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  “You won’t be surprised to find that the plates are white, will you?”

  “Not surprised, no.”

  “Nor pleased.”

  “I can work with white in the dining room. It’s easy enough to add color with the table dressings.”

  He stood, staring at her. “The chimneys are unblocked in the sitting and dining rooms. I could arrange for a log fire on the night.”

  “That would be wonderful, Hagen, not only for the chill factor but also because people tend to relax around fires.”

  “I wouldn’t know. We didn’t want smoke to stain the walls.” He turned his face away.

  She wanted to hug him. This must be so difficult, seeing his house with a stranger’s eyes. Likely everything she did or said reminded him that Mercia had gone. Instead, she reached out a hand and gripped his for a moment. “We won’t stain her walls. I’ll personally clean off any smoke damage.” Her voice sounded husky.

  He squeezed her fingers and drew a breath. “It’s been a year, Marigold. I think a few changes are in order.” He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but instead he brought the back of her hand to his mouth.

  The shock of him kissing her hand made her gasp. She quickly pulled away from him. “I must go,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll collect my bag first. I won’t take Monday off. I enjoy working away from home.”

  She practically ran to get her bag from the breakfast room, as awkward as she had been at sixteen.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at the front door. “My manners are all over the place these days and that was inappropriate. It was simply…” He shrugged. “Memories.”

  She nodded because she understood. When anyone reminded her of her mother, she also had sad, lost feelings. “I know, Hagen. It won’t help if I cry for you. I’ve cried too much for me, and I know it doesn’t make anything better. But I do understand.”

  She walked home at such a rapid pace, and so lost in her thoughts that she noted nothing until she reached her own shabby front door. She stepped inside her very ordinary house determined not to let her feelings for Hagen overcome her. If he married again, he would choose another Mercia, and Marigold would never be a Mercia. She would never have a spotless white house and an interest in being swamped by celebrities or dressing in wickedly expensive clothes.

  If she had paid full price for the dress she had bought today, she would have suffered from a weeklong guilt attack. Then again, for years she had barely spent a cent that wasn’t calling out to be spent on something useful. Maybe after three months earning a salary, she could be more casual about money, not as casual as Hagen, but more relaxed. At least she would have an amount to spend.

  She had an idea when Hagen had mentioned his father’s interest in wine. Knowing his mother was equally interested in food, and having heard Demi Allbrook used to manage the business dinners before Mercia had taken over, she picked up the landline and dialed the number she had often dialed before, looking for either Calli or Tiggy—Demi Allbrook’s number. These days she probably used a smart phone but Marigold didn’t have her number.

  The phone rang three times, and, “Hello,” said Demi’s voice.

  Marigold spent the breath she had been holding. “Hi, Demi. It’s Marigold Reynolds here. I want to talk business, but I’ll call back on a weekday if you would prefer to relax without business intruding into your life on a Saturday afternoon.”

  “Marigold!” Demi said with a clear exclamation mark. She tended to use many in her speech. “Darling! You can talk to me about anything you like. I’ve been meaning to drop into your office to welcome you, but I thought I’d give you a minute or two to settle in. How are you managing?”

  “I’m not Tiggy, by any means. The best I can say is that I’m trying. I’ve just had lunch with Hagen—”

  “Hagen! Oh, dear Lord, Alex!” she said raising her voice. Marigold could imagine Alex Allbrook’s glance of polite interest at his wife. “Marigold had lunch with Hagen. He says he’s impressed, Marigold. None of us have had anything other than a business meal with him for the past year.”

  “I don’t want to burst your bubble, Demi, but it was a business lunch. I had a look at his house so that I would know what I’m working with for this dinner of his. He told me the budget, and I’m supposed to find a caterer. It’s all so last minute and I don’t think it will be easy. I was hoping, since you have done this sort of thing before, if you have any recommendations?”

  For a moment, she heard nothing but silence and she worried that somehow she had stepped out of line. “Didn’t Tiggy book anyone?” Demi sounded puzzled.

