She sighed again, a deep, heartfelt release of love and emotion for her poor, poor Jack.
Liz didn't exactly want to hear about Jack's troubles — just as she was quite sure Jack wouldn't be interested in hearing about her own —but she made a sympathetic sound anyway.
"Maybe things will turn around once Mrs. Stonebridge returns," Liz said, implying that she was more intimate in the family's affairs than she really was. "Families have a way of pulling together." She added innocently, "Stacey Stonebridge is, what, a cousin of Jack's?"
Netta's eyebrows did a quick little lift. She leaned more closely to Liz, as if they were sharing a box at the opera, and said, "Not a cousin. And nothing to do with Jack. If you get my drift."
Liz got it. She nodded and said, "These things happen," which meant absolutely nothing but seemed like the right thing to say.
"Well, I'd like to stay and help, dear," said Netta, "but I have to interview a nanny in ten minutes, and—"
"No, no, please, I'll be fine. Thank you so much, Netta. Truly." Liz had to resist an urge to hug the overworked housekeeper.
Netta gave Liz's forearm a little squeeze. "His bark is worse than his bite, dear."
She left Liz on her own. The first thing Liz did was stalk from rug to rug like a beagle, hovering over the areas of offense and sniffing for vile smells. She was stooped over the Aubusson, the oldest and most beautiful of the carpets, when Jack Eastman walked in on her.
"Good morning, Elizabeth," he said from behind her.
Liz whirled around so sharply that her blunt-cut hair slapped up against her cheeks. The sound of her given name on his lips sounded shockingly intimate to her; the tone of his voice, even more so.
"Ah! Hello, Mr.—"
"Jack."
"Mr. Jack," she said, unable to resist twitting him. At the same time she was saying to herself, Why did you do that? Be nice. Maybe he'll pay the rest of the bill.
He was dressed in working khakis and a dark polo shirt that showed off his strong build and rugged good looks one heck of a lot better than some prissy old blazer and lemon-yellow tie. He's going sailing, Liz decided. Poor, poor Jack.
"I had to come back for my briefcase," he explained unnecessarily.
"Ah," Liz said. Not going yachting, then. How too, too bad.
He seemed to want to chat. "I've been so distracted by this mess at the shipyard that I walked out without it. Every damned bureaucrat in Rhode Island is down there, crawling over the spill." Obviously he, too, was assuming that Liz had heard about the crisis.
She began to wonder if the spill was serious. "How much solvent actually poured out?" she asked, becoming alarmed.
"Someone knocked over a fifty-gallon drum. It wasn't properly sealed — which I can't understand — and now there'll be hell to pay."
"Not exactly Chernobyl, then," Liz said with an ironic smile. She picked up the nearest Mickey Mouse cutout she could lay her hands on, just to have something to do, and began fussing with the two-sided tape on it.
She thought he'd be on his way in search of his briefcase, but he surprised her by coming the rest of the way into the Great Room and perching his buns on the rolled arm of the leather chair. He seemed to be in no hurry, apparently pleased to think that here was yet more labor coming to him for free.
Liz didn't like it: didn't like having him watch her, didn't like having him stiff her, didn't like having him out-stressing her. Dammit! She resolved not to engage in his game of oneupmanship by either meeting his glance or matching his stare. She simply ignored him. For all she knew, he could be counting the squares in the parquet floor.
"I'm sorry for the way I've behaved," he said out of the blue. "l've been taking a hell of a lot out on you. I hope you don't take it amiss."
Amiss. Who talked like that anymore besides lords of manors? "I'm sure you have weightier problems than most," she said, without meaning a word of it.
"Look, I've decided to pay you the money that's due," he said more stiffly. "I've told my secretary. The check's in the mail."
That made her turn around and smile. It sounded so low-rent, coming from him. "Of course it is," she said sweetly, mostly to irritate him. Clearly she was still smarting from his treatment of her.
His cheeks flushed deeply. Something about his embarrassment made him look almost like a kid to her, a kid in prep school who's been caught picking on someone littler than himself. Which is exactly what he'd been doing up until now.
