Jude Deveraux (20 page)

He
ignored her remark. 'Tess Brewster — that was the name of the agent who was
killed — lived — '

'Did
you know her?'

'Yes,'
Jared said succinctly, letting Eden know that he didn't want to talk about
that. 'Tess rented a house just down the road from here. A converted — '

'Overseer's
house,' Eden said. 'I know the place well.'

'Overseer?'
he asked, one eyebrow raised. 'Like in
Uncle Tom's Cabin?''

'Don't
give me that Yankee look,' she said. 'Nearly all the overseers for Farrington
Manor were African-American, and I know. I did the research, remember? That
house used to belong to Farrington Manor, but it was sold many years ago. Mrs.
Farrington told me that at one point it was derelict and cows wandered through
it, but one of the — ' She opened her eyes wide.

'Right,'
he said. 'One of the Granvilles bought it. It now belongs to your Mr. Slick.'

'Brad,'
she said, ignoring the disparaging nickname. 'That's good. I'll ask Brad about
the woman and the accident this afternoon.'

'Think
he'll tell you anything?'

'No, of
course not. I think Brad killed the woman and will want to cover it up. You're
disgusting, you know that?'

'You're
the first woman who has ever thought that.'

'Why
don't you go outside and talk to one of the men skulking out there? And if any
of them smoke, tell them not to throw their butts in my garden. At least I
think it's my garden,' she said under her breath. 'I don't seem to have time to
go outside to even look at it. There are probably weeds taller than I am.'

'That's
easy,' Jared said, smiling at her.

'Go!
Get away from me! I have to work.'

But
Jared didn't move out of the chair across from her. He opened one of her books
and looked at a photo of red tulips surrounded by a trim boxwood hedge. 'I
thought your idea of making those people beg you to create a garden for them
was great. So what constitutes an eighteenth-century garden?'

'Pattern,
symmetry. And they need outbuildings,' she said, distracted.

'There
are enough of those around here. I've never seen so many buildings falling down
as there are here in North Carolina.'

Looking
up from her book, Eden stared at him in silence.

'What's
that look for?'

'Maybe
I could work with the Arundel Historical Society and Restoration North Carolina
and move some of the smaller buildings into Queen Anne. The buildings could be
restored.'

'Good
idea. Glad I thought of it.'

She
shook her head at him. 'Your ego must reach the moon.'

He
smiled at her and didn't seem as though he planned to go away. 'So tell me
about all this,' he said, motioning to the many books on the table. 'It looks
interesting.'

She
opened her favorite book,
The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg
by
Brinkley and Chappell, to the Benjamin Waller garden. 'See,' she said, 'you
need pattern and symmetry, and different plants are used together.'

When
Jared's face showed that he didn't understand but wanted to hear more, she
warmed to her subject. 'In America today, because we have so much land, we tend
to plant one crop in one space. Modern American families will plant a quarter
acre of corn, for instance. Or they'll put in a dozen tomato plants and make
sure that nothing else is near their tomatoes. All very clean and sterile. The
colonials lived in a dangerous world, so they lived close to one another, but
they still had to grow a lot of their own food.'

'Country
in the city.'

'More
or less. In Williamsburg, the houses had half-acre lots, and it is amazing that
they could fit so many plantings into that small space. Every inch of their
lots was used. And nothing was barren. They didn't have the luxury of space.'

Jared
looked as though he wanted her to go on.

'Take
herbs, for instance. Today, if an American wants to plant herbs, they put in a
herb garden. They tend to separate everything. Herbs are here, fruit trees are
there, vegetables are there, and flowers are over there. All separate. But the
colonials mixed things up — which, today, we're rediscovering is a better
idea.'

'A
cottage garden,' Jared said, looking pleased with himself.

'No. A
cottage garden prides itself on having twenty-five different species in one
bed, and everything is free-form. The colonials couldn't have stood that. They
wanted order and symmetry, so they'd make a design, architectural really, and
each shape would be bordered by a hedge of one plant, such as boxwood, or
lavender. Then, inside, they'd put their flowers or vegetables. And they would
put plants together that helped each other.'

