Jude Deveraux (9 page)

Brad
chuckled. 'Didn't think I knew about that, did you? I said that I helped Mrs.
Farrington pull the silver out of the floors and the walls. By that I mean that
I used the crowbar and she criticized. I told you she made me work like a
slave. Before the renovation could begin, she made me help clean out the inside
of the walls and the floors. I must say that you ladies certainly did a lot of
work when you put all those in there.'

'And
that's when you found the Paul Revere teapot.'

'Not
me, but yes, that's when it was found,' Brad said. 'I was the one who arranged
the sale for her.'

Eden looked
at him. 'I think she must have cared a great deal about you if she trusted you
with a Farrington heirloom.'

He
leaned toward her so close that his lips were near her ear. 'But she wouldn't
show me what's buried in the garden. She told me about what you two had done,
but she also said that whether or not those things were dug up was up to you.'

Eden
had to laugh. She was beginning to like this man a lot. Perhaps even beginning
to trust him. Maybe she should tell him about McBride's snooping. Maybe Brad
would go in there and beat him up for her. She didn't care if McBride was
bleeding from every orifice, after Brad left she was going to tell McBride to
get out of her house.   Spying   on  
her!   Of  all   the   ungrateful — 'I'm
sorry, what did you say?'

Brad
was looking at her. 'You suddenly seem distracted. And why do you keep looking
at the house?'

'I saw
someone at the window. I'm sure it was only Mr. McBride.'

'I
really do wish you hadn't moved him into your house.'

'I
didn't. The invitation was until he recovered from the wounds
I
gave
him.' Her tone let him know that it wasn't any of his business. She changed the
subject. 'Now, tell me, what would
you
do with this garden?' It was
growing dark; the warm air felt wonderful. She could smell the freshwater creek
down the hill, and the night was so quiet that she was sure she could hear fish
jumping.

They
stopped when they reached the fenced garden. Many years ago, not long after
Melissa was born, Eden had found some garden plans tucked inside a book. They
were just crude sketches, but the paper was so old it had intrigued her. The
book holding the papers was from the 1930s, but the drawings looked much older.

Mrs.
Farrington had smiled when Eden showed them to her and said that her father had
searched for those drawings for years. They were the original garden plans,
drawn by Josiah Alester Farrington in 1720 when the house was built. Her father
said the garden had stayed intact until the 1840s, when his grandfather had
torn them up and put in what were called 'carpet beds,' designs created with
annuals. 'The colorful gardens had been all the rage then but were extremely
labor intensive. During the First World War, most of the grounds had been
plowed up and put to cotton. After the war, paths were mowed through the weeds,
and sometimes an industrious wife would put in a patch of vegetables and
flowers, but with the decline in the family fortune, the gardens were mostly
left on their own.

By the
time Eden arrived, the gardens were a shadow of what they once were. After
Melissa was born and Eden found the original eighteenth-century plan, it was
Mrs. Farrington who suggested that she restore the gardens. Eden was young and
restless, and Melissa was a good baby, so Eden had put her unused brain to
studying the principles behind eighteenth-century gardening. After she'd nearly
memorized the contents of the three books Mrs. Farrington owned, the woman had
called the owner of the little bookstore in Arundel and told her to order
'whatever Williamsburg had.' When eleven brand-new books had arrived and Mrs.
Farrington had told Eden they were a gift for her, Eden had sat down and cried
— which had embarrassed Mrs. Farrington so much that she'd left the room.

The
books had been the start of what became a passion with Eden. She read,
sketched, ate, and drank eighteenth-century gardening until the day she and
Melissa left Arundel.

Mrs.
Farrington hired Toddy. He had worked for her family during the war when he was
a boy, to help put the garden in, and when Eden saw him, ancient beyond belief,
skin the color of a black walnut husk, she asked Mrs. Farrington if it had been
the Civil War when he'd worked for them. But Toddy surprised her. He may have
been old, but his brain was sharp, and he approved of what she was doing. Together,
the two of them laid out the first of Josiah Alester Farrington's gardens.

