“I wouldn't have minded that, but as owner of Crapemyrtle, he had a perfect right to consult with his historical consultant.”
“Oh, perfect,” she said, sending him a glance from under her lashes.
He frowned with pretended fierceness. “You can joke if you like, but I know Justin can be blunt to the point of roughshod tactics. I hope I didn't let you in for anything unpleasant.”
“As a matter of fact, we had an interesting conversation, all about paint and the different levels of possible restoration.”
Russ shook his head. Reaching out, he took her hand in his. “You can't fool me. Something is bothering you, and I suspect it has to do with Justin and the house. If you don't want to go on with this, Laura love, you have only to say the word.”
“Back out, now, after you went to the trouble of arranging a trial for me?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, not quite meeting her gaze, “that was no problem. It was Justin himself who suggested it.”
Laura stared at him. “But you said it took you an hour to persuade him.”
“A figure of speech. We talked for an hour, but that was only one of the things we discussed, that and the conditions attached to the trial. He had made up his mind already.”
“I don't understand. He was so positive at first about not having me on the project.” In her agitation, Laura hardly noticed the caressing movement of Russ's thumb upon her wrist.
“I know. That's what worries me.”
“Worries you?”
He shrugged. “Forget I said that. The man's engaged, and to a mighty jealous and headstrong woman, from the look of her, something that could be another problem for you.”
“Yes,” Laura agreed with a rueful smile, and gave him a brief description of what had passed between her and Myra Devol.
“You see what I mean? Nothing but problems. Between Justin and Myra, and what they will do to Crapemyrtle, I'm afraid the two of them will break your heart.”
Laura lifted her chin, a faint color rising to her cheekbones. “My heart is not as fragile as all that. They'll have a fight on their hands if they try to ruin Crapemyrtle.”
“That may be,” Russ said, “but you know they'll have might on their side, which translates to money and legal right.”
“Then they certainly won't be allowed to do it without learning what kind of crime they are committing.”
“Yes, but can you bear to stand by and watch them do it anyway? It was a mistake to ask you to work on this; you are too emotionally involved.”
“Are you trying to tell me you are taking me off the project?”
“You know better,” Russ protested, a hint of concern in his brown eyes. “I'm only trying to make you see that it might be better to remove yourself.”
“I couldn't do that,” Laura began.
There was no time for more. Mrs. Nichols returned then with the fresh coffee, and the conversation was deflected into a lighter vein. Laura's mother invited Russ to stay for a late lunch of soup and a sandwich, and he agreed. The afternoon was far gone when he finally took his leave. Laura walked with Russ along the upper hall, going ahead of him down the stairs.
At the front door, he paused with his hand on the knob. “You'll think about what I said, Laura love, about quitting the project?”
“Oh, Russ,” she said, “I told you —”
“Just think about it—that's all I ask.”
“You know it's impossible,” she said, her voice soft.
He gazed down at her a long moment, then gave an abrupt nod. “I suppose it is. At least it was worth a try.”
He leaned then to kiss her, his lips cool and smooth, their pressure brief. In that fleeting instant Laura was too self-consciously aware of the placement of his hands, the angle of his mouth, and the realization that there was no excitement to transcend such considerations. Her pulse remained steady, and though the friendliness she felt toward him did not change, neither did the even tempo of her breathing.
He was gone, striding away down the sidewalk toward his brown sedan parked at the curb. She watched him for a moment, then turned away to mount the stairs once more with a look of dark concentration in her violet eyes. She trailed her fingers along the banister, thinking not of the embrace just past, but of another she had endured in a tumult of the senses the evening before, and of another man.
4
The work at Crapemyrtle progressed as the weeks of January wore away, passing into February, and in turn, giving way to March. Men swarmed over the house. It was decided to substitute water sprinklers for the more complicated Halon-gas fire-extinguishing system, and they were installed, along with the climate control. The electrical wiring was reworked to carry the heavier loads of a modern household and the plumbing was redone to conceal all pipes from view. In the process, Laura had to veto an enormous bathtub Myra wanted to install, primarily because its great size and purple-black color were unsuited to the dressing room where the woman wanted it put, which was going to be finished in a pale salmon and white paper, though the practical reason given to persuade her was that the flooring in the upstairs room would not support its weight.
On the exterior of the house, the brick paths were uncovered and, in some cases, taken up and relaid, as were the steps that descended from the back loggia. The loggia itself was opened up with the removal of the window walls and French windows, leaving only the supporting columns, with the same railing that lined the upper galleries between them. During this operation, a pair of brick-lined underground cisterns, once used for the collection of water for the house, were discovered. Laura, with diligent effort, had been slowly collecting pictures taken during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, showing different views of the house. In one of these, the cisterns were shown with brick ledges and domed copper covers. By great good fortune, these cisterns were located on the opposite side of the backyard area from where the kitchen was going up, and so were carefully restored with duplicates of their original domes.
