More Than Words Can Say (6 page)

“Well, it’s my hand, isn’t it?” she asked back. Then she laughed a little. “And besides,” she added jokingly, “how do I know that you’re not some sort of country-fried quack?”

Brandon rummaged around inside his bag again. “Oh, I think you’re safe enough,” he answered. “To the best of my knowledge, Harvard Medical School doesn’t produce many quacks.”

“Harvard?” she asked. “Really?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“I can’t begin to imagine how many jokes you must have suffered.”

“You mean about the ‘Yale’ guy who went to Harvard?” he asked back. “Yeah, you can say that again.”

He soon closed her wound with seven precise stitches. When he finished, he dressed her hand with a fresh bandage.

“There you are,” he said. “All set and ready for company. I used dissolving stitches, so they won’t have to be removed. Come tomorrow, I’ll check it again. But I don’t have any oral antibiotics here, so I’ll have to give you a shot.”

“Oh, god,” she answered. “Do you have to?”

“Yep,” he answered. “Jeeves doesn’t have rabies, but he’s still a dog. I don’t even want to think about where his mouth has been.”

Smiling, Brandon produced another clean hypodermic. “So where would you like it?” he asked. “In your arm or your backside?”

One corner of Chelsea’s mouth turned up wryly. “My arm will do nicely,” she answered.

Brandon gave her the shot and then closed his bag. For a moment or two afterward they simply stood there, each unsure of what to say next. At last Brandon washed his hands again, and he casually shoved them into the back pockets of his jeans.

He was good-looking, she decided, in a craggy sort of way. Not what one would call classically handsome, but striking nonetheless. Despite his scholarly profession, there was something of a wild and untamed quality about him. He appeared to be about her age, and he was tall and muscular. His dark hair was a bit on the wavy side, his eyes were blue, and his jaw was strong. A mysterious hint of an old scar lay on his right cheek, and adding to his rugged good looks was his rather short, aquiline nose. A discreet glance at his left hand told her that he wore no wedding ring.

“Well, I think you’ll live,” he finally said to her as he poured a bourbon for himself. “By the way, when are Jacques and Margot due to arrive?”

Suddenly remembering, Chelsea checked her watch. It was a bit before three
P.M
.

“They’ll be here any minute now,” she said. “I should probably go back to my place and wait for them.”

Brandon shook his head. “There’s no need,” he answered. “We can see them drive up from my porch.”

They went to Brandon’s long, screened-in veranda and sat down on two old rocking chairs. Chelsea had a nice view of the lake and of the red and white floatplane moored offshore. She pointed at the plane.

“Is that yours?” she asked.

Brandon nodded. “I’ve been flying for about ten years now. Aside from it being fun as hell, I also use the plane to make house calls. And sometimes, I land in a lake and drop a fishing line out the pilot’s window.”

Chelsea looked around again. “So this house is also your office?” she asked.

Brandon laughed. “Lord, no,” he answered. “I don’t really have an office. I’m an ER doc at the Serendipity hospital. But sometimes, people call me here and ask if I can come to see them. I usually drive, but if it’s some distance away and they’re on the water, I use the plane. The idea started out small, then word got out and it grew to the point where I could now probably do that full-time, if I wanted. But I’d likely starve to death! Many of the folks that I visit have no insurance and can’t afford to pay me, so I let them slide. Or sometimes, they give me whatever they have. Last week I returned home with several chickens in the back of the plane. They were crated up, of course, but they still made a helluva mess.”

Chelsea’s eyes widened. “Chickens, really?” she asked. “What did you do with them?”

Brandon looked at her and smiled. She was starting to like his smile, she realized.

“I’m pretty good with a scalpel,” he answered. “If you don’t believe me, go look in the freezer.”

“Okay, I get it,” Chelsea answered. “So, do you live here all year ’round?”

Brandon shook his head. “No one does. There are eighty-some cottages on this lake, but so far as I know, not one of them is winterized. Besides, living out here in the winter would be impossible. They don’t plow the roads, and the mail service is by boat, which of course stops when the lake freezes over. During the winter, Jeeves and I live in my house in Serendipity.”

