"For once she didn't suspect something was up," Laura said with a sigh as she came back into the den after delivering Jessica next door.
"I don't want her ever to know the rest of my story," Priscilla said from the doorway.
Carter took a seat next to Laura on the sofa. Priscilla, appearing slightly pale, but otherwise okay, lifted the painting and looked at it—a sad smile hovering around her mouth. "I don't know why I had such a severe reaction to seeing Randall after all this time," she murmured. "I thought I'd forgiven him. But evidently, resentment was still rankling inside me."
"You thought you'd forgiven him for what?" Laura asked.
Priscilla stood very straight and gazed at her, her green eyes misting over. "For killing me," she said.
Both Laura and Carter stared at her in absolutely stunned silence. Laura's hand found his and gripped it tightly. He returned the pressure.
Apparently quite satisfied by the impact of her statement, Priscilla seated herself in the armchair opposite the sofa and produced another sad smile.
"Randall was the burglar?"
Laura's voice sounded choked. Carter wasn't sure he had a voice.
"There never was a burglar," Priscilla said. "After he shot me, Randall disposed of my jewelry, broke a window, then left. Two days later, he came back and supposedly discovered my body." She shook her head. "That's why I was so upset when I read the newspapers you brought—all that nonsense about him being so distraught."
"Why did he kill you?" Laura asked.
Priscilla's eyes took on a faraway look, as though she had transported herself back into her past. "Randall and I had each flaunted our 'friends' remember? But Thomasina was a cheap woman, flinging herself at Randall even before her husband died. I was really angry when he took up with her. And he wanted a divorce—can you imagine that? What would our friends have said? People of our station in life did not get divorced."
She sighed. "That was a silly thing to say. I wouldn't have objected to a divorce if it had been anyone else. By that time I had no love left for Randall. And I had consoled myself often enough with other men. But Randall wanted a divorce so he could marry Thomasina. He wanted me to move out of this house, my house, so that he could bring her to live in it."
"What happened, Priscilla?" Carter asked softly.
"He came home unexpectedly from work," she said. "I had been… entertaining a friend."
"Peter Cranston?" Carter suggested.
Her face softened. "Dear Peter. I did discover one thing, Laura, which I will pass on to you. Just because one man lets you down, that doesn't mean all men will. Peter was…wonderful and extremely charming." She fixed Laura with her stern green gaze. "Randall was not at all charming. There is nothing worse, Laura, than a serious-minded man without one iota of charm. Especially when you find out he never loved you."
She sighed. "I'm sorry. I was telling you Peter had been visiting me. But on that particular day, he couldn't stay. He had a meeting in Port Townsend. Something to do with the acquisition of land." She inclined her head to one side. "I've often wondered what would have transpired if he had stayed. Would he have prevented Randall from shooting me, or would he have been killed, also? I think I am glad he did not stay. I would not have wanted to be responsible for his death."
She gave a little shiver that was echoed by Laura. Slipping his hand free, Carter put an arm around Laura's shoulders and she leaned against him, seeming glad of the closeness.
"Randall came home…" he prompted.
Priscilla nodded. "After Peter left, I went out for a short walk. On my return, I picked a few roses. I brought them in the house, arranged them in a vase and took them up to my bedroom." She glanced at Laura. "Jessica's bedroom now. Once Carter's. Still my favorite room. I heard someone moving about in Randall's bedroom. I was quite nervous, but when I called out, Randall answered. I went along the hall to ask why he was home two days earlier than he'd planned. He was sitting on his bed. In that room, Laura," she added, with another shiver. "The one with the awful wallpaper. I had refused to enter it since our wedding night, when he told me he loved only Alice…and could never love another. He told me Thomasina had brought him home in her carriage because he wanted to surprise me."
She arched her eyebrows, her mouth turning down at the corners. "It didn't take much imagination to realize he'd hoped to catch me with Peter. I accused him of this—oh, how we loved to accuse each other. I pretended to be angered by his suspicions, mostly to cover up my relief that Peter had already left. And then, he stood up and shouted at me that he couldn't stand me anymore. He had to marry Thomasina and bring her to live in his home."
She looked down at her hands, clasped in front of her, then shook her head sadly. "I shouted back at him, of course. I always shouted back. I said it was my house—my home. I said I would never give him a divorce and I would never leave my house."
She looked at both of them, her eyes luminous. "I was still shouting never, never, never, when he drew the gun from his coat pocket and shot me."
Laura stood up and went to kneel in front of Priscilla, putting her arms around her. "I'm so sorry," she said.
"Me, too," Carter added.
Priscilla smiled gently at him, then patted Laura's head. "It was all a long, long time ago," she said. Then she laughed shortly. "Do you remember?" she asked Laura. "I told you to be careful about making vows. That's why I'm still here, you see, because I vowed I would never leave. I was never able to leave. It was all so foolish. If I hadn't made such a vow, if I had given Randall a divorce, I could have married Peter and lived happily ever after. That's why I don't hate Randall, Laura—it was my own stubbornness, my own stupidity that ruined my life."
