Jude Deveraux (8 page)

Eden
took a deep breath and turned away from the phone. She had an urge to call her
daughter back and say she was returning. She had an urge to call her publisher
and ask for her job back. She had an urge to . . .

She
stopped walking. She decided to go upstairs, wash her hair, and spend an hour
and a half getting ready for Brad's visit tonight. He was moving much too fast,
assuming too much too soon, and McBride . . . Truthfully, she didn't know what
to make of that man. Both men wanted something, but until she found out what it
was, maybe she could enjoy herself.

'Do you
think that's wise?' Brad asked tightly. 'I don't mean to criticize, but do you
really think you should let a strange man move into your house?'

'He
isn't strange, remember?' Eden said, her back to Brad so he wouldn't see her
smile. 'Your friends at the police station ran a check on him. I was told that
Jared McBride is a full-fledged hero. Considering that I was
his
assailant
I thought that the least I could do was put him into a place where I could take
care of him.' She turned to look at Brad, batting her mascaraed lashes. 'Did I
do wrong?'

Brad
started to answer, then grinned. 'Am I right in thinking that you're telling me
to mind my own business and that it's your house.'

'More
or less,' she said, pleased that he understood. She unwrapped the
pecan-encrusted trout from the foil packages that Brad had brought from
Soundside, the seafood restaurant that was steps from his office.

When Brad
took plates out of the glass-doored cabinet, Eden noted that he seemed to know
where everything was. He said he'd often visited Mrs. Farrington, but that
they'd never become true friends; yet he seemed to have visited often enough
that he knew his way around the house well. Had he been telling the truth?

He
carried  the dishes into the dining room and  set  the 
table.  'So  how  long  is  McBride staying?'

Eden
ignored his question as she put the fish onto the plates. She'd steamed green
beans and made a salad. 'Tell me everything that's happened in Arundel since I
left here twenty-two years ago. Who got married, who died, who had babies? Any
scandals?'

It took
Brad a few moments to get his mind off the man Eden had invited into her home,
but when he did, she found that he was a wonderful storyteller. As far as she
could tell, Arundel hadn't changed much. But then, its residents fought hard
against change. When Wal-Mart wanted to put in a store on the outskirts, the
company met with so much protest that they slunk away in silence. The residents
were quite willing to drive a hundred miles to buy goods, just so their pretty
town wouldn't be polluted with ugly, modern stores. Brad's three last names
were an example of the residents' dislike of change. All of his names came from
the founding families of Arundel. Mrs. Farrington told Eden that there were
certain names that were all over Arundel, on the street signs, on the
buildings, on the businesses. The families had started the town and, for the
most part, had never left it. The children still carried the old names, and
they still left for college, but they returned to Arundel with spouses from
good families to live in the family home, then bear children who were given
three last names. Anywhere else it might be unusual to meet a girl named
Haughton or Pembroke, but not in Arundel. The names were a permanent calling
card, a way to let people know who they were and where they fit into history.
Some people thought the whole idea was pretentious and snobbish, but others
swooned over the historic continuity, which was so rare in the United States.

As Eden
looked at Brad across the table, she thought how well he fit into the old
house. It was as though he was a reincarnation of his ancestors who had often
visited the place and had twice married into the Farrington family. When he
poured her a glass of wine, she smiled at him and he smiled back. She felt
comfortable with him.

'Okay,'
Brad said, 'I know I'm too pushy and too forward, and I know that I've been
taking liberties with you, but you have to realize how much Mrs. Farrington
talked about you.'

'Did
she?' Eden said, smiling. 'I think I missed her every day I was away from her.'

'I
don't know how! She was a demanding old woman. I can't tell you how many times
she made me mow her lawn! I wasted two Saturdays a month here behind that
hideous old push mower of hers. I used to ... ' He stopped and smiled at Eden.
'If I hadn't had Alice Augusta Farrington while my wife was ill, I think I
might have gone insane. My wife took nearly three years to die.' He looked down
at his plate, then back up at Eden. 'In this light, at this table, I can almost
see her, Mrs. Farrington, I mean. There are things about you that remind me of
her.'

