Dear Reader,

Like many little girls growing up, I loved horses, though I knew I would probably never own one. So my relatives, bless them, gave me horse books!

My beloved Aunt Charlotte gave me a special book on great racehorses.

The story that most haunted me was of Black Gold, a great little horse that won the fiftieth Kentucky Derby. Run for too many years, he finished his last race—but broke a leg. He crossed the finish line on three legs—but he crossed it. And then was put down.

I thought of Black Gold when writing about Andrew, the quiet and serious hero in this book. He is a man who loves horses and is passionately devoted to both keeping the sport fair—and free of tragic endings like those that befell Black Gold, Ruffian, Barbaro and Eight Belles.

We need more like him.

Bethany Campbell

The Secret Heiress

Bethany Campbell

www.millsandboon.co.uk

BETHANY CAMPBELL

has written forty-eight novels and novellas of romance and romantic suspense. An eight-time finalist for the RITA® Award, she has won three, as well as three Reviewers’ Choice Awards, a Maggie Award and a Daphne du Maurier Award.

Under another name, she has published articles, short stories and poetry. Her proudest moments outside of romance were doing a poetry workshop with Maya Angelou, and being presented two poetry awards in one evening by Gwendolyn Brooks.

She won the 2005 Cape Fear Screen Writing Award, and her film script, Three Apples Fall, has just been shot and edited by LCW productions.

Her husband, Dan, has written science fiction, a syndicated humor column and a number of short plays and screenplays. The couple lives in northwest Arkansas with three cats and a garden that’s been out of control for fourteen years. Their favorite pastime is watching movies and videos. They plan, someday, to clean their office.

To the memory of Charlotte and Jesse Hall

and to their children, John and my dear Mary Ann

CONTENTS

PART ONE: Australia, the Northern Territory

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

PART TWO: Hunter Valley, New South Wales

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

PART THREE: Australia, The Hunter Valley

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

PART FOUR: Australia, The Hunter Valley

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

PART FIVE: Australia, The Hunter Valley

Epilogue

PART ONE
Australia, the Northern Territory

February

Chapter One

The tall Kentuckian, Andrew Preston, was new to Australia.

And he’d come to the Northern Territory for a practical reason. He’d meant, with the help of his old friend Mick, to test the Territory’s political waters. He needed support in his run for the presidency of the International Thoroughbred Racing Federation.

At the moment, though, the political waters were icy cold.

“Listen, Yank,” the big man, Francis Bleak said. “Australian leadership should come from Oz. Reforms? We don’t need none. We’re doing fine as we are. Now I got work to do.”

The Thoroughbred breeder turned his broad back and walked into the stable. The three men who’d stood by him, listening stony-faced, cast cold glances at Andrew and silently followed Bleak inside.

Andrew looked at Mick and Mick looked at Andrew.

Straight-faced, Andrew said, “This is starting out really well, eh?”

Mick, a breeder himself, ruddy and red-haired, shrugged. “You told me to introduce you to some tough ones. I just did. It could have been worse. He could have shot you.” Mick started toward his Jeep.

“Be quiet,” Andrew cautioned. “We’re not out of range yet. I take it he’ll vote for Bullock.”

“Righto,” Mick said with a nod. “But I warned you about Bleak. Hey, I’ve known him all my life. He may raise horses, but he’s an ass.”

Mick and Andrew, both thirty-five, had once been roommates in grad school in Kentucky. Mick, squarely built and freckled, had returned to Australia, where he now was president of the Northern Territory Thoroughbred Association.

In Kentucky, Andrew had served two terms as executive director of the Thoroughbred Association of the Americas, Southern Region. He was a tall, lean and broad-shouldered man. His dark hair was thick and wavy, his features finely carved. For generations, his family had bred and raced Thoroughbreds, and he moved with an expert horseman’s physical confidence.

He loved the sport, but he had serious concerns about it. Serious enough to make him take action. When he’d been asked to run for the presidency of the International Thoroughbred Racing Federation, ITRF, he’d taken it as a great honor. But an even greater responsibility.

When he spoke of reforms, he meant reforms. Reforms in breeding, equine safety—and the ugly inroads crime had made into the sport. There were people, powerful people, who didn’t like his ideas, especially about cleaning out the criminal element.

Mick had kept company with him this week to personally introduce Andrew to the racing set in the Northern Territory. He believed passionately in Andrew’s cause and wanted it clear that Andrew had solid connections to Australia—both family and friends.

Both men knew that Andrew faced a grueling fight against Aussie candidate Jackson Bullock. Australia was the deciding contest. There would be other elections the same day in smaller Pacific countries, but Australia was where the presidency would be won or lost. Bullock was the favorite here, a native son with longtime ties to the racing community.

Andrew’s dark brows drew together. “Bullock’s going all out to beat me?”

Mick’s good-natured face clouded. “Right. He didn’t expect you’d get so much support in Europe. He thought he’d win easy, and now he’s pissed off. Here, he means to dominate you. On his airwaves. In his papers. Through all his media connections. He’ll fight hard. And if he has to, he’ll fight dirty.”

A deep voice called from behind them. “Misters—can I speak with you?”

Andrew glanced over his shoulder and saw a dark-skinned man dressed in jeans, a bush shirt and cowboy hat. He was a burly fellow and carried a blacksmith’s anvil as if it weighed but a few pounds. Mick stopped, and so did Andrew.

“Raddy.” Mick grinned, “I didn’t see you.”

“I was just inside the stable,” the man said with a laugh. “I came to borrow Barney’s small anvil.” He tucked the anvil under one brawny arm.

“Andrew, this is Conrad Nakumurrah, best blacksmith in the shire. Raddy, this is my Yank friend, Andrew Preston. He’s running for prez for the ITRF.”

“Pleased to meet,” said Raddy. He shook Andrew’s hand with a grip appropriately like iron. Andrew feared for his finger bones.

“Same here,” he managed to say.

“I heard what you said to Bleak,” Raddy told him. “I like what I heard. You have sympathy for horses. That’s good. You going to my boss’s place?”

“Dead cert,” Mick answered. He started walking again, and the other two men fell in step on either side of him.

“My pickup’s parked by your Jeep,” Raddy said. He looked up at Andrew shrewdly. “I heard the way you talk about the animals. Some people—” he nodded back toward Bleak’s stable “—they don’t care for the horses. Only the money. Breed ’em for the long legs until the long legs break. And so forth. You are against such things, right?”

“Right,” Andrew replied with a sideways smile.

Raddy cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “You know about the Song Lines? The Dreaming Tracks?”

“Only a little,” said Andrew. “I read a book about it.”

“Ha! I hear you talk, I suspect you understand. Australia is part of a song the earth sings. Part of the dream the earth dreams.”

Andrew smiled and nodded. “Yes. So is Kentucky. Where I come from.”

“Ha!” Raddy exclaimed again. He turned to Mick and pointed at Andrew. “This is a good fellow, yes?”

“Yes,” Mick agreed. “He is. But tell me, Raddy, how’s your family.”

“I have a new child. A beautiful boy child. It is odd you ask about my family.”

“Why?” asked Mick.

“Because last night, my wife had a feeling that today something special would happen. She made a charm. ‘Someone will need this,’ she said. ‘You’ll know him when you see him,’ she said. Aha!” Again he pointed at Andrew.

Andrew blinked in surprise. Mick gave Raddy a dubious look. “I can never tell about you. If you believe this stuff or if you’re pulling my leg.”

“Maybe I’m doing both at once,” said Raddy, flashing a smile. But he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a wooden charm. It was a beautifully carved bird with a beak painted yellow, its body black and white and red. It hung on a necklace of red string.

“Here,” Raddy said, handing Andrew the charm. “Wear this. It will bring you something important. My wife knows these things.”

“It’s—wonderful,” murmured Andrew, touched, yet puzzled. “What is it?”

“Put it on, put it on. It will bring change to your life. Because you know the earth sings songs, it dreams dreams.”

Andrew put the string with the charm about his neck, feeling odd. Did he have the right to do this? But Raddy only smiled more broadly. He swung the anvil into the back of the truck, opened the door and got in. “I will see you later?”

Mick nodded. Raddy grinned. “Catch you then!” He backed up, changed gears, and drove off.

Andrew and Mick got into the Jeep. Andrew looked skeptically at the carved charm hanging from his neck. “What’s it mean?”

“I don’t know.” He glanced at Andrew. “Do you believe all that rigmarole? Song lines and charms and stuff?”

Andrew shrugged. “What do you think of it? You understand it better than I do.”

“I’m never sure. Sometimes I think the Aborigines see things we don’t see. They know things we don’t know. I’d treat that charm with respect, if I were you.”

Andrew fingered it uneasily, then dropped it inside his blue shirt. Beneath the painted wood, his heart tingled strangely.

At that same moment in the Northern Territory, in the city of Darwin, Marie Lafayette had finished her day’s classes at the university and fought the unusually heavy traffic.

She weaved and darted on her secondhand bike, moving with surprising speed for one so small. She was barely five foot two, hardly more than a hundred pounds, and although she was petite, her body was toned and muscular.

Legs pumping, she headed for the Royal Darwin Hospital where her mother lay in the critical care unit. A heart attack had felled Colette Lafayette, her third—and worst—attack in as many years.

