The Garden Intrigue

Crafts movement, getting rid of the old white moldings and pale paint, replacing them with heavy walnut and shiny brocades. Small golden gargoyles on a dark green background snarled down at me from the wall.

Colin turned to me, his sun-streaked hair bright against the hunter green backdrop. “Do you think—?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. She didn’t say.” I didn’t like this any more than he did, but there was no ignoring the evidence. “Who else could it be?”

Colin pressed his eyes closed. I could see the network of fine lines around his eyes, pale against his suntanned skin. There was more than one way to save the world. Colin might not be a swashbuckling double-oh- something, but he had his own variety of hero complex. He had single-handedly held up his sister through the trauma of their father’s death, their mother’s defection, and Serena’s own romantic disasters.

I squeezed Colin’s arm. “She’s a grown woman.” Serena was a full two months older than me. Right now, I felt positively ancient. “She’s old enough to make her own decisions.”

“Yes. She has done, hasn’t she?” Colin nodded towards the stairs, his face showing nothing, revealing nothing. “Shall we go down?”

I thought of and discarded at least half a dozen saving phrases. She didn’t mean it; she does love you, you know; that’s not what I meant. None of them would do the least bit of good. It would only draw us both further into a conversation neither of us really wanted to have. Sometimes, talking about it doesn’t make it better.

There was also the selfishness factor. My relationship with Colin still felt, even six months in, too new and fragile to risk, even for a good cause.

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Unless you want to order takeout and have it delivered up to the second floor? Right. I didn’t think so.” We made it about two steps before I tugged him to a halt. “There’s one more thing you should know.”

“Don’t tell me,” Colin said flatly. “They’ve decided to rebuild the whole house as a Disney castle and staff it with singing Martians.”

“Er, no. Jeremy’s seated us at opposite ends of the table.” I did my best to dispel the image of a kick line of musical Martians pouring our after-dinner tea. That was probably DreamStone’s next movie, with Micah Stone as the kick-ass alien hunter. “The joke will be on him when we spend the whole evening communicating in semaphore. Like that Monty Python sketch with Cathy and Heathcliff.”

Colin slid his arm around me for a quick squeeze. “Whatever Jeremy might think, it is still my table. No one’s seating arrangement is set in stone.”

“Except for Micah Stone!” We paused on the landing where the stairs turned. “That was a joke.”

Colin scanned the arriving guests from the safety of the balustrade. “Do you see Dempster?”

From the landing, we had an excellent view of the center hall. The house had never been a grand mansion, only a modest gentleman’s residence, but, to my apartment-bred eyes, the hall was still a generously proportioned one. It might not be Blenheim or Chatsworth, but it could still hold a good thirty people with room for catering staff to circulate with their faux silver rent-a-trays. The door kept opening and closing, admitting more and more people as cars made hash of the carefully combed gravel circle outside, some veering off onto Colin’s precious lawn.

They were a mixed bag, the guests. I amused myself by playing Spot the Americans. It wasn’t a fail-safe game, but I prided myself on a fifty percent accuracy rate. It wasn’t just the clothes, but something about expression and carriage. My theory has always been that different vocal constructions shape our facial muscles differently, so that you can tell an American face from a British one simply by the way the person holds her mouth.

Not a fail-proof system, but reasonably reliable. In this case, there was the added clue of the Curse of the American in England, the attempt to out-British the British, the Americans wearing what they presumed Brits wore for a country house weekend, while the Brits themselves, a far flashier and more glamorous crowd than the gang at the pub or the academics of my acquaintance, were dressed in the latest of Madison Avenue couture. DreamStone backers, I imagined, or friends of Colin’s mother and her husband. They moved in moneyed circles, hobnobbing with the artsier end of the international jet set—and by artsy, I mean those who bought art, not those who produced it. That was Jeremy’s job. He sold high-end art, acting as agent to a series of prestigious modern artists, among them, Colin’s mother.

I didn’t see Colin’s mother. I gathered, from what I had heard, that she had a phobia about Selwick Hall. The phrase “gives me hives” may or may not have been used. Besides, this production was Jeremy’s baby, not hers. It didn’t matter to her that her only son might be involved or that his life might be disrupted by it.

My fingers had curved into claws on the timeworn walnut of the banister. I forced them to unclench and went back to scanning the crowd.

Below me, I could hear someone saying in cut-glass tones, as pretentiously posh as Dempster’s, that, heavens, no, she wasn’t here with the film crew, she was the representative from Manderley; hadn’t they heard of Manderley?

I looked down and saw a perfectly coiffed blond head, not a hint of telltale roots showing, highlighted to feign a vacation in St. Barth’s, cut in a kicky sweep not unlike my last haircut, the one that had now grown out into straggles. Oh, damn. Unconsciously, I reached for the ends of my hair, too short to put up, too long for style.

Even up half a flight of stairs, Joan Plowden-Plugge still had the power to make me feel like a mugwump.

I tugged at Colin’s sleeve. “Hey. What’s Joan doing here?”

“I didn’t invite her,” he said quickly. I believed him. Not out of consideration for me and my feelings, but because Joan had made no bones about her desire to become mistress of Selwick Hall, or at least of its master. “She’s here for Manderley.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Colin had been quite clear about wanting to keep a lid on publicity, at least as it pertained to Selwick Hall. The movie itself he couldn’t do much about. That was DreamStone’s province.

Colin’s lip twisted. “I’m not okay with any of this.”

Fair point. That wasn’t what I’d meant, though, and he knew it.

He leaned a hand on the other side of the railing next to me, boxing me in. “Look, if I have to have reporters in my home, I’d rather it be Manderley than one of the tabloids.”

I wasn’t sure a periodical that looked down its nose at Town & Country as hopelessly plebeian counted as a substitute for the gossip rags. But if Colin thought doing a piece in Manderley would stave off the tits’n ass crowd, then so be it. I had my doubts. Where Micah Stone went, there went the paparazzi. And nothing would suit Jeremy better than a double-page spread of himself in front of “his” ancestral home, complete with wellies and a gun propped over his shoulder.

Colin looked down at me, his hazel eyes concerned. “I know Joan isn’t your favorite person—”

“I can’t imagine where you get these ideas,” I muttered. Just because she had all but hired a coyote to drop an Acme anvil on my head.

“But I’ve known her since we were children. I trust her not to say anything…” Colin paused, searching for the right phrase.

“Libelous?” I’m not the child of two lawyers for nothing.

Colin pushed away from the railing. “Embarrassing.”

“Right. That, too. Do you think we should go down, or shall we just stay up here and keep staring at people? I’m fine going either way.”

“Was that a hint?” Colin asked.

“It was more of a directive.” I took his arm in a proprietary grasp. Take that, Joan Plowden-Plugge! She might have two names, but I had one Colin, and, by gad, I wasn’t sharing, not for all the cupcakes in kindergarten. “I could use one of those glasses of bubbly.”

“Only one?”

“Do you really want me to get blotto and start singing show tunes?”

Colin’s lips brushed the top of my head. “You’re cute when you’re blotto,” he said.

I noticed he didn’t say anything about my singing ability.

“You’re just hoping I’ll lose it and say horrible things to Jeremy so you won’t have to.” Oops. Did I say that out loud?

Colin didn’t seem too perturbed by the prospect. “That would be a plus, yes.”

I poked Colin in the arm. “There’s Dempster.”