Romance Classics (32 page)

“Oh, he knows,” said Lynn, and was slightly abashed at the startled looks of the others. “I made the slip when I first met him at the Junction. He seemed rather pleased and said it was most appropriate.”

“That’s too bad,” said Ruth quietly. “After all, it
is
his home: the only real home he has, I imagine. Too bad he can’t be fond of it.”

“Wait until you see it,” suggested Lynn grimly. “You’ll see why nobody in the world could ever be fond of such a place, and why he’d probably laugh his head off at the suggestion that it
is
a home.”

“But surely he could change things, redecorate,” protested Ruth.

Lynn chuckled wryly. “I suggested that,” she admitted.

“Oh, Lynn, you didn’t! How could you be so rude?” Ruth gasped.

“Well, he was apologizing for the gloom, and I said he could redecorate, and he said, ‘Just for the length of my sentence? It would scarcely be worth-while. I am here as little as I can manage.’ Now
that’s
one of the things I dislike about him: that he looks on three months every year at Oakville as a prison sentence; and to me it’s an enchanted spring!”

The other three at the table exchanged glances, and Ruth said mildly, “You two do seem to have become fairly well acquainted, after just two meetings.”

“Oh, I learned all I want to know about him the first meeting, at the Junction,” Lynn said swiftly.

“And apparently when you went to call on him, you learned a bit more,” suggested the Judge dryly.

“Nothing that made me like him any better,” Lynn flashed stubbornly, and met their eyes, feeling warmth in her cheeks and hating herself because she was blushing.

Stella Mabry was twenty-eight and saw no reason to attempt to deny it. She had been born in Oakville and had grown up here where everybody knew everybody’s age. Also, she was plain, and that, too, was something she saw no reason to try to deny. From her earliest school days, when other little girls were called pretty and dressed daintily and were popular with the little boys, Stella had accepted the fact that she was plain with the same simplicity with which she had accepted the fact that her family was poor. If she wanted ever to be anybody, she would have to manage that alone. She had worked hard at her studies, had been secretly proud that she had made straight A’s, and had tried to console herself for her lack of popularity by dwelling on the fact that even if her teacher wasn’t fond of her, she
was
proud of her scholastic standing.

The same standards had carried her through business college. And when she had been given the job in Judge Carter’s office, her admiration for him had instilled in her the determination to study law and some day be a fine “lady lawyer.”

Steve’s arrival had given her still another consuming ambition, which was to marry Steve. She assured herself firmly that she was so right for him! He needed a wife exactly like her: a woman who would help him rise in his profession, who would be selflessly devoted to him, who would keep his house and rear his children, but who could also help him by discussing his work with him.

She had been appalled at the thought of Steve being exposed to Lynn’s beauty and charm. And then she had consoled herself with the thought that Lynn was only there on a visit and would be going away soon. Anyway, she wouldn’t even look at Steve; Lynn would be after much more important marriage prospects than Steve would be able to offer her for years to come.

The invitation to Spook Hill for dinner had set her aflutter. She would be in sharp, cruel contrast to Lynn. She needed a new dress, a new hair-do — she needed, she told herself savagely, a new face!

In spite of the sober assurance that she looked “as nice as could be expected” in her practical navy “good” dress, her heart sank a little as she and Steve stood in the living room of the Carter home and Lynn came toward them, smiling, exquisitely lovely in a simple, unpretentious pale green wool that did very flattering things to her chestnut-gold hair and her brown eyes.

“You look lovely, Stella,” Lynn told her, her smile warm and friendly.

“Thanks,” said Stella curtly. “Of course you would put any other girl in the shade. That’s a stunning dress.”

“This?” Lynn looked down at it disdainfully. “I didn’t think there was any point in getting too dressed up! After all, if Wayde McCullers wants to get acquainted with the peasants, we shouldn’t dress above our station!”

“Now that, my girl,” said the Judge, unexpectedly stern, “was a very rude and ungracious thing to say. I’m surprised at you. You’re going to this man’s house, to break bread with him, and he wants to be friends. Remember that.”