Although it was February and still “the Wet,” the rainy season, today the sun shone, and the clouds were distant. But Marie knew better than to trust the Northern Territory’s fickle weather. She had a secondhand rain poncho in her secondhand backpack.

In the hospital parking lot, she chained her bike to a rack, and headed for the main entrance. The building, one of the tallest in Darwin, was a miracle of engineering, designed to withstand the cyclones that were the curse of the city.

Marie made her way to the elevator, pulling off her helmet and shaking her head. Her hair was thick and golden, and she trimmed it herself into a short, smooth bob. Her eyes were her most arresting feature; they were long-lashed and a pure crystalline light green, unmarked by even a touch of hazel.

Her high cheekbones, straight little nose and full lips gave her a delicate femininity in spite of her boxy unisex clothes. She wore the university uniform for cookery classes, a white shirt and plain black trousers.

She got off at the critical care facility. She no longer had to identify herself at the desk. The entire staff recognized her by now. She headed down the hall and quietly opened Colette’s door.

Colette lay with her eyes closed, and Marie’s heart tightened in alarm. Her mother looked even frailer than she had yesterday. But her eyes immediately fluttered open, as if she sensed that Marie was there.

“My good girl,” she said in a small voice.

Marie caught Colette’s hand in her own, as if she could pump some of her own strength and energy into her mother. “Mama,” she said softly and bent to kiss her.

Colette smiled and stared up at her. “My good girl,” she repeated. “This is a school day. Isn’t it? How were classes?”

“Good, Mama. And my job at the Scepter’s going well. Last night they told me they wanted to train me for management when I finish this round of certification.”

Marie worked evenings waiting tables at the restaurant in the Scepter Hotel and Resort, one of Darwin’s finest. The manager considered himself a perfectionist, but he’d said Marie had exceeded even his expectations.

Now the older woman sighed and smiled. “Ah. You’re so smart, and you work so hard.”

“Mama, let me bring you something homemade tomorrow. You’re getting too thin. You’re not used to hospital food.”

Colette grimaced. “I have no appetite. Eating tires me.”

Marie squeezed her hand more tightly. “Home cooking will make you feel better.”

Colette shook her head. “What makes me feel best is how well you do. You’ve got an education, opportunity, prospects. That’s what’s important. You’ll have a good future—secure.”

Marie swallowed. Education, opportunity, prospects, security. These were things her mother had never had. But she’d worked unstintingly for Marie, and now it was Marie’s turn to care for Colette. And she would—she was prepared to drop out of school for a semester, even take a leave of absence from her job if she had to.

“I’m doing fine, Mama. And you’re going to be fine.”

Colette’s mood shifted strangely. “I’ve been thinking. I have something to tell you. Something I’ve held back. You know about Reynard and me.”

Marie nodded, but was concerned: Colette had been repeating herself lately—was this a bad sign? She kept talking about the past as if she were struggling to make it clearer to Marie, although Marie knew it well.

Reynard was Colette’s brother by law, but not by birth. The Lafayettes had first adopted Colette, then four years later, Reynard. But the family had almost been ruined by the 1950 cyclone. The cyclone, unnamed, destroyed the little building where the Lafayettes lived above their pastry shop—everything they had.

Colette’s father, overwhelmed by depression, never recovered. The family began a spiral into near poverty. Neither Colette nor Reynard could finish their schooling.

“I told you I never knew who my birth mother was,” Colette murmured.

Marie nodded; she knew that part of the story by heart. But then Colette surprised her. “But maybe I do know. I didn’t know how to tell you. I started writing to people. A nurse in Queensland answered me—two years ago. This is her letter. Remember that little wooden box I asked you to bring? The letter was in it. But don’t read it here. Read it at home and think about it. Yes, it’s time I put it in your hands. I feel it.”

It was time? She felt it. What did Colette mean? Marie fought down a wave of alarm. She forced a smile, as cheery as she could make it. “You’re being very mysterious.”

With an unsteady hand, Colette picked up an envelope from the bedside stand. “I didn’t know what to believe, what to do, so I did nothing. I just have no idea…”

Colette seemed exhausted. “So I’m passing it on to you. To find out or—I’m so tired,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’ve come all this way, but I think I’m going to fall asleep. It’s all I do lately.”

“Don’t apologize. You need rest. Sweet dreams.” Marie bent and kissed her mother’s cheek again. Already Colette’s eyelids were lowering, but she managed a smile.

Marie studied the envelope, feeling an indefinable uneasiness, and then tucked it into her backpack. She stared at Colette’s face, once smooth and delicate, but now shadowed by illness.

Making her way to the elevators, Marie punched the down button, her stomach queasy with anxiety. She and Colette were not only mother and daughter, but the closest of friends. Colette had to recover. She had to. Life would be empty and loveless without her.

The elevator doors slid open, and Marie blinked in surprise. A cupid, a very tall, chubby cupid, stood inside. At first glance he seemed naked except for a large white diaper and two inadequate wings sprouting from his back. Cupid’s blue eyes widened, and he gave Marie a smile and a leer.

She quickly realized he wasn’t naked, but dressed in flesh tights and a leotard.

A gilded bow hung from one shoulder. Slung over the other was a little gold quiver of darts with pink heart-shaped tips. His mop of curly blond hair was clearly a wig.

“Hello, Dearie,” he said, looking her up and down. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s a bit early for Valentine’s Day,” Marie returned, hardly in a mood for silliness. She noticed he carried two large pink tote bags, each labeled BNC for Bullock News Corporation and showing a jolly, smiling caricature of its founder, Jackson Bullock.

Cupid jiggled one of the bags, which seemed to be empty. “BNC’s sending me to children’s wards to hand out goodies—candies and crackers and balloons.”

“Very admirable,” Marie said between clamped teeth.

“I got a lovely Scallywag biscuit left. Want it?”

“No, thank you,” she said in the same tone.

“Aww,” he said. “Troubled? You look worried. Shame, a pretty thing like you. You need Dan Cupid in your life. All of him you can get. How about a spot of supper tonight?”

She looked at him as if he were a bug. She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Puh-leese.”

“Please pick you up? With pleasure. What time? Where do you live? Do you like the Pizza Shack?”

She flashed him a disgusted glare. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not in the mood. Please just leave me alone.”

“Oh, ho!” he said in a hostile tone. “Aren’t you little Miss Snip? What’s the matter? Don’t you like men?”

She was saved by the door opening into the lobby. She was smaller than he was, but trimmer and faster. She sprinted toward the hospital’s main entrance.

“Hey!” he bellowed. “You shouldn’t run off from Dan Cupid. You’ll be sorry.”

She dashed out the door and toward the bike racks. She glanced over her shoulder in case he was following her, but she could see no trace of him. Thank God, she thought. Could life get any more surreal?

She was sick with forebodings about her mother, and now she’d been harassed by an overweight man in a diaper. Things could not get worse.

Seven seconds later, just as she reached her bike, a flash of lightning nearly blinded her, and a thunderclap almost broke her eardrums. The sky was no longer blue but roiling with storm clouds. She felt the first drops of rain.

A strong, wet wind sprang up, almost flattening the hospital’s flower garden, and the rain began to cascade in earnest. She slipped out of her backpack, got out her heavy weather rain cape, shook it out and started to put it on.

Another gale of wind made her stagger, and it ripped the cape from her hands and sent it flying off like a strange yellow bat over the storm-tossed shrubs. It flapped as high as the trees and disappeared. The whipping rain half blinded her.

She’d have to walk the bike home, as fast as she could. She swore softly, then gritted her teeth and told herself to buck up. She needed to be at her job within three hours.

Marie felt like the proverbial drowned rat when she reached the apartment that she and Colette shared. Curious as she was, she knew there wasn’t time to read the mysterious letter. She laid it atop her dresser, showered and got ready for work.

She put on a plain black skirt and another white shirt, this one with frills and clip-on black bowtie. She studied herself in the mirror and thought that her life was a series of changing uniforms. Even when not in a work uniform, she had a sort of uniform. Bush pants and shirt—sturdy and sensible wear.

Now she fluffed her hair to make it look softer and gave thanks that she had a ride to the Scepter Hotel. Her coworker, Izzy, would pick her up and bring her home. Marie chipped in for petrol and Izzy’s trouble.

When Isabella honked, Marie snatched up her raincoat and dashed for the car. She made small talk with Izzy, but didn’t confess her fear that Colette seemed worse. She couldn’t bring herself to put her anxiety into spoken words. She feigned her usual natural cheer.

That night, distracted as she was, she performed her job with utter professionalism, perfect courtesy and genuine charm, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She spoke Chinese to the Chinese businessmen, Malaysian to the Malay tourists, and Spanish to a traveler from Argentina. She had a gift for languages and had studied them at college. She had a smile for everyone.

Well, almost everyone. Butch Paul, a busboy, had come close to sexually harassing her lately, but if he tried tonight, he’d be extremely sorry.

When other men tried to flirt with her, she acted as if they were only teasing and smiled at them, refusing to get involved. Nobody came to the Scepter to be greeted by a mope. Her business was not hanging her heart on her sleeve, it was hospitality.

Redheaded Mick Makem was a regular customer, and tonight when he joked with her, she made herself banter back as if she were in the best of spirits.

She vaguely noticed that he sat with a dark, lean man who was strikingly handsome, then rebuked herself for paying attention to a good-looking man at a time like this. She’d vowed to keep herself under strict control tonight.

