Park security.”

  “I’ll have you know, Mr. Bingley, I have clients of all caliber.” Run, indeed.

  “I’m sure you do, Miss Bennet.”

  “That’s Doctor Bennet.” I hoped Bingley was not a part of this stagey show as I had begun to like him. And I was not in the slightest impressed with these James Bond theatrics. Well, maybe a tad.

  We were swept down a marble rabbit hole that magically appeared at the base of the building. The chauffeur eased the car into a glass-and-steel one-car elevator that lowered us to the basement garage. I had read in the news that these apartments sold in excess of $200 million dollars each and were more like classy bunkers. The story in the Times said they had bullet-proof glass and panic rooms. Who was Mister William Darcy, and why was I being taken into the bowels of this mysterious building?

  The chauffeur parked the car and jotted round to open my door. Charles Bingley and I left the personal elevator and walked a 200-foot-long mirrored corridor with eel skin walls. The shutters were down at a slant for privacy and the entire building had the feeling of a ghost town.

  We approached a glass and chrome desk. A matched set of security guards in bowler hats and dark bespoke suits stood at attention. If they had been dogs they would have been Doberm
an pinchers ready to rip our throats at the slightest provocation.

  “Your photo identification, please.” The guard on the right spoke softly with the edge of a threat in his voice.

  I unzipped the inside pocket of my purse and took out my laminated ID. I had the sensation they were memorizing my face and would now recognize me instantly anywhere on the planet. Perhaps they each possessed a Mission Impossible Eye Camera and had taken my snap for Google Earth.

  “Mister Darcy is expecting you,” they said in unison.

  “Really?” Did they think we’d dropped into the marble tunnel and trudged this futuristic passageway on a whim? Of course, Mister-I’m-So-Special was expecting us, and, of course, they knew it.

  Bowler Boys handed me my driver’s license, and I fell back into step with Bingley as he trotted up the corridor. He leaned over and whispered near my ear. “Those blokes are trained by British Special Forces. Even Darcy’s mail is X-rayed.”

  I’m so impressed I feel nauseous. Why would anyone volunteer for this lifestyle?

  I quickstepped alongside Bingley as if I knew where we were headed. The corridor ended in a marble foyer and a mahogany door. I assumed His Hot-Shotness was behind door number one.

  Bingley studied my face with amusement. “You walk like a jolly hockey stick.”

  I smiled. I’d been told that before. I do manage a chipper step. Something I’ve done since childhood.

  “I wish your sister Jane could have joined us. I would have enjoyed meeting her and seeing her reaction. Anyone who would take on staging dogs at the Royal Albert is a lady of some great nerve.”

  “Yes, Jane is an amazing woman.” I said.

  “And a great beauty.” He blushed. “Jane, that is. I’ve seen her in passing, but we’ve not been properly introduced.”

  “Forgive me, Mr. Bingley, but you speak of my sister as if you are familiar with her.” Bingley was like One Snyde Park, a study in contrasts. Warm and chilly.

  I changed the subject. “Just whom did Mister Darcy piss off?”

  “Piss off?”

  “Sorry. That was an inappropriate American expression. Let me rephrase. What causes him to live in such fear?”

  Bingley raised his left eyebrow but did not answer.

  The rich can afford to give offense; the working class, not so much.

  Bingley leaned a scooch and placed his eye near a scanner located on the doorframe. With a soft clicking sound the large double doors unlatched and a simple chime sounded. We were in Mister Darcy’s domain.

  Chapter 4

  William Darcy stood with the morning sunlight at his back, his features barely visible, but I would recognize his scent anywhere. It occurred to me I was spending way too much time with dogs. I sniffed, exhaled, and threw back my shoulders. As our eyes met, I flashed on last night’s dream and felt a whimper build in my throat.

  Sometime during the night Will Darcy had made a cameo appearance in my dream. I stood in a lush green meadow, the sun warm on my face. Mister Darcy bounded toward me in slow motion, his arms outstretched. Derby and Squire frolicked at his feet. He embraced me, lifting me high in his muscular arms, which I hadn’t really noticed all that much yesterday. Not that much. He kissed my lips just hard enough to wake me.

  Now I blushed as I recalled the tingly feelings from the tip of my nose to the nethermost point of my toes. With guilty pleasure, I licked my bottom lip. Cheese dreams. That’s the last time I’ll eat Blue Stilton before bed.

  Darcy turned crimson. Good lord, don’t tell me the man can read my mind. He looked over my head for an instant, an obvious diversion for him. With a noticeably deep sigh, he regained his broom-up-the-butt composure and hooded his eyes.

  “I trust you have recovered from last evening’s fiasco,” he said, a rogue smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. Two dimples fought for notice on his cheeks. He was wearing a tight tan-colored t-shirt, wall-climbing harness, rock shoes, and manpris. His strapping calves looked yummy in the knee-length men’s Capri pants. If he was headed for the Matterhorn, he had best reschedule. His presence was required at Elizabeth Bennet’s School of Canine Manners.

  I closed the gap between us with six firm steps. “Were Derby and Squire the cause of the entire Royal Albert uproar?”

  He squirmed. “One could say they’ve been indulged. My butler Collins has a soft spot for them. He spoils them rotten. As a result they refused my commands and one bark led to another.”

