First Impressions Read online

  “Did everyone in town know about her son? About what he did?”

  “Sure. We know about each other.”

  Eden looked down at her wineglass to hide her smile. To someone who’d never lived in Arundel, what Brad had just said was impossibly pompous. He was a member of a society that “knew” the others in that society. They would have known about Mrs. Farrington’s son, but they would still have accepted him into their houses because he was one of them. But if an outsider had come into town and done what Alester Farrington had tried to do, they might have hanged him.

  “When Mrs. Farrington died, you lost one of your families,” Eden said, smiling at him. She had lived too many places and seen too much in her life to dislike “family” in any form. To her mind, that’s what these people in Arundel were: a large family with a very long history.

  “Yes, but as Mrs. Farrington said to me, perhaps it was for the better. Many bad things had happened in the Farrington family. She was of the old school and believed there was a bad ‘strain,’ as she called it, in her family. Genetics.”

  Eden started to say that she probably knew more about the Farrington family than anyone else on earth, since she’d spent years reading about them, but she said nothing. And she was tempted to tell him about her book, but again, decided to say nothing.

  “What I really want to say is that if I seem a bit too familiar I ask your forgiveness. It’s just that I feel as though I’ve known you for a long time. I know that we both share a fondness for cheesecake and that we both dislike hollyhocks. I know that you like rabbits but don’t like dogs much. By the way, I own three dogs, all of them well mannered and polite, I might add. I know you aren’t married, that you’re beautiful, talented, and smart, and with those things added to owning this big house, you’re going to have a lot of male interest. I’m concerned that in a sense of everything being fair in love and war, that half a dozen people will rush to tell you all about how horrible I was while my wife was dying.”

  “Were you horrible?” Eden asked softly.

  “No. I stayed with her, but I didn’t love her. As I said, we’d already filed for divorce. I spent a lot of time here in this house during those years. I think I needed someone as bossy as Mrs. Farrington so I wouldn’t have to think. It was the worst time of my life.” He leaned back in his chair, and after a moment, he smiled. “Now that I’ve told you my deepest, darkest secret, what about your life? And I know about what happened to you to give you your daughter, so that doesn’t count.”

  More questions, Eden thought. “Of course Mrs. Farrington would have told you about that,” she said grimly. “But then I’m sure it was all over town from years before.”

  “Yes, she told all of us, but she did so because she didn’t want people thinking you were just some hot pants teenager who’d fooled around with her boyfriend. She wanted people to understand.” He smiled at her. “All of us did understand. I don’t think anyone was discourteous to you while you were here, were they?”

  “No,” Eden said, looking at him. She realized that Mrs. Farrington had told the “family” about Eden and the word was sent out that, in spite of her unmarried-and-pregnant state, she was to be treated kindly, not snubbed. Even though Brad had not been in Arundel during those years, he included himself in the “we” of the people who understood.

  Eden was about to say more when a movement at the doorway caught her eye. It was just a flash, then it was gone. A mouse? she wondered. But no, she didn’t think so.

  “How about if we take our wine outside?” Brad asked. “I’d like to see that lawn I worked so hard on, and maybe you could tell me of your garden plans.”

  “I haven’t had time to really look at the outside,” she said, thinking that the only time she’d been out was when she’d gone to McBride’s house to take him soup. And with the thought of that man she knew what she’d seen in the doorway: McBride’s foot. He was just outside the door, listening to her and Brad. How long had he been there? And, more important, why was he there? Just old-fashioned snooping? Prurient interest? Was that all it had been when he’d been snooping through her house at night?

  “Yes!” Eden said. “Let’s go outside.” She said this too loud and too fast. Part of her wanted to let McBride know that she knew he was there. She’d like to see his face when she caught him!

  As she pushed away from the table, she glanced at the glass-doored cabinet and saw McBride’s reflection in the glass. He didn’t look guilty or embarrassed, just gave her a little nod and a smile, acknowledging that she’d seen him.

