Lavender Morning

by Jude Deveraux

“Thanks,” she said as she turned toward the path, then looked back at him. “Three twenty-five.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what they charge in New York for super cupcakes. Three dollars and twenty-five cents each.”

  “Of course they do,” he said, his face showing his shock at the price. “All right. I’ll get my brother-in-law to agree to the price. I’ll champion you, but if those cupcakes are awful, you’ll make me look like a fool. And you won’t get another job around town.”

  “I’ll make you proud,” she said as the horn blew again. “My car keys are in the basket.” He nodded, and she took off running.

  9

  JOCELYN RAN THROUGH the meadow to Luke’s truck, which was parked by her car under the oak tree. He didn’t get out and open the door for her, just waited with the motor running. She opened the door of the big green truck, put her foot on the running board, and vaulted in. Luke was pulling away before she got the door closed.

  “Are you angry because you were wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m not angry and I’m not wrong, so what would I be angry about if I were?”

  “About Ramsey not taking me into Williamsburg as you said he would.”

  Luke shrugged. “I guess Tess sent him somewhere else.”

  Jocelyn didn’t say anything because that was too close to the truth. But Ramsey had wanted to tell her some important things, and she was glad they were alone when he told her. All in all, she thought she’d done well at hiding her shock at his words. The lack of money to care for the old house was bad, but not something she couldn’t, somehow, deal with. Surely there were government programs to help with a house that old.

  What bothered her was all the information about Miss Edi. It seemed that every hour she found out something else that wasn’t true. Since she was a child, she’d spent as much time as possible with a woman who taught her everything that was important in life. Jocelyn had seen Miss Edi as the wisest person in the world. But now she was finding out Miss Edi hadn’t been honest with her. She told herself that the woman had every right to keep huge parts of her life private, but it still hurt.

  “Hey!” Luke said softly. “What’s made you frown like that? You and Rams have a fight?”

  “No,” she said as she put her head against the side window and looked out at the road. “Have you ever believed in someone completely, then found out that that person wasn’t at all what you thought?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You find out something about Ramsey?”

  “No, I mean yes. He really cares about people, doesn’t he?”

  Luke gave her a glance as he turned a curve. “I guess so. What does he care about?”

  “Everything. Everyone.” She sat up straighter. “Where are we going?”

  “Plants, remember?”

  “I can’t afford them,” she said before she thought.

  One minute Luke was driving straight ahead, and the next he’d done a U-turn and was heading back the way they came.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you home, then we’re going to sit down, and you’re going to explain what you just said.”

  Ramsey hadn’t said to keep what he’d told her a secret, but Jocelyn felt that it was just an oversight on his part. Whatever had gone on between Miss Edi and his grandfather had been kept quiet for so many years that she didn’t think she should blab it now. “It’s just some legal stuff,” she said. “It’s, uh, probate. It takes a long time to get the money Miss Edi left me to take care of the house, so I have to wait. Meanwhile, I have nothing but what I have in savings, which isn’t much. But Ramsey got me a job at his sister’s tomorrow. I’m going to bake some cupcakes even though I don’t have so much as a baking pan, but if I can make the cupcakes, everything will be fine. I think. I hope.”

  Luke pulled into the driveway of Edilean Manor, turned off the engine, then went around to the other side and opened her door. “Out,” he said when she just sat there. “Unless you want me to carry you, get out of the truck.”

  She got out, went to the front door, then fumbled in her pocket for the key. “The house key’s with my car key, and Ramsey has it.”

  Luke reached across her and opened the door. “Who locks their front door in this town?”

  “But you said—” She didn’t bother to finish as he walked into the kitchen and she followed. He pulled out a chair at the big table and waited until she sat down, then he put a teakettle on the stove to boil.

  “Where’d that come from?” she asked.

  “My mother. I told her you liked tea, so she gave me a box of stuff for you. Okay, start talking.”

  “Probate,” she said. “Ramsey said—”

  “Ramsey said no such thing, and if you don’t stop lying to me, I’m going to start shouting. I can be very loud when I want to be. All those years of sports.”

  “Don’t shout,” she said as she put her head on her hand. “Why are you doing this? I thought we were going to a nursery and…” She trailed off.

  “You look like you got hit by a freight train,” he said as he took the kettle off the burner and poured tea into a pretty teapot that Joce had never seen before. “I want to know what my cousin said to make you react like this.”

  “Nothing that you need to use your right hook on.”

  “Left.”

  “What?”

  “Left hook. I’m not going to punch out Ramsey, but I will give him a piece of my mind. What was he thinking to let you leave looking as though you’d been drained by a vampire?”

  “You’re exaggerating. He just told me some legal stuff and—” His glare cut her off. “Okay, so I didn’t let him see how much his words affected me. In fact, I let him think I was happy. Full of life. Nothing gets ol’ Jocelyn down.”

  “But then you climbed into my truck and you looked like you’d—”

  “I know,” Joce said. “Hit by a freight train. Drained of blood. You sure know how to make a girl feel good.”

  He set the pot in front of her with a matching cup and saucer, then went to the refrigerator to get milk. “So now that we have that settled, tell me what happened.”