Chelsea took another sip of bourbon, thinking.
No winterization, the local doctor sometimes gets paid in chickens, they don’t plow the roads in the wintertime, and the mail is delivered by boat.
Lake Evergreen was starting to make Serendipity sound like a major metropolis.

Brandon causally propped his feet up on an old, wooden coffee table that sat before them.

“So tell me about yourself,” he said. “It isn’t every day that I get a visitor.”

Chelsea provided him with a quick thumbnail sketch. She then also explained about her grandmother’s death and how she had inherited the cottage.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he said. “Jacques and Margot told me that she died. I never knew her, but they are always saying how wonderful she was. Even though they never actually met her, they talked on the phone. The truth is, Jacques is so old now that for the last few years, I’ve been the one doing all the heavy lifting at your place. But don’t tell him that you know, because he still considers it his baby. They’ve spent the last two days, from dawn to dusk, getting the cottage clean and ready for you.”

Chelsea was quite surprised to learn that Brandon had been helping to maintain her cottage.
What a sweet gesture,
she thought.

“I didn’t know about your contributions to the cause,” she said. “Can I pay you something for all of your trouble, plus your medical services?”

Brandon made a throwaway gesture with his free hand. “Nah,” he said. “Just invite me over to dinner one night, and we’ll call it even.”

“You’ve got a deal,” she answered.

Then her thoughts turned again to her cottage and the mysterious tin box that had induced her to come here.

“So you’ve been inside my place, I gather?” she asked.

“Sure. Not the boathouse, though. For some reason, Jacques has always been pretty secretive about it.”

“So what’s the inside of the cottage like?” she asked eagerly.

“Well,” Brandon said, “it’s—”

Just then they heard a horn blow, and they turned to see an old Ford pickup arrive at Chelsea’s place.

“That’s them,” Brandon said. “I’ll come along, because whether Jacques wants to admit it or not, he’ll need my help getting things done. But first, I’ll let the dogs out.”

“Won’t they just fight again?” Chelsea asked.

“Maybe, but they’ve got to declare a truce eventually,” Brandon answered. “Might as well be now.”

He strode back down the hall, let Dolly out, and told Chelsea to take her by the collar. Then he opened another door and took hold of Jeeves’s collar. After a time, he slowly led Jeeves nearer to Dolly.

At first, Chelsea feared another snarling row as the dogs glared menacingly at each other. But after some hugely inappropriate sniffing, tails finally wagged, so Brandon and Chelsea let the dogs go. In mere moments they were eagerly standing side by side before the porch door, begging to be let outside.

“Ah . . . ,” Brandon said. “And so it begins.”

“I’m impressed!” Chelsea answered. “But I can’t let Dolly run loose! She’ll get lost!”

“Not when she’s off with Jeeves,” Brandon said. “He always comes home.”

“Does Jeeves always return because he loves you so much?” Chelsea asked.

Brandon laughed again. “A nice thought,” he said. “But mostly, I think it’s because this is where he gets fed.”

At first, Chelsea was hesitant about letting Dolly loose. But so far, Brandon had been right about the dogs, so she decided to trust his judgment.

“Okay,” she said. “You can let Dolly go, too.” As Brandon made for the screen door, Chelsea asked, “Why did you name your setter ‘Jeeves’?”

Brandon stopped and turned around. “That’s simple,” he answered with another smile. “He’s an English breed, and he does what he’s told.”

When Brandon opened the screen door, the dogs charged from the cottage and began happily bounding down the sandy shoreline, as if they had been best pals for years. Brandon turned back toward Chelsea, and he smiled.

“Dolly ’n’ Jeeves,” he said. “Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”

Despite her worry about Dolly getting lost, Chelsea was forced to grin, too.

“Yes,” she answered. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

As Chelsea accompanied Brandon toward her cottage, she again surreptitiously touched the key hidden beneath her shirt, wondering . . .

Chapter 6

W
ith the arrival of her caretakers, Chelsea became even more consumed with the thrill of the unknown. Like one’s first walk toward a new lover’s bedroom, approaching her cottage offered both excitement and promise.

What will be inside the tin box?
she wondered.
And will knowing make me happy or sad?

