Garden of Scandal

by Jennifer Blake

  Her indrawn breath was perfectly audible in the late-afternoon stillness. Voice husky, she said, “This one is more than enough. It’s glorious. Exactly as I saw it in my mind, though I don’t know how you knew.”

  He thought of all the things she knew about him, the things Gregory had taken such pains to let him know he had told her. He couldn’t explain them because she hadn’t asked, and volunteering would mean he thought she cared. Or that he had any right to expect her to believe him.

  Yet with so much against him, she had been generous and forgiving, and honest enough not to blame him for her own impulses. Or condemn him for taking unfair advantage of her moment of gratitude.

  She was grateful. That was all.

  Standing there, then, he accepted what he had known all along—Laurel Bancroft was a class act. She was also something more. She was beautiful and self-contained and special beyond anything he had ever imagined. And not for him. Never for him.

  He swallowed the knowledge, accepting its bitterness. Then he nodded, a stiff-necked gesture. In quiet tones, he said exactly what he meant, regardless of its inanity. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “I love it,” she said with the same soft certainty.

  He began to back away. He had to, before he did something, said something incredibly stupid. His chest hurt. The muscles in his body seemed leaden in their weight.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  “Monday,” she corrected, the word offhand, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. “Today’s Friday.”

  “Right. Monday, then.”

  Turning quickly, he made the bike in a few long strides and climbed on board. He was out of there as if he had a stick of dynamite tied to his tail.

  The following morning, Laurel set the Green Man plaque in the kiln to be fired. That evening, she turned off the heat and let it cool overnight. She had intended to destroy it, obliterating her folly by compacting the clay into a nice, formless ball again. She couldn’t do it. It might be ridiculous and superstitious, but it had seemed too much like destroying Alec.

  The plaque came through the firing amazingly well, considering how long it had been since she had worked with clay sculpture and her inexperience at it. There were no cracks, no fallen edges. Looking at it with a critical eye the next day, she saw a few places that could have been rendered more perfectly, but she was satisfied with it.

  Actually, it had the quality considered by most potters and sculptors as an indication of good work, she thought as she smoothed the strong jawline of the face with her fingertips. It made her want to touch it. She had caught the slashing indentation of Alec’s cheek, which appeared when he smiled, and the fanlike crinkling of the skin at the corners of his eyes. Yes, and the sensuous curves of his mouth were not only well molded, but felt almost real, as if they might warm to life, move against her own if she…

  She jerked her hand away, curling her fingers into a fist. After a moment, she forced herself to reach for the large, flat box that she had set aside. Placing the plaque inside, she carried the box over to the rough shelving that ran along one end of the shed and pushed it onto the highest plank. She shoved it as far back as it would go, well out of sight. Turning away, she left the shed and closed the door behind her.

  It wasn’t so easy to shut away the memory of Friday afternoon. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel Alec’s arms around her, feel the disturbing moment when she had pressed against the hard warmth of his body. It had been like standing at the center of a lightning strike, caught in the flare of white-hot heat, blinding light, and searing power. Nothing had prepared her for that conflagration, or for the rush of need that poured through her in response. She had been stunned, held immobile by feelings so long repressed she had forgotten they existed. If she had ever known them.

  She wasn’t sure she had. Even in the days when she was first married, when loving was so strange and new, she had not felt so fervid or so uncertain of her own responses, her own will.

  If a hug carried so much force, what would a kiss be like? And if a kiss was even more intense, how would it be possible to survive the overwhelming power of…

  No. She wouldn’t think about it. She would forget she had ever touched Alec Stanton. And she would pray to high heaven that he did the same.

  It was later that afternoon when Marcia and Evan came to see her. Sticks bounded out to meet them, dancing and wriggling in his joy. He had been a Christmas gift for them as a puppy when Marcia was ten and Evan only eight, so he had shared their childhood and adolescence. It was Laurel, however, who had fed him, brushed him, taken him for long walks in the woods behind the house, so he had become her dog.

