Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair (36 page)

“Oh, Diana, I don't know what to say . . . thank you, of course . . .” I was at a sudden loss and couldn't find the right words to express myself.

Diana said, “You're young, Mal, only thirty-four today, and much of your life is still ahead of you. And one day I'm sure you'll remarry, perhaps even have children again, and I like to think of you being here with them.”

I gaped at her. I was aghast. “No!” I exclaimed. “I won't remarry—”

“You don't know what's going to happen,” she said, interrupting me. “I know how you feel at this moment, and perhaps I was wrong to bring the subject up tonight. So I'm not going to continue this conversation. Certainly not now. However, I do want to say one thing, and it is
this, Mal darling. You must go on. We must all go on. Life is for the living, you know.”

I had a strange affinity with Lettice Keswick.

I felt curiously drawn to her, and yet she had been an ancestor not of mine, but of Andrew's. Nonetheless, I did feel oddly close to this seventeenth-century Yorkshire-woman, dead now for several hundred years though she had been.

I had grown to know Lettice through her writing—those two diaries covering two years of her life in Stuart England, her cookbook full of recipes for food and wine, and her enchanting, illustrated garden book.

As I sat in the library at Kilgram Chase this morning, leafing through those various books again, I could not help thinking that Lettice had been a lot like me, in many ways. A homemaker, a cook, a gardener, a painter, a woman interested in furnishings and all those things which made a home beautiful. And she had been a devoted mother and an adoring wife, just as I had.

Basically that was my problem. I had not known anything else after college; certainly a few months in an ad agency didn't count. And without my husband and my children, I had no focus, no purpose. Certainly I had nothing to do, and that was not good, not good at all, as Diana kept pointing out. A job was essential.

But what kind of job?

That old question came back to nag me, as it had for some months.

Sighing under my breath, feeling suddenly impatient with myself, even irritated, I pushed back my chair and went outside. I also felt the need for some air before lunch.

I found my steps were leading me toward the walled rose garden, always a favorite spot of mine. But perhaps
more so of late, since I knew it had been designed almost three hundred years ago by Lettice. It was exactly the same today as it had been then.

Opening the oak door which led into the garden, I walked down the three steps and stood looking around for a moment or two. It was not a large garden, but it had a special kind of charm, due in no small measure to its ancient stone walls and paths covered with moss and chamomile, two sundials, and various wooden garden seats placed here and there.

Lettice's design was simplicity itself, but that was the reason it worked. There were hedges of shrub roses, ramblers climbing the ancient walls, rectangular beds of floribundas, and circular beds of hybrid tea roses. My favorites were the Old-Fashioned roses, a variety raised before the twentieth century; I liked to think these resembled the roses planted by Lettice so long ago.

It was late May, and since most of the roses currently planted bloomed in June, the garden was not as beautiful or as colorful as it would be then and through the rest of the summer. But because the walls gave the garden shelter and the sun shone on it in the afternoons, a few of the June roses were already starting to flower.

I sat down on one of the garden seats, my mind still focused on a job. I had no idea what I could do or what I wanted to do. I had decided weeks ago that I did not want to work in an office, and of course that limited my choices.

Last weekend, when my father and Gwenny had come to stay with us, he had been in favor of my going to work with Diana at her antique shop in London. And she herself was all for it, was waiting for an answer, in fact.

“You should be with people, Mallory,” my father had said. “That's why a shop's ideal. And in this instance, it's the perfect shop for you, loving antiques and art the way
you do.” Gwenny and Diana had agreed, and all three of them had tried to talk me into the partnership she had so generously offered.

I thought about this idea one more time, assessing the pros and cons. Perhaps they were right. I did care about antique furniture, objects of art and paintings, and I had quite a wide knowledge of them. Though I didn't want to decorate for people, I wouldn't mind selling things to them. Actually, the thought of being in a shop appealed to me.

Except . . .

Except what?

I wasn't sure exactly what it was that was making me balk.

Then it hit me. I had a moment of truth, of such extraordinary clarity of vision I was momentarily stunned.

I didn't want to work in Diana's shop or become her partner because I didn't want to stay in England.

I wanted to go home.

Home to Indian Meadows. My home. The place Andrew and I had so lovingly made ours. I missed it. I was homesick. I needed to be there in order to get on with my life.

Everybody had been telling me I must do that, but I hadn't been able to make a move. I had been stationary, marking time here, because England was the wrong place for me at this juncture of my life. I loved it; I would always come back to Yorkshire. But now I must move on. Immediately.

I must go home. Whatever my life was going to be, I suddenly knew that I wanted to, no,
must
live it in Connecticut, in that old house. I needed to be in its lovely cool rooms, to be close to my old apple tree and my barns. I longed to see the horses in the long meadow, the mallards on the pond. I wanted to be with Nora and Eric and Anna.

Indian Meadows was mine. Andrew and I had created it together, made it what it was. I felt
right
there, at ease. I had fled Indian Meadows in January in search of Andrew. But I no longer had to look for him here in his childhood home. He was with me always, inside my heart, part of me, just as Jamie and Lissa were part of me. And would be for as long as I lived, for all the days of my life.

But if I were to keep my Connecticut homestead, I had to earn a living.

I could open my own shop. Right there at Indian Meadows.

This thought took me by surprise.

I pondered it, realized at once that it was not a bad idea at all. Except that there were innumerable antique shops in the area, stretching from New Milford and New Preston all the way up to Sharon.

But it didn't have to be an antique shop, did it?

No. What kind of shop, then?

A shop for women like me. Or rather, women who were married with children, the way I had been once. Homemakers. Mommies. Besotted wives. I could sell them all of the things I knew about, from the days when I was a wife and mother: kitchenware, cooking utensils, and baking tins; beautiful pottery for beautiful tables; herbs and spices, jams and jellies; potpourri, fancy soaps, and beeswax candles. All of these things women had loved since Lettice Keswick's time.

