by Jane Peart
“Well, you’ll have time enough to decide all this, I imagine,” he said confidently. “When you are a little more settled in, I may have some more suggestions that would be helpful.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“Not at all. You’re back in the South now, Evalee. That’s what kin are for, remember?”
She nodded, thinking, Just like the Oblenskovs. Aunt Irina’s oft-repeated phrase rang in her ears: “But darlink, of course—what are families for?”
Druscilla’s coupe had hardly disappeared down the driveway when Jill turned to Scott. “Couldn’t Evalee and Natasha have the gatehouse, now that your mother’s living in California?”
Her husband looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Isn’t that a little soon to suggest? Besides, we don’t know if mother is going to stay permanently in Santa Barbara.”
“Buying a house, sending for some of her furniture—sounds pretty permanent to me,” Jill replied mildly. “And of course, she can always stay here if she comes back for a visit.” She paused. “Evalee said herself she wanted to find a place of her own. It seems to me the gatehouse would be perfect. Mama Blythe remodeled it beautifully and there’s plenty of room. Evalee could use the downstairs for her shop or office or whatever she plans to do. The upstairs would be adequate living space for her and Natasha.”
Scott raised an eyebrow. “It would be pretty close to us,” he said slowly as they walked back into the library. “How would you feel about having them right on our doorstep, so to speak?”
“I’d love it!” she responded. “I love having family around. I love all your family, don’t you know that yet? And Scotty would love having Natasha nearby as a playmate. They hit it off immediately, didn’t you notice?”
Scott stood at the fireplace, took the poker, and stirred up the remains of the fire. “I wasn’t thinking about the children. I was thinking about you, actually. I wouldn’t imagine Evalee was much your type.”
“And what type am I?” Jill asked archly. “I got the feeling somehow that Evalee—well, there’s something about her. In spite of the chic, the sophistication, there’s something that touches me. She didn’t come back here to be Dru’s little girl again. I think the sooner she gets on her own, the better off she’ll be. She needs someone to help her attain her independence, her own place. I believe she needs support, a friend. I’d like to be that for her if I can.”
Scott looked at his wife with tender amusement. “Ah, Jill, you are so softhearted. As a little girl, you were probably always bringing home lame ducks and homeless kittens, weren’t you?”
“I’d hardly call Evalee a stray kitten! Did you see those pearls she was wearing? A king’s ransom. And that silver fox? That’s high style.”
“Well, it’s up to you, my darling. Whatever you want to do.” Scott laughed. “I know better than to argue when you’ve got a project in mind. Evalee’s your next project, right?”
Jill’s expression was already thoughtful. Gatehouse Gifts, she was thinking. Evalee’s panache would draw customers among the wealthy newcomers who had moved to Virginia, bought up some of the old homes. Even politicians from Washington, D.C., were moving here to get away from the high prices and congestion of the capital. Yes, Evalee might do very well—with a little help. And Jill was determined to give her that help.
chapter
13
THE FOLLOWING WEEK Jill showed Evalee through the gatehouse on the Cameron property. After Scott and Jill’s marriage it had been converted into living quarters for his mother, Blythe. However, after Blythe spent a winter in her native California, she had found the climate, the surroundings, and the lifestyle so pleasant that she had decided to make her home there. Since then it had not been used.
Almost as soon as Jill unlocked the front door and Evalee stepped across the threshold, Evalee felt a rising excitement. She saw the possibilities at once. It would be easy enough to turn the downstairs into a shop.
“It needs painting and some fixing up. It’s stood empty almost two years, and of course, Blythe had most of the furniture she wanted shipped out to Santa Barbara,” Jill told her. “But our attic is full of odds and ends. Between that and what’s left here, I’m sure you’d have everything you need.”
Evalee walked through the first-floor rooms, stopping every once in a while to glance around as if mentally measuring, placing furniture, hanging curtains.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Jill suggested.
Evalee followed Jill up the quaint circular staircase to the upper floor. There was a large bedroom with windows on two sides looking out onto the tall oaks surrounding the building. A dressing room revealed built-in drawers and closets. A large bathroom with pink fixtures and Victorian, rose-patterned wallpaper adjoined a smaller room that looked out over the meadows.
“So what do you think?” Jill asked as they went back down.
“It’s perfect, Jill. The downstairs I could use for display purposes and a reception room, with separate space for an office.” She smiled. “Tasha will absolutely love having a bedroom to herself—and that bathroom!”
It was an unexpectedly radiant smile. Jill realized that when Evalee was able to relax, she could be almost beautiful. The contrast of pale skin, dark eyes, and blond hair was striking. Jill knew that the young woman had been through a great deal. But maybe now that she was here and had something to look forward to, tilings would be different. Under Evalee’s brittle ‘surface Jill saw someone who was very vulnerable. It strengthened her desire to help. “I’m glad you agree. There is so much that could be done.”
“And will be done,” Evalee added. “Oh, Jill, this was a brilliant idea.”
“I think so, too. It will be wonderful to have this place put to such good use. Remember, I want to help you any way I can.”
“I’m very grateful. Thank you, Jill,” Evalee said and hugged her.