She laughed again. "It took me a long time to learn that. I was here throughout their marriage, Randall's and Thomasina's." She made a face. "I must say I made them fairly miserable at first. But then I saw that they were making each other miserable, so I stopped, at least until Randall died."
Her smile was sheepish now. "I started again when Thomasina was left alone. It seemed she wasn't going to move out and I wasn't about to let her stay on. It was quite a battle of wills for a while, but she gave in eventually. And she had the better of me in the end—she sold everything I held dear. There was nothing I could do to stop her."
She shook her head. "There now," she said with an air of discovery. "I feel much better. I've never been able to tell anyone about it before."
"You knew that Randall had died in an accident?" Carter asked.
She nodded. "I did wonder if somebody's husband hadn't arranged that accident," she said. "Judging by the rows he and Thomasina had, he was back to his old ways soon after the wedding." She looked very solemn. "The manner of his death seemed just," she concluded.
Laura hugged her again, then stood up. "Thank you for telling us," she said.
"I'll make sure that painting is destroyed," Carter said.
Priscilla shook her head, standing herself. "Let it hang in your museum. It's a part of local history. Looking at it, some young woman might decide not to marry a man until she's quite sure he's the right one for her." She sighed. "Just so I don't have to look at it again."
"Never again," Laura said. Then she smiled. "This might be a good time to tell you I'm going to turn The Willows into a bed-and-breakfast inn, Priscilla. You'll have friends here as long as I'm alive—and I'm sure Jessica will take over after that."
Priscilla's eyes glowed. She put her arms around Laura, hugged her gently, then said, "Now I think I shall make myself scarce." A little of her usual mischief showed in the glance she gave Carter. "I've an idea Carter didn't dress up as Abe Lincoln in order to impress the neighbors." With that she began disappearing and was soon gone.
Laura sank down on the chair Priscilla had vacated and looked at Carter. "Wow, that was quite a story."
He nodded, then those eyebrows of his slanted up in their puckish way. "I hope you took to heart all that Priscilla said about men who lack charm
."
"I did. Including the bit about women who are too stubborn for their own good. And the danger of making vows." She produced a smile of her own. "I think I'd pretty well decided all that for myself already, Carter. It just seemed as if you weren't quite ready to—"
"I haven't yet had a chance to tell you my story, Laura," he interrupted.
She found that her heart was suddenly accelerating. He looked so very serious all of a sudden. "Lay it on me," she said, seeking refuge from anxiety in humor.
He shook his head. "I want Jessica to be here."
"Oh." He could hardly have anything personal in mind, then. Her heartbeat slowed and she felt a sinking sensation. "I'll go get her," she said.
When she and Jessica returned, Carter gestured Jessica over to sit beside him. With that same solemn expression, he said, "I have something to tell your mother, then I have a question to ask you. Is that okay?"
"Does it have something to do with you dressing up as Abraham Lincoln?" Jessica asked, pulling on her right earlobe.
"It does."
"Okay," she said, and folded her hands in her lap.
He looked at Laura. He was very solemn, his eyes darkened to the color of very old brandy. Her knees were about to give out, she decided. Obviously he was going to explain to both of them that he wasn't ever going to see them again. Once again, she sank down in the chair.
"When I offered to buy this house, I thought I wanted it because of the feeling of contentment that came over me each time I was in it. It was so homelike. And I'd never really had a home. When you told me I couldn't have it, I was devastated. It was as if I'd had a glimpse of Eden and then you had slammed the door. I didn't behave very well, I'm afraid. I was in shock. I didn't sleep at all that night, and sometime in the middle of the night, I had a realization that shocked me even more."
His eyebrows slanted up in the puckish way they had. "To be perfectly honest, I went into a blue funk. And then I went to work and read the letter from my friend in Boston and next thing I knew I was on the plane. Obviously I was taking the coward's way out, refusing to face the realization I'd had. I couldn't bring myself to look at it straight on, but while I was gone, I kept taking little sideways glances at it, and the more I did that, the more it didn't seem such a shocking thing to consider."
He put an arm around Jessica and she snuggled up against him. She was frowning mightily, obviously unable to take in everything he was saying. Laura, on the other hand, was quite sure she knew what he was leading up to—there was a singing in her veins now that definitely foreshadowed happiness.
His dark eyes held hers. "I wore my Lincoln getup to convince you that I am, after all, a very serious-minded sort of guy," he said.
She could feel a smile wanting to break out on her face, but she wasn't ready to let him know she had guessed what he was up to. He'd obviously worked on this scenario and she didn't want to do anything to spoil it. "I recognize there are times when I'm as much a silver-tongued rogue as Sly," he added solemnly. "But I can promise you, Laura, that if you agree to my proposition, I will save all silver utterances for your ears."
