Lavender Morning (16 page)

could still see the scars. And as she got older, she walked with two canes.”

Luke paused in his digging to look hard at her.

“What’s that look for?”

“You went to that little college and took a job as a teaching assistant to be near her, didn’t you?”

“No, I liked the school and I liked my job. I did it—” She broke off when he kept looking at her. “Yes, I

did, but I didn’t tell her that.”

“And I guess she didn’t know. Too dumb to figure it out, huh?”

Jocelyn gave a little laugh. “She probably knew, but we didn’t talk about it. I guess when you’re Miss Edi’s

age you know that there’s time after…After the people you love are gone, you have time to do things, like go to

school and even to get a proper job.” She looked at the house in the distance and thought about Miss Edi’s

ancestors living there. She could almost see Miss Edi as a child, running out the back door.

“So you got what you wanted from her, didn’t you? She left you this house and lots of money.”

“I did
not
stay with her because I wanted
anything
from her!” Jocelyn said as she came to her feet. “I

stayed because I
loved
her. Maybe you don’t understand that but I—” She glared at him. “Why are you smiling

at me like that?”

“Got you away from the tears.”

It took Jocelyn a few moments to calm herself, but then she saw what he’d done. “Sneaky.”

“My middle name.”

She sat back down and for a while watched him work. He seemed to have removed all the grass off a big

rectangle of an area, piled it into a heap, and was now digging into the bare dirt. “Whatever are you doing?”

“This is called ‘double digging’ but, overall, I’m putting in an herb garden. I asked you about it, but you

didn’t say anything, so I went ahead with it. If you don’t speak up, you don’t get a say in its design.”

“You didn’t say a word to me about an herb garden. Last night you talked to me about Ramsey and…And,

let’s see, about Ramsey, but I never heard the word
herb
from you. For all I know, you don’t even know the

word.”

“Are you telling me that you spent the whole day with Sara and Tess and not once did they give you my

message?”

“Message?” Joce asked. “They said you’d told
them
you wanted to put in an herb garden. I didn’t get the

idea it was a message sent to
me.
”

“Who else would I be asking? You own the place.”

“Do I?” Joce asked. “You dig up my backyard and I don’t even get a say in what you’re digging, so who

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owns this place?”

“All right,” Luke said as he jammed the shovel in the earth, then leaned on it. “Do you like the idea of a

reproduction eighteenth-century herb garden like I planned or not? Maybe you’d like something Victorian? Or

maybe you’d like something with a chrome and glass fountain in the middle. That would go well with the house.

Just let me know and I’ll be sure to put it in. I’m just the gardener and I do what the mistress of the house tells

me to.”

Jocelyn opened her mouth to make a scathing reply but couldn’t think of one. “Tell your mom thanks for all

she did in my bedroom.”

“I will,” Luke said and again had to turn away to hide his smile.

“And thank you for putting the bed in.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

For a moment they were silent, with Jocelyn watching him. His muscles played under his T-shirt, and his

jeans clung to his strong thighs. He had the body of a man used to working outdoors, and it showed.

She made herself take her eyes off of him. “You know what Sara and Tess and I did this afternoon?”

“From the sound of the laughter of you girls, I think you smoked some weed and ate chocolate.”

“Think Sara’s mom sells grass at her grocery store?”

“If she does, you can bet it’s organic.”

Joce smiled. “After we’d eaten until we could hardly walk, we packed all that food up and took it to a

couple of churches in…I don’t know where we were, but Tess drove us there at about sixty miles an hour and

we loaded tables with food. It was quite nice. Tell me about Tess.”

Luke gave a little snort. “I can tell you all I know about Tess in one word: nothing.”

“But Sara said you visited her yesterday.”

“I ‘visited’ you too, but that doesn’t mean I know you. I keep beer in her fridge and I stop in when I want

to talk to her about something.”

“About gardens?”

“She knows less about gardens than you do. Usually, I talk to her about Ramsey.”

“Right,” Joce said. “Ramsey.”

He gave her a sharp look. “You need to know that whatever you do with my cousin in the future, you’ll

have to share him with Tess.”

“At the office,” Joce said.

“No, everywhere. Rams…” Luke lifted his hand in dismissal. “I’m not going to talk about Ramsey and

Tess. Ask them. Did you come out here to get the local gossip from me?”

“I wanted to see what you were doing in
my
garden.”

Luke held his arms out. “What you see is right here.”

“So why an herb garden?”

“Why not?”

Jocelyn groaned. “Did your lack of conversational skills come about because you were a loner as a child,

or did your inability to answer a question make people stay away from you?”

“Some of both, I guess. What did Sara say about me?”

“What makes you think I asked her about you?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her.

“So maybe I did. She said you were much, much older than she is, that you played high school sports, and

that she knows nothing much about you.”

“I genuinely love that girl,” Luke said.

“So she lied?”

“Evaded. So what plants do you want to put in this thing?”

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“E

3/16/2010 vaded. So what plants do you want to put in this thing?”

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

“Herbs,” Jocelyn said quickly.

“I asked for that one. What kind of herbs?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “For pizza and spaghetti, I guess.”

“They’re the same ones. What else?”

“For…” Her head came up. “I know. I want lavender.”

“What kind of lavender?”

“Would it make sense to say that I want the kind of lavender you can eat?”

“Perfect sense,” Luke said, looking as though he was pleased with her. “
Intermedia
is usually considered

the best for eating. It’s better known as Provence lavender.”

“Sounds wonderful. Can you put some in this garden?”

“It depends on how much of it you want to eat.”

“I don’t know…,” she said hesitantly.

