Jude Deveraux (2 page)

Jared
bit his tongue to keep quiet. Bill had been married to the same woman for
thirty-five years and liked to think that he knew all about women and marriage.
The truth was that his wife spent nearly half the year in another state living
with her never-married sister, who was rumored to be a real hellion. There was
a lot of laughing speculation as to what Bill's wife got up to when she was
with her sister.

'If
this woman hasn't been told yet that she's inherited this house, how do you
know that she won't sell it sight unseen? What makes you so sure she'll move
away from the city lights to go to the wilds of rural North Carolina?'

He
looked at Jared. 'The truth is that we think this woman knows something and it
has to do with that house. If she sells the house right away, then our theory
is shot, but if she quits her job, runs out on her pregnant daughter, and jumps
on the first plane to Arundel, it's possible that she's in a hurry because she
knows something.'

Jared
took the box off Bill's desk. 'So when do I leave?'

Grinning,
Bill opened his desk drawer and withdrew a set of keys. 'A three-quarter-ton,
four-wheel drive, dark blue Chevy pickup awaits you in parking space number
eighty-one. It's full of fishing gear and whatever Susie in accounting
ordered   for  you   from  the  L. L. 
Bean catalog. There's a marked map on the passenger seat and a key to the house
on the ring. It's late, so you can stop in a motel tonight and read every word
about Ms. Palmer before you meet her.'

Jared
hated that Bill knew him so well that he'd arranged all this before he'd been
consulted. 'What's my name to be this time?'

'We
were kind to you and let you keep your first name. I hear you complained that
you didn't like the last name we gave you. What was it again?'

'Elroy
Coldheart,' Jared said with a grimace. Kathy in the records department had let
him know that she was interested if he was, but he wasn't. The next time he saw
her, she'd handed him his new passport with a smile. It wasn't until later that
he saw the name.

'This
time you're named Jared McBride. Whatever did you do to Kathy to make her come
up with the name of McBride?' Bill was chuckling, but he was also curious. He
wanted to know everything that went on in his department.

Jared
didn't answer. Lugging the big file box, he left the room smiling. He wasn't
going to tell Bill anything. His only thought was to get this assignment over
and done with as quickly as possible.

'Mom?
Mom? Are you all right?' Melissa looked at her mother with concern. She'd
brought in the mail and put it on the hall table, then went to get herself
something to eat. She was five months pregnant, and she could eat the legs off
a table. Her mother had come in from work and picked up the mail, opening a
letter from what looked to be a law firm. Melissa hoped it was nothing bad.
'Mom?' Her words were muffled by the peanut butter sandwich in her mouth. She'd
been tempted to add grape jelly but was afraid her husband would smell the
jelly on her breath. Stuart was adamant that she didn't gain too much weight
during pregnancy, so at dinner Melissa ate steamed vegetables and broiled meat.
It was just during the day, while he was at work

at the
prestigious accounting firm, that she indulged in chocolate and shrimp —
together.

'Mom!'
Melissa said loudly. 'What in the world is wrong with you?'

Eden sat
down on the little sofa by the hall table. The sofa had been a rickety piece of
junk when she'd seen it in a small, out-of-the-way shop in a district that
Melissa's husband didn't want them to visit. Eden had known right away it was
Hepplewhite. She and Melissa had tied the sofa onto the roof of the station
wagon and taken it home. It had taken Eden six weekends to repair, refinish,
and upholster it.  ‘Aren’t you clever?' Stuart had said in his haughty
way, as though Eden were of a lower class than he was. She'd had to grit her
teeth, as she always did when she dealt with her son-in-law. Melissa loved him,
but Eden had never been able to figure out why.

'Mrs.
Farrington left me her house.'

'Mrs.
Farrington?' Melissa asked, looking at the clock. She had seventeen and a half
minutes before Stuart came home. Was that enough time to make herself another
sandwich?

'Go
on,' Eden said, knowing her daughter's mind. 'I'll cover for you.'

'I
shouldn't. Really, I shouldn't. Dinner will be soon and — '

'It's
grilled chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, roast potatoes, and sugarless Jell-O
for dessert. Very good for you. Not a calorie in any of it.'

Melissa
opened her mouth, then scurried off to the kitchen, her mother behind her. She
was slathering peanut butter on bread when Eden walked into the room, the
letter open before her. 'Who's Mrs. Farrington?'

'You
remember her, don't you, dear? We lived with her until you were five.'

'Oh,
yeah. I do remember her. Sort of. Very old. And a long time ago you mentioned a
man. Was he her son?'

Eden
didn't bother to suppress the shiver that ran over her body. 'Yes, her son.
Dreadful man. It seems that he died some time ago. Before Mrs. Farrington did.'

'You
didn't keep in touch with her?' Melissa was pouring chocolate syrup into her
milk. It was a good thing that Stuart never opened the refrigerator or he'd see
the forbidden things that Eden bought for her daughter. No, Stuart was the type
who believed food should be eaten at a table and served to him by someone else,
preferably his wife. He didn't go rummaging in the refrigerator looking for
something to eat.