“Yes, Dad,” said Lynn. “Well, shall we get going? It would never do to be late for such an invitation.”

“No reason we should take both cars,” said the Judge. “Suppose you drive, Steve. There’s plenty of room for all five of us in my car.”

So it was that when the sedan clambered up the steep hill that was crowned by the big, ugly gray house, Lynn sat demurely between her parents on the back seat and Stella and Steve were together in the front.

The big oaken door of the house swung open as they came up the steps, and Wayde himself stood there to greet them.

They were swept into the house on the warmth of his greeting and into a vast, cheerless living room. The only cheerful note was a log fire blazing away in the huge fireplace in which a tall man could have stood upright.

“It’s really too warm tonight for a fire,” Wayde apologized lightly. “But I had to do something to make the place look a little less like a mausoleum.”

Ruth looked at him swiftly and then about the huge, barnlike room.

“It has great possibilities,” she said impetuously, and blushed.

“That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Carter.”

“It wasn’t at all,” Ruth made swift apology with a gentle smile. “Finding fault with your home—”

“Well, since I was the one who first found fault with it, I see no reason why you should apologize,” Wayde answered, smiling. “It was kind of you to point out that it could be changed, but I’m afraid that’s a colossal task to which I don’t feel equal.”

Fitch chose that moment to appear with cocktails; a little later, he announced dinner. The dining room was as bleak, as barnlike as the big old drawing room. When they were seated, Lynn looked about her at the dark paneling, the heavy dark green damask draperies, the handsome if gloomy mahogany furniture, and barely managed to repress a shudder. For the first time, she could find it in her heart to feel sorry for Wayde. This must be the most excruciating change from the world and the life to which he was so happily accustomed, she decided, and smiled at him as he bent toward her with a pleasant word.

He looked a trifle startled but quite pleased, and resumed his task of host, making pleasant small talk as the well-prepared and very appetizing dinner was served.

After dinner, back in the big gloomy drawing room, it somehow developed that there was a table of bridge; the Judge and Stella were partners against Ruth and Steve. Lynn wasn’t quite sure how it had been managed, because it had been done so deftly that the four were settled at a table and the cards were being dealt almost before she realized it.

Wayde spoke to her, smiling, eager. “I believe there’s a garden, and I know there’s a moon. Shall we have a look? That is, if we can find the garden.”

Lynn stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Well, of course there’s a garden. A very famous one. Twice a year the Ladies’ Aid from mother’s church holds a silver tea in the garden and people come from miles around to see it.”

“Then you probably know where it is.” Wayde grinned at her, quite undisturbed. “Shall we have a look?”

“Well, of all things — to live here and not even know where the garden is!” Lynn sniffed at him disdainfully and led the way.

“Shall you need a sweater?” suggested Wayde at the front door.

“Of course not! Why, it’s almost summertime,” she protested.

“It’s early April, my girl — and that can be chilly!”

“Not in Oakville — it wouldn’t dare!”

She led the way out of doors, along the terrace to the left and down a shallow flight of stairs to the garden.

They stood at the foot of the stairs, and she looked up at him in the silvery flood of light from the moon that was high and golden-yellow, and saw his eyes roam over the acreage that spread out, dropping in gentle terraces, each one planted meticulously and beautifully tended.

“Well, what do you know?” he marveled.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, not to have known about it?”

He chuckled wryly. “Frankly, I’m never especially interested in gardens when I get here — just with getting away as fast as I can!”

“That’s something you should be ashamed of, too,” she told him tartly, “hating your own home so much.”

“You call this a home?” He gestured toward the house behind him. “It’s more like a mausoleum.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” Lynn protested earnestly. “It really does have, as Mother said, great possibilities. It could be made so attractive. Oh, I admit it would take a lot of money, which I’m sure you have, and a lot of time, which you probably wouldn’t want to spend that way.”

Wayde looked down at her in the moonlight, and there was an odd expression on his handsome face.