But then it happened. Butch the busboy gave the side of her breast a hard squeeze as she was leaving the kitchen, and she snapped. She spun about and stamped his foot so hard that tears sprang into his eyes. “That’s not fair,” Butch accused. “You know kung fu or something.”

“Yes, I do,” Marie returned coolly. “So don’t ever touch me again. Ever.” She turned and left him glaring after her. She hadn’t spilled so much as a drop from the drinks on her tray.

“Somebody ought to take you down a notch,” Butch sneered.

Marie saw that Mick and his dark-haired friend had seen it all. Mick made an okay sign and grinned at her as she came to their table. “Way to go, slugger,” he said.

The dark man simply stared at her with a strange intensity. He said, “We both saw what he did. Do you want us to report it? He was completely out of line.”

He looked genuinely concerned, but she said, “No thanks. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, looking into her eyes.

“Positive,” she said. And she was positive. She had a green belt in karate, and someday she intended to work her way up to black. Colette had insisted she take classes. Darwin had its rough elements, and Marie was so small that Colette wanted her to know how to protect herself.

But physical toughness wasn’t going to get her through this latest crisis. Colette’s illness demanded a different kind of strength, and she wasn’t sure how much she had left.

And as the work night wore on, she wondered more and more about the contents of Colette’s mysterious envelope. Why’d she give it to me now? What did she mean, it’s time?

Her uneasiness grew.

Andrew and Mick lingered, nursing their drinks until closing time. They had much to talk about, and in the back of Andrew’s mind, he worried about that small blond woman who might be too spunky for her own good.

Sure enough, just as he and Mick were back in Mick’s Jeep, about to pull away, he saw two women dash through the mist toward an older model car. One of them was the little blonde, her head down. The rangy busboy stepped from the shadows and blocked their way. He looked as if he might have helped himself to a drink or two at the bar. He grabbed the blonde’s arm, scowling, hectoring her.

The dark-haired woman looked frightened, the little blonde seemed incensed. Mick started to say something, but Andrew didn’t hear it. He was out of the Jeep, and in six strides he was between the busboy and the blonde. “Look,” Andrew said from between his teeth, “leave the lady alone. You want to pick on somebody, try somebody your own size. Will I do? Huh? Will I?”

The rangy kid swore, but after casting Andrew a filthy look, he turned and quickly sloshed off into the shadows, kicking angrily at puddles. The dark-haired woman was already in the car.

“Get in, Marie,” she called. “Before he comes back.”

“I’ll stay until you’re out of the lot—and watch that nobody follows you,” Andrew said, looking down at Marie. “You have a cell phone in case you need one?”

She stared up at him, her face pale in the parking lot lights. Her pale skin gleamed with moisture from the night’s haze. My God, he thought, she’s lovely.

“A mobile?” she asked. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ll be fine. Really, I—I can take care of myself. I—I—”

She amazed him by beginning to shake. Not just a slight tremor, but a real shaking, like someone shivering from intolerable cold.

He seized her upper arms in concern. He could feel her muscles jerking beneath her raincoat’s thin fabric. Her lower lip worked helplessly, her chin trembled, and he couldn’t tell if her eyes were moist from tears or from the fine rain.

“Are you okay?” he demanded, leaning nearer.

“Y-y-you’ve been very kind, b-b-but—” She couldn’t seem to get any more words out. He slipped one arm around her, afraid her knees were about to buckle.

“Miss, I’m going to tell your manager about this incident. And if that fool harasses you again, call the police. I mean it.”

She tried to disengage herself, but when she took a step backward, she swayed, as if she couldn’t quite support herself. Instead, she sagged forward, clutching the lapels of his rain jacket. She buried her face against his chest. Her back heaved as if she were sobbing silently.

But only for the briefest of moments. Then, as if by sheer willpower, she righted herself again, drew back and looked him in the eye. “I’m terribly sorry. It’s not him.” She nodded in the direction the busboy had fled. “I’m absolutely okay. Just some—an illness in the family. I’m terribly embarrassed. I apologize. And thank you again. But I’m fine.”

Before he knew it, she’d slipped from his grasp, opened the passenger door, and was sliding into the car beside her friend. She smiled at him, and there was something in that smile that nearly broke his heart.

The car drove off, and he stood in the mist, looking after the disappearing taillights.

Chapter Two

The rain started to drizzle harder as Marie and Izzy left the parking lot. It was just after midnight. Izzy stopped at a light and said, “What was that all about?”

“Butch groped me again,” Marie said in a flat, no-nonsense voice. “I stomped on his foot. That’s why he came after me in the parking lot. Mick and that other man saw it happen. They must have realized Butch wanted to get even.”

“So that handsome guy comes to your rescue?” Izzy asked. “God, I wish Butch’d pinch me so I could stomp on him.”

Marie said nothing, just sat lower in the seat.

Izzy cast her a sideways glance. “That handsome guy? He was watching you tonight.”

“I didn’t notice,” Marie said. And she hadn’t.

“Not notice? How could you not notice? He’s been in the papers, on the telly.”

“I don’t have time for the papers or telly,” Marie murmured, gazing out at the darkness.

“He’s a high muckety-muck in horse racing. American. He’s going to run for some horse-thingy president. Against Jacko Bullock.”

“Uck.” Marie shuddered. Bullock turned up several times a year at the Scepter during the racing season. She thought he looked like and acted like a pig. “Bullock’s nasty. He’s worse than Butch any day. He propositioned me right at the table one night, in front of three other men. I almost poured his drink on his head. I’d have loved to.”

“Well, he’s powerful,” Izzy said. “He’ll gobble that poor Yank up and spit out his bones.”

“Sad but true. The Yank seemed like a nice fellow.” He had, she thought vaguely. An extremely nice fellow.

“I guess,” Izzy rejoined with heavy irony. “And that’s why you ended up in his arms? I thought he was going to plant a big smoochie on you.”

Marie shrugged irritably. “Look, I went wobbly. I had a bad day.”

“Oh, chook,” Izzy said. “I’m sorry. Is it your mom?”

“Yes,” Marie said, her throat tight. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

And Izzy, who had a kind and sensitive heart, asked no more.

But at home, Marie had to think about her mother. She could think of nothing else. She took Colette’s envelope, sat on the edge of the bed and forced her hands to stay steady as she opened the flap.

She unfolded a sheet of paper, a letter. It was dated just over two years ago and signed “Willadene Gates.” It began:

My Dear Miss Colette Lafayette,

Thank you for writing me, for I think I can answer your questions, as years ago when I was not yet 17 yrs. of age I become an attendant at a home for unwed mothers.

A high-priced place, it promised total discretion, if you get my meaning. I do remember your birth, for your birthday is the very same day as my own, March 9!

“Your mother’s name was Louisa Fairchild. She was 16 yrs. old, unwed & pregnant, & come from quite the posh family.

And I remember you, even after all these years. I said to myself, how could anyone give up such a darling infant? But that girl refused to even speak of you. Cold as ice, she was.

In a few days, her parents come and took her home. Louisa F. walked out of the ward with never a backward look. She never even spoke to her own parents!

Now she’s grown up and grown old. I see her name in the news. She’s rich as Midas and lives on a horse station near Hunter Valley—very hoity-toity! She never married and don’t get along with any relatives, I hear tell.

Should you find her, and she recognizes you as her own, I hope you will not forget your friend, Willadene, what give you this info, as I am now elderly and living in reduced circumstances (although as you see the memory is still sharp!)

Your friend, the first to ever hold & kiss you,

Willadene Gates

At the bottom, Colette had weakly scribbled a note.

I wrote Willadene Gates two months later. The letter came back marked “deceased.” I didn’t know what to do next. My feelings are still mixed about whether I should try to find out more or let the matter go.

Marie, I put some of my nail clippings in a little plastic bag. I pricked my finger and let some blood fall on a piece of cloth. I put them in an envelope in my jewelry box. If we’re related to Louisa Fairchild, your DNA and mine should match hers, if I understand what they say on the telly.

It would be good to know the truth, at long last, but I was never brave enough to search further. I should have done it for your sake and apologize that I did not. I leave it in your capable hands.

Your proud and loving mother.

Marie read the letter again, disbelief mingling with suspicion.

How had Colette found this Gates person? Could the woman be trusted? Her words had a slippery coyness that oozed with hunger for reward.

Marie rose and went to her mother’s bedroom and opened the shabby velvet jewelry box on the dresser. An envelope lay in the box’s bottom drawer.

Almost fearfully, she opened it. Inside was exactly what Colette had said, a little bag of nail parings and a square of white cotton with three drops of blood.

She also found a second, smaller paper envelope. Opening it, she saw a newspaper photograph with a short article. The article, eight months old, reported that charges had been dropped against Louisa Fairchild, 80. She’d been accused of shooting and wounding her neighbor Sam Whittleson, 61.

The short piece left Marie even more stunned. As a very young woman, Louisa Fairchild had apparently abandoned her daughter. As a very old woman, she’d shot her elderly neighbor. Such a relative didn’t seem promising.

But the picture of Louisa Fairchild shocked her more. She saw a lean, imperious woman staring straight and almost arrogantly at the camera. Her mouth was a rigid, unsmiling line. Yet her resemblance to Colette made Marie’s nerve ends prickle and chilled her stomach.

