The Trouble with Magic (Loveswept) (4 page)

“Clever idea, this,” he said, his gaze roving about, avoiding her inquisitive stare. “Did someone name it? Like the Bride’s Garden? My guess is the Wailing Hall.”

“That’s very good,” she said, laughing, turning to leave. “But, no. It’s just the hall to the nursery.”

She took him to a door on the walkway that opened onto a stairwell. She stepped in and proceeded to the top. The third floor had at one time been servants’ quarters and was now used for storage.

“Did you live here year round?”

“No. I grew up in Harford.”

“New Hampshire? Massachusetts? Maine?”

“New York,” she said, taking the servants’ stairs all the way to the kitchen on the main floor. “Between Binghamton and Ithaca. My father was an apple farmer.”

“Was an apple farmer?”

“Mm. He passed away a while back,” she said.

He wished he could see her face. There was nothing in her voice to indicate that her father’s passing had had any effect on her, but if he could have seen her face. ...

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, still without emotion. “The kitchen, as you can see, is completely modern. Oh. Did you want to see the attic?”

“Does it leak?”

“Certainly not.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I think we can skip it this time.”

“There’s a cellar too,” she said uneasily. “It has rock walls so it sometimes gets a little damp, usually during long periods of steady rain. But it doesn’t really leak.”

“Harriet. Harriet.” He shook his head. “You’re doing it all wrong,” he said, throwing his head back as if he couldn’t take the agony of it any longer. “You’re supposed to point out the flaws in the house and conceal the assets. You’re talking this place up like a commission-hungry realtor.”

“But ... there are no flaws. A couple of the doors need oiling, and that faucet upstairs needs a new washer but other—”

“You’d better make up a couple more then—a couple of
big
ones—if you don’t want me to snatch this place out from under you,” he said, hardly believing his own ears. “Could I bother you for a drink?”

Bewildered, she nodded. “Coffee, tea, juice? Something stronger?”

“Coffee, if it’s no trouble.”

In a strained silence she put coffee and water in the coffee maker and then, with her hands on the counter behind her, she turned back to him.

“Would you like to see the main floor while we’re waiting?” she asked, unsure of how to proceed after his outburst.

“No,” he said bluntly. “I’m sure the rest of the house is as fine as what I’ve seen so far. I don’t need to see any more.” The kitchen was a bright, warm, well-used room with tall stools lined up at the center work island.

Frowning, she watched Payton straddle one of the stools and lean his elbows on the counter.

“I’m not stupid, Mr. Dunsmore.” He looked at her. “If I’d brought you out here and tried to tell you the place was a shambles—when a blind man can see that it isn’t—you’d have called me a liar and a cheat and refused to help me.”

This was true, but he’d never intended to help her anyway.

She crossed from the sink to the island, her hands spread beseechingly.

“I’ve come to you in good faith, as open and honest as I can be, because I want you to see Jovette Island for what it really is—a home. My home. It isn’t just another piece of real estate, it’s my family’s history.” Her words were building up speed and momentum. “Lazare Jovette was a French trapper who traded with the Indians for this island. Gerard Jovette fought Americans to keep the island; and then, as fate would have it, by the time the boundary between Canada and the United States was decided upon, his grandson Jean had already fallen in love with and married a young American woman, and the island remained in Jovette hands. Adam Jovette fought tooth and nail to keep it when the Jovettes lost most of their money during the crash of ’29 and through the depression. My own parents weren’t wealthy people, they had to make sacrifices to keep this island and—” She went suddenly silent.

“And that leaves you,” he said, finishing for her.

“That leaves me.”

For a long moment he studied her, and when he couldn’t stand seeing the sadness and the hope and touching ray of faith in her eyes any longer, he stood and resettled himself at a window. He stared out at more lawn and the dense field of trees that covered the rest of the island.

He didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t a sentimental man, and she was nothing to him but a stranger who’d caused him a great deal of aggravation. But a minute part of him, hidden deep inside, was inhibiting his usual decisive business practices, in favor of a less harsh, less cruel beat-around-the-bush method that he normally scorned.

