True Love

by Jude Deveraux

  The look he gave Alix made her stand up straighter. “Goddesses must envy you,” he whispered.

  His words were flattering and of course untrue, but they made all Alix’s doubts leave her. She set her laptop down and inserted the CD that he’d put on the table. The first tune was a combination of Scottish and Irish reels, with a lot of violins. It was fast-paced but also lyrical.

  Smiling, he held out his hand to her.

  When she took it, an instant warmth went through her. His touch wasn’t as electric or sexual as Jared’s, but it was calming—and invigorating at the same time. Her concerns about the work she needed to do fell away. All that seemed important was this moment and what this man had to tell her.

  Stepping back from her, he bowed, and even while Alix didn’t know the dance he was leading her into, she did seem to know. She curtsied, then turned and walked forward four steps, Caleb beside her. She stopped, turned back toward him, and lifted her hands to touch his.

  “How do I know what to do?” she asked.

  “Past memory,” he said, turning her around once more. “But now is not the time for thought. Just feel, and I will tell you the story. Valentina was extraordinarily beautiful. She had red hair and green eyes, and a waist the width of a man’s hand.”

  They were moving to the music toward the far wall. “She sounds like my mother.”

  “She is exactly like her.”

  “Then she must have caused a stir among the young men on the island.”

  “Oh, yes,” Caleb said in a voice that sounded faraway. “They all made complete fools of themselves when she was near.”

  “Did she and Captain Caleb fall in love immediately?”

  “He did. He didn’t know it then, but he did. As for Valentina, at first she despised him.”

  “Isn’t that always true of Great Romance?” Alix turned full circle, then came to face him.

  “Perhaps to read about, but not to experience. Their meeting came about because the Captain returned from his long voyage earlier than expected.”

  “Just as Izzy and I did,” Alix said. “And if we hadn’t shown up early, I wouldn’t have met Jared.”

  “Are you referring to your sister?”

  Alix laughed. “I can believe Izzy was my sister in another life. I guess that next you’ll be telling me that an alternate me knew Jared.”

  “You made buildings together,” Caleb said. “Many of the houses on this island are yours. You drew them; he built them.”

  Alix found herself laughing again. “What a marvelous prevaricator you are! You must meet my mother. With your plotting and her writing you’d be a perfect match.”

  “We were,” he said.

  “Yes, of course. You couldn’t be anyone other than Captain Caleb. But how could Valentina ever despise you?” Alix couldn’t help flirting with him. If there was ever a man made to flirt with, this was him. His eyes had a soft, bedroom quality, and combined with the beautiful dress, she was beginning to feel like the most desirable woman in the world. Long ago, Alix had found that with a mother like hers, she needed to be smart and talented and accomplished. When it came to pure sex appeal, no one could compete with Victoria. But right now this man was making Alix feel like she was a temptress.

  “You see,” Caleb said, “when the Captain arrived back on Nantucket, he didn’t know who Valentina was. She’d come to the island after he left on a voyage to China, so he hadn’t seen her.” He turned about, then came back to Alix with a look that said he’d been away from her much too long.

  Her face was close to his. He was clean shaven and she could smell his skin. It was salty and oh, so very male.

  A new tune played, this one softer and slower. Caleb held out his arms to her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to slip into them. He led her into a waltz that was so light she wasn’t sure her feet were touching the ground. Around and around they went, higher and higher.

  Alix put her head back and closed her eyes. When she opened them she was glancing down at the window, down at the stacks of artifacts. She and this man seemed high, high up, above the floor. As an architect, she knew it wasn’t possible, the ceiling was too low, but right now she didn’t feel like a businessperson of any type. The beautiful white wedding gown swirled around her body, nearly surrounding the two of them in a soft mist. Within her, she could feel a deep sense of herself as a woman. All the enticing, alluring touches that made her who she was were coming out of her, radiating.

  And this man, this beautiful man, was making it happen.

