He steps out of the wardrobe and waves me toward it in a gallant gesture. “As you wish.”
I smooth the front of my cardigan and sniff. “It’s beneath my dignity as a professional museum director.” As if I have any left after a trustee fully palmed one of my cheeks.
“But library ladders …?”
“Not beneath my dignity—if I’m not the official director yet. Didn’t I already explain this all to you?”
He gives me a fake solemn nod. “You did. My apologies. I should have taken notes.”
“Do better next time.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He slides his phone from his pocket and types. “Do … bet … ter … next … time.”
I turn toward the exit before he can see me be the first to break. “Can we get on with this tour, Mr. Martin?”
“Absolutely, your royal directorness.”
“I am special by title, not birth. The correct form of address is yournobledirectorness.”
“I’m embarrassed on behalf of all Americans. Please accept my apologies, your majestical directorness.”
This is way too easy. This rapport with Jay Martin. But that only reminds me to be extra careful about blurring any lines. I’m not a guarded person, and I couldn’t act distant or standoffish if I tried. I am a lifelong golden retriever with no chance of being a black cat. But after the disastrous way everything played out this winter at the Sutton, I have been working on being at least a border collie. It still has all that friendly energy, but the border thing is important. So important. Border collies stay in the border. They keep all their stuff in the border. They keep other stuff out of the border.
I might need to spend time with a border collie to figure out how they do it.
We continue our tour of the third floor, which doesn’t take long as it’s mostly used for storing antique furniture.
The house was built by an architect who developed his own version of the Georgian style, refining some of its more ornate elements to give them greater delicacy and symmetry. It became known as the Federal style.
Federal homes are laid out as a rectangle. On the ground floor here, the east wing is the library and kitchen. The west wing is a ballroom.
Yes, a ballroom. At least, that’s what it was built for. But Foster renovated the floor to become a shuffleboard court after playing it on a cruise and deciding he loved it. It’s odd to see the green lanes and white triangles painted on the floor under the watchful eye of the Grecian columns and the ornamental frieze moldings with their garlands of plaster honeysuckle and vases.
Neither of the wings have floors above them, and the west wing with the ballroom has especially high ceilings. The central section of the rectangle rises three stories, but these are mainly bedrooms and bathrooms, and each floor covers less square footage than the one below it. That’s not to say it’s small; remove the ground floor wings and you’re still dealing with a mansion.
We descend to the second floor and Foster’s suite, a well-appointed room with handsome antique furniture and beautiful woven rugs. On the other side of the central staircase, two more bedrooms share a bathroom and offer a warm, inviting space for company to nest.
“I don’t mean to pry,” I say as we take the back staircase down to the east wing, “but you haven’t talked about your grandmother much. Foster mentioned she passed a while ago,but I’m wondering how much of the house was her touch versus Foster’s.”
“I’m happy to tell you about her.”
I lead us back to the library, and Jay takes one of the seats across the desk, leaving the big leather office chair for me. I like that he doesn’t feel the need to pull any power moves, like taking the executive chair to defend his territory. If I’d grown up spending time in this house, it would be hard for me not to feel protective of it.
“My grandmother died ten years ago,” he says. “She was awesome. She had so many traditions, and she made everything fun. I never knew what she was going to put me up to when I came to visit.”
“It must be hard to have lost both of them,” I say.
“It was harder when my grandmother died. She was seventy-five, but somehow that still felt too young.” He sighs, but it’s not sad or heavy. It’s almost content. “It would probably have felt that way if she’d died at a hundred. She was a Martin by marriage, but she was the heart of this house. She’s the one who taught me the best way to ride the library ladder.”
I smile, imagining it. “Foster always spoke of her with so much affection. She sounds like a character.”
“She was.” His lips twist to the side and he stares somewhere over my head, but it’s an unfocused middle-distance stare. “After she died, the house started to feel different,” he says, his face relaxing as he drops his gaze back to me. “Not in a bad way. But my grandfather redirected his grief into restoring the house, getting it ready to become a museum. That was how he kept himself busy the last ten years.”
“Foster was very proud of this place. Between them, they’ve done a good job of preserving it.”
“Minus the shuffleboard room?” he asks, his eyebrow quirked.
I smile. “Minus that.”
