Love, Come to Me(69)

Heath had given Lucy complete responsibility for redecorating and furnishing the house as well as choosing and training the staff. He had established charge accounts for her at Jordan, Marsh and Company, C. F. Hovey Company, and other large department stores where she became a well-known figure. After having purchased dizzying quantities of merchandise at each place, Lucy had only to walk through the door before she heard pleased exclamations from the doorman and all the store attendants. “Oh, Mrs. Rayne, good morning to you!” “Hello, Mrs. Rayne!” “Mrs. Rayne, how nice to have you back so soon!” Yes, it was quite a feat to have earned such a high standing with them in such a short amount of time, considering the famous reserve of Boston retailers. She amused Heath to no end with her tales of being fawned over by store clerks and managers.

Many times she agonized privately over the decisions she had to make. She had not been brought up to spend money casually, and she had never been entrusted with such a magnitude of responsibility before. Choosing a sofa or picking out a china pattern was one thing, but decorating a whole house was entirely different. Especially when that house was so large, and worse, when she wanted the result of her efforts to be something that would please her husband as well as herself. It was terrifying to order thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture and carpeting, worrying all the while that she might not have chosen the right colors and styles. The house had to be sedate enough to suit the taste of the conservative Bostonians who would come to visit, but Heath had made it clear that he wouldn’t live in a typically funereal New England home. His taste was decidedly modern. Compromises between the two styles had to be made, and compromises were difficult to find. Most of the time Lucy was walking on unfamiliar ground, but since there was no one around to criticize her efforts, she began to rely on her own taste and her own instincts.

She wasn’t especially fond of the elaborate styles that were so fashionable, and so she used solid colors and quiet patterns. To frame the windows, Lucy chose simple velvet panels that would be replaced in warmer weather by light curtains of crisp muslin. Wool portieres drawn back with soft tassels framed the doorways to each room. In colder weather, they would be released to stop drafts from seeping in.

The family sitting room was done in shades of blue and rose, ornamented with lace curtains and an exotic brocade called Château Sur Mer. The background of the brocade was pale cream, the print a lavish pattern of full-blossomed roses, curling green leaves, and delicate orchids. The colors of the parlor were much brighter—royal blue, deep red and emerald green, a rich background for the gleaming walnut furniture.

The bedroom had taken the most time to finish. Lucy had decided on a color scheme of ivory, dusky blue, and soft peach. The old-fashioned, high-poster bedstead was hung with fluttering draperies that matched the window hangings. She bought a selection of embroidery silks and several needlework patterns for cushions, laprugs and lambrequins. It would take time, but eventually she would fill the bedroom with handmade ornaments to make it even more inviting. The figurine that had once belonged to her mother occupied a place of honor on the mantel. As she walked through the house, Lucy felt immense satisfaction with every detail. It felt like home to her already; she felt the promise of the future here, amidst the gracious rooms and quiet sense of welcome they exuded.

After settling into his office at the Examiner, Heath found out quickly that the path he had chosen to tread was trickier and even more twisted than he had anticipated. Most Bostonians regarded new ideas and new approaches with suspicion, which meant that Heath had to be sensitive to the fine line between innovation and going a step too far. What he considered to be liberal, others thought of as radical, a fact he became well aware of. He learned to rely on Damon’s judgment.

Damon, with his innate understanding of the New Englanders’ temperament, was willing to be creative, but he also knew just how much was too much. Damon knew the lay of the land, and his editorials were unfailingly brilliant—relevant, straightforward, and sensible. He was a proficient editor on a technical level, almost faultless. Unfortunately, he was not popular with the employees of the paper. It took a certain talent to inspire excellence in others, a talent that Damon didn’t have. He was too reserved, too impatient with others’ slowness, too unbending. Heath had been brought up to think of that as typical New England haughtiness, but whatever it was called, it did not exactly endear Damon to others.

Heath, on the other hand, had been raised in a society where charm was as necessary as breathing, eating, and sleeping, and he knew exactly how to smooth over ruffled feathers and soothe bruised egos. It was up to him to use all the wiles of a con artist to get the kind of work he wanted out of the employees of the Examiner. He spent countless hours talking to his most promising reporters, discussing their writing and their ideas, leading them from one point to the next until they made the conclusions that he wanted them to make. Knowing the value of praise, he took care to be fair but sparing with his approval.

Strong, accurate reporting was what would make the Examiner successful, and once a strong foundation was established, they would build on that. Heath intended to add a Sunday edition to the Examiner and restructure the paper so that the advertising would be on the inside pages and not the front page. And maybe bigger headlines, not just the width of one or two columns, but twice that size—maybe even three times that size. He would make it showier than the Herald and the Journal, so that when the three papers were side by side, the Examiner would be the first one to catch the eye. It would take months before the real results of his efforts would show, but at least the circulation held. It even edged upwards every now and then, and under Heath’s influence, they were all slowly but surely learning how to work with each other. Even Damon, who had started out as mettlesome and independent as a thoroughbred stallion, was beginning to mellow.