Photography By David Troy
There’s no reason one can’t take a little vacation twenty minutes from home, is there? Doesn’t having someone else cook dinner and make the beds qualify as a holiday?
With that sentiment in mind, I steal away to Tower Hill Bed & Breakfast in Cape Charles, Va., just a short drive away from my house. It’s a Monday night in summer. I am spouse- and offspring-free and looking forward to a brief respite from a hectic week.
The approach to the manor house is along a brand- new blacktop through the remnants of a once lush 650-acre plantation. Now all that’s sprouting is a new housing development consisting of a dozen or so McMansions in various stages of completion. Happily, the unsightly vista is quickly forgotten as the road ends by King’s Creek at the three-story brick beauty. Its genteel setting amidst grandfather oaks makes it easier to pretend I have tiptoed back in time to the 1746 “Tower Hill” built on the banks of the serene creek.
A fire did in the original home seven years ago, leaving nothing but the Flemish brick walls, chimney, eight fireplaces, and basement. While many would have knocked down the remains, BECO, a Hampton Roads development firm also responsible for the subdivision, accomplished nothing short of a miracle, taking the dilapidated frame and fleshing out a waterfront plantation-turned-inn. It garnered BECO owners Burt Cutright and Eric Olsen the 2004 Best Historic Restoration reward from the Tidewater Builders Association.
Now a five-room inn (with an accompanying restaurant, Mariah’s, located off the inn’s parlor) fits seamlessly into the refined but relaxed atmosphere much like a Southern aunt who came to visit and stayed.
On another holiday from home, my husband and I dined at Mariah’s. We were welcomed into the expansive light-filled foyer by Melanie Brown and her chef-husband, Tim, the innkeepers of the one-and-a-half-year-old B&B.
Eight tables were dressed with a simple but elegant mix of burgundy and tan linens. Our dining room offered a peek at the sunset on King’s Creek; another dining area in the brick basement features a cozy hunt club atmosphere, complete with antique pool table, bar, wine cellar dining, and two large fireplaces. During cooler weather, it’s the perfect place to play Yogi Bear and hibernate in style.
We appreciated the upbeat and down-home wait staff and the small but exuberant crowd that shared our seating. Fortunately, Mariah’s is not for connoisseurs of stuffiness. We enjoyed everything about our meal, from the plump, blackened scallops that started it to a spicy mahi-mahi spiked with a tasty pomegranate cream to an aptly dubbed coconut chocolate decadence for dessert.
Unfortunately, Mariah’s is closed on Sunday and Monday nights, so on my second visit, I have to be content with the complimentary glass of wine Tim offers me in the downstairs pub. Tim is a handsome, brown-haired forty-year-old who still retains some of his New England reserve but chats amiably. (Melanie is a native of Virginia Beach.) His deep culinary roots reach back to age fourteen, when he joined the cooking staff at an historic New England inn; he’s never stopped working in the food and hospitality industry. Before coming to Cape Charles, he was the executive chef at the Virginia Beach Resort and Conference Center and taught at the Johnson and Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts. “We’re doing so much better than I thought we would at first,” says Tim. “We get a lot of locals plus people driving in just for dinner from Salisbury and across the Bay from Virginia Beach and Norfolk.”
I know he gets inundated with questions about the namesake specter, Mariah Saunders, the daughter of a former owner who died in the late 1800s likely from complications in childbirth, but my curiosity still gets the best of me. Tim answers patiently that no, he had not seen her, but yes, there have been a few ghostly happenings, including the high windows in the house’s third-floor “tower” opening by themselves.
Tim shows me to my room on the second floor, the “Wilkins Room,” named after a former homeowner whose gravestone is one of a handfulÑincluding Mariah’s— still visible under an ancient cedar out back.
Ample-sized with a private balcony, it, like four of the five rooms, has a commanding view of the forested creek. Its ivory walls are accented with charming china-blue doors and trim.
The rooms, like the inn, are decorated in a pleasant mix of antiques and reproductions relying more heavily on the latter. Most of the bathrooms have endearing mini clawfoot tubs tucked into bead board cubbies, and what looks like a closet actually opens up to a fairly roomy shower, a clever way of making the new blend in with the old.
Feeling uncharacteristically brave and thinking what a nice addition to my story a sighting would make, I quietly climb the stairs to the third-floor tower. But it, too, is vacant of earthly and unearthly beings. I find myself inviting Mariah in a whispered giggle to “come visit me later if you like.”
Inside my room I find a nice surprise, a plate overflowing with gourmet cheeses and sliced fresh fruits and bread aside ice and bottled water. A four-poster king-sized bed dressed in lacy linens and pretty quilt along with a working fireplace provide romantic niceties even if I’m only looking forward to the rare pleasure of a good book uninterrupted. But I barely crack the cover when I succumb to the comfortable seduction of the heavenly bed.
At 1 a.m. an unidentifiable noise jolts me awake. I whisper a “never mind” retraction to the ghostly interruption and fall back to sleep.
Bobwhites, introducing themselves to the dawn, serve as an alarm clock. Delightful, too, is my first eyeful, the creek bathed in a golden mist.
I remember Tim’s instruction for early risers and make myself a cup of joe in the tower lounge. Before descending the stairs, I attempt to open one of Mariah’s windows, but I’d need Schwarzenegger-type strength to budge these suckers. Soon I’m sipping coffee on my balcony enjoying the winged symphony.
Later I follow a clamshell path to the private dock, with kayaks awaiting the more ambitious. Tim, also up with the roosters, invites me to an in-kitchen breakfast, a nice, laidback alternative. “We get people who come alone and prefer eating in here and other guests who’d rather skip the dining room and talk with me in the kitchen while I cook,” he says.
At the beautiful long wooden bar, I savor fluffy scrambled eggs with swiss cheese and chives, bacon, fresh blueberry pancakes, and a peach, blueberry, and watermelon compote while Melanie and Tim’s Chesapeake retriever, Reef, gives pitiful looks from outside the back door.
Confessing how I spooked myself the night before, Tim can’t hide an amused expression as he explains all has been quiet for some time in the Casper department. “I think we’ve made her happy,” he says.
Apparently, he could say the same for the inn’s patrons. For despite its ghostly namesake, excellent accommodations aren’t an apparition at Mariah’s Tower Hill.
Mariah’s at Tower Hill Bed & Breakfast and Inn
3018 Bowden Landing
Cape Charles, Va.
757-331-1700 or http://www.towerhillbb.com
Room rates: $95 to $225.
