Garden Of Scandal

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A chill moved over Laurel. In her compassion for Alec—for them all, really—she had almost forgotten the point of her questions. Lips stiff, she said, “Old lady Chadwick? Who was she?”

“Our landlady, after Alec moved us all out of the slum apartment where we’d been staying.” Gregory grimaced. “She owned this big estate—swimming pool, tennis courts, golfing green, guesthouse, groundskeeper’s cottage, the whole nine yards, complete with a chauffeur and even a Chinese gardener.”

“Mr. Wu,” she said in quiet discovery.

“Alec mentioned him, huh? Figures. The old guy was his idol, lived down the street from our apartment on the edge of Chinatown before we moved—preferred it to living on the estate. I think he admired Alec’s gumption. Anyway, Mr. Wu used to pay him a little something for helping out at the old lady’s house after school, whenever Alec could thumb a ride to get there.”

Laurel, watching Alec’s stiff movements as he wielded his shovel, thought he knew they were talking about him even if he couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t help that. Sunlight moved back and forth along the filaments of his hair that were as dark and gleaming as the feathers on a raven’s wing. Indian black and shiny. It made sense.

Aware, suddenly, that Gregory was looking at her with a malicious grin for her preoccupation with his brother, she collected her scattered thoughts. As if the question had her entire concentration, she asked, “Mr. Wu wasn’t, by any chance, related to Mita?”

“Her father, you mean? Lord, no. I mean he was ancient, white hair and beard down to here.” He leveled a hand near his navel. “He did have a soft spot for her, though, and I wondered once or twice about his eldest son. Anyway, after Mom died Alec had the nerve to ask old lady Chadwick if we could stay in the groundskeeper’s cottage at the back of the property since Mr. Wu wasn’t using it.”

“You moved to avoid the child welfare authorities,” she said, clarifying the situation in her own mind.

He gave a nod. “Alec said nobody would think to bother us there. Turned out he was right. Of course, he only told the old lady that Mom was sick in the hospital. She believed him for three months or more—time enough.”

Laurel didn’t even try to disguise her sharpened curiosity. “Time enough for what?”

“To win her over. Our Alec has a way about him, or haven’t you noticed?” He watched her, a faint smile playing over his thin features and a suggestive look in his eyes.

“I thought you said he was thirteen?”

“He was.”

“This woman, then…”

“She seemed old at the time,” he said whimsically, “though I don’t imagine she was more than, oh, about your age now.”

Old enough to be Alec’s mother, almost thirty years older than he had been then. Laurel scowled. The Chadwick woman couldn’t be the one he had married. Could she?

“You’ve heard the story already, haven’t you?” Gregory guessed. “That’s not like Alec. He’s usually too embarrassed to talk about it.”

She gave him a straight look. “But you aren’t?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’ve got no manners and no shame, you know. Mrs. Chadwick never had much time for me even when I was around, which wasn’t often. Mita, now, she treated her like a doll, dressing her up, showing her off. But Alec was her darling.”

“You make it sound as if there was something wrong with that.” She couldn’t quite put the thought in plain words.

“I do, don’t I? And there was, in a way. He isn’t perfect any more than I am. He makes mistakes. And like me, he pays for them. With interest.”

She heard the bitterness lining his words. Still, her preoccupation with Alec’s life story was too intense to spare his feelings more than a glancing thought. “What exactly was his mistake?”

“He said yes when our landlady asked him to marry her.”

So it was true. More than that, it was worse than she had thought. A woman old enough to be his mother. Dear heaven.

She hadn’t believed it; she recognized that, as she felt the sick acceptance move over her. Somehow, she had thought talking to Gregory Stanton would prove Mother Bancroft had lied, or else that she had embellished some less damaging story to suit herself.

Wrong. All wrong.

“I suppose,” Laurel said quietly, “that we all make our mistakes.”

“Some more than others,” Gregory said on a huffing sigh.

She wanted to be absolutely fair. With great care, she said, “Alec doesn’t seem to have benefited a great deal from this odd marriage.”

“Depends on how you look at it. He became an engineer thanks to Chadwick money. Mita was able to zip through eight years of training for her Ph.D., and is interning now in pediatrics. Me, well, I didn’t have to worry about eating or a place to sleep for ages, only about supporting my habit.”

“You lived on him.” She spoke before she thought, then wished immediately she hadn’t.

“Yeah,” he answered, looking away. “I lived on him.”

That explained a lot—not that it was any of her business. “But I have to say it doesn’t sound like very much return in exchange for his freedom, especially considering the size of the estate you mentioned.”

He shrugged. “There were a few problems with the old lady’s heirs after she died, though Alec still took care of everybody. Now—” Gregory stopped.

Now Alec was still taking care of him, she finished silently for him, because Gregory was dying in slow stages. “You resent him for it,” Laurel said in sudden comprehension. “You would rather he had taken the money and used it for himself. You’d rather he wasn’t here with you.”

“Nobody asked him to be so almighty noble,” Gregory said with a tight snarl. “I don’t need him to look after me. I don’t need him for anything.”

Oh, but he did, Laurel saw, and his bitterness was in direct proportion to his need. Did Alec realize that? Yes, he must, since Gregory made no effort to hide it. Regardless, Alec stayed with him. He was lending his brother his strength because he had more than enough to spare. He was helping him live because he was so alive himself.