“Do you want to graze lambs on it to make the meat taste good, or do you want to make a few dozen

cookies?” he asked without patience.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I want to make a voodoo doll of you and stick lavender pins in it.”

He laughed. “Come on, I’ll show you where we can plant some lavender.” He put the shovel down, took a

towel off the bed of his truck, and wiped his sweaty face with it.

“I haven’t seen much of the garden at all,” she said, looking out through the big trees.

“You’ve been too busy—”

“Don’t say it!” Joce ordered.

“What?” Luke asked with exaggerated innocence.

“That I’ve been too busy with Ramsey.”

“I was going to say that you’ve been too busy getting to know people to spend much time in the garden,

but if your mind goes to Ramsey and stays there, who am I to contradict you?”

“You can be a real pest, you know that?”

“I’ve never before had a woman tell me that. My mother, yes, my cousins often, and some of my uncles,

but women never say I’m a pest.”

“Spare me,” Jocelyn said, but she was smiling. “You have dirt on your face.”

“Yeah, so get it off.”

He leaned down so his face was close to hers. She lightly brushed her hand across his cheek, but the dirt

didn’t move. She brushed harder. “Is this stuff glued on?”

“Take your shirt off and wipe hard,” he said without a hint of a smile.

Joce shook her head at him and stepped back. “Get it off yourself.”

He wiped his forearm across his face and the dirt came off. “Better?”

For a moment Jocelyn just looked at him. He was a very good-looking man, with his dark hair and his

green eyes. “When’s the last time you shaved?”

“When House did.”

It took her a moment to realize he meant Dr. House on TV. It was one of her favorite shows. Smiling, she

followed him as he made his way through the trees.

As she looked at the land around her, she couldn’t help thinking, All mine. Everything she saw belonged to

her. “Could you show me the property lines?”

“Glad to,” he said.

He took her around the eighteen acres she now owned, all that was left of the thousand acres the young

man from Scotland had bought for his kidnapped bride. Luke knew the grounds well and pointed out where the

old cabins used to be, the well house, the dovecote. He stopped at a treeless spot and said the blacksmith shop

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used to be there.

“When we were kids, we’d come over here and dig in this area and find pieces of hand-wrought iron.

Charlie found three horseshoes.”

“What about Sara? Did she find anything?”

“She was good at finding arrowheads. She said that the nineteenth century was too new for her to care

about, so she didn’t bother with horseshoes.”

“Interesting that you know that about her, but she says she hardly knows anything about you.”

Luke gave a little smile, then moved farther into the trees. “The old brick kilns used to be back here.

Look.” He pushed aside some bushes, and she saw a low brick wall. “I put these bricks back together so you

could see the foundations.” He spread his arms out. “We could put your lavender in here. The ground is sandy,

and lavender likes that. And it gets a lot of sun.”

“I can almost imagine what this place was like. Maybe I should restore it to what it once was.”

“It would cost too much to do that, and besides, Colonial Williamsburg has done a better job than we

could.”

She liked that he said “we.” It made her feel like she was part of something.

“This place likes having been here all these years,” Luke said. “It likes the living, and likes the generations

that have been here. I think the house breathed a sigh of relief when old Bertrand died.”

“Maybe the house was glad he didn’t get down to selling the doorknobs.”

“He did, but Rams stopped him.”

“Did you help?” Joce asked.

“I wasn’t here then,” Luke said quickly. “What do you think about this place for your lavender?”

“It looks great, but what do I know? Do you mean you were gone for that week or that you weren’t living

here in Edilean?”

“So tell me more about making love on top of blue corn chips.”

“Point taken,” she said. “No more personal questions. I wonder if Miss Edi let her brother sell so much

because she was cleaning the house out for the next family.”

“That’s what Rams said, but I think she just wanted to be rid of the old junk. Of course the attic is still full

of it. Have you been up there yet?”

“No. I went up the stairs but the door is locked and I don’t have a key to it.”

“Rams will give you one when he tells you about your inheritance.” Luke started walking again and she

followed him.

“So how much do you know about the deal with the house?”

“You stay, you get it all. You leave, the money stays with the house.”

“Just what I heard,” Jocelyn said, “but wasn’t that supposed to be a secret?”

Luke shrugged. “Somebody took the dictation; somebody typed the document. Who knows how things get

out?”

“It’s my guess that you know exactly how it got out, but I also guess that you won’t tell me.”

“You’re smart, aren’t you?”

“Does that make a change from most of the women you know?”

Luke didn’t answer but pointed to a long, low brick building in the distance. “I put that place back

together.”

“But it looks old.”

“Thank you,” Luke said. “That’s a good compliment. I had to dig up old bricks, then clean them off before

I could use them.”

They had reached the building, and she saw the way Luke’s hand touched the side wall. “It was a labor of

love, wasn’t it?” she said.

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“More or less.”

“Did you always want to be a gardener?”

He looked at her oddly and seemed to be about to say something, but then changed his mind. “No, I came

to it later in life. I decided that there was nothing like working with the earth. Nothing gives a man more pleasure

and more satisfaction.”

“Think it’s an ancestral thing? Are you from generations of farmers tilling the soil?”

“Not that I know of,” Luke said. “My dad ran offices full of salesmen and my grandfather was a doctor.”

“Like Sara’s father.”

“Yeah,” Luke said, obviously pleased that she knew that. “Uncle Henry worked with my grandfather for

years before Gramps retired.”

“To take you fishing,” Joce said. “Just the two of you.”

“That was the other grandfather.”

“Oh,” she said.

Luke opened the door to the brick building and Joce knew they were in his workshop. It was nice in there.

Above the workbench with its tools was a round window. She stood on tiptoe to look out it and saw how close