"You know your way around here pretty well," she said. "For a guy who spends most of his time in the gardens, apparently."
"I've known a lot about this place since I was a kid," he answered. "I may not have lived here, but you can learn a lot about a place from books and articles." He sank down on a bench across from her, pushing aside the leaves of a thick elephant ear plant.
"So what are you doing here with this Southern wedding magazine?" he asked. "You writing an article for them or something?"
"I'm getting married," she answered, surprised that she only now noticed the discomfort of her clingy gown, the rough edges of the stone bench. No doubt because this place's temperature was cooler than the mansion's main dwelling.
An expression of surprise flittered across his face momentarily. "That so," he answered, softly.
"They wanted to write an article about it," she said. "They offered for me to get married on a Southern plantation–at their expense–if I would let them design the whole thing and write about it. So I said yes." She drew the blanket more tightly around her shoulders.
"Some sort of childhood dream, I guess?" he surmised.
She shrugged. "I just ... just love the culture," she answered. "The romance, the elegance. That's why I started writing. To make places like this real, to make sweeping love stories real..." It was a lame response, lacking the eloquence which she wanted, which was why she allowed these words to trail off after a moment.
She avoided his eyes, gazing off in the direction of the wall of greenery between the glass doors leading to the main hall. His eyes were studying her, she was aware, giving rise to another blush.
"Well, I should let you get on inside." He rose from his seat and opened the outside door. She watched him cross the threshold to the outside lawn, closing it behind him. He struck off in the direction of the river path, until he was nothing but a moving speck in the moonlight.
Amy rose from her seat, letting the blanket fall onto the bench. Gathering her sandals from the puddle on the floor, she padded slowly across the stones in the direction of the mansion's door. She glanced back, but he had already disappeared from sight. Turning away, she entered the main hall, and limped upstairs to her room.
*****
She was afraid he would be in a place like this. The dank, squalid walls all but weeping with human despair, the rattling cough and groan of illness drifting from its recesses of human suffering as she crossed the threshold.
Would she find him suffering? Altered in such a manner that she would never know his face or voice without another to tell her it was him? Jackson had survived the impossible before, but it was not possible to survive every chance which Death dealt in a game such as this. All she knew was her heart could not rest until she was with him again...
"I think we're nixing the uniforms." Mathilda's voice interrupted Amy's train of thought as she re-read the passage on her typewriter's page. "The whole North-South conflict seems a little–dicey. We need a more neutral focus for this event."
"Fine with me, but Greg will definitely be disappointed," said Amy, who turned her attention to the editor, who was seated on the suite's sofa, reviewing a list of assignments for the next magazine's issue. With her, Kay and Elise, who were equally engrossed in their portfolios and planners.
The windows were open in both rooms, but the heat was sweltering despite the faint breeze from outside. Every few minutes a clunk or bang was audible as handyman/gardener Jackson attempted to bring life to at least one of the units. The elusive repairman had never been mentioned again, prompting Amy to wonder if Jackson was the repairman Mr. Fairfax had in mind after all.
"Maybe we should feature an excerpt of your new book, if the publisher agrees," mused Mathilda. "It would be a nice way to wrap the feature...the emphasis will be on the dress and theme, anyway."
Something about this statement struck Amy as sad–wasn't this event supposed to be about something more? Not that she hadn't been equally as obsessed with those details.
"I'll see what I can do," she answered. "I have to phone my book editor in a few days to see if they can extend my deadline anyway. Then call Greg about this list of battle sites that doesn't make any sense..." She held up a printed-off sheet of paper, which featured a lot of information she suspected was fairly useless for her novel.
"Greg who? Oh, wait, you mean your fiancé." Mathilda glanced up from her planner. "I keep forgetting his name, I'm sorry. For some reason, I always think of him as your assistant."
Amy snorted. "It would be the other way around, I think," she answered. "He's the one with all the social contacts and all the answers. I'd be lost without him when it comes to the historical stuff." Or forced to be less lazy about it, she admitted inwardly.