Louisa Fairchild still had wide eyes, shaped like Colette’s. She had Colette’s high cheekbones, slender nose and cleft chin. And Marie herself shared these features, too, except for the cleft chin.

She was suddenly overcome with an almost irrational curiosity. The Fairchild woman lived in Hunter Valley. Not long ago, Marie’s uncle had gone to work in that very region. Could he know anything about this woman?

She went back to her room, snatched up her phone and dialed her uncle’s latest number. It was after midnight, but Reynard was a night owl. He answered after only a few rings. “Marie!” he exclaimed. “How are you, love? And how’s my dear Colie?”

Marie heard background noise and supposed he was in a pub. “Rennie, Mama’s not well. She’s very weak—and she doesn’t look good—I’m afraid for her.”

Reynard’s voice went serious. “She’s taken a turn for the worse?”

“I sense it. She’s getting weaker. The doctors don’t seem able to help her.”

Reynard spat out several colorful oaths concerning doctors. Then his tone grew solemn again. “Should I come? Would it help if I was with you?”

“Rennie, you’ve got a job. You just can’t walk away.”

“I can if I need to be with her and you, pet. No man owns Rennie Lafayette.”

Marie feared she’d sounded too alarmist. “Wait until I know more. But Reynard?”

“What, love?”

“Mama gave me a letter that a woman wrote her. This woman said she’d worked in a home for unwed mothers and remembers when Mama was born. And she named Mama’s birth mother. Do you know anything about this?”

“Stone the crows!” he said in surprise. “I never—she never said a word to me. When did she find this out?”

“Over two years ago. And the woman died shortly after. I don’t know how to check this out. Or even if I should. Mama’s mother might be dead, too, by now. But she lives or lived in Hunter Valley. Have you ever heard of a Louisa Fairchild?”

“Heard of her?” Reynard demanded. “Crikey, I know her! She’s supposed to be Colie’s mom? Hold on. I’m going outside for a bit of privacy.”

Marie heard him tell someone to deal him out; he had a family emergency. The background noise faded. She pictured him stepping, alone, into the Southern night.

“There,” he said. “Now—Louisa Fairchild is supposed to be Colie’s mum?”

“So said the Gates woman.”

“That’s a jolt. Colie’s such a nice woman. So much for the bloody theory of heredity.”

“Louisa Fairchild’s not a nice woman?”

“The old girl’s a snorter, she is. But now that I think on it, she does bear a certain likeness to Colie. It’s truth.”

Marie remembered the photo and somehow she managed to feel both numbed and anxious at once. “You really know her?”

“I live at a neighboring horse station, not far from her. I’m the handyman there. I’ve actually been in the old girl’s house. Fixed the lock on her famous gun cabinet. She’s an old boiler, she is, a right old hen. But I get some smiles out of her—pruny smiles, but I get ’em.”

Marie didn’t doubt it. If Reynard put his mind to it, he could make a cat laugh. She said, “Gun cabinet? Mama had a clipping about Louisa Fairchild. Something about her shooting a man—do you know about it?”

“All New South Wales knows about it. She said the bloke stormed into her house, raving about water rights, and attacked her. Conveniently, she was cleaning a gun at the time. Said it went off accidental-like.”

“And people believe that?”

“Some do. And some say she got off the hook because she had more money than Whittleson. She could out-lawyer him.”

“What do you think?” Marie asked, frowning in uncertainty.

“I think it’s odd to be cleaning a loaded gun. It’s a point Whittleson’s lawyer never brought up. But lawyers? Pah—they’re about as useful as a third armpit.”

Reynard always resented authority and officials; unlike Colette, he was a born rebel, and it was part of his raffish charm. Marie tried to nudge him further into the subject.

“You’ve met her. Do you think she could shoot somebody?”

“She’s a scrapper. And she can shoot. Rumor says she can blast the head off a snake at thirty meters. Still,” Reynard said silkily, “she’s rich as a queen. No known direct descendants. If she’s your gran, she might open her scrawny arms to you in welcome.”

“I might not open mine,” Marie said. She liked nothing she’d learned about this woman.

“She’s a hard one to know,” he returned. “Not a happy person. Lonesome, I think.”

Reynard’s take on Louisa confused Marie. He sounded critical one moment, sympathetic the next. But he was often mercurial; that was his nature.

“I wonder why Mama waited so long to tell me.”

“I don’t know, pet. But from what you say, I think I’ll drive right up there. She may be franker with me than with you about Louisa Fairchild. I am her baby brother, eh?”

Marie protested, but Reynard insisted. “Today’s Monday. If I start early tomorrow, I can make it in two days. Don’t argue, dear heart. My womenfolk need me!”

My womenfolk need me! He sounded so swashbuckling, she almost smiled.

“You’re sure you won’t lose your job?” she asked.

“Who’d be fool enough to fire a jack-of-all-trades like me?” he said with the same bravado. “I’m indispensable, if I do say so.”

Marie smiled. Although Colette worried about her footloose brother, he always cheered her as no one else could. “Then come to us,” she said.

But shortly after 3:00 a.m., Marie’s phone rang. It was the hospital, calling to inform her that Colette had died in her sleep.

Chapter Three

Marie was stunned, but didn’t cry. What she’d feared most had happened, but it seemed unreal. It was as if she was trapped in a terrible, incomprehensible dream.

She phoned Reynard, who sounded stricken and said he’d be there as soon as he could.

The next morning, zombielike, Marie arranged for her mother’s remains to be cremated. She had it done as soon as possible, without ceremony, for that had been Colette’s wish.

Then, somehow, she went to her classes, still feeling trapped in the numb, unbelievable nightmare. That night she waited tables at the Scepter, functioning on autopilot. But under her business-as-usual facade, she was in a maelstrom of emotion.

All of Marie’s life, it had been the two of them, she and Colette. When the Lafayette family’s fortune failed, Colette went to work as soon as she could and had never stopped. Reynard had left Darwin. Some called him a drifter, but he called himself “a free spirit.”

He returned to visit two or three times a year, and then he’d be off again to wherever his whim took him. He was clever enough to always find a job, too restless ever to keep it long.

By her early thirties, Colette was working as a cook and housekeeper. Lonely and shy, she tried always to please. Finally, in the household of a professor whose wife had left him, she tried too hard. He easily seduced her.

Colette soon found herself pregnant—and unemployed. She didn’t tell Marie who her father was until Marie was ten, and the man had been dead five years.

He’d never acknowledged Marie’s existence, and Colette had never asked him for a thing. So from the beginning of Marie’s life, she and Colette had been a family of two, and Colette had been not only her mother but her closest companion.

That night, the first night that Colette was gone, the stupid busboy, Butch, made a move to grope Marie again.

“Where’s your fancy toff tonight?” he sneered. “Want a real man?” She looked at him in disgust, her expression cold as Antarctica.

“Why are you so uppity?” he demanded. “Think you got the crown jewels between your legs? You’re the same as any other woman.”

She turned and walked away. She was not the same as any other woman. All she knew for certain about Colette’s mother was that the woman had foolishly trusted a man. Result? She’d ended up unmarried and pregnant.

Colette made exactly the same mistake. Result? She’d ended up unmarried and pregnant—but she’d not been one to give up her child.

Two illegitimate generations were enough.

Long ago, Marie vowed she wouldn’t repeat the pattern. She intended never to “fall in love” or into any man’s bed. Ever. Marriage? Married women could be as lonely as single ones. Sometimes lonelier.

It had been completely unlike her, nearly collapsing into a stranger’s arms last night. She wondered if she’d done it because she’d known Colette was dying. Had she known that from the moment Colette put the letter in her hand?

She wanted this empty, unhappy day to be over.

This, too, will pass away, she thought. But it didn’t pass soon enough.

She glanced at her watch, wishing it were midnight. But it was only 7:00 p.m.

On the grounds of Mick’s stud farm, Makem’s Thoroughbreds, Andrew glanced at his watch and wished the night was older and the party over. But it was only 7:00 p.m.

A gorgeous brunette in a tight red sundress leaned against a palm tree watching him, sultry invitation in her gaze. Andrew ignored her. He intended to keep on ignoring her.

A man in the public eye, a man campaigning for an important office, should not fool with women. He knew he shouldn’t have impulsively embraced the waitress in the parking lot last night…yet, still, for some reason, the memory of her rain-misted face haunted him.

But he needed to watch his step. Especially when his opponent had large media holdings—including some of the country’s most ruthless scandal sheets. And Andrew’s family had just emerged from an alleged breeding crime that made headlines around the world.

Jacko Bullock loved to sling mud. Sexy mud sold best, even if it was lies. Jacko would be delighted to find dirt on Andrew, especially sensational dirt.

Andrew didn’t intend to supply him with any. Not a rustle of impropriety. Not a whisper, a wisp, a breath.

Mick Makem, who was hosting the barbecue, gave him a sly nudge. “That black-haired beauty over there’s giving you the eye.” His freckled face split in a grin.

“Not interested,” Andrew answered, taking a sip of beer. “People are taking pictures here. And she looks like trouble.”

Mick jabbed with a sharper nudge. “Lovely trouble. All work and no play make Jack a dull guy.”

“Better a dull guy than a fall guy,” Andrew muttered.

“Oh,” said Mick, understanding. “Bullock, you mean.”