  “I can’t. It’s…it’s private.”

  “Everyone knows you’re to get about three million dollars. Is that what’s upset you? Overwhelmed by the money?”

  “Not quite,” she said as she sipped her tea. “This is good. You should have some.”

  “No thanks.” He got a beer out of the refrigerator, then sat down in the chair beside her. “If you weren’t overwhelmed, were you underwhelmed? It wasn’t as much money as you thought it was going to be?”

  “It wasn’t the money!” she nearly shouted. “There is no money to worry about!” She put her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that.

  “Well,” Luke said as he leaned back in the chair. “No money.”

  “Look, I can’t say any more about this. I just need some time to think about everything, and I ask you to please tell no one what I said.”

  “You think I’m going to run out of here and tell the town?” His brows were drawn together almost into a straight line.

  Suddenly, she could take no more. She put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  “Hush,” Luke said as he drew her gently into his arms so her head was on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t. It was what Ramsey told me.”

  “That there is no money? Is that what he told you?”

  “Yes, no,” she said, still crying. “Everything was a lie. I’m finding out that everything I knew about a woman I loved so much was a lie. Who she was, where she came from, even who she loved, it was all a lie. Every word of it. Why did she lie so much? Did she not trust me? I don’t understand.”

  Luke pulled a paper napkin from a holder on the table and handed it to her. Sitting up, she blew her nose as Luke got up. “Mind if I make myself a sandwich? I didn’t have time for lunch.”

  “I’m sorry. I’
m imposing on you. I never meant to do this. When I left Ramsey I felt great, but…”

  “When you saw me, you broke down,” he said, and there was amusement in his voice.

  “It wasn’t like that. Ramsey is…you know, so I didn’t want to fall apart in front of him.”

  “I have no idea what ‘you know’ means. What is Ramsey?”

  “A man I’m interested in,” she said. “In ‘that’ way.”

  “I see,” Luke said. “So when you’re with him you keep your chin up, your eyes dry, and you don’t let him see you with a snotty nose.”

  “Yes,” Jocelyn said, blowing her nose again. “I didn’t know I was feeling so bad until I got away from him. He’s always so nice to me. He carries food around wherever he goes, and he’s always complimenting me. He says I’m funny and smart and that he—” She blew again, only this time harder. “Sorry. What kind of sandwich is that?”

  “Ham and cheese. You want one?”

  “You have any pickles?”

  “I don’t know. It’s your refrigerator.”

  “It’s a magic refrigerator because I have yet to go to a grocery store but it’s always full of food.”

  “I’m sure that’ll end by this week. Everybody in town will be used to you and won’t bother trying to get to know you. Especially not if they know you have no money.”

  “Ha ha,” she said. “You aren’t going to tell, are you?”

  He paused in putting mustard on four slices of bread. “You’re worried that no one will like you if they know you aren’t rich?”

  “I don’t want them to know that their beloved Miss Edi had no money! I don’t want them to think bad about her.”

  “So you don’t care that they know you are poor.” He had his back to her, but she knew he was smiling.

  “No, of course not,” she said as she took the plate with the thick sandwich on it. “This looks great.”

  “If you just had lunch with Ramsey, how come you’re hungry now?”

  “I couldn’t very well stuff myself in front of him, could I?”

  “Shades of Miss Scarlett,” he said under his breath.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The barbecue,” Luke said. “Ashley likes her with a healthy appetite.”

  “Oh, yeah, I think I remember that. This is good. What kind of mustard is that?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Aunt Ellie. I think you should tell me what Ramsey told you and if you even hint that I’m going to tell the world, I’ll punish you as only a gardener can.”

  She smiled at his allusion to one of their first conversations. “Where do I start? Before or after WWII?”

  Luke’s eyes widened. “Interesting. Start before.”

  “Ramsey told me that something terrible happened in 1941, just before we entered the war, that made Alexander McDowell so grateful to Miss Edi that after she retired, he set her up in an expensive house in Boca Raton and let her manage a lot of his money. I’m no financial genius, but even I can see that that’s not the normal thing to do. Besides doing charity work, she used the money to add to my ordinary public school education and to support her lazy brother. So what happened to make him do that?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Luke asked. “This is the first I’ve heard of any of it. Didn’t Rams tell you what Miss Edi did for his grandfather?”

  “He doesn’t know, nor does his father. I think the story went to the grave with the people involved.”

  “What does this story have to do with the money?”

  “Whatever happened, Alex McDowell spent a lot. I can’t imagine why he paid so much. Did he give it freely?”

  “Freely?” Luke asked as he finished his sandwich. “You don’t think Miss Edi was blackmailing him, do you?”

  “It did go through my mind,” she said softly.

  “Well, get the idea out of your devious little brain,” Luke said as he picked up the two empty plates and put them in the sink. “You didn’t know Alex McDowell, but I did. He scared all of us kids half to death and most of the adults. ‘Gruff’ didn’t begin to describe him. He yelled at his employees and kept a tight rein on everything that he had a penny invested in. If somebody had tried to blackmail him, he would have picked him up by his neck and thrown him across the room.”