  She was as delighted to see her children as Sticks was, maybe even more so. Meeting them on the steps, she enveloped them in warm hugs. They looked more like Howard than they did her, with the same sandy hair and hazel eyes he had inherited from his mother. Evan had Howard’s stocky build, though Marcia’s body shape was like Laurel’s. Her daughter was too slender, too pale and fragile, Laurel thought, but then she herself had little room to find fault.

  Marcia didn’t look happy. Laurel would have liked to ask her what was wrong, and would have if she had not been well aware of how useless it would be.

  As she led the way toward the kitchen, the natural place to relax and talk, it occurred to her that there had been something even more awkward than usual in their greetings. She tried to dismiss it as normal. It had been, what, at least three weeks since she had seen either of them?

  They were so busy these days—Evan with spring courses at college and his fraternity friends, Marcia working in a lawyer’s office and taking care of her house and husband. Laurel called when she thought she could catch them, which wasn’t often. It wasn’t unusual for there to be less-than-perfect ease between them; they hadn’t been really close or free with each other since their father died.

  Excuses. She was making excuses for them. She knew, but didn’t want to face it.

  Marcia’s first words when they were seated around the table made the situation unblinkingly clear. “I see Meemaw was right,” her daughter said in accusation. “You’ve been tearing the place apart.”

  “I thought I was taking care of it, doing some of the things that have been needed for a long time.” The painful awareness that Marcia and Evan were there only because their grandmother had been talking to them made her voice low and compressed.

  “It was necessary to have a fountain?”

  She watched them for a long moment, her gaze level. Evan looked away, but Marcia returned the scrutiny with set features. Laurel answered quietly, “No, the fountain was just something I wanted.”

  “But why in the world would you—”

  “Call it a whim,” Laurel said shortly. The carping tone of her daughter’s voice was beginning to wear on her nerves.

  “I’d call it expensive,” Marcia stated, her pale face pinched with disapproval. “Where is all the money coming from to pay for housepainting and brick and pipe, not to mention the labor?”

  Laurel tilted her head. “Which of it bothers you the most, honey? The expense or the man I’m paying to do the work?”

  “Meemaw said you wouldn’t be reasonable about it, and I didn’t believe her!” Splotchy color spread over her daughter’s face and neck, making her look almost ill.

  “Tell me why I should be reasonable. I can’t believe you’re complaining because I decided to clear the front garden—which never should have been allowed to grow up in the first place. Or that you can have any possible objection to the fact that I had the house painted to keep it from rotting down around my ears.”

  Evan cleared his throat, giving his sister a quelling look. “Nobody is objecting to a little clearing and painting, Mother.”

  The too-reasonable tone of his voice, so close to patronization, too much like the one Howard had used when he thought she was getting angry, set Laurel’s teeth on edge. Because of it, she refused to give them any help
with this absurd discussion. “Then what is the problem?”

  Evan hunched his shoulders, not quite meeting her eyes as he sat forward at the kitchen table. “Meemaw’s a little upset about the whole thing. She hates to see anything changed here, you know. She’s saying that if you can afford all this renovation, then you can afford to pay my college expenses.”

  “Yes, of course,” Laurel said promptly. “You know I would have been glad to do it if she hadn’t insisted on taking over.”

  “I know, but it’s not just the tuition. There’re dorm fees and car expenses and walking-around money. She was going to buy me a new Mazda before all this came up. Now, well…” He shrugged.

  Howard’s mother was leaning on Evan, using the generous allowance she gave him and the promise of a new car to persuade him to intervene with Laurel. The sickening part of it was that her son had given in to the pressure.

