“I’m taking you to one of my favorite spots.”
“Okay.”
She decided to stay quiet. He took her hand, guiding her through hanging vines and wild dogwood trees. They moved downward, toward the marsh, then up until they were on a grassy little incline.
“Look,” he said, pointing.
Willa followed the direction of his gaze, then laughed. “Oh, my. Well, this was certainly worth the trip.”
He’d brought her to a pagoda sitting on top of a moss-covered mound. The pagoda was rustic and ancient, but the wood and stone blending together on the high walls looked solid, and the shingled, slanted roof seemed to be holding up. Or at least, the English ivy was holding the building together. It covered the entire structure and ran down over the mossy rocks that formed the walls of what looked like a walk-through grotto.
A playful morning breeze rustled the nearby tupelo trees, bringing with it the tinkling sound of bells. The almost melancholy melody seemed to be coming from inside the pagoda.
“Chimes,” Lucas told her, his keen gaze centering on her face. “I like chimes.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, her breath coming hard and heavy, whether from the long walk or the sheer beauty of this place, she couldn’t say. “So this is your secret garden?”
“You could call it that,” Lucas told her as he led her up a narrow stone footpath toward the rectangular structure. “Aunt Hilda discovered it in her younger years, when she could get around more. She showed it to me when I first came here.” He smiled, then closed his eyes. “I can still remember what she told me. She said, ‘Now, Lucas, most would tell you that this is a temple, a shrine. But we only have one temple—and that is our little chapel where we worship the Lord. This is not a place of worship, but it can be a place of retreat, if you ever need it. God will hear you here in this place, if you need to get away and talk to Him.’”
“She sounds like a fascinating, wise woman.”
He opened his eyes, gave Willa one of those heart-stopping looks. “She is. She’s traveled all over the world, seen all sorts of shrines and temples, cathedrals and churches, but she loves the Chapel in the Garden more than anything she’s ever seen. And that’s where she expects us to be each Sunday.”
Willa thought that was quaint and sweet and again felt that distant tug of longing in her own heart. “And yet, you come here sometimes, to find your peace, talk to God?”
He nodded. “No one else bothers with this place. Not even Justin, our landscaper. I try to keep the swamp from taking it over completely.”
“So you weed it and clear it out, prune the bramble and sweep away the spiders and snakes?” She hoped.
He nodded, as silent as the still, waiting wind and trees. Then he said, “I don’t like spiders and snakes, but I respect them. If I find any, I usually send them in the other direction.”
Somewhat comforted, she asked, “Even the poisonous ones?”
“Even those, unless of course they attack first. Then I don’t ask any questions.”
Willa imagined that was probably how he handled life, too. Since he seemed used to being attacked a lot, based on what Lorna had told her.
She could envision him standing here, the hunter in him alert and wary, willing to kill to survive. But she could also see him bending to nudge an innocent creature in the right direction so he wouldn’t be forced to harm it. It was that image, rather than the more macho one of him as a hunter and a scrapper, that endeared him to her.
“Well, you’ve done a good job. It looks well-kept and completely snake free,” she told him, her gaze taking in the antique sundial centered near the entryway. “But I have to admit, this place looks a little lost and sad.”
“It is,” he replied. “It was once a garden spot, centuries ago. It wasn’t part of our land then, but the family that owned the neighboring plantation suffered through a yellow fever epidemic, probably brought here from New Orleans. The landowner lost his entire family—his wife, his son and daughter—they all died. He let the place go to ruin during the Civil War, then he died many years later, a lonely, reclusive old man. I’m not sure how my family wound up owning the land—Lacey could tell you all about that—” He stopped, looked at the winding stream that flowed from the Mississippi River to the bayou from the other side of the small, slanting hill. “The story goes that he used to come here and grieve his loss in this hushed, decaying garden. I come here when I’m feeling lost and sad myself. Sometimes I get in that kind of mood. Aunt Hilda says, c’est l’heure solennelle.”
“The solemn hour.” Willa knew enough French to translate what he’d told her. And wondered why he’d brought her here. Did Lucas sense that she was sad and lost underneath all her fame and fortune?
Just the thought that he might, coupled with the tragic tale he’d told her, brought tears to her eyes. But she quickly dashed them away, not willing to explore the underlying turmoil of her problems right now. She didn’t want pity, refused to wallow in self-doubt and despair.
And yet, this place seemed to be beckoning her to do just that. Or maybe it was telling her to let go and let her inner torment boil to the surface in a cleansing purge. So she could get on with her life. If she had a life to get on with, that is.
Wanting to change her somber thoughts, Willa said, “You don’t strike me as the type to wander around moping. From everything Lorna has told me and from what I’ve seen of you, I wouldn’t have imagined you’d have such a place, so beautiful yet so melancholy, tucked away from the world.”
He looked at her, his dark eyes locked on hers in a heated black gaze, his secrets as tangled and overgrown as the swamp around them. “’The beauty remains; the pain passes.’”
“What a lovely thing to say.”
“You can thank Renoir for that one,” he told her, looking away briefly.
“The painter?”
“The very one. He knew a thing or two about pain.”
“And it sounds as if you know a thing or two about art,” she replied, her opinion of him rapidly changing.
“I know enough to get by. But then, that’s how I am about most things in life—whatever it takes to get by.” He shifted, ran a hand over his long, curly bangs. “But I didn’t bring you here to get you down or talk about art.”
She wanted to ask him exactly why he had brought her here, but then the smile was back, taking her breath up and away. The tiny bells hanging on a silvery chain just inside the open pagoda door tinkled and laughed along with him, but to Willa, the sound changed in the wind.
It almost sounded like weeping.
“Well, this is a strange and mysterious place,” she said, her voice low. “Do you come here a lot?”
“Depends,” he said, pulling her into the cool darkness of the rustic structure. “Look over that way.” He pointed through one of the open windows toward the path they’d traveled.
Through a gap in
