High-SocieTea
"Where the Art and Elegance of Taking Tea is Treasured"
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by Valerie C. Scanlon
Hardback ISBN #0-7388-4098-X Paperback ISBN #0-7388-4099-8
Pages: 320
After seven years of travel, in October 1995, Jeanne Landry returns to the Barrett Hills estate where she grew up; her brother Owen is now caretaker. Jeanne is resigned to servant life for a while, in part beguiled by Charles Barrett suggesting that she may be like her late mother. A servant may overhear (though a good servant never lurks), and Jeanne is aware of the discord and conflict among Charles and Cecilia and their four grown children.
Come January, during the Blizzard of '96, there is murder on the estate, which has been isolated by the storm and a blackout. Jeanne and Owen quickly realize that the Barrett’s plan to have the Landry’s take the blame and to be unable to deny it.
Two families, each with its faults and misunderstandings, each with love and loyalty; for all their differences much the same. And a puzzle Jeanne has little time to solve.
Valerie C. Scanlon teaches at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York, and lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Order What Return Shall I Make directly from the publisher at
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=2421, or from your local bookstore.
Read an Excerpt of What Return Shall I Make Below
Chapter 2
Thursday October 5, 1995
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd.
Sonnet 27
Those times I recall, now that I pour out my soul.
Psalm 42
Thursday at noon my train arrived in New York City, and I took a Metro North train to Barrett Hills, then from the station retraced my steps of seven years ago. I didn't mind the long walk, wanted to breathe here alone at first. Mindlessly too, it seemed only minutes when on Forest Road I saw the gap in the stone wall marked only by a cairn and simple mailbox. The school bus driver had known to stop, but no one who didn't have business here would have guessed what was on this driveway, for the woods were dense and the house could not be seen from Forest Road, which several hundred yards to the east ended in a cul-de-sac of boulders and sugar maples.
The trees were what I had come home for, weren't they. That old oak was still standing, as were the birches arching beside the road like ribs of some long-dead leviathan. The maple that had shaded the driveway for more than a century had barely begun to change color this early in October. "You saved it for me, God bless you," I said aloud, then saw myself: a grinning fool talking to trees. Get a grip, Landry.
The carriage house was hidden by the yews and rhododendrons to its south, but when I came around the bend in the gravel road (Mr. Barrett did not believe in blacktop, or what it cost), there was Owen sitting on the porch steps. Elbows on knees, he was gazing toward the long lawn, apron to the mansion beyond the large circle of the driveway. When he saw me he stood up, came down the steps, and waited. He had rarely ever raised his voice, and no need to now as I approached.
I had always thought of Owen as not quite handsome, as if he had been deprived of that as he was of quick wits, but that had been when Dad was here. He was alone now, thirty-four but slim as ever, though larger somehow, a growing that couldn't be penciled on the doorframe of the kitchen to be measured with a ruler, and I felt much more than six years younger, much less than my five-feet-four with him a foot taller. His light brown hair fell across his forehead as it always had, the tan of his face set off his blue eyes and small nose and high cheekbones; he looked so much like our mother that I was speechless.
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