Garden of Scandal Page 7

  Alec was quiet as he tried to imagine how he would feel if he thought he was losing Laurel. Of course, he had to imagine having her first. Neither one was easy.

  He drew a deep breath and let it out. Deliberately, he said, “Laurel wants that big pine over next to the fence, there, taken down. She says you might have a saw.”

  5

  It was Grannie Callie’s idea for Alec to take Gregory to Ivywild. Gregory should get out of the house, she said. He needed something else to think about besides himself and the symptoms and progress of his illness. Alec thought his grandmother probably needed to get out for a while, as well, but didn’t want to leave Gregory alone.

  She had been more than generous about letting his brother and him stay, but she had her own life and routine, which they had interrupted, her own friends she was neglecting while she looked after them. Alec had done everything he could think of to make it easier for her. They couldn’t expect her to devote all her waking hours to the invalid.

  Not that Gregory was bedridden. He got around well enough, though his energy level was low. He could handle dressing and undressing himself and was able to take his pain medication when it was set out for him. The main problem was seeing that he didn’t take too much of it, and that he ate regular meals and got some fresh air and sunshine to keep his spirits up. Another good reason for taking him out on the job.

  Gregory seemed to appreciate being out and about. He walked slowly around Laurel’s garden, stopping now and then to smell a flower or finger a leaf. He even tried to help a little, picking up a hoe to tackle a patch of nut grass.

  Alec watched his brother for a moment to be sure he was all right, then turned back to the ditch he was working on with a shovel. It was for the water line to feed the fountain. The garden space inside the fence was too confined, too filled with plants, for him to bring in the ditchdigger he had rented. Once he had the piping finished to the other side of the fence, he would climb on the digger, but for now he was it, since he had to be sure nothing was torn up that Laurel wanted saved.

  In the midst of his concentration, he heard the screen door slam and Laurel scream his name. He whipped around, saw Gregory starting to fall, crumpling like a scarecrow with the stuffing spilling out. Dropping his shovel, he lunged for him in a full, desperate stretch. He barely caught him.

  “Up here,” Laurel called from the steps. “In the shade on the veranda.”

  Alec was grateful beyond words for the offer. He should have known better than to let Gregory do anything strenuous, should have watched him more closely. The trouble was, Gregory didn’t like being watched over like a kid; definitely didn’t like being told what he should and shouldn’t do. He was proud and touchy, which was a fine and necessary thing, but still made it hard to decide when it was best to let things ride and when to knock him flat for his own good.

  Gregory’s moment of weakness lasted only a second. He roused himself in plenty of time to curse Alec for refusing to let him make his own way to the big wicker swing that hung at the rounded oval end of the veranda. Laurel, recognizing correctly that his brother didn’t like her seeing him being carried, moved back into the house. She returned with a glass of ice water when Gregory was settled.

  For a second, Alec was aware of a flash of jealousy; Laurel had never brought him a glass of water, never looked so concerned for his health. Of course, he had never collapsed in her front yard, either.

  Watching Gregory drink the water, studying the haggard paleness of his thin face with its straggly beard, Alec said to him in abrupt decision, “I should have known this was too much. Rest a minute, then I’ll take you back home.”

  “Don’t worry about me, little brother,” Gregory answered irritably. “I’ll be fine right here. You just get on with your job.”

  “It’s my job to worry. It’s what I’m here for.” Alec kept the words patient, but implacable. “It will only take a few minutes to run you back.”

  “I said I’m fine. I’ll just sit here and watch you flex your muscles. Maybe the nice lady will keep me company.”

  Alec was afraid she might at that, which was one reason he was determined to get Gregory away. Without looking at Laurel, he said, “Mrs. Bancroft is busy. Come on, now.”

  “I’m not that busy,” she corrected him in clear tones. “I’ll be glad to sit down for a little while.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said, the words stark as he finally allowed his gaze to move over the cool, lovely planes of her face, the sunbeam sheen of her hair, the long, flowing skirt of lavender cotton she wore with a cool sleeveless blouse.

  She gave a brief smile without quite meeting his gaze as she answered, “I know that.”

