Deveraux Jude - Legend Read online

  Jane started to reply, but then a busboy began to clean their

  table, broadly hinting that it was needed and they should leave. In a

  few minutes, the three women were back out on the streets of Alexandria. Jane looked at her watch. "Debbie and I need to do some shopping at Tyson's Corner, so shall we meet you back at

  Onions at five?" "Sure," Kady said hesitantly, then grimaced. "I have a whole list

  of things I'm supposed to buy for the town house. Things that don't go into the kitchen." "You mean like sheets and towels, that sort of thing?" "Yes," Kady said brightly, hoping Jane and Debbie would volunteer to help her with this incomprehensible task. But luck

  wasn't with her. "Debbie and I have to pool our money and get you something

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  nice for a wedding gift, and we can't do that with you around. come on, don't look so glum. We'll help you look for sheets tomorrow. "Isn't there a rather nice cookware shop in Alexandria?" Debbie asked, thinking she'd much prefer to go cookware shopping with Y,ady than gift purchasing with Jane. "I believe there is," Kady said, laughing. "I never thought of that. Maybe I can find a way to occupy myself after all." It was

  obvious that she was joking and that she'd intended all along to

  visit the kitchenware shop. "Come on," Jane said, taking Debbie's arm. "No doubt poor Gregory will be sleeping on cookie sheets and drying with waxed paper. "Parchment paper," Debbie and Kady said in unison, a chef's inside joke that made Jane groan as she pulled Debbie away.

  Smiling, Kady watched her two friends go, then breathed a sigh of relief. It had been years since she'd seen Jane, and she'd forgotten by half how bossy she was. And she'd also forgotten how worshipful Debbie was.

  Looking about her at the beautiful fall sunshine, for a moment

  Kady didn't quite know what to do with herself. She had hours of freedom. And that freedom had been given to her by her dear, darling Gregory. For all that Gregory was heavenly, so kind and so

  considerate, his mother was a tartar. Mrs. Norman never took an

  afternoon off, so it never occurred to her that Kady should have time off either.

  But then, truthfully, Kady didn't have many interests outside the kitchen. On Sundays and Mondays, when Onions was closed, Kady was in the kitchen experimenting and perfecting recipes for the cookbook she was writing. So, even though she'd lived in Alexandria for five years, she didn't know her way around very well. Of course she knew where the best cookware shop was and where to buy any produce imaginable and who was the best butcher, but, truthfully, where did one buy sheets? For that matter, where did one buy any of the things that Gregory said they'd need for their house? He'd said he'd leave all that up to her because he knew how

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  important such things were to a woman. Kady had said, "Thank you," and had not told him she had no idea how to buy curtains and rugs.

  She had, however, spent a bit of time redesigning the kitchen of the town house into a two-room masterpiece, with one area for

  baking and another for bone-burning, as the pastry cooks called the work of entr6e chefs. The two rooms, one L shaped, the other U shaped, met on either side of a big granite-topped table, where Kady could beat the heck out of brioche dough and hurt nothing. There was open storage and closed storage and ...

  She trailed off, letting out a sigh. She had to stop thinking about cooking and kitchens and think about the problems at hand. What in the world was she going to wear to her own wedding? It was all

  well and good to be in love with a gorgeous man, but she didn't want to hear people say, "What's a hunk like him see in a dumpling like her?" Debbie and Jane had been so nice to fly to

  Virginia to try on bridesmaids' dresses and help Kady choose her dress, when they needed to return in six weeks for the wedding itself. But the three of them weren't making any headway. Seeing herself in that mirror this morning had made Kady want to skip the whole thing. Couldn't she just wear her chef's coat to the wedding? It was white.

  While she was thinking, her legs carried her to a certain

  cookware shop that never failed to have something Kady could use.

  An hour later she exited with a French tart cutter in the shape of an

  apple. It wasn't a wedding veil, but it would last longer, she told herself, then started toward the parking lot and her car. It was early yet, but there were always things to do at the restaurant and, besides, Gregory might be there.