“Right.”

Bullock still repeated the accusations about the American Prestons’ breeding fraud. Even though the Prestons had been cleared of any wrong doing in the DNA fraud that had ended the career of their star stallion, Leopold’s Legacy, Bullock kept resurrecting memories of the old rumors and implying new evidence might soon emerge.

Bullock’s point, Andrew knew, was to keep the Preston family firmly linked to the word scandal. And what could be more damaging to a candidate than a good old-fashioned sex scandal?

How many American politicians had lost their reputations, even their careers, by not keeping their pants zipped? Count ’em, Andrew thought.

So he had grimly vowed to stay celibate for the duration of the election. Here in Australia, he was the tall, dark, single American from a rich family with a famous stable. Beautiful women signaled him they were ready for kissing and a great deal more. He’d been approached by so many lookers, it made him suspicious.

He knew he was considered handsome. But he was also smart enough to know that he hadn’t become as sexy as a rock star as soon as he stepped on the Australian shore. And he knew looks weren’t particularly an advantage against the homely, hearty and proudly homegrown Bullock. Bullock looked and acted like somebody’s plain and stocky loudmouthed uncle, Australia’s answer to a Good Ol’ Boy.

Andrew didn’t come across as a Good Ol’ Boy. He was long and lean, with chiseled features, brown-black hair and deep blue eyes, and he had a slew of college degrees. Next to the rotund Bullock, he didn’t look homey and jovial; he looked aristocratic and privileged.

Unlike Bullock, he wasn’t a glad-hander or a baby-kisser. He didn’t slap backs or lavish smarmy compliments on everybody he met. When he talked about issues, he talked about them with passion, but his passion was measured and earnest. He didn’t pound the podium like Bullock. He didn’t shout or sputter or chortle or wave his arms or tell raunchy jokes.

The result was that, although some people thought Andrew the serious, committed and perfect candidate, others believed he didn’t have a chance in hell. And tonight, he was haunted by a sensation usually foreign to him: he felt isolated.

Mick’s barbecue wasn’t just for political reasons. This was Andrew’s birthday, his thirty-sixth. Turning thirty-six was sobering. He’d unwittingly crossed some psychological line he hadn’t known existed.

Most of his friends had settled jobs, wives and children. He had a campaign.

He was now closer to forty than to thirty…and in the hurly-burly of entering the election, he’d begun to feel disconnected from his real self. He had to watch every word, every action, even every facial expression and bit of body language, especially here in Jacko-Land.

Stop obsessing, man, he commanded. You’ve got principles, and you committed to run for the presidency. Forget the private stuff. Fight your heart out.

So he set his jaw and put on his public persona again. He smiled. He rejoined the party. He had indulged himself in something like a midlife crisis for almost two minutes, and that was two damned minutes more than enough.

He amiably cuffed Mick’s arm and complimented him on the feast spread before the crowd. Wine from a local vineyard flowed generously and cold beers seemed to number in the hundreds.

“Want to see something really delish?” Mick asked with a wink. “Look who’s coming your way.”

Andrew saw the beautiful brunette making her way toward him, her eyes now fastened on his. Her red sundress was cut low over a startling pair of breasts, and she sparkled with jewelry. She was almost too stunning to be real.

She looked like a model or a beauty queen or a starlet. She certainly didn’t look as though she belonged at a suburban political barbecue. Distrust edged into Andrew’s mind. “Mick,” he said, “do you even know who she is?”

“No,” Mick admitted. “She’s a guest of one of the breeders. But it’s you she’s got her eye on. She’s been trying to catch your attention all night.”

My God, thought Andrew, could she be a plant? Somebody the Bullock people had sent to entice him?

Photographers, press people, some with video cams, milled through the crowd.

The brunette smiled at him and nodded in more than friendly greeting. He smiled back mechanically.

“Hi, there,” she purred. “My name’s Sylvia. I just want to say I totally agree with everything you say. I heard you’re going to stay with your cousin down in Hunter Valley. I get to Hunter Valley now and then.”

“I make my base with him in Hunter Valley,” Andrew said. “But I won’t be there much. Have to travel a lot. Excuse me. I see somebody I have to talk to. Nice to meet you.”

He nodded, a curt movement that signaled goodbye. He turned his back on the woman and left her looking piqued.

Maybe he was being paranoid, but that might be good. No involvement with women—especially one like that—until the election was over. That was that, and it should be gospel.

But suddenly he remembered his strange attraction to the blond waitress. He wondered why he couldn’t forget her. Biology could toss even the most cautious man a curveball.

He was more cautious than most because he had to be. He pushed the blonde to the back of his highly efficient mind.

Almost.

But there was another woman, only a memory now, a lively voice that sometimes spoke to him that no one heard except him.

He gazed up at the night. Darwin’s cloudy sky showed an obscured, gray pearlized moon. Suddenly the voice in his memory, that long-ago woman’s voice, said “There’s a door in the moon—if you can find it. And if you open it, you find out the future.”

For an instant, he saw the past instead, and another young woman, small and spirited like the waitress. Kellie Maguire.

He’d met her his first year at the University of Kentucky. When she’d told him about the door in the moon, at first he thought she was nuts or trying to grab attention. No. She meant it. He finally asked if she’d ever found the door into the moon.

She’d laughed and said she’d never looked for the future; she was too busy with the present. And she was.

She wasn’t like anybody he’d ever known before. She had a sassy air about her and long red hair, always tied back in an unruly ponytail. She was sweet and cheery and as independent as hell.

Unlike him, she didn’t come from a family with money. She was a scholarship student, majoring in art and literature. He thought that was stupid. How could anybody make money that way?

She laughed good-naturedly at his business major. How was he ever going to have fun if he didn’t learn anything except money? “Hey, Preston,” she teased. “Live, why don’t you?”

She didn’t give a damn for fashion, and she was so original and self-disciplined he was in awe of her. He’d only seen her cry once, when she’d learned her grandmother was dying. She broke down in tears for almost a full minute, and he’d held her. Then she’d pulled herself together and tried to act as if nothing had happened. She’d never spoken again of that moment.

He was secretly shy and, though he hated to admit it, hide-bound. She challenged him, she fascinated him, she could get him talking half the night about things he’d never even thought of before.

She enticed him to movies he never would have seen on his own, challenged him to read books he normally never would have opened. She’d changed him, and by the end of his freshman year, he was falling in love with her, unconventional as she was.

And then she was gone. Forever. A swimming accident over the summer. A drunken motorboater didn’t see her, and ran into her, killing her almost instantly. And Andrew hadn’t come close to loving anyone again since.

Now, for that strange instant, the door in the moon opened, and he saw her standing there, with a smile and her untidy red hair dancing in the cloudy breeze.

“Christ, Preston,” she said in his mind. “Now you want to be president of ITRF?”

That question raised a dozen more in his heart.

“Yeah,” he said to her silently. “Very funny, huh? I want to be president…”

“Then go for it,” she answered with her sidelong grin. “But is that all you want? Are you sure? Isn’t there something missing?”

And then her image disappeared, and he was staring up at a clouded, doorless moon.

At midnight that night, Jacko Bullock reached across the sleeping body of his mistress and picked up the receiver. “What?” he demanded. He was in a rotten mood because he’d just dozed off, but he hadn’t quite managed to make love to Tarita, who now slept beside him, all silken and exquisite and useless. He needed a new woman again.

He heard raspy breathing, and that meant Feeney. Feeney was his contact, his liaison in Jacko’s covert war on Andrew Preston. Feeney was a general in this war, one whose face he’d never seen, but who’d been supplied by very dependable allies.

Jacko had a public campaign for president of the ICRF. And he also had an extremely well-hidden private one, as complex as a huge spiderweb. Feeney wasn’t at its center, but he was close enough, close enough.

“Preston steered clear of her,” said a man’s rasping voice. “The dark one. She said he smiled, he nodded. But he didn’t let her get near him.”

Jacko swore. “What is he, a pansy? Sylvia’s gorgeous.”

Hell, he thought, she’d kept him satisfied for almost three months—that’s how good she was. He’d sent orders for her to wear something red and low-cut. And plenty of diamonds. He’d given her diamonds. Cheap ones, but they’d kept her happy.

“He’s not a pansy,” Feeney said. “He likes women, all right. I think he just was leery of her. Maybe she’s not his type.”

Jacko swore again. “Not his type? She’s the type for any man with a set of working goolies. For a while, at least.”

“Well,” Feeney said hesitantly, “she’s not subtle, y’ know? From what we know, he doesn’t go for the glam thing. No super-models. His tastes are hard to predict.”

If Sylvia’d got Preston in bed, I’d’ve given her good diamonds, Jacko thought.

He stared down at Tarita’s lovely, sleeping form and wondered if she’d suit the Yank. If she could turn the trick, he’d give her up in a minute.

“Preston’s human,” said Feeney in his scratchy voice. “This country’s full of beautiful women, and he’s a long time here. And he isn’t made of iron.”

Jacko snorted. “Then watch him. When he finds a piece, she’s dead meat, by God. And he’ll be done. Ruined.”

“He’s being watched,” said Feeney. “He’s being—”

Jacko, disgusted that the bejeweled Sylvia had failed, hung up. He stared down at Tarita, shadowy on the wine-red satin sheet. Should he shake her out of sleep and try again?