  Alix let the sensations and feelings seep into her body. The music grew louder, as though there were an orchestra in this vast room. She smelled food and perfume. She heard laughter and people talking. When she looked down, there was light: golden, glowing, and warm. It was candlelight, flickering and radiant, illuminating the flushed and rosy skin of a hundred people.

  Alix seemed able to see beneath the floor. The entire downstairs was awash with light and laughter. “I see it,” she whispered, clasping Caleb’s hand tighter.

  “Who do you see?” he whispered back.

  “My mother! The men are around her. She looks like she does in the mornings before she puts on makeup. I’ve never seen her eyebrows unplucked.”

  “That’s Valentina,” Caleb said softly. “Who else is there?”

  “Many people. That man looks like my father.”

  “He is John Kendricks, a widower and the schoolmaster, but he also built this house while the Captain was away,” Caleb said. “Do you see yourself? Perhaps you’re John’s daughter. There on the window seat.”

  “Oh, yes. The girl with the sketch pad reminds me of myself. What is she drawing?”

  “A house, of course,” Caleb said. “Do you see Parthenia? She would be with your father. They were deeply in love.”

  “There!” Alix said. “Is the pretty woman beside him Parthenia?” The woman was standing to one side, smiling, but not laughing and chatting as the other people were. “She seems very quiet.”

  “She is.”

  “Who is the gray-haired man? He looks like Dr. Huntley.”

  “That’s the Captain’s father,” Caleb said. “He will do anything for his son.”

  Alix closed her eyes again and the music grew louder. Opening her eyes, she smiled at Caleb. “Yesterday I was calculating how much cement to order for a job. Now I’m wearing a beautiful gown and dancing on air. Literally. By the way, where is the Captain?” Still breathless from the dance, she looked for him.

  “You won’t see him down there. He’s just coming home from his long voyage; he felt like he’d been at sea forever. He’s tired and hungry and he wants to see his new house.”

  “So the luscious Captain Caleb was coming home that night?”

  Caleb smiled. “Luscious. I like that word. But this evening he was anything but. As he stepped onto Kingsley Lane he saw his new house lit up—and he didn’t like it. You see, John and Parthenia were getting married that night and half the island was invited. But the Captain didn’t know that. All he saw was that there were a thousand candles, and many carriages and horses outside. The manure was ankle deep.”

  “What a romantic image,” Alix said, laughing. “Did the Captain run the people out?”

  “No, he was never like that. But he didn’t yet want to see anyone, so he sneaked inside and made his way up the stairs to his bedroom. Unfortunately, he found his bed covered with ladies’ cloaks, so he went up to the attic.”

  “To hide away and sulk.”

  “No!” Caleb said, sounding affronted, but then he twirled Alix even harder and gave a little smile. “Perhaps it was so, but for whatever reason, he was there when Valentina came upstairs.”

  “With a young man?” Alix asked.

  “No. She wanted to remove her shoes and be quiet for a moment. She had been danced off her feet.”

  “Was this a romantic meeting?”

  “Hardly,” Caleb said, a smile in his voice. “You see, he didn�
�t know her and from the look of her, he believed it was quite possible that she was a lady of the evening.”

  “It sounds to me like Captain Caleb had just returned from exotic ports, took one look at the gorgeous, voluptuous Valentina, and made a serious pass at her. I don’t think it was his mind that was involved in that first meeting.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, grinning. “I think the schoolmaster’s daughter is too clever. You’ll never get a husband that way.”

  Alix returned his smile. “My mother is also very clever and she got Captain Caleb.”

  His laugh rang out and indeed it was the one Alix remembered so well, so deep, coming from way inside him, rumbling upward like rich, dark, sweet molasses. “I swear I have not laughed so well since you were last here. Now, where was I in my story?”

  “John Kendricks’s daughter was too smart for any man to handle.”

  Caleb smiled. “It is true that on that first night Captain Caleb tried to persuade the beautiful Valentina to kiss him. But that’s all there was.”