  Smiling, she began to walk but stopped in front of an antique shop. in the window was an old copper mold in the shape of a

  rose. As though hypnotized, she opened the shop door, making the bell jangle. Reaching past an antique table and a cast-iron cat, she took the mold from the window, saw it was something she could afford, then looked around for a clerk to pay.

  There was no one in the shop. What if I were a thief? she thought.

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  Then she heard voices in the back and went through a curtain into a storage room. Through an open doorway leading into a yard, she heard a woman's voice raised in annoyance and frustration. "What am 1 supposed to do with all of this? You know very well that I don't have room for even half of these things." ,,I thought you'd like them, that's all," said a man's voice. "I

  thought I was doing you a favor." "You could have called me and asked." "There wasn't time. I told you that. Ah, the hell with it," the man said, then came the sound of crunching gravel as he walked away.

  Kady stood still in the storeroom, waiting to see if anyone would enter, but no one did, so she looked out the door. in the service yard was a pickup truck loaded high with dirty old trunks and boxes with tape around them. The tailgate was down, and on the ground were half a dozen more metal boxes and wooden crates. The whole mess looked as though it had been stored in a leaky barn for a couple of centuries. " Excuse me, " Kady said, " I wonder if I could make a purchase.

  Turning, the woman looked at Kady, but she didn't answer her. "Men!" she said under her breath. "My husband was driving to a hardware store and saw a sign that said, 'Auction,' so he stopped and saw that lot number three-two-seven was 'Miscellaneous Unopened Trunks,' so he bought the whole lot. All of them. He didn't look or ask to find out how many there were, he just put up his hand and bought all of them for one hundred and twenty-three dollars. And now what am I going to do with all of these? And from the looks of them, most are trash. I don't even have room to store half of them out of the rain. "

  Kady didn't have an answer for her, and she did have to admit that the piles of crates and boxes didn't look very promising. Maybe "Unopened Trunks" was supposed to conjure the idea of hidden treasure, but she couldn't imagine any treasure inside these things. "Could I help you pull them inside?" "Oh, no, he'll be back, and he'll stack them up for me." With a Sigh, the woman turned to Kady. "I'm sorry. You're a customer.

  Jude Deveraux

  You can see how upset I was, since it looks as though I left the front door unlocked. Could I help you with something?"

  As the woman had been talking, Kady had been looking at all the boxes. Sitting on the bed of the pickup, under three cobwebcovered crates, was an old metal box that had once contained flour. It was rusty in places, and the writing was hardly visible, but it was

  still good looking in a craftsy way. She could envision the old box on top of the cabinets in her new kitchen. "How much for that box?" Kady asked, pointing. "The rusty one on the bottom?" the woman asked, obviously thinking Kady was an idiot. "I have X-ray vision and I can see that that box is full of pirate's treasure. "

  "In that case, you have to carry it. Ten dollars." "Done," Kady said, fishing thirty dollars out of her wallet, ten for the box and twenty for the rose-shaped mold.

  As the woman stuffed the money in her pocket, Kady pulled the box off the truck, then shook it. "There really is something in here. " "All of them are full," the woman said in exasperation. "Wh
oever owned this stuff never threw away a piece of paper in his life. And the mice have been into most of them, as well as mildew and nasty crawly things. Go on, take the box. If there's something valuable inside there, it's yours. My guess is that it's still full of flour. " "In that case I shall make antique bread," Kady said, making the woman smile as she grabbed one side of the box and helped Kady pick it up. "Can you carry that? I can get my husband to-" "No thanks," Kady said, her forearms under the bottom of the box, which was bigger than she'd first thought; she could barely see

  over the top of it. "Maybe you wouldn't mind hooking that mold onto my handbag."

