“Oh, Willy, I missed you.” She closed her eyes to seal in tears of happiness. They kissed and he tasted of sarsaparilla. She brushed back his hair and held his face and couldn’t get enough of looking at his beloved freckled cheeks and his precious brown eyes.
“Scotty says you’re stayin’ for good. Are you really, Gussie, are you?”
She smiled at Scott. “Well, I guess I am. I’ve packed up everything I own—even my sewing machine and Moose.”
“Moose! Really?”
“Really. He’s in a poultry crate in the baggage car and the porter has been feeding him.”
Willy peppered her face with noisy kisses that landed anywhere and everywhere. “Garsh!” he rejoiced. “Moose! Did you hear that, Scotty? She brung Moose!”
“Brought Moose,” Scott corrected. When Agatha would have smiled at him, Willy held her cheeks between both his hands, demanding her undivided attention. “Wait’ll you see my horse. Her name is Cinnamon and she’s pregnant!”
“She is!”
“Scotty let me watch her get bred.”
“I see I’m just in time to get your education on the proper track for a boy of five.”
“Six. I had a birthday.”
“You did! I missed it?” She twisted her expression into one of exaggerated dismay.
“It’s all right. I’m gonna have another one next year. Let’s go get Moose. Zach is waitin’ at the wagons.”
Willy squiggled out of Scott’s arms to the cobblestones and scampered off, leaving Gandy and Agatha facing each other. With no barriers between them their eyes met and held. The sense of rush dissipated.
“Hello, again,” she said.
“Hello. How was the trip?”
“Fine. Rushed. Thank you for the fine accommodation. This time I actually slept.”
“This time?”
“Last time I was too excited to sleep. This time I was too exhausted not to.”
“No trouble gettin’ things settled in Kansas?”
“Everything went fine.” It was so hellishly tempting to touch him that she suddenly gave in to the urge. She went up on tiptoes, clipped an arm behind his neck, and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s from Violet. She said I should tell you she wanted to do it every time you walked into the millinery shop.” The hand holding her hat came around her back as he dropped his head obligingly.
When she would have backed away, his arm tightened. The dimples appeared in his cheeks, his voice softened. “That’s from Violet. What about from yourself?”
She had the presence of mind to smack him blithely on the other cheek and make no more of it than a joke. “There. That’s from me. Now give me my hat.”
He placed it on her head. “I thought you gave up hats.”
“That’s asking a lot of a woman who’s worn them all her life. I kept a few of my favorites, and this was the most convenient place to carry one of them.” She reached to adjust it but he did it instead, studying the results critically.
“Uh-uh. I don’t think so,” he decided and removed it. “You always did look better without one.”
“Hey, come on, you two,” Willy interrupted. “Zach’s waitin’.”
Scott reluctantly shifted his attention to the boy. “All right, all right. Go tell Zach t’ pull the wagon up t’ the baggage car at the other end and we’ll meet him there.”
Gandy took Agatha’s arm and they sauntered along the cobblestones toward the baggage car.
“You left the store in Violet’s hands?”
“Yes. She was ecstatic. Who is Zach?”
“The son of one of our old slaves. He’s very good with horses and is teachin’ Marcus how t’ be a farrier. So y’ brought the sewing machine.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want to make a wedding dress without it. Did any of the others come to town with you?”
“No, but they’re all at home waitin’. Do y’ need anything from town before we head for Waverley? It’s an hour’s ride and we don’t make it every day.”
She needed nothing. She felt as though she had everything in the world she’d ever need or want as she watched the reunion between Willy and Moose—face to face, whiskers to freckles, the cat suspended as Willy held him beneath his front legs and kissed him, then squeezed him far too tightly, scrunched his eyes shut, and said, “Hey, Moose! Garsh, I missed you.”
Agatha was introduced to Zach, who pulled up in a weatherbeaten wooden wagon upon which was loaded the empty poultry crate and the sewing machine and all of Agatha’s gear, including the hat, which Gandy tossed through the air at the last minute.
