“I like Jefferson. He was a big patron of viticulture.”
“Did he have a vineyard?”
“Yes, at Monticello. But he was more of an experimenter than a serious grape grower. He was trying to grow European vines—vinifera—which produced amazing wine in places like France or Italy. But the vinifera couldn’t handle the weather, disease, and pests in the New World.”
Clearly he was a man who loved what he did. To understand him fully, Lucy thought, you would have to learn about his work, why it meant so much to him, what the challenges were. “I wish I could walk through the vineyard with you,” she said wistfully. “It looks beautiful from here.”
“Tomorrow I’ll take you outside to see something special.”
“What is it?”
“A mysterious vine.”
Lucy regarded him with a perplexed smile. “What makes it mysterious?”
“I found it on the property a couple of years ago, growing on an easement that was about to be plowed up for a road project. Transplanting a vine that size and age was a tricky proposition. So I asked Kevin to help me with it. We used tree spades to get as much of the root-ball as possible, and we moved it to the vineyard. It survived the transplant, but I’m still working to get it healthy.”
“What kind of grapes does it produce?”
“That’s the interesting part. I’ve got a guy at the WSU land grant working on identifying it, and so far he hasn’t been able to come up with anything. We’ve sent samples and pictures to a couple of ampelography experts in Washington and California—it’s not on record. Most likely it’s a wild hybrid that happened from natural cross-pollination.”
“Is that rare?”
“Very.”
“Do you think it will make a good wine?”
“Probably not,” he said, and laughed.
“Then why have you gone to so much trouble?”
“Because you never know. The grapes might turn out to reveal some attributes of the wine that you never expected. Something that expresses this place more perfectly than anything you could have planned. You have to…”
As Sam paused, searching for the right phrase, Lucy said softly, “You have to take a leap of faith.”
Sam gave her an arrested glance. “Yes.”
Lucy understood all too well. There were times in life when you had to take a risk that might end in failure. Because otherwise you would be haunted by what you hadn’t done … the paths you hadn’t taken, the things you hadn’t experienced.
* * *
After Sam had taken care of Renfield, he worked in the vineyard for an hour and went to check on Lucy, who had fallen asleep on the sofa. He stood in the doorway, his gaze tracing slowly along the length of her body. There was something extraordinary about Lucy, a delicate, almost mythical quality. Like a figure from a painting … Antiope, or Ophelia dreaming. Her dark hair trailed in ribbons across the pale green velvet, her skin as pale as night-blooming lilies. Dust motes glittered in a constellation in the sunlit air above her.
Sam was fascinated by Lucy’s mixture of vulnerability and strength. He wanted to know her secrets, the things a woman would reveal only to a lover. And that was nothing short of alarming. He’d never had such thoughts before. But if it took the last ounce of decency he possessed, he would leave her alone.
Lucy stirred and yawned. Her eyes opened to regard him in momentary confusion, heavy lashes shadowing the drowsy depths of green. “I was dreaming,” she said in a sleep-colored voice.
Sam went to her, unable to resist reaching down to play with a lock of her hair. “What about?”
“I was here. Someone was showing me around … it was the house the way it used to be.”
“Was I the one with you?”
“No. It was a man I’ve never met.”
Sam smiled slightly, releasing the lock of hair. “I don’t know if I like you hanging out with another guy in my house.”
“He lived here a long time ago. His clothes were … old-fashioned.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No. But he led me on a tour. The house was different. Darker. The furniture was antique, and there was fussy wallpaper everywhere. In this room, it was green-striped. And the ceiling was papered, and there was a square with a bird in it at each corner.”
Sam stared at her alertly. There was no way Lucy could have known that when he and Alex had removed an ugly drop ceiling that had been installed in this room, they had found the original ceiling, papered exactly as Lucy had just described. “What else did he show you?”
“We went to the third-floor attic, the one with the slanted ceiling and the dormer windows. Children used to play in there. And the stained-glass window that used to be at the second-floor landing … I told you about it yesterday, remember…?”
“The tree and the moon.”
“Yes.” Lucy’s gaze was earnest. “It was there. The same one I saw before. A design of a tree with bare branches, and the moon behind them. It was beautiful, but not what you would expect for a house like this. But it was right, somehow. Sam…” She grimaced as she leveraged herself to a sitting position. “Could I have a pencil and some paper?”
“Easy,” he said, trying to help her. “Don’t move too fast.”
“I need to sketch it before I forget it.”
“I’ll find something.” Sam went to a cabinet where they kept Holly’s art materials. Retrieving some pencils and a spiral pad of art paper, he asked, “Will these do?”
Lucy nodded, reaching eagerly for the supplies.
For a half hour or so, Lucy worked on the sketch. When Sam brought a lunch tray to her, she showed the design to him. “It’s not finished yet,” she said. “But this is basically what I saw.” The drawing was striking, the trunk and the branches of the tree spreading across the paper in a pattern like black lace. A moon appeared to be caught in the grasp of the upper branches.
“The tree would be done in lead?” Sam asked, studying the image, and Lucy nodded.
Imagining the picture as a stained-glass window for the front of the house, Sam felt a chill of rightness, of certainty too strong to be questioned. The house would never be complete until this was replaced.
“What would it take,” he asked slowly, “for you to make this window? Exactly the way you saw it in the dream.”
“I would do it for nothing,” came Lucy’s emphatic reply. “After the way you’ve taken care of me…”
Sam shook his head decisively. “This window’s going to take some work. The design is intricate. What do you usually charge for something like that?”
“It depends on the type of glass, and how much detailing I would do … gilding and beveling, things like that. And that’s not including the installation, especially since you would need it to be weather-sealed—”
“Ballpark guess.”
Lucy gave a little grimace. “Three thousand dollars for everything. But I could skimp in some areas to bring down the cost—”
“No skimping. This is worth doing right.” Sam reached over and tucked a paper napkin at the top of Lucy’s shirt. “What do you think about making this window at your own pace, and in return we’ll
