April of Enchantment (Sweetly Contemporary Collection) (11 page)

Inside, the house smelled of fresh paint and plaster. The scent of mice and mustiness that prevailed two months ago had been routed, as much the effect of the coming and going and of open windows as from the efforts of the exterminator that had been called in.

Laura set her tote down in the hallway against the wall, then strolled down its long length with her hands pushed into the pockets of her rust-colored chambray skirt. It was a little cooler in the house than outside, enough to make the long sleeves of her lilac-and-rust-plaid shirt feel good, but not enough for her to need the sweater pushed into her tote bag. As the sun went behind a cloud, it grew dimmer. That had been a problem these last few days as they had turned their attention to the interior. She would be glad when light fixtures could be installed and they would no longer have to make do with drop lights supplied by the carpenters and painters. They would need the extra illumination when they came to the detail work.

She was proud of this hallway. According to the diary, the walls had been covered with a scenic paper when the house was built, like a continuing mural. A classic design, it had depicted a panoramic scene from Homer’s Odyssey done in shades of blue, green, and gold, with touches of rose. At some time over the years, it had been painted over, perhaps in the late Victorian period when the seminude figures might have seemed offensive. On top of that had been the spray paint liberally applied by the teenagers who had gotten into the house. The paint analysis had shown, however, that the over-painting was a homemade, organic compound. With a little experimentation, it had been discovered that it was fairly easy to wipe away. With it had come the spray paint, which had not been able to penetrate to the paper itself. Underneath, the classic scenes, protected all these years, had been found to be nearly perfect. The panels, with their soft, time-muted colors, gave added life and dimension to the house.

Smiling a little with satisfaction, Laura retraced her footsteps and slowly mounted the stairs. On impulse, she turned into the bedroom where she had been standing that first day, when Justin had found her in the house. The great cheval glass had been pushed out of the way against one wall. It and an enormous armoire were the only pieces that remained in the house, no doubt because of their size. The armoire was ten feet tall, a plain piece easily as heavy as a piano, with no special features. The mirror, including its pediment, was nearly twelve feet, much too tall for modem buildings, too tall to be easily maneuvered down the curving staircase. How either piece had been brought to the second floor, Laura could not imagine, unless they had been lifted by block and tackle to the upper gallery. The only reason they were still in the house was probably because it was too much trouble to remove them the same way. And a good thing, too.

A twelve-foot mirror, Laura mused, standing before it. It did not seem out of place in this upper room, where the ceilings were so tall, but it did seem a little excessive for full-length viewing of people who in the early nineteenth century had averaged, for women, under five feet, and for men, less than five-seven or -eight. Such practical considerations had not been important then, though certainly they had realized that such mirrors were not small. The name “cheval” itself, the French word for horse, had been given to such looking glasses because they were fully tall enough to reflect a man on horseback.

At the sound of tires crunching on the drive outside, Laura glanced up. The new layer of white gravel that had been put on its surface to protect it from so much coming and going had also turned it into a more effective warning system. She moved to the windows. The car sweeping up before the house belonged to Justin. She watched as he got out, the sun’s rays slanting low through the trees glinting on the dark waves of his hair. He was alone, which in her present mood was a relief. Turning, she went to meet him.

She was halfway down the stairs when he came through the front door. She paused, uncertain as to how to greet him. She had seen him only once, and then from a distance, since he had left Crapemyrtle that day with Myra.

As if just becoming aware of her presence, he looked up. A stillness came over him. All expression left his features. It could not have been surprise that held him, for surely he must have recognized her blue compact on the drive. His dark eyes met hers with something like pain in their depths, or so she thought, though she could not be certain. A cloud bank moved before the sun once more, casting the hall in shadow.

“Laura,” he said, closing the door behind him, coming toward her, “I should have known I would find you here.”

“I wanted to take a look at your latest acquisitions,” she told him, keeping her voice light with an effort.

He glanced around at the emptiness of the hallway and the rooms that lined it. “So you got into your car and drove out here — alone. I thought we agreed some time ago that wasn’t the smartest thing to do.”

She lowered her lashes, descending the stairs until she stood on the step just above him, the top of her head almost level to his. “My mother had company, an old friend from her schooldays.”

“What about Russ? I’m sure he would have been glad to act as escort.”

“He’s out of town for the weekend.” She gave a slight shrug.

“The least you could have done,” he said with measured emphasis, “was lock the door.”

She pushed her hands into her pockets, squaring her shoulders as she met his dark gaze. “You aren’t my keeper. I don’t know why you are so concerned anyway; the house is not exactly deserted anymore. Besides, when you are married, you will have to leave Myra here alone when you go into Baton Rouge.”

“That’s different,” he said with a quick, impatient gesture. “Everybody in town will know the house is occupied then. Anybody driving up won’t be expecting to find it empty.”

“Well, it isn’t empty now, as anybody can see,” she said, irritation rising into her eyes as she waved in the direction of the cars on the drive. “And I’m not alone. You are here.”

He gave a grim nod. “Yes, and I intend to stay until you leave.”

“Which you would like me to do immediately? Well, I won’t, not until I get good and ready!”

His face was stiff, the muscles corded. He stared at her from inches away, his eyes on a level with her own. Abruptly, a corner of his mouth twitched. “So there?” he said softly.

She tried to keep her countenance and failed. A violet gleam lit her eyes. “Yes,” she said frankly, “so there!”

He stood where he was a moment longer, his gaze dropping to the gentle curves of her lips, then with a deep-drawn breath, he turned away.

“As long as you’re here, you may as well tell me about this hall. I saw one of the painting contractors yesterday and he told he how well it had turned out.”

