The Housekeeper's Daughter

“We met for a while last night. It’s time to bring a professional strategist on board,” he confided, wondering if Addie didn’t actually know him even better. Tom used to warn him about burning out if he didn’t learn to pace himself. Addie seemed to understand that he thrived on that pace. “Dad thinks one of the lawyers in Charles’s firm might be just who we need. I’ll meet with him in a couple of weeks to talk about my campaign.”

Rising, she moved with her pail to the next section of flowers, her eyes on her work, her attention on him. “Is he here, or in Washington?”

“Washington. I thought I was aggressive,” he admitted, moving with her, “but this guy’s got even me beat. He told Charles he thinks we should start positioning for the presidency at the start of my term as governor.”

A wrinkled leaf hit the bucket, along with a handful of browning blossoms. “What do you think?”

“It sounded good to me.”

“Shouldn’t you win the election as governor first?”

He could always count on Addie’s practicality to keep his ego in check.

“I suppose it might help,” he conceded, thinking it wouldn’t have killed her to offer just a little stroke of confidence.

“Might,” she echoed with a little smile. “You always are getting ahead of yourself.”

“I think of it more as planning ahead.”

She lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug.

“What?” he asked, knowing there was something she wasn’t saying.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she mused, curiously touching a potato bug and watching it roll into a ball. “I was just thinking that you don’t seem happy unless you’re dreaming huge. There’s nothing wrong with that,” she qualified, sounding as practical and pragmatic as her father might have, “so long as you don’t overlook what needs to be done in the meantime.”

The reminder gave him pause. He did tend to set big goals. And he did sometimes fail to notice obvious details in his preoccupation to reach them. But last night’s talks had been heady stuff. Rumor had it that he was a shoo-in for his party for governor. The other major party couldn’t even find a candidate willing to run because no one wanted to lose to Virginia’s favorite son. He had his detractors, of course, people who believed he would be nothing without his family’s money or name. But he would push himself as hard as necessary to prove himself worthy of people’s faith in him. Pushing himself was what he did best.

In the meantime, however, there were things that needed to be done. For one, he apparently needed to find himself a wife.

The thought had him frowning into his cup. Years ago he would have asked her father what he thought of that idea. Now he considered picking Addie’s brain about that particular obligation.

He didn’t know if she had learned from her dad as he had, or if she’d simply inherited his knack for knowing the right thing to do. But in the years since her father’s death, she had proved herself to be as uncannily wise as her dad and surprisingly insightful where Gabe’s aspirations and obligations were concerned.

He valued her insight, her honesty and the fact that he could trust her with anything. He just didn’t want to think about duty or his campaign just then. He hadn’t been home for a month. He’d rather just enjoy her undemanding company.

“Olivia said you have some news. Did you finish your research?”

Addie’s expert eye swept the border as she moved along.

“Not yet. But I did call the president of the local historical society about what I found. She had no idea there’d been a public garden on that old property,” she said, a hint of excitement sneaking into her tone. “She asked me to send her copies of what I had and offered to help get the project funded when my research is complete.”

Addie had been working for years to graduate from college. While doing research for a botany class last winter, she had discovered a forgotten set of plans for an historic garden. The last time he’d been home, she had just located the property it had once occupied in Camelot.

“Funding a restoration can take forever,” he warned.

“I’m learning that,” she admitted, looking more excited, trying not to be. “But once the property gets an historical designation, the garden itself will be a piece of cake. I have copies of the old plans and the list of all the plants. There’s reference to a water trough I still need to research, but we have nearly all of the plants right here on this property. Dad found them years ago when he laid out the colonial garden for your mother.”

“Mom’s going to let you dig them up?”

“Heavens, no,” she murmured, still checking for anything wilted. “I asked if I could take cuttings. I’ve already started cultivating them.”

Drawn by her enthusiasm, impressed by her thoroughness, Gabe felt himself smiling once more. “It sounds as if you have it all figured out.”

“Except for the paperwork,” she conceded, less enthused about that detail. “But that’s what Mrs. Dewhurst said she’d help me with. She’s the president of the historical society.”

He knew the woman. Helene Dewhurst was an old money social maven who kept her manicured claws in everything. “Will you get class credit if she helps?”

“This isn’t for school. I’m doing it because of Dad. For him, actually,” she confided. “You know how he loved growing the old hybrids we don’t see anymore. And you know he felt knowledge was to be shared.”

Her father had loved anything with a history to it. He had also thrived on sharing in infinite detail whatever he could learn about whatever he discovered. Her father had instilled her deep respect for anything old and venerable, along with her love of the soil and the miracles that grew from it. He had also taught her more than Gabe figured any female truly wanted to know about the origins of every professional football team in New England.

Her gentle voice grew softer. “I think he’d like knowing his work helped restore something people could enjoy.”

The softness in her tone was echoed in her smile. He should have known there was more to her excitement than something that would serve only her own purpose. She always seemed most animated thinking of someone else.

“How close are you to finishing your research?”

The handle of her pail landed on the rim with a metallic clink when she moved it again. “I hope to have everything together before I go back to school.”

That would be in January. “See if you can get it finished before that and give it to me. I’ll fast-track it for you.”

Addie’s eyes lit when she looked back up at him, past the heavy mug in his hand, past his broad chest and broader shoulders.

“You’d do that?”

“Of course I would.”

Addie swallowed a bubble of elation over what Gabe was offering. She had been raised to be realistic. There wasn’t an impractical bone in her body. And heaven knew she was always sensible. The help of Mrs. Dewhurst had already confirmed her hope that the project had merit, but with Gabe’s influence, she actually had a shot at seeing it completed before she turned as ancient as the pines by the lake.

“I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.”

“Let my secretary know when it’s coming. She’ll watch for it.”

“I will,” she said, adding her thanks, watching him smile.

The shape of his mouth was blatantly sensual, the line of his jaw strong and as determined as the man himself. His eyes were the gray of old pewter, his dark hair thick and meticulously cut.

He was a beautiful man. He was also tall, powerful, incredibly wealthy, and he had captured the interest of every female in the country with a Cinderella fantasy. His integrity and intelligence had earned him the respect of his friends and constituents, and the envy of his opposition. Addie knew all of that. But she thought of him only as her friend. Not that she would ever share that with anyone. She had grown up fully aware of her station. Like her mother and the father she still missed, she was just an employee of the Kendricks. And staff was expected to remain on the periphery and be as unobtrusive as possible.

Addie had never found being inconspicuous a problem. She was barely five foot three, as skinny as a sapling and about as shapely, and looked more like a girl than a twenty-five-year-old woman. She’d even flunked the assertiveness test she’d found in her friend Ina’s Cosmo. As with the group of four manicured, pedicured and coiffured women approaching Gabe now, people tended to look right past her.

“The gardens are fabulous, Aunt Katherine,” she heard one of the young ladies say. “The wedding is going to be wonderful.”

“You’re a dear, Sydney,” Gabe’s golden-blond and elegant mother replied to her niece. Wearing a cream silk blouse and taupe silk slacks, Katherine Theresa Sophia of Luzandria, now a Kendrick, looked as regal as the queen she could have been, had she not married Gabe’s father. Her two daughters and her niece looked just like her, fair, polished and utterly refined.

“I just hope the weather holds,” Mrs. Kendrick continued. “We have the tent on the west lawn for dinner, but I’d hate to have to move the ceremony inside. I don’t know why we didn’t use the cathedral downtown.”

“Because I wanted to be married at home,” the glowing bride-to-be reminded her mother. “And we won’t have to move anything inside. There’s not a cloud in the sky, and the weather report is for clear. Everything will be fine.”