Читать книгу A Family Likeness - Margot Dalton - Страница 7

GINA STUDIED the newcomer. He appeared to be about forty, no more than average height, but powerfully built. He wore casual pleated slacks and a white polo shirt, and had curly dark hair, heavily frosted with gray at the temples. His face, with its finely chiseled features and clear intelligent blue eyes, was severe in repose, despite the fullness of his lower lip. She thought his mouth hinted at a sensual nature, well controlled but very intense.

“I’m sorry if I startled you.” His tone was courteous. “My name’s Alex Colton. I phoned earlier to say I’d be coming out this afternoon.”

“Oh, that’s right. My housekeeper mentioned your call. But I’ve been so busy today I forgot all about it.”

Colton looked around at the wet scraps of paper littering the hardwood, then at the flowered walls, now almost completely covered. He turned back to Gina with a smile. “It looks great. You’re quite the decorator.”

The smile surprised her. It transformed his face, driving away the severity and making him seem happy, almost boyish. But as suddenly as it had appeared, the smile faded and the severity returned.

Or was it sadness? Gina wondered. If a woman lived with this man, she’d probably spend a lot of her time trying to make him smile.

Gina wiped her hands briskly on her shorts and moved past him to the door. “My housekeeper mentioned that you were interested in renting a room?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I wanted to discuss terms,” he said. “If you have a few minutes to spare.”

“I always have time to spare for business.”

Gina led the way down the stairs, conscious of Alex Colton just behind her. For such a powerfully built man, he had a tread as light as a cat.

“That window is magnificent,” he said, gazing upward. “Do you happen to know who did the stained glass?”

Gina paused in the foyer by the newel post, fingering an intricate carving of grape leaves in the polished oak. For the second time that afternoon, she told the story of Josiah Edgewood and his reluctant bride.

Colton stood above her on the stairs and listened in apparent fascination, emotions playing visibly across his face. The man was such a good audience that Gina had to force herself to stop talking. She felt as if she could go on for hours, telling him stories about the house and its history, enjoying the way his eyes lit up and that elusive smile touched his mouth.

“Well, it seems my wife was right, as usual,” he said at last. “I think this place is going to be perfect for us.”

His wife.

Gina was surprised and a little annoyed with herself for her swift surge of disappointment. After all, she was hardly the sort of woman who looked on every man as a romantic prospect.

She led the way across the foyer and into her office. Moving behind the broad oak desk, she gestured to one of the leather chairs nearby and reached into a drawer for the reservation book. Her guest settled in a chair and examined the placid scene beyond the window.

“When were you and your wife thinking of coming to stay with us, Mr. Colton?”

He glanced at her, looking startled and unhappy, and turned back to his study of the yard. “What’s wrong with that dog?” he asked.

Gina followed his gaze, watching as Mary’s fat white poodle lumbered past the window and settled near a clump of pink alyssum, whining piteously.

“She’s hungry,” Gina said. “Her name’s Annabel and I’m afraid she’s on a diet.”

“She certainly should be,” Colton said with another of those brief shining smiles. “But she doesn’t seem to have a lot of willpower, does she?”

“Not a lot,” Gina agreed. “Annabel doesn’t believe in suffering silently.”

She stole a glance at her visitor, who was still watching the dog. He looked so intrigued that once again she had to suppress the urge to keep talking, to tell him all about Mary and Roger and their running conflict over the care and feeding of Annabel.

“We’re getting a lot of bookings for the summer,” Gina said, studying her reservations again. “But we have a few weekend rooms left in June, and a fair number of openings in the fall, though Christmas is already—”

“I want the whole summer,” he said abruptly.

Gina looked at him in astonishment. “The whole summer?”

“That is, if the place looks as great under close inspection as it does on first impression.”

She fingered her pen nervously. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, Mr. Colton, that our prices are…somewhat higher than normal accommodation rates in the area.”

“About a hundred and fifty dollars a day,” he agreed calmly. “My wife had a brochure about the place, and I hope it isn’t too far out-of-date. Are those .prices still accurate?”

Gina nodded. “There’s quite a lot of variation from room to room,” she said. “Some of the smaller rooms are less than a hundred a day, but the attic suite, for instance, is two-fifty.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because of its size and the amenities. There’s a wood-burning fireplace, a king-size sleigh bed on a platform fitted with steps, a large antique bathroom with a two-person whirlpool tub and a covered balcony overlooking the lake.”

