As You Wish (The Summerhouse 3)

As Olivia looked about the bit of garden with its scraggly shrubs, she thought how she’d like to divide it with crisscrossing paths. She’d use bark rather than gravel so walking on it would be silent. In the middle would be an arbor with a bench under it. Along the sides—

She broke off her thoughts. Was this derelict garden part of the enticement to get her to take on these damaged people? If so, who had thought of it? Kit? Or the unmet Jeanne?

When Olivia heard a noise from inside the house, she left through the little gate and hurried toward the road they’d driven in on. But she avoided it. She didn’t want to be seen. Both Ray and Elise had looked as though any second the question was going to come from them: “What do you think I should do?”

Olivia dreaded hearing it. Maybe in other circumstances she could come up with an answer, but right now her own problems filled her mind.

As she walked past the old stables, she looked toward Camden Hall. It was a big, sprawling Edwardian house, three stories high, “more glass than wall” as the saying went. It was a beautiful house, but it had that hollow look of a place that had been unoccupied for as long as anyone could remember.

Behind the house was what was once a pleasure garden, all flowers and little ornamental trees. It was neatly trimmed, but was now mostly bare.

Ahead of her was what she’d been looking for, the tall fence that Kit had recently had replaced. The old roses had been carefully pulled away from crumbling bricks. After the new fence was up, the pruned branches had been tied back on. In another year, they’d return in full, glorious color.

The fence enclosed River House—the place Kit had bought for her and they had restored while they were on their long honeymoon.

Olivia had told Ray that she didn’t want to see the house without her husband and that was true. What she did want to see was the tiny island in the shallow river that ran in front of the house. It was where she and Kit had made love back in 1970—and been caught doing it.

Even now, so many years later, the memory made her smile. How Kit had protected her! Back then, Young Pete had only recently taken over the caretaker’s job and he was zealous at it—and very serious. That day he’d heard voices and had run home to get his shotgun.

Olivia and Kit, both naked, their clothes on the ground, had looked through the trees and shrubs to see Young Pete standing on the other side of the water. He was coming toward them with a gun in his hand.

They looked at each other, arms entwined, bodies bare, eyes wide. Did they call out and tell Young Pete that they weren’t trespassers? But actually, they were. Had it been the father, Olivia would have identified herself. But the son was a different matter. Who knew what he would do?

Kit took over. He grabbed a handful of mud, smeared it on his face, and stuck a big, leafy branch into his hair. Yelling at the top of his lungs and looking very scary, he ran, stark naked, over the bridge and toward the wall that surrounded the estate.

Young Pete was so flabbergasted at the sight of the naked, wild-looking man that he stood and stared, his shotgun lowered.

Kit was almost over the wall before Young Pete recovered enough that he raised the gun and took aim. Olivia, who’d been on the girls’ softball team in high school, picked up a rock the size of her fist and threw it. It hit Young Pete in his lower back. As he spun around, the shotgun accidently went off, and the unexpected recoil sent him facedown into the water.

Olivia, naked as the day sh

e was born, grabbed their clothes, ran across the bridge, and headed for the wall. She leaped onto a stump and propelled herself up. As she knew he would be, Kit was leaning over, both his arms held out to her. He pulled her up and over. With clasped hands, they ran through the wooded area. When they reached the edge, they stopped and looked at each other. She used Kit’s shirt to wipe the mud off his face and he kissed the bloody scratches on her body that had been made by the stony wall.

It wasn’t until after they’d made love on the grass that they saw that Olivia’s brassiere was missing.

They halted, fear in their eyes. Would they be identified through that? Arrested for trespassing?

But then, Kit’s eyes began to sparkle. How could a piece of underwear identify its owner? “Was it that pink one with the rosebud in the center?” Kit asked.

“The very one,” she answered.

They began laughing and didn’t stop until they got back to the huge old plantation, Tattwell, where they were both living and working. After that, just the mention of the word rosebud sent them into peals of laughter.

As for Young Pete, when he went to the sheriff with the pink satin brassiere and demanded that they find the owner, he set off laughter that didn’t die down for twenty years.

The sheriff said, “We’ll have a town-wide search to find out who it fits.”

“Like Cinderella’s shoe,” the deputy said. “Just a different body part.”

“When duty calls, we must serve,” the second deputy said.

The men looked at Molly, the dispatcher, who had on her usual tight sweater. She was a thirty-six triple D and the bra was a thirty-four B.

The men were smiling at her, as though to say, “You first.”

“In your dreams,” she said, and went on typing.

The story spread as only gossip in a small town could. Young Pete was constantly asked if he’d identified his trespasser yet. Asked if he needed help in looking at mug shots of possible suspects. Some wit took a photo of the found article and made it into a wanted poster.