He stood up and sauntered closer. "I said I was sorry," he drawled. "Surely you can forgive a first offense."
"Not if it was your second," she said instantly. It was Liz's turn to color; she remembered the moment all too well. "You ran me down in the entry hall a week ago after having words with your ... with someone."
For a moment he looked blank. Then his expression settled into an ironic smile. "I remember now: chocolate cake or white. You're right. I'm a cad," he said in a softly mocking, oddly seductive voice.
Just for that, Liz decided to take all her peonies back. She wrapped her left arm around one black vase, then marched across the room and wrapped her right arm around another. "Where I come from," she said primly, "people only apologize when they mean it."
"Elizabeth, I was only teasing you," he said, amused by her reaction. "Hasn't Netta given you her little speech yet about my bark being worse than my bite?"
"I assumed she meant Snowball," Liz said, sweeping past him with the vases in her arms.
Where she was taking them, she had no idea. She detoured into the kitchen, completely flustered by his behavior. For a man in a hurry, his banter sure did seem idle.
Liz yanked the flowers out of each of the vases and tossed them onto the stainless-steel counter of the sink, then began a pointless search through all the marble-topped cabinets for something cheap and plastic to transport them in. And meanwhile, Jack Eastman still seemed to have some time on his hands before he had to punch back in.
"Maybe I can help you," he said from way too close behind her. "What're you looking for?"
"A plastic Kool-Aid pitcher," she snapped without daring to turn around.
But he turned her around. "What exactly is your problem, Mrs. Coppersmith?" he asked without letting go of her shoulders.
Hot, hot, hot! Overwhelmed by the sizzle in his touch, Liz said, "My problem is, you don't drink Kool-Aid, and I'm afraid to borrow the crystal martini pitcher."
He let out a short baffled laugh, and then apparently it hit him: she resented his wealth. "Did you know you have an attitude?" he asked, squinting amiably into her brown eyes.
Oh, God, I do know it, and f I don't get it under control, I will never, ever, be able to make one red cent off these damned rich snobs.
"Do I?"
He grimaced. "I said I was sorry, I said I would pay you, I said I was harmless," he repeated in careful English, as if she'd just stepped off a boat from Norway. "Don't you think it's time to stop beating me up over our rocky start?"
"Our rocky start on the road to where?" she blurted. Really, it seemed — obviously she must be wrong, but it seemed — as if he was coming on to her.
Or not. He let go of her, then walked over to the sink, picked up a deep red peony the size of a cauliflower, and presented it to her. "I'd like you to do another event for me," he said with a very level, very serious look. "Would you be willing?"
"Is this a trick question?" Liz asked, confused by the signals he seemed to be sending.
He laughed. "You're not a very trusting person, are you?" Liz remembered Keith, remembered how she came home from a trip to her obstetrician a week after Susy was born — and found a note from him on the kitchen table. A year later, she was still so traumatized that she had to sell the table.
"I've learned that the only person I can really trust is myself," she said tersely. "What event did you have in mind?"
"A company picnic for the second Saturday in July. We used to have an annual cookout at the shipyard, but then things got tight in the r
ecession and we had to drop it. Ironically, things are so much worse this year — morale is so low — that I think we have to find the money for one," he said, his brow furrowing. "We have to."
Hey, just hock the clock, thought Liz. Aloud she said, "I couldn't possibly bid my time as cheaply as I did for the birthday." She handed him back the peony.
She saw — she thought she saw — a flicker of annoyance in his eyes as he took the thick-stemmed flower and laid it gently on top of the others. "I don't expect you to work for nothing," he said easily enough. "But I would like you to bring some magic to the event, the same as you did here. It'll be an outdoor affair, but if it rains, we'll move it into one of the boat-storage sheds."
He slipped his hands into his back pockets and rocked slightly on the heels of his deck shoes. "Well? How about it?"