No. He was too tired, too disgusted. God, he wished this election were over and he could get on with his life. So much more lay ahead: more power, more prestige—and far more money.

He hoped Feeney was right, and Preston would hurry up and find himself a tasty tart. And then? God help the scumbag. And the unlucky dirty little girl he settled on.

Feeney would help him take care of that, too.

The next morning in Darwin, Marie still moved like an automaton. And like an automaton, she did not feel. She was numb and vaguely wondered if she was in shock.

She managed to get through the day because Colette would have wanted her to.

Reynard arrived late that evening, before Marie got home from Scepter. He’d parked his battered blue truck in front of her apartment and waited in the driver’s seat. As soon as he saw Marie, he leaped out of the truck to hug her tightly.

She clung to him with real affection. He’d always been kind to her and Colette, and Colette had adored him. Even though she fretted over him, he could always make her laugh with a funny story or a cheeky song.

“My little love,” he said against Marie’s ear. “Our Colie’s gone where there’s no more pain. Had she been born my blood sister, I couldn’t have loved her more.”

Marie drew back and studied his face, shadowy in the apartment’s outdoor lights. He was in his early sixties, but still surprisingly handsome. The only apparent flaw in his health was that he wore two hearing aids. He’d suffered for years from ringing in his ears, and had begun to go deaf in his late thirties.

He was tall, and his body was straight and strong. He had dark blond hair, wavy and going gray. His brows were darker, his lashes bronze-colored and surprisingly long.

In spite of the lashes, his face was strong-boned and years of sunburn had lined his skin, especially with laugh lines. His eyes were medium blue and looked lazy, heavy-lidded. They made him seem as if he was ready to nod off, but she knew his gaze missed little.

She looked up at him. “I’m glad you’re here. Nobody else would understand.”

He rumpled her short hair. “I know. We’re an odd lot, aren’t we? Tell me, duck, when’s the service? I’ll have to go to the Salvos and get me a suit.”

Marie looked him in the eye. “There’s no service. She was cremated yesterday. That’s how she wanted it. We can get the ashes tomorrow. She wanted them scattered in the ocean.”

Reynard’s body stiffened, and he stared down at her with displeasure. “Cremated? Burned like rubbish?”

“She never told you. She knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“You did it without me?”

“She didn’t want you to have to be there. She thought it…would hurt.”

“And what about you, miss? You were there all by yourself?”

She swallowed hard, not wanting to remember. “Yes. I didn’t want her to be alone.”

He shook his head in what seemed a mixture of dismay and grudging admiration. “But you were alone. Didn’t you feel wretched?”

“I didn’t feel much of anything,” she said honestly. “Rennie, it’s like an invisible suit of armor fell from the sky and clamped itself on me. It won’t let me feel yet.”

“Ah. I know the sensation.” He looped his arm around her shoulders. “Maybe now that I’m here, you can come back to yourself. Let’s go inside.”

As she unlocked the door, he said, jokingly, “I hope you’ve got a drop of something for you old uncle. The long drive made me thirsty.”

She nodded sadly. “I bought a bottle of port.”

“Then let’s have a glass. It’ll loosen you up. Your body feels tight as a knot, my girl. You should come back to Hunter Valley with me. Get away from this place for a while.”

He was steering her into the living room, but she stopped and stared at him in alarm. “I can’t leave here,” she protested. “I have classes. I have a job. I have this apartment.”

“Details,” he said with a careless air. “I have a proposition for you.”

“What?” she asked suspiciously.

He gave her his most winning smile. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. After…you know. Now let us drink a toast to our Colie. And that old bat Louisa. Who might be your granny.”

She could no longer think clearly. She didn’t want to think at all about Louisa Fairchild, only Colette. “Yes,” she said. “A toast. She deserves that.”

Marie had reserved a small hire boat. Reynard, of course, could pilot it, for he truly was a jack-of-all-trades. After her classes the next day, they took the boat out into the harbor to a pretty and private spot that Colette had always loved.

They said their own silent goodbyes and released the ashes into the waves. Then they returned to shore. And nothing, to Marie, would ever be the same.

Afterward, she and Reynard sat in a pub near the harbor. Reynard had a whiskey, but Marie barely touched her wine.

“Oh, knock it back,” Reynard urged her. “You’ve been through bloody hell, my girl. Drink a bit more. It’ll help you to sleep.”

“Sleep?” she asked dubiously.

“I’ll drive us back, and you should take a nap,” he said. “You look all fagged out. You’re not Superwoman, y’know.”

She saw the logic, but still she didn’t want the wine.

“You remember what I said last night?” Reynard asked. “About you coming back to Hunter Valley with me?”

“Remember what I said? I have commitments here.”

“Perhaps you have commitments there,” he argued. “To your mother, for instance.”

“Mama?” she asked, puzzled.

“Yes,” he said, leaning closer, staring intently at her. “She gave you the letter from Willadene Gates, didn’t she? She expected you to deal with it. Knew she didn’t have the strength to do it herself, poor thing. Wanted to know the truth. Knew the end was near, I’ll warrant. Thought it was time to put things in your hands. Trusted you, she did.”

“She didn’t know if anything should be done,” Marie objected.

“She kept the letter, didn’t she?” he challenged. “She gave it to you, didn’t she? Read her note. She practically begs you. She thought she failed you by not following through. But that you could handle it. And so handle it you must.”

Marie felt a bit dizzied by his reasoning. “What difference does it make if Mama was Louisa Fairchild’s daughter? I mean, it can’t mean anything now that Mama’s—”

She found it hard to say the word dead.

Reynard looked both saddened and angry. “If the Fairchild woman had been kinder, Colie might not be dead. Years of poverty ground her down. But Fairchild just cast out Colie and let the fates take her. God, I’d show a dog more kindness.”

“Rennie, she probably thought that Mama was going to a good, safe home. Mama loved the Lafayettes. Didn’t you?”

“I was a mere toddler when they lost everything. I don’t remember the good times. No, I’ve no happy childhood memories. They couldn’t even afford to get my ears fixed. My life might’ve run a different course if that had happened.”

Colette would agree to this, Marie knew. Reynard said that he did poorly in school because of his tinnitus, the constant ringing in his ears. He was bright, but he knew he’d never get through college, so never tried.

Instead he’d drifted across Australia, back and forth, up and down. He’d lived that way for decades, and Colette had always feared he’d die that way, aimless, rambling and poor.

Marie looked at him in concern. He raised his chin and said, “I think you owe it to her to find out about the old Fairchild girl. And who knows? Maybe you could put things to right.”

“To right?” she repeated, frowning slightly.

“Maybe Louisa was forced to give away her baby and that’s why she’s so sour. You could bring her happiness. And find some yourself. Colette would want that for you. You know she would.

“Besides,” he added, “the old girl might settle a bit of money on you. God knows you and Colie never had help from any corner.”

“I don’t want that woman’s money,” Marie said firmly. “I can take care of myself.”

Reynard shrugged. “I wish I could say the same. If she was my gran, I’d feel her out. She might at least give me enough for better hearing aids. Why, there’s even doctors in England and America that say they can cure tinnitus.” He smiled philosophically. “But I’ve borne it this long, haven’t I? I can bear it for the few more years I’ve got.”

The few more years I’ve got. The words struck Marie hard. When she was young, she thought Colette would live forever. And Rennie, vital, mischievous, clever Rennie—why, if he could live by his wits, he’d never have to die. But he was aging. And mortal.

“It seems to me,” he said, “if she’s your gran, you might close a long, sad chapter in your family history. Bring about a sort of healing. A sort of—fairness. And forgiveness.”

Marie could say nothing.

“What do you say? Come back with me,” he urged. “It would do you good to get away for a while. You’ve worked yourself half to death with your school and your job and caring for Colie. Will you think about it at least? For me?”

Her head swam, and she felt emotionally exhausted. “I’ll think about it,” she said without conviction.

“Good girl,” he said with a disarming smile. He patted her hand. “Good girl.”

The next morning Reynard kept after her. He had an answer for her every argument. Perhaps Louisa would have helped Colette and her family—if only she’d known what had become of her daughter.

What was wrong with going to Fairchild Acres, just to see if Marie might like the old girl? “You could work there, you know. Observe her. She lost an assistant cook right before I left for here. You’d be the perfect replacement.”

“Go in as a spy?” Marie demanded, appalled. “And if I like her, pop up and say, ‘And by the way, I’m your long-lost granddaughter?’ No! It’s awful. It’d never work.”

Reynard then explained for a full hour why it would work. “Again, if you don’t like her, she never needs to know. You can leave and never look back.”

“I have to take my finals.”

“Take them early. You’ve got fine grades. Tell ’em your mother’s died and you’ve got family business to tend.”

“I have a job.”

“Colette said they think the world of you. They’d give you a leave of absence. Your apartment? Sublet it. It’s an excellent location, the uni so close.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t not do it. It may be the chance of your lifetime.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve got to get ready for work.”

“Work, that’s all you ever do. You’ll end up like your mother. And she’d hate that.”

He made her head spin. She was glad to escape to the Scepter.

When she came home again, Reynard was watching television. He switched it off with the remote control. “Sit down with me,” he said. “I got news.”

Now what? she thought. But she sat. “Yes?”

“I phoned Mrs. Lipton,” he said with his most benevolent smile.

