Lavender Morning (23 page)

A minute later, David had caught a ride with a fellow golfer, and they were on their way back to the

clubhouse. Luke didn’t say anything until they were at a table in the corner and his grandfather had ordered them

a pot of tea, a plate of sandwiches, and a couple of Jack Daniel’s.

“All right,” David said, “so tell me what you
really
drove all the way here to ask me about.”

“There seem to be some big differences from what people believe to be true about Miss Edi and what is

real.”

“Are you talking about the lack of money or the fact that she and I broke off our engagement before we

both left for World War II?”

Luke looked at his grandfather with an open mouth. “Broke off your engagement?” he whispered.

“Why are young people so surprised to hear that people in the past also had secrets? Did you forget that I

was the town doctor? Back in the sixties there was an outbreak of gonorrhea in town, and I knew who gave it to

whom. I never said a word. And there was—”

“What was Miss Edi
really
like?” Luke asked, cutting his grandfather off. He didn’t want to know more

about people’s private lives than he already did.

“Perfect,” David said. “Never a hair out of place. Never a word spoken that she’d regret. She was strong,

forceful, and knew what she wanted.”

“You don’t sound as though you liked her very much.”

“I adored her. When we were toddlers Alex McDowell kept taking my toys—until Edi bashed him on the

head with a wooden block, and he never bothered me again. She was a lady all her life. You do know, don’t

you, that she dedicated her life to helping burn victims?”

“I heard something about it.”

“It was more than you can imagine. She hooked up with Dr. Nigel Brenner, and they traveled the world

together. Edi handled everything. Twice she got them out of countries that had overnight become war zones.

Both times, Nigel’s nurses were hysterical, but Edi never lost her courage or her wit, and she got them to safety.”

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

87/176

3/16/2010

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

“But you married Nana Mary Alice,” Luke said.

David smiled. “Feisty, funny, sexy Mary Alice Welsch. Until Edi left the country, I hadn’t even noticed her.

When I came back from the war with a wound in my shoulder that threatened to make me lose my arm, there

she was. You know what her best medicine was?”

“If you tell me sex, I’m leaving,” Luke said.

“Laughter. She made me laugh, especially at myself.”

“To this day, the old-timers think—”

“That Mary Alice bewitched me and that she was little better than a harlot for seducing me away from Edi?

She loves that. I wanted to tell people the truth, but Mary Alice said she liked being thought of as a man stealer.

She said it made her seem sexy, like a movie star.”

Luke had to laugh because that sounded just like something his grandmother would say. She was a cookie

baker; she was always ready to help anyone who needed it, and she was as far from being a “man stealer” as

could be. Yes, he could see his grandmother liking being thought of as a sexpot.

“Are you going to tell me what Edi’s past has to do with you, or am I going to have to order more of these

little sandwiches?” David asked.

“It’s this girl…” Luke looked down at his drink. He’d hardly touched it.

“You like her, don’t you?” David asked, his voice changing from teasing to serious.

“Yeah, I do. She went to a nothing college just so she could be near Miss Edi. Tess showed me some

background on Joce, and with her grades she could have gone anywhere, but she didn’t.”

“At the end of her life, Edi had no one,” David said softly. “Her brother was dead, but they’d never been

close to begin with, so there was no one.”

“Why did she live in Boca Raton? Why didn’t she return to Edilean?”

“I’m not sure, but my guess would be that people here knew too much about her. She came back often and

did a lot for the town—as I’m sure you know. But she preferred to live in Florida.”

Luke looked at his grandfather. “What happened in 1941?”

David leaned back in his chair and his face closed as though a door had been shut. “There are some things

that don’t need to be talked about, and I don’t care how many times you ask me, I’m not going to tell that

story.”

“But I think it has something to do with today. Miss Edi lied to Jocelyn, or rather concealed a lot from her.

It’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t matter to me, but it’s tearing Joce apart. As far as I can tell, Joce had a rotten

life. I don’t know much about it, but I think Miss Edi was the only good thing she had. But now the woman has

played a bad joke on her by leaving her that old house and no money for its upkeep. Miss Edi could have used

some of Alex McDowell’s trust money to create an endowment for an historic house, but she didn’t. And if Miss

Edi worked hard to keep Joce from knowing about Edilean, why did she leave her the house? None of it makes

sense.”

David took his time answering. “The Edi I knew had a reason for everything she did, and I think she meant

for your Jocelyn to find out what that reason was.”

“Don’t start on me again. She’s not ‘my’ Jocelyn.”

David ignored his grandson’s angry tone. “Did you read Edi’s letters to Alex?”

“Letters?” Luke asked, sounding as though he’d never heard of such a thing.

“Yes, letters. Alex and Edi corresponded all during the war and afterward. Ramsey must have them.”

Luke thought about that for a moment. If there were letters between Edi and Alex, then Luke had no doubt

that Ramsey had read them—and kept them a secret. No wonder Rams was pursuing Jocelyn with so much

gusto. Picnic baskets, chocolate-covered strawberries, hassling Tess for advice…Suddenly, some things were

making sense. Luke’s mother used to visit Alex McDowell often. Had she read the letters? Had she colluded

with him in some plan to hook up Rams and Jocelyn?

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

88/176

3/16/2010

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

Luke looked at his grandfather. “What about you?”

David looked up at the waitress to signal for the check. “What about me what?”

“Letters,” Luke said. “Did you and Miss Edi write each other?”

“For a while,” David said, his voice barely audible.

Luke stared at his grandfather as he signed the check, and when he stood up to go, Luke stayed seated and

kept staring.

Reluctantly, David sat back down. “Okay, yes, we exchanged a few letters, but…”

Luke studied his grandfather’s face. “Nana Mary Alice doesn’t know about them, does she?”

