by Nora Roberts
was now her music room.
Boxes she hadn’t even thought of unpacking stood in a pile against one wall. A few odd pieces of furniture that had come with the house sat hidden under dustcovers. The windows were uncurtained, the floor was uncarpeted. There were pale squares intermittently on the walls where pictures had once hung. In the center of the room, glossy and elegant, stood her baby grand. A single box lay open beside it, and from this Maggie took a sheet of staff paper. Tucking a pencil behind her ear, she sat.
For a moment she did nothing else, just sat in the silence while she let the music come and play in her head. She knew what she wanted for this segment—something dramatic, something strong and full of power. Behind her closed eyelids she could see the scene from the film sweep by. It was up to her to underscore, to accentuate, to take the mood and make it music.
Reaching out, she switched on the cassette tape and began.
She let the notes build in strength as she continued to visualize the scene her music would amplify. She only worked on films she had a feeling for. Though the Oscars told her she excelled in this area of work, Maggie’s true affection was for the single song—words and music.
Maggie had always compared the composing of a score to the building of a bridge. First came the blueprint, the overall plan. Then the construction had to be done, slowly, meticulously, until each end fit snugly on solid ground, a flawless arch in between. It was a labor of precision.
The single song was a painting, to be created as the mood dictated. The single song could be written from nothing more than a phrasing of words or notes. It could encapsulate mood, emotion or a story in a matter of minutes. It was a labor of love.
When she worked, she forgot the time, forgot everything but the careful structuring of notes to mood. Her fingers moved over the piano keys as she repeated the same segment again and again, changing perhaps no more than one note until her instincts told her it was right. An hour passed, then two. She didn’t grow weary or bored or impatient with the constant repetition. Music was her business, but it was also her lover.
She might not have heard the knock if she hadn’t paused to rewind the tape. Disoriented, she ignored it, waiting for the maid to answer before she recalled where she was.
No maids, Maggie, she reminded herself. No gardener, no cook. It’s all up to you now. The thought pleased her. If there was no one to answer to her, she had no one to answer to.
Rising, she went back into the hall and down to the big front door. She didn’t have to develop the country habit of leaving the doors unlocked. In L.A., there’d been servants to deal with bolts and chains and security systems. Maggie never gave them a thought. Taking the knob in both hands, she twisted and tugged. She reminded herself to tell Mr. Bog about the sticking problem as the door swung open.
On the porch stood a tall, prim-looking woman in her early fifties. Her hair was a soft, uniform gray worn with more tidiness than style. Faded blue eyes studied Maggie from behind rose-framed glasses. If this was the welcome wagon lady, Maggie thought after a glance at the unhappy line of the woman’s mouth, she didn’t seem thrilled with the job. Much too used to strangers’ approaches to be reserved, Maggie tilted her head and smiled.
“Hello, can I help you?”
“You are Miss Fitzgerald?” The voice was low and even, as subdued and inoffensive as her plain, pale coatdress.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m Louella Morgan.”
It took Maggie a moment; then the name clicked. Louella Morgan, widow of William Morgan, former owner of the house that was now hers. For an instant Maggie felt like an intruder; then she shook the feeling away and extended her hand. “Hello, Mrs. Morgan. Won’t you come in?”
“I don’t want to disturb you.”
“No, please.” As she spoke, she opened the door a bit wider. “I met your daughter when we settled on the house.”
“Yes, Joyce told me.” Louella’s gaze darted around and behind Maggie as she stepped over the threshold. “She never expected to sell so quickly. The property had only been on the market a week.”
“I like to think it was fate.” Maggie put her weight against the door and pushed until she managed to close it. Definitely a job for Bog, she decided.
“Fate?” Louella turned back from her study of the long, empty hall.
“It just seemed to be waiting for me.” Though she found the woman’s direct, unsmiling stare odd, Maggie gestured toward the living room. “Come in and sit down,” she invited. “Would you like some coffee? Something cold?”
