Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances

by Dorothy Fletcher

At Christmas, they would trim a tree together, and exchange presents, two people in love, and see out the seasons in this fine old house. And, as it had all those years ago, her aunt’s voice seemed to speak to her, warm and friendly and enthusiastic. “Well, then, here you are, Margo, everything set for you, just what I would have wanted. You must grow up, you know, you’re no longer a child, and if you want to be a good wife you must find wisdom. You will have patience, that’s the secret of it all, Margo, my dearly beloved … patience … patience.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “You are not to think about it,” John says, getting out of bed as he sees her standing at the window, restless in the night “I forbid you to think about it.”

  But she will. In time even that terrible memory will fade. Not entirely, for it will always be there, in her mind, the exquisite face unrecognizable, the dewy eyes popping, the hair like seaweed, the arms and legs swollen stumps: It could have been me, Margo thinks.

  “Darling, come back to bed.”

  She goes back to bed, holding him, for in the morning there will be a tour, and they will eat a hasty breakfast, after which she will follow him, listening. “In the year 1659, a band of English pioneers, following the lordly Hudson upstream in search of fertile lands, paused when they reached a place where the river seems to linger to embrace the Sterling intervale, before it breaks through Mount Tom and Michford and flows to the sea …”

  The tourists, from every part of New York State, follow him, murmuring, touching with light and reverent fingers, the artifacts of another age. The House on the Hill, beautiful and timeless, stands on its summit, the sun flaming through its windows, making them golden and glorious, and the mansard roof, innocent of any television antenna, is outlined against the blue upstate sky, and the lilac bushes, fragrant and purple, blossom beside the Georgian doorway. And a man named John Michaels shows visitors through the house.

  They go off, in buses, and John reaches for his wife’s hand. “Well, how did I do today?” he asks.

  “Very good. Have I told you, lately, that I’m madly in love with you?”

  “Are you, darling?”

  They don’t need to talk it over. They go upstairs, to the master bedroom, to hold each other. Pompey calls up after an hour. “Dinner soon,” his voice says. “Last call for dinner.”

  And the trees shiver in the breeze, the bushes quiver with life, the House on the Hill stands fast, a bridge between past and present.

  Yes, and there was a whole life ahead.

  And because she was New England bred, she remembers the lines. She gets up, after kissing her young husband, and remembers the lines. There is a smell of asparagus and pork, and she remembers the lines. John gets up too, and they rock together, so in love, so in love. And she remembers the lines. They say, out of habit now, “Darling, darling.”

  And she remembers the lines.

  A woman died, and left, part and parcel, a house with memories, a house whose beginnings started two centuries ago. She thinks of that, and remembers the lines. They are now part of her very being.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep …”

  This edition published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

  www.crimsonromance.com

  Copyright © 1973 by Dorothy Fletcher

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-7194-5

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7194-7

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-7193-7

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7193-0

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © 123rf.com; istockphoto.com/Pesky Monkey

  Shadow on Long Island

  Dorothy Fletcher

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  Copyright

  1.

  It was almost noon when I finished my grocery shopping and headed for Newton Lane and the Cheese Cupboard. I crossed Main Street and suddenly caught sight of myself in the mirrored panel of a store front. I paused for a brief moment to take a second look and then went on.

  I had seen something I liked. I had seen the summer Jan Stewart, the country Jan. The city Jan Stewart was “dressed,” worldly, brisk, competent and reasonably ambitious. She wouldn’t have a thread dangling, or a loose button, nor would she be seen dead on the streets of Manhattan as casually put together as that girl just glimpsed in a window….

  A girl with the beginnings of a sunburn, hair still damp from an early morning swim, and a big, floppy, carelessly worn hat. A tall girl with an unpressed Mexican blouse loosely floating and legs cased in old and faded jeans.

  We were alter egos, those two Jans, split almost to the point of schizophrenia. But that’s what civilization has done for us — or a good many of us — in this far from best of all possible worlds: we live in sections, so to speak. Especially women, who have succeeded in convincing many now that it’s their privilege and right to enjoy themselves, in the market place, as it were (just like men) instead of remaining Arab wives, supported from the altar to the grave.

  Meanwhile there was that other part of me that remembered my mother’s kind of life. Comfortable, protected, feminine. A woman outside the fray. It had almost been my kind of life, too. I had been engaged, with a marriage set for June (of all trite months) and I had thought to leave the business world, raise a family, drive a man to the station, the kids to school.

  And join the local PTA.

  Alas for fond dreams.

  There were many other women about, and my fiancé, Ted Lassiter, had discovered it belatedly. One of the others had, unhappily for me, apparently surpassed me in ways essential to his happiness and well being.

  It had come as a very rude shock.

  I wasn’t left waiting at the church, but it had come close to that. We were, in fact, addressing wedding invitations when the final confrontation came.

  “God, I’m so damned sorry,” Ted had said miserably.