After Scott gave Evalee the key, she went back to look through the gatehouse on her own. As she unlocked and opened the door, she had a strange feeling. She took one step inside. The house was silent, empty. A feeling of loneliness swept over her.
For years her life had been so full of people, she had hardly ever had a moment alone. What she was feeling was totally new. Was it excitement? Expectation? Fear? She wasn’t sure.
She took a few steps farther into the large front room, looking around thoughtfully. Her heart began a strange staccato beat.
Suddenly she felt overwhelmed. Evalee took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, refusing to give in to that momentary feeling of apprehension. She had not come this far for nothing.
She felt the urge to pray for certainty that God was in this decision. She knew this would be a more important kind of prayer than those she’d flung heavenward on the hectic days she’d been on her way to work, hurrying to catch the Metro, worried that the sniffles Natasha had would turn into something worse, that her stockings wouldn’t last until next payday, that their cold-eyed landlady would raise the rent again on their flat.
She needed insight, strength, power. The Scripture that had sustained her through all the challenges of the past years came to her now. Shutting her eyes, she repeated the words of Ephesians 3:20—"All praise and glory to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.”
She stood still for a minute. Through the door she had left open behind her, autumn sunshine poured in. She could hear the sounds of birds, the rustle of leaves in the trees that circled the small house. Another sensation began to flow through her, replacing the anxiety. A feeling of promise, of peace.
It was real, as if a great weight were lifting. She realized that what she had felt earlier had simply been that moment of stage fright before the curtain goes up. The second act of her life was about to begin. She was ready to play her role. And who could tell? Perhaps something wonderful was about to happen.
Back at Dovecote that night, Evalee lay sleepless in the high
poster bed. As physically tired as she was, her mind was restless and her thoughts roaming. Being in Mayfield, being with her mother and family, was like being in another world, compared with the one she had lived in for the past five years. It was unsettling, disorienting. However, that other life, into which her love for Andre Oblenskov had led her, had once felt just as alien. She recalled the first time Andre had taken her to meet his mother and the other relatives that made up their extended family.
“You’ll love them and they’ll love you! Don’t worry!” he had assured her.
They had only known each other two weeks, and she had yet to meet his family or he hers, but he had already asked her to marry him.
It had been love at first sight—or very nearly so. It had been so immediate an attraction that they had both felt temporarily stunned.
Like so many times in life, there had been no premonition. That night in Paris when they met, she had no idea that her whole existence was about to change drastically.
Dru and Evalee had been in England, visiting Lady Blanding and Mrs. Victor Ridgeway, Dru’s stepdaughters and Evalee’s older stepsisters. They had gone on to France and were in Paris that spring.
Evalee had been invited to attend an embassy party as the guest of some friends of Aunt Garnet’s, Lord and Lady Ainsely. She had been excited, of course, because it was a dazzling affair and she had a new gown to wear. It was with a sense of anticipation that she mounted the steps and entered the reception room, which was glittering with lights from dozens of crystal chandeliers.
She and Andre had seemed to see each other at the same moment. He was standing by the window, tall and slim, dressed in impeccable evening clothes. He had high cheekbones, black curly hair trimmed very short, a thin, arched nose. His eyes were soft and very dark, almost melancholy. At the very second their gaze met, everything—the hum of conversation, the murmur of laughter, the clink of glasses, the background music—seemed to stop. It was as if by the stroke of a conductor’s wand, an orchestra had become silent. Everything receded until only the two of them seemed to exist.
In spite of his splendid appearance, he had looked rather lost and awkward in the midst of the laughing, chatting crowd. Her immediate impulse was to go right to him, somehow put him at ease, make him laugh at something witty she might say.
It was such a paralyzing experience that Evalee could not move. She had stood there as one mesmerized, staring into the eyes of the young man across the room. But Lady Ainsley touched her arm to introduce her to some people. And when Evalee turned back, looking over again to where he had stood, he was gone. She felt disappointed, as if she had missed something important.
It was not until she saw him carrying a large tray and stopping among the guests to offer glasses of champagne that the realization had struck. Until then she had had no idea that he was one of the hired waiters.
Later, when she got to know him, she found out that many of the exiled Russians, including Andre’s family, had arrived in France practically penniless, escaping with only what they could carry on their person or in their limited luggage. His relatives, like most of the aristocracy, had been trained only how to take their privileged places in life, not how to earn a living.
All that evening Evalee had kept watching him out of the corner of her eyes while she danced, chatted, even flirted, with the half dozen eligible men Lady Ainsley had brought her here to meet. Lady Ainsley had hoped that the young American visitor would have a bevy of escorts to show her around Paris. Strangely distracted, Evalee had not been able to get the waiter with the handsome face and mournful eyes out of her mind.
That night she had found it hard to settle down for sleep. Already she had woven all sorts of romantic tales about him. He had an air of mystery about him, she thought. Inspired by a recent novel she had read about the famous spy Mata Hari, she wondered if he was in disguise. Perhaps he was masquerading as a waiter, working incognito on some daring mission for a foreign country. However, none of her fantasies could have matched Andre’s real life story.
Of course, she had not learned that until later.