“No, thank you. I’ll stay only a minute.” Louella did wander into the living room, and though there was a single sofa piled with soft, inviting pillows, she didn’t accept Maggie’s invitation to sit. She looked at the crumbling wallpaper, the cracked paint and the windows that glistened from Maggie’s diligence with ammonia. “I suppose I wanted to see the house again with someone living in it.”
Maggie took a look at the almost-empty room. Maybe she’d start stripping off the wallpaper next week. “I guess it’ll be a few weeks more before it looks as though someone is.”
Louella didn’t seem to hear. “I came here as a newlywed.”
She smiled then, but Maggie didn’t see anything happy in it. The eyes, she thought, looked lost, as if the woman had been lost for years. “But then, my husband wanted something more modern, more convenient to town and his business. So we moved, and he rented it out.”
Louella focused on Maggie again. “Such a lovely, quiet spot,” she murmured. “A pity it’s been so neglected over the years.”
“It is a lovely spot,” Maggie agreed, struggling not to sound as uncomfortable as she felt. “I’m having some work done on both the house and the land …” Her voice trailed off when Louella wandered to the front window and stared out. Heavens, Maggie thought, searching for something more to say, what have I got here? “Ah, of course I plan to do a lot of the painting and papering and such myself.”
“The weeds have taken over,” Louella said with her back to the room.
Maggie’s brows lifted and fell as she wondered what to do next. “Yes, well, Cliff Delaney was out this afternoon to take a look around.”
“Cliff.” Louella’s attention seemed to focus again as she turned back. The light coming through the uncurtained windows made her seem more pale, more insubstantial. “An interesting young man, rather rough-and-ready, but very clever. He’ll do well for you here, for the land. He’s a cousin of the Morgans, you know.” She paused and seemed to laugh, but very softly. “Then, you’ll find many Morgans and their kin scattered throughout the county.”
A cousin, Maggie mused. Perhaps he’d been unfriendly because he didn’t think the property should’ve been sold to an outsider. Resolutely, she tried to push Cliff Delaney aside. He didn’t have to approve. The land was hers.
“The front lawn was lovely once,” Louella murmured.
Maggie felt a stirring of pity. “It will be again. The front’s going to be cleared and planted. The back, too.” Wanting to reassure her, Maggie stepped closer. Both women stood by the window now. “I’m going to have a rock garden, and there’ll be a pond where the gully is on the side.”
“A pond?” Louella turned and fixed her with another long stare. “You’re going to clear out the gully?”
“Yes.” Uncomfortable again, Maggie shifted. “It’s the perfect place.”
Louella ran a hand over the front of her purse as if she were wiping something away. “I used to have a rock garden. Sweet William and azure Adams. There was wisteria beneath my bedroom window, and roses, red roses, climbing on a trellis.”
“I’d like to have seen it,” Maggie said gently. “It must’ve been beautiful.”
“I have pictures.”
“Do you?” Struck with an idea, Maggie forgot her discomfort. “Perhaps I could see them. They’d help me decide just what to plant.”
“I’ll see that you get them. You’re very kind to let me come in this
way.” Louella took one last scan of the room. “The house holds memories.” When she walked out into the hall, Maggie went with her to tug open the front door again. “Goodbye, Miss Fitzgerald.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Morgan.” Her pity stirred again, and Maggie reached out to touch the woman’s shoulder. “Please, come again.”
Louella looked back, her smile very slight, her eyes very tired. “Thank you.”
While Maggie watched, she walked to an old, well-preserved Lincoln, then drove slowly down the hill. Vaguely disturbed, Maggie went back into the music room. She hadn’t met many residents of Morganville yet, she mused, but they were certainly an interesting bunch.
The noise brought Maggie out of a sound sleep into a drowsy, cranky state. For a moment, as she tried to bury her head under the pillow, she thought she was in New York. The groan and roar sounded like a big, nasty garbage truck. But she wasn’t in New York, she thought as she surfaced, rubbing her hands over her eyes. She was in Morganville, and there weren’t any garbage trucks. Here you piled your trash into the back of your car or pickup and hauled it to the county dump. Maggie had considered this the height of self-sufficiency.
