The Chesapeake Diaries Series (163 page)

Trula does have a way of getting people to see things her way
, Lucy mused.

She walked to the front window, stepping around the Christmas tree—the one Clay had decorated—and tried to ignore his unseen presence in the room.
Well, it was hard to pretend there was no trace of him here. She walked around the table and knelt down, her fingers feeling along the side of the table until they connected with the carved letters. She smiled to herself. Yes, even without the Christmas tree, a little of Clay remained. She remembered the day he’d put them there, and how she’d admonished him for marking up the table. She wondered if he knew that his initials were still there.

There were footsteps in the hall, and Lucy straightened up, pushed thoughts of Clay aside, and went into the lobby, where the prospective bride and groom were accompanied by Trula and Grace.

Lucy had done her homework, spent much of the previous day and night reading about Robert online; she’d have recognized him anywhere. Susanna Jones, on the other hand, had made herself somewhat scarce as far as the press was concerned. There’d been few photos of her online; Lucy never did find one that showed the woman’s full face.

They make such a striking couple
, Lucy thought as she walked from the library to the lobby to greet them, Robert classically tall, dark, and handsome, and Susanna willowy, her dark hair framing an oval face into which were set dark blue eyes that took in Lucy and their surroundings with quick scrutiny. Once the introductions were made, Trula and Grace went off to have tea and Lucy invited her potential clients to have a seat at the table.

After the obligatory congratulations to the engaged couple, Lucy got down to business, opened her notebook, and took a pen from her bag. Three things became obvious very quickly: Susanna knew exactly
what she wanted, Robert completely deferred to her, and money was not going to be an issue.

“We want our wedding to walk that line between formal and informal.” Susanna took a leather folder from her bag. She removed several sheets of paper and placed them in front of her on the table.

“As long as it’s not stuffy,” Robert added. “I hate stuffy.”

“Right.” Lucy made a note:
Formal/Informal
. “Got it.”

“Here’s a copy of my list.” Susanna passed one of the sheets to Lucy. “I will email a copy to you for your electronic file.”

“Thank you.” Lucy shouldn’t have been surprised. Given that Susanna was the person who, according to Trula, had been handling Robert Magellan’s affairs for years, nothing less than efficiency would be expected.

“We’d like the wedding and the reception both outside,” Susanna continued. “We’re thinking white tents partly open to the sky and to the Bay. Long tables—not round ones—and lots and lots and lots of flowers. Everywhere.”

“So you don’t want anything at all in the inn itself?” Lucy glanced at Susanna’s list. The open tent was right there near the top at number two.

“Maybe if it rains we’ll have to move the ceremony inside, but we really want as much outside as possible, since we’ll be here all week.”

“All week?” Lucy looked up from her own notes. “You mean after the wedding?”

“No, no. Before. We want to have a great week
with our friends. Like a big happy vacation that we can share with everyone.”

“You’re planning on having some of your guests arrive a few days before the wedding?” Lucy made a note to check with Daniel about holding rooms and offering a special rate for guests who’d be attending the wedding. “I’ll talk to Daniel about blocking off some rooms.”

“We want all of them,” Robert said.

Lucy’s head snapped up. “All of them?”

Robert nodded. “We want the entire inn. The grounds, the tennis courts, the children’s playgrounds.”

“Do you have a date in mind for the wedding?” Lucy hoped there wouldn’t be a conflict with those regular guests who returned for the same week or two weeks and had been doing so for years. How would her brother handle that?

“June something. Maybe the last Saturday, if it’s available,” Susanna told her. “Grace said she thought it might be.”

“I’ll have to check with Daniel,” Lucy said, “but I’m sure the inn will do everything possible to accommodate you.”

“Great.” Susanna smiled, then asked, “Could we take a walk outside? I’d like to go over what I had in mind for the ceremony and the reception with you. I have a list.”

“Of course.” Lucy stood and gathered her notes, then grabbed her coat from the back of the chair where she’d previously tossed it. When they’d all bundled up, Lucy led the way out through the lobby and the door that faced the Chesapeake.

“Such a majestic building,” Susanna noted.