“Sounds like a honeymoon suite,” he said.

“Often it is.”

“And is the attic suite occupied at the moment?” he asked.

“There’s a young couple from Minnesota staying there for the weekend. They’ll be gone on Tuesday.”

“Well, it sounds beautiful, but probably not exactly what I’m looking for. What about that room you were working in?”

“That’s the gold room,” Gina said. “It’s about midrange. It has leaded-glass casement windows, a gas fireplace and a small balcony. It’s a hundred and seventy.”

“And if I took it for two months? Would I have to pay—” he paused a moment to think “—ten thousand dollars?”

“Of course not. I could offer a substantially decreased rate for a long-term stay. And all our guests are treated to a wonderful three-course breakfast and an afternoon tea in the library.”

Colton leaned back in his chair. “Would the gold room be free for the entire summer?”

“I think I could make arrangements to have it available,” Gina said, keeping her face carefully expressionless. She could never recall having a room booked for sixty consecutive days to the same person. A stay at Edgewood Manor was usually an expensive luxury for her guests. It was a chance to escape from the real world, to be pampered by the staff for a few days and swathed in the sumptuous elegance of a bygone era.

Sometimes travelers from faraway places such as Australia or Japan stayed for a week or more if they had a particular interest in the Okanagan region. But a booking of two months was simply unheard-of. It would require some juggling on her part and moving of guests to other rooms. But she had nothing on file to indicate that anybody had specifically requested the gold room, so it should be all right…

While she was examining the reservation book, Colton startled her again.

“Before you get too involved in that,” he said, “I probably should mention that I’ll be needing another room, as well.”

“Two rooms? For the entire summer?” Gina looked up at him sharply.

He was sitting in relaxed fashion in the leather chair and had returned his gaze to the window. The afternoon sunlight etched his profile softly with gold.

Gina felt a rising annoyance.

This had to be some kind of scam. Maybe he was a journalist, planning to do a sensationalist article on inflated accommodation prices in resort areas, without the slightest concept of how much it cost to operate a huge old place like this.

“Look,” she began stiffly, “if you’re trying to make some kind of point, I’m not sure I understand what it is.”

He turned in surprise. “What do you mean?”

Gina’s anger faded to uncertainty once more. His gaze was so clear and honest, his face quietly appealing. “We don’t normally have such extended bookings,” she said at last. “A stay at Edgewood Manor is a weekend luxury for most people, Mr. Colton. It’s not the kind of place where people tend to book a room for two whole months. And,” she added, looking down at her reservation book to avoid his thoughtful gaze, “certainly not two rooms.”

Colton sat forward in his chair. His face suddenly looked tired and drawn. “I see. But it’s allowed? I mean, you’ll still rent me the rooms if I want them?”

“Why do you need two rooms?” Gina asked bluntly.

“My daughter will be spending the summer here, as well. She’s fourteen.”

Gina still felt nervous and uncertain. She couldn’t seem to read the man, couldn’t determine if he was utterly sincere or merely feeding her a line for some obscure reason of his own.

She decided to play along and see what happened. Maybe he really was on the level. And renting two rooms for the whole summer was certainly profitable for her…“All right.” She consulted the book again. “But there’ll be a problem, I’m afraid, if. you want your daughter in a room adjoining yours. On the second floor we only have the blue and gold rooms and the Edgewood master suite, which is quite expensive and also heavily booked.”

“Well, what about the blue room?”

Gina shook her head. “A number of couples have strong emotional attachments to the blue room. It’s already reserved for quite a few weekends this summer. If your daughter stayed there, she’d have to move out at regular intervals to a different room while the blue room was being used.”

Colton shook his head. “Oh, she wouldn’t care for that, I’m afraid. Like most teenagers, Steffi travels with a lot of stuff. It takes a small army to move it.”

Gina examined the reservation book again. “Let’s see. Fourteen years old…” she murmured thoughtfully. “Maybe she’d like the patio room. It’s on the main floor, with a French door opening onto the terrace. It’s readily accessible to the beach path, and it’s also one of the smaller, less expensive rooms. You can see the door to it over there, in fact.”