Still, something was out there.
She lay on her back for a full minute, staring up at the ceiling. The sunlight slanted, low and thin, across her newly purchased quilt. She’d never been a morning person, nor did she intend to have country life change that intimate part of her nature. Warily, she turned her head to look at the clock: 7:05. Good heavens.
It was a struggle, but she pushed herself into a sitting position and stared blankly around the room. Here, too, boxes were piled, unopened. There was a precariously stacked pile of books and magazines on decorating and landscaping beside the bed. On the wall were three fresh strips of wallpaper, an ivory background with tiny violets, that she’d hung herself. More rolls and paste were pushed into a corner. The noise outside was a constant, irritating roar.
Resigned, Maggie got out of bed. She stumbled over a pair of shoes, swore, then went to the window. She’d chosen that room as her own because she could see out over the rolling pitch of what would be her front yard, over the tops of the trees on her own property to the valley beyond.
There was a farmhouse in the distance with a red roof and a smoking chimney. Beside it was a long, wide field that had just been plowed and planted. If she looked farther still, she could see the peaks of mountains faintly blue and indistinct in the morning mist. The window on the connecting wall would give her a view of the intended pond and the line of pines that would eventually be planted.
Maggie pushed the window up the rest of the way, struggling as it stuck a bit. The early-spring air had a pleasant chill. She could still hear the constant low sound of a running engine. Curious, she pressed her face against the screen, only to have it topple out of the window frame and fall to the porch below. One more thing for Mr. Bog to see to, Maggie thought with a sigh as she leaned through the opening. Just then the yellow bulk of a bulldozer rounded the bend in her lane and broke into view.
So, she thought, watching it inch its way along, leveling and pushing at rock and dirt, Cliff Delaney was a man of his word. She’d received the promised estimate and contract two days after his visit. When she’d called his office, Maggie had spoken to an efficient-sounding woman who’d told her the work would begin the first of the week.
And it’s Monday, she reflected, leaning her elbows on the sill. Very prompt. Narrowing her eyes, she looked more closely at the man on top of the bulldozer. His build was too slight, she decided, his hair not quite dark enough. She didn’t have to see his face to know it wasn’t Cliff. Shrugging, she turned away from the window. Why should she have thought Cliff Delaney would work his own machines? And why should she have wanted it to be him? Hadn’t she already decided she wouldn’t see him again? She’d hired his company to do a job; the job would be done, and she’d write out a check. That was all there was to it.
Maggie attributed her crankiness to the early awakening as she snatched up her robe and headed for the shower.
Two hours later, fortified with the coffee she’d made for herself and the bulldozer operator, Maggie was on her knees on the kitchen floor. Since she was up at a barbaric hour, she thought it best to do something physical. On the counter above her sat her cassette tape player. The sound of her score, nearly completed, all but drowned out the whine of machinery. She let herself flow with it while words to the title song she’d yet to compose flitted in and out of her mind.
While she let her thoughts flow with the music she’d created, Maggie chipped away at the worn tile on the kitchen floor. True, her bedroom had only one wall partially papered, and only the ceiling in the upstairs bath was painted, and there were two more steps to be stripped and lacquered before the main stairway was finished, but she worked in her own way, at her own speed. She found herself jumping from project to project, leaving one partially done and leaping headlong into the next. This way, she reasoned, she could watch the house come together piece by piece rather than have one completed, out-of-place room.
Besides, she’d gotten a peek at the flooring beneath the tile when she’d inadvertently knocked an edge off a corner. Curiosity had done the rest.
When Cliff walked to the back door, he was already annoyed. It was ridiculous for him to be wasting time here, with all the other jobs his firm had in progress. Yet he was here. He’d knocked at the front door for almost five minutes. He knew Maggie was inside, her car was in the driveway, and the bulldozer operator had told him she’d brought out coffee an hour or so before. Didn’t it occur to her that someone usually knocked when they wanted something?