'How do
plants help each other?'

Eden
opened a new book put out by her publishing house on companion gardening. 'Certain
plants like each other, and there's a theory that if you have problems with
bugs on your crop, then you should plant something else nearby that the bugs
like more than your crop. In the Middle Ages, no one would plant strawberries
without planting borage next to it. Lovage goes near the tomatoes, and hyssop
has to be with grapes. They're best friends. You grow catnip and use the
branches as a mulch to repel the odious Japanese beetles — which, thankfully,
the colonials didn't have. Valerian draws worms to the surface to aerate the
soil, and it adds minerals to the compost pile. And marigolds should be
everywhere. Bugs hate the smell of marigolds.'

Jared
blinked at her. 'And you say you've forgotten what you knew.'

Eden
smiled at his praise. 'I think I can remember most of it with some study, and
of course there's so much more that's been published since I was gardening.
Back then, people didn't even believe in mulch, and only a few people had any
idea what a compost heap was.'

'Imagine
that.'

Eden
laughed. 'It's a matter of what's old is new again. We're finally learning that
nature and our ancestors knew what they were doing. They were organic gardeners
out of necessity, and now a lot of people are looking into how they did it.'
She looked down at her paper. 'Designing these gardens for other people is my
problem. How do I do that? The colonials could get four gardens out of a
half-acre lot.'

'How
big are the lots at Queen Anne?' She looked at him.  'Unfortunately, I
don’t know, but I assume the ones not on the water are from one to three
acres.'

'What
would you do with three acres?' 'In colonial times it would have been
pastureland, with sheep, cows, and horses, but now it could be a croquet lawn
or a putting green. Just so it's not two and a half acres of lawn that has to
be mowed.' When she looked down at her pad and began to write, Jared leaned
across the table and looked at the paper. 'Must have,' she'd written at the top
of the page.

must be
enclosed

must
have outdoor structure (s)

must have
walkways

must
re-create the past

'So
show me a hypothetical design,' he said. 'Okay,' she said, glad for his
interest, because she needed someone to run her ideas past. 'It's like this.
Here's the house.' She drew a rectangle near one end of the paper. 'I'd bring
in at least one old building and have it restored — and thank you for that
idea. I'll be sure and give you credit.' She drew a small square to the left of
the page. 'Now we connect the buildings with a walkway. Colonials didn't have a
huge lawn where people could walk anywhere they pleased.'

'And
these were the guys fighting for freedom?'

'Before
power mowers, having an acre of lawn to mow wasn't freedom.'

'Point
taken.'

'Here, near
the house, we enclose a place for a pleasure garden that would be used for
picnics and just sitting outside on warm evenings.' She drew a rectangle near
the house, then surrounded it with what looked like rounded shrubs. 'Trees at
each corner, and over here a little gazebo, but you have to be careful of
gazebos so you don't make it look Victorian.'

'Then
what?' Jared asked.

'The
kitchen garden. Not too far from the house, but not too close either. A
colonial kitchen garden was a thing of beauty and didn't need to be hidden.'
She drew six narrow rectangles, then a square with a diamond in the center. As
Jared watched, she drew paths off the diamond.

'I see.
You could put a fountain there in the middle. An authentic-looking fountain, of
course.'

She
smiled at him. 'Now, curving pathways to connect all the spaces, and they'd all
be tree-lined, of course. This was before air-conditioning, so shade was
important. And, depending on the size of the property . . . ' She turned the
pages in the book to the plan for the Governor's Palace and described the
various 'rooms.' There was a 'ballroom garden' filled with topiaries, a maze
made from hedges of American holly, a canal stocked with fish, and a bowling
green. It was a garden that nearly bankrupted the government, but Eden thought
it was worth every cent.

Jared
looked up from the book. 'So where do the ATVs race?' '

'On the
highway, with the eighteen-wheelers,' she said instantly, and he laughed.