  “How much rum was involved?” Alix asked.

  “Measured in gallons or flagons?”

  Alix laughed. “Did Valentina slap him?”

  “No,” Caleb said. “She …”

  Alix looked at him. “Are you blushing?”

  “That is a female condition,” he said. “Men do not blush.”

  “What did Valentina do to the Captain? Who, by the way, might have been a bit tipsy.”

  “She played a trick on him. You see, she pretended to invite him to make love to her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Caleb kept dancing, holding on to Alix, and took his time in answering. “She got him to remove his clothing.”

  “You mean he was naked and she wasn’t?”

  “Yes.” Caleb gave a sheepish grin. “Once the Captain had disrobed entirely, Valentina took his clothing and left the attic. She locked the door rather securely behind her.”

  “Oh?” Alix began to laugh at what she was visualizing. “If the house was new there probably wasn’t much up here, was there?”

  “There was only a half-empty jug of rum.” Caleb’s look seemed to be a combination of remorse and embarrassment. “And it was a cold night.”

  Alix couldn’t repress her laughter. “How did he get out of this room?”

  “The next morning Kendricks heard … well, some fairly strong words coming through the floorboards. It had been very difficult to raise the household after the night’s revelry.”

  “Not to mention that it was the schoolmaster’s wedding night. I don’t mean to laugh at the Captain, but he really did deserve what he got.”

  “He did,” Caleb said. “Although he certainly didn’t think so at the time. When he was finally released from the attic he put on his most impressive uniform and went to Valentina’s washhouse, where she was stirring her big pots of soap. He demanded an apology from her.”

  “Did she give it to him?”

  “She told him to make himself useful and grab a paddle and stir.”

  “Not the way a ship’s captain was used to being treated?”

  “No,” Caleb said, smiling. “Not at all how he was used to being treated.”

  They smiled at each other and kept dancing.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Jared was in the beat-up old truck he kept in Hyannis, driving back from Maine. In the summer it was difficult to get a reservation for a vehicle on the slow boat. What with the sixty thousand or so visitors who came and left the island, and their many vehicles taking up room on the ferry, a lot of Nantucketers kept a car or truck off island.

  Beside him was Jilly Taggert Leighton, just one of the many relatives he’d met over the last few days. There seemed to be hundreds of them!

  There were some, mostly Montgomerys, in the little Maine town that had been founded by their ancestors and he was told of more, Taggerts, who lived in Chandler, Colorado. He saw photos of an enormous house in Colorado built by a robber baron back in the nineteenth century. As far as Jared could tell, the house hadn’t been updated in many years. He didn’t say so, but he very much wanted to get his hands on the place and bring it up to code. He couldn’t imagine how dangerous the electrical probably was.

  As Jared looked at the pictures, he’d imagined Alix’s face when she saw the mansion in Colorado. And he thought of what she’d say when she saw the big house in Maine. Besides the buildings, he wondered which member of the family she’d like the most and who she’d never be close to. Would he and Alix have the same opinions of everything and everyone? Or would they disagree?

  The truth was that Jared had thought of Alix the whole time he was away. And he’d talked about her. He thought maybe that’s what surprised him the most, that he’d spoken of her out loud. Off-island, he’d always been a very private person. His grandfather said the contrast was good. On Nantucket you couldn’t get a girlfriend, break up with one, or even flirt with a girl without half the town knowing about it. Which was one of the many reasons why Jared had only gone out with tourists while at home—and why he’d kept his New York girlfriends in the city.

  But Alix was different. Never in his life had he felt so comfortable, so at ease, with anyone. From fish filleting to designing a house, they just seemed to know how to … well, actually how to live together.

  A couple of times before Jared had lived with women, but each time it had been a disaster. For one thing, all his girlfriends had seemed much more aware of his success than his passion for his craft. He was a famous architect who moved in elite circles, and they wanted to be part of that. They wanted to wear gowns that cost thousands, jewels that cost even more, and go to parties every night of the week. They wanted to be seen with the famous Jared Montgomery, wanted to be associated with him. Jared felt secondary to that man, whom he often thought of as a media creation.

