houseofcards_rp | Hot as a hare, blind as a bat

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Hot as a hare, blind as a bat

Maggie sets her trowel on the ground and sits back on her heels. The Datura didn't need deadheading, yet the evidence lay before her eyes: small, precise cuts separating flowers and leaves from stem. The Heart rises to her feet in a smooth motion that belies her age and makes her way down the neat cutting beds. No mistake. Someone's come in with small sheers and pruned some of her more interesting plants. Foxglove, morning glory, monkshood, castor oil plant, someone's disturbed them all. Lovely.

"How very unwise of my uninvited guest," she murmurs to herself before turning back to the gate and inspecting the lock. An enterprising soul could hop the wall, but in this case, a close look reveals scratch marks around the mechanism. A short walk brings her to her Cannabis plot. Unmolested. She claims to grow the weed for medicinal reasons--indeed, she has a prescription for it. But truth be told, she enjoys the relaxation it brings her and never begrudges a few leaves here and there should anyone ask her. Yet the plants escaped this latest harvest. Clearly, her prowler hadn't cared about medicine.

"I suppose I'll need to reinstall the surveillance cameras. And let one of the Faces know so they can pass the word along. Bloody nuisance."

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Maggie hadn't been surprised by Sieben's chosen method. He'd always been a narcissist. Of course he'd go out causing as much pain and attention as possible. Look at me! till the end. Still, he had been charming. She'd give him that.

"Subtle. I might have missed it if I wasn't an organic gardener. At least the Japanese beetles are happy. I should call Briony to see if she was hit, too."

He'd been a very charming man, really; enough that if her head hadn't already been turned by her now-husband, Sieben almost certainly would have turned it. All told, she's rather certain she's better off with Victor Fox.

Zoe looks a little pensive as she nods. Maybe living in Spade Castle has made her paranoid. "Her garden's almost as extensive as yours, isn't it?" She asks. "Though, with her dog, I imagine it would be tougher to get past her."

Well, her dog and those latent paranoid instincts.

"Victor and I are leaving tomorrow for a few days. I wanted to let you know."

She'd been under the impression Briony's dog would kiss a burglar as soon as bite it, though no doubt it would bark. "I've been resting on my laurels. Used to be my reputation alone kept intruders at bay. I suppose I'll need to take steps." She turns toward the house. "Tea, dearest? Do tell me it's not business. You two never seem to have time for yourselves."

He does seem to be as much a golden retriver in temperment as Evan's new actual golden retriever. "Tea would be lovely," she says, and then grimaces. "I have to go audit the Outpost accounts for work. I think Victor is going to check on the border guards while we're there."

"I could say something about all work and no play," Maggie teases, "but I expect you two manage despite your schedules." She places a platter of homemade scones and muffins on the table, followed soon by butter and jam. "No sandwiches, I'm afraid.

"Perhaps I should get myself a dog, only imagine all the training to teach it to keep out of the garden."

"Chives is trying to pinpoint a, um, conception schedule," Zoe says dryly as she takes a raspberry muffin and splits it. "I told him these things take time. I didn't tell him that we try pretty frequently."

She takes time pouring both of them tea to let the blush fade.

"Maybe you need a motion sensor. It would take less training, at least."

"Oh, I like that. Something with flashing lights and loud klaxons." She imagines her burglar caught mid-act and his--or her--resulting panic. "I suppose I could go for a silent alarm," she adds and gets up to see to the kettle. "But," she comes back with the tea service and sets it down between them. "That would ruin all the fun, wouldn't it?"

"I do hope for Annie's sake that he won't be as...focused on his own offspring as he is on yours. The boy needs to wed, and soon."

"Papa would have said there's no point in going to all the effort of installing it if it's not going to set every dog in the Deck to howling," Zoe says with a slight smile as she picks up the sugar bowl. "I don't hold up much hope for Annie, though; the Chiveses are very...keen on schedules."

She adds a lump of brown sugar and a dash of milk before she speaks again.

"Papa left Hadyn a trust fund."

"Did he? I'm not surprised. He was a thoughtful man. Does Haydn know yet?"

"I told him," Zoe said with a sort of tight smile. "But he wasn't....exactly thrilled. I mean, I'm not surprised. Papa is kind of a subject we avoid most of the time.

"He doesn't want to hear about him."

"It must be difficult to learn the man you always thought was your father wasn't." She pats Zoe's hand. "And difficult to love one's father so much and not be able to talk about him with your brother."

"I suppose I always sort of idealized him," Zoe says with a sigh. It was easy to do, when he'd always been so much more of a parent than Charlotte. "But he never said a word to either of us. I can forgive him, but I don't think Hadyn can."

"Do you think it would have been fair to rob Haydn of the father he loved? Even had he wanted to, I sincerely doubt Laureline would have allowed it. Give him time."

She tops off their cups. "I'm sure he would have told you once you were older."

"No, I suppose not." She'd never known Dwayne Novak, and Hadyn hadn't really talked about him much. She did know, though, that Jordan had adored his father, and the Novak side of the family was less...

Well, less typically Spade.

"Hadyn thinks he didn't want him."

"Who knows when he found out Laureline's boy was his son? I know Georgios. If he hadn't cared, he would have left that money to you. I suppose Haydn thinks he had a guilty conscience.

"I feel for him. His world turned topsy-turvey."

"That's probably what he thinks. We didn't really talk about it much. He loses his temper a little whenever he does," Zoe says, and pauses. Aunt Maggie, unfortunately, knows why hot tempers sometimes bother her; Papa and Charlotte's battles were violent at times. She's not afraid of Hadyn, of course, but she always likes to avoid shouting if possible, even when she can hold her own.

"I'm just not sure what to do with it. He told me to keep it, but you know I can't do that."

"He may never come to accept things, but eventually he should be able to hold a conversation.

"Perhaps you could manage the funds for him. There may come a time when he'll need them. I'm not sure of the legalities, but when has that ever stopped the Deck from taking care of business. I hope you don't let him take his temper out on you."

"I hope so," Zoe says, taking a drink of her tea.

"I can probably manage it the same way I manage my own," she adds. She'd received the same $500,000 when she'd been eighteen, and had grown it over the past three years with a mix of careful and judiciously risky ventures. Even without Victor's considerable savings, she was comfortably set.

Even without the Huntly funds Charlotte had cut her off from.

"I don't let him," she says, half-smiling at Maggie. "Sometimes I just don't want to get into it, though."

"Good. Just checking. As for his inheritance, that's all you can do, really. You can't force him to take control of it if he doesn't want to. I suppose you could dump it all into an account under his name and forget about it."

"Yeah, I suppose." It doesn't sit well with her to just have money lying there, honestly. "Maybe I'll ask Elisha to talk to him about it. He listens to him, I think."

Maggie splits and butters a scone. "If you think that's best. I wouldn't care for someone telling me what to do with what's mine, lover or not. But I'm a stubborn old woman set in her ways."

The money has been sitting around for years apparently. Another month or so, even another year, until Haydn was ready to deal with it wouldn't matter.

With Hadyn and his stubbornness, they could all be dead before he decided to do anything with it. Zoe just sighed a little, though. "I'll think about it."

Later. It wasn't as if she didn't have enough to think about right now, anyway.

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Hot as a hare, blind as a bat

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