  He certainly looked it. He was perspiring, mopping his forehead, and his eyes were bleak.

  So, I am quite sure, were mine.

  “Better now than later,” I said gamely. What I wanted to do was bash him over the head. And then drop out of sight forever.

  I got over it … somehow. Nothing was forever: I was wryly amused at my mother’s timeworn phrase … “this too shall pass” … meant to inspirit. They were words used earlier to help me over tough spots like difficult exams or broken dates.

  But things like rapture and seemingly unmarred bliss passed, too, it seemed, and mother never used that phrase any more. Obviously she now saw the irony of it.

  “I’ll have a half pound of the cheddar,” I said to the man helping me.

  He said, “All you city folk like this kind,” and cut the wedge.

  It had pistachio nuts in it, and I was mad for it.

  It was expensive, as the rest of my purchases had been. The man gave me my change (what there was of it) and said gallantly that it was always a pleasure doing business with a pretty girl.

&nbs
p; I left the store and thought about having lunch somewhere, but decided against it as a further expenditure. I would make myself a sandwich when I got home. I started back to my car, laden with parcels and looking into shop windows.

  I was renting a small house in East Hampton for the summer. East Hampton has become a little bit too precious, a little bit too “in” for my taste, but I wasn’t complaining. The wall to wall celebrities had nothing to do with my tenure there, and the Maidstone Club was not my territory at that point. Chauffeured Rolls and Bentleys rubbed fenders with more modest Volvos and Chevvies on the village streets, attesting, at any rate, to the fact that lesser lights managed to give the famed and fashionable a run for their money, though the hard-working clerks and typists who were part of the milling throng might have to subsist on beefburger meals all winter in order to spend their holidays on these chic shores.

  That had nothing to do with me.

  I was here because of Caroline Lestrange.

  From the center of town to the Lestrange estate was a ten-minute drive.

  As you came close you smelled the sea, inhaled the salt damp of it, felt the shore come to greet you. It was good to return to that, and any vague depression I had felt earlier while recalling my not so distant romantic disaster vanished in a trice.

  I turned my Triumph into the little grass-grown lane at the very edge of the Lestrange acres, saw my whitewashed cottage come into view, idled the motor for a minute or two in order to feast my eyes on it and felt delight flow through me.

  It seemed inordinately small from this vantage point, but was not so wee inside. The ell didn’t show from the road, but the ell, which faced the back, and the cliff down to the water, offered a grand sweep of sea and sky. Just outside that was a small stone patio, with the bright yellow barbecue grill I’d bought as soon as I’d known I was going to spend long summer days here.

  It was just what the doctor ordered. It was a far cry from the shanty at Sea Cliff I had rented last year. This was a marvel of perfection, all five rooms of it, and I had made up my mind to buy it. That was, if the owner, Caroline Lestrange, would agree to a sale. It was, admittedly, a very large if. Such a strange, erratic and aristocratic old woman would not be easy to dicker with.

  Yet in my mind the cottage was already mine. I could picture the deed drawn up, with all its legal terminology, and had begun envisioning Thanksgivings and perhaps Christmases spent here. A turkey in the oven …

  It was a Friday, and next week was the Fourth of July, with Monday as an extra day, making a four-day span away from New York.

  My week-ends on the Island would be long ones at any rate, as I was spacing my vacation, rather than taking all three weeks of it in one solid block. This would give me five generous week-ends, plus the one on the Fourth.

  And then the last two weeks of August would be entirely my own.

  On this particular week-end, I had been eager to ready things in the cottage for the summer, and had taken the extra day, plus a couple of hours on the previous one. I’d driven down in the late afternoon on Thursday, arriving at East Hampton late, but glad to be there.

  Strictly speaking, I was not within my rights, since my tenancy had been based on occupancy from July through Labor Day. But I had few qualms about asking the indulgence of this time as well, and so I’d called Caroline Lestrange from the city.

  There had been no protest whatsoever; as a matter of fact, she had been voluble (as ever), chatted at length, wanted to know what the weather in town was like, and how was my young man?

  “I shall be happy to see you again,” she finished, and then briskly ended the conversation.

  After that I made final arrangements with the telephone company and Con Edison, and my cottage was now in working order. I kept roaming through the rooms and patting objects lovingly, telling myself that all this was — at least for two months — mine, all mine. The sun rayed in through sparkling clean window panes which someone, thanks to Caroline Lestrange, had scrubbed to a gloss.

  I had made a find.

  There was an air conditioner, of somewhat ancient vintage, in the bedroom, but I doubted I’d be using it much, what with cross ventilation and sea breezes. I tried it, and it didn’t seem to be very effective, though it certainly was loud, like a locomotive at full steam.