'I'll
take you on one for a spin one day, and you'll love it.'

'I doubt
it,' she said, then looked at her watch. 'I have to go meet Brad.' Her eyes
pleaded with him to not go with her.

'Sorry,'
he said, 'but it's my duty to keep you safe. Tell Mr. — '

She
gave him a look to cut it out.

'Granville,'
Jared said. 'Tell him that I'm going to help you with the designing.'

She
started to protest but stopped herself. What good would it do? 'You wouldn't
happen to have a camera, would you?'

'Digital,
five million pixels, with a one gigabyte card.'

She
raised her eyebrows, impressed. 'Okay, you can take pictures of everything for
me.'

'Meant 
to do that anyway,' he said softly. 'I want you to get us into that house where
Tess

lived,
okay?'

Eden
nodded. She wasn't sure how she was going to ask Brad, but she'd figure out something.
She smiled at McBride, and he smiled back. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

'So
what's for lunch?' he asked, and she groaned.

When
Eden saw Brad, she again marveled at how comfortable she felt with him. She
wondered if it was because he was part of the Arundel family that Mrs.
Farrington had been part of. For all that Brad was, more or less, a stranger,
she felt as though she'd known him forever. Mrs. Farrington said that when you
met the man, THE man, you started planning your wedding dress. So far in her
life, every time Eden had dated a man for more than three months, she started
planning how she was going to let him down easily. Never in her life had she
been dropped by a man, but she'd had to tell several of them that it was over
between them.

But
Brad was different, and she knew it — and so did he. When he saw her, his face
lit up. Like a child at Christmas. Like she was a gift that he'd wanted all his
life. We've had similar bad experiences, she thought, and we've never come
close to finding that Great Love.

Brad
hurried forward, took both her hands in his, and kissed her cheeks. He looked
like he wanted to do more, but instead he just stood there, holding her hands
and looking into her eyes.

'I hate
to break this up,' Jared said from behind them, 'but the architect is waggling
at you.'

'Waggling?'
Brad said, smiling at the old-fashioned word. Still holding Eden's hands, he
turned to Drake Haughton, who looked exaggeratedly at his watch. 'Sorry,' Brad
said to Eden, 'but I'm on a strict timetable today. We have some buyers flying
in from New York later this afternoon, and I have to be back here to meet with
them. Shall we go?'

Eden
followed Brad to his car, and after a look at Jared, he seemed resigned to his
presence. As Brad held the door open for her, he said quietly, 'I see Mother
Superior is well.' Eden giggled.

Eden
thought she was to meet with clients, but Brad told her that the meetings would
start tomorrow. 'Today I'm going to show you everything. You can't go into a
meeting without having seen the place.'

'Of
course not,' she said, glad to be with him. If McBride weren't in the backseat,
everything would have been perfect. Well, actually, perfect would mean that she
wasn't being investigated by the FBI, and people weren't breaking into her
house and filling it with poisonous snakes, and —

'Are
you okay?' Brad asked, glancing away from the road to look at her.

'Fine.
Just a little nervous about suddenly becoming a landscape designer. I spent the
morning going over my gardening books and making a lot of notes. I hope people
like the idea of these gardens. They're not what most people want.'

'Something
I've found out in this business is that people love restrictions. Covenants put
on property make them feel safe. The guy next door can't park a boat in front
of his house. They like that kind of thing. And I think they'll like the idea
of everyone having to make gardens that aren't like the rest of the U.S.'

'I hope
so.'

'You
look nice. What did you do to make yourself look even better than you did
yesterday?'

'She
took a bath and put big yellow curlers in her hair,' Jared said from the
backseat, reminding them of his presence. 'Eden wanted to ask you about a house
you own.'

Eden
wanted to pinch McBride. She would have come to the house in time. Why did he
have to rush things? And why did he have to remind Brad that they were living
in the same house?

Brad
looked at her questioningly.