'No,'
Eden said tightly. 'After we left I had nothing to do with her. Not that she .
. . ' She broke off. What happened was not something she wanted to have to
explain to her daughter. I didn't want that pedophile of a son of hers to know
where I was, she could have said, but didn't. 'No, we didn't keep in touch.'

Many
times over the years she'd wondered what had happened to dear Mrs. Farrington, and
Eden often felt a wave of guilt run through her when she thought about that
sweet woman being left alone with her evil son. But then Eden would look at her
daughter and know that she'd done the right thing in running away and never
looking back. She glanced at the clock. 'You now have approximately two and
three-quarter minutes before the master returns, so you'd better drink that and
clean out your glass.'

'Mother,'
Melissa said primly, 'Stuart isn't like that. He's a kind and loving man and I
love him . . . ery uch.' The last words were muffled, as her mouth was full.

'Yes,
he's wonderful,' Eden said, then cut herself off when she heard the sarcasm in
her voice. It was tough to think how she'd tried to raise her daughter to be an
independent woman, only to see her marry a control freak like Stuart. To Eden's
mind, Stuart was all show. For all his talk of having a great future before
him, he'd willingly moved into Eden's apartment 'for a few weeks,' as he'd said
just before the wedding. 'Until I get a place for us. A little farther uptown.'
Stuart had made Eden's generous offer seem as though it were worth nothing, and
she'd had to resist the urge to defend herself. But that was two years ago, and
now nothing Stuart said bothered her. He and Melissa were still in Eden's small
apartment, still letting her cook for them and letting her take care of most of
the household chores. Months ago, Eden had decided she'd had enough and was
going to evict them. She'd built up her courage to the point where she didn't care
if they had to live on the street for a while. It might do them some good.
Teach them some lessons. But then Melissa had announced she was pregnant and
that was that. Eden could still remember the smirk on Stuart's face when
Melissa made the announcement. It was as though he'd known what Eden had been
thinking and he'd calculated the pregnancy just so Eden couldn't throw them
out. 'You don't mind, do you, Mom?' Melissa had said. 'It was an accident. We
meant to have children, but we wanted to wait until we had a place of our own.
But with Stuart on the verge of a promotion, it doesn't make sense to buy
something small and dreary when in just a few weeks we'll be able to afford
something grand and glorious.'

Since
her daughter had married, Eden often wondered if Melissa had become a
marionette. 'Small and dreary' and 'grand and glorious' were Stuart's words,
not Melissa's.

Eden
took a seat on a bar stool at the kitchen island and read the letter again.
'Mrs. Farrington had no other heirs, so she left me everything.' 'How nice for
you,' Melissa said. 'Any money?' Eden kept her head down, but she felt the
blood rush up the back of her neck. Anger did that to a person. There was fear
in Melissa's voice, and Eden well knew what caused it: Stuart. For all that Melissa
told Eden at least three times a day how much she loved her husband, the truth
was that after two years of marriage she'd come to know him well. If he found
out that Eden had inherited a lot of money, there would be problems.

'No
money,' Eden said cheerfully and tried not to hear her daughter's sigh of
relief. 'Just a falling-down old house. You remember it, don't you?'

'A
Victorian monstrosity, wasn't it?' Eden started to correct her daughter and say
that the house had been built before George Washington's Mount Vernon, but she
didn't want Melissa to tell Stuart that. He might see money in a house that
old. Melissa hadn't yet learned that she didn't have to tell her husband
everything that went through her mind. 'More or less,' Eden said, still looking
at the letter. She was to go to a lawyer's office in North Carolina as soon as
possible to sign the papers and take possession of the house. They're probably
worried that the roof's about to cave in, she thought, but said nothing as she
folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.

'What
will you do with an old house like that?' Melissa asked, her eyes wide.

Eden
knew that her daughter was afraid for her mother to leave. They'd rarely been
apart since Melissa's birth twenty-seven years ago. 'Sell it,' Eden said
quickly. 'And use the money to buy my grandson a house in the country. With a
copper beech tree in the backyard.'

Smiling,
Melissa relaxed, then hurriedly drank the rest of her chocolate milk when she
heard the front door start to open. She washed the glass in seconds, so she was
ready to turn and greet her husband when he walked into the kitchen. Stuart was
tall, thin, and handsome. Melissa's eyes lit up when she saw him.

