True Love

by Jude Deveraux

  She opened the envelope and saw the distinctive lettering.

  Would you like to go with me to liberate an old truck?

  Alix couldn’t help laughing and doing a little dance around the room. “Oh, yes, I would love to go,” she said aloud as she danced over to Captain Caleb’s portrait. “Are you happy about this?” she asked, looking up at him, then said, “Do not make anything fall down.”

  She was pleased when everything in the room held steady. After taking a moment to compose herself, she headed downstairs. As before, Jared was in the living room reading a newspaper. All their papers and the big prints were gone from the floor and neatly stacked on the shelves.

  “Hungry?” he asked without looking up.

  “Starved. Did we get any cereal?”

  “No,” he said as he put down the paper and looked at her.

  She thought she saw a spark in his eyes, but it was quickly gone.

  “If you can scramble eggs, I can make toast. Toby sent over some jam she made.”

  “The Toby who everyone loves does her own canning?”

  “And baking. She makes a blueberry pie that’ll make you weep. I think she puts cinnamon in it.”

  “When are you two getting married?”

  “Toby is much, much too good for someone like me. I’d feel that I had to behave all the time.”

  “No hijacking of old trucks?”

  “Definitely not,” Jared said, smiling at her.

  As they started for the kitchen, Alix’s phone buzzed and she looked at it, hoping it was Izzy, but it was an ad trying to sell her a used car. She deleted it.

  “Something wrong?” Jared asked.

  She told him that it had been days since she’d heard from her friend and that wasn’t usual.

  “Are you worried about her?” he asked as he went to the fridge.

  “Not really, but I do wish she’d let me know what she’s doing. Have you eaten?”

  “I did.”

  As usual, they worked together like a perfectly aligned machine, getting food out and putting it where it was needed. When Alix picked up the skillet Jared handed her the butter. He’d already cracked two eggs into a blue bowl that Alix remembered seeing being used for eggs. Bread went into the toaster and Jared set the table.

  Within minutes they sat down and he filled their cups with hot coffee.

  “Did I hear voices this morning?” Alix asked, then said, “Even if it’s a lie, please tell me that I did.”

  “What does that mean?”

  If she told him the whole truth she’d have to mention her chapel model and she didn’t want to do that. “Just that another picture fell off a table—and don’t you dare say it’s a drafty old house.”

  Jared grinned as that was exactly what he was about to say. “Old houses always have odd things happening in them, but, yes, this morning Lexie stopped by.”

  “Please tell me she didn’t see me passed out on the couch.”

  “She did and she wanted to know all about you.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That you nearly worked me to death.”

  “You’re the one who—!” She stopped and shook her head at him. “Where’s perfect Toby’s perfect jam?”

  “How could I have forgotten it?” he said, his eyes laughing as he went to the fridge and got the jar.

  It had a label with daisies on it and perfect lettering said BEACH PLUM JAM—CLW.

  “CLW?”

  Jared shrugged. “I guess those are Toby’s real initials.”

  “I would have thought that you knew everything about her.”

  “Mortals can’t aspire to reach so high.”

  Alix gave a groan that was also a laugh. “I’m afraid to meet this creature. Do her wings get in the way when she moves?”

  “She’s used to them, so she sort of tucks them under her arms. Are you ready to go?”

  “This jam is great. What are these beach plums?”

  “They grow wild here, and where they are is kept secret from one generation to another.”

  “I guess that means you know.”

  “No, but the man who haunts this house does.”

  Alix laughed as she took her plate to the sink and rinsed it. “Where is this truck you want to steal and why do you plan to take it?”

  “It’s for the Daffodil Festival, for the parade.”

  “For Lexie and the angelic Toby to use? Will Wes drive it?”

  “No, I will.”

  “I thought you didn’t attend it.”

  “Lexie changed my mind. You have any more solid shoes than those? I thought that before we get the old truck I’d show you some land I own. It’s been passed down from one Jared to the next.”

  “Who’s that?” Alix asked without missing a beat.

  He looked puzzled for a second, then gave a half grin. “Jared is the name that comes between the Mr. and the Kingsley.”

  “Before or after the number?”

  “Before,” he said, still smiling. “In fact, it’s what most people call me. Well, except for the peons in my office, the ones who are there to gain wisdom from me.”

  “Ooooooh, that Jared. The wise one. He’s above my league. Makes me nervous even to think about him.”

  “What about Jared Kingsley?”

  “Him, I rather like,” Alix said, looking him in the eyes.

  For a moment they stared at each other. He was the first to break away as he put his hand on the doorknob. “Go change your shoes and meet me outside in five minutes. Don’t make me wait.”

  “Okay … Jared,” she said, then left the room to run up the stairs to her bedroom.

  She closed the door and leaned against it briefly. “Well, Captain,” she said, looking around the bed at the portrait, “what do you think of your grandson and me? Don’t answer that,” she said quickly.

  She slipped off her sandals, opened the big wardrobe to get her sneakers out, and tied them on. When she stood up, she looked at the portrait and suddenly realized something. If there was a ghost in the house, he’d met her mother.