She didn’t want to think like that, didn’t want to feel any sympathy or admiration for Alec. It wouldn’t make it any easier for her to do what she must.

But do it she would. She was no gullible older woman ready to fall for hard brown muscles and practiced charm. Already, she could see how it could happen. To become dependent on him, to look to him for strength and comfort, to learn to watch for his smile and teasing comments, would be fatally easy. Because he was so vital, yes, and she longed for some of that living warmth to ease the coldness inside her. In some strange way she didn’t quite understand, she needed desperately to touch the passionate enjoyment of being on this earth that she could sense burning inside him.

Impossible. She didn’t know how much longer she could stay aloof from him and still have him around. Such a short time, so few days, they had worked together on the garden, yet she missed talking to him, missed the stimulation of his constant nearness. There was no pleasure in setting him at a distance, giving him orders and watching him work until his jeans were so wet with sweat that they dripped as he walked. In fact, it made her feel vindictive and ashamed.

In the silence that had fallen, Gregory said wearily, “I think maybe it’s time I went home, after all. I’m so…tired. I guess you should tell Alec.”

“Home being your grandmother’s, not California?” Laurel asked, unwilling to summon the man in the garden again so soon after sending him away.

Gregory’s glance was bleak. “The three or four visits to Grannie Callie’s house were the best times I ever had as a kid. Mom used to come back home to Louisiana when she was down on her luck, usually when she had a new baby. One time she left all of us with Grannie Callie for a whole long summer. Too bad she ever found her way back again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You don’t think so?” The corner of his mouth curled. “I’d have been a redneck Southerner, driving around in a pickup truck and pitching beer cans into the back, instead of a washed-out druggie on his last legs. And Alec would be—” He stopped, dragged air deep into his lungs. “Call him for me, will you, if you don’t mind?”

He wanted her to do this little chore for him. Why? So he need not look as if he were backing down, so it would seem like her idea? Or did he think that Alec might not like having to answer to her in front of him? Was it one more snide dig at his brother?

Rising, she walked to the railing. Lifting her voice in clear appeal, she called, “Alec?”

At the first sound of her voice, he looked up from the ditch he was digging, his dark eyes flashing like obsidian caught by the sun. He lifted a brow in inquiry.

“I believe your brother would appreciate it if you could take him home now.”

He met her gaze for a long moment before he gave a slow nod. It might have been no more than an acknowledgment, but it felt like an instant of intense communication. The two of them, she thought, understood each other very well. Possibly too well.

She heard Gregory’s curse from behind her, but she didn’t care.

It was later, after Alec had returned from seeing his brother home, when she noticed the low rumble of thunder. She looked up from the catalog in front of her where she was reading about Monsieur Tillier, an old-fashioned red tea rose she thought she might like to order for her garden. The rumble came again—closer now, and louder, as if it meant business. From the corner of her eye, she caught the flicker of lightning through the lace curtains over the windows. She counted only to five before thunder rolled again. The lightning strike was close, at least according to country wisdom.

Was Alec still working in the front garden? Maybe he should take shelter on the veranda. Or he could step into the safety of the garage if he was in the side yard.

She might have to let him in the house if the wind got too high. He would get wet on the veranda since the rain sometimes swept in under the overhanging roof, wetting the floor all the way to the inner wall. The garage, of course, was tight enough and perfectly safe, if he only had the sense to head in that direction.

On the other hand, being brought up in California he might not realize what a late-spring storm could be like in Louisiana. It was possible he didn’t know how quickly it could blow up, or how strong it could become. She hesitated, flipping her pen between her fingers in a nervous gesture, as she considered checking on him.

He was a grown man, for pity’s sake; surely he could take care of himself! He didn’t need her to baby him. Or did he?

Wasn’t that what some younger men were supposed to want when they sought out an older woman? He could be a classic case since he had lost his mother while still young, and had been forced to nurture others instead of being nurtured himself.

Yes. And just maybe she was attracted to him as a substitute for the son and daughter Mother Bancroft had virtually taken away—or some such psychological claptrap. It made about as much sense, didn’t it?

She could hear the first drops of rain rattling in the hard glossy leaves of the magnolia outside her window. Pushing back her chair in sudden decision, she walked quickly toward the front door.

Alec wasn’t in the front garden. She stood for an instant, absorbing the moist coolness of the rain, listening to its patter on the roof and breathing in the wet-earth smell of it. The wind lifted her hair and swirled under her skirt, cooling her in places she hadn’t even known were warm. Then, in the distance, she heard the hissing advance of a stronger downpour as it marched over the woods toward the house. Glancing toward the sound, she saw the heavy, dragging curtain of dense rain.

She swung toward the steps, hastening down them, ducking her head against the rain splattering from the roof. Turning right at the bottom, she followed the curving steps around to the side yard. At the gate, she leaned to stare into the garage.

It was empty. Alec wasn’t there.

She swung back the way she had come, taking the path to the other side of the house. There was no gate here to block the brick walkway that rounded the curving end of the veranda and continued to the back. As the rain increased, she started to run.

Then she saw him. She stopped dead still.

He was sitting on top of the cistern, balanced on its concrete cap with his feet folded and hands resting on his bent knees in what she recognized vaguely as the lotus position. His fingers were lightly cupped, his eyes closed, his face perfectly still and upturned to the rain.