Lavender Morning p.21 Read online

  “Did she eat an entire half of one?”

  “More like a quarter.”

  “Would you two stop it!” Ramsey said. “Jocelyn, my cousin and I came here to explain some things that I think may have been misunderstood by you.”

  “Oh? And what would that be?”

  “About our intentions.”

  “Intentions?” Jocelyn asked. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “I told you she’d be mad,” Luke said as he leaned back against the sofa.

  “Because my cousin misrepresented himself,” Ramsey said, and it was the voice of a lawyer, “doesn’t mean that I have. I have never been anything but honest and clear about my intentions toward you.”

  “And they would be?”

  “Would be…?” Ramsey asked, not understanding her question.

  “She wants to know what you intend to do with her,” Luke said. “Marry her or set her up in a shop, as Sara’s new boyfriend wants to do with her.”

  Ramsey turned to glare at Luke. “This whole thing is your fault. Why didn’t you tell her you were married?”

  “Never came up,” Luke said, then looked at Joce. “You have any beer?”

  “Not for you, I don’t,” Jocelyn said sweetly. “Why don’t you ask your wife? Or does she just send you checks so you can live well but take on menial jobs?”

  Luke’s face turned red with anger, but Ramsey grinned. “She’s got your number. Why don’t you wait for us outside? Better yet, why don’t you go home and leave us alone?”

  Luke didn’t say a word as he started to get up.

  “Tell me, Ramsey,” Jocelyn said, “was it me or my house you wanted so much?”

  Luke blinked at her a few times, then sat back down.

  “How can you say a thing like that? I’ve liked you since before we even met.”

  “And what a perfect match we’d be. McDowell money with the Harcourt land. I don’t have the name, but I do have the house. I saw all those people you were courting today. Think of how you could entertain them in such style here. You aren’t thinking of running for office, are you?”

  Luke gave a sound in his throat like a chuckle. “She’s got you there.”

  Jocelyn turned blazing eyes on him. “And you took up my time so I wouldn’t meet another man while Ramsey was working. It was all so clever. So very well done.”

  “Joce, it wasn’t like that,” Ramsey began.

  “No? At the second picnic you told me about the letters you’d read with your grandfather. What a touching story. You made it sound as though you’ve been in love with me since I was a child. But of course after that revelation, I didn’t see you again for days.”

  “I think I’ll leave you two alone,” Luke said.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Joce said, and he sat back down.

  “Look!” Luke said. “I never misrepresented myself. I’m your gardener, that’s all. My personal life has never been an issue between us.”

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a reply. Gardeners don’t…don’t take such an interest in their employers as you have in me. You’re just like my father, with his slick talking, his Harleys, and his penchant for girls who don’t know which side of a book to open.”

  “Your…?” Luke said, aghast. “You think I’m like your father?”

  “A photocopy if I ever saw one. And, by the way, your cousin pays your salary.”

  “I know,” Luke said, his face still showing his shock over Jocelyn’s words. “Every week I pad my bill by half.”

  “Why you—” Ramsey began.

  “Out!” Jocelyn said. “I want both of you out of my house this instant, and I don’t want to see either of you…maybe never.”

  “Jocelyn,” Luke said as he tried to recover himself. “I apologize for whatever you think that I’ve done to you, but the garden needs—”

  “Stay out of my garden,” she said. “Don’t come near it or me.”

  “But it needs care. It needs—”

  “I’m sure I can find a high school boy who will mow the lawn.”

  “Jocelyn,” Ramsey said, pleading, “you aren’t being fair to me. I know that your stepsister was a real snake today, and I’m sure you’re upset about it all, but I haven’t done anything to deserve being told to get out of your life. Whatever Luke did to make you think that he was…” Ramsey looked at his cousin. “What the hell have you been doing to make her so angry to find out that you’re married? So help me, if you’ve touched her in any way, I’ll—”

  “I am not property!” Jocelyn shouted as she stood up and glared at both of them. “I am not a piece of land that you two can fight over and eventually win. Or in this case, that one can hold for the other. I am—”

  “Joce, please,” Ramsey said. “If Luke has been too familiar, it’s not my fault, don’t take it out on me.”

  “Why don’t you go to Tess and tell her your problems?”

  When Luke chuckled, Jocelyn glared at him. “And you can go to your wife. Now go! Both of you!”

  15

  JOCELYN LOOKED UP from her desk and stared vacantly out the window. The lawn needed cutting—again—and it looked like some bug was eating those…whatever those bushes were that ran around the side of the house. One morning she could have sworn she heard termites eating the wall, but it turned out to be only Sara and her boyfriend at it—again.

  She looked back down at the slant-top drafting table she’d bought and at her papers. The desk wasn’t what she someday hoped to be able to put in the house, but for now it was what she could afford.

  She’d done a lot in the six weeks since she’d told Ramsey and Luke to get out of her life. First, she’d gone to a bank in Williamsburg and borrowed fifty grand on the house. She figured she needed that much to live on while she did her best to write a biography that she could sell to a publisher. She was tempted to write something about Thomas Jefferson, as all those books seemed to sell, but her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to write about Miss Edi.

  Jocelyn knew from experience that no publishing house would give an advance to a writer who’d never written a book before, so she’d had to find other ways to support herself while she wrote. To repay the mortgage, she spent her days in Williamsburg researching the eighteenth century for a very successful novelist for a trilogy set during the American Revolutionary War.

  During the evenings and into the night, Joce worked on the book about Miss Edi. Tess had told Joce she didn’t know Luke was married. In fact, Tess said she and Ramsey had had a big fight about it. He told her that what went on in his family was his business.

  Tess swore that if she’d known she would have told Joce. “I hate the way this town hides its dirty little secrets. Someone should have told me—you—us that he was married.”

  Tess’s tone was so angry that Joce felt herself pulling back from her. But Tess got her the key to the attic and Joce had spent days going through every box and trunk. As far as she could tell, everything of value had been removed, and all that was left were thousands of account books. Perhaps someday she could do something with them, but she’d been hoping for a diary where someone admitted killing someone else, and after her bio she could write about it and make millions.

  “So make up your own story,” Tess said. “Kill someone, then figure out who did it and why.”

  It sounded so simple, but in the past whenever Joce had tried to do it, she couldn’t. She liked to read about real events and real people, so that’s what she wanted to write about.

  “Miss Edi!” Tess said, putting her hands over her ears. “I’ve heard so much about that woman that if I saw her ghostly form standing in the doorway, I’d just tell her to go away.”

  “If you see her, please ask her to tell me what to do,” Joce said gloomily.

  It was yet another night that Tess was in Joce’s kitchen making cupcakes. After the party at Viv’s house—The Disaster, as Joce thought of it—Tess had agreed to do the next two catering jobs. Luke’s father, Jim,