When he
pushed his food around on his plate, Eden felt that he had something to say but
was afraid to say it. Silently, she waited for him to go on.

'You'll
hear stories about me,' he said softly.

'Will
they be worse than the ones about me?'

'No,'
he said, then grinned and took a big bite of his fish. 'After what you did to
McBride, this town will have gossip for the next ten years. You're going to
beat our resident clairvoyant for causing talk.'

'A
clairvoyant? Great! I can have my fortune told. Does this mean that Arundel is
becoming New Age?'

'Far
from it. She's a Pembroke.'

'Ah,'
Eden said. That explained everything. While no one in Arundel would put up with
eccentricity from an outsider, they tolerated pretty much anything from one of
their own. 'So tell me about your wife,' she said.

'We
weren't exactly a match made in heaven. You're going to hear that. We'd already
started divorce proceedings when she told me she had cancer.'

'But
you stayed with her.'

'Yes, I
did. I wasn't faithful, though. You'll hear that too. There was a woman . . .
But it didn't last. After my wife died, I realized that I didn't want anything
to do with her, not long-term, anyway. Mrs. Farrington made me see that.'

'Really?
But Mrs. Farrington was such a proponent of extra-marital sex.'

'Yeah,
my grandfather and my great-uncle.' Brad grinned. 'But in between the Willow
Stories,   as   I   came  
to   think   of  them,   Mrs. Farrington
told me about you.'

Eden
was nattered and curious. 'What could she have told you about me?'

'What
you liked to eat, what you wore, what you were good at, what you couldn't do.
What interested you, what didn't. You name it and she told me about it. She
said you liked the garden more than the house, so that's why she went to all
the trouble of renovating this old house, but left the gardens a mess for you
to have the pleasure of cleaning up.'

Eden
smiled. 'I can hardly wait to get my hands on them. Know any muscular teenage
boys who need summer jobs?'

'At
least twenty of them. Mind if I help?'

'Don't
tell me you're a gardener?'

'More
or less. Well, actually, less. But I can dig holes with the best of them.'

His
look was so intense that Eden looked away for a moment. He seemed to want her
to comment on what he'd told her about himself. 'Brad, you don't have to
confess your past sins to me,' she said. 'Really, at my age, I've committed a
few of my own.'

'You?'
he said, one eyebrow raised. 'What possible sins have
you
committed?
According to Mrs. Farrington you were an angel come to earth.'

'Didn't
she tell you that I was lazy and daydreamy and all the other things that she
complained about me?'

'She
never said a bad word about you.' His eyes were twinkling, and Eden was
enjoying his teasing. 'I got the impression  that you worked nonstop and
that you never said an unkind word about anyone in your life.'

'She
didn't tell you about all the horrible things I said about the youngest Camden
boy? He decided he was going to marry me.'

Brad
groaned. 'I know him well. Doing you a favor, was he?'

'Oh, yes.
I think he had an idea that Mrs. Farrington would leave me the house, and he
wanted it. There weren't enough old Camden houses for him to have one. I think
he thought he'd die if he had to live in a new brick house. Whatever happened
to that boy?'

'He
moved up north where he got a Yankee wife, but when his brother had financial
reverses, he moved back home. He lives in the Camden-Minton house now. He's
good with money. He must have figured out that Mrs. Farrington couldn't leave
the house to her son.'

'Did
everyone in town know about her son? About what he did?'

'Sure.
We know about each other.'

Eden
looked down at her wineglass to hide her smile. To someone who'd never lived in
Arundel, what Brad had just said was impossibly pompous. He was a member of a
society that 'knew' the others in that society. They would have known about
Mrs. Farrington's son, but they would still have accepted him into their houses
because he was one of them. But if an outsider had come into town and done what
Alester Farrington had tried to do, they might have hanged him.

