On the long drive into the city, Laura rehearsed what she meant to say, going over the words again and again to imprint them in her mind. She would be calm and rational, setting her case forth without accusing Myra, but also presenting it in such a way as to make Justin see the enormity of the crime his fiancée was going to perpetrate.
It crossed her mind that she should have changed out of her jeans and turtle-neck shirt, but she dismissed the idea. What she looked like didn't count; this was not a social call. It was business, a bid to be allowed to do her job, a gamble to save Crapemyrtle.
She did not think that was putting it too dramatically. As far as she was concerned, to have any one of the rooms cut up and modernized in such a manner was no less a disaster than if fire was allowed to raze the antique structure.
Justin's office was in a tall building of concrete and glass that towered into the sky. Laura took the elevator to the top and marched down the hall until she came to the suite marked with his name and corporation. He was in. The secretary-receptionist announced her and directed her to the correct door. Laura went quickly toward it and turned the knob.
A wide room paneled in cypress and carpeted in gray broadloom opened out before her. A curtained expanse of windows gave ample light. One wall held a set of antique maps in polished steel frames while the other was taken up by file cabinets and bookcases of fine, built-in cabinetry. Justin sat behind an English partner's desk, a remote figure in a vested suit with a perfectly knotted tie at the collar of a silk shirt, its white in sharp contrast to the bronze of his face. He looked up as she entered and indicated the Sheraton chair drawn up across from him.
“Laura,” he said, registering faint surprise, “come in. Sit down and tell me what brings you up to Baton Rouge.”
Her carefully prepared speech went out of her head. She moved quickly toward him across the thick carpet. “You have got to do something before it's too late.”
He came slowly to his feet, dropping the papers he held in his hand, his brows drawing together over his nose. “What's the problem?”
“It's Myra,” Laura said baldly, and launched at once into a quick sketch of what had happened.
He stared at her when she had finished, a measuring look in his dark eyes. “She wouldn't dare.”
“She would, and she is,” Laura assured him.
“I can't believe it.”
“I wouldn't make up such a thing. You have to come back with me to Crapemyrtle now and call a halt to what she is doing. That is, if you want her stopped.”
“Are you sure she wants to make such a radical change?”
Laura made an impatient gesture. “I told you what she plans exactly the way I heard her describe it to a carpenter. If you can't accept it, then come back with me and ask her yourself. Talk to her. After all, she is your fiancée!”
A grim look settled over his face. “I didn't say I doubted your word. It's just that I think there has been some mistake.”
“All I'm asking is that you come and see for yourself!” Laura braced her hands on his desk, leaning toward him.
His dark eyes with the gold flecks in their depths rested for an instant on her flushed face, then met the look of angry pleading in her violet gaze. “It looks,” he said slowly, “as if I'm going to have to do just that.”
They made the trip from Baton Rouge in record time. The only vehicles on the drive as they pulled up were a couple of painters’ trucks. There was no sign of Myra's crimson sports car. Laura allowed herself a brief sigh of relief.
There were fresh tracks on the lawn, as of some big delivery truck, she noticed as she slid from her compact. Her lips tightened. She had been trying to protect the grounds and the flowers that surrounded it on all sides, but sometimes she thought it was a losing battle.
She waited for Justin, who had come to a stop behind her in his own car. Together, they entered the house, going at once to the sitting room. It was untouched, still as Laura had left it. There was no sign that Myra had returned, though it lacked only a half-hour until lunchtime.
Laura swung slowly around in the center of the room, inspecting it with her eyes, before she allowed herself to be sure. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “We are in time.”
“It looks that way,” Justin agreed.
Laura sent him a quick glance, disturbed by the neutral tone of his voice. He still didn't believe her, or perhaps he simply didn't want to think the woman he was engaged to, the woman he presumably loved, could be so underhanded. It was right, of course, that his loyalty should belong to her, but it was also disturbing.
Turning toward the windows, Laura said, “Myra should be back soon.”
“I hope so. I need to get back to the office.”
Laura scarcely heard his quiet words. Her attention was caught by the rumble of machinery. She glanced through the French window toward the garden, the direction from which the sound came. Her horrified gaze caught the upward flash of a great orange mechanical arm. And then she was snatching open the glass-paned door, running along the gallery, taking the path toward the rose garden.
She heard Justin call her name, but she paid no heed. Through her mind flashed Myra's declaration that she meant to have a swimming pool, the glitter of ill-concealed triumph she had seen in the woman's emerald eyes, and the fresh tracks of heavy machinery she had noticed on the lawn. Taken with what she had just seen and heard, they spelled just one thing.
It was as she suspected. The excavating machine, a large, orange backhoe, squatted just outside the rose garden. The powerful noise of its engine shook the ground as its great digging arm reached inside the garden, tearing at the tangled canes of the running roses, ripping the briarlike old plants from the moist earth.
“No!” Laura shouted. “Don't! Stop it, oh, stop it!”
The young man behind the controls could not hear her above the motor, could not see her for the overgrown shrubbery that lined the walk. She waved to attract his attention, screaming at him until she thought her throat would burst, but he only set the gears to grinding to lift the arm, ready to send it crashing down once more upon the roses.
