As You Wish Read online

  Ray groaned. “This is going to be a touchy-feely weekend, isn’t it? Where’s the nearest bar?”

  “Not allowed.” She was smiling. “Did you and Elise talk?” She nodded toward the young woman who had politely stepped away from them.

  “Nothing but about how pretty the flowers are. I get the idea she came from money.”

  “You think?”

  Ray laughed. “She kind of oozes it, doesn’t she? What’s her problem? Daddy wouldn’t buy her a jet of her very own?”

  “Now who’s judging?”

  “Okay, I’ll back off. But it’s my job to quickly figure people out so I can sell them things. For her, it would be Chanel and Cartier. Bet she has a black Amex.”

  Olivia didn’t want to reveal confidences, but sometimes assumptions needed to be stopped. “Elise escaped authorities by being locked inside the trunk of Jeanne’s car. No color of credit card would have helped if either of them had been caught. You ready to go?” As she walked away, she called for Elise, who got in the seat beside her, and they left for the summerhouse. When she looked in the rearview mirror, she was glad to see that Ray still wore a look of astonishment. Good! Looking at someone else’s problems often helped you solve your own.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until 3:00 p.m. that Olivia was able to get away from her housemates. She had driven onto the grounds of Camden Hall, Elise beside her, Ray in his sleek car close behind. At the gate, Young Pete—past eighty years old—waved them in and Olivia went left to what had been the gardener’s house. There was a plaque on the door that read Diana’s Cottage. She figured it was probably named after Diana the Huntress. Her mother said there had once been pheasants on the property, so maybe the little house had belonged to the gamekeeper.

  Whatever it had been, the cottage was now so cute it almost hurt a person’s eyes. It was stone, with a tall roof punctured by two windows. One of them was round, like an eye watching over the estate. Olivia hadn’t been surprised when Elise wanted the upstairs bedroom with that window. It was small enough to be difficult to see into, but large enough for her to watch for anyone approaching.

  Olivia took the second bedroom and was glad she would have her own bath. There hadn’t been any discussion of the matter, but Ray seemed to know he was to stay downstairs.

  She was glad to see that the refrigerator and the small pantry had been fully stocked, and wondered who’d done it. Jeanne, who owned the cottage? Or had Kit called someone and asked them to do it? Olivia was learning that her husband had become a person who made others jump to do his bidding.

  It hadn’t always been that way, she thought. When they’d met, he’d been a boy of nineteen, and all the world had been a wonder to him.

  By the time Olivia got her housemates settled, all she wanted to do was escape. Ray looked like a bull with four red flags being waved at him. Now that it was time for him to start making his decision, he had no idea where to begin the process.

  As for delicate, ethereal-looking Elise, for all her pretending that being signed into a mental ward and escaping inside a car trunk didn’t bother her, she’d gone around the house pulling the shades down. Even with that, she sat on the far end of the couch, a pillow on her lap, and kept looking toward the back door as though she were ready to run through it.

  Olivia nearly ran outside, then stood there for a moment breathing in the fresh air. Did she really and truly want to take on these two needy...well, children? Big Ray with his wild-eyed looks. Tall, fragile Elise with eyes that darted about the room. Could she deal with them?

  She’d had to reassure Ray that he could indeed make a sandwich all by himself, and had to show Elise that her bedroom door could be bolted. Olivia tried to calm herself and look around. She was standing on a pretty flagstone terrace that was in a little garden with a short wall around it. She had an idea that the area had once been used for vegetables, but now had only a few shrubs. Surrounding the little enclosed garden were trees that needed pruning.

  Beyond that was a tall stone wall that encircled the entire property. Everyone in town knew that in the spring Young Pete hired brawny high school kids to assess the winter damage and repair the old wall. “Roofs and walls,” he said. “That’s the key to maintenance.” Nowadays, he rarely left the grounds that his family had looked after for three generations. Old Pete, Pete, Young Pete. No one in the next generation of the family wanted anything to do with taking care of some old houses.

  As Olivia looked about the bit of garden with its scraggly shrubs, she thought how she’d like to divide it with crisscrossing paths. She’d use bark rather than gravel so walking on it would be silent. In the middle would be an arbor with a bench under it. Along the sides—

  She broke off her thoughts. Was this derelict garden part of the enticement to get her to take on these damaged people? If so, who had thought of it? Kit? Or the unmet Jeanne?

  When Olivia heard a noise from inside the house, she left through the little gate and hurried toward the road they’d driven in on. But she avoided it. She didn’t want to be seen. Both Ray and Elise had looked as though any second the question was going to come from them: “What do you think I should do?”

  Olivia dreaded hearing it. Maybe in other circumstances she could come up with an answer, but right now her own problems filled her mind.

  As she walked past the old stables, she looked toward Camden Hall. It was a big, sprawling Edwardian house, three stories high, “more glass than wall” as the saying went. It was a beautiful house, but it had that hollow look of a place that had been unoccupied for as long as anyone could remember.

  Behind the house was what was once a pleasure garden, all flowers and little ornamental trees. It was neatly trimmed, but was now mostly bare.

  Ahead of her was what she’d been looking for, the tall fence that Kit had recently had replaced. The old roses had been carefully pulled away from crumbling bricks. After the new fence was up, the pruned branches had been tied back on. In another year, they’d return in full, glorious color.

  The fence enclosed River House—the place Kit had bought for her and they had restored while they were on their long honeymoon.

  Olivia had told Ray that she didn’t want to see the house without her husband and that was true. What she did want to see was the tiny island in the shallow river that ran in front of the house. It was where she and Kit had made love back in 1970—and been caught doing it.

  Even now, so many years later, the memory made her smile. How Kit had protected her! Back then, Young Pete had only recently taken over the caretaker’s job and he was zealous at it—and very serious. That day he’d heard voices and had run home to get his shotgun.

  Olivia and Kit, both naked, their clothes on the ground, had looked through the trees and shrubs to see Young Pete standing on the other side of the water. He was coming toward them with a gun in his hand.

  They looked at each other, arms entwined, bodies bare, eyes wide. Did they call out and tell Young Pete that they weren’t trespassers? But actually, they were. Had it been the father, Olivia would have identified herself. But the son was a different matter. Who knew what he would do?

  Kit took over. He grabbed a handful of mud, smeared it on his face, and stuck a big, leafy branch into his hair. Yelling at the top of his lungs and looking very scary, he ran, stark naked, over the bridge and toward the wall that surrounded the estate.

  Young Pete was so flabbergasted at the sight of the naked, wild-looking man that he stood and stared, his shotgun lowered.

  Kit was almost over the wall before Young Pete recovered enough that he raised the gun and took aim. Olivia, who’d been on the girls’ softball team in high school, picked up a rock the size of her fist and threw it. It hit Young Pete in his lower back. As he spun around, the shotgun accidently went off, and the unexpected recoil sent him facedown into the water.

  Olivia, naked as the day sh