“Are there any ghosts?” he asked, not looking at her.

“Ghosts? Of course not. Why do you ask?”

“Family homes with a history and an active ghost or two are hard to come by these days,” he said, his voice dispassionate. “Antiquity is in these days. And ghosts attract tourists and thrill seekers like magnets. Though, even without the ghosts, there’s enough history in this place to turn a good profit. ... of course, we could always invent a couple of ghosts.”

He’d come to her island, but he hadn’t heard or seen anything except what he’d wanted to see and what he’d wanted to hear. A loud clanging noise sounded in Harriet’s head. Prison bars. Her fate was sealed.

“Would a legend help?” she asked, her voice rigid with anger, her heart as hard and heavy as stone as she set her plan into action.

“A
LEGEND?” HE ASKED, TURNING
to look at her. “What sort of legend?”

“Magic,” she said. She couldn’t trust the expression on her face not to betray her and busied herself pouring coffee for them both. “This island is magical.”

He laughed. It was a deep, warm sound she might have enjoyed if it didn’t hurt her so much.

He had to admire her. Harriet Wheaton was a woman of her word. She’d obviously seen that she hadn’t convinced him not to buy the island and instead of whining and crying and begging him to reconsider, she’d accepted her failure and given up gracefully, as she’d promised. Dealing a legend into the arrangement was above and beyond what was expected of her.

“Wonderful,” he said, chuckling as he took the seat across from her, where she’d placed his cup of coffee. “Magic beats a ghost hands down every time.”

“It gets better,” she said, guarding her features closely. “The magic involves love and living happily ever after.” She paused. “I suppose that’s why there are no ghosts,” she added.

“This is great. A honeymooners’ island!” He became solemn. “Look,” he said, trying his best to be gentle—an uncommon endeavor. “I ... I can imagine how tough this is on you and I ... it’s business. It’s nothing personal. I ... thought I was going to enjoy this part—taking your island—after all the trouble you’ve caused me. But ... well, I’m not, Harriet.”

He could have fooled her.

“Maybe not just honeymooners, Mr. Dunsmore,” she said, ignoring his feeble excuses or apology or whatever it had been. He was extremely handsome and something very male called to the woman in her. But plainly, there wasn’t a drop of human kindness or compassion in him. “You could turn it into a ... a lonely hearts island. You know, where strangers come and meet and fall in love, and then live happily ever after.”

He gave her a small smile and nodded, watching her expectantly, waiting to hear the legend. He couldn’t ask her to tell him. He could hardly think, let alone speak. Something was terribly wrong. He felt no triumph, no satisfaction, no pleasure. If anything, he was feeling something that he suspected came very close to guilt. Guilt! And he’d done nothing wrong.

The facts were simple. It took money to maintain an island. She had no money. Someone was going to take the island from her eventually. It might as well be him. It made perfect sense, so what was the problem?

Was he supposed to give this strange woman the money she needed? Loan it to her, knowing she’d never be able to repay him? Walk away from an excellent investment only to have someone else snap it up behind him? Where was all this stuff coming from? he questioned, shaking his head.

“You don’t believe in happily ever after?” she asked, watching his head move back and forth. He gave her a blank stare. “I sometimes wonder about it myself, but it’s in the legend and I’ve seen proof of it.”

“Of happily ever after?”

She nodded. “You remember I told you about Lazare Jovette, the French trapper who came to the island first? Well, one winter—a particularly fierce winter—he came across a young Indian girl, ill and half-frozen, right here on this very island.” She paused briefly to speculate on the extent of Payton’s knowledge of history. “You see, when the Europeans came to this country and Canada, they brought with them diseases that were unknown to the Indians. Whole communities were wiped out by smallpox, and even illnesses as simple as the flu took many of them because they had no tolerance built up against the white man’s diseases.”

“The Indian girl had smallpox,” he deduced.