“Oh, she knew all right, but she made me swear to burn them, and I did.”

Luke’s face fell. “You didn’t by chance burn some other letters, did you?”

“No. Your grandmother was forgiving of some things, but she got sick of being compared to Edi. She

stood right beside me as I threw every one of those letters into the flames.”

Luke looked at his plate, and for a moment David was silent.

“However…,” David said.

“However, what?”

“The truth is that those letters from Edi weren’t very interesting. She just recounted where she was and

what she was doing during the war. They were more perfunctory than enlightening. But the
stories
she sent to

Alex…Well, they were a whole different kettle of fish.”

“You mean the letters Ramsey has?”

“No, not those. I’m talking about the stories she wrote while she was recovering from her burns. She told

Alex the
truth
about what she did during the war and she wrote down the story about the man named David

who she fell in love with.”

“Do you have those stories?” Luke asked, his eyes alight.

“Yes and no.” David paused. “You know what Alex was like at the end. It was only by accident that I saw

the stories, and I think some of them may have been destroyed. I kept all that I could find.”

“Where are they?”

“In a safe-deposit box that my wife doesn’t know I have.”

“When can we get them?”

David looked at his grandson. “Meet me here tomorrow at ten A.M. and we’ll drive to Richmond.”

“You have to keep the safe-deposit box all the way in Richmond?”

“Be grateful I didn’t open it in Nevada. Meet me here, and we’ll drive there together.”

“I look forward to it,” Luke said.

“We won’t go fishing, but maybe we can ride in a vehicle together,” David said, and Luke knew he was

making an allusion to Granpa Joe. It had never occurred to Luke that Granpa Dave could be jealous.

“So maybe you can give me some advice on how to get a feisty girl to think of me as something besides her

best buddy,” Luke said.

Just then two pretty girls walked by and when they saw Luke they started to giggle and batt their lashes at

him.

“Now why do I think you’ll have no problem with that on your own? Come on, I’ll walk you to your

truck.”

“I brought the car.”

“If I’d known you wanted information from me
that
much I would have made you pay the check. So, tell

me, what’s your father up to these days?”

Luke gave a low laugh. “He’s solving a cupcake crisis.”

When Luke started to say more, David put up his hand. “Save it for tomorrow and tell me on the drive. I

may not sleep tonight from eager anticipation.”

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

89/176

may not

3/16/2010 sleep tonight from eager anticipation.”

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

“And you can tell me about your broken engagement from Miss Edi.”

They were in the parking lot now, and suddenly Luke looked at his grandfather with love. He knew from

experience how quickly people could leave this life.

“Don’t look at me like that. Go!” David ordered. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Luke said as he got into his car, but he put his hand on his grandfather’s shoulder and gave it a

squeeze.

11

I
F I NEVER see another cupcake in my life, it will be too soon,” Sara muttered as she turned the little cake

around in her hand and tried to make an icing rose on top of it.

“I would have thought you’d like this job,” Tess said. She was making a big daisy on her cupcake.

“You just like it because it’s better than working with lawyers,” Sara said. “I don’t like the mess. I don’t

like the smell, and I don’t even like the sugar.”

“You don’t have to stay,” Jocelyn said. She was at the huge, beautiful range that Jim, Luke’s father, had put

in for her four days ago. Already, it had been put through enough that it was a veteran.

“Go!” Jim said to Sara as he came in from the hallway, his arms full of grocery bags. “Go sew your fancy

clothes for ladies who eat too much.”

Sara handed her cupcake to Tess and practically ran out of the room.

Jim surveyed the many cupcakes on the table and countertops as though he were a government inspector.

“Do we pass?” Joce asked.

“They look good to me, but I think Luke should yea or nay them. He knows more about flowers than I

do.”

Tess put down her big pastry tube and shook her arms. Few people knew how much muscle it took to

squeeze the thick, heavy icing out of the big bags through tiny tubes to make the designs. “I’m going to write a

murder mystery and the killer is a woman who is a professional cake decorator. No one suspects her because

the murder took great strength to commit. Who would think that a lady who decorates cakes has the strength of

ten men in her forearms?”

Jim picked up a cupcake that looked like a ladybug. The body of it was red with black spots, with a black

face. Tess had added white eyes, a red nose, and a bright white smile. She’d also made a green turtle with

Tootsie Roll legs and head. But her pièce de résistance was a bright yellow, smiling chick with closed eyes and

happy little wings that made him look as though he was about to take off flying.

“You ought to go into business,” Jim said as he picked up a cupcake covered in pink and yellow flowers

with tiny white centers.

“No,” Tess said slowly, “I’m just good at bossing lazy men around.” She picked up an uniced cupcake and

looked at it. “What do you think? Shall I try a bumblebee?”

“I think that whatever you attempt, it’ll come out good,” Jim said as he glanced at Jocelyn, who was

straining a batch of spinach purée. They’d been working on the cupcakes for days now, and the biggest surprise

to them all was how good Tess was at decorating them.

D:/…/Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.…

90/176

3/16/2010

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

The first day, Jim had taken over. When he and Joce couldn’t find Luke in the garden, Jim drove them to

Luke’s house to borrow his pickup. Jocelyn was curious to see where Luke lived, but all she saw was the

outside. It wasn’t a large house, but it had a deep porch across the front, and it was beautiful. She didn’t know

what she’d expected, but it didn’t take an expert to see that the house had cost a lot. The windows were double

paned and deeply trimmed with hardwood. The roof looked to be slate. When she peeked around the side, she

could see what looked to be a fabulous garden in the back.

When she glanced at Jim, he was watching her. “I take it you haven’t been here before,” he said as he

pushed some numbers on a keypad and the garage door opened.

“No. Is the town saying I have been?”