If she stood in front of him beside where he was digging, he would have to see her, have to stop, she thought. She did not count on him moving his aim, shifting the arm to the left, ready to take the next bite out of the soil in the exact spot where she chose to come to a halt.
Laura recognized her danger in a microsecond, knew that once the backhoe was set in motion it could not be quickly stopped, that her muscles, stiffened with the effort to bring her to this point, could not be shifted in the split instant necessary to throw herself out of the way.
Suddenly she was wrenched aside, her arms caught in a bruising grasp. She staggered and would have fallen, but Justin caught her to him, twisting her around to face him.
“You are a menace,” he growled, a gray tinge beneath the golden bronze of his face. “Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Behind her, the bucket of the backhoe had buried itself in the dirt. The motor of the machine rumbled into silence. She stared up at Justin, her eyes purple with shock and desperation. Her hands on his arms clenched the muscles with trembling strength. Her lips were stiff and her voice no more then a whisper as she said, “They can't dig up the rose garden! They can't!”
He glanced at the backhoe and the damage it had done as if taking note for the first time of what had been taking place. He flicked his black gaze back to her pale face, his expression shuttered. With a supporting arm about her shoulders, he turned to face the young man with long black hair and sleeves rolled above bulging forearms who climbed down from the excavating machine. “No,” he agreed, “they can't.”
“What's going on?” the driver of the backhoe demanded, lifting heavy boots to step over the crushed rose vines as he came toward them.
“Who told you to start digging here?” Justin asked, his tone controlled, but stern.
“The name on the work order is Devol,” came the answer.
“I run a plumbing shop, contract swimming pools on the side. A woman came in three weeks ago and said be here this morning at nine o'clock. When I showed up, she pointed out this place and told me to get started, not to worry about the bushes and sidewalks since they didn't amount to much.”
“I see,” Justin said. “Could I have a look at this order?”
“It's in the truck.” The driver jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the heavy-duty truck behind him with the trailer-carrier for the backhoe hitched to the back bumper. “I'd have been further along, but after I got my backhoe off the trailer, the thing wouldn't start.”
“That may be a good thing.”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“There won't be a pool dug here.”
“Now wait a minute.”
Justin stopped him with a lifted hand. “I realize your time is valuable, and I'm sorry that you had to make a trip out here for nothing. My name and address ought to be on that work order too. You can send me a statement of the charges for your time up to this point.”
“I'll do that.” The young man gave a short nod and swung around, starting back toward his machinery.
Laura took a deep, tremulous breath. With a smile lighting her face, she looked up at the man beside her. It was then that the tapping of heels was heard on the brick walk behind them.
“Well, isn't this charming?” Myra said, her tones ringing out with shrill sarcasm. “Maybe I was right, Miss Nichols. Maybe you are taking too personal an interest in your job.”
Justin turned without haste to face his fiancée, his arm still in place. “Darling,” he said, the grim tone of his voice making a travesty of the word, “I've been waiting to see you. There is a matter or two I am anxious to speak to you about.”
Myra blanched visibly under her makeup, her green eyes darting from Laura to her fiancé and back again, her red lips tightening as her gaze narrowed on the arm about the other girl's shoulders. “Why, Justin, you look livid. Whatever can be wrong?”
“I expect you have a good idea.”
“You can't be talking about the little additions I had planned to surprise you? I don't know what Laura has been telling you, but I'm sure there's nothing in them to upset you.”
Justin tilted his head toward the backhoe with its digging arm still buried in the earth. “You don't think that might have been a little upsetting?”
It was then that Laura moved from his casual embrace, deliberately effacing herself, dropping to her knees beside the mangled canes of the roses.
Myra flicked her a quick look, then let her gaze move past her to where the driver was moving across the lawn, halfway between his truck and the backhoe, well out of earshot. “What a pity,” she said with pretended dismay. “The idiot started digging in the wrong place. I told him I wanted the pool in back beyond the new addition as plainly as I knew how; I even pointed out the spot.”
Laura could not help overhearing. She swung her head to stare at the other woman; then, as if drawn by a magnet, she turned her gaze to meet Justin's dark eyes. He was looking down at her, a brooding expression on his features. Abruptly he turned away, taking Myra's elbow.
“Shall we go into the house?” he grated.
“Whatever you say, darling,” Myra said sweetly.
Their footsteps receded. In her agitation, Laura pulled at the rose vines, tugging at the thick, upturned mats of roots and pushing them back into the ground, tamping dirt around them, uncaring for the scratches of the thorns or the soil that embedded itself under her nails. The roses were not as badly hurt as she had feared. Most of the old, broken growth would have to be pruned away, but that was needed in any case. These roses were hardy; they had to be, or they would not have survived so long. They would grow again, bloom again. Houses and plants could be given new life; it was only people, and the faith that sustained them, that could not be rejuvenated.
Laura did not see Justin and Myra again that day, though she heard the squeal of the tires of Myra's sports car as she left the drive, followed shortly by the hum of the 1940 Lincoln. It was just as well. She was in no mood to face either of them.
