Scarlet Nights

by Jude Deveraux

  “So what did he do about the plum man?”

  “I didn’t see it but I was told that at the next class assembly at a high school in Williamsburg, they were treated to a slide show of the man kissing the principal’s wife. And they were wearing very little clothing.”

  Mike couldn’t help chuckling. “Let me guess. Your mother investigated the jam.”

  “Oh, yes! It contained white rum, which was against the rules. Mr. Lang also said the fruit had been stolen from his trees, but that couldn’t be proven.”

  “It would be interesting to know if when Lang was sneaking around whether he was looking at pretty girls or spying in general.” Mike thought that if the old man was snooping, he might have seen something useful.

  “I’ve never heard it said that he watches girls dressing. I think he does as much listening as he does looking. Mother says he has no life of his own, so he watches other people’s lives.”

  “And no one in this town has done anything about him?”

  “The Langs are part of the place and we know to keep our curtains drawn.”

  “Doors left unlocked but windows covered,” Mike said, shaking his head. “What else has he done?”

  “One time some man was determined to get the McDowells to lease Merlin’s Farm to him. Ramsey’s dad said he could have it if he could get Mr. Lang out. The poor man didn’t know that Uncle Benjamin was joking. My mother refused to tell me the details of what Mr. Lang exposed about the man, but he resigned his position at William and Mary, and moved to Maine.”

  Sara paused. “But, to be fair, Mr. Lang’s done some good too. When I was a teenager, a little girl ran away from home, and Mr. Lang not only knew where she was but why she’d run away. After she was found and was able to talk, a neighbor was put in jail.”

  “Interesting,” Mike said. “Has no one tried to spy on him?”

  “Sure. Luke and Ramsey dedicated a lot of their childhood to trying to see what Mr. Lang was up to. They used to hide in the bushes around Merlin’s Farm and try to watch him, but except for one time, he always found them.”

  “Lang didn’t hurt anyone, did he?” Mike asked sharply, thinking about the traps.

  “He knew better than to do that. He shouted at everybody who came near—and his dogs were great at guarding. All the kids said Mr. Lang was part bat, that he could hear and see in the dark.”

  “His senses probably are better, since he spends so much time alone.”

  “Are all the things you know about him from your grandmother?” When Mike nodded, she added, “Since she loved the farm and Brewster Lang lived there, maybe they were sweet on each other.”

  Mike snorted. “Grans said she used to laugh about the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. But she told Tess and me that if she owned the place, he would be her servant boy.”

  “Boy? Are you sure she called him that? Weren’t they the same age?”

  Mike was pulling under what he’d dubbed the Virgin Tree, only this time he made sure his car couldn’t be seen from the road. “My grandmother told the same stories over and over, so there are some things I know for sure. Tess and I grew up hearing of the ingratitude and conniving of every person in this town. Lang was just fifteen when my grandmother left Edilean; she was twenty-two. She liked to tell Tess and me that she’d someday return to Merlin’s Farm and Lang would wait on her, that he’d be her butler. She always thought of him as a boy and not of her class. In her mind, he never grew older than fifteen. You think you can walk through fields in that getup?”

  He was referring to Sara’s pale yellow cotton dress and her strappy Italian sandals.

  “You would have been disappointed if I’d worn a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.”

  “They would have been more suitable for traipsing about an old farm.”

  She looked at him.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “I would have been weeping with regret.” He didn’t smile but the dimple in his cheek showed. “Follow me and do whatever I tell you to.”

  “Always do,” she murmured, and laughed at Mike’s groan.

  He went the same way he had the first time he’d seen the farm and was doubly careful not to make a path. Once, he put his arms under Sara’s and swung her over a muddy place. But when she was on a dry surface, he kept his arm around her.

  “I can walk the rest of the way,” she said.

  “Sure?”

  “Of course I am. I can—” She realized he was teasing her. “Tell me, do I come before or after Erica in your list of women you flirt with to get information?”

  He started walking again. “I’ll have to think about that. I’ll bet Erica knows some tricks you don’t.”

  “I’m sure she does,” Sara said as she followed him. “But then I am oh, so teachable.”

  “Don’t start something you don’t mean to finish,” he said over his shoulder.

  Sara couldn’t repress her grin. Sometimes Mike made her feel like the most desirable woman on the planet. Of course she knew that what he was doing was just part of his job, but it still felt good. She and Greg had long ago passed the point where he told her she was beautiful and sexy. In fact, in the last months they seemed to have stopped saying anything that didn’t have to do with the business.

  She looked at the back of Mike as he made his way through the weeds. He deftly jumped from one flat place to another, and when he landed, he’d turn and hold out his hand to take hers to steady her for the short leap. She realized that she’d come to depend on him whenever she needed help.

  “What’s that look for?” Mike asked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking, that’s all.”

  “About what you have that Mitzi wants?”

  “Oh, right. That. Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking about.”

  “Now who’s lying?”

  “I learned how from you.”

  Chuckling, Mike stepped into the clearing and halted as he looked around.

