Ever After by Jude Deveraux Page B

been.

    When Hallie returned, she had a bag full of muffins and cookies—and a new pair of navy-blue flats. “Sorry,” she said.“There’s a beautiful clothing shop by the bakery and I had to make an emergency purchase.”
    Jamie, leaning on his crutches, was standing at the back door. Caleb, beside him, wondered what he’d say. Would he try to prove his masculinity by saying she shouldn’t have made them wait?
    “Wise decision,” Jamie said solemnly. “Do you think they have them in my size?”
    “If they did, they’d have to be tied to the dock.” She looked at Caleb. “Where do you think the ladies served tea?”
    “There,” he said, pointing. “There was a pergola covered by roses.”
    There were only a few stones left to mark where the structure had been. Hallie pointed out the shade near the wall. “What if we bring some furniture out and have our tea there?”
    “I’d like that very much,” Caleb said.
    “Come on,” she said to Jamie, “help me set this up and maybe I’ll let you try on my new shoes.”
    “With or without you in them?” he asked as he followed her to the house. At the doorway he paused to look back at Caleb. “See? No pity,” he said and went inside.
    It didn’t take long to bring out three chairs, a little table, and a tray full of tea things.
    “I want to hear every word of the story of the Tea Ladies,” Hallie said as she poured the tea. “Although I fear that if they ended up ghosts, there isn’t a happy ending.”
    “There is usually good in every story,” Caleb said and began to tell of the two sisters who had been born less than a year apart. They had been pretty little girls, but by the time they reached sixteen, they were extraordinary. “Nantucket men traveled the world over, but all of them agreed that they’d never seen beauty to compare with that of Hyacinth and Juliana Bell.”
    Their mother died when the girls were quite young. Theirfather—who had a store that sold tea and coffee—dedicated his life to providing for them and protecting them.
    Caleb was a good storyteller and he had them laughing as he described what the men of Nantucket did to try to court the gorgeous young women, from gifts to secret visits. “See this high wall? Old man Bell put it up to try to keep the men out. But it didn’t even slow us—them—down. Night and day, men and boys vaulted over the wall and fell to the ground. Doc Watson said his practice was based solely on what he called the Bell Fools. Broken ankles, arms, collarbones, twisted necks. Half the males on the island were on crutches.”
    Jamie and Hallie were laughing.
    “What we all loved about them”—Caleb again caught himself—“I mean
they
loved is that the girls never let the attention or their own beauty go to their heads. They were kindness personified. They…” He had to pause to get control of himself. Hallie was right: This story did
not
have a happy ending.
    He looked back at the eager young faces waiting to hear more. “They were the town’s matchmakers.”
    “As in putting couples together?” Hallie asked.
    “Yes, and they were quite brilliant at it. They were the ones who got Captain Caleb Kingsley and the lovely Valentina Montgomery to stop arguing and admit they were mad about each other.” He looked at Jamie. “If they hadn’t done that, your Kingsley ancestor wouldn’t have been born and you wouldn’t now be sitting here with this lovely young lady.”
    “I love them very much,” Jamie said with such seriousness that he made Caleb laugh and Hallie’s face turn red.
    Caleb continued. “The girls invited people, young and old, to tea nearly every afternoon, and what they served was beyond delicious. It was said that they could take barnacles and bilge water and bake them into ambrosia. Between the beauty, the food, and the matchmaking, you can see why all the sailorsbrought back gifts for the girls.” He told of their father’s taboo on keeping expensive personal items,