“And who, pray tell, is Mrs. Lipton?”

“Louisa Fairchild’s housekeeper. Lovely woman. I see her almost every day.”

“Why do you see her so often?” asked Marie. “And why’d you phone her?”

“I bring her eggs. The old girl—Miss Fairchild—likes her eggs fresh, but she won’t keep chickens. Afraid of birds. Was chased by a goose as a child.”

This was the first humanizing detail Marie had heard about the woman.

“I called Mrs. Lipton to ask if she was still in search of an assistant cook. She is.”

“Reynard…” Marie said in a warning tone.

“She’d found nobody suitable yet. So I told her about you, that you have your certificate in cookery and hospitality from the uni, that you work at the Scepter, that your mum was a cook, too, and she taught you to make wonderful desserts and pastries. She said you sounded perfect.”

“Reynard,” she exclaimed in shock. “How could you?”

“I told her you need a change of place with your mum just dead and all. So tomorrow just e-mail her some references or whatever. I didn’t tell her you were workin’ on a second certificate. Didn’t want you to sound overqualified. I told her it’d take you about two weeks to make arrangements to leave here. She said fine.”

She stood, torn between laughing or exploding in anger. “No. And that’s an end to it.”

That was not an end to it. He argued, he cajoled, he flattered, insisted, urged, coaxed, wheedled, pleaded and finally goaded. It was when he called her a coward that she snapped.

“You’re afraid,” he taunted. “You’ve never had an adventure in your life. I defy you to name a single one. You’re a lovely young woman, but you’re becoming a drudge. Now adventure comes knocking, and you pretend you’re not at home.”

Marie, sad, exhausted, worn down, finally agreed. She went to bed, wondering if she’d gone insane.

Reynard had to go back to Hunter Valley, and Marie, still filled with doubt, scurried to put her affairs in order. Always efficient, she’d finished her arrangements in just over a week.

Two days after he got back to Lochlain, Reynard phoned to say there’d been a spot of trouble at his employer’s, a stable fire, but not to be alarmed by anything she heard on the news; the fire had been contained. Nobody had been seriously hurt. All was well.

Marie, who had no time to follow current news, took him at his word and told him she’d see him soon. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m buying my bus ticket today.”

“No you’re not,” Reynard told her. “I got you a plane ticket to Newcastle. It’s only a skip and jump from there to Fairchild Acres. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

His generosity stunned her. He couldn’t afford such a gesture. “Reynard, you can’t. That’s too much money. I can’t allow it.”

“The ticket’s in the mail, duck. And like a duck, my duck, you will fly. Think of it not as a gift for you, but for Colie. It’d make her happy.”

She bit her lip so that she wouldn’t cry. “Thank you, Rennie. I’ll pay you back some day.”

“You’ll pay me back by coming here. And that’s your gift for Colie. To find out the truth about her and Louisa Fairchild.”

PART TWO
Hunter Valley, New South Wales

March

Chapter Four

On a morning in early March, Marie found herself in a cramped economy seat on the cheapest airline out of Darwin. It was small and a bit shabby, but she was thrilled, for she’d never before been on a plane.

The inside of it looked no more glamorous than an elderly bus, but it was a magical thing, for it quickly whisked her up into the clouds and in an unbelievably short time, she was hundreds of kilometers away, in the Newcastle, New South Wales, airport, hugging Reynard.

He flinched at her tight embrace, and when she kissed his cheek, her lips touched a long cut just starting to heal. “Oof.” He drew back from her slightly, and she realized that under his work shirt she could feel something suspiciously like bandages.

“Rennie, what’s wrong?” she demanded.

“Oh, the bloody fire,” he said dismissively. “Cracked a few ribs, that’s all. Don’t worry, love. I’m a tough old bird, I am.”

Instantly she suspected his injury—and the fire—had been more serious than he’d let on. “Reynard, tell me more about this whole thing. Were you in the hospital?”

“Only overnight. Come on. Let’s go find your luggage. Ah, it’s lovely you look. Flying agrees with you?”

“It was wonderful,” she answered. “But I want to know more about what happened to you. And about the fire.”

As he steered her toward the baggage claim area, she saw that he carried himself gingerly and walked with a slight limp. “Rennie,” she prodded, “what happened?”

“A horse panicked, rammed me against a wall,” he told her. “That’s all. The scratch? The wall had a nail in it. And for a few seconds, so did I. A bit of a bashing, nothing life-threatening, I assure you.”

“And the fire? How bad was it?”

Gruffly he explained that in terms of money, the fire was a disaster for Lochlain Racing, where he worked for Tyler Preston. Several horses had died, and many more had been permanently damaged by smoke inhalation. There was one human fatality, a body that had finally been identified as old Sam Whittleson.

“Sam Whittleson?” Marie echoed in disbelief. “That man Louisa shot?”

“The very one. Somebody killed him this time. They found a gun half-melted in a burned fertilizer barrel, and a lab’s trying to identify it. The cops say the fire was arson, and—”

“Wait,” Marie interrupted. “Arson? Murder? You told me nobody was seriously hurt.”

“When we talked, I didn’t think anybody was,” Reynard said defensively.

“Who killed him? Why?”

“Nobody knows,” Reynard said with an impatient shrug. “Anyway, the authorities said the fire was set, and some yobs whisper Tyler Preston himself set it. To hide that he was drugging his horses.

“But,” Reynard said flatly, “he didn’t drug horses, and he set no fire. That’s the trouble living in the sticks. Too much gossip, too many rumors. Now, take Louisa Fairchild. Some even say she done Sam in—ridiculous. An eighty-year-old woman steals out in the wee hours. She lures a man who wouldn’t trust her for a second into a neighbor’s barn? And she guns him down? Not bloody likely.”

The luggage carousel buzzed, and suitcases began to cascade onto the moving belt. Her bicycle appeared with a clatter. “God’s holy trousers,” Reynard exclaimed. “You brought that bloody old wreck of a bike?”

“I have to get around. I don’t have a car.”

“You’ll frighten horses,” he grumbled. “Nobody rides a bike up there. You ride something with four wheels or four legs, and that’s it.”

“I’m not afraid to be different,” she countered, lifting her chin.

He shook his head. “You never were. And I don’t know if that’s your blessing or your curse. Indeed I don’t.”

Reynard refused her help in loading his old blue pickup, even though the job was clearly a strain on his taped ribs. Soon he and she were in the truck, and she gawked at the quaintness of Newcastle and then at the beauty of the Hunter Valley countryside.

Woods and peaceful fields and hills and vineyards stretched on until they met the shadowy lavender of mountains in the distance. Rain poured daily in Darwin, but in the Hunter Valley, the sky was cloudless and blue.

“It’s more beautiful than I imagined,” she murmured. “So tranquil.”

“Appearances deceive,” Reynard said. “Too dry. There’s spot fires near the Koongarra range. There’s wildfire warnings all over the valley. It’s not tranquil, and neither are the people. The stable burning, the killing, it spooked everybody. And the locals were still squabbling about Louisa’s shooting Sam Whittleson last year.”

“Tell me more about that,” Marie said. “They were feuding about water rights or something?”

Reynard nodded. “And there were factions from the start. Some say it was Sam’s own fault. Some say it was Louisa’s. Now at Lochlain, where I work, Sam’s son’s the head trainer. So the Prestons sided with Sam. That irks the old girl. But then she never really took to the Prestons in the first place.”

“Why not?” Marie asked, the familiar uneasiness stirring again.

“The Fairchilds’ve been in Hunter Valley for a century and a half. The old girl sees the Prestons as upstarts and Yanks to boot. Still, they say she was usually civil to them—until they sided so strong with Sam. Now she’s offended about racing politics, too. Really offended. You see, my boss, Tyler Preston, he’s got this cousin. Well, the cousin—”

They rounded a curve and the view was suddenly dominated by a huge set of gates, framed by stone pillars ornamented with bronze and red crests. “Ta-da!” said Reynard with a chuckle. “Behold—Fairchild Acres.”

The security guard let them in, and Marie looked at the great lawn and the seeming endless pastures and paddocks beyond. Did Louisa own all this land?

They bounced down a broad drive between jacaranda trees, plots of bright flowers and the flash of water from a myriad of sprinklers. The rest of Hunter Valley might be browning and dry, but not Louisa’s lawn.

They rounded another curve. “And there is the humble abode of Louisa.”

At the end of the drive stood an enormous house. Gray stone and stucco, it rose three stories, with a gabled roof and rows of mullioned windows. The jacarandas gave way to a wider sweep of manicured lawn, decorated with large formal gardens. There was even an ornamental marble pool with a three-tiered fountain at its center.

She gaped at the house, the grounds. Reynard took a fork in the drive that led to the back of the house. “You’ll meet Mrs. Lipton first.”

Marie’s heart beat hard. Too hard. But Reynard had kept reassuring her that she wouldn’t need to lie. Her identity was true, her experience real, her credentials excellent. She should simply be closemouthed about her family.

“Just remember the nursery rhyme, love.” With a sidelong smile, he recited the poem:

“A wise old owl sat in his oak.

The more he heard, the less he spoke;

The less he spoke, the more he heard;

Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?”

She eyed him thoughtfully. “Is that how you know so much about what goes on here? And you’ve only been here—what?—two months?”

He winked. “That’s it, love. Eyes open. Ears open. Mouth shut. That’s how you learn.”