It was
fifty feet square, divided into four quarters by wide brick sidewalks. In the
center was a circle containing a tall carriage lamp surrounded by a barrel full
of jasmine that ran up the lamppost. Rosemary was planted at the base of the
barrel, with dianthus around the edges. The four quarters of the garden were
encased internally by a low boxwood hedge and externally by a three-rail cedar
fence. Eden well remembered how the garden had once looked, but now it was
mostly empty. A few shrubs were beginning to sprout in the early spring air,
but for the most part it was a huge expanse of mulch.

'It
took me over a month to clean it up,' Brad said. 'It had been allowed to grow
into such a tangle that I had to chainsaw my way in.'

She
looked at him sharply and found that she rather liked the idea of him with a
chain saw and sweat dripping off his forehead. The image aroused feelings in
her that she hadn't felt in a long time.

Brad
was watching her. 'Fill it,' he said succinctly, and when she said nothing, he
continued. 'You asked what I'd do, and I'd fill this  garden 
with  tall  plants  in   the  center  and
work outward. For those two sunny squares, I'd put buddleia there in the middle
to draw butterflies, then I'd flank it with caryopteris, sedum, monarda, and
coreopsis.'

Eden's
smile grew broader as he spoke. She hadn't heard those words in years, not
since she'd gone to New York and lived amid concrete and steel. 'You do like
butterflies, don't you? What about fennel?'

He
smiled broader, and it was a smile shared by gardeners. 'Ah, yes, the
swallowtails. I can't forget them. But we'd have to put the fennel in pots. Too
invasive.'

'Or a
bottomless pot buried deep.'

'Perfect.
Now, that corner is under the pecan tree, so it's fairly shady.'

'Astilbe
and pulmonaria,' she said. 'Not hostas, too big.'

'Exactly.
Of course you could go wild with some native orchids.'

'Orchids,'
Eden said, her breath drawn in. 'But no monkshood. Grandchild coming.'

'Yes,'
he said. 'Nothing in the deadly nightshade family. Maybe my grandson could
visit.'

'You
have a grandchild too?'

'Oh,
yes, my daughter Camden's son. His name is — '

Eden
put up her hand. 'Let me guess. Granville Braddon Something.'

'Nope,'
he said, smiling. 'It's Farrington Granville Robicheaux. Robicheaux being the
name of the man my daughter married.'

'Farrington,'  
Eden   said,   smiling.   'Only   in
Arundel could that be a child's first name. I'm glad he was a boy.' She stopped
teasing. 'Mrs. Farrington would be pleased. Maybe her name can be kept alive
after all.' They smiled at each other and she pointed to the fourth quarter.
'Not that you know anything about gardening, but what would you put there? And
I warn you that if you don't like dicentra, it's all over between us.'

'Bleeding
heart,' Brad said. 'My absolute favorite. Speaking of which, Friday is the
annual Shrimp Festival. Would you go with me?'

'On a
date?'

'Yes.
I'll pick you up in my '57 Chevy, take you to the festival, then later we can
go to the local make-out hill.' He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

'It
sounds wonderful. I'll be ready. If only I had a poodle skirt to wear.'

'I
think poodle skirts were well before your time.'

'One
can only dream.' Her head came up. 'Where do you live?'

'Guess,'
he said, then they both laughed. The Granville house, of course. It was a big
old monster of a house on the corner of Granville and Prince streets. Built in
the eighteenth century, it had once been a small, elegant house, but it had
burned down in the 1850s. The Granville who owned the land at that time had
bought the four lots surrounding him, torn down the houses, and built a huge
Queen Anne-style Victorian, complete with porches and a gazebo. There was a
wisteria vine on  a  pergola  in  the front that was said
to be the oldest wisteria in the state. Oldest or not, the trunk was as big as
a tree.

'I want
a tour,' Eden said. 'From basement to attic, I want to see every inch of that
house.'