"Proposition?" she queried. A proposition sounded more sexual than matrimonial. Had she been wrong in her assumptions? A little chill spiraled through her body.
But then he said, "I discovered in the middle of that night of reckoning that it wasn't the house I felt shut out of. I remembered what it felt like watching you cook, what it felt like to hold you, the warm fuzzies it gave me when Jess put her hand on my knee, how relieved I was when Priscilla showed up after her absence. It wasn't the house I wanted— or at least not just the house—it was the whole package. Laura, Jessica, Priscilla."
"Me?" Jessica said, turning pink with pleasure.
"You are a very important part of the package," Carter said. He looked down at her with such love in his eyes that Laura had to bite down hard on her lower lip to stop the prickling that started behind her eyelids.
"Which brings me to my question for you," he continued. "I know that you loved your daddy very much, and I will never try to take his place in your heart. And I know that a while back you thought it would be pretty dumb of your mom to marry me. But I think you and I got a little closer since then. How would you feel if things work out the way I'm hoping they'll work out, which would mean I'd be hanging around here a lot more."
Jessica looked at him solemnly. "I'd feel good," she said.
Obviously Carter's convoluted sentences had made more sense to Jessica than they had to her. Though Laura had clearly heard the word marry in there.
"What do you mean, hanging around a lot more?" Jessica asked.
Still looking down at her, he held up a hand, palm outward, evidently asking for patience. "You are quite sure?" he asked.
Kneeling on the sofa, Jessica put her arms around his neck and hugged him. "You can come to my house as much as you want," she said.
"It's going to get a little more complicated than that," he said, then murmured something in her ear.
When he was done, she smiled at him and nodded, then she whispered a question and he answered it, apparently to her satisfaction. "O-kay," she said, with very positive emphasis.
He grinned at her. "I have to talk to your mom now, if you'll excuse me."
Jessica scrambled down with a pleased expression on her face. She always had appreciated being treated like a grownup.
Carter stood up and approached Laura's chair. Holding out a hand, he helped her to her feet and put his hands on her shoulders. "This is a very serious-minded person telling you I love you," he said.
Laura let out her breath on a long sigh that seemed to take every negative feeling she'd ever felt out with it. Her whole body seemed suddenly suffused with warmth and wonder and confidence. "I love you," she said.
He let out a sigh of his own. Then his eyebrows slanted up. "So how would you feel about me hanging around here more?"
"I think I could bear it."
His devilish smile danced around his mouth. "As I told my friend Jess," he said, with a nod to her that brought a wide grin in response, "I have this revolutionary idea—at least it's revolutionary for a Kincaid male—that maybe you wouldn't mind marrying me and letting me come here to live. Together with Jessica and Priscilla…"
"And Max and Uncle Sly," Jessica shouted.
So that was the question he'd answered.
He looked a little uncomfortable. "I promised Sly last night that he'd always have a home with me. Is that going to be a problem?"
Laura hesitated. "We had a visit from Sly a little earlier. Right now he's off at a restaurant in town, squaring things away with Dorothy."
Carter's relief was obvious, but he was still waiting for an answer to his question. Laura pretended to consider the matter seriously. "He and Priscilla would get along well, I expect. He did say she was the ideal woman. They'd be terrific company for each other. And I believe he told me once he was a magnificent cook. It occurs to me that once the bed-and-breakfast gets going, I'm going to need help in the kitchen."
Carter smiled. That was some kind of smile he had, she thought, as she had thought so many times before.
"As for Max," she continued. "Now that we're going to be settled, Jessica and I could probably handle a dog. A guard dog would give our guests a feeling of security."
"Yay!" Jessica cheered.
Carter's hands cupped Laura's face, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones. "I guess I don't have as much to offer as Sly and Max," he said softly. "There's not much I could do for our guests, except those few chores that require brute male strength."
"There's one other thing you could do," Laura murmured, letting all her love for him show through and seeing it reflected back at her in his smile. "You could be charming. You're very good at being charming and I've discovered I love being charmed. I expect our guests would, too."
He laughed again, and then his lips claimed hers. His mouth would always excite her, she felt sure. Her arms moved around him just as
his arms tightened around her.
"Was that a yes?" he asked.
"It was," she said with a happy sigh. Then it was her turn to laugh. "This is going to be one unconventional family— a man, a woman, a child and a dog, plus a ghost and a gambler."
"Sounds like a wonderful family to me," a disembodied voice said.
The room was suddenly shot through with rainbow light. A mistiness on the sofa next to Jessica gradually resolved itself into the figure of a plump young woman in jade green, with ostrich feathers in her hat and black buttoned boots on her feet. Taking hold of Jessica's hand, Priscilla smiled at Laura and Carter, looking as smug as though she were responsible for this whole situation.
Which, come to think of it, she was.
MEG CHITTENDEN
When the Spirit Is Willing Page 26