  I made a light lunch and ate it standing up, then got together the cleaning things and dustrags I had bought in town. I meant to fall to work immediately, but I was in a kind of high, and before settling down to my housewifely tasks I went outside again to look about me contentedly. I lit a cigarette and sat down on a low stone wall, feeling very much the mistress of my fate. It was a lovely day, gold and blue, with clouds that moved slowly and serenely, and the temperature in the high sixties.

  I couldn’t have asked for more.

  The estate on which my cottage nestled was a large, rambling family compound situated on the remainder of what had once been hundreds of acres of fine shore country land. A wealth of great shade trees stood here, as well as fruit trees — pear, apple and flowering quince. A circular drive wound about a central lawn of velvety green, bounding the four big houses — summer homes. They were impressive enough, though not comparable to the Edwardian horrors at Newport, rather in the time-honored tradition of New England manor houses.

  The family whose property this was bore the name of Lestrange, which did not sound English but was. The Norman Conquest put its stamp on Britain; many of England’s oldest names have a Gallic ring.

  The name Lestrange is a familiar one in the history of the United States. In 1648 a few English settlers came from Lynn, Massachusetts, to settle in what is today East Hampton. One of them was a Lestrange. That much I had learned from a little research. I had known the more recent family history before; it’s more or less common knowledge. One of the Lestranges took a flyer in rails, made a killing, bought a bank and then other banks, and a dynasty had been born.

  Their day of preeminence was gone, alas, and their eclat somewhat diminished. They were still a household name, but less so than the Rockefellers or Duponts. There had been deaths and reverses, and future shock had taken its toll. Still, it was a glamorous name, Lestrange, and reminiscent of the era of New York’s Four Hundred.

  Three of the big houses were closed and shuttered, giving them a brooding, somber look. One of them, however — the one on the northwest corner — was occupied, and its chatelaine was Caroline Lestrange Hallowell Muncie Comstock. And if the uninitiated knew little about other Lestranges, they knew plenty about Caroline Lestrange, whose fame was legendary.

  She had been a most flamboyant personality in her time, an international beauty, as shameless and glorious as Tallulah, with her three marriages, and lovers galore, including princes, sheiks and the like. She had been a page, really, in amatory history, and had shuttered her life only recently because of advancing cataracts, arthritis, and an overall weariness. Time magazine, quoting her in a recent interview (on the occasion of her eightieth birthday) maintained that she called herself désabusé.

  The French word was typical, for Caroline Lestrange had spent much of her youth in the City of Light, and it was a well-known conceit of hers to speak French whenever English would do. She was like the White Russians of Tolstoi’s time who were so enamored of the French tongue that they spoke it almost exclusively in the magnificent drawing rooms of St. Petersburg.

  Désabusé … there is really no comparable term in the English language. World-weary won’t quite do, nor will jaded, disillusioned. The French word will have to suffice, and it suited Caroline Lestrange, that anachronism in today’s world. A great lady … though she might have been promiscuous in her gilded youth.

  It was she who had rented my cottage to me.

  • • •

  And that had been through a fluke. My very close friend Eric Sloane had noted a newspaper item concerning the Lestrange estate, an article which had followed closely on the heels of the Time spread. “Let’s have a look at the
place,” he said. “We’ll make a weekend out of it.”

  And so we did just that, on Memorial Day weekend, having lunch on the way and, arriving in the late afternoon in East Hampton, lucky to find a room at the Sea Spray Inn.

  Next morning we had a late and hearty breakfast, browsed through already milling crowds of people who were enjoying their first spring week-end, did some souvenir shopping and then hunted up the Lestrange estate.

  It wasn’t hard to find: we asked, and were told. In fact, we knew this part of the world fairly well. When we came to it, we saw at once that it wasn’t at all like the forbidding fortresses on the Island’s north shore where now — one is informed — Cosa Nostra families sequester themselves behind electrically-wired barricades. There was a girdling fence, but of white picket and more decorative than anything else, as well as a closed gate, but no Do Not Enter … No Trespassing signs.

  All four houses were visible from where we stood, though partially screened, of course, by their surrounding shrubbery and the many shade trees. All of them had a Tudor aspect, with the obligatory timbering and gabling characteristic of that type of architecture, and off-center chimneys.

  The grass needed cutting; it all seemed rather desolate, somehow, as if deserted, abandoned, no longer a living part of the environs. Yet it had a kind of haunting beauty. A great pear tree, newly in bloom, was luminous with starry white flowers of an aching loveliness, with a light powdering of fallen blossoms at its base.

  “It looks as if it might be haunted,” I was commenting, when, out of the quiet, we heard a voice. I jumped, and Eric looked up sharply.

  “Who’s there and what do you want?” the voice demanded.

  We both saw her at the same time, and I recognized Caroline Lestrange from her pictures. There were still traces of her beauty left; she wore her hair the way she had always done, to the shoulders and with slight ripples of waves. It was almost more dark than white, and her face, though lined, was far from raddled. She still gave the impression of glamor, was slim, slight, and somehow striking still.