  As the woman did so, she looked at Kady speculatively. "You know, I think I'll have a treasure sale on Saturday. I'll give these

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  cases a good vacuum and sell them as 'Contents Unknown.' At ten bucks each, I might make a profit yet." "if you do, your husband will take all the credit," Kady said, smiling from around the box. "And he'll never pass another auction without buying everything in sight. I'm going to have to consider this one," she said, laughing as she led Kady around the shop into an alley. "Right through there is the street. Are you sure that isn't too heavy? It's nearly as big as you are. Maybe you should bring your car around." "No, it's fine," Kady said honestly, for her arms were strong from years of lifting copper pots full of stock and kneading huge mounds of bread dough.

  But as strong as she was, by the time she had walked the three blocks back to her car and put the tin box into the trunk, her arms were aching. Looking at the rusty old thing, she wondered what in the world had made her buy it. Gregory was moving some furniture from his house in Los Angeles to Alexandria, but he'd told her that he thought their town house needed Federal furniture, not the big, white sun-country sofas and chairs he owned, so he planned to sell most of what he had.

  Closing the car trunk, she sighed. "Federal furniture," she said to no one. "Where's Dolley Madison when you need her?" As she got behind the wheel, she thought that for tomorrow night's dinner, she might do some experiments with rabbit in red wine, something eighteenth century.

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  t was eleven P.M., and Kady was

  exceptionally tired as she entered her boring little furnished apartment. She'd chosen the place because it was close to Oaions and because she wouldn't have to buy furniture.

  For the life of her she couldn't figure out what had been wrong with her tonight. In theory everything had gone very well. Gregory had been at his most charming, and she appreciated the effort he'd made to entertain her friends. Even Jane had been impressed, telling Kady that her own husband felt no obligation to talk to her friends and, instead, often spent his days with his face behind a

  newspaper. As for Debbie she was so starry-eyed from eating Kady's cooking and having a man who looked like Gregory pay attention to her that she could hardly speak. "You're tired," Gregory had said abruptly after Kady had suppressed her fifth yawn at the dinner table. "You've been on your feet all day. You should go home and rest." "I don't think freedom agrees with me," Kady said, smiling sleepily. "I should have spent today in the kitchen."

  Gregory turned dark eyes to the other two women. "Can either

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  of you do anything with her? I have never seen anyone work as rriuch as she does. She never takes time off, never does anything except work." As he spoke, he took Kady's hand and caressed it, then gave her a look guaranteed to melt her knickers.

  But when Kady gave another yawn, he laughed. "Come on, baby, you're going to ruin my reputation as a lady-killer. What are Debbie and Jane going to think of me?"

  Kady laughed, as Gregory always seemed able to make her do. Turning to her women friends, she smiled. "He really is the best rnan in the world. Very exciting and all that; it's just me. I don't know what's wrong with me tonight. I seem to be drained of all energy. "Probably from thinking about having to choose furniture," Gregory said as he stood, then pulled Kady's nearly limp body up out of the chair. He was quite a bit taller than she was, and his face

  was as sharply chiseled as hers was soft planes.

  Gregory turned to the other women, smiling. "I'll take her home then return for whatever Kady's made for dessert." "Raspberries with kirsch and-"

  She broke off when all three of them laughed, making her blush. "Okay, so I'm just tired, not dead." Holding on to Gregory's strong arm, Kady left the town house, and he walked her home, saying nothing, just keeping his arm protectively around her. At her door, he put his arms around her, then kissed her good night, but he didn't ask to be allowed to spend the night. "I can see that you're exhausted, so I'll leave You." Drawing back, he looked down at her. "Still want to marry me?" "Yes," she said, smiling, leaning her head against his hard chest. "Very much." She looked up at him. "'Gregory, I really am hopeless at buying furniture. I don't have a clue about curtains and sheets and-"

  She broke off as he kissed her. "We'll hire someone. Don't spend another moment thinking about it. I have a deal going in LA, and as soon as it's closed, we'll be able to afford anything. " He kissed the tip of her nose. "All the copper pots you want."

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  With her arms about his waist, she hugged him tightly. "I don't know what I've ever done to deserve a man like you. I feel so guilty that you're giving up your job in Los Angeles to live here with me."