"That's what every boss says about their assistant, more or less," Mathilda called back. Amy fanned herself with a sheath of papers from her manuscript, too warm to reply.
There was a sputtering from the unit, a low hiss as it sprang to life with a rattle of cold air from its bowels. Amy sat up in her chair, aware that the same reaction was happening in the suite.
"Jackson, is that–" she began. There was an element of triumph in his grin as he withdrew his hands from the pipe system within. With a faint sputter, the cold air died away to a chorus of groans from the suite's occupants.
He cleared his throat. "How 'bout I go get you ladies a fan?" he asked.
The oscillating fan was parked on the bedroom window, where Amy stood in front of the breeze which swept against her skin and the sundress clinging to her. With her eyes closed, she could imagine it was a breeze sweeping off the cool coastline of the Carolina beaches, perhaps. A lonely beachside Southern mansion falling into ruin, a post-war widow stranded there ...
"Found another one." The birth of this romance was interrupted by Jackson's return, a box fan in his hand. "Your friends might could use a little breeze, too."
"They're back in the Magnolia Suite," she answered. "But the staff crammed in there would appreciate a fan, I'm sure." She turned towards him as he stooped to collect his tools piled before the broken unit.
"How's the book?" he asked. Shoving the wrench and screwdriver into a metal toolbox.
"Good," she answered, a tad too brightly. "Just great." That wasn't entirely true, she supposed, since she was feeling distracted by the pressure of the deadline looming. Not the manuscript's deadline, but the more personal one destined for next week.
"Feeling inspired by this place yet?" he asked, as he stood up.
"You know, it's funny; but this is sort of how I pictured the house in my book. Only it gets burned at the end, which I suspect won't happen to this place, unless it's an electrical fire."
This morning when she plugged in her hair straightener, a volley of sparks had erupted from the outlet.
Jackson laughed. "Well, this place hasn't had much attention for the past few years. And it's wiring is pretty old, so I'd say the chances of that are good unless a crew gets in here pretty soon."
"I'm surprised the owner even let us stay here with it like this," she said. "I get the impression there haven't been many guests here for the last decade or so. Except for the armed-and-not-so-dangerous types in uniform." The teasing nature of this last remark took her by surprise, even though her own lips spoke it.
"Maybe he felt sorry for the lady in a bind," suggested Jackson. "Your editor's pretty keen on this project, I get the idea. A little obsessed with Southern belles and magnolias."
Amy smiled wryly. "That's partly true," she answered. "I guess she saw the perfect occasion and couldn't resist. We all want to make a fairytale come true, right?"
"Lucky her, finding somebody with a romance in the right place," he answered. Lifting the tool box and the fan, he moved towards the door.
She rose from her chair and followed him, a little distance between herself and his own easy stride carrying him down the hall to the Magnolia Suite. Voices battling with the general sound of an office hub reached her ears as
he rapped on the door and opened it. Mathilda was on the phone with someone, arguing about the cake tasting article.
"But I told you that we needed pictures of the top three!" she protested. "No, I don't want you to handle the county fair story–clearly that's Joanne's department. You only had one job to cover this time–" she put her hand over the receiver and motioned for Jackson to put the fan near the window.
"Do you mind if we schedule the cake tasting for Sunday afternoon, Amy?" asked Elise, who was cross-legged before an open book of bakery designs. "I'm having some creative samples whipped up by the local bakery using my sketches."
"That sounds fine," Amy answered. "My mother will be here by then, so she'll finally get to see a piece of my wedding in action." Picturing herself and her mother sampling desserts on the veranda seemed perfect, and a far better way for the two of them to experience her wedding than arguing over whether it was badly timed.
"Perfect," said Elise, scribbling something on her planner. Jackson was untangling the fan's cord, adjusting its settings once it was plugged into the wall.
