Lavender Morning (7 page)

homegrown and organic. She raised those chickens, and the apples are from our trees.”

Joce looked at the sandwich in doubt. “You knew this chicken?”

Sara shrugged. “By the time I was three I learned not to name any living thing around our house. Except my

sisters. I named them, but they still didn’t end up in a pot.”

Joce nearly choked. “Don’t get me started! Whatever sister story you have, I can top it.”

“Think so?
Both
my sisters graduated from Tulane with cum laude degrees. Both of them got married the

week after they graduated—to doctors, of course. And both of them got pregnant the week after they married.

And they were virgins on their wedding nights.”

Joce took a drink, then gave Sara a smug look. “No competition. My sisters are Steps. They’re identical

twins, beautiful, naturally blonde, and are five feet eleven inches tall. You know what they call me? Cindy.”

“Cindy?” Sara’s eyes widened. “Not…”

“Right. Short for Cinderella.”

Sara didn’t want to concede the title just yet. “I have four utterly perfect nieces and nephews, two of each.

They never, ever forget to say please and thank you.”

“Ever hear of Bell and Ash?”

“The models? Sure. Last week they were on the cover of—No!” Sara gasped. “You can’t be telling the

truth. They’re your…?”

“Stepsisters,” Jocelyn said.

“You win. Or lose, I don’t know which. I think I’ll call my sisters and tell them I’m glad they’re mine.” She

looked at Joce in speculation. “How do you stand it?”

“I get by,” she said, shrugging as she looked at Sara. “I don’t think I would have made it if it weren’t for

Miss Edi. She was the one who saved me.” She looked down at her sandwich. “Speaking of Miss Edi, she said

you’d lived here all your life.”

“In the town, not in this house.”

“Sure,” Joce said cautiously, then chewed while she tried to think of a polite way to bring up what she

wanted to talk about. “Do you know a man named Ramsey McDowell?”

“Of course,” Sara said, but she didn’t look up.

“What’s he like?”

“Beautiful, brilliant, sophisticated. What exactly do you want to know about him?”

“I take it then that he’s a heartbreaker.”

Sara took a while to answer and when she did, there was caution in her voice. “He’s broken some hearts,

yes.”

“But he’s never had his broken?”

Sara looked up from the dress. “I think I should tell you that Ramsey is my cousin, so there’s family loyalty

there. I’d have to know you a lot better than I do now before I say much about him.”

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“It’s just that he’s coming here tonight for dinner, and I’d like to know more about him than just the one

conversation we had. He seems to be—”

“Rams is coming here? Tonight? What did you do to rate that?” Sara looked impressed.

“Nothing that I know of,” Joce said. “He’s handling all the paperwork for the house, so I guess—”

“That’s work, and he does that at his office. What did you do to get him to come to your house?”

“I…I don’t know, except that I knew the date the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.”

“That would do it. Rams loves smart people, and he loves history.” Sara took a spool of thread from the

box and rethreaded her needle. “That’s where the girls make their mistakes with my cousin.”

“What do you mean?”

“They think Rams is like all the other men and goes for low-cut dresses. He likes those but he likes brains

more. Besides, Tess erased the dress theory forever. As for what else he likes, you can ask Tess about women

or food or whatever. She knows him better than we do.”

“Tess? Oh, yes. The other tenant. What does she have to do with Ramsey…Rams?”

“She runs his life.” When Joce raised her eyebrows, Sara shook her head. “No, not in that way. Tess runs

his law office and she’s so good at it, she tends to run his life as well. If you get flowers on your birthday from

Rams, they were probably chosen and sent by Tess.”

“Ah, one of
those
secretaries. Dotes on him, half in love with him? That sort of thing?”

Sara smiled. “She says she can’t stand him, and she frequently lets him know it.”

“So why does she work for him? Why does she live here in Edilean?”

Sara shrugged. “I have no idea. Tess is a mystery to me, and I know she’s a mystery to Rams. But she lets

him know when he does something she doesn’t like.”