It was a tribute to the skill of the brick masons who had constructed them that the cisterns still held water, though they were no longer in use, of course. At some time in the past twenty years a deep well had been drilled near the house. Orders were given now for it to be cleaned out and the water tested for human consumption. The pump to force the water through the pipes in the house had rusted from disuse. When the water was declared pure, much more so than most city systems, a new pump was installed of a size guaranteed to provide more than adequate water pressure.
On the great house itself, the shutters—real blinds with movable louvers and the hinges and latches that would allow them to be closed over the windows as protection in high winds or insulation against the cold—were removed. The thick paint layers of years were stripped away, exposing their hard, perfectly preserved cypress wood. These received a new coat of paint and were set aside. In the windows, a number of panes were replaced, using antique glass found at the wrecking yards. Some people did not like the distorted view they gave, resorting to clear, modern glass in the upper sashes, but Justin had declined such a suggestion from the contractor.
The brick columns that lined the galleries were straightened to stand plumb, coated with plaster, and painted a dazzling white. The dentil work around the entablature was replaced where sections were missing, and this too was cleaned and painted. The sandblasting crew then turned their attention to the brick walls, carefully blowing away the crazed, cracked, and peeling finish without disturbing the soft, handmade brick that had been burned on the place when the house was built, or the crumbling, hand-mixed mortar. The painters moved in quickly behind them to cover everything with white once more, preventing deterioration from the damp spring weather.
Stripping the paint from whatever they came across seemed to become a compulsion, however. One day after the paint crew had moved inside, Laura came upon them just beginning to chip away the muddy-looking grime on the baseboards of the library.
“No!” she exclaimed. “Stop!”
The men turned to her in amazement. It was only after she brought soap, water, and a polishing cloth, and got down on her knees to scrub at the boards, that they were able to recognize what she had seen all along. Once cleaned, the paint revealed itself to be a fine example of faux bois, literally translated as “false wood.” Original to the house, the baseboards had been carefully painted by a talented artist to represent marble, with the same shadings of color and swirling pattern. Similar detailed work had been done on the cornices, with a lighter blend on the convex molding and a darker shading on the concave moldings for a remarkable three-dimensional effect. Though at the time it was done the artist's efforts had been intended to pass for the more expensive marble material, at the present time the uniqueness of the artistic expression made it more valuable than the real thing would have been.
After that incident, Laura began to spend more and more time at the house, staying from before the moment the carpenters and painters arrived until after they left again, busying herself scraping paint, cleaning, running errands, or poring over some of the hundreds of catalogs that she had collected containing period wall coverings and draperies, paint chips, and hand-loomed rugs.
She was often joined for brief stretches of time by Justin Roman. He was interested in everything she had to show him, quickly becoming submerged in the smallest detail. And yet, his attitude was businesslike, distant. He took great pains not to be alone with her, and never stayed long. Sometimes Laura found evidence, tracks on the drive, fingerprints in the fine dusting of sand that settled everywhere, footsteps in the mud, which showed he had been there after everyone else had gone. They did not talk a great deal, especially when he brought his fiancée with him to check on the progress, but slowly Laura gained confidence that he meant to return Crapemyrtle to its former splendor with no more jarring modern adjuncts than were absolutely necessary.
She was rudely shaken out of her complacency early one morning the first week in March. When she pulled into the live-oak-lined drive, she saw Myra's crimson sports car parked before the house, drawn onto the grass that was just beginning to show touches of tender green. Beside it was parked a carpenter's truck with a name stenciled on the door that she did not recognize. Frowning a little, she stepped out of her compact. Her footsteps were swift as she crunched over the white gravel of the drive, mounted the steps, and entered the house.
Myra's high-pitched tones directed her to the sitting room at the front of the house. The woman, dressed in a pair of tight-fitting black pants worn with a green silk shirt and three-inch-heeled sandals of green leather, stood before the fireplace. She was talking volubly to a man in overalls.
“We'll tear out this marble mantel. It's just too, too quaint and insipid. Instead, we'll put in a brick wall with a raised hearth and glass doors over the fireplace opening. After that, we'll take down all these silly roses and naked cherubs, and lower the ceiling to something reasonable for better acoustics. Over there on the end wall, I want to take in about four feet of the room, panel it or something, and build a storage cabinet for my stereo equipment, albums, tapes, and so on, in one end, with an arrangement for a wet bar in the other.”
“You're going to run into problems with the plumbing on that bar, ma'am,” the man said.
“I don't care,” Myra snapped. “Get a plumber out here to see to it.”
“Myra,” Laura said, finding her voice as she advanced into the room. “You can't mean it! You can't be thinking of tearing this room apart like that. It's the most beautiful in the house!”
The other woman swung around, her red lips curving in a faintly malicious smile. “Can't I? I told you I meant to have a game room.”
“But not here! It would be—atrocious. You can't!”
“That's your opinion. You just stand back and watch me.”
As Myra turned away, Laura put her hand on her green-clad sleeve. “Justin won't like it. He'll be furious.”