There was a rap on the door, followed by Mr. Fairfax peering around the edge. "So sorry, Ma'am," he said to Mathilda, "but the deliveryman left a box downstairs for you. Said it was those bakery pastries you ordered." He entered all the way, a white cake box in both his hands.
"Finally," said Mathilda, "it's those mini cupcakes for the guest tables at the wedding. I tried to get them to create something using Antonia's flowers to top it, maybe you and Greg's initials woven together like the scene in the book where her sister spells out Jackson's name on the cake right before–"
As she spoke, she popped open the box, the sight of its contents rendering her speech into a strange croaking noise. It was not decorative cupcakes inside–and definitely not Antonia's tiger lilies in miniature–but a sheet cake like no other Amy had ever laid eyes on. A lurid green icing battlefield populated by miniature Civil War soldiers made of decorative plastic. Small splashes of red icing here and there beneath fallen figures.
"Is that one–decapitated?" ventured Elise, her face paling slightly.
"Oh, dear," said Mr. Fairfax. "I believe they got your order mixed up with someone else's, Ma'am. Maybe the local historical society, who's having their summer celebration of famous Southern events, I hear."
"Well, let's just take this back downstairs, shall we?" suggested the handyman, who seemed to have forgotten about the fan as he closed the box lid and pried it gently from Mathilda's frozen hands.
What surprised Amy was not the eager editor's momentary lapse in speech, but her own reaction. Which held not the least bit of curiosity or disappointment with regards to the cupcakes representing the romance of her own imagination.
*****
"Well, isn't this nice?" Mathilda's tone was less-than-convincing even in its chirpy state. Perhaps the cupcake debacle still weighed heavy on her mind, despite these very different surroundings, as she instructed, "All right, let's snap a few photos and see if this works." She spoke to the photographer at her elbow.
A tea table set for two, beneath a white lattice arbor draped in clinging vines. Soft green leaves and a mist of petals which showered delicately below with each rare summer breeze. A tea service of polished silver and delicate china cups bearing gold plate and hand-painted rosebuds.
It was supposed to be Greg across from Amy, who was seated in the first whicker chair with her yellow sundress spread wide over its crinoline petticoats–but that was before he canceled due to an emergency faculty meeting, or due to a fear of further bee stings, Amy suspected.
So it wasn't a furtive Greg watching the bees buzz and checking the pollen count on his cell phone. Instead, it was the hotel maintenance man, lifting a delicate tea cup like it was a baby bird fallen among the shrubs.
"Try to look a little less slouched, Mr. Jackson," said the photographer. "Just ... lean in. I think I can get them both in the shot, but those vines really need to be trimmed," she added to Mathilda, under her breath.
"Look alive," she instructed, this time more loudly, in Amy's direction. "Try talking, Miss Pontelle."
Amy forced a smile into place. "So, do you see this as the perfect right hand corner photo for a magazine spread?" she asked. "I mean, with Greg of course. Not that you would look bad in the photo, it's just–well, you know." She wondered if her lips' movement in the photos would look blurry–Greg hated blurry motion in photos and became like carved stone whenever someone photographed him.
He would never go for this–unless maybe he was wearing a Civil War uniform in the bargain–and even then, it would be a hard sell.
"So how long you been engaged?" Jackson's question caught her off-guard. A little of the tea in her cup, a mere splash in the bottom for effect, was suddenly airborne and landed in her saucer.
"Um...awhile," she answered. "I, uh, guess you could say ... two years or so. I mean, since the whole idea came up." There were grounds in the tea, she couldn't help noticing. Maybe Mr. Fairfax wasn't too careful in his preparation...or was it Edward's job?
"Tilt your head to the side, Miss Pontelle," suggested the photographer. Amy's head twisted at an angle which felt impossible to maintain.
"You mean, since he proposed," Jackson corrected her.
Proposed? He meant Greg with a ring and a formal declaration of his love, of course. Something that was almost as fictional as the scenes between Antebellum Heart's characters. For the first time, she felt an open blush over the notion of how their engagement really came into being.