  “If my mother said she’d keep Mr. Lang busy today, she’ll do it.” Sara was beside him. “Did they give you a key to the house at the closing?”

  “Yes, but I have no intention of using it.”

  “Then how—?”

  He gave her a look up and down. “I’m going to love pushing you through a window.”

  “And I’m going to enjoy—” She broke off from saying that she looked forward to being pushed, and reminded herself that she was engaged to be married. Just yesterday she’d spent three hours with the wedding planner—and Sara had changed several things. The carnations were gone and roses were in. She knew Greg would be angry, but right now she couldn’t make herself worry about that.

  “We’re going in through a window because Lang might have set traps in the doors. And once we get inside, you’re not to touch anything, you understand me? He may have rigged some pretty box with a bear claw—and I don’t mean a pastry.”

  “I doubt if—” At Mike’s look, she cut off. “I will touch nothing.”

  “Except me,” Mike said without a hint of a smile.

  “Right. Got it. Hands only on Mike.” She wasn’t smiling. “Any particular places I’m to touch?”

  “Knees would be nice. Start there and work your way up. Slowly.”

  Sara laughed. “Go on. You lead, I’ll follow.”

  “I’ve always wanted to hear a woman say that.” Turning, he walked across the open area so fast that Sara could hardly keep up with him. Once they were at the house, he made quick work of pushing up a window, then he grabbed the sill and hoisted himself inside. He’s a gymnast, Sara thought. A Tarzan and a gymnast.

  When Mike leaned out the window and put his hands out for hers, she didn’t hesitate, and it again occurred to her how much she’d grown to trust him in their short time together.

  As he pulled her up, he made what she was sure were several unnecessary touches on her body. When his hand went down her leg, she wanted to make herself glare at him, to remind him that she was engaged to be marri
ed. But she couldn’t. She liked the feeling, and especially liked being touched by a man who had desire in his eyes.

  Love and marriage aren’t only about fantastic sex, she reminded herself as Mike released her and began to look about the old farmhouse. There are other things in marriage that are just as important, such as friendship and—She didn’t want to think about that because she and Greg weren’t what she’d call friends, certainly not like she and Mike were. Greg and she were—Mike was staring at her, waiting for her to put her mind back on the current task.

  She’d never been inside the house before but she knew as much about it as was possible to find out. “Do you want me to give you a tour?” Sara needed the distraction of words to keep her from thinking about Mike. It seemed that lately all she did was compare him to Greg. Everyone who met Mike liked him. She couldn’t see that he was making an effort with anyone, but was just being himself. Greg worked hard to make anyone he sold things to like him, but with her family and friends, he didn’t conceal his contempt. “Country morons” is what he called the people of Edilean. Greg especially ridiculed Luke. “The man must make a fortune with those books he writes. So why doesn’t he hire someone to mow his lawn for him?” Sara had tried to explain that being a success was no reason to become a King Midas. That Sara’d mentioned a name Greg had never heard of made him furious.

  “Sara?” Mike was looking at her in curiosity.

  “Oh, sorry. My mind was elsewhere. What did you say?”

  “I asked when you’d seen this place that you hadn’t told me about.”

  “I have not withheld any information!” she snapped, then apologized. Her annoyance was from her memories of Greg, not from Mike. “I know about the interior of the house through HABS.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know while we look around?” he asked gently, as though he knew something had upset her.

  Sara turned away so he wouldn’t see more than she wanted him to. Why was it that Mike, who she’d known for only days, was becoming more clear to her than Greg, who she’d known for over a year? Greg was a man she’d been through a lot with. They’d set up the store together. Well, maybe Greg had made all the decisions and Sara had done the bulk of the actual work, but it had been together. Hadn’t it?

  “Are you going to tell me about that haves?” Mike asked.

  “HABS, all caps. Historic American Buildings Survey.” He was looking at her hard, as though trying to ascertain what she was thinking. Again, she compared him to Greg. Greg would never ask her to tell him what she knew about something. Sometimes it seemed that Greg believed Sara should only think and do what he told her to. Or worse, lately, starting about the same time as sex between them stopped, Greg had begun to say that if Sara truly loved him, she’d know what he wanted. She’d somehow intuit all his needs. One night he told her that if she loved him as much as she should, she’d have known that he didn’t want chicken for dinner because he’d had it for lunch. She said, “If you’d called and told me that, I could have—” Greg interrupted. “Do you have any idea how busy I am all day? You expect me to tell you what I ate for lunch? Next you’ll be telling me I have to tell you who I had lunch with. Is that what this is all about? Jealousy?”

  Sometimes arguing with Greg made her head spin around until she had no idea what they’d been talking about in the first place.

  “Are you okay?” Mike asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Maybe you should wait in the car.”

  “And miss seeing my dream house?” Sara asked, then launched into talking about the house.

  Mike didn’t know what had happened to Sara as soon as they entered the old house, but something about the way she looked pleased him.

  He half listened to her telling a story about how HABS had begun, with President Franklin Roosevelt setting it up to provide jobs during the Depression. What he heard was that there were old photos and even floor plans for the house somewhere on the Internet—and he planned to look at them ASAP. But for right now he just wanted to see the house his grandmother—and Sara—had so rhapsodized about. And he wanted to try to find a reason why the Vandlos might be interested in the place.