“No. I never heard exactly what she had, but when she became ill her people cast her out, thinking it was something terrible and wanting to save the rest of the tribe. Lazare found her, took her in, and spent the winter nursing her back to health.” She took a sip of her coffee. “In the spring, her people returned. They were shocked to see that she’d survived the illness as well as the winter, and they welcomed her back. But Lazare had fallen in love with her and didn’t want her to leave.”

“So, he went to the chief and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse,” Payton injected.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“TV.”

There was a twinge of resentment at his lowering Lazare’s story to a TV western.

“Actually, the chief was no problem,” she said. “But the girl’s father loved her very much and was too happy to have her back to let her go again. He wanted her to marry a young brave and stay with the tribe. And when the girl pleaded with him and proclaimed her deep feelings for Lazare, the father still thought to discourage the union by asking an enormous price for her.”

“And being a poor trapper, Jovette couldn’t pay the price. So he and the girl ran off together,” Payton inserted.

“Jovettes don’t deal that way, Mr. Dunsmore,” she informed him haughtily. “Lazare was willing to pay the price, but he didn’t want the Indians to lose respect for him by making such a horrible trade. So, he told them that he’d give them a bearskin, twelve beaver hides, and seven fox pelts for the girl—and the island.”

“Where are these Indians now?” he asked, grinning. “I’ve got a couple of bridges I could trade to them, cheap.”

“I believe they’ve already made that deal,” she said, making no attempt to hide her disapproval of his attitude.

He had the grace to sober and look sheepish. “So Jovette and the Indian girl lived happily ever after and, so the legend.”

“No. That was just the beginning,” she said. “They did live as happily ever after as anyone could expect to, but it didn’t end there. Many years later, their son towed a drifting dory to the shores of this island and found a young Irish girl inside. She was indentured to some beastly man and was attempting an escape. She’d been on the river for several days and was weak with hunger and exhaustion, but it was love at first sight between her and Lazare’s son. I think his name was Leon or maybe Antoine, I always get the two mixed up.”

“So, the two of them got married and lived happily ever after and, thus the legend,” Payton said, as if it were inevitable.

“Well, yes they did, but two Jovettes falling in love on the island is only a coincidence,” she said. “But when it was still happening a hundred years later ... during the French and Indian War? ... A young English lieutenant—a bitter enemy of the French—happened upon the island and fell in love with the daughter of the house. Marie, I think. And then a few years later an American settler with two daughters, going up river in search of farming land, sought safety on the island during a summer squall, and Marie’s brothers each took a wife before the settler moved on. ... Well,
then
falling in love on Jovette Island became a bit of a legend.”

“Did any Jovette ever not fall in love on the island?”

“Oh, sure. Many of them. After all, this is sort of an out-of-the-way place. It’s not like there’s a regular stream of traffic out here. But we’ve documented that at least one Jovette every generation meets, falls in love, and marries someone on the island.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head.

“Your parents met here?”

“My uncle and my father were school chums, and one summer, my uncle invited my father to spend a week here. He met my mother. They fell in love. And a few years later they married.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head again.

“What an incredible set of coincidences,” he said, marveling.

“Coincidence or magic?” she asked.

He stared at her openmouthed for an instant and then laughed.

“You don’t really believe it’s magic, do you?”

She gave him her Harriet shrug and a Harriet lift of her brows. “Why not?”

“Because not ten minutes ago you told me you weren’t stupid.”

“That has nothing to do with believing in magic.” She stood to put her cup in the sink. “But the magic has everything to do with keeping the island in the Jovette family.”

“And why is that?” he asked, a disbelieving smirk on his lips.

“Because the magic works only for the Jovettes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, that the Jovettes who have fallen in love here have had good marriages and lived fairly happily ever after. Whereas the Jovettes who haven’t fallen in love here have generally had bad marriages that ended in divorce. And it means that, as far as we know, no one outside the family has ever met someone on the island and fallen in love with them. It means the magic works only for the Jovettes.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, and then as it occurred to him, added, “This isn’t another one of your tricks to keep me from buying the island, is it?”

“No, Mr. Dunsmore,” she said, resigned to the fact that she was going to have to convert him the hard way. “It’s another attempt at making you see that the island should remain in the Jovette family.”