She gestured out the window toward the side wing of the mansion. There was a door at ground level across the leafy yard, with leaded-glass panels set into rails of antique brass that winked brightly in the sunlight.

Colton’s eyes sparkled with interest. “May I see the room?”

“Of course.” Gina got up and led the way out of her office, conscious again of him following close behind. “It’s quicker to go out through the back,” she said, opening a door into a wide hallway floored in oak and smelling deliciously of fresh bread.

“What a heavenly aroma,” he said, sniffing in pleasure.

“Mary’s baking this afternoon. She’s the cook and housekeeper. That’s the kitchen,” Gina added as they passed a big airy room full of glass-fronted cabinets. “Guests are welcome to drop in and visit while Mary’s working. And she’s always very generous about sharing her recipes.”

“I look forward to meeting her.”

Gina nodded. “I’ll introduce you on the way back. Hello, Roger,” she said as the caretaker passed them, carrying his freshly carved spindle and a can of wood stain.

Roger smiled at Gina and Alex Colton, his face creasing with warmth. “I have to match the wood stains,” he told them, brandishing the spindle. “It usually takes about seven attempts before I get it just right.”

“That’s Roger Appleby,” Gina told her visitor as the handyman vanished into the foyer. “He looks after things for me around the hotel. He also plays wonderful music on a hundred-year-old cello.”

“I’m liking this place more and more,” Alex Colton said, smiling down at her.

The two of them went out the back and down the broad steps to the yard. Annabel caught sight of them and trotted awkwardly across the lawn, gazing up at them with wretched appeal.

“She looks even fatter up close,” the man said, bending to pet her.

Gina watched, liking the way he caressed the dog. His hands looked strong and competent, but very gentle. She realized she was staring and turned away quickly to cross the yard, heading for the shaded flagstone terrace.

“Is all the landscaping authentic Victorian, too?” he asked.

“Most of it. Lady Edgewood had a lot of shrubs brought over from Scotland, and they do quite well in this climate. There’s even some heather growing on the slope up there. Of course, I’ve added other perennials, and Mary has a big garden that provides most of our vegetables during the summer. And we make all our own jams and preserves.”

“Enchanting,” Alex Colton said sincerely, looking around at the shimmering lake, the blue-shadowed mountains on both sides of the valley and the roofs of the little town of Azure Bay in the distance. “Really beautiful. I think this summer is going to be good for us.”

Gina watched him, struck by the sadness in his face. He looked utterly worn-out, she thought with a rush of sympathy, despite his obvious physical strength.

“I was sure,” she muttered, rummaging in the pocket of her shorts, “I had a master key somewhere. Now what did I…”

Gina felt a growing embarrassment as he watched her place the contents of her pockets, item by item, on a stone retaining wall. There were two polished stones that she’d found on the beach that morning after her swim, as well as a piece of flint that could possibly be a chipped arrowhead, and a length of bent wire she planned to use on the shed door until Roger could find a lock.

But the key didn’t emerge. She went on lining things up on the wall, ignoring his amused glance.

A lottery ticket she hadn’t found the time to check on yet, two feathers, a recipe for peach chutney jotted on a table napkin, a couple of pieces of toffee wrapped in gold foil, a tiny plastic replica of Batman, a pocketknife with a wooden handle, a miniature compass in a gold case—

“A compass!” he exclaimed, picking up the little object. “Does it work?”

“Of course,” Gina said briskly. “Ah, here’s the key,” she said in relief, sweeping the other things back into her pockets.

“Why do you carry a compass?”

“You never know when you might get lost in the woods around here. A compass is a really handy thing to have.”

His eyes sparkled. “You’re just like a ten-year-old boy. Pockets full of interesting stuff. I like that, Miss Mitchell.”

He handed Gina the compass and she returned it to her pocket, trying hard to look like the mature and professional manager of a successful business. But it had been so unnerving to have him examining that row of objects.

She resolved to clean out all the junk from her pockets as soon as Alex Colton left and to try harder in future to refrain from picking up every interesting thing that caught her eye.

“Is the patio room occupied at the moment?” Colton asked. “I’d hate to barge in on somebody.”

Gina shook her head. “There was a couple here for two days, but they left yesterday morning. I’m afraid they complained to Roger that Annabel was making a lot of noise,” she added.

“Steffi is going to love Annabel,” Colton said with a fleeting grin. “Although,” he added, “there’s a very real danger she might be tempted to sneak some food to the poor thing.”

