Lavender Morning (5 page)

“I don’t know,” Joce said, smiling at his sense of humor. “This is all quite new to me. I’d never heard of

Edilean, Virginia, until I saw the will, so I’m still in a bit of shock.”

“Never heard of us? I’ll have you know we’re the biggest small town in Virginia. Or is that the smallest big

town? I never can remember what our mayor says we are. Ask me what you need to know and I’ll tell you

everything. Oh! Wait! I need to fasten a diaper. There, that’s done. Now, what can I tell you about us?”

“Diaper? You’re married?” Her shocked tone told too much, and when he hesitated before answering, she

grimaced.

“Nephew. I have a very fertile sister who pops them out like corn over a grill. She just stuck her tongue out

at me, but then the baby kicked. The one inside her, that is. And the one on her hip. Excuse me, Miss Minton,

but I have to take the phone to another room before my sister throws something at me.”

Joce was smiling as she waited, hearing footsteps, then a door close and, finally, quiet.

“There now, I’m in what passes for a library in my house and I’m all yours. Figuratively speaking that is.

Now tell me what I can do for you.”

“I don’t really know. I didn’t know Miss Edi owned a house, much less a town.”

“Actually, she had to give us our freedom in 1864, and—”

“Three,” Joce said before she thought, then wished she hadn’t. “Sorry, you were saying?”

“I see…186
3.
Emancipation Proclamation. Can you tell me the day?”

“January the first,” she said cautiously, not sure if this would get her labeled as a know-it-all or worse.

“January the first, 1863. Well, Miss Minton, I can see that you and I are going to get along quite well.”

There was a change in his voice as he went from teasing banter to more serious. “What can I tell you?”

“I don’t know where to begin. I want to know about the house, the town, about the people. Everything.”

“It would take much too much time to talk about all of this over the phone,” he said. “My suggestion is that

you come here to Edilean and we sit down and talk about everything in person. How about if we have dinner and

discuss this at length? Shall we say Saturday next at eight?”

She drew in her breath. That was just eight days away. “I don’t know if I can get there by then.”

“Shall I send a car?”

“I, uh, no, that won’t be necessary. I have a car. How do I keep the roof repaired?” she blurted.

“A practical woman,” Ramsey said. “I like that. I’m not at liberty to say the exact extent of what Miss Edi

left you, but I can assure you that you’ll be able to keep the roof in
great
repair.”

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She smiled at that. She didn’t relish the idea of having the responsibility of the care of a very old house and

no way to support it.

“Miss Minton, what is your hesitation? The beautiful town of Edilean is awaiting you, plus a magnificent old

house, and Colonial Williamsburg is right next door. What more could you want?”

She started to say “Time,” but didn’t. Suddenly, she had one of those moments that rarely happen in a

lifetime. In an instant, she knew what she was going to do: She was going to change her life. Since Miss Edi’s

death, Jocelyn hadn’t made a single change. She had the same job she no longer liked, the same routine, the

same dull, dark apartment. Her friends now looked at her with sadness because Joce was no longer part of a

couple. They were already talking about fixing her up with blind dates. The real difference in Jocelyn’s life was

that her best friend was gone. Now, if she went “home” it was to her father’s house, to motorcycles outside,

NASCAR on the TV inside, and the pitying looks of her stepmother. Poor Jocelyn, she had nothing and no one.

This was Friday, and if she quit her job tomorrow morning, then she’d have days to sort out all the things

she needed to do, like turn off the water, and—

“Could I wire you some money?” he asked, seeming to think her silence had to do with expenses. “No,

wait, that’s no good. You’d have to give me your bank account numbers and you shouldn’t do that. For all you

know I’m a…” He hesitated.

“A lawyer?”

“That’s right. Scum of the earth. We spend years in school learning how to rip people off. How about if I

overnight you a check?”

“I have enough to do what I need to,” she said. “It’s just that this is a big step.”

“If you know the date of the Emancipation Proclamation, then you love history. So how can you wait to see

a house that was built in the eighteenth century? No velvet ropes anywhere. You can explore all you want. Did

you know that the stables were recently rebuilt? And there’s a cellar that’s intact. And I believe the attic is full of

trunks of old clothes and diaries.”

“Mr. McDowell, I think you missed your calling. You should be traveling around the country on a covered

wagon and selling snake oil.”

“No, no snake oil. I sell Miss Edi’s Golden Elixir. It’s made from rainbows and flecked with gold dust from

the leprechauns’ pots. Guaranteed to cure anything that ails you. You have a boyfriend?”

“And what will the elixir do to him?” she asked, smiling.

“No,” he said, seriously, “do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not since he asked me to marry him and I ran away screaming.”

“Ah,” he said.

Joce wished she could take back her comment. “I mean, it wasn’t actually like that. He’s very nice and I’m

not adverse to marriage, but—”

“No explanation needed. My last girlfriend led me into a jewelry store and they had to take me away in an

ambulance.”

“A kindred soul.”

“Sounds like it. Now, what about dinner?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t make reservations yet,” she said cautiously. “In case I don’t make it out of here in

time.”

“Who said anything about reservations? I was thinking about wine and pasta served on a tablecloth on the

floor of your new eighteenth-century house. By candlelight. With strawberries dipped in warm chocolate for

dessert.”

“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “You are going to be a problem, aren’t you?”

“I hope so. I like a girl who knows her history. And I like this photo of you that Miss Edi sent me last year.

You still have this red bikini?”

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You stil

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Jocelyn couldn’t contain her laugh. “She passed that thing around to half the men at our church. When I had

my twenty-sixth birthday and still wasn’t married, I thought she was going to staple it to the trees and leave a

phone number.”