“She is a beauty,” Lucy agreed. “The earliest section—the large main section—was built in the 1800s and added onto over the generations. It’s been in my dad’s family all that time.”

“Trula told me.” Susanna fell into step between Robert and Lucy. “One of the things that drew me to the inn was the strong sense of history here. I love that one family has lived here all that time. Most people don’t stay in one place for all that long.”

“It’s pretty unique, that’s for sure.” Lucy glanced over her shoulder and admired the three-story white building that rose behind them.

“Are there ghosts?” Susanna asked.

“Ghosts?” Lucy laughed. “I hope not.”

“Damn. I was hoping for ghosts. I was sure that in a building this old …” Susanna paused. “You wouldn’t tell me even if there were, would you?”

“Probably not. But rest assured. No ghosts.”
None but my own …

They reached the area where the lawn was flattest and led to the Bay.

“This is where I’d like the ceremony to be.” Susanna stopped twenty-five feet from the water’s edge and looked around. “I thought I remembered that there was a gazebo here.”

“There’s one around the corner of the building,” Lucy pointed out. “That’s the only gazebo.”

“Any chance we could have it moved over here for the ceremony?” Susanna asked. “I sort of pictured it here, with the Bay behind us. I wanted our guests to have a view of the water.”

“I can discuss that with Daniel,” Lucy told her. “I don’t know exactly what that would entail.”

“And I was hoping for roses all around the gazebo,” Susanna continued, staring at the designated space as if she could see it already in place. “Tons of climbing roses growing all around and over, sort of like they do on Nantucket. Do you think we could have roses?”

“Any particular color?” Lucy wished she’d opted to record the meeting lest she forget something.

“Pink roses,” Susanna went on. “Lots of pink roses. And if I’m getting to choose—not light pink, not hot pink. That medium shade, you know the ones I mean? Pretty and sophisticated but not overly girlie.”

Lucy checked Susanna’s list. Yes, right there under the heading
CEREMONY
and the subheading
GAZEBO
, Susanna had typed
Roses—preferably pink
(
medium shade
).

Lucy nodded and made a note to herself,
Can plant pink
(
medium
)
climbing roses around the gazebo to bloom in time for wedding?

“Susanna, is there a theme?”

Robert frowned. “It’s a wedding. Isn’t that the theme?”

Susanna ignored him. “Just something fun. Lots of great music, fabulous food … you do have a great chef here, don’t you?”

“Of course.”
And if we don’t have one now, we will have one by June
. “I’m sure Daniel’s chef will be happy to work with you on your menu, then you’ll come back for a tasting.”

“Actually, we’ll want to work on menus for the entire week,” Susanna pointed out. “We’ll want meals and snacks for the kids, too. I’d like a tea one afternoon and Robert would like to do some fishing with
his friends one day.” She paused. “Can you arrange to rent a boat with a crew and some gear?”

“I’m sure that Daniel would know—”

“Oh, and we keep hearing about the tasty Maryland blue crabs. Do you think a few of us could go crabbing sometime that week?” Susanna paused, as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Maybe we should have crab served at least once a day. Rob, how do you feel about having—”

“Great.” Robert strolled off toward the water. “Wow, take a look at that sailboat out there. Carry on, you two. You don’t need me for any of this stuff.” To Lucy, he said, “Whatever Suse wants …”

“Rob isn’t much of a planner when it comes to things like this. He just wants to show up and have everything perfect.”

“I’m sure everything will be,” Lucy assured her. It would be a challenge to coordinate everything from the opposite side of the country, but she could probably talk Dan into letting her use the services of Madeline, the inn’s own event planner, to tackle some of the details when Lucy was in L.A. Even so, the Magellan-Jones wedding had all the signs of a massive undertaking.

“We’ll need lots of things to keep the little ones happy.” Susanna consulted her list. “Oh, and swimming and tennis for the older kids. And maybe sailing lessons. Can we arrange for that? Golf? Is there a course nearby?”

Before Lucy could respond, Susanna added, “And speaking of the little ones—can we have a story hour in the afternoons? Maybe a puppet show one day. And pony rides.” Lucy opened her mouth to speak
but Susanna wasn’t finished. “Would it be possible to hire some babysitters for the afternoons and the evenings?”