  She looked up at him. "Are you sure you wouldn't want me to move

  there? I could open a restaurant there and-" "My mother won't leave Onions, and you know that. It's the place she and Dad built together, so it's full of memories for her. And she's getting older. She may seem to have the energy of a

  teenager, but she hides a lot. It's easier for me to move here; then all three of us can be together." He paused. "Unless you're unhappy here and want to leave. Is that the case?"

  Kady put her head back down on his chest. "No, I'm happy wherever you are. We'll stay here, run Onions; I'll write my cookbooks, and we'll produce a dozen babies."

  Gregory laughed. "They'll certainly be well fed little crumb crunchers, that's for sure." Putting his hands on her shoulders, he set her away from him. "Now go to bed. Get some sleep. Tomorrow your friends are going to take you to a carpet store to look at rugs to buy for the house." "Oh, no!" Kady sai@, clutching her stomach. "I can feel an attack of bubonic plague coming on. I think I must stay in the kitchen tomorrow and brew an herbal remedy."

  Laughing, Gregory used his key to open her apartment door, then pushed her inside. "If you don't behave, I'll hire a bridal consultant to 'organize' you. You'll find yourself being asked to

  register for trash cans and monogrammed toilet-seat covers."

  He laughed harder when Kady turned white at the very thought of such horror. Still laughing, he closed her apartment door, leaving her to get some sleep.

  So now Kady stood with her back to the door and looked about the pretty but bland apartment. She really was grateful that Gregory understood her total lack of talent in choosing furnishings. It wasn't that she didn't want a nice place to live; it was just that she had no idea-and, okay, no interest-in choosing chairs and such.

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  I am the luckiest woman on earth," she, said aloud, as she had twice a day since she'd met Gregory.

  But oddly enough, as she stepped away from the door, her energy seemed to revive. As she felt the tiredness draining from her, she thought she might make herself some cocoa and read a book or see if there was a late-night movie on.

  But even as she thought it, her eyes drifted to the big tin box sitting smack in the center of her living room. She could scarcely all,)w herself to admit this, but, truthfully, all evening this rusty old boX had been in the back of her mind. As she'd been deglazing a

  ro,isting pan, she'd thought, I wonder what is inside that box?

  -,he absolutely refused to think that her tiredness had been an excuse to get
away from the others and get back to the box and its hidden treasure. "Probably a rat's nest inside," she said aloud as

  she went to her tiny kitchen to take a short, strong offset spatula and an ice pick from a drawer. It was going to take some work to get the lid off the rusty box.

  Thirty minutes later, she had finally scraped away enough rust to

  pry the lid off enough to get her fingers under it. Her tugging made her fingertips hurt, and she was thoroughly disgusted with herself for her frantic pulling and scraping. After all, just as the woman at the antique shop had said, the only treasure inside was probably flour, complete with the dead carcasses of weevils.

  With her fingertips jammed under one edge of the lid, Kady gave such a great pull that she went tumbling back across the room, the lid clattering to the floor. Pulling herself upright, she leaned over

  the box and peered inside, and saw yellowed tissue paper.

  On top was a tiny bouquet of dried, faded orange blossoms, obviously put there with loving hands and undisturbed for many years.

  Immediately, Kady knew that what was under the paper was

  something very special. And something very private. Sitting back on her heels, she looked at the flowers, pinned to the paper, so they had not been dislodged in all her frantic attempts to pry the lid off.

  For a long moment, Kady hesitated with indecision. Part of her

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  cried out that she should replace the lid and never open the box again-put it on top of her kitchen cabinet and look at the outside, forget about the inside. Or better yet, get rid of the box and forget she ever saw it. "You are being ridiculous, Kady Long," she said aloud. "Whoever put this in here has been dead a long, long time."

  Slowly, disgusted to see that her hands were trembling slightly, Kady unpinned the flowers, set them aside, then peeled back the tissue paper. Instantly, she knew what she was looking at.

  Folded carefully, untouched by light or air for many years, was a