If ever a job offer sounded like a double-dare, this was it. Everything about the man seemed to be taunting her, from the pose he struck to the words he chose. Liz had worked with ornery clients before, but never with one so rich, handsome, or unforgiving. If she blew this assignment, it was good-bye to the Gold Coast.
"I have just two questions," she said grimly. "Will there be dogs? Will there be rugs?"
"Dogs, no rugs. And kids, lots of them," he added with a dry little smile. "My secretary Cynthia will tell you what you need to know. Just call her, or stop by the yard."
Liz allowed herself a small smile in return. "Okay. I'll work up an estimate. But I think you should know: Magic doesn't come cheap."
He picked the peony back up from the pile and slipped it through her fingers and then, with no warning at all, began to lower his mouth to hers. Then he stopped, pulled back, and smiled.
"We all need a little magic in our lives," he whispered before he sailed out of the kitchen.
Liz was left in a state of shock. Her cheeks were burning and she forgot, quite literally, to exhale. So she'd been right after all — he had been coming on to her.
Sexual harassment, she decided with a kind of cynical triumph. Exactly what she'd have expected from a man like him. She touched the big red peony to her lips.
The question was, how much was sexual, and how much was harassment?
Chapter 6
The reporter from the Newport paper simply wanted Liz to confirm a few facts.
He was writing a feature story on Jimmy Screener, a lifelong Newporter who ran a locksmith shop on Thames Street. Jimmy was chock-a-bloc with interesting anecdotes, the reporter explained, and one of the most recent ones concerned Liz.
Was it true, he asked, that in her attic she'd discovered a cache of old letters and an antique box with a pin in it?
"Well, yes, it's true," Liz answered reluctantly.
And was it true that they'd all been sealed away? Could Liz tell him a little more about that?
Liz had no desire to tell him anything at all, but she didn't want to seem as if she were hiding something, so she said, "The entrance to the attic had been plastered over to blend in with the rest of the ceiling. It was done, I would guess, over half a century ago."
"Was the pin very valuable?" asked the reporter.
"No, it's just a garnet pin."
"And the letters? What were they all about?"
"I've hardly had a chance to look at them," Liz said, which wasn't true. She was bleary-eyed from having read through the night. "Most of them were written by a woman named Victoria to her sister Mercy around the turn of the century."
For some stupid reason Liz added, "Victoria was a kind of spiritualist."
"Hey, there might be a story there," said the reporter, eager about the possibilities. "Would you mind if I looked them over?"
Nuts! "Well, maybe eventually," Liz said vaguely. "I'd like to go through them myself before I decide. But I have your name; I'll be in touch," she said, easing out of the reporter's grip.
She hung up, not without promising that she'd give his paper first crack. For the first time, it occurred to Liz that she might not even be the lawful owner of the stuff from the attic. What if someone from Victoria St. Onge's estate came to claim them? The thought was profoundly unsettling. For whatever reason, Liz felt deeply connected to the material she'd found.
Overnight Liz had learned enough about Victoria St. Onge to convince herself that the lady was a genuinely gifted con-woman. She was the kind of person to whom people were forever saying, "Why, you've read my thoughts exactly!" But she was also as cynical as they came. Her remark to Mercy that the summer colonists in Newport were like sheep in a pen — "easily spooked, and easily fleeced"— was fairly typical. Presumably Victoria always kept her shears sharpened and handy.
She was also either a thief or a kleptomaniac: "I took the scarf" she wrote in one letter, "because it was rather pretty, and because Lucy was altogether too vain in it."
Worse, she was not above a bit of prostitution. How else to explain the extravagant diamond brooch presented to her by a lovesick suitor? "George told me," Victoria had written gleefully to her sister, "that in the privacy of my sitting room I am less a St. Onge than I am an El Diablo."
All in all, a picture of Victoria St. Onge was emerging that wasn't very pretty. It was impossible for Liz not to think about her own Victoria, tucked cozily away on Martha's Vineyard with the first two shoeboxes. Was she, too, becoming disillusioned? And if so, would this be the end of the reincarnation nonsense?