  No, she mustn’t think like that. Evan was torn between the two of them, as he and Marcia had been since their father died. On the day of the funeral, Mother Bancroft had taken Marcia and Evan home with her. She had said it was for Laurel’s sake, to give her time to adjust without the loud comings and goings of a pair of teenagers. Laurel had been too confused and upset to argue; she had only just managed to endure the interment. Still, she had wanted her children near, to be able to hold them and have them hold her, to take away the pain and horror they were all keeping inside. But they had been hustled away, and it was weeks before she saw them again. When she did, they had looked at her with accusing eyes. Never again had they acted or felt like the son and daughter she had borne, the children she had loved before the accident.

  “I had a little money from my parents,” she said, “and it’s cost me very little to live these past few years. The insurance money from—that came to me after your father’s death is still in the bank. I can take up your expenses where Mother Bancroft leaves off, then, Evan. I might even be able to buy you that car. But just tell me one thing. Do you really think your grandmother will penalize you for what she considers to be my faults?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  “Neither do I,” she said, “but I wouldn’t like to think so.”

  Marcia said, “There’s something else going on here that we need to talk about, Mother. It’s downright shameful for you to keep that Stanton boy hanging around.”

  The prissiness of her daughter’s tone was almost funny, but Laurel easily refrained from laughing. “That Stanton boy, as you call him, is quite a few years older than you are.”

  “Well—well, he’s younger than you are, by a long shot!”

  “So? He’s not just hanging around, you know. He’s working for me, and extremely hard, I might add. Which you would notice if you took your mind out of the gutter long enough to look around you.”

  “Yes, I can see he must be handy to have around. In more ways than one, I’ll just bet.”

  “Marcia!”

  “What, Mother? Don’t you know how it looks? Do you have any idea what people are saying? I’m so embarrassed, and Jimmy is absolutely mortified. He has prayed on his knees every night this week that you will give up this wicked connection and find redemption in the Lord. He even got up in church on Wednesday and asked the congregation to join him in beseeching God on your behalf—”

  “He what!” Laurel’s head came up in shocked anger.

  Marcia blinked rapidly. “Well, what did you expect? Did you imagine we would just ignore what’s been going on? That you could do as you please and no one would say a word?”

  “I thought,” Laurel said distinctly, “that my children would have some consideration for me. At the very least, I think someone should have asked whether I’m sleeping with a man before you start praying in public that I’ll stop!”

  A defensive light appeared in her daughter’s eyes. “It was Jimmy, not me. You know how he is.”

  She did know. Her daughter’s husband, the eldest son of a family that belonged to one of the more conservative nondenominational churches, considered himself a deeply religious man. He didn’t approve of his wife’s mother because she didn’t attend church anymore. To Laurel, he seemed an outright fanatic. But then, no one had asked her opinion before Marcia had married him two years ago.

  “Jimmy could hardly have known about the situation here unless you told him,” Laurel said. “He has no reason to think Alec is doing anything more than maintenance work, and wouldn’t if you—or someone—hadn’t suggested otherwise.”

  Marcia gave a sharp laugh. “Then he is doing something more!”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But he is, isn’t he? You might as well admit it.”

  Laurel stared at her daughter, sick to the heart that it had come to this, yet unable to see how it could have been avoided. Her voice even, she said, “If you have to ask, then you don’t deserve an answer.”

  “That’s convenient, isn’t it? Especially if you’d rather not lie about it. And you never lie, do you, Mother? Never, ever.”

  “Marcia, don’t.” It was Evan who spoke, cutting across his sister’s sarcastic remark. But he wouldn’t look Laurel in the face.

  The suggestion in Marcia’s words was that Laurel had lied on the afternoon their father had died. Laurel had known they thought she had, but it had never been made quite so plain before.

  Crossing her arms over her chest in a protective gesture, she lifted her chin. Staring from Evan to Marcia, she said, “Think what you please, it makes no difference to me. But you might remember this. I am a widow and responsible to no one. Whatever I do is really none of your business.”

  As Marcia opened her mouth, Evan made a quick sign to prevent her from answering. His hazel eyes earnest, he said, “Give us credit for a little consideration, Mom, can’t you? We care about you, we really do. But you can’t expect us to sit back and do nothing when your safety’s at stake.”