Then she and Willy and Scott and Moose boarded a black well-sprung rig and headed for her new home. On the way Agatha saw her first redbud in bloom—clouds of rich heliotrope. And dogwood—clouds of cottony white. And wisteria—cascades of pure purple. In the ditches beside the road wild jonquils bloomed in patches so large it looked as though pieces of sun had dropped to the earth and shattered upon the grass. Here, as in Florida, the scent of the South prevailed—rich, moist, fecund. Already Agatha loved it.
They passed Oakleigh and Willy told Agatha that was where A.J.’s grandma and mother had lived before the war. They passed a little white church in a copse of pines and he told her that was where Leatrice went on Sundays. They passed the cemetery and he told her that was where Justine was buried.
They turned into the lane and Gandy told her, “This... is where I was born.”
Waverley.
More grand, more majestic than Scott’s watercolor had been able to depict. Waverley, with its towering pillars and magnificent rotunda and its wrought-iron lacework. Waverley, with its massive magnolia out front and the boxwoods trimmed to match their names. She looked up and her heart hammered—she was really here at last. She looked down and saw the peacocks on the lawn!
“Oh!” she exclaimed breathlessly.
Scott smiled, watching her, filled with pride at the appearance of the place, decked out in its floral finery, lustrous as a pearl on its emerald lawns.
“You like it?”
Her reply was all he could have hoped for. She sat speechless, with a hand pressed to her thrumming heart.
Jack saw the carriage and came hurtling across the grounds from the tannery, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “They’re here, everybody! They’re here!” And before the carriage stopped, the front door flew open and voices were whooping and people were barreling toward the rig with arms uplifted.
Agatha was passed from Pearl to Ivory to Ruby, getting hugs from all. Then came Jack, puffing from his run across the yard, sweeping her in a circle and making her laugh. Then Jube, radiant even in a cleaning dress of washed cotton.
“Jubilee, congratulations!”
The two women backed off and smiled at each other. Then Jube captured Marcus’s arm to tug him forward. “Isn’t it wonderful? If he says anything different, don’t believe a word of it.”
Marcus, always the perfect gentleman, smiled at Agatha but held back. She gave him an impulsive hug.
“Congratulations, Marcus! I’m so happy for you.”
He made motions as if he were squirting oil and raised a questioning brow.
“Yes, it’s all oiled and ready to go. We’ll have her dress made in no time.”
There was one other person waiting on the front steps with hands crossed over her bulging stomach and a leather pouch suspended from a thong around her neck, a woman shaped like a water buffalo, who could only be the indubitable Leatrice.
Everyone except Leatrice talked at once. Everyone except Leatrice hugged Agatha or kissed her on the cheek. Everyone except Leatrice smiled and laughed. Leatrice waited like a queen on a dais for her subject to be announced.
When the initial hubbub had died down, Scott took Agatha’s elbow and escorted her up the marble steps.
“Leatrice,” he said, “I’d like you t’ meet Agatha Downin’. Agatha, this is Leatrice. She’s cantankerous and unreasonable and I don’t know why I keep her. But I’ve been
farther underwater than she’s been away from Waverley, so I guess she’s here to stay.”
Leatrice spoke in a voice like an engine with gear trouble. “So you here at las’, d’ woman from Kansas. Maybe now we get sumpin’ ‘sides growlin’ outta dis one heah.” She curved a thumb toward Gandy. “Boy’s been one bodacious bear t’ live wid.”
Gandy grew red around the collar and studied his feet. Agatha politely refrained from looking at him. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Leatrice.”
“I jus’ bet ya have, an’ ain’t none of it good, izzat right?”
Agatha laughed. The woman did, indeed, stink like a polecat, which Gandy had warned she would. “Well, I’ve heard that you rule with an iron hand, but I have a feeling there are times when somebody needs it.”
“Humph!” Leatrice readjusted her crossed hands over her barrel belly. “An’ I know who.”
Zach arrived with the baggage and the men began unloading it. Jack and Marcus came up the steps bearing the sewing machine. Zach and Ivory followed with a trunk, the latter with Agatha’s pink-flowered hat perched on his head.
“Where you git dat hat, boy?” Leatrice demanded.
Agatha snatched it off. “It’s mine, but the master of Waverley has issued his first order—no hats for me.”
