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“But you think not.” Noah shook his head. “You’re so easy to read.”
“Then why do I beat you at poker practically every week?”
Noah just scowled at me instead of answering.
I grinned back. “When is the agent getting here? This is a nice lawn and stuff, but you’re not going to live out here.”
“I might. For the seventeen days a year when the weather is nice enough to do so.” Noah pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Looks like he’s here. We can head to the front door and he’ll meet us there.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I tucked my hands in my pockets and continued to eye the green space as we worked our way back around. It was really nice. Was I being negative because I was jealous? I had plenty of space in my townhouse—but absolutely zero ground that could be called mine. The little patch of lawn out front was community space. On the positive side, that meant the association did all the mowing and weeding and whatever-elseing needed to be done. On the other hand? It wasn’t mine.
“Noah. Great to see you.” The man I assumed was the real estate agent extended his hand as we approached the steps to the front door. “Hi. You must be Cody. I’m Steven. Glad you could come along.”
“Happy to do it.” I shook Steven’s hand.
“Let’s go on inside. I won’t bore you with the historical details—I’m sure you read the listing, right, Noah?”
“I did. I’m not sure I could pass a test, if it came to that, but I have the basics. Seventeen ninety-five, right? And Robert E. Lee grew up here.”
Steven glanced up from his phone with a grin. “That’s right.”
After the agent fiddled with his phone for a moment, the lockbox on the door clicked. Steven reached for it and removed a key before unlocking the door and pushing it open. “After you.”
Noah stepped through first. I followed. I barely registered Steven coming in behind and pulling the door shut.
“As you can see, the entry is stunning. The previous owners had started on a renovation-slash-restoration project, but ran out of funds. But they did a wonderful job on this space.”
I glanced at Steven then turned back to the foyer. They had, indeed, done a fantastic job here. Gleaming wood doors stood to either side of the street entrance. More wood lined the bottom quarter of the walls, making them seem even taller than they were. “This is fancy.”
“Yeah.” Noah blew out a breath. “And I realize ‘historic’ means people go for restoring instead of changing. I’m for that. Mostly. But the colors…”
“They’re not bad. The wallpaper is what, cream? That’s what I’d call it, anyway. And the carpet matches. It looks like any federal historic home I’ve ever toured.” I shrugged.
If Noah was going to finish the renovation, it wasn’t like he had to keep what the people before him had done. But he probably needed to try and stay somewhat within the realm of historic accuracy.
“Are there rules that go into what he can do since it’s a registered home?”
Steven wiggled a hand from side to side. “There’s leeway. The damask wallpaper might not be your style, but it’s a good choice from a historic standpoint. Let’s go left, into the living room. It’s the other room that’s been finished. For all the other spaces, I have drawings and plans I can share of what they’d worked out with their architects and designers. You don’t have to use them, but they are included in the purchase price.”
We wandered into the living room and I winced. It was done in a sort of apple green. Sure, very seventeen hundreds if everything I could drag out of my memory of entirely too many trips to Colonial Williamsburg was to be believed. But also not a color I could see living with.
“Where does the flat screen go?”
Noah laughed and looked my way. “Right? I’m trying to picture comfortable furniture in here and failing.”
Steven looked pained. “Why don’t we move on across the hall?”
I trailed behind Noah and Steven as they went through the dining room, family room, breakfast area, and kitchen. The designs for the family space and kitchen were modern enough while maintaining some of the historic feel, but I still couldn’t picture Noah living here.
The stairwell in the foyer was open all the way up. I stood at the bottom just gazing at the twists of stairs. How did you get furniture up there? Maybe some kind of hoist system, since it was open?
It took another hour to make our way through the rest of the property and look at the various plans for renovation and restoration. Thankfully, once we moved out of the formal rooms on the main floor, the space became a lot more livable.
But it was still so much space.
“How many square feet is it?” I looked at Steven as I stepped back down off the bottom step into the foyer.
“Just over eight thousand.”
