A Groom wirh a View

looking Iva straight in the eye. “Livvy’s father will be in one of the rooms. He is, after all, the owner of the house and the man who’s paying for the wedding, and the bride gets the other one. I’ll show you where you’re staying.”
    They trailed along behind her, snipping at her and each other the whole way. When Jane returned to the main room, she found Shelley puttering around with a dust cloth. “I sent Eden up to the dressmaker. What a glamorous number she is,“ Shelley said. “You look frazzled.“
    “Wait until you meet the aunts,“ Jane said. “They’re here already?“
    “Apparently they got in a dispute about starting early enough tomorrow and the one with a car insisted they come today instead. They’re terrors. Shelley, we’re surrounded by a bleating flock of cranky old ladies.“
    “You’ll cope. And if you can’t, I’ll read them the riot act.“
    “I already coped. I was very firm with them. I’m turning into you.“
    “Then why don’t you look more cheerful?“ Shelley flicked the dust cloth over an old Victrola.
    “I had an interesting chat with Eden,“ Jane said. “This family, it seems, is much stranger than I thought. And Eden doesn’t seem to think Livvy’s in love with Dwayne. Shelley, I’m horrified that I might have done all this work and the bride’s going to bolt at the last minute.“
    “Do you really think so?“ Shelley asked.
    Jane repeated the gist of the conversation she’d had with Eden. “So she’s just marrying to please her father with a mob of grandsons.“
    “According to Eden,“ Shelley reminded her. “But she may not be right. Livvy might be madly, passionately in love and is just too boring and repressed to show it. And even if she’s not wild about him, she’s getting a good-looking husband, a father for potential kids, and he’s marrying into a lot of money. Marriages have been made for worse reasons and thrived.”
    Jane thought for a moment. “I never heard her say a warm word about Dwayne at our meetings. Of course, I never heard her express much of an opinion about anything. You’re right. And it’s not my problem. If she bolts, she bolts. Nobody can blame me. Though I’m sure the aunts will try to.”
    Jane let Mr. Willis know that there would be two more for dinner, then she and Shelley went in search of the missing members of the party. They found Larkspur digging around in an area next to an old well. “Finding anything?“ Jane called to him.
    He spun around so quickly he nearly toppled right in. “What a fright you gave me!“ he said guiltily. “Just digging up some scilla bulbs that were planted around the well. I haven’t seen them bloom, of course, and they might be utter duds—“ He was babbling.
    “You don’t happen to know where Uncle Joe hides out, do you?“ Jane asked, cutting him off as he launched into a description of the various hues of scilla.
    “I do happen,“ Larkspur said. “There’s a dreadful little house through the woods right there.“ He pointed toward an overgrown path. “It looks like a duck blind that took on a life of its own. I saw him leaving it and, I blush to admit, took the littlest peek through the window. He’s made it quite comfy.“
    “Let’s go roust him out,“ Shelley said.
    They started off, and Jane turned back for a second. “Will you be here for dinner, Larkspur? If so, you need to tell Mr. Willis.“
    “I may stay,“ he said. “It looks like rain and I don’t want to drive back in the dark in a nasty downpour. Yes, I’ll stay over tonight and run back to the shop in the morning.“
    “He was blushing,“ Shelley said when they got into the woods. “I wonder why.“
    “And how did he happen to come prepared to stay overnight?“ Jane asked.
    Shelley smiled. “He planned to stay, didn’t he? I think he believes in this treasure story. Jane, did you see the size of the holes he’d dug around the well? Scillas are little bulbs that are just an inch or two under the surface. Larkspur was digging his way to China.”
    Jane laughed. “Just what I was thinking. But why the well?“
    “If you were going to bury a treasure, you’d need to put it where you could easily find it again. Near a landmark that’s going to be there for a good long time.“
    “We need to ask Eden about this treasure story,“ Jane said. “She’s a good source of information.”
    Uncle Joe’s hideout must have been a gamekeeper’s cottage in a previous era. It was the