“So what does she have to do with a low-cut dress?”

“You’ll have to get Rams to tell you
that
story.”

“You know, I think I read in some book that when you go on a first date with a man, you do not ask him

what his secretary and a low-cut dress have in common.”

Sara laughed. “I’m sure you’re right, but Rams has always been able to laugh at himself. Listen, this is just a

warning, but when you meet Tess, don’t call her a secretary, and do
not
ask her about that dress. She’s sick of

the story.”

“All right,” Jocelyn said as she pushed her empty plate away. Already she was beginning to feel a bit

overwhelmed with all she had to learn.

Sara seemed to know what she was thinking. “You’ll do fine. Everyone is just curious, that’s all. But I do

warn you that everyone in this town—who actually lives here, that is—is going to want you to tell them about

Miss Edi.”

“I can understand that,” Joce said. “The townspeople must have loved her very much.”

“Loved her?” Sara said. “The truth is that there are few people still alive who really knew her. Except for

Aunt Mary Alice, that is, but she can’t very well love her, now can she?”

“I don’t know,” Joce said. “Why couldn’t your aunt Mary Alice love Miss Edi?”

“I thought you two were friends. Surely you must know Miss Edi’s tragic love story?”

Joce gave a sigh. “Until a few days ago I would have said I knew nearly everything about her, but I’m

learning that I didn’t know that much. She never mentioned Edilean, Virginia, or this house. I do know that she

was once deeply in love with a young man from here who was killed in World War II.”

“Killed!” Sara said. “Killed by feisty little Mary Alice Welsch getting herself pregnant by him and making

him marry her. When Miss Edi came home from the war there was the man she loved, married to someone else.”

Once again Jocelyn had that feeling of betrayal. This wasn’t the story she’d been told. All the love that Miss

Edi had told her about, her great, deep love for David Aldredge, hadn’t ended in death. It had ended in a

shotgun wedding. No wonder Miss Edi never mentioned Edilean and no wonder she lied about her beloved’s

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shotgun

3/16/2010 wedding. No wonder Miss Edi never mentioned Edilean and n

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html o wonder she lied about her beloved’s

death. Better death than betrayal!

Joce tried to compose herself so Sara couldn’t see what she was feeling. “Didn’t all this happen a long, long

time ago?” Joce asked. “You make it sound like it happened yesterday.”

“This is Virginia and we remember things. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the War Between

the States. She knew who loved whom and who was jilted. So now I tell stories from another war. Whatever,

I’ve heard Miss Edi’s story a thousand times. The Harcourt family started the town, owned the biggest house,

laid out the town square, all that. Even after they lost most of their money, they were still the most important

family. By World War II, the McDowells were far richer, but they didn’t have the cachet the Harcourts did.”

As Joce finished her tea, she tried to put the real story together. “So Miss Edi came home from World War

II, her legs a mass of burn scars, and she found out that the man she loved had married someone else?”

“That’s right.”

“So what did she do?” Joce asked.

“The house and what money the family had left was in Miss Edi’s name, but she turned the house over to

her younger brother. I don’t know about the money. My Great-aunt Lissie used to say that Bertrand wasn’t

much of a man.”

“What does that mean? That he didn’t ride horses up the staircase at midnight?”

“Now, now, don’t let the Yankee in you come to the surface.”

“Sorry,” Joce said, but she was smiling. “I’ve read too many romantic novels.”

“Haven’t we all? As I was saying, Miss Edi came back, saw her man had been stolen from her, so she gave

the house to her lazy brother and left town. But not before she had MAW draw up a forty-five-page contract for

her brother to sign. She may have been hurt, but she wasn’t stupid.”

“MAW?” Joce asked.

“The local law firm. McDowell, Aldredge, and Welsch.”

“Aldredge,” Jocelyn said under her breath, then louder, “always the same names. Tell me, do you people

ever move away from your hometown like the rest of the U.S. does?”