  “I’m Victoria’s daughter,” she said. “I don’t look like her, except maybe my mouth does, and my hair’s a little bit red. I don’t have her talent, but she is my mother. She—”

  Pebbles hit the window and she went to push it up then leaned out.

  Jared was downstairs and looking up. “Are you writing a book? Let’s go!”

  “I’m correcting the errors you made on your cousin’s house. It takes a while.” She shut the window. “Not exactly patient, is he?” She opened the door, then looked back at Captain Caleb and blew him a kiss. “See you later.” She hurried down the stairs, grabbed her bag from the hall table, and kept running.

  Alix got into the truck beside Jared and closed the door with a solid pull. A few days ago she would have wondered why a man as famous and probably as rich as he was didn’t buy himself a new truck. But the longer she stayed on Nantucket, the more the old truck seemed to fit in.

  He drove down one street after another, some of them so narrow she caught her breath. But Jared didn’t seem to notice.

  “Oh, hell!” he muttered.

  Alix looked to see what was upsetting him but nothing seemed to be unusual. They were on a very narrow street and coming toward them was a big black SUV, but that was normal. “What is it?”

  “Off-islander,” he said under his breath and his tone made the term sound vile, maybe even evil.

  The big car looked like all the others, so what made him think it wasn’t someone who lived on Nantucket? “How do you know?”

  His answer was a look that said “How do you not know?” He put his arm across the back of the seat, reversed, and maneuvered the truck into a tiny space against the curb.

  Alix looked with interest as the vehicle passed. Inside was a woman with lots of shiny hair, half a dozen gold bracelets on her arm, a designer linen shirt, and a cell phone plastered to her ear. As she drove past them she didn’t so mu
ch as wave a thanks to Jared for having moved aside so she could get by. In fact, she didn’t even look at them.

  “Answer your question?” Jared asked.

  In just a few days on the island Alix had become so used to the friendliness and courtesy between inhabitants that the woman’s rudeness was shocking. It was as though the beat-up old pickup didn’t exist to her. “Off-islanders,” Alix said in wonder. “Will there be a lot of them here?”

  “Horrific!” Jared said as he pulled out of the temporary parking place. “And not one of them knows how to drive. They think four-way stops mean the other drivers stop to let them go by without so much as slowing down.”

  Alix hoped he was making a joke. The rest of the way she looked out the window. She doubted if she’d ever get used to the beauty of the houses of Nantucket.

  At last he turned off the paved road and down a dirt path. Around them were scrubby bushes and tall, bent pines that looked like bonsai plants on steroids. “The wind’s done this?” she asked.

  “Yes. We’re on the North Shore near where the first English settled.”

  “Where your ancestors lived?”

  He nodded. “They built houses near here, but the harbor closed up in a big storm so they moved.”

  “And the harbor is everything.”

  “No, the sea is everything,” he said, then quoted, “Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires. That’s what Melville said about us.”

  “Ah, yes. Moby Dick. When they glorified killing the whales.”

  “Not my family,” Jared said as he stopped, turned off the engine, and they got out of the truck.

  “That’s right. Captain Caleb was in the China trade. Why didn’t that continue? Or did it?”

  “Opium Wars,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something. How much—?” He broke off because his cell phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the ID. “Sorry, but I need to take this call. The sea is that way.”

  “Sure,” she said. There was a little path ahead of her and she walked down it. The plants around her looked fierce and tough. Kind of like Nantucketers, she thought, and tried to imagine what the first settlers had seen. She really did need to read some Nantucket history.

  At the end of the path was one of the many beautiful, sandy beaches that surrounded the island and that she’d seen photos of. She’d never been a “beach person” who longed to sit in the blistering hot sun and do nothing, but on this beach a person could, well, think.

  “Like it?”

  She looked up to see Jared standing near her, gazing out at the ocean. “Yes, I do. Was there a house here?”

  “Come on,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”

  She followed him down a narrow path that had been made in between the fierce little shrubs and noticed the sand on the ground. She had an idea that if you dug anywhere on the island you’d hit sand.

  He stopped at a large, cleared space that had only an indentation to show that there had once been a building there.

  “Was the house moved?”

  “Burned,” Jared said.

  “Recently?”

  “Early 1800s.”

  As she looked at him, he walked to a tall pine tree and sat down on an area of softened needles.

  Alix sat down beside him, but not too close. She thought he seemed awfully serious. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but first, that call I just had? It was from my assistant in New York.”

  “You have to return,” she said before she thought.

  “No.” He smiled at her. She’d sounded like she didn’t want him to go.

  “What did she say?” Alix was a bit embarrassed at the way she’d said that.

  “He. My assistant is a man named Stanley. Wears a bow tie and is a powerhouse of efficiency. I asked him to find out about your friend Izzy.”

  “Did you?” she asked, surprised.

  “I did, and Izzy is in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Stanley never kids. Or makes a mistake. He called Izzy’s mother and she said that Gary’s mother—”

  “Glenn’s mother.”

  “Glenn’s mother is making Izzy so crazy that he took her away for a while.”