She returned to the house and set to work cleaning the candle ledge in the dining room, the small projecting, molded shelf above the door where candles could be ranged in a row to give extra light both to the room and, through the transom, to the hallway outside. Even as she worked, she could not banish the scene in the garden from her mind. She went over it again and again, from the moment when Justin had pulled her from under the arm of the backhoe until he had taken Myra into the house.
He had been concerned for her, she could not doubt that, though he had also been angry that she had put herself in danger. Whether there was anything personal in his attitude, she could not say, and yet he had held her close to him long past the time when such support had been necessary. Myra had not liked finding them like that. The look in her eyes had been murderous with jealousy and a lacing of something that might have been fear.
The woman had suggested earlier that there was an attraction of some kind between Laura and the owner of Crapemyrtle. She seemed to think it was derived from Laura. Russ, on the other hand, had come close to saying he was worried that Justin might have been influenced in his offer of a trial by an interest in Laura that dated from their first meeting. Were they right, those two?
Standing on her ladder, chipping away at the stubborn layers of paint, Laura frowned. In all honesty, she could not say that she was indifferent to Justin. He was a dynamic man who exuded physical appeal. She responded to it on the same primitive level, that was all. What he felt, she could not begin to guess, unless it was something similar. He had kissed her that first evening at Crapemyrtle, had held her a moment longer than necessary when he had caught her after her fall from the ladder, had even hinted that he found her beautiful. But that was all weeks ago. Not until today had there been anything else to indicate he was aware of her existence beyond her usefulness as a consultant. Though he had not said so in plain words, she assumed he had not found her lacking in that regard. There had been no limits set on her trial period, and he had not said it was at an end just yet, but the restoration was nearly half done and she was still in charge. That should mean something.
At least she knew that she was right about his feelings toward the house. He had not been at all pleased to learn of Myra's plans, and certainly had shown no indication to okay them. What had been decided between them? Had Myra toned down her plans for a game room to something Justin could live with? Had she given up the idea altogether? Had she convinced him she was telling the truth about the mix-up in the choice of location for a pool?
The woman's duplicity in suggesting that Laura was exaggerating for her own reasons, trying to make trouble, still left Laura breathless with indignation. Could Justin believe such a tale? She did not like to think so, but under the circumstances she must not be surprised if he did. Still, what motive Myra might have attributed to her, Laura hated to contemplate.
Was it all worth it? Laura asked herself. The sheer hard work, the constant watchfulness, the suspicion and intrigue, the doubts of her abilities that made her question herself?
Of course it was. She had saved the sitting room today, hadn't she? And the rose garden? She had preserved the faux bois in the library-study. She had influenced the opening of the loggia and revived the old cisterns. Because of her intense, loving concern and guidance, the house was being slowly brought back to what it should be, made a thing of beauty once more, a shining example of a way of life that had passed into the shades of time. What did praise and recognition matter, compared to such knowledge? It was enough in itself, wasn't it?
5
The weather turned warmer. One bright, sunlit day followed another, days that made the work at Crapemyrtle go both easier, because it could be done with all doors and windows thrown open, and harder, because of the urge to be out in the balmy sunshine. The row of forsythia on the north side of the house, fronting the ov
ergrown hedge, turned to a mass of yellow, while the bridal wreath and baby's breath spireas became drifts of white. Pear, plum, and peach trees decked themselves with white and pink blooms. The flowering quince turned rose-red along its shiny brown stems, and yellow jonquils, daffodils, and pale-lavender-blue hyacinths blew in the gentle March wind.
It was a week after the incident in the rose garden. The outside of the house was finished. It gleamed white, a pristine background for the dark-bluish-green shutters with their brass hardware freshly hung beside the windows. The last of the balusters of the upstairs railings, carefully duplicated from those still in place, had been inserted in the open spots. From the outside at least, the house looked perfect, a gem gleaming in the sun, seeming to bring forth its own glow as clouds dimmed the daylight.
It was a Sunday. Laura should have been relaxing at home. She had stayed away as long as she could, but as the afternoon wore away, she had climbed into her car and driven out to the house. Her purpose was to look at some of the pieces her mother had gathered in the last few days and arranged to have delivered to the house, part of the original furnishings. There had not been time before to inspect them carefully, and Laura needed to be positive of what they looked like, since she might have to use some aspect of them as the focal point for the design of a room. At least that was what she told herself. The real reason, if she could have brought herself to admit it, was that she wanted to have the place to herself, without the constant coming and going of painters, carpenters, and their helpers.
The wind was rising, gathering to kite-flying force. It whipped Laura's hair across her face, and she pushed it back, resetting the combs that held it, allowing the long strands to cascade around her. Though the sun through the trees still cast an intermittent dappled shade upon the greening lawn, there were thundershowers forecast for the night. It didn't matter. Laura never minded a little rain, and in the spring you had to take the bad with the good. Turning, she took her canvas tote bag, something she never went anywhere without these days, from the car. She fished in it for her house key, a new one to fit the recently installed door handles and locks. She pushed the car door shut and moved toward the front steps.
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