Lavender Morning (38 page)

“Your arm?” she managed to whisper as she remembered that it had been bleeding.

“I can’t figure out if my arm hurts more or my leg. The dilemma is keeping me from fainting.”

“Good,” she said as she snuggled closer to him. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

When Edi awoke, she was in a bed on a soft mattress and there was sunlight coming through the window. Her

head ached and her arm was sore, but she didn’t feel too bad. She looked about the room. It was small, with

flowered wallpaper, and two beds. The bed beside hers was made up with an old quilt and fat pillows. There

was a big old wardrobe against one wall and a dressing table along the other. The facing wall had a window with

lace curtains.

When she tried to sit up, she was a bit dizzy, but her head cleared in a minute. She heard a soft knock on

the door, then Sergeant Clare came in carrying a tray with one arm. His right arm was in a sling.

“You’re awake,” he said, smiling, then gave his concentration back to the tray when it nearly unbalanced.

“Let me—” Edi began as she started to get out of bed, but then she realized she was wearing only her

peach rayon teddy. She hastily pulled the covers back over her. “Where are my clothes?”

“In the kitchen, dry and waiting for you,” David said as he set the tray down on the end of her bed, then

stood up and flexed his arm. “You can stop looking at me like I’m about to attack you. It’s too late for

modesty.”

Edi didn’t drop the covers from around her neck. “What does that mean?”

He sat down on the opposite bed, picked up a toast wedge, and began to eat it. “If you don’t want that

food, I’ll take it.”

“I need something to put on,” she said.

Reluctantly, he got up, went to the wardrobe, and pulled out a man’s shirt. It was huge and nearly worn

out, but Edi took it and put her arms in the sleeves. When she was covered, she bent toward the tray and poured

herself a cup of tea. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “Where are we? How soon can we get out of here and

get the magazine?”

“Which answer do you want first?”

“All of them,” she said.

“The accident happened yesterday and we’re now at the home of Hamish Trumbull.”

Edi stopped with a piece of toast to her mouth.

“It seems that Mrs. Pettigrew was so sure we wouldn’t make it over the bridge that she called a neighbor

who told ol’ Hamish to get down to the river to save us.”

“But you did make it over the bridge,” Edi said, sounding affronted. “If it hadn’t been for that cow—”

“Who, by the way, belongs to Hamish.”

“If it hadn’t been for
his cow,
we would have made it.”

“Thank you,” David said. “That’s just what I told Hamish, but he didn’t believe me. He says we missed the

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bridge and went into the river upside down. He says I’m the worst driver he’s ever seen.”

“You should have hit his cow,” Edi said, her mouth full.

“My sentiments exactly. Here, let me pour that for you.” David used his left arm and his right hand to

maneuver the teapot, his leg held stiffly out from his body.

“So what’s the story on the magazine?” Edi asked.

“The granddaughter Aggie has it and no one knows where she is.”

Edi groaned. “How old is she to be out unsupervised?”

“Sixteen and her goose is cooked. She told Mrs. Pettigrew that she was going home to Gramps, and told

Gramps she had to work. Poor kid. When she does show up, she’s in for it.”

“So how long do we have to wait for her to return from wherever she is?”

“Us,” David said as he got up off the bed and walked to the window. “About that ‘us.’ You see, Hamish is

a bit old-fashioned, and I had to tell him some fibs.”

When he didn’t say anything else, just kept looking out the window, Edi started to piece things together.

“You told him we were married, didn’t you?”

“It was either that or I had to sleep in the barn. Sorry, but the feather mattress won over the straw.”

She thought about the way he’d pulled her from the water yesterday and she couldn’t begrudge him a bed.

“All right, so we’re married and…what?”

David turned to her with sparkling eyes.

“In your dreams, soldier,” she said.

“If wishes were horses…” David said, then dragged his leg as he crossed the room to sit back down on the

other bed. “It seems that Aggie the Missing is due back here day after tomorrow. All we can hope is that she

shows up with the magazine.”