Eden
gave her son-in-law a nod, then slipped out of the kitchen to go to her bedroom
and close the door. For a moment she leaned against the door, closed her eyes,
and remembered back to that summer when she'd been pregnant with Melissa. Eden
had been just seventeen years old, just out of high school, when she'd been
walking home from church choir practice one night. She'd been leaped on by a
man, thrown down, and . . . She'd never been able to remember much of what
happened after that. When it was over, she dragged herself up, pulled her skirt
down, and staggered home. She'd wanted to call the police, but her parents had
refused. They didn't want their family to be the object of gossip; they didn't
want people to know what Eden had done. 'But
I
didn't do anything,'
she'd cried. A few weeks later, when she'd started throwing up from morning
sickness, her parents told her to get out of their house. Nothing Eden said
could sway them. She'd packed one suitcase, taken the $300 her parents had
grudgingly given her, and got on a bus going east. She ended up in North
Carolina, a state she'd never been in, but it was beautiful and she loved the
old houses and the flat fields.

She'd
tried to get a job, but there wasn't much work to be had, and no work for a
girl who was by then obviously pregnant. When she'd applied at the newspaper
office in Arundel, a man had taken pity on her. He was looking at the job
application she'd filled out. 'You didn't misspell one word,' he said, teasing
her. Eden was hot, tired, hungry, and wishing she'd never been born. All she
could do was look at him. Was he going to grade her application?

He
looked her up and down for a moment, then said, 'Let me guess about you. It's
something I'm good at. Decent family, church every Sunday, good grades in
school, wrestled with the high school football quarterback on the backseat of a
car, and now the two of you've run away together. Or did he leave you somewhere
along the way?'

Eden
was too tired to play games. He'd probably eaten more for lunch than she'd had
in the last two days. 'Religious fanatic parents who spent my childhood telling
me I was a sinner, Top of the top grades in school, but then if I went below an
A plus I got the belt, buckle first. No quarterback, just a rapist on a dark
night. When I came up pregnant, my parents threw me out. I now have fifteen
dollars to my name, no place to live, nothing to live on. I've been looking
hard at the local train tracks.'

The man
blinked at her a couple of times, then picked up his telephone and pushed a
memory button. 'Gracey? Henry here. I'm sending over a young woman. Feed her
and let her have that bed in the back, will you? She needs food and rest, then
I'm going to send her out to Alice's.' He paused, listening. 'Yeah, I know
Alice is a pain in the neck, but, trust me on this, this girl can handle her.
Compared to what she's been through, Alice will seem like a dream.'

Somehow,
Eden managed to get out of the chair and make it to the door without fainting.
Rage at the injustice of what had happened to her had kept her going, but now
that someone had shown her some kindness, she feared she might collapse. The
man didn't help her up or walk her to the door. Maybe he'd guessed that Eden's
pride would get her there on her own. It wasn't easy to be proud when you
hadn't had a bath in over a week, but she managed it.

Eden
was almost run over by a pickup as she made her way across the road to Gracey's
Restaurant. A tall, wiry woman, her gray hair in a bun at the back of her neck,
came out to put her arm around Eden. 'Honey, you're worse than Henry told me
you were.'

Three
hours later, after Eden had eaten more than Gracey had ever seen a person eat
at one sitting, Eden climbed into bed and didn't get out until the next
morning. It was Sunday when Gracey drove Eden out to meet Mrs. Alice Augusta
Farrington, who lived in an old house across a bridge, just outside downtown.

Eden
had always loved history, and she'd loved any movie that was set in a
historical context. That was good, since her parents didn't allow her to watch
any movie that had been made after 1959. Their opinion was that the 1960s were
the beginning of the end of Godliness in America. When Eden got out of Gracey's
car and looked up at the old house, she knew that she was looking at the
genuine article. This wasn't a house 'built in the Colonial style.' This was a
Colonial house. She'd never seen Colonial Williamsburg, but she thought this
house would fit in there.

'Ghastly
old place, isn't it?' Gracey said. 'I tell Alice that she ought to bulldoze it
and build herself a nice brick ranch style.'

Eden
looked at Gracey to see if she was kidding. The older woman's eyes were
twinkling. Eden smiled.

'Just
checking,' Gracey said, smiling back. 'We like old houses around here.'

Eden
looked up at the house. Seven bays across the front, a full porch on the ground
level. There were some truly big trees on each side of the house, and she
wondered if they'd been planted when the house was built.

Alice
Augusta Farrington was so small that she made Eden feel big — which wasn't
easy, since Eden was small herself. But Mrs. Farrington was about four-eleven
and couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds. 'What she lacks in size, she
makes up for in spirit,' Gracey had said onthe way out to the house, when she
told Edenabout the Farrington family. They'd built the house back in the early
1700s and had held on to it ever since. To Mrs. Farrington's mind, that made
her American royalty. 'DAR ha!' she'd say. 'Upstarts. Go through a couple of
books, find out their ancestors stowed away on a ship, and think they're worth
something. Now,
my
ancestors . . . ' Mrs. Farrington would then be off
and running with stories about her ancestors having been aristocracy in
England. 'And they would be aristocracy in America if that idiot George
Washington hadn't turned down being crowned king. I'd be a duchess now. What
was
wrong
with that man?!'