They went to Pequot to view the tumbledown farm. Gussy held a heavy old umbrella over Mrs. Hyde’s head for two hours as they walked the grounds in the rain, Mrs. Hyde twitching her nose like a hound, poking into tangled bushes and peering at the overgrown orchard, grumbling about the lack of authentic plantings. An idea began to form in Gussy’s mind, and when she went home that night she pored over the ancient gardening tomes and began to sketch a plan for the kitchen garden and grounds of the homestead, hardly daring to hope it would meet with Mrs. Hyde’s approval.
MARIAN LET GUSSY KNOW that she was peeved about her granddaughter’s frequent absences. It was unseemly for Gussy to be coming home with muddy boots and grimy hands, hobbling with sore muscles, turning down every chance to associate with the nice young men she should be cultivating rather than crab apples and gillyflowers. Gussy smiled vaguely and nodded and went her own way nonetheless. Marian fumed, but decided to give the child her space for the time being. In the end, there was nothing to worry about; Elias Quincy Throckmorton had spoken. This brief freedom of Gussy’s young maidenhood would end soon enough, and then Andrews Lowell and his upstanding family would be there to take over the reins, just as Marian’s dear husband and stern father-in-law had done for the similarly high-spirited girl she’d once been.
THAT WEEK, Gussy’s relationship with Jed ran hot and sometimes lukewarm, but never quite cold. He made it clear that he disliked being held in limbo while she worked up the guts to make her stand to her grandparents; still, she continued to waffle back and forth, unable to commit either way.
Then again, he very much liked the other side of Gussy, what she called the new Gussy. She was vibrant and generous, blossoming with an all-encompassing love of life, completely irrepressible when she got to talking about her job and everything she was learning. She’d wave her arms as, with Percy at her heels, she bounced around Jed’s place wearing nothing but his T-shirt, rattling on like a pair of wind-up joke dentures until he had to laugh at her giddy enthusiasm even if that made her mad. Then she would yell at him and pounce on him and he’d tumble her back into bed and they’d make up in a way that was so addictive he couldn’t wait for their next tiff.
But Gussy was more and more absorbed with the hushhush garden design that apparently involved lots of research among her coveted pile of musty old books. Sometimes she was too busy to meet him in secret at the carriage house no matter what he lured her with, and at those times he began to wonder if he shouldn’t have pushed her so hard, because it seemed to him that she’d gone overboard. Yet when he broached the possibility, she assured him with a kiss that her heart wasn’t set on the Pequot job alone; she’d come to realize that she wanted a little bit of everything, but a lot of him. And she took his hand to lead him to the bedroom, and then he stopped worrying over what would happen when the committee made its decision and Gussy lost out.
11
Right Question, Right Answer, Right Man
THE SHOWDOWN TOOK PLACE in Pequot’s brick town hall, with the collectively stern-faced committee lined up on one side of a long table facing the easels and slide-show screen they’d provided and the mammoth TV and complicated VCR setup the representatives from Haversham & Hopewell had wheeled in. The field had been narrowed to four finalists. Jed had made the cut, along with the slick, ultraprofessional machines of Haversham & Hopewell and an out-of-town group from Bath called Environmentalia. This was no surprise. However, the announcement that Beatrice Hyde’s revitalized business was the fourth finalist certainly came as one. The general feeling was that the firm was getting by strictly on Mrs. Hyde’s local reputation; the others weren’t worrying overmuch about competition from that direction.
Jed’s presentation was scheduled first. He’d prepared a short spiel about the historic use of landscaping, complete with slides. He showed samples of his previous work and then smoothly revealed his ideas on how to renovate the homestead grounds. His plan was plotted carefully, its sweeping vistas and major plantings dovetailing with both the existing orchard and the ongoing restoration of the ramshackle house and outbuildings. Several members of the committee asked questions that he handled easily, although he wasn’t as knowledgeable about authentic seventeenth-century gardens as he might have been.
