Lavender Morning Read online

  “I haven’t seen much of the garden at all,” she said, looking out through the big trees.

  “You’ve been too busy—”

  “Don’t say it!” Joce ordered.

  “What?” Luke asked with exaggerated innocence.

  “That I’ve been too busy with Ramsey.”

  “I was going to say that you’ve been too busy getting to know people to spend much time in the garden, but if your mind goes to Ramsey and stays there, who am I to contradict you?”

  “You can be a real pest, you know that?”

  “I’ve never before had a woman tell me that. My mother, yes, my cousins often, and some of my uncles, but women never say I’m a pest.”

  “Spare me,” Jocelyn said, but she was smiling. “You have dirt on your face.”

  “Yeah, so get it off.”

  He leaned down so his face was close to hers. She lightly brushed her hand across his cheek, but the dirt didn’t move. She brushed harder. “Is this stuff glued on?”

  “Take your shirt off and wipe hard,” he said without a hint of a smile.

  Joce shook her head at him and stepped back. “Get it off yourself.”

  He wiped his forearm across his face and the dirt came off. “Better?”

  For a moment Jocelyn just looked at him. He was a very good-looking man, with his dark hair and his green eyes. “When’s the last time you shaved?”

  “When House did.”

  It took her a moment to realize he meant Dr. House on TV. It was one of her favorite shows. Smiling, she followed him as he made his way through the trees.

  As she looked at the land around her, she couldn’t help thinking, All mine. Everything she saw belonged to her. “Could you show me the property lines?”

  “Glad to,” he said.

  He took her around the eighteen acres she now owned, all that was left of the thousand acres the young man from Scotland had bought for his kidnapped bride. Luke knew the grounds well and pointed out where the old cabins used to be, the well house, the dovecote. He stopped at a treeless spot and said the blacksmith shop used to be there.

  “When we were kids, we’d come over here and dig in this area and find pieces of hand-wrought iron. Charlie found three horseshoes.”

  “What about Sara? Did she find anything?”

  “She was good at finding arrowheads. She said that the nineteenth century was too new for her to care about, so she didn’t bother with horseshoes.”

  “Interesting that you know that about her, but she says she hardly knows anything about you.”

  Luke gave a little smile, then moved farther into the trees. “The old brick kilns used to be back here. Look.” He pushed aside some bushes, and she saw a low brick wall. “I put these bricks back together so you could see the foundations.” He spread his arms out. “We could put your lavender in here. The ground is sandy, and lavender likes that. And it gets a lot of sun.”

  “I can almost imagine what this place was like. Maybe I should restore it to what it once was.”

  “It would cost too much to do that, and besides, Colonial Williamsburg has done a better job than we could.”

  She liked that he said “we.” It made her feel like she was part of something.

  “This place likes having been here all these years,” Luke said. “It likes the living, and likes the generations that have been here. I think the house breathed a sigh of relief when old Bertrand died.”

  “Maybe the house was glad he didn’t get down to selling the doorknobs.”

  “He did, but Rams stopped him.”

  “Did you help?” Joce asked.

  “I wasn’t here then,” Luke said quickly. “What do you think about this place for your lavender?”

  “It looks great, but what do I know? Do you mean you were gone for that week or that you weren’t living here in Edilean?”

  “So tell me more about making love on top of blue corn chips.”

  “Point taken,” she said. “No more personal questions. I wonder if Miss Edi let her brother sell so much because she was cleaning the house out for the next family.”

  “That’s what Rams said, but I think she just wanted to be rid of the old junk. Of course the attic is still full of it. Have you been up there yet?”

  “No. I went up the stairs but the door is locked and I don’t have a key to it.”

  “Rams will give you one when he tells you about your inheritance.” Luke started walking again and she followed him.

  “So how much do you know about the deal with the house?”

  “You stay, you get it all. You leave, the money stays with the house.”

  “Just what I heard,” Jocelyn said, “but wasn’t that supposed to be a secret?”

  Luke shrugged. “Somebody took the dictation; somebody typed the document. Who knows how things get out?”

  “It’s my guess that you know exactly how it got out, but I also guess that you won’t tell me.”

  “You’re smart, aren’t you?”

  “Does that make a change from most of the women you know?”

  Luke didn’t answer but pointed to a long, low brick building in the distance. “I put that place back together.”

  “But it looks old.”

  “Thank you,” Luke said. “That’s a good compliment. I had to dig up old bricks, then clean them off before I could use them.”

  They had reached the building, and she saw the way Luke’s hand touched the side wall. “It was a labor of love, wasn’t it?” she said.

  “More or less.”

  “Did you always want to be a gardener?”

  He looked at her oddly and seemed to be about to say something, but then changed his mind. “No, I came to it later in life. I decided that there was nothing like working with the earth. Nothing gives a man more pleasure and more satisfaction.”

  “Think it’s an ancestral thing? Are you from generations of farmers tilling the soil?”

  “Not that I know of,” Luke said. “My dad ran offices full of salesmen and my grandfather was a doctor.”

  “Like Sara’s father.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said, obviously pleased that she knew that. “Uncle Henry worked with my grandfather for years before Gramps retired.”

  “To take you fishing,” Joce said. “Just the two of you.”

  “That was the other grandfather.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Luke opened the door to the brick building and Joce knew they were in his workshop. It was nice in there. Above the workbench with its tools was a round window. She stood on tiptoe to look out it and saw how close they were to the house. In fact, when she turned her head, she could see the entire back of the house and both apartment doors. She saw the little white table where she’d sat with Sara and talked.

  She got off her toes and looked at Luke as he studiously moved some tools around on top of an old cabinet on the opposite wall. “When you’re in here, you can see everything that goes on at the back of the house.”

  “Can you?” he asked. “I guess I never noticed.”

  She glared at him until he turned to look at her, giving her a one-sided grin. Yet something else she’d learned about him. Now that Luke was looking a bit guilty at what could possibly be interpreted as spying, she thought she’d do what she could to get information out of him. “So who was Tess talking to on the phone today?”

  Luke walked to the door of the shop. “About three?”

  Jocelyn nodded.

  “Her brother. She talks to him every Sunday afternoon no matter what. You could take her to a rock concert or have her hypnotized and if it was Sunday she’d call her brother.”

  “You sound almost jealous.”

  “You’re an only child like I am, so aren’t you jealous of people who have siblings to share their lives with?”

  “Only child,” Joce said. “What a lovely thought. I have—” She broke off. There was no way she was going to tell him who her stepsisters were. “Yeah, I’ve had a lot of