  “Yet he was married to a woman who looked as angelic as Sara.”

  “She was as sweet as he was sour. No one ever understood the two of them—except that ol’ Alex adored her. Just plain adored her. It was close to worship.”

  “That would do it,” Jocelyn said as she poured herself another cup of tea. It was no longer hot, but it was still good. “If a man adored me, that would go a long way to making me overlook his bad points.”

  “So marry Ramsey,” Luke said. He was at the sink, with his back to her.

  “Don’t you think it’s just an itty bit early to think of something like that? I only met him a few days ago.”

  “You lie to him about how you feel, about what upsets you, even about how much you eat. Sounds like the beginnings of love to me.”

  “I didn’t lie to him!”

  Turning, he looked at her.

  “Okay, so maybe I put on a brave face in front of him, but it wasn’t lying. I like him. He’s everything I ever wanted in a man.”

  “So marry him. He’s rich. Let him support you and this house. Your problems would be solved.”

  “For your information, Ramsey hasn’t come close to asking me to marry him. Besides, if I married him now I’d always be grateful to him. When I got angry at him for something, I’d say nothing because I’d know I have a lifelong obligation to be grateful to him for saving me, so then I’d develop ulcers and probably die young when they all ruptured.”

  Luke took a moment to digest all this information. “I’m glad to see that the idea of marrying my cousin hasn’t crossed your mind.”

  “I haven’t had much time to think about anything. You know what the real irony of all this is? I didn’t expect anything from Miss Edi after her death. Maybe a keepsake, but nothing else. She had a lot of charities, so I assumed everything would go to them. Why did she do this to me?”

  “That’s the most interesting question you’ve asked. She knew she had no money of her own, but she left you an old house that will—trust me on this—fall into decay if money isn’t pumped into it about every six months.”

  “I’m not sure I can think about all this right now. Any minute Ramsey’s sister is going to call and tell me she needs cupcakes and I have to figure out how to make them. Do you think the oven in that thing works?” She nodded toward the ugly white stove against the wall.

  Luke blinked for a few moments as he realized that she wasn’t going to talk about this subject anymore. But that was all right with him, as he had some questions of his own and he needed to work on them by himself. “I have no idea,” he said as he turned the big knob to switch the oven on. “So what do you plan to make?”

  “Chocolate with puréed spinach in it, and before you say a word, Ramsey has already told me what a bad idea he thinks this is. But I’ll make them taste good, don’t worry.”

  “Miss Edi leave you a magic wand?”

  “I wish she had. I told Rams that I’d charge three twenty-five for each cupcake, so I have to live up to that, but I need equipment that I don’t have. Is there a cookware store near here?”

  Luke pulled the oven door open and stuck his hand in. “So far, it’s cold. Why don’t you borrow what you need?”

  “Who’s going to lend me a heavy-duty mixer and pastry tubes?” she asked.

  “Did you forget that the church you went to was Baptist? Baptists love to eat. Whatever you need is in the kitchens of the women in this town. Make a list and I’ll get Mom to find everything for you. Your kitchen can be fully stocked in about an hour and a half.”

  Jocelyn sat at the table, looking at him in wonder. “But I haven’t had the call yet.”

  Luke pulled his cell phone out of the leather pou
ch on his belt and punched a button. “Mom?” he asked. “You think Dad would be willing to help Joce with a bunch of cupcakes?” He paused. “Yeah, I guess so. Sure, I could talk to her. Why don’t you ask Viv?” As he listened, he smiled. “I think she’d like to do that, but she may charge you.” His smile broadened. “Because a scheme like that could get Dad out of your hair for a whole week, that’s why. Okay, but I’ll tell her you said that. Do you want to tell him or do I? Coward! I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He listened some more, then his smile left him. “Yes, I’m behaving myself. You can ask her if you don’t believe me.”

  Luke held the phone at arm’s length toward Jocelyn. “My mom wants to know if I’ve made a pass at you.”

  “Not one man in this town has made a pass at me,” she said loudly. “Not one suggestive word has been said to me. I’ve been fed until I’m bursting, but no passes have been made.”

  Luke looked at Jocelyn for a second, then he put the phone back to his ear. “Beats me,” he said. “Ask Rams. Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes, but don’t say a word to Dad. I’ll tell him everything.” He closed the phone and looked at Jocelyn. “So what was that all about?”

  “Just girl stuff. So what did your mother say?”

  “She already knew about the three twenty-five. I guess Rams told someone at the office because it’s already all over town. Mom said that it was absurd to give a kids’ party in the middle of the week and serve cupcakes like that. She wants to get my father involved and set up a major event and invite half of Williamsburg to it.”

  “Half of—” she said, wide-eyed. “What am I supposed to do? Set up a cupcake store?”

  “If you want to find out about Miss Edi’s life and answer some questions that seem to be tearing you apart, you need to get to know some people around here. I’ll make sure Mom invites some of the old-timers who knew her. Sound like a good idea?”

  “The best,” she said, looking at him in gratitude.

  “I’ll ask you if you still think it’s a good idea after you’ve dealt with my father for a week.”

  “Is he bad?” she asked softly, ready to play therapist to Luke.