  Her first instinct was to confront him, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to get Brad involved in this. She would deal with McBride on her own.

  Standing, Eden tucked her arm in Brad’s, and they left the house with their full wineglasses. Brad was telling her about the fenced garden that Eden had designed so many years ago, but it was difficult for her to concentrate on what he was saying. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that Brad knew a great deal more about gardening and about Mrs. Farrington than he’d let on. Something he said made her give him her attention. “What did you say?”

  Brad chuckled. “Didn’t think I knew about that, did you? I said that I helped Mrs. Farrington pull the silver out of the floors and the walls. By that I mean that I used the crowbar and she criticized. I told you she made me work like a slave. Before the renovation could begin, she made me help clean out the inside of the walls and the floors. I must say that you ladies certainly did a lot of work when you put all those in there.”

  “And that’s when you found the Paul Revere teapot.”

  “Not me, but yes, that’s when it was found,” Brad said. “I was the one who arranged the sale for her.”

  Eden looked at him. “I think she must have cared a great deal about you if she trusted you with a Farrington heirloom.”

  He leaned toward her so close that his lips were near her ear. “But she wouldn’t show me what’s buried in the garden. She told me about what you two had done, but she also said that whether or not those things were dug up was up to you.”

  Eden had to laugh. She was beginning to like this man a lot. Perhaps even beginning to trust him. Maybe she should tell him about McBride’s snooping. Maybe Brad would go in there and beat him up for her. She didn’t care if McBride was bleeding from every orifice, after Brad left she was going to tell McBride to get out of her house. Spying on her! Of all the ungrateful—“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  Brad was looking at her. “You suddenly seem distracted. And why do you keep looking at the house?”

  “I saw someone at the window. I’m sure it was only Mr. McBride.”

  “I really do wish you hadn’t moved him into your house.”

  “I didn’t. The invitation was until he recovered from the wounds I gave him.” Her tone let him know that it wasn’t any of his business. She changed the subject. “Now, tell me, what would you do with this garden?” It was growing dark; the warm air felt wonderful. She could smell the freshwater creek down the hill, and the night was so quiet that she was sure she could hear fish jumping.

  They stopped when they reached the fenced garden. Many years ago, not long after Melissa was born, Eden had found some garden plans tucked inside a book. They were just crude sketches, but the paper was so old it had intrigued her. The book holding the papers was from the 1930s, but the drawings looked much older.

  Mrs. Farrington had smiled when Eden showed them to her and said that her father had searched for those drawings for years. They were the original garden plans, drawn by Josiah Alester Farrington in 1720 when the house was built. Her father said the garden had stayed intact until the 1840s, when his grandfather had torn them up and put in what were called “carpet beds,” designs created with annuals. The colorful gardens had been all the rage then but were extremely labor intensive. During the First World War, most of the grounds had been plowed up and put to cotton. After the war, paths were mowed through the weeds, and sometimes an
industrious wife would put in a patch of vegetables and flowers, but with the decline in the family fortune, the gardens were mostly left on their own.

  By the time Eden arrived, the gardens were a shadow of what they once were. After Melissa was born and Eden found the original eighteenth-century plan, it was Mrs. Farrington who suggested that she restore the gardens. Eden was young and restless, and Melissa was a good baby, so Eden had put her unused brain to studying the principles behind eighteenth-century gardening. After she’d nearly memorized the contents of the three books Mrs. Farrington owned, the woman had called the owner of the little bookstore in Arundel and told her to order “whatever Williamsburg had.” When eleven brand-new books had arrived and Mrs. Farrington had told Eden they were a gift for her, Eden had sat down and cried—which had embarrassed Mrs. Farrington so much that she’d left the room.

  The books had been the start of what became a passion with Eden. She read, sketched, ate, and drank eighteenth-century gardening until the day she and Melissa left Arundel.