  “If so, I can’t find an annotation. It only says in her notes to organize Hagen’s dinner. I presumed it was to organize the table decorations or the place cards in a restaurant. Instead, I need to do the whole thing in his house from whoa to go.”

  “I have a few ideas,” Demi said in a slow and thoughtful voice. “Let me get back to you tomorrow. A celebrity chef wouldn’t be available on short notice and you wouldn’t want one anyway. You want a good cook who is content to stay in the background. What fun! I’ll call you back as soon as I have some choices for you. Bye, darling Marigold.”

  Marigold sat for a while, half stunned, and grinning like a fool. At best, she’d imagined Demi would suggest a few names. Instead, the adorable woman would give her hands-on help. Even if Marigold’s mother had still been alive, she couldn’t have given Marigold any catering advice. Her kidney failure made her social life almost non-existent and the idea of knowing a celebrity chef would have caused her to smile with puzzlement. She knew doctors and lawyers, but no Indian chiefs, or chefs as the case might have been.

  Marigold breathed out with satisfaction. One step almost completed. If the food was organized, she could manage the rest. Her mother had made sure that Marigold knew from an early age the niceties of table settings, introductions, protocols, precedence, and all those other old-fashioned courtesies that had almost been lost these days. Even for breakfast, Marigold had flowers on the table in her own house. For her, flower arranging was habit. She could only guess but from the look of Mercia’s white table, the decorations she used would have been expensive and not acquainted with either soil or water.

  Now for her next step. Having seen Hagen’s dining room and the way all the character had been painted out of his house, she’d had an idea about the setting she could use for his guests. Visitors to a house as old as his would be interested in the history. Being related to the original builder meant she knew this. She didn’t plan to spout off about her family, but she could offer the house some original color.

  To this end, she reapplied her lipstick, changed her top into a polo neck, added a jacket, and strode outside to her car, deliberately not calling first to see if her father might be at home. Her stepmother usually answered the phone and managed not to be able to find him. Marigold didn’t assume this was Jane, her stepmother’s choice, but her father’s decision not to speak to his daughter, who could admit to a fairly adversarial relationship with her only living parent.

  Fortunately, he lived close in a modern house in Burnside. Her half brothers had been brought up in comfortable circumstances and appeared to see her as an intrusion, which galled Marigold. And she was tired of never confronting the various issues she had had with being treated that way.

  She pulled up her car in his driveway, and strode to the front entrance. The buzz of the bell called Jane to the door with a surprised smile.

  “Have I caught Julian at home?”

  “He’s watching the football on TV with the boys. Come in, Marigold.” Jane was a small neat woman with brown eyes and dark curly hair. She wore colors that didn’t suit her, autumn colors, which meant that she looked sallow, a shame because she had an outgoing disposition, unlike Julian, Marigold’s father. She wished she could say she liked her father, but mainly she felt sorry for him; he had missed e
very opportunity his daughter gave him to love and respect him.

  He barely turned his head as Jane announced Marigold’s arrival. “Sit down.”

  She sat. “I’m not here to watch football on television. I want to borrow the Royal Doulton dinner setting.”

  He finally glanced at her. “My grandmother’s set?”

  “Yes. It should be mine. She handed it down to your mother, and Grandma Reynolds said you were keeping it for me.” She raised her chin.

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard that,” Jane said in a fussed voice. “It’s quite valuable. I thought we would divide it up for the boys. It’s certainly big enough.”

  “I didn’t ask to keep it. I asked to borrow it.” Marigold smiled firmly.

  Her father frowned. “Do you want it?”

  “I asked for it, didn’t I?”

  “Give it to her, Jane. I don’t see the point of dividing it up for the boys. They might marry women who can’t stand old things. I can’t myself.”

  “Give it to me?”

  “If my mother meant it for you, you can have it.” He glanced at the TV as if it might disappear if he didn’t concentrate.