“You just leave Justin to me,” Myra said through her teeth, jerking her arm away. “Right now, he's in Baton Rouge, and what he doesn't know won't hurt him.”
“It will ruin the house,” Laura said desperately.
“That's fine with me; I didn't like it the way it was anyway.”
Laura glanced at the carpenter, standing back with his hands on his hips, watching the two of them. She looked back to Myra. “I can't let you do this.”
“And just how do you intend to stop me?” the other woman sneered.
Without wasting time, Laura turned back to the man in overalls. “This house belongs to Justin Roman. It isn't just any ordinary building; it's a careful restoration of a historic landmark. Look around you. Do you honestly think that the man who owns this place is going to be happy with a game room just inside his front door like the one outlined to you?”
“I am his fiancée,” Myra declared, breaking in, “and I say he will.”
“I'm the interior designer and consultant here, and I've worked long and hard to see that everything is as it should be. You can take my word for it when I tell you that Mr. Roman will not pay a cent for unauthorized construction.”
“Justin doesn't have to pay. My father —”
Laura turned on her. “Your father doesn't own this house, and so far as I know, you have not been given power to contract additions or improvements in Justin's name.” She swung back to the man. “You heard her say yourself that what Justin didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Doesn't that suggest to you that she's doing something Mr. Roman would not like, and that she knows it?”
The carpenter fingered his chin, casting a quick look at Myra. “Well, ma'am, it does look as if it would be better all around if I was to get the approval of the owner.”
“You have my approval, and that's all you need!” Myra screamed. “You'll do as I say, and not waste another minute about it!”
Laura took a step toward him. “If you touch anything in this room, if you alter it in any way, I can guarantee that you will be slapped with a suit for damages so quick you'll wonder what happened.” She didn't know that it was the truth, but it was the most effective threat she could think of at the moment.
“That isn't so,” Myra yelled at the man. “When the work is done, I can bring Justin around. Get started now, you stupid fool! Do as I say, or I can promise you that you have just lost a job!”
The man's face stiffened as he glared at the woman in green. “I tell you what; nobody yells at me like that. You can just take your job and do whatever you want with it, ma'am.”
Her eyes blazing with frustration, Myra watched as he leaned to pick up his tool box. “I'll find another carpenter, and a better one than you!”
“You do that,” he said, and swinging around, marched from the room.
Myra whirled on Laura. “You think you've won, don't you? But by lunchtime I'll have another carpenter out here and working!”
“Justin may have something to say about that.”
The other woman walked to where her clutch purse lay and picked it up. When she turned, she had regained her composure. “You can call him, if you like, but do you really think he is going to take your side against me, the woman who is going to be his wife?”
“Not mine personally,” Laura answered, putting as much force as she could into the words, “but I think he will side with what's best for Crapemyrtle.”
Myra smiled with a hard twist of the lips. “Possibly, but he won't thank you for forcing him to choose.”
“That doesn't matter,” Laura said with a lift of her chin. “I only care for what's best for the house.”
“That's always good to hear,” Myra replied. “I was beginning to think your outlook toward the man who is going to be my husband was a little too personal, that you actually thought you knew him better than I did. I couldn't allow that, you know.”
There was no time for Laura to consider Myra's parting shot or the look of malicious triumph that shone in her vivid green eyes. She h
ad to get to a phone as quickly as possible. It was still early. If she could reach Justin soon enough, he could drive out and put a stop to Myra's plans once and for all.
Laura sent her blue compact racing back toward town. At the Nichols house, she jerked to a halt, got out, slamming the door behind her, and raced up the walk. Her mother appeared from the back as she came through the door.
“What is it? What's the matter, Laura?”
“I can't stop now, I'll tell you later,” she cried.
She may as well have saved her breath. It was early, all right, too early for Justin's office to be open. With fingers that shook, she found his home number, which he had given to her in case of emergency. When she had dialed, there was no answer to the persistent ring.
Laura glanced at her watch. It was an hour yet before she could reasonably expect to reach him at his place of business. By that time, she could be over halfway to Baton Rouge. If she could see him in person, she might be better able to impress the importance of what had taken place upon him, make him understand what a hideous mistake it would be to allow his fiancée to have her way. He could not fob her off with an excuse, or plead business engagements, or worse, be deflected from speaking to her at all by a polite secretary. More important, if she could convince him to return to Crapemyrtle, she could be certain they started at once, giving them time to reach the house before lunchtime, before Myra could round up her next carpenter crew.
The decision was only half-formed in her mind when she dropped the receiver back in its cradle and swung toward the stairs.
She met her mother halfway down. The older woman reached out to catch her arm. “Laura?”
“Oh, Mom, it's awful. Myra is trying to turn the sitting room into a game room with a wet bar. I've got to find Justin so he can stop her.”
Mrs. Nichols seemed to have no trouble understanding that tumbled speech. She nodded.
“I'm going into Baton Rouge, but I'll be back by lunch.”
Her mother released her. “Be careful,” she said, but Laura, already whipping through the door, scarcely heard.
April of Enchantment Page 6