While Chelsea reclaimed her sneakers, Jacques and Margot Fabienne got out of their battered pickup. Jacques, a great Gallic bull of a man whose strong, fleshy facial features bore a respectful expression, wore a dog-eared carpenter’s bib over an old blue shirt, and work shoes that had also seen better days. An honest-to-goodness black French beret sat atop his head. His face bore a series of craggy lines and wrinkles that seemed a road map of the many places he had been and the things he had experienced. As Chelsea approached, he respectfully removed the beret from his shiny, bald head.

Margot was tall and whippet slim, with short, haphazard white hair that looked like she cut it herself. Her eyes were deep green and when she smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes gathered pleasantly. She was simply dressed in a black shirt, a pair of women’s tan trousers with a wide leather belt, and sensible shoes. In her hands she held a ceramic Dutch oven. The slight aromas escaping from around its lid were homing signals to Dolly and Jeeves, causing the dogs to gather wishfully at Margot’s feet and hopefully thump their tails. While smiling down at them, Margot whispered something in French.

With a smile on his face, Brandon went to Jacques. When he gave Jacques a hug, he couldn’t get his arms around the great Frenchman.

“
How
are
you
,
Jacques?
” Brandon asked in French.

His use of a foreign language surprised Chelsea a bit, causing her to raise an eyebrow.

Jacques smiled before answering. “
I am good for someone so old!
” he replied in his native tongue. He then gave Chelsea another glance before looking back at Brandon. “
The new owner is beautiful, is she not?
”

Brandon smiled back at him. “
Indeed!
” he answered. “
But I suddenly find myself hoping that she doesn’t speak French!
”

While Brandon and Jacques laughed, Margot cleared her throat and shot both men a sharp look of reproach.

“We will speak only English before the new owner, you two,” she said sternly. “We agreed, remember?”

“But you just spoke French yourself,
non
?” Jacques protested.

Margot gave Chelsea a wink. “That was different,” she said. “I was talking to the dogs.”

Chelsea liked Margot at once, and she smiled at how this slight, aged woman had so quickly put Brandon and Jacques on notice. But Chelsea also realized that for virtually anyone else, doing so would be a nearly impossible task. Brandon and Jacques seemed to be stalwart, independent souls, men who didn’t imagine themselves subject to much and, for better or worse, seemed largely unconstrained by many of society’s rules. Chelsea wasn’t used to being around such men, but she was finding that she enjoyed it. And although she hadn’t understood a word of what Jacques and Brandon had said, like many women, she liked hearing it in French, nonetheless.

Chelsea gave Brandon a questioning look. “So you speak French too, I see,” she said.

Brandon nodded. “Yeah, but I still mangle it pretty badly,” he answered. “Over the years, Jacques and Margot have been kind enough to teach me. Many have been the nights when we shared a bottle or two of wine while they immersed me in the subtleties of their native language. But sometimes, all I really got immersed in was the wine. Then they’d laugh themselves silly, while I slurred my words and said ridiculous things like, ‘That bathtub looks good on you!’ Anyway, I still don’t read or write it much, but I can speak it pretty well, and that comes in handy up here.”

Still holding his beret before him, Jacques approached Chelsea. Although his fingers were the size of sausages, his handshake was gentle.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, mademoiselle,” he said. Then his expression sobered. “We were so dismayed to hear of your grandmother’s death . . . Madame Brooke was a true lady, and she will be missed. We will do our best to serve you like we served her.”

At the mention of Gram, Chelsea felt another wave of grief rush through her. But this time her pain was tempered with a strong sense of gratitude for the Fabiennes and everything that they had done for Brooke.

“Thank you both,” she answered quietly. “We buried her yesterday . . .” She again glanced at the container Margot held. “And what have you there, may I ask?”

Margot smiled. “Coq au vin,” she answered proudly. “It’s my own recipe. We also brought some crusty bread and red wine to go with it. They will come in handy on your first night, no?”

“Thank you very much,” Chelsea said. “As it happens, I love coq au vin.”

Brandon laughed at her rather mangled pronunciation. “Given the way that Margot makes it, coq au vin is two things,” he said. “First of all, it’s chicken stewed in wine sauce.”

Chelsea smiled again. “I already know that,” she chided him. “But what’s the second thing?”