Refuge (eBook)

Chapter Three:
Cameron

As soon as Peyton settled herself into the backseat of the cab for the twenty-minute ride from the airport, she pulled her cellphone from her bag and began making notes.

To Do List

• Open Greyson
• Talk to farm manager about day to day operations on the farm
• Buy plane ticket back to London
• Text farm manager re: plans for the future

Soon the bustling congestion of office buildings and airport support buildings gave way to rolling farmland and livestock grazing on the hillsides. Peyton could practically feel her heart rate slowing. She took deep breaths and looked out the window expectantly. At length she saw the painted wooden sign beside the stone pillars.

“Greyson,” the sign read in dark green letters on an ivory background. The farm itself was completely surrounded by a stone wall. The mortarless walls running up and down hills made an imposing sight and Peyton’s breath caught at the sight of it. Off in the distance to the west, the Blue Ridge Mountains rose in majestic splendor.

Greyson was never more delightful than in the spring of the year. Visitors to the grand manor house drove on a long gravel drive that passed between two rows of tall hardwoods under-planted with azaleas of every color. Horse pastures bounded the drive on both sides. Around a final bend in the road, the house loomed, an immense red brick Georgian building with tall windows framed in white and a hipped slate roof bearing a dozen dormers. The house backed up to a scenic tributary of the Potomac River. Beside the river, paths covered in pea gravel meandered along the hillside. A colonial kitchen garden and maze as well as a paddock separated the house from the dock further down the sloping hillside at water’s edge. In Thomas Grey’s time the water side of the house had been the main entrance, so a grand doorway overlooked the river scene. But sometime in the nineteenth century, traffic from the dusty corduroy road outside the property began to be heavier than river traffic. James and Flora decided sometime in the late thirties to add a long covered porch along the rear of the house, a cool place to rest in the evenings in one of the rocking chairs that were always there. So an equally grand portico was constructed for the other side of the house as well. It was to that entrance that the taxi arrived. Peyton looked out the window as if trying to find her bearings.

Surrounding the house on either side were outbuildings of every variety. On the east side were a smokehouse, laundry, dairy and kitchen building. On the west side were a carriage house, five-stall stable and a dovecote.

Greyson was where Peyton had grown up, raised calves for the local 4-H club, and had learned to ride horses. It was home but also, now, quite empty of the people who had made it so.

I didn’t realize what we had here until I went away.

Peyton surveyed the property gloomily. A pall hung over her as she emerged from the taxi and paid the driver. The boxwoods need trimming, she thought. She rolled her bags up to the steps and carried them onto the wide front porch. Turning the key in the brass box lock of the heavily paneled door, she took a deep breath, stepped inside and looked around.

The front porch opened to a wide center hall with 12-foot ceilings, ornate plaster moldings, transoms and large windows and doors that faced one another for cross-ventilation. Two large rooms opened off each side of the hall. Floors throughout were of wide heart pine boards polished to a high sheen. The ceiling height throughout the house soared to ten feet. The walls of the center hall were deeply paneled in walnut and a staircase six feet in width led to the upper floor. Family portraits painted in oils lined the staircase all the way to the carved arch that surmounted it. Peyton smiled wistfully as she saw the portrait of herself as a three year old with her mother and father and Dusty, her new pony. Dusty had been her daily companion for years until she outgrew him. On the landing at the top of the stairs, a nine and one-half foot tall case clock maintained a steady beat marking the passage of time in the old house. Beneath the steps, a door led to a full basement where, Peyton knew, her parents had stored antiques, junk and memorabilia from their years of residence at Greyson.

It’s odd, she thought, how a house can go down when there’s no one to live in it. In just the four weeks since her parents’ death, the house had taken on a smell Peyton had never noticed before. Her footsteps seemed to echo unbearably loudly as she moved down the halls on the old wooden floorboards. She walked around the house carefully, memories assaulting her at each room’s doorway.

The front parlor to the right of the front door was completely paneled in rich heart pine. Arched recesses on either side of the fireplace sheltered the tall windows set into 18 inch thick solid brick walls. Beneath the windows, window seats cushioned in pale blue velvet beckoned invitingly. An oriental carpet in faded blue and rose covered the pine floor. Atop the marble fireplace, a large painting of a group of racehorses rested in a frame of gold leaf. (Her mother Dorothy had commissioned that painting for her father the first year they’d gone to the Derby.) To the left of the front door, a sitting room contained a full length portrait of Louisa Grey which hung above a nearly eight foot long Chippendale sofa upholstered in dusty rose damask. In the center of the room, rococo candlesticks of sterling silver stood at each of the four corners of a mahogany Chippendale gaming table.

Through a carved archway, the dining room to the left of the center hall held a polished mahogany table and twelve chairs under a brass chandelier of ancient age. Family silver held pride of place on the large inlaid mahogany sideboard along one plastered wall. The same window pane where Thomas Grey had carved his and his bride’s names over 200 years ago looked out upon a landscape hardly changed from that time until the present. Peyton remembered countless birthday and holiday celebrations around that table and smiled to herself. With a daunting realization that the care of the house now fell to her, she moved on through hallways, kitchen, library, and conservatory.

Peyton peeked in room after room, as though seeking to convince herself that her parents were really gone. She picked up her suitcases and climbed the wooden treads of the staircase, holding carefully to the bannister railing. Finally, after looking briefly into each of the five other bedrooms along the hall, she reached the room on the second floor where she’d always slept. This had been her room from birth until she left for college at age 18. After that she’d only lived there during summers and holidays. Still, it felt more like home than her London flat.

Looking around, she tossed her bags onto the carpet and sighed audibly. She threw herself onto the blue toile de Jouy fabric covering one of the twin mahogany rice canopy beds and wiped away a tear. Above the beds were canopies of cotton fishnet woven in intricate designs. The room looked the same as when she had last visited three weeks before. Same heavy cornflower blue draperies at the two windows, same mantel and fireplace, same closet and dressing room. The bathroom was still there and so were her old dolls. But the house was so empty without her parents. She closed her eyes and sighed again. Fatigue from hours of travel and packing soon overtook her and she fell into a deep sleep.

It was not until an hour and a half later that the insistent ringing of the telephone beside her bed woke her. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and sat up.

“Hello,” Peyton responded somewhat grumpily.

“Peyton? It’s Cam…Cameron Hill. Have you got a minute to talk?”

Cameron, Peyton thought. Oh, yes, the farm foreman, of course, and she shook her head as though to clear the cobwebs.

“Peyton, I know you’ve just gotten in but I wonder if we could meet sometime. We need to talk about what’s next.”

“Oh, yes, of course, you’d need to know what to do now since…”

“If this is a bad time,” Cameron suggested,” maybe tomorrow would be easier. I know you must be tired from travelling.”

“No, we might as well tackle this now as later. Can you come up to the house in about thirty minutes?”

“That’ll be fine. See you then,” Cameron said quietly and hung up the phone.

Peyton spent the next few minutes brushing the knots out of her long, dark brown hair, and pulled it back into a high pony tail. She washed the sleep from her eyes and changed to a fresh pair of khakis and a white cotton sweater, then walked downstairs. She grabbed a small glass bottle of Coke from the refrigerator in the kitchen and smiled. Her daddy always had to have his Cokes and they never tasted better than when they were in the glass bottles. Walking through the heavy screen door to the back porch, Peyton sat in one of the eight large rockers there. The vista from the back porch had always been inspiring. This afternoon she found it downright comforting, as though it was one of the few things in her life that hadn’t changed. Hummingbirds...