  “But that doesn’t account for their dislike of Caroline Bingley. What did she do to them?”

  “Umm.” The air once again turned chilly. “Miss Bingley features importantly in my future plans. The dogs must come to like her, no matter. Do you understand?”

  I was about to snap a reply when I heard the sound of a door opening within the depths of the huge flat. The door noise was followed by the rapid scratch of nails on marble as Derby and Squire came running across the slippery floor and careened around a Louis XIV table, sending it into a shimmy.

  Their stubby legs paddled and their nails scrabbled as Derby stepped on his own ear and tumbled into Squire, who rolled and then righted himself. The dogs skidded into my shins, almost knocking me over. Instinctively I grabbed Mister Darcy’s forearm, feeling the electric crackle of a connection. Was I just tasered?

  A short man with oily hair and the demeanor of a mole waddled after the dogs, calling their names. The bloke’s close-set eyes and buckteeth gave me a shiver.

  Darcy seemed to be recovering from the same taser. He rubbed his arm as he spoke. “This is Collins. He’ll be your contact person for Derby and Squire.” He nodded toward the mole-man.

  I smiled a greeting but did not present my hand. Collins was a house servant, and it would have shown a lack of breeding on my part to shake his hand. Besides, who knew where those hands had been.

  “No offense, Collins, but you will not be included in the hounds’ training,” I said as I stepped around the dogs and went nose to chest with Will Darcy. “In order to train Derby and Squire, I must also train their master. You will be involved in their training or I will not take your case.”

  Had I asked Mister Darcy to run naked through Trafalgar Square he couldn’t have come up with a more startled expression. He turned paper white, and his mouth gaped like a fish that just swallowed a hook.

  I took advantage of his temporary speechlessness. “You want the dogs trained for the hunt? That means they must learn to respond to your commands, not mine.” I was bluffing as I’d never trained a dog to hunt and had no idea where to begin. But in every other type of dog training, the owner must be recognized as the alpha-dog. I had no doubt Darcy possessed more than enough alphas to meet the task.

  I had planned on watching some YouTube videos on fox hunting last night, but after the bedlam at the Royal Albert, I crawled into my nightgown, nibbled some cheese and biscuits and promptly nodded off on the living room sofa.

  Since Darcy continued to stammer, I figured I’d deliver a second round of verbal pokes. “Why are you treating these basset hounds like lap dogs? They need to run about in fields and sniff their prey if they are to grow to their potential as working dogs.”

  The mention of the dogs in a meadow caused a rush of blood to my cheeks as I slipped back into my dream. I was hoping Mister Darcy was distracted enough to not notice.

  “I’m guessing the pups to be about eighteen months old,” I continued, more to divert myself than inform my client. “Their leg muscles need to trudge the high grass and muddy grounds, their noses must become accustomed to the scents of the wild.”

  I stood next to Darcy and held my head high, nose up as if I were born a toff. “Here, sniff. What do you smell?”

  Darcy raised an eyebrow humoring me. “Lavender soap.”

  “That’s me,” I said. “Try again.”

  “I smell furniture polish and…Red Diamond perfume.”

  That wasn’t the answer I was expecting.

  Heels clicked an angry staccato as somethi
ng wicked came my way. Caroline Bingley made her entrance smelling like my grandmother’s closet and trailing a Gucci scarf from her skinny neck. She assumed a BBC-camera position, placing her left hand on her left hip and pushed out her enhanced bosom. Too bad the cameras weren’t rolling.

  Her right index finger jabbed the air, the blood-red nail making a dandy weapon. “What is Doctor Dolittle doing here?” she addressed her question to Mister Darcy.

  I noticed his hands clench and unclench. He looked at Charles Bingley seeming to suggest he control his sister. It appeared all was not chipper in Darcyville.

  The color left Bingley’s face. Crickey, this woman revolted even her own family.

  Bingley stepped briskly to her side blocking the evil eye she was shooting at me. “Please, Caroline. Miss Bennet, Doctor Bennet is here to help Darcy.”

  “Oh, really?” she elbowed past her brother and took two menacing steps toward me.

  What was Caroline Bingley’s problem with me? We’d just met only yesterday. How could she dislike me spot-on? Was this some sort of previous life thing? Perhaps it was my unflappable good humor. I ground my teeth and smiled. It couldn’t be my looks as she was two and one-half times prettier than I. I deducted a half point for her extraordinary use of silicone.

  The dogs hid behind my shoes, their noses buried in my ankles. Caroline’s perfume was making my eyes tear. With forty times the number of scent receptors of a human, the poor hounds had to be gagging on her Red Diamond perfume.

  They struck all of a sudden, coming from behind me, and nipping the pointy tips of her witch-like shoes.

  “Those are Manolos!” She screamed, kicking at their heads. Derby turned and lifted his leg. He let go a yellow stream onto Caroline’s left leg. Her scream echoed off the cement walls and vaulted ceilings, repeating itself long after she had shut her yap.

  I grabbed Squire while Collins threw himself on Derby. Together we lifted the dogs. “This way, miss,” he said. I followed rather than breathe another minute of the perfume or hear the tinkled-on woman curse the pups.