  Mrs. Farrington hired Toddy. He had worked for her family during the war when he was a boy, to help put the garden in, and when Eden saw him, ancient beyond belief, skin the color of a black walnut husk, she asked Mrs. Farrington if it had been the Civil War when he’d worked for them. But Toddy surprised her. He may have been old, but his brain was sharp, and he approved of what she was doing. Together, the two of them laid out the first of Josiah Alester Farrington’s gardens.

  It was fifty feet square, divided into four quarters by wide brick sidewalks. In the center was a circle containing a tall carriage lamp surrounded by a barrel full of jasmine that ran up the lamppost. Rosemary was planted at the base of the barrel, with dianthus around the edges. The four quarters of the garden were encased internally by a low boxwood hedge and externally by a three-rail cedar fence. Eden well remembered how the garden had once looked, but now it was mostly empty. A few shrubs were beginning to sprout in the early spring air, but for the most part it was a huge expanse of mulch.

  “It took me over a month to clean it up,” Brad said. “It had been allowed to grow into such a tangle that I had to chainsaw my way in.”

  She looked at him sharply and found that she rather liked the idea of him with a chain saw and sweat dripping off his forehead. The image aroused feelings in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Brad was watching her. “Fill it,” he said succinctly, and when she said nothing, he continued. “You asked what I’d do, and I’d fill this garden with tall plants in the center and work outward. For those two sunny squares, I’d put buddleia there in the middle to draw butterflies, then I’d flank it with caryopteris, sedum, monarda, and coreopsis.”

  Eden’s smile grew broader as he spoke. She hadn’t heard those words in years, not since she’d gone to New York and lived amid concrete and steel. “You do like butterflies, don’t you? What about fennel?”

  He smiled broader, and it was a smile shared by gardeners. “Ah, yes, the swallowtails. I can’t forget them. But we’d have to put the fennel in pots. Too invasive.”

  “Or a bottomless pot buried deep.”

  “Perfect. Now, that corner is under the pecan tree, so it’s fairly shady.”

  “Astilbe and pulmonaria,” she said. “Not hostas, too big.”

  “Exactly. Of course you could go wild with some native orchids.”

  “Orchids,” Eden said, her breath drawn in. “But no monkshood. Grandchild coming.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Nothing in the deadly nightshade family. Maybe my grandson could visit.”

  “You have a grandchild too?”

  “Oh, yes, my daughter Camden’s son. His name is—”

  Eden put up her hand. “Let me guess. Granville Braddon Something.”

  “Nope,” he said, smiling. “It’s Farrington Granville Robicheaux. Robicheaux being the name of the man my daughter married.”

  “Farrington,” Eden said, smiling. “Only in Arundel could that be a child’s first name. I’m glad he was a boy.” She stopped teasing. “Mrs. Farrington would be pleased. Maybe her name can be kept alive after all.” They smiled at each other and she pointed to the fourth quarter. “Not that you know anything about gardening, but what would you put there? And I warn you that if you don’t like dicentra, it’s all over between us.”

  “Bleeding heart,” Brad said. “My absolute favorite. Speaking of which, Friday is the annual Shrimp Festival. Would you go with me?”

  “On a date?”

  “Yes. I’ll pick you up in my ’57 Chevy, take you to the festival, then later we can go to the local make-out hill.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

  “It sounds wonderful. I’ll be ready. If only I had a poodle skirt to wear.”

  “I think poodle skirts were well before your time.”

  “One can only dream.” Her head came up. “Where do you live?”

  “Guess,” he said, then they both laughed. The Granville house, of course. It was a big old monster of a house on the corner of Granville and Prince streets. Built in the eighteenth century, it had once been a small, elegant house, but it had burned down in the 1850s. The Granville who owned the land at that time had bought the four lots surrounding him, torn down the houses, and built a huge Queen Anne–style Victorian, complete with porches and a gazebo. There was a wisteria vine on a pergola in the front that was said to be the oldest wisteria in the state. Oldest or not, the trunk was as big as a tree.

  “I want a tour,” Eden said. “From basement to attic, I want to see every inch of that house.”