“
They
do, but
we
stay.”

Joce nodded. “Right. The tourists. The outsiders. They come and go, but yawl stay.”

“You didn’t say it correctly, so you might as well quit trying. You have to be at least third-generation

Southern to be able to say ‘you all’ correctly.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. What happened to Miss Edi’s brother?”

“Died in his sleep years ago. Aunt Lissie said he was a man who could do absolutely nothing and make

himself believe it was work.”

“I think I may have met him,” Joce said. “I might even have dated him.”

“I knew the moment we met that you and I had a lot in common.”

They smiled at each other, two women in mutual understanding, then they sat in silence for a while and Joce

looked out over the grounds. She still wasn’t used to the idea that she was now a property owner. She glanced

back at the house, at the sheer, perfect beauty of it, and felt cold chills come over her arms.

Nor had she reconciled herself to the fact that the woman who’d practically been her mother had either left

out a lot about her life, or had outright lied to her. Jocelyn had lived with the idea of the “perfect love” Miss Edi’d

had for a fallen soldier since she first heard it when she was a child. In fact, the image of that love had been her

guide, her yardstick that she’d measured her every relationship against. When a man got serious, Jocelyn asked

herself if this was a man she loved with the passion that Miss Edi had felt for her David. No man, no feelings Joce

had ever had, had come close to the picture of “true love” that Miss Edi planted there.

But now Jocelyn was finding out that Miss Edi’s great love was just a tawdry affair. The man had jilted her

for another woman.

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“So what are you going to do with the house?” Sara asked, bringing Joce out of reverie. “Sell it? Make it

into apartments?”

Joce wasn’t fooled by her tone of not caring, of seeming to just be asking a question. So this is why the

welcome carpet was rolled out so lavishly, she thought. Had someone told Sara to do whatever she needed to to

find out what Miss Edi’s heir was planning to do with the old house? “How much do you think I could get for all

those old bricks?”

She waited for Sara to laugh, but she didn’t. She kept her head down as she sewed on the beads.

“Sara,” Joce said, “I’m a lover of history. Since I got out of school I’ve made my living by helping people

research the past.”

Sara looked at her with cool eyes. “It would make a wonderful B and B.”

Joce groaned. “That’s not me. I’m more of an introvert. I can talk with one person at a time, but put me

among crowds of strangers and I crawl into my shell.”

Sara kept looking at her, obviously waiting for something she could tell the townspeople. Joce had a vision

of the telephones lines becoming so busy they caught fire. Or maybe the overuse of cell phones would make the

TVs go out.

Joce couldn’t hold out under Sara’s unblinking stare. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I really don’t.

Miss Edi left me the house and I assume some money, but I have no idea how much.” Suddenly, Jocelyn didn’t

want to tell more about herself than she already had. There were too many things going on inside her mind that

were confusing for her to think clearly—and she certainly wasn’t about to tell anyone of her ideas of writing

about Miss Edi. “You know of any job openings?”

“Tess got the last good job in town.”

Joce glanced toward the far side of the house at the other wing. The doors were closed and the windows

shut. “By the way, what do you do? Other than repair dresses, that is.”

“That’s what I do,” Sara said as she cut the thread. “Mostly, I tailor dresses for ladies who buy a size six,

then can’t get into it on the night they’re supposed to wear it.”

“You can make a living at that?” Joce asked.

Sara gave a shrug.

Joce was sure there was more to what she did for a living, but she didn’t seem to want to tell what it was.

All Joce hoped was that it wasn’t something illegal. She hoped Sara wasn’t growing marijuana in a back

bedroom. At that thought, she wondered if all landlords felt like this. What would she do if the bathtubs started

leaking? What about termites? Miss Edi mentioned a gardener. What was his salary?

Joce glanced at the house and wondered where she was to sleep tonight. Was there a bed in the house?

Sara pulled a cell phone out of her sewing box, opened it, and looked at the time. “I have to go. This dress