'The
overseer's house down the road. I, uh . . . '

'Her
daughter is thinking of moving here to Arundel, so Eden thought she might like
that house. I called a Realtor, and imagine our surprise to find out that
you
own it.'

Twisting
in her seat, Eden glanced at McBride in disgust. What was inside of him that he
could lie so easily?

'You'll
have to fight Minnie for the place,' Brad said. 'She wants it very much, but I
won't let her have it.'

'Why
not?' Eden asked.

'Maybe
I should tell you now so you don't learn it from gossip, but I am utterly
selfish. I won't let Minnie move into that house because I hate living alone.
It's that simple. She hates my big old house and wants out of it, but if she
and her daughter moved . . . ' Trailing off, he shrugged at Eden. 'I guess I
should let her have the place, but Drake, my assistant, also wants it. I owe
Drake's father and ... 'He trailed off.

Brad's
eyes met Eden's, and she wondered if he was saying that he now hoped he was
going to have a different person to live with. She had to look away from him so
he wouldn't see what was in her eyes. She too hated living alone. The year that
Melissa had been in New York and Eden had lived by herself had been the worst
year of her life. Even now, although she'd never tell him so, she was glad
McBride was in the house with her.

'How
long has the house been empty?' Jared asked.

'Six
weeks, I guess it is now,' Brad said as he stopped the car.

Eden
had been so intent on Brad that she hadn't looked outside the car. Now she saw that
they were on a pretty, tree-lined street. Again, she saw that old-growth trees
had been saved. Peeping through the trees and around the gently curving street,
she could see houses that were all eighteenth century in design.
Well-proportioned, simple rectangles, with beautiful, paned windows, she
thought. No fancy, curved porches, no gingerbread trim, no witches' hat roofs.
Nothing Victorian, and nothing modern anywhere.

'My
goodness,' she said. 'They could all have been modeled after my house.' And for
the first time, Eden fully realized that Farrington Manor was
her
house.

'We
were trying for perfection,' Brad said, smiling at her as he got out of the
car, then went around to open the door for her. 'The owners of this house
haven't moved in yet, so I thought we'd look around at the outside and you
could see what you have to work with. Most of the lots are the same size.'

'That's
exactly what I need,' she said, then turned to Jared. 'How about if you take
photos of everything?'

'I'll
do my job if you do yours,' Jared said pointedly.

Eden
knew what he meant, and she nodded. In the next minute he walked around the
back of the house and left her alone with Brad. Alone with Brad, she thought as
she turned to look at him. Alone. From the look in his eyes, he was thinking
the same thing.

'Too
bad we don't have a key to the house.'

His
statement was so like a teenager's that she laughed.

He took
her arm and walked her across the street. 'Come on, I know a place where he
can't find us.'

'I
doubt that,' she said as they went across the street, through the side yard of
another house, then through a gate to the back. It was a typical American
backyard, with a couple of skinny new trees and about an acre of grass. Come
summer, no one would step outdoors because they'd sizzle in the heat.

'Eden,'
Brad said, then started to pull her into his arms.

But she
pulled away from him. She had no doubt in the world that at least one and maybe
two FBI binoculars were on them now. She didn't relish having photos of her and
Brad shown to McBride — or to anyone else, for that matter. 'I . . . ' she
began. She couldn't think of a reason for not letting him kiss her.

'Right,'
he said, smiling. 'Too public' He let go of her hand and gestured to the huge
expanse of grass. 'Think you can do something with this?'

That he
was so understanding made her like him more. 'Oh, yes. By the way, I wanted to
ask you if there was a good nursery near here. I'm going to need a lot of
plants.'

'Raleigh.
We have trucks you can use.'

For a
moment she looked about her and tried to think how to bring up the subject of
the house.

'Is
your daughter really thinking of moving to Arundel?'

'It's
more that I'm wanting her to move here. You and I have something in common in
that we bear little love for our sons-in-law.'

'Don't
get me started. Did Minnie tell you — '

She
didn't want him to go in that direction. 'You don't have a renter for the
overseer's house? Or are you going to let Minnie or Drake have it?'