  “My safety.” The words were flat.

  “We know what this guy is, what he’s after. Besides, I made a point of checking him out, and he doesn’t look like the kind of man you want to mess around with, even if it wasn’t for the rest of it.”

  Distaste for his choice of words colored Laurel’s tone as she said, “The rest of what?”

  “I don’t mean to sound ugly, Mom, but let’s face it. His kind preys on lonely older women like you.”

  She didn’t know whether to be outraged or amused. “Really, Evan, I don’t have one foot in the grave, and I think I just might have sense enough to recognize when someone is trying to use me. Believe me when I say that Alec Stanton has never by word or deed tried to get money from me, nor has he said or done anything that would lead me to think he might try.” It was, she discovered, the exact truth. Which was amazing when she thought about it.

  “No, I expect not. He’s too smart for that.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “He’ll wait on that until after you’re married,” Evan answered in hard tones.

  Laurel flung up her hands. “Now you’ve got me married to him! Well, that ought to make Jimmy happy, at least. He can stop bending God’s ear about me living in sin!”

  “Or maybe,” Evan went on with grim persistence, “this Stanton guy will wait until you’re dead.”

  Laurel’s irritation became cold anger. “That’s it,” she retorted. “I’ve had it up to here with this slander about someone who has never done anything to either of you, someone you don’t know from Adam.”

  “Mom,” Evan said, “if you’ll just listen…”

  “I’ve heard all I want to hear, thank you very much. What makes you think you can come here and meddle—”

  “Meddle?” Marcia laughed. “Well, you can be sure we won’t do it again. Come on, Evan.”

  “Shut up, Marcia,” Evan said without looking at his sister. “Mom, Alec Stanton’s first wife, an older woman just like you, died out in California.”

  “I know that, and for your informatio
n, she was much older, nearly—”

  “Did you know he was arrested for her murder?”

  Laurel felt the blood drain from her face. She was suddenly cold, chilled to the heart. A shudder rippled over her, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “No,” she whispered.

  “I thought not,” Evan said in satisfaction.

  “No,” Laurel said again, but not in response to his smug comment. It was denial, pure and simple. She didn’t want Alec to be a murderer. She couldn’t stand for it to be true.

  7

  Alec didn’t make it to work on Monday morning, after all. Gregory took a bad turn Sunday night and had to go to the emergency room of the local hospital. They admitted him for observation. When Grannie Callie left Gregory’s room in the early-morning hours to go home and get a little rest, Alec asked her to call Laurel and explain. Then he spent the rest of the day with Gregory while they ran him through every exhausting test in the book.

  The basic diagnosis was never in doubt, but then the cause of this most recent collapse was no great surprise, either. Undereating combined with overmedication was the verdict. The doctors changed the prescription of Gregory’s pain reliever and sent him home again.

  On Tuesday, when Alec pulled up in front of Ivywild, things seemed quiet, too quiet. Everything looked fairly normal on the outside. Maisie’s car was in its usual place behind Laurel’s ten-year-old Buick in the garage, and the smell of browning onions and garlic indicated Maisie was doing something interesting about lunch. He caught a glimpse of Laurel through the window of the pottery shed where she was busy with her pots. The fountain was working fine, the stream jumping and splattering with a noise like rain trickling from the roof.

  No matter, a greeting of some kind would have been nice. Such as, “Hi, how are you?” maybe. “How’s your brother? Are you all right? We missed you.”

  Yeah. Right. At least Sticks could have come out and barked. Something, anything.

  Sticks, that was what was missing. The big German shepherd hadn’t appeared on the veranda to warn his mistress about a vehicle pulling into the drive, hadn’t come barreling out for a tussle and ear-scratching as was his habit lately. He must be with Laurel, on guard like a good dog. Either that or she had him shut up somewhere again, for some reason. Of course, old Sticks could be off chasing rabbits or visiting a girlfriend.