“Where to with these things?” Jack asked.
“The right parlor,” Gandy answered, and the men moved inside.
Willy came by, lugging a hatbox nearly as big as he, while Jube and the girls followed with additional luggage. As they disappeared inside, Agatha plucked at the petals on the hat and peered up at Gandy with a teasing light in her eyes. “And where to with this thing?”
Gandy glanced wryly at the hat with its pink cabbage roses and whorl of net and its cluster of cherries in a sprig of green leaves.
“No offense, Agatha,” he said, “but that is the singularly most ugly thing I’ve ever seen. Why any woman with hair like yours would want t’ cover it with cabbage roses and cherries is a mystery t’ me.”
Agatha stopped plucking at the silk petals, sighed, and quite by chance won the black woman’s heart forever by inquiring, “Would you have any use for one slightly used pink hat, Leatrice?”
Leatrice’s eyes widened and fixed upon the gaudy creation. Her hands reached out slowly, reverently.
“Dis? Fo’ me?”
“If you don’t mind it being slightly worn.”
“Lawdy...”
Gandy grinned at Agatha and said, “Come on. Let me show you the house.”
They left Leatrice on the front steps, wearing the abominable-smelling asafetida bag around her neck and the pink hat on her head.
Scott took Agatha through a door wider and higher than any she’d ever seen into the grand rotunda, where she stood a moment to catch her breath. It was majestic. Spacious and bright with paneled doors rolled back revealing twin parlors on either side and the sweeping twin staircases twining down from overhead, forming a graceful frame for the matching back door across the shiny pine floor. She looked up and it was just as she’d imagined: the cupola roof overhead, the graceful brass chandelier, the catwalks and windows, the doors leading to the upper-level rooms, and the spindles—all seven hundred eighteen of them—like the ribs of a massive living thing.
She had that impression right from the start—that Waverley had a life of its own, apart from those who lived in it. It had dignity and a touching air of defiance, as if having survived the war gave it the right to feel superior. It dominated, too, its sheer scale dwarfing those who moved within its walls. But that dominance was tempered by an air of protectiveness. Agatha had the feeling that, should one need refuge, one had only to step between the twin staircases and they would embrace like powerful arms, holding any threat at bay.
“I love it,” she declared. “How ever could you have stayed away all those years?”
“I don’t know,” Scott replied. “Now that I’m back, I really don’t know.”
“Show me the rest.”
He took her into the front left parlor, a beautiful room with four high, dramatic windows, a large fireplace, and to the left of the doorway a graceful depression in the wall, surrounded by decorative plasterwork.
“The weddin’ alcove,” he announced.
“About to be used again,” she noted. “How nice. I’m sure she’ll be pleased.”
“Jube is ecstatic.”
“No. Not Jube. I meant the house.” Agatha lifted her eyes to the high ceiling. “It has a... a presence, doesn’t it?” She walked around a drake-footed Chippendale chair, trailed her fingers over the waxed surface of a Pembroke table, the back of a graceful sofa, then passed the piano, where she played a single note that hung in the air between them. “A personality.”
“I thought I was the only one who believed that anymore. My mother did, too.”
Through the low front windows they could see the boxwoods his mother had brought from Georgia.
“Perhaps she’s looking over from her grave across the road and nodding in approval at how you’ve revived the place.”
“Perhaps she is. Come, I’ll show you my favorite room.”
She, too, loved his office on sight. So much more personal than the front parlor, and bearing a more lived-in look, with his ledger left open on the desk, a crystal inkwell and a metal-nibbed pen waiting to be put to use again; his humidor undoubtedly stocked with cigars, the remains of one in a free-standing ash stand near his desk chair. The smell of him permeated the room, cheroots and leather and ink.
“It fits you very well,” she told him.
She glanced up and found him watching her, not exactly smiling, but looking as pleased at having her here as she felt at being here at last.
“I’ll show y’ the dinin’ room,” he said, turning to lead the way across the hall. It, too, was huge, with a great built-in china closet and a massive rectangular table beneath another gas chandelier. The floor was bare and gleaming beneath the table and their footsteps echoed as they stepped farther into the room.
