Legend (Legend, Colorado 1)

He didn’t say anything for a while, and when he did, he changed the subject completely. “The kitchen in my house in Connecticut is in the oldest part of the house, and next to it is a pretty little study that looks out over a walled vegetable and herb garden. Along the south wall are grapes and espaliered apricot trees. No one has cared for the garden for years, but with work, it could be brought back to life. The study has two walls of old pine shelves that could hold probably a thousand or more books, cookbooks maybe. And as I said before, the kitchen hasn’t been remodeled, so there’s a storage pantry, a butler’s pantry, and a third room with thick brick walls. We don’t know what the third room was used for but—”

“A larder.”

“A what?”

“It’s a larder, used to keep meat cold. Is there a drain in the floor?”

“Why yes, there is and an underground—”

“A well,” she said with longing in her voice. “A spring runs under the room, and the water keeps the room cold.”

“Leonie wants to tear the auxiliary rooms out and make them all into one big, modern kitchen with black glass cabinets and—”

“No!” Kady said vehemently. “You can’t do that. Those small rooms have a purpose and—” She drew a breath. “It’s none of my business, of course.” She took another calming breath. “What does she want to do with the walled garden?”

“Put in a private Jacuzzi. She wants to bring in boulders and make it a natural landscape.”

“Apricot trees are natural.”

“The trees will have to go, of course. Leonie says the leaves will clog the tub’s filtering system.”

Kady lay on her back looking at the firelight flickering on the cave’s ceiling, thinking of the horror of destroying such beauty.

“What is hyssop?” Tarik asked.

“An herb. It’s used to flavor oily fish, and it’s what Chartreuse is made from. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. That’s what someone said was growing in the garden, but it made Leonie sneeze, so we took it out. What about you?”

She was so involved in thinking of the desecration of the old garden that she didn’t understand him. “Me?” she asked blankly.

“Yes. Does anything make you sneeze?”

“Certainly not any herbs,” Kady said with her jaw c

lenched. “I’d like to go to sleep now,” she said, as she couldn’t bear to hear another word about Leonie’s planned destruction of what seemed to be a beautiful old place.

“Oh, sure,” Tarik said, and she could hear him turning over in his sleeping bag, his back to her, but a minute later she heard, “Bricks.”

When she didn’t ask what he was referring to, because she thought she already knew, he said, “The walls of the garden are made of old bricks, but Leonie hates them because they’re covered with lichens and green moss. She wants to tear them down and put up something modern and tidy. Leonie likes modern things.”

“Like you!” she said with feeling.

“You think I’m modern?”

“You live in New York and you—”

“I work in New York. I live in a two-hundred-year-old house in Connecticut.”

“And you . . .” She broke off because she really couldn’t think of much else wrong with him. Except that he made her crazy, that is. One minute he was laughing at her, the next he was rescuing her, the next he was washing the dishes. “I’d like to go to sleep now,” she said again, letting him know that she wanted to stop talking. Even when he was talking about such innocent subjects as his house, he seemed able to annoy her. What did it matter to her what his wife did to their house and garden? It wasn’t any of her concern, was it?

“Yes, of course, habibbi,” he said softly. “And may you have the most beautiful of dreams.”

“And the same to you,” she said, pushing at the down-filled sleeping bag, trying to make it more comfortable. “Is that what you call Leonie?” she asked and then wished with all her might that she could recall the words.

To her surprise, Tarik did not laugh at her. Instead, he said softly, “No, I have never used that endearment to anyone else. It’s just for you.”

In spite of her good intentions, his words made her feel good, and she went to sleep smiling.