Luke gave a little smile, then moved farther into the trees. “The old brick kilns used to be back here. Look.” He pushed aside some bushes, and she saw a low brick wall. “I put these bricks back together so you could see the foundations.” He spread his arms out. “We could put your lavender in here. The ground is sandy, and lavender likes that. And it gets a lot of sun.”
“I can almost imagine what this place was like. Maybe I should restore it to what it once was.”
“It would cost too much to do that, and besides, Colonial Williamsburg has done a better job than we could.”
She liked that he said “we.” It made her feel like she was part of something.
“This place likes having been here all these years,” Luke said. “It likes the living, and likes the generations that have been here. I think the house breathed a sigh of relief when old Bertrand died.”
“Maybe the house was glad he didn’t get down to selling the doorknobs.”
“He did, but Rams stopped him.”
“Did you help?” Joce asked.
“I wasn’t here then,” Luke said quickly. “What do you think about this place for your lavender?”
“It looks great, but what do I know? Do you mean you were gone for that week or that you weren’t living here in Edilean?”
“So tell me more about making love on top of blue corn chips.”
“Point taken,” she said. “No more personal questions. I wonder if Miss Edi let her brother sell so much because she was cleaning the house out for the next family.”
“That’s what Rams said, but I think she just wanted to be rid of the old junk. Of course the attic is still full of it. Have you been up there yet?”
“No. I went up the stairs but the door is locked and I don’t have a key to it.”
“Rams will give you one when he tells you about your inheritance.” Luke started walking again and she followed him.
“So how much do you know about the deal with the house?”
“You stay, you get it all. You leave, the money stays with the house.”
“Just what I heard,” Jocelyn said, “but wasn’t that supposed to be a secret?”
Luke shrugged. “Somebody took the dictation; somebody typed the document. Who knows how things get out?”
“It’s my guess that you know exactly how it got out, but I also guess that you won’t tell me.”
“You’re smart, aren’t you?”
“Does that make a change from most of the women you know?”
Luke didn’t answer but pointed to a long, low brick building in the distance. “I put that place back together.”
“But it looks old.”
“Thank you,” Luke said. “That’s a good compliment. I had to dig up old bricks, then clean them off before I could use them.”
They had reached the building, and she saw the way Luke’s hand touched the side wall. “It was a labor of love, wasn’t it?” she said.
“More or less.”
“Did you always want to be a gardener?”
He looked at her oddly and seemed to be about to say something, but then changed his mind. “No, I came to it later in life. I decided that there was nothing like working with the earth. Nothing gives a man more pleasure and more satisfaction.”
“Think it’s an ancestral thing? Are you from generations of farmers tilling the soil?”