  Gregory glanced from one to the other, as if becoming aware of the undercurrents between them. “See?” he said with satisfaction as he waved a hand vaguely toward Alec. “Run along. We don’t need you.”

  Alec felt his stomach muscles tighten as if in anticipation of a blow, but there was nothing he could do. He turned on his heel and went back out into the hot sun.

  Laurel, watching Alec go, thought he was upset. He was concerned about his brother, and who could blame him? He was also mad at her for going against him. That was too bad. As Maisie would put it, he could get glad in the same britches. Laurel wanted to talk to Gregory.

  Looking around, she caught the arm of a rocking chair and dragged it closer to the swing. As she sat down, she said easily, “It’s been so hot and humid these last few days, it could get to anyone who isn’t used to it. I really don’t know how Alec stands it out there all day.”

  Gregory glanced at his brother with a brooding look in his eyes. “He’s strong as a bull elephant, can stand anything.”

  “Most of the time he doesn’t even wear a shirt.”

  He looked at her, the expression in his brandy-colored eyes bland. “Sun doesn’t affect him quite the same as you and me. He has Native American blood.”

  When it appeared he was not going to elaborate, she said, “You mean your father was a Native American?”

  “Not mine, just Alec’s.” His smile was thin, as if he had expected some reaction from her that he had not received. “Actually, I think the guy was a half-breed, though who knows? He didn’t stay around long enough for anybody to find out too much about him.”

  “I see,” Laurel said. The main thing she understood was that Gregory was trying to shock her, though she didn’t intend to provide amusement for him by allowing it. Features composed, she glanced from him to his brother. She had thought Gregory’s illness accounted for his slighter frame and lighter skin coloring, but it appeared she was wrong, at least in part. At the same time, she didn’t believe Alec was immune to the sun’s effects.

  Gregory’s gaze was tinged with black humor as he studied her face. “No, we’re not much alike, are we, Alec and I? My dad was your typical WASP, some kind of traveling salesman from the West Coast who took our dear mother away from all this.” He waved his hand in a vague gesture that took in Hillsboro and the state of Louisiana as well as the woods around them. “Our younger sister Mita, now, was fathered by an Asian. Being your typical sixties and seventies woman, Mom was determined to prove her lack of prejudice. Besides, she liked having her own variety pack of kids, or so she said. She bought into the whole earth-mother, single-parent bit. Didn’t care whether the fathers stayed around or not.”

  “She must be an unusual woman.”

  His lip curled. “She was in her way. She died trying to have a Latino baby. At least we think that was the nationality, but only she knew for sure. Anyway, something went wrong and neither she nor the baby made it. I guess she was getting a little old for it since I was eighteen at the time.”

  “I’m…sorry,” Laurel said, not sure whether she meant for his loss or for her urge to pry that had led her into so private a history.

  He looked away. “I don’t suppose it matters. It was a long time ago.”

  She thought it did matter—possibly always had
, always would—to him and Alec both, but she couldn’t say so. Instead she said, “You were young to take on so much responsibility.”

  “Me? Responsible?” He laughed, a harsh yet hollow sound. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “But, well, I assumed there was no other man around to take over.”

  “There wasn’t, except for Alec.”

  She leaned her head against the high seat-back, rocking a little as she frowned in thought. “But he must have been, what? Only thirteen? Fourteen?”

  “Something like that. Our little man, though, he was always big and tough for his age.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.” She stopped rocking.

  “You wouldn’t,” he answered with an edge of rudeness as he looked around at Ivywild. “You’ve always been respectable, I would imagine. I bet you’ve never been hungry, really hungry, a day in your life. You’ve always known exactly who you are, where you came from, and where you belong. No doubts, no wild guesses, no looking for yourself in the bottom of a bottle or in the white dust of some drug with a name you can’t pronounce….”

  He trailed off, but she did finally understand. Gregory had been a drug user at eighteen, and so Alec had taken over, fending for himself and his little sister.

  “Surely some government agency could have helped out?” she asked.

  “Oh, right. Helped Alec and Mita right into separate foster homes, is what they would have done. No way, not on your life. Alec fooled them when they came around. He may be a bastard, but he’s a smart one. Of course, he had old lady Chadwick by then.”

  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. Al
ready, 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?”