'When
Mrs. Farrington died, you lost one of your families,' Eden said, smiling at
him. She had lived too many places and seen too much in her life to dislike
'family' in any form. To her mind, that's what these people in Arundel were: a
large family with a very long history.

'Yes,
but as Mrs. Farrington said to me, perhaps it was for the better. Many bad
things had happened in the Farrington family. She was of the old school and
believed there was a bad 'strain,' as she called it, in her family. Genetics.'

Eden
started to say that she probably knew more about the Farrington family than
anyone else on earth, since she'd spent years reading about them, but she said
nothing. And she was tempted to tell him about her book, but again, decided to
say nothing.

'What I
really want to say is that if I seem a bit too familiar I ask your forgiveness.
It's just that I feel as though I've known you for a long time. I know that we
both share a fondness for cheesecake and that we both dislike hollyhocks. I
know that you like rabbits but don't like dogs much. By the way, I own three
dogs, all of them well mannered and polite, I might add. I know you aren't
married, that you're beautiful, talented, and smart, and with those things
added to owning this big house, you're going to have a lot of male interest.
I'm concerned that in a sense of everything being fair in love and war, that
half a dozen people will rush to tell you all about how horrible I was while my
wife was dying.'

'Were
you horrible?' Eden asked softly.

'No. I
stayed with her, but I didn't love her. As I said, we'd already filed for
divorce. I spent a lot of time here in this house during those years. I think I
needed someone as bossy as Mrs. Farrington so I wouldn't have to think. It was
the worst time of my life.' He leaned back in his chair, and after a moment, he
smiled. 'Now that I've told you my deepest, darkest secret, what about your
life? And I know about what happened to you to give you your daughter, so that
doesn't count.'

More
questions, Eden thought. 'Of course Mrs. Farrington would have told you about
that,' she said grimly. 'But then I'm sure it was all over town from years
before.'

'Yes,
she told all of us, but she did so because she didn't want people thinking you
were just some hot pants teenager who'd fooled around with her boyfriend. She
wanted people to understand.' He smiled at her. 'All of us did understand. I
don't think anyone was discourteous to you while you were here, were they?'

'No,'
Eden said, looking at him. She realized that Mrs. Farrington had told the
'family' about Eden and the word was sent out that, in spite of her
unmarried-and-pregnant state, she was to be treated kindly, not snubbed. Even
though Brad had not been in Arundel during those years, he included himself in
the 'we' of the people who understood.

Eden
was about to say more when a movement at the doorway caught her eye. It was
just a flash, then it was gone. A mouse? she wondered. But no, she didn't think
so.

'How
about if we take our wine outside?' Brad asked. 'I'd like to see that lawn I
worked so hard on, and maybe you could tell me of your garden plans.'

'I
haven't had time to really look at the outside,' she said, thinking that the
only time she'd been out was when she'd gone to McBride's house to take him
soup. And with the thought of that man she knew what she'd seen in the doorway:
McBride's foot. He was just outside the door, listening to her and Brad. How
long had he been there? And, more important,
why
was he there? Just
old-fashioned snooping? Prurient interest? Was that all it had been when he'd
been snooping through her house at night?

'Yes!'
Eden said. 'Let's go outside.' She said this too loud and too fast. Part of her
wanted to let McBride know that she knew he was there. She'd like to see his
face when she caught him!

As she
pushed away from the table, she glanced at the glass-doored cabinet and saw
McBride's reflection in the glass. He didn't look guilty or embarrassed, just
gave her a little nod and a smile, acknowledging that she'd seen him.

Her
first instinct was to confront him, but she didn't. She didn't want to get Brad
involved in this. She would deal with McBride on her own.

Standing,
Eden tucked her arm in Brad's, and they left the house with their full wineglasses.
Brad was telling her about the fenced garden that Eden had designed so many
years ago, but it was difficult for her to concentrate on what he was saying.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that Brad knew a great deal
more about gardening and about Mrs. Farrington than he'd let on. Something he
said made her give him her attention. 'What did you say?'