He
looked at her for a moment. 'No, I don't have a renter, and I own three other
houses, any of which Minnie would like.' He started walking toward the back
fence, Eden beside him. 'Did Minnie tell you what happened to the last tenant?'

'No,
she didn't mention it.'

'I
can't believe she left out any gossip,' he said as he opened the gate for her
and they stepped out onto a service road. Right away, Eden liked the layout of
the place. Instead of having the garages opening at the front of the house —
and let's face it, a huge, blank garage door was ugly — the garages faced the
back, and residents entered through small service roads that ran behind the
houses. 'I like this,' she said, waving her hand. 'So what gossip did Minnie
leave out?'

'I
rented the house to a woman who was a retired schoolteacher. She showed me some
watercolors that I think she painted, but she was too shy to say so. They were
nice but not great. She said she was interested in the old houses in this area.
She was especially interested in Farrington Manor.'

'You
sound sad. What happened?'

'She
was killed in a hit-and-run. It was a shock to the whole town. Her relatives
came to claim the body, and . . . ' He shrugged, not knowing what else to say.

'What
happened to the woman's effects?'

Brad
looked at her sharply.

Eden had
to think fast. 'Okay, so you caught me. I love watercolors and I thought that
maybe she'd done a portrait of my house.'

'Tyrrell
Farrington's portraits aren't enough for you?'

'Puh-lease.'

Brad
smiled. 'I could call and ask her family. I have the address and phone number
her uncle gave me somewhere. When he came to get her body, he told me that if I
heard anything about what happened to her, he'd like to know about it.'

'A
hit-and-run. That's so . . . cowardly. No one saw anything?'

'Nothing.
The police think she was hit at about two in the morning. I can't imagine what
she was doing walking on the roads at that time of night. Didn't she read the
papers? Watch the news?'

'Where
did it happen?'

Brad
sighed, and she could tell that he was reluctant to answer her. 'In front of
your house. The police figured that someone was coming over the bridge, turned
the curve too sharply, probably on the wrong side of the road, and there she
was. You don't expect someone to be walking along the side of the road at two o'clock
in the morning, so you get a bit lax.'

'Not to
mention drunk.'

'Probably,'
Brad said. 'It was all such a waste. Her uncle was pretty upset about her
death. He looked like he wanted to hurt someone.'

Eden
wanted to stop asking questions, but she thought of what was becoming her
secret life with the FBI and she continued. 'Would you mind giving me the name
and number that man gave you? I think I'll call him and see if she did a
watercolor of my house.'

For a
moment, Brad just blinked at her.

'Is that
too ghoulish of me?'

'No,
actually, I think that's kind of you, and I think they might like that, but I
just remembered something. I think Hank Smiley at the frame shop — you know,
that room off the hardware store on Prince Street? I think he might have some
of her watercolors. I forgot all about that. I was in there one day not long
after she was found, buying some frames for photos of my grandson, and — '

'I can
hardly wait to do that,' Eden said, smiling.

'Grandkids
are better than you can imagine. Anyway, Hank said something to me about
pictures some woman had left in the store and he didn't know what to do with
them. I was in a rush that day so I didn't pay much attention to him. I
remember wondering why he was telling
me
about pictures left by some
woman. I thought maybe he wanted my services as a lawyer to get his money for
the framing job.'

'But
maybe he told you because the woman had been renting a house from you.'

'Right.
I bet her family would like to have those pictures.'

'Would
you mind if I went to the frame shop and asked about them? Maybe I could have
Mr. Smiley call your office for verification of who I am.'

'He
knows.'

'Of
course,' Eden said, half glad that people knew of her, and half annoyed.

For
several moments Brad said nothing, just stared up at the house in front of them
(brick with a wing with huge windows). Then he sighed, as though he had decided
something. 'So what's up with you and McBride?'

'He's
my — ' she began but broke off at the look on Brad's face.

'I've
been a lawyer a long time and I know when someone's lying. He's good at it;
you're not.'