  Her brothers, eighteen and sixteen, glanced at her as if she were crazy. “Plates,” Jamie said. “I don’t want plates. Do you want plates, Joff?”

  “Nope. Hi, Marigold.”

  “Hi, Joff and James. I won’t disturb your TV watching any longer. Can I take the plates now?”

  “I’ll need a while to pack them.” Jane moistened her lips. “I’ve got them in the storeroom. One of the boys will take them to your house tomorrow. What do you want them for?”

  “A dinner. But I really want them because they were meant to be mine. If I thought you used them, it would be a different matter, but I know you don’t. I know most people wouldn’t, but I would. I love the set. I used to help Grandma wash it after we had eaten. Thank you, Julian. I’ll be on my way now.”

  Her father didn’t stand, he didn’t walk her to the door, and he didn’t say good-bye. He watched TV and left Jane to see her out.

  Chapter 4

  Marigold washed the whole Royal Doulton set right after the box arrived via her brother Jamie on his way to football practice on Sunday morning. The aqua-blue and white setting had been edged with a lacy gold pattern, and she placed each elegantly simple piece on her dining room table, plotting her setting for Hagen’s dinner.

  Although using a plain white arrangement of flowers as the centerpiece would set off the colorful runner she had decided the table needed, she had in mind using a gold-etched treasure, one that had belonged to her mother’s family. She removed the bowl from the china cabinet, placing the fine porcelain in the center of her mother’s old mahogany table. Standing back to admire the effect, she realized that she hadn’t used the dining room in a year. On her own now, she normally ate at the small table in the kitchen, a habit she decided to break. She loved pretty things, and she had deprived herself for no real reason.

  Now was perhaps the time to make grown-up decisions about the way she lived. She still occupied her childhood bedroom. After her mother’s death, she had packed up everything and returned the hospital bed, the wheelchair, and the bathroom safety bars. Knowing reminders would make her weep, Marigold hadn’t been in her mother’s room since, except to stand and stare.

  She opened the door to the main bedroom in the house, marched across the bare floorboards, and jerked open the curtains. Light flooded into the musty, empty space. Blinking resolutely, she pulled out the boxes she had left stored in the cupboards and checked the labels. Clothes: time to offer each neatly folded garment to the charity shop. Old letters and cards, jewelry box, mementos: keep. Stationary, tax returns, dried up pens, a broken watch: no use to anyone.

  She took the clothes out to the garage to drop off tomorrow. With some reluctance, she threw out the sentimental keeps no one would ever use, watching each piece drop to the bottom of the bin, her heart aching. However, the memories she had kept inside her would always be more long-lasting than mementos. Now with the bedroom almost empty, she placed her mother’s treasures with her own. That done, she cleaned the bedroom from top to bottom, revealing a shabby paint job and a beautiful wooden floor.

  Contemplating the room with her hands on her hips, she decided on the placement of her bedroom furniture into the larger space. But first she would paint the room in one of the colors of the patchwork quilt her mother had made. She chose the dark blue.

  Nothing would please her more than being able to renovate the whole house, but even with a three-month salary she wouldn’t be able to afford to do much more than change a few colors. Nevertheless, as a property stylist, she should certainly have done far more in the time since her mother’s death. Apathy had overcome her, but having a real job had moved her head into new space.

  * * * *

  On Monday at work, she sorted out the furnishings she might use to showcase the duplex school building, though Hagen’s dinner mainly occupied her mind. After lunch when he returned from whatever meeting he’d been attending, she said to him, “At some time, I’ll need to polish your silver and get your table napkins starched.”

  “Why does that sound suggestive?” He placed his hand on his door, too handsome and too perfectly groomed for her peace of mind.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Because you’ve apparently been to an all guy’s meeting,” she answered in a voice of forced patience. “And you’ve probably been innuendo-ing each other to death.”