“Oh, goodness, I hope not.” Gina unlocked the door. “Roger does that all the time. Mary gets very upset with him.”

“I think,” he repeated, following her into the room, “I’m really going to like this place.”

He was immediately charmed by the patio room, which had a curtained window seat, a walk-in closet and a small en suite bathroom.

“Perfect,” he declared. “I’ll take this room, as well as the gold room, all right?”

“You haven’t even asked about the price,” Gina said, leading the way back into the yard.

“I’m sure you’ll be fair.”

Gina paused by the retaining wall and looked up at him. “How can you be sure of that?”

He hoisted himself onto the stone ledge and smiled at her. “Because you carry feathers and a compass in your pocket.”

She hesitated, feeling awkward.

“Sit here with me, Miss Mitchell,” he said, patting the sun-warmed stone beside him. “I do have a few more questions about the hotel.”

“Gina,” she said automatically, settling on the ledge a couple of feet away from him. “We’re all on a first-name basis here.”

“Gina,” he repeated. “And I’m Alex.”

He extended his hand. She shook it, pleased by the strength of his grip.

“It’s nice to meet you, Alex,” she said formally. “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay at Edgewood Manor.”

“Yes,” he said, leaning back, his hands braced against the stone. “So do I. We could certainly use a holiday.”

He closed his eyes in the sunlight. Gina stole a glance at him, once again struck by his look of strain and weariness.

“When will you be arriving?” she asked.

“On the first of July, right at the beginning of the long weekend. I’ll book both rooms for all of July and August, but Steffi might choose to visit a school friend for the first week or two of July, so she’ll arrive later than I do.”

“I see.” Gina wondered why he didn’t say “we.” Maybe his wife would also be staying home until their daughter was ready to travel to Azure Bay. But it seemed odd that he would come by himself, ahead of his family.

“What’s the daily routine here?” he asked, bending to pet Annabel again as she huddled by their feet, nibbling one of her paws disconsolately.

“Well, there aren’t any rules. We serve breakfast at eight o’clock, and Mary leaves fruit and baked goods in the dining room all day for guests who like to nibble. Tea is set out in the library from about four o’clock on. Guests are welcome to build a fire in the drawing room or the library on chilly nights and go anywhere on the property that’s not marked exclusively for staff.”

“How large a staff do you have?”

“Mostly just Mary and Roger and me. But in July and August, our busiest months, I also hire a couple of college girls from town to help out.”

“What about the evening meal?” Alex asked.

“The staff eats here, but we don’t serve anything to the guests. They usually choose to walk or drive into town for dinner. It’s less than half a mile, and there are several restaurants catering to tourists, including a really good seafood place. They also have a Chinese restaurant and a pizza place that both deliver, if you prefer to stay and eat at the hotel.”

“Sounds great.” He glanced up at the vine-covered facade of the old mansion’s other wing. “Can we see the room where you were working from here?”

Gina pointed. “The gold room’s that second-floor balcony up there under the dormer.”

Alex squinted into the sunlight. “Ah, yes. Would there be an electrical outlet on the balcony?”

“No, but there’s an outlet just inside the door. I particularly remember,” she added, “because I had to take the plate off today to paper around it.”

“Good. I’ll probably work out there most days if the weather’s nice.”

“What kind of work?” Gina asked.

“Computer,” he said briefly.

She nodded, not pressing for further details. He seemed reluctant to divulge more.

But then to her surprise he said, “I teach economics at a private college near Vancouver. I plan to do some writing this summer.”

“Will your wife and daughter be able to amuse themselves all day?” she asked. “I’m afraid there’s not a lot going on in the town of Azure Bay—though Kelowna is less than half an hour away, and it’s a good-size resort city.”

“Steffi’s an outdoor girl,” Alex said. “She loves hiking and swimming, and she’s a pretty fair amateur photographer. She’s not the type to hang around malls or video arcades.”

“I see.” Gina paused, thinking about the reality of a two-month stay at Edgewood Manor for anyone unaccustomed to this kind of rural existence. “How about your wife? Is she—”

“My wife is dead,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry.” Gina glanced at him. He was staring across the lake, his profile cold and unrevealing. “I thought…I was sure you spoke of this holiday as her idea.”