Lettice Keswick
. Now there was a name to conjure with. I could call it Lettice Keswick's Kitchen. That had a nice ring to it. No, I preferred Indian Meadows. Why not keep that name? It had always meant a lot to us. It was the name of the house, but there was no reason why it shouldn't also be the name of the shop.

My shop.

My very own shop. Indian Meadows. A Country Experience.

That also had a nice ring to it. But why was it a country experience? It would only be a shop, after all. But it could be an experience if something special happened there. It could be a café as well. A small café in the center of the shop, serving coffee, tea, cold drinks, soups, small snacks, and quiche.

A country shop and café in an old red barn in the foothills of the Berkshires, the northwestern highlands of Connecticut. God's own country, Andrew and I had always called it.

Nora and Anna could help me run it. They'd enjoy it; certainly they'd enjoy making the extra money. And perhaps Eric could be a part of it; after all, things were not very good at the lumberyard, Nora had written to tell me. She had also said she missed cooking for me. Well, she could make jams and jellies, chutneys and spreads to her heart's content. There were enough recipes in Lettice's cookbook to keep her busy. That was it. Our own label.
Lettice Keswick's Kitchen.

I experienced such a rush of excitement I could hardly contain myself. All kinds of ideas were rushing into my head, ideas for other labels, other lines of products. There might even be a catalogue one day.

A catalogue.
My God, what a great idea that was.

I jumped to my feet and glanced around the rose garden.

Thank you, Lettice Keswick, I thought. Thank you. For there was no question in my mind that Lettice had had a hand in this.

I
t was a warm Friday afternoon at the end of the month, and Sarah had driven up to stay with me for the weekend.

Even before she had changed from her chic city clothes into her country-bumpkin togs, as she called them, she had wanted to see the barns, to review the progress I had made in her absence.

And so here we stood in the middle of the biggest of my four barns, surveying the work which had been done by my building contractor, Tom Williams, whilst she had been away on business.

“I can't believe it, Mal!” she exclaimed excitedly, her dark eyes roaming around, taking everything in. “Tom
has
moved with great speed, you're right.”

“And Eric's been just as fast,” I pointed out. “He's already painted the second floor, and tomorrow he'll start down here.”

“It was such a good idea of yours, extending the old hayloft. Now you've got a second floor, but without losing the feeling of spaciousness.”

As she spoke Sarah looked up toward the new loft at the far end of the barn.

“The café will be under the loft,” I said, “if you remember the architect's plans. And I think it's kind of cozy to have it there. Tom's suggested putting in a big potbellied
stove for the winter months, and I think it's a terrific idea, don't you?”

“Yes, and you might want to consider one of those gorgeous porcelain stoves from Austria. They're awfully attractive, Mal.”

“And expensive, I've no doubt. I've got to keep an eye on the budget, Sash. But come on, let's walk down there, and I'll tell you a bit more about the café.”

Taking hold of her arm, I drew her to the other end of the barn. “Now, here, Sarah, in the very center of this space, I'm going to have little tables for four. Green metal tables and chairs, the kind you find in sidewalk cafés in Paris. I've already ordered ten from one of the showrooms you sent me to last week, and that means I'll be able to seat forty.”

“So many!” she exclaimed. “Can you handle that number of customers? Serve them, I mean?”

“Yes, I could if I had to. But I honestly don't think there will ever be forty people crowding into the café all at the same time. They'll drift in and out, since they'll mainly have come to shop. At least I hope that's why they'll be here.”

Drawing her farther into the café area, I continued, “The counter and cash register will be down near the back wall, just in front of those doors Tom has already put in. They lead outside to the kitchen addition.”

“When's he going to start that?” Sarah asked, walking over, opening a door, and peering out.

“Next week.”

“I thought Philip Miller's plans for the kitchen were really on target, Mal, didn't you?”

“At first the kitchen seemed a bit too big to me. But when I really thought it through, I realized he had taken growth into consideration. Not that we can grow that much.”

Sarah said, “Better to err on the side of largeness, rather than building a kitchen you discover too late is too small.”

“I took Philip's advice. And when I saw him last Friday, I also listened to him when it came to the appliances. I've ordered two restaurant-size freezers and two restaurant-size refrigerators, as well as two heavy-duty cooking stoves. Oh, and two microwave ovens for reheating and warming food.”

“Are you planning to serve a lot of hot dishes now? Has the menu changed, Mal?”

I shook my head. “It's still the same one we discussed. Various soups, quiche lorraine, maybe cottage pie, but that's it. The rest will be sandwiches and cakes, plus beverages. However, don't forget that Nora will be making our own line of jams, jellies, lemon curd, mincemeat, and chutneys.”

“Lettice Keswick's Kitchen,” Sarah said, a smile crossing her face. “I love it, and it's a great name for a label.”

Turning slowly in the center of the floor, Sarah waved an arm around and continued, “And the walls here in the café will be lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves displaying cooking utensils, pots, pans, cookware, and pottery.”

“And the Lettice products as well,” I reminded her.

“It's going to be great, Mal! A fabulous success. I can just smell it,” Sarah enthused.

“From your mouth to God's ear, as my mother would say.”

“My money's on you, Mal, it really is. Oh, Tom's already put in your new staircase. Can we go upstairs to the loft?”

“Yes, but just be careful,” I warned. “As you can see, there's no bannister yet.”

I led the way up into the old hayloft, now totally remodeled and revamped. Tom had, in effect, created a gallery which floated out into the middle of the barn. It had a
high railing at the edge, instead of a wall, and because of this it was airy and light-filled.