  “Hm. Not a bad guess. Don’t worry about the silver or the napkins. I’ll get my daily to attend to those. I hope that doesn’t sound suggestive.”

  “Nope.” She turned and saw Sandra’s eyebrows on the way down.

  Hagen shut his office door and Sandra muttered, “It sounds like he’s back in the land of the living.”

  “It does? Has he always been a lecher?” Marigold asked with a straight face.

  Sandra laughed. “For a while there, he wouldn’t have recognized an innuendo if it whacked him in the face. His male hormones are returning.”

  “Good to hear,” Marigold said, marching into her own office, unsettled. If Hagen were about to turn into a rampant male, she would be in danger, not of being accosted, but of wilting from envy when he chose his next woman.

  She picked up her black pen and tapped her chin before beginning on a sketch of the outside of Hagen’s house. Picturing the angle of the roof, she had her concentration interrupted by a phone call. Demi Allbrook.

  “Hi, Demi. Do you have good news for me?”

  “Sure do. A lovely young chef, who is currently working with Rob Megnam at Eight’s Late, will cater your dinner. Rob doesn’t think it will do his business any harm to have his best apprentice cooking a meal for the high end of town.”

  “You are a wonderful woman, Demi. So, I should meet with him to discuss the menu.”

  “Exactly what I thought. I made a booking for lunch tomorrow for you and me at Eight’s Late. That’ll be a business lunch. Tell that to your boss.” Demi sounded satisfied.

  Marigold laughed. “My boss spends so much time himself out of the office that he won’t notice if I leave. It will be good to have the food off my plate, so to speak. What time shall we meet?”

  “I’ll pick you up at midday. Bye, darling!”

  Marigold finished off the house sketch, and scanned the black-and-white picture into the computer. The next quarter hour she spent online designing a white business-size card with her shrunken drawing placed in a line along the top. She ordered fifty from the site. Then she found a use for Tiggy’s scalpel by cutting out a half A2-size stencil of the house.

  With the whole table setting now organized she put her mind to the rest of Hagen’s sitting room. In the warehouse, she found a large floor rug in jewel colors. This would cover part of the marble tiles in the hall. Another she f
ound in similar colors could be placed in the sitting room. She dusted off her hands, knowing she could find the right cushions to add warmth to the white leather seating. Tonight at home she would make the silk table runner she had decided on for his dining table. As far as she was concerned, the dinner was done.

  The next morning, she dressed carefully, wanting to look suitably businesslike to the chef who would be preparing Hagen’s dinner. Through the glass panels in her office door, she saw Demi arrive at midday. Demi veered into Hagen’s office first. She came out with a satisfied smile.

  “Ready?” she said to Marigold who stood waiting, her bag hitched over her shoulder.

  “You look gorgeous,” Marigold said, her smile wide.

  Demi was a good-looking woman of medium height and in her middle fifties. She wore a cream suit with a striped silk blouse. Her bag and shoes were tan, smart, and expensive, and her dark hair was blunt cut just below her ears. “I don’t have as many chances to go out to lunch with a young person as I would like, and you look lovely yourself, Marigold. You always know the perfect colors to wear.”

  Marigold had few choices. For work, she owned a black jacket, a black skirt, and black pants. Other than that, she had a few different tops. Today she wore a black-and-white striped blouse, which played off the light red-gold of her hair. She kissed Demi on the cheek, and Demi tucked her hand under Marigold’s arm and led her outside to the car, a silver Beamer.

  As soon as she had pulled out onto the road, Demi said, “It’s good of you to take over from Tiggy at a moment’s notice. She couldn’t have left if she didn’t know she had someone she could trust to do her work.”

  “She’s got a mean old boss,” Marigold said, smiling mischievously. “I know he would have made it very difficult for her to get time off without an instant replacement.”

  Demi glanced at her. “Which one? Alex or Hagen?”

  “I was thinking of Alex. I was always so sorry for her, being stuck with a father who gave her everything her devious little heart desired and also helped her with her homework.”