Jellicoe sat back in his chair, portentously silent, his fingers laced over the waistcoated lump of his abdomen, unmoving except for the occasional twitch of his bushy white walrus mustache and the stealthy swivel of his eyes. Jed noticed that his former boss’s attention was deflected again and again toward the side of the room where the other candidates sat. It didn’t seem like a particularly good sign.
“Very Broadnax Jellicoe,” Gussy whispered from the last row of folding chairs when Jed had finished and gone to join the rest of the waiting finalists. “I’m sure he was impressed.”
Jed glanced over his shoulder. “Thanks, I guess.” Gussy was turned out in a snazzy little cocoa-colored business suit with a tight skirt, her hair in a neat French twist. She looked quite professional except for having a complexion that was as white as a loaf of Wonder Bread. He could feel waves of nervous excitement thrumming off her as they watched the slick presentations of the two bigger firms. Environmentalia focused on creating a wildlife habitat. H&H’s featured an MTV-style videotape and music in stereo, but perhaps a wee lack of substance. Beatrice Hyde grunted and murmured advice in Gussy’s ear.
As Isaac Hopewell was concluding what had become a nasty diatribe on the failings of various local projects, Jed remembered something and patted the inside pocket of his suit coat. He took out a pair of round, wire-rimmed glasses and turned to give them to Gussy. She stared at his offering. “Your glasses,” he whispered.
“I have my glasses,” she said, rummaging in her tiny needlepoint purse. “Well, I have them at home.”
“You haven’t been wearing them lately.”
She rubbed her forehead absently. “No. They give me headaches.”
Smiling, Jed extended the pair he held. “Try these.”
“I’ve got my contacts in,” she said, but took the glasses after a cautious glance at the committee members. They were shuffling papers and talking among themselves, so she held the glasses up and peered through them, squinting experimentally. “But…these are my glasses!” Mrs. Hyde poked at Gussy’s foot with her walking stick, hushing her. “How did this happen?” she whispered to Jed, waggling the eyeglasses at him.
“You grabbed the wrong pair off the coffee table. I’ve been meaning to exchange them with you, but somehow I kept getting distracted.” He grinned; she lowered her eyes modestly, although she was grinning, too. “You haven’t noticed the difference in prescriptions?”
“I thought…” Biting her lip, Gussy tucked the wire spectacles away in her purse. “Never mind what I thought.”
“Miss Fairchild!” Jellicoe’s voice boomed her name like a foghorn. It was clearly not the first time he’d called for her.
Gussy’s head jerked. “Oh, gosh,” she said softly. She cleared her throat. “Pardon me, sir.” She shot Jed a dirty look, as though she suspected him of purposely distracting her, and began gathering her small pile of folders, sketches and colored mechanicals. “Just a moment, Jelli—uh, Mr. Jellicoe. Sir.”
“By all means, take your time, Miss Fairchild,” he said with dry sarcasm. Beatrice Hyde stabbed her walking stick at the floor, her large, knobby hand clenched on its bronze cap as she fixed Jellicoe with a glare. He blinked and ran a blunt fingertip beneath the feathery ends of his mustache.
Jed sat back, surprised that Gussy was handling the presentation even though it was obvious that she’d done the donkey’s share of the preparation work. As far as he knew, she had no professional experience, and most likely little stage presence.
Scratch that, he thought, watching closely as she set her first simple color-pencil garden layout on the easel and gave each member of the committee a green file folder and a bright smile. She didn’t have the polish of Environmentalia or the electroni
cs of H&H backing her up, but she did have schoolgirl enthusiasm. Although her nervousness clearly showed, so did her naive belief that neither the politics of the selection process nor the sophistication of the big firms could deter the committee from choosing the best design, which she clearly and wholeheartedly believed was hers.
She stumbled at first, searching for words and dropping one of her drawings. As she worked her way into the presentation—it involved strict adherence to the restoration of an heirloom garden, but Jed wasn’t paying that much attention at the moment—she loosened up and her words began to flow with the kind of infectious spirit she’d had when she’d bopped around his bedroom talking off-thecuff about her new job and Mrs. Hyde.