“You’re wrong there,” he told her quietly. “I’d be more than happy to find some way to pass the time while I’m here. If redecorating would do that, fine, except that I don’t know the first thing about decorating. I wouldn’t know where, or how to start.”

“Oh, that’s no problem. There are interior decorators who would leap with joy at the thought of doing over a place like this.”

“Who’d whip up something that would look either like a wing in a museum — and the place already looks like that—” Wayde objected—”or else something so arty and amusing that people would run screaming from it.”

He looked down at her with sudden sharpness.

“You’re not by any chance studying interior decorating in Atlanta?” he demanded.

“Oh, goodness, no. I’m studying to be a private secretary!”

“Shorthand squiggles and typing and stuff like that? What a shocking waste,” he protested, “for a girl with your — shall we say potential?”

Lynn laughed. “Oh, by all means let’s say ‘potential,’” she agreed. “I’m going to be a very superior, executive-type secretary. It says so in my diploma. An ‘extra pair of hands, eyes and a sixth sense’ for the Boss’ needs.”

“So you’ll remind him of important anniversaries, help shop for his wife’s presents, and maybe even do a spot of baby-sitting?” Wayde asked curiously.

“Oh, no, I’ll have my own secretary to look after such everyday problems,” she replied. “I’ve been taught how to enter a room gracefully, leave it without turning my back on the boss and whoever may be in the office with him; how to set the table properly when there is a luncheon conference in the board room, and how to arrange flowers on his desk and about the offices.”

“Are you planning to be a secretary or a housekeeper?”

Lynn laughed. “Mother wanted to know whether they were training me to be a secretary or to marry a millionaire,” she admitted, and added quickly, thankful that the moonlight would not reveal her blush, “I assured her it was a secretarial job I had in mind, millionaires these days being in notoriously short supply.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about
that
shortage if I were you.” She thought his tone was faintly mocking and it made her set her teeth hard. “I’m sure you’ll find one, if you really want to.”

“I don’t, of course,” she answered through her teeth. “I want only a good job and to make use of the training I’ve had. Shall we go back into the house? My father is supposed to get to bed early since his illness, and I’m sure he and Mother must be about ready to leave.”

“Of course,” said Wayde politely, and turned to walk with her back up the wide, shallow garden steps and to the terrace. At the door he stopped her for a moment. “If I do decide to redecorate the mausoleum, will you help?”

Lynn raised startled eyes. “Oh, but I don’t know the first thing about interior decorating,” she protested.

“That I doubt,” Wayde said firmly. “But I know that you would be able to suggest ways the place could be made a little more cheerful, even though I doubt even you could make it seem homelike. But I’d be very grateful if you would try.”

She looked up at him, hesitant, and he rushed on.

“I’ve got another couple of months to serve here,” he pointed out. “Bringing house guests down is a nuisance; they get bored, and there’s no way to entertain them. You said yourself that I needed some kind of hobby, something to pass the time. Why not try to make the place a little less like something out of a horror story? I wouldn’t know how to start, but together we might accomplish something.”

“It’s an idea,” Lynn agreed thoughtfully, and suddenly laughed. “I’m only pretending not to be enchanted by the thought. The woman hasn’t yet been born who doesn’t believe she could make a place inviting and homelike, whether she has to shop at the five and dime or in some fabulous place where money is only something to be spent.”

“Then you will?” Wayde was eager.

“I’d love to,” Lynn told him pleasantly.

“You really are a darling,” said Wayde so simply that the endearment barely registered on her mind. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

Lynn laughed. “You’d better wait and see the results — you may hate the place even more when we’ve finished with it,” she warned.

“That would be impossible,” he said grimly. “Any change in the place would
have
to be an improvement.”

“It’s nice to know that you feel that way,” Lynn mocked as she walked into the house and to the drawing room.

In the morning, after Steve and the Judge had departed for the office, Lynn and her mother sat companionably over a final cup of coffee, and Ruth revealed her qualms about Lynn’s determination to spend some time with Wayde.

“I don’t like your going there unchaperoned, darling, and I just don’t have time to go with you,” she confessed suddenly.

Lynn stared at her, wide-eyed.