“Or we could each get our own,” I added hastily.
An almost imperceptible shudder went through her. “Okay—you win. I can stand anything for an hour, right?”
I pretended to be busy nibbling on JJ’s neck so I wouldn’t have to answer, remembering my last visit to the house with Sophie when fifteen minutes had seemed more like an eternity.
Amelia’s Jaguar was parked in the driveway when we arrived. Standing at the bottom of the outside steps, I’d thought for a minute that I’d have to hold Jayne’s hand and drag her with me. I hadn’t seen the cat, nor did I feel any presence, sinister or otherwise. So far so good. Maybe whatever it had been was still too exhausted from terrifying us the last time. Jayne took a deep breath and followed me inside.
Scaffolding had been constructed in the downstairs rooms, where most of the water damage and crumbling moldings had been, and a few of Sophie’s students and hired conservation experts were busy with the laborious job of removing most of the damaged cornices and medallions bit by bit. As Sophie had explained it, they had been removed so they could be restored and the missing pieces reconstructed while the roof and ceilings were being repaired. I refrained from mentioning to Sophie that a huge sander would do the job in a fraction of the time and that there wasn’t really anything wrong with a smooth ceiling. I suppose I treasured our friendship too much.
“Melanie, is that you?” Amelia called from the dining room.
Jayne and I found her next to the large breakfront between the windows. There was even more of the hideous rose china in there, along with more crystal than I’d seen in one place outside Vieuxtemps on King Street. There were also, I was disappointed to see, even more of those salt-and-pepper sets, giving the intricately carved antique breakfront an almost clownish appearance. If it could express itself, I was sure it would have cried at the injustice.
“Hello, Amelia,” I said, kissing each cheek as was her custom. Perfectly turned out in a Chanel suit and pearls, her blond hair in a tight French twist, she appeared tiny and reserved, but I knew her to be a lovely, warm person who adored her grandchildren and was known to crawl on her hands and knees just to make the babies laugh, or to lie on the floor to create a barrier for the children to clamber over.
“And this is Jayne Smith, our nanny.”
They shook hands and I saw the look I’d grown accustomed to when introducing Jayne. “She has one of those faces,” I explained. “So that you think you’ve met but you haven’t.”
But Amelia didn’t laugh or step back. Instead she continued to hold on to Jayne’s hand and stare into her face. “It’s just the oddest thing. . . .” She stopped and then smiled, finally dropping Jayne’s hand. “I’m sorry. I know we haven’t met. But for a moment there, I could have sworn you were someone else. Wrong age entirely, which brought me to my senses. They say we all have a doppelg?nger—perhaps not in the same generation.” She laughed, but the sound seemed forced.
“So you’re the marvelous nanny Jack has told us so much about. I thought that you might have a halo and wings the way he carries on.”
Jayne blushed and I laughed, although I didn’t find it funny at all. Not the image of Jayne as an angel, but the fact that Jack talked about her to other people. But she was our nanny. Of course he talked about her. Other people with nannies talked about them, too, didn’t they? I didn’t know anyone with a nanny, so I’d have to take that as a probably.
“We have no idea how we’d get on without her,” I said.
Amelia smiled at Jayne, but there was something behind the look I couldn’t translate. “I got here a little early and one of the nice workmen let me in. I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of walking around and jotting down some notes. You have some very valuable and sought-after furniture here. Several pieces by famed cabinetmaker Thomas Elf as well as a few from Chippendale. And you have quite a collection of Royal Albert bone china—I believe I counted place settings for at least seventy, with plenty of serving pieces.”
“Are those the rose-patterned dishes?” Jayne asked.
“Yes. Is that something you would like to keep?” Amelia asked.
“No,” Jayne and I answered in unison.
Amelia laughed and then wrote something on the notepad she carried with her. “Got it. It’s not my taste, either, but there are a lot of people who love that pattern. I think I could get a very good price for the entire lot.” She led us from the dining room, through the kitchen, and into the butler’s pantry. “As you can see, there’s even more china here. But there’s also a very large collection of salt and pepper shakers.” She arched her elegant eyebrows. “I happen to know that Button collected these, but only after she visited each state. There are fifty sets, all in pristine condition.”