Sunlight spilled through the high, arched windows and seemed to coalesce on Gussy’s form in a dazzle of brilliance. Her hips swayed with a dancer’s grace as she turned to the easel, pointing, gesturing, flipping through the mechanicals. The elegant upsweep of her hair and the purity of her profile were limned by the sparkling golden light when she lifted her chin and nodded solemnly at Jellicoe. His beefy face bore a trace of a smile in response. She clasped her hands at the small of her back and leaned forward, eager to answer the committee’s questions, fervid about her design, frank about what she didn’t know. Jed found her to be heartbreakingly lovely.
And more. As her words had sunk into his stunned brain, he’d gradually realized that her garden design was the best. It wasn’t so grand that it would take years to fully mature, as his own admittedly would; it wasn’t as prohibitively expensive as the Haversham & Hopewell design. With her intimate knowledge of the way that small-town economics worked, she’d developed a tiered plan that could be expanded as funds were raised. She’d drawn up detailed schedules and instructions for volunteers. There were lists of the seventeenth-century culinary and medicinal plants and herbs she proposed using, all documented and footnoted.
By the tone of the committee’s questions, Jed guessed that they were as impressed as he. Even Jellicoe had straightened up and opened the green folder, stroking his mustache as he asked Gussy for further specifics. Beatrice Hyde was smugly confident. The startled look on Isaac Hopewell’s vulpine face was priceless.
Jed leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and watched as Gussy gathered her things, nodded at the committee and walked toward him, her expression both joyous and greatly relieved that the presentation was over. His feelings for her expanded beyond what he thought was possible. Even if she could never bring herself to stand up to her family, today he’d seen that she did have an inner core of courage. She was genuine, strong and sincere—all that he’d ever wished for.
The garden competition paled in comparison. It didn’t matter to him what the committee decided, which firm succeeded or failed.
Gussy had already triumphed. And in doing so, she had won his heart—should she decide to keep it.
ONLY SUCH AN OVERWHELMING cacophony of honking could’ve torn Gussy away from her place beside the telephone, where she was waiting for word from the Pequot Heritage Committee. Grandmother Throckmorton looked up from her needlepoint, tugging at the threaded needle in irritation. “What in the world?”
“I’ll go see.” Gussy reached the front hall at the same time as Thwaite. She tipped up her chin to confront him frostily, still unsure about his discretion regarding the incident with Jed, but she’d figured out that the only thing the old butler respected was autocracy. She knew herself that it was difficult to adjust otherwise in this household, so it must be especially so for Thwaite after working for Elias Throckmorton for fifty years.
Thwaite opened the door. Gussy stepped past it and screamed.
She bounded down the steps, her arms open. “April! Tony! Mother! Father!”
With one last blast of the horn, April leaped from the rolling white convertible and threw her arms around Gussy. “Baby sister,” she crowed. “You’re all grown up!”
Gussy laughed. Although only seven weeks had passed since they’d all been together at April’s wedding, Gussy did indeed feel that she’d grown up in that time. But she hadn’t thought it showed.
“Look at you,” she said, automatically deflecting the attention from herself. “Glamour-puss.” April looked like a Hollywood starlet in a strapless pink sheath dress and sleek designer sunglasses. A long chiffon scarf was wrapped around her head and neck, the loose ends left to trail down her back. She was suntanned to a nut-brown hue that was only a few shades lighter than the color of her new husband’s skin.
Tony Farentino came around the car, handsome and casual in loose tan slacks and loafers, his shirt blinding white against the dark of his skin and blue-black hair. April slipped her arm around his waist. “You remember my sister, Gussy, don’t you, darling? Oh—and here’s Grandmother!”
After exchanging quick hellos with Tony, Gussy turned to her parents, who were climbing out of their more conservative dark green rental car. “Mère,” she said, using the language she knew her petite mother, a devout Francophile, preferred. Gussy had maintained a few words of boarding-school French just for these occasions.
Nathalie Fairchild held her youngest daughter by the elbows, kissing both cheeks. “April was right, chérie. You’re ‘all grown up.’” Her laugh tinkled like wind chimes. “Philip, we’ve been away too long. Do look at what has happened to our little girl.”