The music coming through the open windows caught his attention, and his imagination. He’d never heard the melody before. It was compelling, sexy, moody. A lone piano, no backdrop of strings or brass, but it had the power of making the listener want to stop and hear every note. For a moment he did stop, both disturbed and moved.
Shifting the screen he’d found into his other hand, Cliff started to knock. Then he saw her.
She was on her hands and knees, prying up pieces of linoleum with what looked like a putty knife. Her hair was loose, falling over one shoulder so that her face was hidden behind it. The deep, rich sable brown picked up hints of gold from the sunlight that streamed through the open door and window.
Gray corduroys fit snugly over her hips, tapering down to bare ankles and feet. A vivid red suede shirt was tucked into the waist. He recognized the shirt as one sold in exclusive shops for very exclusive prices. Her wrists and hands looked impossibly delicate against it. Cliff was scowling at them when Maggie got too enthusiastic with the putty knife and scraped her knuckle against a corner of the tile.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, swinging the door open and striding in before Maggie had a chance to react. She’d barely put the knuckle to her mouth in an instinctive move when he was crouched beside her and grabbing her hand.
“It’s nothing,” she said automatically. “Just a scratch.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t slice it, the way you’re hacking at that tile.” Though his voice was rough and impatient, his hand was gentle. She left hers in it.
Yes, his hand was gentle, though rough-edged, like his voice, but this time she could see his eyes. They were gray; smoky, secret. Evening mists came to her mind. Mists that were sometimes dangerous but always compelling. That was the sort of mist she’d always believed had cloaked Brigadoon for a hundred years at a time. Maggie decided she could like him, in a cautious sort of way.
“Who’d be stupid enough to put linoleum over this?” With the fingers of her free hand, she skimmed over the hardwood she’d exposed. “Lovely, isn’t it? Or it will be when it’s sanded and sealed.”
“Get Bog to deal with it,” Cliff ordered. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
So everyone said. Maggie withdrew a bit, annoyed by the phrase. “Why should he have all the fun? Besides, I’m being caref
ul.”
“I can see that.” He turned her hand over so that she saw the scrape over her thumb. It infuriated him to see the delicacy marred. “Doesn’t someone in your profession have to be careful with their hands?”
“They’re insured,” she tossed back. “I think I can probably hit a few chords, even with a wound as serious as this.” She pulled her hand out of his. “Did you come here to criticize me, Mr. Delaney, or did you have something else in mind?”
“I came to check on the job.” Which wasn’t necessary, he admitted. In any case, why should it matter to him if she was careless enough to hurt her hand? She was just a woman who had touched down in his territory and would be gone again before the leaves were full-blown with summer. He was going to have to remember that, and the fact that she didn’t interest him personally. Shifting, he picked up the screen he’d dropped when he’d taken her hand. “I found this outside.”
It wasn’t often her voice took on that regal tone. He seemed to nudge it out of her. “Thank you.” She took the screen and leaned it against the stove.
“Your road’ll be blocked most of the day. I hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere.”
Maggie gave him a level look that held a hint of challenge. “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Delaney.”
He inclined his head. “Fine.” The music on the tape player changed tempo. It was more hard-driving, more primitive. It seemed something to be played on hot, moonless nights. It drew him, pulled at him. “What is that?” Cliff demanded. “I’ve never heard it before.”
Maggie glanced up at the recorder. “It’s a movie score I’m composing. That’s the melody for the title song.” Because it had given her a great deal of trouble, she frowned at the revolving tape. “Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
It was the most simple and most direct answer he’d given her thus far. It wasn’t enough for Maggie.
“Why?”
He paused a moment, still listening, hardly aware that they were both still on the floor, close enough to touch. “It goes straight to the blood, straight to the imagination. Isn’t that what a song’s supposed to do?”