“I’m sure we can arrange that.”
Note to self: ask Mom to find out who the most reliable babysitters are these days
. “As for golf, there’s a brand-new course that just opened last summer on Cannonball Island, which is at the end of Charles Street. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to accommodate your group.”

A quick wind blew off the Bay. Susanna pulled up the collar of her jacket and asked, “Lucy, you can see what I’d like out here, right? I mean, as far as the gazebo and the roses and the aisles are concerned?”

“I get the picture.”

“Great. Then let’s go back inside. I’m freezing.” Susanna turned toward the water and cupped her hands to call to Robert, who was walking toward the marshy side of the property. “Rob, are you coming in?”

He waved to her, shook his head, and kept walking.

“Guess not,” Susanna noted. “Just as well. He starts to twitch when we start getting into the little details, and for me, the details are everything.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Lucy started toward the building, wondering how many more little details Susanna had yet to share with her.

“Look, I know I must sound like one of those awful brides you see on TV. ‘I want this’ and ‘I want that.’ ”

Lucy began to protest, but Susanna held up her hand.

“No, I know it sounds like a lot. But we just want to make sure our guests have the time of their lives. We want to make sure that everyone is as happy as
we are, that everyone has a great time, one they’ll never forget. We’re trying to think of every detail.”

“I don’t think you’ve missed too many.”

Susanna laughed. “There’s more to come.”

“Go for it.”

“We’re going to want welcome gift bags for our guests’ rooms when they arrive. Can you put those together for us?”

“Of course. Just tell me what you’d like to go in them, and I’ll—”

“I already know. It’s on the list, second page. Did I not give you page two?” Susanna frowned. “I’ll get you a copy. At the top of the list are some really good chocolates. Is there a good chocolatier in the area? I like to keep things as local as possible. And maybe some vouchers—like tickets—for boat rides. And a bottle of wine. Is there a local vineyard? Oh, I just had another thought: maybe a wineglass for each guest with his or her initials on it. A map of the Eastern Shore. Gift certificates for some of the local shops, like maybe a discount or something. I bought some darling shorts at Bling when we were here before and I know some of my friends would love that place.”

“I’m sure our merchants will thank you.”

Lucy was happy to see the inn’s front door. She’d been trying to run a rough tally of what all this was going to cost, and had just given up.

“I’m definitely going to have to write all this down,” Lucy said as they went back into the library. “I’ll never remember it all.”

“Let me know when you think you have it,” Susanna said as she took off her coat, “because there’s still more.”

“Let me get all the items down for the gift bags before we move on.” Lucy jotted down as much as she could remember.

“I wasn’t done with the gift bags,” Susanna told her. “I keep thinking of other things.”

“You have to be kidding.” The words were out of Lucy’s mouth before she realized it. “Sorry, I mean—”

“Look, I know it’s a lot. It’s going to be excessive. But you know, I’ve known Robert since I was nineteen. I worked for him for years. I’ve waited for him almost my entire adult life, and now I can hardly believe we’re really going to be married. I’m so happy, I just want to share it all with everyone who means something to me and to Rob. I want everyone to be happy that they came and to fall in love with St. Dennis the way I have. I want this wedding to be flawless, something people talk about forever.”

“I understand.” Lucy nodded. “I just want you to know up front that this will be … well, put bluntly, one pricey affair.”

“I know.” Susanna grinned. “Isn’t it grand?”

Lucy laughed. “We’ll do our best to make it absolutely grand.”

“I know you will.” Susanna reached out and patted Lucy on the arm before launching back into her list of wants. “Did I mention that I wanted tokens of some sort made up? You know, things our guests can use for an ice-cream cone, or a cup of coffee and a muffin. The sort of things that would draw people into the town to discover St. Dennis the way we have.”

“That’s the town motto. ‘Discover St. Dennis,’ ” Lucy told her.

“Trula has some mugs that have that written on
them,” Susanna said thoughtfully. “Your mom sent them to her.”

“Some of the merchants in town sell them, along with T-shirts with the slogan.”

“Do you think we could get some of those—the mugs and the T-shirts—for the gift bags?”