  “She isn’t the only culprit. Izzy’s mother isn’t exactly easy to live with.”

  “So Stanley told me. It seems that after Glenn told his parents as well as Izzy’s that they wouldn’t be invited to the wedding if they didn’t let up on Izzy, both sets of parents paid for the trip. However, Izzy’s cell phone doesn’t work on the island and a call using the hotel phone is very expensive.”

  “She and Glenn aren’t rich, by any means, and Izzy wouldn’t want to run up a bill that their parents had to pay.”

  “I guessed that, so Stanley is having a prepaid international phone delivered to your friend’s hotel from a nearby shop. She should be getting in touch with you soon.”

  Alix sat there looking at him. He had his head turned so she saw his profile. “Yet another kindness from you,” she said softly. “And I’ll pay you back for the phone.”

  “It’ll be a wedding gift and besides, it gave Stanley something to do.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very, very much.” She bent forward as though to kiss his cheek, but he turned his head away and she sat back down. Okay, she thought. Friendship. She needed to try to remember that that’s what he wanted.

  “You keep doing nice things for me,” she said. “Flowers and now a telephone. I don’t know how I can repay you.”

  For a moment he didn’t speak. “Did you read my aunt’s will?”

  “No. My mother called and gave me the number of a lawyer. She said he had some spectacularly fabulous news for me and it was going to make me wildly happy.”

  Smiling, Jared looked back at her. “That sounds just like Victoria.”

  There was so much affection in his voice that a wave of what felt very much like jealousy went through Alix. She tried to repress it, but it flashed through her mind that her mother might be the reason Jared Kingsley turned away from her. It’s what Izzy had said when she’d first seen Victoria’s room. But Alix pushed the thought out of her mind.

  “I take it the lawyer didn’t tell you about Valentina,” he said.

  “You mentioned her name before, but I know nothing about her.”

  “My grandfather—” Jared caught himself. “You know the portrait in Aunt Addy’s bedroom? I mean, your bedroom?”

  “Of Captain Caleb? I guess he would be your grandfather, but a little far back.”

  “He’s five greats,” Jared said. “Would you like to hear his story?”

  “Very much so.”

  It was quiet where they were, sitting under the bent tree, the sun shining on the old house site.

  “Valentina Montgomery was an off-islander,” Jared said. “She came here in the early 1800s to visit an old aunt who’d married a Nantucket sea captain. The aunt was a widow and an invalid, and Valentina took care of her.”

  Jared went on to tell that young, handsome Captain Caleb Kingsley had been away when Valentina arrived. He’d been on one of his four voyages to China where he’d made a name for himself by bringing back exquisite goods and selling them for top prices to stores all over the East Coast.

  “He had taste,” Jared said. “That’s what set him apart and made him rich.” He explained that the others who went to China brought back the cheapest things they could find so they’d make the most profit. But Caleb had gone for beauty, and as a result, by the time he was thirty-three he was wealthy. He was the prize catch on an island that had many widows.

  “He and Valentina fell in love and they were going to get married,” Jared said, “but Caleb wanted to go on one last voyage.”

  “Didn’t those trips last for years?” Alix asked.

  “Anywhere from three to seven years.”r />
  “So they agreed to wait until he got back?”

  “Yes.” Jared smiled. “But they didn’t wait for everything. When Caleb left, he didn’t know it, but Valentina was expecting their child.”

  “Oh, my,” Alix said. “What did she do?”

  Jared couldn’t tell Alix that he’d heard this story all his life and no matter how many times his grandfather told it, it was always with passion—and anger.

  “Valentina married Obed Kingsley, Caleb’s cousin. No one knows why for sure, but it was assumed that she did it to give her child the Kingsley name. Or maybe it was so she could stay on the island and raise her child here. Or …”

  “Or what?”

  “Maybe she was blackmailed or threatened in some way. You see, Valentina had the recipe for Kingsley Soap. She’d found a way to use glycerine to make a mild, transparent soap—and this was in a time when lye was used as the base.”

  “Even the thought of that makes my skin hurt,” Alix said.

  “Valentina had been making the soap for a couple of years and she sold it in Obed’s store. After they were married, he began making the soap on a large scale and sending it off-island to be sold. Whatever else he was, he was an excellent businessman.”

  Alix noted the sneer in Jared’s voice; it was as though he were talking of recent events. “He just needed a product to sell,” she said, encouraging Jared to continue. From his tone Alix could tell that the story was leading to tragedy. But then having to marry a man you didn’t love just to give your child a name was already tragic.

  “The soap …?” she began, but then hesitated. Again she thought of her mother’s novel about a soap empire. It had been a clear soap scented with wild jasmine that had started the family on to great wealth. But hadn’t that novel been told from the point of view of a second wife? “What happened to Valentina?”

  “We don’t know,” Jared said. “She gave birth to a son, named him Jared Montgomery Kingsley, and—”

  “He was the first one?”

  “He was,” Jared said.

  “What happened when Captain Caleb returned and found his girl married to his cousin?”

  “Caleb didn’t return. He was in a port in South America with a damaged ship that was going to need months for the repairs, when his brother showed up on another ship.”