“When was this photo taken?” he asked, and there was a touch of fear in his voice. She could almost hear

the unasked question of, How many birthdays ago was that?

“Actually, it was quite a while ago,” she said mischievously. “So, shall I see you at the end of the week?”

“I’ll be there,” he said, but his voice was no longer so buoyant.

Jocelyn hung up and mentally began a list that started with “go to the gym every day this week.” The photo

of her in the bikini had been taken just last summer, but who knew what had happened under her clothes during

the winter?

So that was Ramsey McDowell, she thought as she got up and began to look through her closet.

Tomorrow she’d stop by her professor’s office and resign. She knew he wouldn’t be bothered; there were four

applicants for every job on campus.

She paused with her hand on the clothes. Maybe now she could write her own book. Something nonfiction,

historical. Maybe she could write the history of the town of Edilean. She’d start with the Scotsman who stole a

man’s gold and his beautiful daughter, then ran off to the wild country of America. What was Edilean like in

1770? For that matter, what was it like now?

Ten minutes later, she’d Googled the town. The history of the town was much what Miss Edi had written. It

had been started by a Scotsman named Angus Harcourt, who’d built a large house for his beautiful wife, then set

about putting in acres of crops. But his wife, Edilean, had been lonely, so she’d designed the streets of a tiny

town that had eight small areas of parkland in it. Smack in the middle she’d planted an oak tree from an acorn

she’d taken from her father’s estate. Over the centuries, the tree had been replaced three times, but each time the

transplant had been a scion of the original tree.

Jocelyn went on to read that in the 1950s, her Edilean Harcourt had led a four-year-long court battle when

the state of Virginia tried to evict the residents, as over five thousand acres of the surrounding land was being

turned into a nature preserve. “It was because Miss Edi—as she is called by everyone”—Joce read—“won the

battle that the tiny town of Edilean survives today. No new houses are allowed to be built, but the ones that are

there are preserved so that it’s almost like stepping back into time.

“The town has several upscale shops that draw tourists from Williamsburg, but the crowning jewel is

Edilean Manor, built by Angus Harcourt in 1770, and lived in by the same family since then. Unfortunately, the

house and grounds are not open to the public.”

“I’m glad of that,” Jocelyn said, then moved closer to the screen to see the photos and thought she could

see a sign in front of one of the pretty white houses. Was that Ramsey’s office? Did he live in the same building

where he worked? He’d asked her if she had a boyfriend, but did he have a girlfriend?

She clicked on the button that said EDILEAN MANOR, and there it was. Jocelyn stared at it with wide

eyes. The façade was perfectly symmetrical: two stories, five windows wide, all brick. On both sides were

single-story wings with little porches on them. “I guess that’s where my tenants live,” she said, marveling at the

idea that she now owned this wonderful old house.

Five minutes later, she was tearing through her closet like a leaf blower. She was going to get rid of all the

things that she no longer wore, then see what was left. Fifteen minutes later, she looked at her nearly bare closet

and said, “I’m going shopping.”

The next few days had been a blur of activity as she hurried to get ready to leave, to go to her brand-new

life.

And now, she was in Williamsburg, it was 11 A.M. Saturday morning, hotel checkout time, everything she

owned was stuffed into her little Mini Cooper, and she was about to see “her house” for the first time. She didn’t

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know if she was elated or scared to death. New town, new state even, and all new people—one of whom she

had a sort of date with tonight.

“You
can
do this,” she said again and opened the hotel door.

2

S
HE CLUTCHED THE MapQuest printout in her hand as she drove. The directions were simple: leave

Williamsburg on Highway 5, the one that led to all the plantations, and just a few miles out she’d come to

McTern Road. Three miles later, she was to take a right onto Edilean Road, then drive through the town until she

ended up at her new/old house.

McTern Road was easy to find, but she thought there was a mistake because it meandered through forest

that seemed to have been there since the earth began. She’d read that Edilean was in the middle of a nature

preserve, but she hadn’t expected it to be this close to primordial forest.

She moved to one side as a couple of men in a big black truck pulling a fishing boat with two motors on the

back rushed past her. They waved their thanks for giving them the right of way.

Edilean Road was clearly marked and she was glad to see that the surface was well maintained. She’d been

a little concerned that it would be a gravel road with weeds down the center.

About a mile before she reached the town, the wild-looking forest gave way to specimen oaks and beeches

and big sycamores. She didn’t have to be told that she had entered land that at one time had been part of a rich

plantation.

When she reached the center of Edilean, she paused for a moment to look at it. The Web site had been

only partially right. The town was half as big as it seemed in the photos, but it was twice as charming. Big willow

trees hung over the street so that all the parking was in the shade. There wasn’t a new building anywhere, and the

old structures had been maintained beautifully.

The church was on her left, and on impulse, she turned right so she’d go through the heart of the place. She

wanted to see the “park-like” areas that the original Edilean had designed, and she wanted to see that oak tree.

Another left took her to the main street, Lairdton. Joce had seen that nearly all the street names were of

Scottish origin and the road through the middle was Lairdton. Since “ton” was an old way to shorten “town,” that

meant that Angus Harcourt had named the street Laird’s Town. She guessed that back in the eighteenth century,

the stable lad, Angus Harcourt, had raised himself to being the laird of a clan and wanted people to know that he

owned all of it.

Jocelyn saw an ice cream parlor that looked like something off a movie set and a store of used books.

“Gold mine!” she said aloud. Out-of-print books were some of her favorite things in life.

She saw a little grocery with produce in a bin in front, and a woman wearing a long skirt with a tasseled