His
eyes were twinkling as he lifted her hand and kissed it. 'A woman who owns an
eighteenth-century house would never settle for a Victorian, would she?'

She
wasn't sure what he meant, but she knew she didn't like it. Too much, too fast!
She pulled her hand from his grasp, and just as she was about to speak, a
movement made her glance up at a second-story window. She saw McBride watching
her. She looked back at Brad. 'Do you have a garden?'

'Of
sorts,' he said, smiling modestly. 'A few Victorian things here and there that
go with the house. Not much.'

At that
she laughed. She knew he was lying, and she imagined that he had a garden that
had been in more than one magazine. She very much liked that he believed a
garden should match the house. 'Ever since I lived with Mrs. Farrington, my
gardening mind has been pure eighteenth century. If I'd had the opportunity, I
would have loved to study gardening.' She looked at him. 'I think that had my
life been different I would have done anything I could to get to work for the
Williamsburg foundation.'

His
eyes widened. 'What do you know about Queen Anne?'

'Very
sad woman. On the throne for a mere nine years, pregnant and drunk the entire
time.'

'Uh,
yes, well,' Brad said, blinking at her. 'Major in history, did we?'

Eden
laughed, a bit embarrassed. 'Not the Queen Anne you meant?'

'I
meant the new subdivision. They named it Queen Anne after the creek, which of
course was named after your drunken pregnant lady. They're building two hundred
houses on Route 32 by the water. Very high end. Preserving the wetlands, that
sort of thing.'

'I
haven't heard a word about it,' she said, trying hard not to glance up at the
window to see if McBride was still spying on them.

'It's
mainly a retirement community for rich people. There'll be boutiques and lots
of services, such as a hair salon and a spa. And there'll be a purchased doctor
or two.'

'A
what?'

'You
haven't heard of those? I don't know what they're actually called, but a family
pays a doctor a retainer, usually something like twenty grand a year, and for that
they get personal service, such as house calls and checkups. Mainly, they get a
doctor who remembers their name from one visit to the next.'

'For
twenty grand, I'd think so,' Eden said.

'The
point is that the houses in Queen Anne look as eighteenth century as we can
make them. And the gardens surrounding them won't just be a few nasty
evergreens along the driveway and the house foundations. They'll be structured
gardens. Rooms. You know what I mean. Pure Williamsburg. We think they'll
appeal to our clients.'   He   hesitated,  
looking   at   her   hard. 'Maybe you'd like to
help plan the gardens. Professionally, I mean.'

'Who is
'we'?'

Brad
gave her a sheepish grin. 'I'm one of the investors, but that's because I
believe in this. Our young people are leaving Arundel because there are so few
jobs here. These new houses will create a lot of jobs and will run a lot of
money through the town. Did you know that six months ago one of our only two
grocery stores closed? If we don't do something soon, Arundel could turn into a
ghost town.'

She
could see the passion in his eyes. She'd had no idea that Arundel was in
trouble. To her, the place had always been paradise. It was true that the
mosquitoes and chiggers were enough to drive a person mad, but a little clear
fingernail polish over the spots stopped the itching. To Eden's mind, the warm
weather and rampant growth of the plants more than made up for whatever
problems the bugs caused. And made up for the snakes that found their way into
everything. And for the muskrats in the ditches. And for the raccoons that ate
anything you put in a decorative pond.

'Is
that look a yes or a no?'

'It's
an 'I don't know.' I never thought of designing gardens for a living. I didn't plan
this one. I just followed the original design.'

'Ha!'
Brad said. 'I know what you did and how you adjusted that plan to the modern
world, and I know the way you studied the books Mrs. Farrington bought you. I
even heard about the notebook of designs that you made. Most of all, I know how
you loved doing it. Mrs. Farrington told me how you and Toddy were out here day
after day, year after year.'

Eden
smiled at the memory. 'Toddy was so old he remembered the eighteenth century. I
just picked his brain.'