“Oh?” Alix began to laugh at what she was visualizing. “If the house was new there probably wasn’t much up here, was there?”
“There was only a half-empty jug of rum.” Caleb’s look seemed to be a combination of remorse and embarrassment. “And it was a cold night.”
Alix couldn’t repress her laughter. “How did he get out of this room?”
“The next morning Kendricks heard … well, some fairly strong words coming through the floorboards. It had been very difficult to raise the household after the night’s revelry.”
“Not to mention that it was the schoolmaster’s wedding night. I don’t mean to laugh at the Captain, but he really did deserve what he got.”
“He did,” Caleb said. “Although he certainly didn’t think so at the time. When he was finally released from the attic he put on his most impressive uniform and went to Valentina’s washhouse, where she was stirring her big pots of soap. He demanded an apology from her.”
“Did she give it to him?”
“She told him to make himself useful and grab a paddle and stir.”
“Not the way a ship’s captain was used to being treated?”
“No,” Caleb said, smiling. “Not at all how he was used to being treated.”
They smiled at each other and kept dancing.
Chapter Twenty-one
Jared was in the beat-up old truck he kept in Hyannis, driving back from Maine. In the summer it was difficult to get a reservation for a vehicle on the slow boat. What with the sixty thousand or so visitors who came and left the island, and their many vehicles taking up room on the ferry, a lot of Nantucketers kept a car or truck off island.
Beside him was Jilly Taggert Leighton, just one of the many relatives he’d met over the last few days. There seemed to be hundreds of them!
There were some, mostly Montgomerys, in the little Maine town that had been founded by their ancestors and he was told of more, Taggerts, who lived in Chandler, Colorado. He saw photos of an enormous house in Colorado built by a robber baron back in the nineteenth century. As far as Jared could tell, the house hadn’t been updated in many years. He didn’t say so, but he very much wanted to get his hands on the place and bring it up to code. He couldn’t imagine how dangerous the electrical probably was.
As Jared looked at the pictures, he’d imagined Alix’s face when she saw the mansion in Colorado. And he thought of what she’d say when she saw the big house in Maine. Besides the buildings, he wondered which member of the family she’d like the most and who she’d never be close to. Would he and Alix have the same opinions of everything and everyone? Or would they disagree?
The truth was that Jared had thought of Alix the whole time he was away. And he’d talked about her. He thought maybe that’s what surprised him the most, that he’d spoken of her out loud. Off-island, he’d always been a very private person. His grandfather said the contrast was good. On Nantucket you couldn’t get a girlfriend, break up with one, or even flirt with a girl without half the town knowing about it. Which was one of the many reasons why Jared had only gone out with tourists while at home—and why he’d kept his New York girlfriends in the city.
But Alix was different. Never in his life had he felt so comfortable, so at ease, with anyone. From fish filleting to designing a house, they just seemed to know how to … well, actually how to live together.
A couple of times before Jared had lived with women, but each time it had been a disaster. For one thing, all his girlfriends had seemed much more aware of his success than his passion for his craft. He was a famous architect who moved in elite circles, and they wanted to be part of that. They wanted to wear gowns that cost thousands, jewels that cost even more, and go to parties every night of the week. They wanted to be seen with the famous Jared Montgomery, wanted to be associated with him. Jared felt secondary to that man, whom he often thought of as a media creation.
Over the years he’d tried dating women from different social strata. There was a pretty young woman from Indiana who worked as a receptionist. But she’d been overwhelmed by Jared’s high-flying life and one day he’d found her crying in his apartment. He paid for her ticket home. The women who’d grown up rich were annoyed that Jared could spend so little time with them. Those with ambition tended to use Jared’s contacts as stepping stones on their way to the top.
Whatever their origins, all the women he’d dated had been far more interested in Jared the Famous than in the Jared the Man. Not one of them had grasped the concept of the work behind what he did. Sheer, huge volumes of work.
But Alix did. He could hand her the end of a measuring tape and she knew what to do with it. He could talk in shorthand to her and she understood. But work wasn’t all of it, or even the main part. Alix saw him as a man. She saw both sides of him and liked them both.
“Are you missing her?” Jilly asked from the passenger seat beside him.
Jared smiled. “Did I make a fool of myself talking about her so much?”
“Not at all,” Jilly said. “Most of us have been there and the ones who haven’t hope to be someday. Did you tell Alix that we’ll be arriving today?”
“No. She doesn’t expect me until tomorrow.” He was grinning at the thought of seeing her again. Two days ago he’d gone with Jilly’s older brother Kane and his identical twin grown sons, in search of the stained-glass window for the chapel. At the second store, they’d found the perfect one. Made in the 1870s, it portrayed a knight leaning on his sword and looking wistful. Jared didn’t say so, but the man looked uncannily like his grandfather, Caleb.
After he’d purchased the window, Jared started to help put it on the back of the truck, but Kane said, “You’re a Montgomery so you better let us do it.” Jared had soon learned about the rivalry between the two families. The big Taggerts said that the taller, thinner Montgomerys were weak and scrawny, while the Montgomerys said the Taggerts had no brains. Of course it was all untrue, but Jared enjoyed the ribbing.
All in all, he fit in with the family and, yes, he
was more like the Montgomerys. They were the relatives who encouraged him to talk about what he’d designed over the course of his career, and who enjoyed puzzling out how they were related.
Of the Taggerts, Jared especially liked Kane and Mike, men in their early fifties who had amassed great fortunes—but were as down-to-earth as could be. They were identical twins, so alike Jared couldn’t see a difference between them—but their wives could. And none of their children were fooled.