An Unforgettable Lady(75)

Wilhelm was taking her coat just as her mother came in from the parlor. Carolina was dressed in a pale cream suit, looking elegant as a tea rose.

"Darling, how was your trip." As they embraced, her mother's attention was on Smith. "Grace, won't you introduce us?"

"This is John Smith. Er—John, this is my mother, Carolina Woodward Hall."

Her mother offered him a thin hand and a thinner smile. "We don't know many Smiths. It is s-m-i-t-h, correct? "



He nodded.

"Yes, I had a feeling it wasn't with a 'y' and an ‘e’," she murmured. "Didn't I see you at the Congress Club recently?"

"Maybe."

"Whose guest were you?"

Grace interrupted. "When are Jackson and Blair coming?"

Turning to her daughter, Carolina said, "They should be arriving any minute. We will be ten for dinner tonight, with Mr. Cobith, the Raleighs, and the Blankenbakers. Marta is working on a fabulous roast beef."

There was a pause and Carolina glanced back at Smith, fixing her eyes on his leather jacket. "We dress for dinner here."

When he neither looked away, nor showed any reaction, her mother's brow rose.

Grace jumped in again. "I think we better get settled. Why don't I show John to his room."

"He is in the green suite."

With Wilhelm and Smith behind her, Grace headed up the staircase. On the upper landing, she asked Wilhelm to take her bags to her room and took Smith down the hall in the opposite direction.

When she opened the door to a masculine room steeped in dark greens and wood, he didn't even bother looking inside.

"Where are you sleeping?" he asked.

"At the other end of the house. This is the guest wing."

“How far away?"

"Down the hall, take a left, go past the stairs. I'm the corner room, ocean side."

"Show me."

Grace noticed that he kept his bags with him as they went to her room.

"Who's across the hall from you?" he asked as she opened her door.

"I don't know. Probably no one."

"Then I'm taking that room."

"But you can't—"

His cocked eyebrow stopped her. "Unless you want me sleeping on your floor?"

When she shook her head vigorously, he walked into the other room.

As his bags landed with a thump, Grace tried to corral her anxiety into a manageable bundle of snakes. It was highly unlikely her mother would venture outside the new first floor master suite to check exactly who was sleeping where.

Although it wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility.

Grace went into her own room, feeling frustrated at her mother. At Smith. Most of all at herself. In the grand scheme of things, she had to wonder why she was so scared of giving a guest of hers another room to sleep in. She was thirty now, for Chrissakes. When was she going to be enough of an adult to stand up to her mother?

If she kept on her current course, she was going to be gumming soft foods and using a walker before she found her backbone with that woman.

As Grace looked around, she felt time contract. She'd spent some, if not all, of every summer at Newport and the room hadn't changed in thirty years. The drapes and wallpaper were the same pale yellow they'd always been and the furniture hadn't been moved since she'd graduated from the nursery into her "grown-up room" when she was three. The windows, which overlooked the ocean and the gardens, still let in the light in a familiar pattern across the floor. And the French doors, which opened out onto the terrace, made that comforting, chatty noise as the offshore breeze came up against the house.

Grace opened one of the doors and stepped onto the second-story porch, which ran around the house. Down below, past the gardens and the lawn, the ocean rushed and retreated at the shore. It was a sound she associated with the house, with her room. With happy times.

When she heard footsteps behind her, she stiffened.

"I just wish you weren't so conspicuous—" She turned. "Jack!"

Grace laughed out loud and threw her arms around her friend. She was pulling back, a wide smile on her face, when she caught Smith watching the two of them from the hall with narrowed eyes.

"Er, John," she said, stepping back into the room. "I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine, Jack Walker."

Jack smiled in the direction of the doorway but then cocked an eyebrow. "Well, this is a pleasure. How are you doing, stranger?"