  As Mike searched, running his hands along walls, looking inside everything, Sara talked nonstop. “Crown moldings” and “original” seemed to be her every other word. She spoke of paneled doors and said something about there being a cross on them.

  “To ward off evil,” she said.

  They went through the four big rooms and the wide hallway downstairs. The house wasn’t grand or majestic like Edilean Manor, but Mike could see that with paint and repair, it could be quite livable. He imagined Tess’s child riding a tricycle inside the big dining room. But then, Sara probably wouldn’t allow that, for fear the old wood paneling would be damaged.

  Quickly, he glanced at her, thinking that she might have read his thoughts, as she sometimes seemed to do that. But she was still talking about proportion and the height of the rooms. He’d never thought of himself as the marriage-and-kids type, but when he imagined living in this old house, Sara was in every picture.

  He watched her as she gestured at the ceiling and kept on talking, and he was astonished at how much time she must have spent studying this house.

  He turned back to his search. It couldn’t be possible that Vandlo had wanted the house because Sara did, could it? No other reason except to please her—to help persuade her to marry him? But Mike couldn’t make himself believe that.

  As Mike was more interested in the present, he noted what Lang had done to it. The house was clean and tidy—and sparsely furnished. In the big living room the couch had a block under one leg and was covered by a well-worn canvas. The chairs were cheap to begin with and had been patched repeatedly.

  There was little of a personal nature in the rooms. No photographs, no books, just a stack of well-thumbed catalogs from seed and plant companies that were on the old coffee table.

  As Mike followed Sara through the rooms, he saw that if Brewster Lang was living there now, he hadn’t always done so. They were in what had probably once been the library, and he could see that there used to be books in the built-in shelves. He saw light squares on the walls from where pictures had hung.

  He turned to Sara. “I know Lang and his family were caretakers of this house in 1941, and he lives here now, but who lived in it in between?”

  Sara looked surprised. “You are observant, aren’t you? An historian from Williamsburg and his family lived here for ten or twelve years.”

  “So why doesn’t one of the McDowells live here?”

  Sara shrugged. “They don’t like the place. Ramsey can’t stand it, and neither can his sister.”

  “Then why don’t they sell it?”

  “Until recently, they couldn’t because it was entailed until the twenty-first century. Some McDowell a couple hundred years ago made out a will saying the farm couldn’t he sold until—”

  “The year 2000,” Mike finished for her. “So where does the historian come into this?”

  “I don’t know all the story, but I think Mr. Lang’s mother ran off with someone when he was just a boy.” Sara shrugged. “After she left, Mr. Lang’s father quit taking care of the buildings, so Uncle Alex moved the two men—I think Mr. Lang was seventeen or eighteen then—into another house, and that’s when he rented the farm to the historian. The man had just been married and they raised a family here. But all that was a long time ago. By the time I was born, Mr. Lang’s father was dead and he, the son, was living alone in this house.”

  “Are you saying that Lang has another house somewhere? Someplace he can go?”

  “You are thinking of moving here, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. What with Tess and her kid and—”

  “Don’t forget Ramsey.”

  “Oh right. Him.”

  “Do you want your sister all to yourself?”

  “I think,” he said softly, “that I’d like someone all to myself.�
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  For a moment, their eyes locked. Sara was the first to turn away. “Ready to go upstairs?”

  “I’ll follow you wherever you go,” he said.

  “Then I’m going back to the barn.”

  “Over my—” Mike grinned. “Okay, so you got me. Lead on.”

  They wandered about upstairs to see the four bedrooms and the one big bath. It was tiled in perfect 1930s fashion, all black and white. “I’d leave it just as it is,” Sara said.

  “I know, because it’s ‘original.’”

  Sara’s voice was prim. “When I use that term concerning this house, I mean original to when it was built in 1674. For your information, that bathroom is quite modern.”

  Mike looked at the old pedestal sink and the unusually high toilet. “That room is new?”

  “Yes.” She went on talking about moldings and paneling, but when she again said “original” he laughed at her.

  “You do not appreciate the significance of this house!” she said, but she was smiling.

  “As long as I have you to take care of it, I’ll be fine. You can do anything you—” When he realized what he was saying, he broke off. “Does this place have a kitchen?”

  Sara practically ran down the stairs, while Mike took his time. It still astonished him to think of the house as belonging to him. As he stood at the head of the stairs and looked down, he thought of screen doors slamming and kids running in and out—and Sara calling to all of them.

  “Come on, slow poke,” she said as she looked up the staircase. “The kitchen is horrible. Wait until you see the floor.”

  He went down, then out to the addition that she said had been stuck onto the house sometime in the 1930s. “Probably when the bathroom was put in,” she said.

  For all that the bath had charm, the kitchen didn’t. The old linoleum floor was worn through to the boards below. The appliances were 1970s avocado, and the cabinet doors were barely hanging on.

  “This room could be redone,” Sara said.