“In a way it was.” He continued to look at the shimmering expanse of blue-green water. “My wife died three months ago after a lengthy illness. When I was going through her papers, I found the brochure about Edgewood Manor.”

“I see.”

“My wife was the one who planned our vacations,” he went on. “I was always too busy to bother with details like that. Besides, she had a flair for finding the perfect place and organizing quirky off-beat holidays that were perfect for us. So when I found that brochure in her desk, I looked on it as a sort of message from her.” He gave Gina a tired smile. “And it seems she was right again.”

“I hope so,” Gina said with gentle sincerity. “I hope you and your daughter enjoy the summer.”

“It’s been hard for Steffi,” he said. “Really hard. I’m worried about her.”

Gina was silent, recognizing his difficulty with talking about his family’s trauma. He was a man who didn’t share his feelings easily.

“She’s at an age where a girl needs her mother,” he went on in a low voice. “It was bad enough for Steffi to lose her, but to watch how terribly Janice suffered at the end…”

He fell silent.

Gina glanced at him again, wanting to reach over and squeeze his hand, or put her arm around him and give him a sympathetic hug. But she kept her hands folded tightly in her lap.

“What…what was your wife’s illness?” she inquired hesitantly. She knew she was prying, but something about the man compelled her to ask.

“She had Huntington’s,” he said, still staring at the lake.

“Oh,” Gina murmured, wrung with sympathy. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

She was silent a moment, trying to remember what she’d heard about the condition. “I always thought…” she began.

He turned to face her. “Yes?”

“About Huntington’s. I thought it didn’t affect people until quite late in life.”

“Usually it doesn’t,” Alex said. “But it can strike in the early thirties. That’s when my wife first started to develop symptoms—about ten or eleven years ago. Her father and an uncle both died of it,” he added, “so we knew what to expect. But the children of people with Huntington’s still have a fifty percent chance of escaping it.”

“And until the symptoms appear…”

“You keep hoping,” he said bitterly. “You cling to hope until the last minute. You tell yourself maybe the tremors are just fatigue, and the dizziness is some kind of allergy. You grasp at straws as long as you can.”

“But hasn’t a test been developed recently? I thought there was some kind of genetic marker that can be isolated and identified.”

“That’s true,” he said, looking at Gina in surprise. “You’re very well-informed.”

“I watch public television,” she said, “and read a lot. I’ve always had an interest in scientific things.”

“Of course you have,” he said with a quick smile. “Anybody can tell that by looking at the things you carry in your pockets.”

She smiled back. “My mother was a chemistry teacher until she retired a few years ago. She always encouraged me to have an inquiring mind.”

“What about your father?”

Gina tensed, reluctant to get into a personal discussion. But he’d told her about his own family tragedy, so it seemed graceless not to respond to his questions.

“My father was in sales,” she said. “He traveled a lot. When I was about eleven, he left on a trip to Ontario and wound up staying there. My mother raised us all alone.”

“Us?”

“I have a sister who’s ten years younger than I am. She and my mother live in New Brunswick. I came out here almost twenty years ago to go to college, fell in love with the province and never left.”

“Why did you decide to go to school so far from home?”

“I have an aunt who lives in Vancouver near the university,” Gina said. “It was cheaper to stay with her than in a dormitory somewhere. And UBC offered a really good course on hotel management, which was always my career choice.”

“I see.”

Alex leaned back again, lifting his face gratefully to the warm rays of sunlight.

“In answer to your question about testing,” he said after a brief silence, “it was something my wife never wanted to do, even after the test became more readily available. She said she refused to live with a death penalty over her head. As it happened, the disease progressed a lot more rapidly than is usual once the symptoms appeared, so maybe she was wise.”

Maybe, Gina thought. But it wouldn’t have been her own choice. She always preferred to know what she was dealing with, to confront the reality head-on no matter how awful it might be. She wondered about Alex’s daughter, though. Had she been tested? Surely—

Alex suddenly got to his feet, then waited courteously while she did likewise. “We’d better get this deal concluded,” he said. “I have to be back in Vancouver before nightfall.”

She walked with him back into the hotel, relieved that their painful conversation was ended.

But as they strolled through the hallway with Annabel at their heels and paused in the kitchen to greet Mary, Gina was alarmed to realize she was already counting the days until the first of July…