“She had to do it sometime.” Gussy’s tall, silver-haired father clasped her in a robust hug. “We’ve missed you like the dickens, Gussy, baby.”
Nathalie tapped Gussy’s nose. “Alas, no more bébé. I’m so glad I listened to Mother and picked out the appropriate birthday present for such an adult mademoiselle.”
Gussy’s father kissed her cheek. “And where is the lucky man—”
Nathalie hushed Philip and went to greet Marian; Gussy blinked, startled. What had Grandmother been telling them? Was she so certain that Gussy would marry at her and Great-grandfather’s direction? Certain enough to announce the engagement in advance?
Suddenly April let out an undignified hoot and skipped up the steps to hug Godfrey, who’d appeared in the doorway, scowling and hulking with a red bandanna tied around his bald head, an apron over his bulging bare chest and studded leather pants. Nathalie and Philip looked taken aback for a moment, but recovered quickly and continued on inside with Tony and Marian, laughing, chattering about their most recent trip to Morocco, exotic names like Rabat and Marrakech and Casablanca spilling like gems from their treasure chest of adventure.
Gussy paused under the portico. This was normally when she started to feel overwhelmed, insignificant, left out. She still did, a little. But her new sense of confidence was swelling. She, too, had tales to tell, adventures to relate, minor and provincial though they might seem to such sophisticated world travelers.
Even better, the secret of Jed was lodged firmly in her heart. It was her own special gem, polished by love, warmly glowing with the deep ruby red of passion and the luster of rock-hard commitment. All she had to do now was to reveal it to the world.
APRIL SEQUESTERED GUSSY up in her bedroom as soon as possible. The entire family had already heard about the job with Beatrice Hyde and the Pequot gardening competition, but April knew there was more reason than that to account for this new, adult Gussy. “Give me the scoop, baby sister,” she said eagerly, sitting cross-legged beneath the chintz canopy. “I want to know everything.”
Gussy looked at April’s buttercup hair and clear hazel eyes, seeing beneath the surface to the easy sense of contentment that hadn’t been there before, especially during the years when April was pulling off her frantic adolescent stunts. “Tell me about your honeymoon first,” Gussy coaxed. “I think marriage agrees with you?”
“This time around,” April said with a smug curve of a smile. She and Tony had decided to take a leisurely monthlong cruise of the Greek Islands before going on to his archaeological dig in Guatemala. “I can’t begin to tell you…” Clutching her knees, she shivered deliciousl
y, then considered Gussy’s new, grown-up face. “But I don’t think I have to. I believe you already know.”
Gussy turned pink.
“Who is he?” April demanded. “Not that stuffy Andrews Lowell, as Grandmother insists. It can’t be.”
Gussy murmured negatively, her lips pressed together.
“Billy Tuttle? Peter Gilmore? Erik Huggins? Michael Stern?” April laughed and threw out names indiscriminately, making Gussy shake her head as vigorously as Percy after a swim in the ocean. “Edward Peasport III? Vito Carlucci? Tink Padgett? Godfrey?” Her eyes danced. “Omigosh—not Thwaite?”
“Of course not!”
“Someone new then? Someone Grandmother would consider scandalous?” April pursed her lips. “A carnival roustabout? The golf pro? The delivery boy, the gardener, Great-grandfather’s masseuse?” She stopped at the suddenly stricken look on her sister’s face.
Gussy clapped her hands over her eyes and fell flat on the bed. “His name is Jed Kelley. He’s the new gardener.”
April was silent for a moment before she touched Gussy’s leg consolingly in acknowledgment of their grandparents’ certain disapproval. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Gussy muttered. “Wow.”
“How serious is it?”
Gussy smiled to herself. “Do you remember how you told me about you and Tony, the time you invited him over for a special dinner, and had champagne, and then you…um, you know…”
“Ah, yes,” April said. “The grand seduction, I called it.” She also smiled to herself.
The Amorous Heiress Page 15