Sanctuary by Nora Roberts Page A

door. “Sanctuary came down through the Pendletons. She knows it best. Come inside. You can dry off some and pick up the keys.”
    She hurried up the steps, paused on the veranda to shake her head and scatter rain from her hair. She waited until he stepped up beside her.
    â€œJesus, look at this door.” Reverently, Nathan ran his fingertips over the rich, carved wood. Odd that he’d forgotten it, he thought. But then, he had usually raced in through the screened porch and through the kitchen.
    â€œHonduran mahogany,” Jo told him. “Imported in the early eighteen-hundreds, long before anyone worried about depleting the rain forests. But it is beautiful.” She turned the heavy brass handle and stepped with him into Sanctuary.
    â€œThe floors are heart of pine,” she began and blocked out an unbidden image of her mother patiently paste-waxing them. “As are the main stairs, and the banister is oak carved and constructed here on Desire when it was a plantation, dealing mostly in Sea Island cotton. The chandelier is more recent, an addition purchased in France by the wife of Stewart Pendleton, the shipping tycoon who rebuilt the main house and added the wings. A great deal of the furniture was lost during the War Between the States, but Stewart and his wife traveled extensively and selected antiques that suited them and Sanctuary.”
    â€œHe had a good eye,” Nathan commented, scanning the wide, high-ceilinged foyer with its fluid sweep of glossy stairs, its glittering fountain of crystal light.
    â€œAnd a deep pocket,” Jo put in. Telling herself to be patient, she stood where she was and let him wander.
    The walls were a soft, pale yellow that would give the illusion of cool during those viciously hot summer afternoons. They were trimmed in dark wood that added richness with carved moldings framing the high plaster ceiling.
    The furnishings here were heavy and large in scale, as befitted a grand entranceway. A pair of George II armchairs with shell-shaped backs flanked a hexagonal credence table that held a towering brass urn filled with sweetly scented lilies and wild grasses.
    Though he didn’t collect antiques himself—or anything else, for that matter—he was a man who studied all aspects of buildings, including what went inside them. He recognized the Flemish cabinet-on-stand in carved oak, the giltwood pier mirror over a marquetry candle stand, the delicacy of Queen Anne and the flash of Louis XIV. And he found the mix of periods and styles inspired.
    â€œIncredible.” His hands tucked in his back pockets, he turned back to Jo. “Hell of a place to live, I’d say.”
    â€œIn more ways than one.” Her voice was dry, and just a little bitter. It had him lifting a brow in question, but she added nothing more. “We do registration in the front parlor.”
    She turned down the hallway, stepped into the first room on the right. Someone had started a fire, she observed, probably in anticipation of the Yankee, and to keep the guests at the inn cheerful on a rainy day if they wandered through.
    She went to the huge old Chippendale writing desk and opened the top side drawer, flipped through the paperwork for the rental cottages. Upstairs in the family wing was an office with a workaday file cabinet and a computer Kate was still struggling to learn about. But guests were never subjected to such drearily ordinary details.
    â€œLittle Desire Cottage,” Jo announced, sliding the contract free. She noted it had already been stamped to indicate receipt of the deposit and signed by both Kate and one Nathan Delaney.
    Jo laid the paperwork aside and opened another drawer to take out the keys jingling from a metal clip that held the cottage name. “This one is for both the front and the rear doors, and the smaller one is for the storage room under the cottage. I wouldn’t store anything important in there if I were you. Flooding is