  Over the years he’d tried dating women from different social strata. There was a pretty young woman from Indiana who worked as a receptionist. But she’d been overwhelmed by Jared’s high-flying life and one day he’d found her crying in his apartment. He paid for her ticket home. The women who’d grown up rich were annoyed that Jared could spend so little time with them. Those with ambition tended to use Jared’s contacts as stepping stones on their way to the top.

  Whatever their origins, all the women he’d dated had been far more interested in Jared the Famous than in the Jared the Man. Not one of them had grasped the concept of the work behind what he did. Sheer, huge volumes of work.

  But Alix did. He could hand her the end of a measuring tape and she knew what to do with it. He could talk in shorthand to her and she understood. But work wasn’t all of it, or even the main part. Alix saw him as a man. She saw both sides of him and liked them both.

  “Are you missing her?” Jilly asked from the passenger seat beside him.

  Jared smiled. “Did I make a fool of myself talking about her so much?”

  “Not at all,” Jilly said. “Most of us have been there and the ones who haven’t hope to be someday. Did you tell Alix that we’ll be arriving today?”

  “No. She doesn’t expect me until tomorrow.” He was grinning at the thought of seeing her again. Two days ago he’d gone with Jilly’s older brother Kane and his identical twin grown sons, in search of the stained-glass window for the chapel. At the second store, they’d found the perfect one. Made in the 1870s, it portrayed a knight leaning on his sword and looking wistful. Jared didn’t say so, but the man looked uncannily like his grandfather, Caleb.

  After he’d purchased the window, Jared started to help put it on the back of the truck, but Kane said, “You’re a Montgomery so you better let us do it.” Jared had soon learned about the rivalry between the two families. The big Taggerts said that the taller, thinner Montgomerys were weak and scrawny, while the Montgomerys said the Taggerts had no brains. Of course it was all untrue, but Jared enjoyed the ribbing.

  All in all, he fit in with the family and, yes, he
was more like the Montgomerys. They were the relatives who encouraged him to talk about what he’d designed over the course of his career, and who enjoyed puzzling out how they were related.

  Of the Taggerts, Jared especially liked Kane and Mike, men in their early fifties who had amassed great fortunes—but were as down-to-earth as could be. They were identical twins, so alike Jared couldn’t see a difference between them—but their wives could. And none of their children were fooled.

  Kane’s wife, Cale, was a famous writer and she made everyone laugh with her witty little remarks, some of them quite sarcastic but always right on target. She could nail a situation perfectly in just a few words.

  “So what’s Nantucket really like?” she asked on his second day there. She’d walked out to a point on the Maine coast where he’d been sitting and watching the ocean. As always, she had a notebook in her hand.

  “It’s quiet,” he said. “If you ignore the visitors, that is.” She was small and pretty, her eyes full of curiosity. It was a look he’d often seen on Victoria’s face. Were writers always looking for ideas? he wondered. “And we have lots of ghosts on the island.”

  Her eyes widened.

  He’d also seen that look on Victoria’s face. “Some of the stories of how they came to be ghosts are long and complicated, and quite fascinating.”

  “Oh,” she said, but didn’t seem able to say anything else. As a professional writer she was always on a quest to find more material. Like an alcoholic craved booze, writers were addicted to stories.

  “I better let you get on with your writing.” He nodded toward her notebook as he stood up, but then turned back to look at her. “There’s a house on Kingsley Lane that’s for sale. It’s big and old. It’s called BEYOND TIME because there’s a legend that the ghost in it can take you back to his time.” Jared waved his hand. “But that’s just hearsay. I don’t know if anyone has actually done it. Though I wonder how the rumor got started? But then it’s been around for centuries. I hope to see you at dinner.” He’d walked away, smiling. Unless he missed his guess, that old house was as good as sold.