“You didn’t tell Hamish—?”

“I didn’t tell that old man anything. Mrs. Pettigrew made up a great whopping lie about the magazine being

some sort of spy vehicle and the entire fate of the war resting on our getting it back. She—Why are you looking

at me like that? Please tell me that isn’t true.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, eating the last piece of toast.

“I want you to tell me every word that you do know and don’t even think about not telling me all of it.”

It took her about four minutes to tell him all that she knew. It wasn’t much.

“So you’re to give the magazine to this man…”

“Dr. Sebastian Jellicoe.”

“Then we’re to get him to London so he can be sent back to the safety of Minnesota—or someplace in the

U.S. Is that right?” David asked.

“That’s what I was told.”

“But where he lives and the map to get there is inside the car, which is now at the bottom of an overflowing

river.”

Edi leaned back against the headboard. “I memorized the map.”

“You did what?”

“While you were in the front of the car, whining that nobody would talk to you, I was in the back

memorizing the map. I was hoping to find the marks in the magazine and memorize them too, but I couldn’t find

anything.”

“Whining?” David said, picking up on the one word. “If you were in as much pain as I was you’d be

complaining too.”

“What happened to your leg?” Edi asked, and as she said it she remembered how she’d gone underwater

and loosened the screws, and how she’d kissed him to give him air.

For a moment their eyes met, as he seemed to be thinking about the same thing, but he broke away and

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pulled up the leg of his trousers. “Your general, that Satan you work for, decided that an uninjured man traveling

around England would rouse too many suspicions, so he had me disabled.”

Edi looked at the bottom half of the brace and at the round hinge she knew well, and she couldn’t help it,

but she started to laugh.

“I don’t see anything funny about this,” David said. “I have blisters all over my leg where it rubs against me

and—Will you please stop laughing?”

“I think he did it to protect me,” Edi said, still laughing. “He’s like an old sultan, and he thinks of all of us

women who work for him as his vestal virgins.”

David stopped frowning. “Yeah, he does have the most beautiful of all the women.”

“Half of them are idiots,” Edi said. “I hired a woman who could type a hundred words a minute without an

error, but that old bulldog fired her because she was ugly. He said he wasn’t going to survive bombs
and
ugly

women.”

David laughed. “She isn’t the one who works for Colonel Osborne, is she?”

Edi nodded. “She can do more work than three of Austin’s girls.”

“Except you.”

“Except me,” Edi agreed, “but I get stuck with trying to deal with all of them. One day I almost got hit by a

falling roof when one of the girls ran back to get her lipstick. I told her that gunpowder was the best eye shadow

there was and she was going to get plenty of it if she didn’t get moving. And you know what? She believed me!”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. You know Lenny…?”

“Escobar?” David’s eyes widened. “I saw him taking the powder out of some shells. It wasn’t for—?”

“It was.”

Laughing, David moved back on the bed and lifted his leg onto it. “Okay, so now all we can do is wait until

Aggie shows up and hope she has the magazine. In the meantime, I think Hamish means for you and me to stay

busy.”

“What does that mean?”

“He had me in the barn this morning…” He looked away, and Edi thought maybe his face was red.

“In the barn doing what?”

“Remember the cow?”

“I will go to my grave remembering that cow,” Edi said. “What about her?”

“‘Her’ is the key word.”

“Oh,” Edi said, smiling. “He had you milking.”

“And mucking. I think that’s the proper term for using a pitchfork to remove manure.”

She looked at him. “How did you do that with an arm in a sling and your leg like that? Can you move it?”

“Not at all. I think the hinge rusted.”

“We’ll have to get it off you,” Edi said. “Maybe this man has an Allen wrench.”

