Roses in Autumn Read Online Free Page B

buy a Wall Street Journal in a stately home.
    They followed the man’s directions to a room circled with rose-patterned drapes looped between Corinthian pillars. Pedestaled urns of flowers sitting atop balustrades separated the tables, giving one the feeling of having just stepped through French windows onto the terrace of a Georgian mansion.
    Laura asked the waitress for skimmed milk for her tea, then between sips looked over her notes. “Let’s do the provincial museum this morning and then have tea at the Crystal Garden. Then we can go to the castle if there’s time.” A good night of sleep had restored her usual enthusiasm, and the hot milky drink was stirring her energy.
    Tom looked up from the Wall Street Journal folded discreetly beside his plate. When the waitress brought his platter of bacon and eggs, Laura asked about their house tea. “It’s called Empress blend. Murchie’s makes it for us.” Laura’s nod was a mental ticking of her list—Murchie’s was on her agenda. She liked having her lists organized. Being the fuzzy, right-brained person she was, lists were her lifeline.
    Laura came back from her introspection to pick the raisins from her bran flakes before adding skim milk. Then she looked at Tom. He was chewing a sausage, but his mind was obviously in Sacramento or Kansas City or … She shrugged; wherever he was, she wasn’t with him.
    How could she reach him? She looked around for a topic of conversation and sighted two little gray-haired ladies seated across the room. “Look, Tom. They’re just like the ‘dollar ladies.’”
    He didn’t exactly frown as he looked up. “Dollar ladies? Sounds sleazy.”
    She tried not to bristle at his finding an innuendo in her words. He certainly knew her better than that. “Hardly. They were residents of the Empress in the ’20s. Elderly ladies living on fat trust accounts—until the stock market crash wiped them out. They had no place to go, so the hotel allowed them to move up to the garret rooms for a dollar a day.” Laura strained to keep the conversation light, impersonal.
    And her story was rewarded by Tom’s warm smile. The smile that in all the time she had known him had never once failed to make her heart turn over. “I like that—the grand hotel with a heart.”
    Encouraged, she continued, “There are lots of stories about the Empress dowagers.” She searched her mind for snatches of her research. “Like when they could no longer afford to eat in the dining room, so they smuggled hot plates into their attic rooms. The management discreetly looked the other way except in the most flagrant cases—like the one who let her homemade strawberry jam boil over, or the one who had to be asked not to cook liver and onions in her room, or another whose penchant for pickling onions had to be restrained.”
    A small thing, but all at once they were laughing together over such goings on by dignified little old ladies in the stately halls of the Empress. It was so good to be laughing with Tom again. How long had it been? Weeks? Months, at least. A lifetime? She couldn’t really remember. But it meant there was hope. Please, God, it had to mean that.
    Then she noticed the family seated on the other side of the balustrade from them. “See, my egg melted.” The dad pointed to his empty, half eggshell in its tall crystal eggcup. His small son clapped his hands and giggled. Laura looked at Tom just in time to catch his glance at the father and son—and to see the hurt look in his eyes. Again she felt the guilty stab of failure.
    “Right. Museum first, then?” Laura was grateful to Tom for breaking the small tension that crept back so quickly.
    “It seems a good place to start. I don’t suppose Gwendolyn and Kevin would actually go there since they live here, but I need to know some local history for background.”
    “Gwendolyn and Kevin?”
    “My hero and heroine.”
    “Oh. Yeah. What’s your story about?”
    “Well, all I’ve done so far