Nothing could have pleased her more. With alacrity, she joined him in a tour of inspection, pointing out the fine workmanship of the hand-blocked paper, showing him also the two small areas of damage, both of which could be concealed by the judicious use of hall furniture; tables, chairs, or settees.

From the hallway they passed into the library, where the items discovered by Mrs. Nichols had been placed. Though none of them were major articles of furniture, it was a fascinating collection, taken together.

There was a punkah, a great fan of rosewood with applied carving, shaped like a shield, which had hung over the dining room table. Operated by a servant pulling on a rope threaded through a system of pullies, it had swung slowly back and forth to stir the warm air and keep flies from settling on the food. Also from the dining room at Crapemyrtle, there was a warming oven. Standing less than three feet tall, made of cast iron with lion’s-claw feet, it had carrying handles on each side, a front door that opened to reveal three inside shelves, and a completely open back. It was designed to be set close to the flames of the fireplace so that the heat coming in through the back could warm chilled plates, or else keep food at serving temperature.

Near the door sat an armchair from the Napoleonic era that featured an Egyptian motif with solid gold scrollwork attached to the wood in several places, and carved figures like kneeling caryatids covered in gold leaf taking the place of the arm supports. There was a mantel clock and a matching pair of candelabra in ebony and ormolu, and a candle screen of Belin work on velvet enclosed in a filigree screen, used to protect a lady’s face from the heat of her candle while she worked in its light.

Against one wall was a large spice chest of Honduran mahogany with several drawers, each with its own individual lock. On top of it, resting upon layers of newspaper to protect the chest, were six elaborate brass cornice crowns that had originally been used over the window in the double parlors as headings for draperies. In boxes beside the chest, carefully packed in tissue paper, was the prize of the assembled collection, however. It was a matched pair of chandeliers, also for the double parlors, of French Baccarat crystal.

Justin and Laura moved about the room. He opened and closed the door of the warming oven to be certain it worked. The small stovelike piece of equipment rocked a little, out of balance on its metal legs, but that could be fixed. Laura ran her fingers over the scrolls of the chair, musing to herself that the metal appeared to be placed just right to catch the sitter beneath the knees, in the middle of the back, and between the shoulder blades.

“It doesn’t look very comfortable, does it?” Justin observed, echoing her own thoughts.

“Probably the reason it has survived all these years,” Laura agreed, “but it is pretty.”

Moving to the spice chest, Justin hefted one of the cornices that lay on top. “Heavy.”

“But elegant, you’ll have to admit, or they will be when they are polished.”

“I suppose somebody will have to keep polishing them for the next hundred years?”

“At least, maybe more,” Laura said, flashing him a quick smile, “though they have polishes these days that help retard tarnish.”

He grimaced, wiping his finger through the dust that had already collected on the pulls of the spice chest. “The people who lived in these houses needed an army of servants, didn’t they? Silver and brass to polish; wood fires to keep burning, and to put soot on the windowpanes, mirrors, and chandeliers that had to be washed off again every spring; unpaved roads and open windows in the spring and summer, and no central air to filter the pollen and dust —”

“Hot water to fetch and carry, slop jars and chamber pots to be emptied. There was plenty to be done, and the mistress of the house had to oversee it all. She also had to plan the meals and see they were brought to the table on time and with the proper observance; dole out supplies for all the families in the slave quarters every day; supervise the daily cleaning and laundry; attend the ills of everyone on the place, up to and including minor surgery and childbirth; give orders to the gardener; see that the chickens, ducks, geese, guinea chickens, and the master’s hound dogs were kept out of the flower beds; direct the making of clothes for the slaves, which were given out twice a year; oversee the making of jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves in the spring and summer, and the slaughtering of hogs by the hundreds with the grinding of sausage, salt-curing and smoking of pork in the fall and winter. And all this while entertaining guests most of the time, taking care of older relatives, and usually expecting a child or nursing one, or else worrying about it if a wet nurse was brought in.”

“Are you trying to say the good old days weren’t so good?” He leaned his shoulder against the wall, watching her.

“Oh, they were good, all right, but they were also hard. Just because a woman had servants, even slaves, to do her bidding didn’t mean that she lived a life of idleness, playing on the pianoforte or doing embroidery. It was mostly the young girls of marriageable age who had time for that, and then not for long, since they were usually married by the age of fifteen with a household of their own. For their mothers, the day was an endless round of small tasks. That spice chest is another example of the kind of thing they did.”

“What do you mean?” He glanced briefly at the many-drawered chest, then returned his gaze to her.

“It, like everything else in the house, was kept locked. Every door had a brass key. Tea was kept in special locked boxes or cabinets, as were knives, medicines, liquor, guns, books, tools — everything. The compartments of the spice chest contained coffee, chocolate, sometimes tea, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, and any one of a dozen others. All these things had to be imported from the Far East or the West Indies. Because of it, they were expensive and had to be used sparingly. The mistress of the house carried the keys on a chatelaine, a glorified key chain, at her waist, or she might have trusted them to her butler if she had one. Whenever something was needed, the mistress had to stop whatever she was doing and come. The appropriate box or drawer was unlocked, and it was parceled out.”

“Amazing,” he said with a shake of his head.

“What?”

“How much you know about all this, to be no older than you are.”

“It’s easy to learn what interests you.”

“It may be easy, but you still have to work at it,” he pointed out.

“It isn’t work if you enjoy what you are doing.”

“I wonder if the women who managed houses like this looked at it that way.” A smile gleamed in the darkness of his eyes.

It was not a serious question, but she chose to answer it that way. “Some did, and some didn’t, I expect, depending on how satisfied they were with their lives or how they felt about the men they married.”