“No,” David said sadly. “No Allen wrench that will fit, no anything that will fit. I was in the barn at four

A.M. this morning because it seems that that’s when cows want to be milked and horses have to have their floors

swabbed. I tried every tool the old man has, but nothing worked. The screws are set deep into the steel, they’re

rusted, and nothing will touch them. You didn’t by chance…you know…”

“Know what?”

“Hold on to the little Allen wrench after you…”

“Saved your life? No,” Edi said, “I didn’t think to hold on to it. I guess I was a bit busy with the window

and the water and all that.”

“Just thought I’d ask.”

From outside the room came a loud voice. “Clare! You in there?”

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Fr

3/16/2010 om outside the room came a loud voice. “Clare! You in there?”

Jude Deveraux - Lavender Morning.html

David rolled his eyes. “I’d rather go back to the front lines than deal with that old man. I’m telling you that

Austin is a sweetheart compared to him.”

“I’ll get up and see what I can do to help,” Edi said.

“I better warn you that I think he expects you to cook.”

At that Edi’s face turned pale, and she put the cover back over her. “I don’t know how to cook.”

“You don’t know how to cook?”

“Don’t give me that!” she snapped. “I grew up in a house with a cook. I don’t know anything about it.

Food was served to me on a plate. I can’t even make a pot of tea.”

“Really?” David said, his smile becoming broader by the minute.

“What is so very amusing about that, Sergeant Clare?”

“Because I
can
cook.”

“
You
can cook?” she said in astonishment.

“So now who’s stereotyping? My mother is Italian. I can cook. Look, why don’t we tell him that you’re

injured and have to stay in bed so I’ll do the cooking?”

“And who will milk the cow?”

“Let ol’ Hamish do it. He does it when we’re not here.”

“So you’re saying that I’m just a poor, feeble woman who can’t pull her own weight. Is that it? I’m to stay

in bed and do nothing?”

“Unless you can milk a cow and clean up after horses, I don’t think there’s anything you
can
do.”

“As it so happens, I nearly grew up on a horse.”

“Of course,” David said. “Rich girl. The kitchen is beneath you, but you’re a stable lad in the barn.”

“You really are the most obnoxious man I have ever met in my life,” Edi said.

He stood up and looked down at her as he walked to the door. “And you, Miss Edilean Harcourt, are the

most beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, courageous woman I have ever met. And, by the way, I plan to marry

you.” He left the room, leaving Edi with her mouth open in astonishment.

“You’re a mess, you know that?” David said as he pried Edi’s hands open and looked at the blisters. “What got

into you to do all that work?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “It felt good. I get so tired of being inside and listening to typewriters

all day. I liked being outside.”

They were in the kitchen of Hamish Trumbull’s house and there was a night-and-day difference between

the way it was now and how it had looked that morning. For all his complaining that Edi had worked too hard,

David had spent the day scrubbing the kitchen, inside every cabinet and every pan. He’d filled the wood box and

kept the old stove going all day as he cooked. The room was warm and smelled wonderful.

“You haven’t exactly sat around,” she said, wincing as he examined her hands.

“No, but I had help,” he said without a smile, and the absurdity of that made them both start to laugh, then

they quietened.

“Where is he?” Edi asked, referring to Hamish.

“I wore him out with churning butter,” David said as he got some and slathered it on her blisters.

“Butter? You can
make
butter?”

“Of course. How did you think you got it?”

“By pumping the cow’s tail up and down,” she said.

David laughed. “Okay, so I’m no farmer, but I know what to do once the stuff’s in the kitchen. Taste this.”

He dipped a wooden spoon into a pan bubbling on the stove and held it to her lips. When she started to take it

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from him, he pulled back.

“Delicious,” she said. “I’ve never tasted anything like it. What is it?”

“Alfredo sauce to go on the pasta.”

“The what?”

“Spaghetti,” he said. “You Americans call all pasta spaghetti. Are you ready to eat?”

She stood up slowly. This morning she’d raided the wardrobe in the bedroom they shared and found a pair