"Yeah," she said. "I mean proposal. It wasn't conventional, of course. But Greg's not a conventional guy. He's a scholar, a historian. He's ... sensitive." There was definitely too much teeth showing for this photograph smile, she suspected. No doubt smeared in lipstick, too. As for Jackson, he was making no pretense of a sensitive smile in Greg's role.
"Try something a little more friendly, Mr. Jackson?" suggested the photographer. In response, the handyman's lips formed a smile more like a patient one offered to a difficult hotel customer.
"He must've done something special," said Jackson. "Probably took you up to the tallest building in town or some four-star restaurant. I'd guess it would take a lot to impress a romantic like you into saying yes."
"A romantic?" she repeated. "That's just for the books," she answered. "I'm not really that romantic. I mean, my life is hardly some big adventure. Mostly a lot of takeout and research and really boring television reruns. No celebrations or round-the-world tours." And, of course, the weekends spent rearranging her curio cabinets of memorabilia.
He looked puzzled. "You mean, you wrote a best-selling book and you didn't do a thing to celebrate it?" There was an incredulous smile on his face with this question.
"Try to look a little more ironed-out or something, Mr. Jackson," said the photographer, who was switching the settings on their camera as sunlight pierced the arbor canopy more brightly. "Remember, you're an art history professor or something like that."
"I don't think he looks natural in this role at all." Mathilda pursed her lips. "We should have gotten Mr. Fairfax to help us–or put Jackson here in uniform again."
Amy jolted momentarily in response to this statement, eerily similar to her own thoughts–except those thoughts had been crowded to the back during this q & a, especially the last question.
"I did celebrate it," she answered, a trifle defensively. "I had champagne–"
Champagne with Greg, she recalled. A restaurant party for the two of them, a quiet affair which lived on only as a moment of creeping further into his life. There were no photos or souvenirs of the occasion, no mementoes of any kind, not even a bottle cork.
"Miss Pontelle, you're slouching now, which looks like an ape in my lens," interrupted the photographer. "You and your fiancé are going for something a little more elegant for this shoot–"
"Enough," said Mathilda. "I think we've taken up enough of Mr. Jackson's time and this whole exercise will be worth nothin
g until what's-his-name is here again. We may have to come back to that uniform idea after all–Miss Pontelle having tea with her hero."
Amy rankled at this remark–uncertain why, because it wasn't for the reason she wanted it to be, Mathilda's momentary lapse on Greg's name. She pooled her indignation into this facet of the editor's irritated rant, forcing herself to concentrate on it. Didn't Greg have feelings? Wasn't he half of this wedding, after all? Shouldn't his name be on the tip of everyone's tongue, not just the author-turned-Southern-belle whom they dressed up every other day?
She stood up even before Jackson, her yellow sundress skirt almost flouncing with the act. The gardener had returned his teacup to the saucer with an ease that surprised her.
"The cases of champagne arrived for the reception yesterday, Amy," said Mathilda, more kindly now as the photographer stowed her camera in its gear bag. "Feel free to pop a cork early and sample some–the bottler and I are friends, so this supply is my little wedding present to you."
"Sounds nice," said Jackson. Neither his smile nor his voice in their politeness gave Amy any clue if he meant this as she brushed past him and continued on her way.
*****
Amy's feet dangled in the water off the edge of the dock, feeling the faintest degree of coolness below the sun-warmed surface. She wished she had remembered to bring her sunglasses, but the thought of a trek through the hot sun to retrieve them seemed distasteful at this point.
It was hot outside; but it was hot inside also, where her manuscript awaited her, growing more daunting by the day. For some reason, the longer she was here, the less capable she was of writing anything. As if the reality of her southern romance was somehow interfering with her process of thought.
So instead, she gazed out on the water. Where a boat was visible bobbing in the distance, someone out for a row in the heat of the afternoon, their oars sweeping past a flock of semi-tame ducks bobbing on the surface.
Gone With the Wedding Page 6