Liz drifted into the kitchen, with its irresistible view of the East Gate estate, and let herself get lost in the peaceful majesty of the scene before her. After two weeks in her new house, she could safely say she'd never seen the same view twice. Every day it grew richer, fuller, greener; every day the light was new and different. Liz understood, at last, why some artists paint the same scene dozens of times, trying to get at its essence.
She herself couldn't decide whether she preferred morning light to afternoon, bright days to foggy ones. She liked the garishness of the noonday sun, but she loved the subtleties of a rainy day. Dawn always seemed more wonderful than sunset — until the sun went down. Liz was overwhelmed by the beauty of the summer season, aware that she had the rich red blaze of fall, the pristine snows of winter, the sleepy greening of spring still to look forward to.
And — unlike Jack Eastman — she wouldn't have to pay property taxes on any of it.
Liz thought of Jack, thought of the near kiss. To call it a kiss would be a bit of a stretch. She closed her eyes and relived it — again — and chewed her lip over it — again — and thought, again, that he meant it as a handshake, nothing more. Dammit.
"Anyway, who cares?" she murmured to herself. Did men like Jack Eastman ever really ask women like Elizabeth Coppersmith on dates?
She let herself drop back into the fantasy. Assuming he weren't her client, would she say yes? Jack was good-looking, powerful, rich. He could, when he wanted to, be charming. He had a seductive laugh. He knew all the right people. He was a very eligible bachelor.
Or — would she say no? Jack was vain; bossy; ungenerous. It took a major effort for him to be charming. His laugh was arrogant. He knew all the wrong people. He was eligible, all right, but he was a bachelor — the most selfish kind of male.
Interesting. Liz couldn't imagine what she'd say — if he ever asked her.
****
After picking up Susy from school, Liz fed her some lunch and dragged her off to the Newport Library. Liz wanted to find out when Victoria St. Onge died. For that matter, she wanted to know if she died.
The last letter Liz had of Victoria St. Onge was written in early 1935, a rambling note done in a shaky hand. The woman would've been about eighty-five years old by then and was obviously failing, both physically and mentally.
Nonetheless, Victoria St. Onge came across in the letters as someone so intense and manipulative that Liz was ready to believe — well, just about anything. Finding a date of death would be oddly reassuring to Liz in the mood she was in right now.
The mood was: jumpy. Liz's breakthroug
h to the attic had cost her a lot in peace of mind and hours of sleep. Chimes ... ghosts ... claims of reincarnation. Liz was convinced that the only way to get her life back to normal was to read through the letters, get to know Victoria St. Onge as an ordinary — if cunning — human being, and dismiss her from her thoughts forever.
She was far less confident about what to do with her amnesiac friend on the Vineyard.
After plopping Susy down under the watchful eye of the children's librarian, Liz squirreled herself a few feet away in the Newport Room and began leafing carefully through bound and yellowed copies of the Newport Daily News, beginning with the ones from early 1936. The crumbling newspapers, with their simpler, gentler themes, were naturally fascinating to Liz, a Newport native, but she made herself focus on her mission: to find out when Victoria St. Onge died.
By the time she came to the year 1939, Liz not only knew when, she knew how.
****
"So how's the Vineyard working out?" Liz asked Victoria in a resolutely cheerful voice when they talked on the phone that night.
"Better than my wildest dreams," Victoria said happily. "You remember the internist who treated me after the accident? I told you about him — dark eyes, beard, funky sense of humor? He's here, on vacation too, and boy oh boy, he's alone. He's a windsurfing nut. So guess what? I've decided that I want to learn."
"You, windsurf? I don't think so." Victoria was the most unathletic woman Liz had ever known.
"I know — I fall constantly. Ben thinks it's hysterical. This morning I fell right out of my top. Unfortunately, the water's so damned cold that we had to go out and buy me a wetsuit." Victoria sighed and added, "I hope that's not the end of the attraction."
"If that's all he cares about ...," Liz said, in a motherly way.
"Well, it's not as if he can love me for my mind."
"Victoria — you've lost your memory, not your mind. And anyway, he knows it. Stop being so defensive."
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