The next day, after a shopping spree, she and Dru had stopped at one of the sidewalk cafes near the Luxembourg Gardens for a cafe au lait, and there he was, again a waiter. Evalee was surprised, and she was speechless to see him approach their table.
His eyes had sent a message. He recognized her. She felt her face grow warm under his intense gaze. He took their order while she sat silent and astonished.
Later he had slipped a note in with their check before placing it beside Evalee. She reached for it quickly, hiding it in her handbag as she took out her wallet. Outside the cafe, when Dru’s attention was diverted by a woman walking past with two adorable poodles on a double leash, Evalee read the note.
I will be off in another twenty minutes. Could we meet by the fountain and talk? My name is Andre Oblenskov.
She had folded the piece of paper and tucked it into her handbag. Dru, tired from shopping, accepted Evalee’s explanation that she wanted to walk in the park and would see her mother back at the hotel later.
Evalee’s heart had pounded as she waited near the fountain. She had never done anything like this before in her life. It felt daring and exciting. Was it foolish? She knew nothing about this…this waiter! Maybe she should leave. But just as she wavered in indecision, she saw Andre hurrying toward her. He was wearing a sweater and baggy corduroy pants. Without his waiter’s jacket, he looked like any other casually dressed student. He saw her and quickened his pace. There was such lightness in his step, such happiness glowing in his dark eyes, that Evalee felt as though she were meeting someone she had always known. More to the point, someone she’d been waiting for all her life.
They had spent the rest of the afternoon together. Sitting on one of the benches, unable to take their eyes off one another, they talked. Andre told her all about himself. As he spoke, she felt something unfold within her, something warm, sweet, and very tender, something she had never felt before.
Andre told her he had lived in Paris since he was six years old. He told her of his Russian childhood, describing summers at the seashore and holidays at the family’s country estate. Then there had come a night, he said, that changed everything he had known before.
It had been winter, and he had been awakened from his bed by his nurse, hastily dressed, and taken down to where his parents stood in the hallway, talking in low, urgent voices. His mother had on a long, hooded cape trimmed with silver fox fur. To his surprise, his father was dressed in the rough smock, full pants, cap, and boots of a peasant. Outside their carriage waited. Andre was rushed out and placed in it. His mother followed, weeping, and his father kissed him, hugged him hard, then slammed the carriage door. They rode off through the night, his mother holding him so tightly that he could feel the pumping of her heart, and the tears that rolled down her cheeks onto his.
They had never seen his father again. Andre and his mother had joined relatives in Paris and waited—in vain. No word of what had happened had come to them until long after the war. Even then news out of what had become Communist Russia came very slowly and could not always be counted on to be true.
Before they had escaped, his mother had sewn jewels into her corset, into the lining of her cloak, the hem of her dress. They lived for years by selling them, one by one, reluctantly and only out of dire necessity. His mother would not, however, give up her tiara, which was her symbol of having been a countess, or the pearls that had passed down through the family since the time of Catherine the Great.
It wasn’t until he started school that Andre had learned about the Bolshevik Revolution and the fate of the tsar and some of Andre’s own family who had stayed behind. The family members who had escaped clustered together in Paris, which they had once regarded as a place for vacationing in luxurious hotels. Now they were exiles who could never return to their country, forced to eke out some kind of existence. Andre had at last realized he could never go back to Russ
ia, to the home he remembered.
It was getting dark when Andre walked Evalee back to the hotel. By that time she was in love.
After that first day, they had met every afternoon in the gardens after Andre got off work. He was trying to study at night to get into the university. But the waiting list was long, and natives of France were given first consideration for admittance. In the meantime he worked at the cafe—and sometimes at special events, such as the embassy party, for extra money. A cousin, who had also been a count in the old days, had connections among the waiters of Paris and was often able to get him extra jobs.
Evalee had known that this would be hard to explain, not only to her mother but also to her two stepsisters and Lady Ainsley. How would she tell them she was in love with an exiled Russian, a waiter? That was hardly the type of suitor they had been trying to arrange for her in England.
But before Evalee had introduced Andre to her family, he insisted on presenting her to his mother, whom he evidently adored. Evalee soon understood why. Countess Marushka Oblenskov was the most courageous woman Evalee had ever met, a woman of strength and faith and fortitude. Strangely enough, she reminded Evalee a little of Aunt Garnet, who had also survived war and great personal tragedy.
Welly I have Montrose blood in my veins, too, Evalee thought drowsily. Maybe that kind of courage is inherited. She had already surmounted much. Whatever challenges now lay ahead, Evalee would meet them. With God’s help, was her last thought as she finally drifted wearily off to sleep.
Moving day came at last. Evalee had all kinds of help. Her cousin Gareth Montrose came to do the heavy lifting and carrying. Jill and Evalee directed positions and placements. Dru kept Natasha happy until it was time for her to inspect her new room. The little girl was delighted with everything. Peeking out one of the dormer windows through the leafy oak branches, she exclaimed, “It’s like living in a tree house, Mama!”
Scott joined them later with the twins and a hamper of supper prepared by the Cameron’s cook, and they all ate the first meal in Evalee’s new dwelling, wishing her great happiness and success in her enterprise.