  His eyes were twinkling as he lifted her hand and kissed it. “A woman who owns an eighteenth-century house would never settle for a Victorian, would she?”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, but she knew she didn’t like it. Too much, too fast! She pulled her hand from his grasp, and just as she was about to speak, a movement made her glance up at a second-story window. She saw McBride watching her. She looked back at Brad. “Do you have a garden?”

  “Of sorts,” he said, smiling modestly. “A few Victorian things here and there that go with the house. Not much.”

  At that she laughed. She knew he was lying, and she imagined that he had a garden that had been in more than one magazine. She very much liked that he believed a garden should match the house. “Ever since I lived with Mrs. Farrington, my gardening mind has been pure eighteenth century. If I’d had the opportunity, I would have loved to study gardening.” She looked at him. “I think that had my life been different I would have done anything I could to get to work for the Williamsburg foundation.”

  His eyes widened. “What do you know about Queen Anne?”

  “Very sad woman. On the throne for a mere nine years, pregnant and drunk the entire time.”

  “Uh, yes, well,” Brad said, blinking at her. “Major in history, did we?”

  Eden laughed, a bit embarrassed. “Not the Queen Anne you meant?”

  “I meant the new subdivision. They named it Queen Anne after the creek, which of course was named after your drunken pregnant lady. They’re building two hundred houses on Route 32 by the water. Very high end. Preserving the wetlands, that sort of thing.”

  “I haven’t heard a word about it,” she said, trying hard not to glance up at the window to see if McBride was still spying on them.

  “It’s mainly a retirement community for rich people. There’ll be boutiques and lots of services, such as a hair salon and a spa. And there’ll be a purchased doctor or two.”

  “A what?”

  “You haven’t heard of those? I don’t know what they’re actually called, but a family pays a doctor a retainer, usually something like twenty grand a year, and for that they get personal service, such as house calls and checkups. Mainly, they get a doctor who remembers their name from one visit to the next.”

  “For twenty grand, I’d think so,” Eden said.

  “The point is that the houses in Queen Anne look as eighteenth century as we can make them. And
the gardens surrounding them won’t just be a few nasty evergreens along the driveway and the house foundations. They’ll be structured gardens. Rooms. You know what I mean. Pure Williamsburg. We think they’ll appeal to our clients.” He hesitated, looking at her hard. “Maybe you’d like to help plan the gardens. Professionally, I mean.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  Brad gave her a sheepish grin. “I’m one of the investors, but that’s because I believe in this. Our young people are leaving Arundel because there are so few jobs here. These new houses will create a lot of jobs and will run a lot of money through the town. Did you know that six months ago one of our only two grocery stores closed? If we don’t do something soon, Arundel could turn into a ghost town.”

  She could see the passion in his eyes. She’d had no idea that Arundel was in trouble. To her, the place had always been paradise. It was true that the mosquitoes and chiggers were enough to drive a person mad, but a little clear fingernail polish over the spots stopped the itching. To Eden’s mind, the warm weather and rampant growth of the plants more than made up for whatever problems the bugs caused. And made up for the snakes that found their way into everything. And for the muskrats in the ditches. And for the raccoons that ate anything you put in a decorative pond.

  “Is that look a yes or a no?”

  “It’s an ‘I don’t know.’ I never thought of designing gardens for a living. I didn’t plan this one. I just followed the original design.”

  “Ha!” Brad said. “I know what you did and how you adjusted that plan to the modern world, and I know the way you studied the books Mrs. Farrington bought you. I even heard about the notebook of designs that you made. Most of all, I know how you loved doing it. Mrs. Farrington told me how you and Toddy were out here day after day, year after year.”

  Eden smiled at the memory. “Toddy was so old he remembered the eighteenth century. I just picked his brain.”

  Brad smiled at her so that his eyes crinkled at the corners. “You can’t BS me. I was told the truth about you, remember? By the way, the books you accumulated on eighteenth-century gardening are in that big pine cabinet in Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom. You must have every book ever published about eighteenth-century gardens.”