“Breakfast is at eight, dinner at noon, and supper at seven. Supper is always formal and all our guests share the meal with us.”
“And Willy?” she asked.
“Willy, too.”
So Scott Gandy would gift her with yet another thing—that ineffable sense of family that thrived around no place so heartily as around a supper table. Her sunsets need never be lonely again.
Her heart was full. She wanted to thank him, but he was already leading the way to the other front parlor.
“And this is your room,” Gandy told her, stepping back to let her enter.
“Mine?” She stepped inside. “But... but it’s so big! I mean, I wouldn’t need half this space.” Her sewing machine and trunks were already installed in the spacious room. Brightness everywhere—four gleaming windows—a south view of the front gardens, the drive, his mother’s boxwoods, and, to the east, the river. Too much to take in without being overcome.
“I wanted you t’ be on the main floor so you wouldn’t have t’ climb the stairs so much. If it’s all right with you, we’ll use a corner in here for Willy’s classroom.”
“Oh, it’s more than all right.”
This room was the twin of the first parlor, without the alcove, but with that rarity, a walk-in closet bigger than any two pantries she’d ever seen. There was a pretty bed with a white brocade tester, a chaise upholstered in multicolored floral, a small chest-on-chest, a five-foot freestanding cheval mirror on swivel brackets, and a library table holding a large bouquet of golden forsythia.
“I’m sorry, Gussie. You won’t have much privacy, except at night. Durin’ the day, to add to the feelin’ of intimacy around the place, it would be nice if you kept the doors rolled back while you’re workin’ in here. That way our guests feel like they’re one of the family.”
She stood before the cheval mirror, catching his gaze in the glass. She turned slowly, wondering if he had the vaguest notion of what it meant to a woman
like her to have a room like this in a house like this.
“I’ve had privacy, Scott. It’s not all that desirable. All those years I lived in that dark, narrow apartment above the shop with nobody to come to my door and interrupt me or disturb me. You cannot guess how awful it was.” She smiled, a smile of the heart as much as of the lips. “Of course I’ll leave the doors rolled back while I work here. But I feel a little guilty about taking one of the loveliest rooms in the house that could be bringing in money from paying guests.”
“Your job is seein’ after Willy. I don’t see how you can do that from one of the slave cabins. Besides, there are three guest rooms upstairs, equally as large as this one.”
“But this is more than I’d hoped for. The nicest place I’ve ever lived.”
He came several steps into the room and stopped beside the foot of the bed. “I’m glad you’re here, Gussie. I’ve thought—”
Suddenly, Willy came charging through the doorway, claiming Agatha’s hand.
“Come and see my room, Gussie.”
He tugged her along impatiently and Scott followed to stand at the bottom of the right stairway, watching them ascend. “Can you make the stairs all right?”
“Nothing could stop me,” she replied, looking back over her shoulder.
On her way up Agatha was surprised to meet a middle-aged couple coming down. They were dressed for riding.
“Hello,” the woman said.
“Hello.”
Immediately, Gandy sprinted up the steps. “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Van Hoef, off t’ the stables?”
“Indeed,” replied the man.
“A perfect day for a ride. Mr. and Mrs. Van Hoef, I’d like you t’ meet Agatha Downin’, the newest permanent resident of Waverley.” To Agatha he explained, “Robert and his wife, Debra Sue, arrived yesterday from Massachusetts. They’re our first official guests.”
Agatha murmured a polite response. Then the Van Hoefs continued down the stairs.
“Guests already?” Agatha remarked.
“Van Hoef runs a successful milling operation and is reputed t’ be one of the five most wealthy men in Massachusetts. Do y’ know why he’s here, Gussie?”
“No.”
“Because of somethin’ you said t’ me one time when we were talkin’ about Waverley. You called it a national treasure, do you remember?” She didn’t. He went on. “I had no idea when I left Kansas how I was goin’ t’ make Waverley pay its way again. Then one day I was lookin’ out the rotunda window”—he looked up to it, then back down at her—“and your words came back to me. I realized then what potential the place held. If it hadn’t been for you, insistin’ I come back here, I probably never would have. I just wanted to say thank you for badgerin’ me into it.”