He parked, got out stiffly, and opened Marie’s door as smoothly as if he were a trained chauffeur. Perhaps he’d once been one, for she didn’t know all of his past. Not by half.

He escorted her to a back door and gave the bellpull a smart ring, and then two more.

A girl of about eighteen opened the door. She had curling red hair and freckles all over her ruddy face. She wore navy-blue shorts, a white short-sleeved blouse and a white apron.

“Oh, Rennie,” she said with a grin. “Come in. And this must be your niece. Marie, is it?

“I’m Belinda, but everybody calls me Bindy. I’ll get Mrs. Lipton.”

Bindy talked fast, and she dashed off into a hallway just as fast. Marie stood, dazzled by the huge modern kitchen, gleaming with whiteness and chrome.

“Hello, Rennie,” said a man’s deep voice. The accent was American.

Marie turned to see a tall figure standing near a table. She looked up into his face, and her heart, already pounding, almost leaped out of her chest.

He was the man who’d defended her in the parking lot of the Scepter that night, the stranger she’d clung to so foolishly, so desperately. Suddenly the room seemed to swim round her, dizzying her.

Did he recognize her? Would he remember her? She prayed not.

“Mr. Preston,” said Reynard, heartily shaking hands with him. He grinned.

“What are you doing here? Miss Fairchild must be gone.”

“She is, and somebody had to do your work. So I brought the eggs today.”

Rennie grinned more widely. “Thanks kindly, mate. And meet my niece, Marie Lafayette from Darwin. She’s the new assistant cook. Marie, Andrew Preston from the U.S.A. He’s running for the presidency of the ITRF. Staying with his cousin over at Lochlain.”

Marie was still struck dumb and immobile. Andrew Preston stepped over to her and offered her his hand. Somehow she raised her own and placed it in his. It was like having tiny flames shoot up her fingers, through her arm, and into her heart.

She remembered he’d been handsome, but not as handsome as this. He might be the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but it was a purely masculine beauty. He wore a white T-shirt that emphasized his shoulders and chest and revealed tanned, muscular arms. Around his neck was a peculiar necklace, a carved bird on a red string.

Low-riding blue jeans hugged his narrow hips and long legs. His riding boots were tall, black and dusty. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said.

His eyes were such a dark blue they seemed nearly black. His wavy hair was a dark and gleaming brown, and he seemed fully a foot taller than she.

Assume a virtue if you have it not, she thought. She raised her chin and gave a perky smile. “Pleased to meet you.”

He smiled back and released her hand. Again, strange sensations tripped through her body, making her giddy.

“I heard about your mother,” Andrew said. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He sounded as if he actually meant it.

“Thank you,” she said, her smile dying.

Andrew turned to Reynard. “I was just starting back to Lochlain,” he said. “See you there later. And I hope we meet again, Miss Lafayette.”

Marie nodded. She’d let down her guard, so she gave him a mildly friendly, totally professional and completely manufactured smile.

Andrew smiled again, almost hesitantly, and left by the back door.

“Well, you seemed a bit gobsmacked at the sight of him,” Reynard said, eyes narrowing.

“I didn’t know anyone was there. H-he surprised me,” she said defensively.

“I’ll bet he did, I’ll bet he did. And you surprised me.”

Before Marie could reply, an interior door opened and a tall woman entered. She had perfectly sculpted gray hair, a strong jaw, a kind face and a firm, stout figure. She wore a navy-blue skirt and blouse, and a ruffled white apron with a bib. “Rennie, you rascal,” she said, obviously pleased.

“Ah,” he replied, his tone silky. “And what mischief are you up to, entertaining gentlemen in your kitchen? Miss Louisa doesn’t know he was here, does she? You’re a bold one, you are.”

She made a shooing gesture at him. “She’s in Sydney getting her annual checkup. She won’t be back until this evening. Ah. And this is your niece, Marie?”

“The very one. Marie, Mrs. Lipton, the housekeeper. A marvel of organization, she is.”

Mrs. Lipton almost smiled, but her face grew serious. “Marie, I’m very sorry about your loss. It’s good you’ve come to join your uncle. It’s a very empty feeling, losing one’s mother. I remember all too well.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Marie almost whispered.

Reynard said, “My sister was a darling woman and a lovely cook.” He pinched Marie’s cheek affectionately. “And this one’s every bit her mother’s child. She’ll do you proud.”

Mrs. Lipton moved to a small cabinet built into the wall. She opened it and pulled out a set of keys. “Rennie, will you be a dear and take Marie to her quarters? I suppose she has things you’ll have to help her move in. Then bring her back here, and I’ll explain her duties to her. Marie, did you bring a uniform?”

Marie said, “Yes, ma’am.” Mrs. Lipton had e-mailed the uniform requirements.

“You needn’t wear it until this evening. We’ll also provide you with one of our staff T-shirts with the Fairchild logo. Now, help her settle in, Rennie.”

He gave her an appreciative look from beneath half-lowered lids. “Right away. By the way, Mrs. Lipton, you’ve changed your hair somewhat, haven’t you?”

“Oh. Just a bit,” she said, toying with a gray curl. “Now run along. I know Tyler will want you back at Lochlain.”

“He’s a good enough cove, Andrew Preston,” Reynard said, as they parked in front of the staff bungalow. “I see him around Lochlain all the time. Not our sort, of course, but a good cove. The old girl doesn’t like him, of course. She’s got her back up because he’s a Preston and a Yank and dared come here to campaign against her candidate—Jacko Bullock.”

“I see.” But Marie didn’t really understand; she was still in shock at seeing the man again. Andrew Preston. She hadn’t even known his name. Andrew Preston.

Reynard parked and unloaded the truck, talking the whole time.

Numbly she listened as he explained that Bullock had used all his media clout to defend Louisa in the shooting case the year before. He’d been her loyal supporter, and she intended to be his. She therefore hoped that Andrew Preston would not be merely beaten, but crushed like a bug.

“When it gets to racing politics, she can be hell on wheels,” Reynard said as he unlocked the door to her room. The cottage was sparklingly clean, not fancy, but comfortable, with a shared living room and kitchen.

“It’s nice.” Marie nodded in approval. “And Mrs. Lipton is a nice woman.”

“She is indeed.”

“She seems to like you,” Marie said with a hint of mischief. “And you flirt with her.”

“She needs a bit of fun in her life. So does old Louisa, if she’d admit it. I do my bit, is all. I’ll bring your things. There’s a place to chain your bike near the main entrance. “

Reynard put her bike in place and carried her secondhand suitcases inside. “You need help unpacking?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Then let me take you back to the kitchen and I’ll be off to Lochlain.”

“Your boss has been generous, letting you off this long.”

“Tyler? Very decent fellow, a good mate. Andrew Preston’s cousin, did I say?”

“You did.” Her pulse speeded up at the mention of Andrew. It was ridiculous, she scolded herself. Seeing him again wasn’t exciting. It was just a surprise. And—awkward.

“I thought he eyed you like you were something special,” Reynard said.

“Don’t be silly. I’m a kitchen worker.”

Reynard frowned as if in puzzlement. “Bad as my old ears are, I thought I heard something when you saw him.”

She threw him a puzzled look. “Heard something?”

He scratched his chin. “A clickety-clackety. Like maybe someone finally shook those hormones of yours into action.”

She smacked him lightly on the arm, but her eyes flashed in irritation. “You’re impossible.”

“Unfamiliar sensation, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Hormones romping around?”

She smacked him again. He threw his head back and laughed. But then he sobered. “He’s a handsome devil. But out of your league, love. Be careful of men like him. Would to God that Colie had been.”

Andrew, who’d borrowed Tyler’s Jeep for the trip, drove back to Lochlain in a pensive mood. It had been odd, when he’d delivered the eggs, to be welcomed so warmly by the kitchen staff. It meant not everyone at Fairchild Acres hated his guts. Just Louisa.

But that wasn’t what most interested him. Images of Reynard’s niece, startlingly vivid, kept flashing into his mind. Marie. She’d stood so demurely in the kitchen—yet with confidence.

He’d recognized her almost instantly, but he never would have taken her for Reynard’s niece. While Reynard exuded a raffish air of good fellowship, Marie seemed carefully controlled, sure of herself, yet at the same time a bit shy. It was a paradoxical combination, and it intrigued him.

He remembered holding her in his arms so briefly. Too briefly. He rubbed his chest, which sweated in the rising heat. Then he realized Raddy’s charm was gone. He stopped the car, searched the seat and looked on the floor.

Where in hell was it?

Reynard insisted on driving Marie back to the kitchen, although the distance was short. She kissed him in thanks, said she’d phone, then hopped out of the truck.

“Oh, wait,” Reynard said. “There’s something I forgot to tell you.”

She came to his opened window and looked at him in puzzlement. “What?”

“Louisa’s great-niece and nephew are here, staying with her. Megan and Patrick Stafford.”

“What?” she demanded, swept by both surprise and anger. “You said she wasn’t close to any of her family.”

“I never did. Willadene Gates wrote that. And Louisa wasn’t on speaking terms with them. I think this is kind of a test. To see if they’re worthy of inheriting her money bin. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. Either way, there’s enough to go around.”

Marie, appalled, stared at him. “Reynard! If she’s reconciling with them, I shouldn’t even be here. It makes me feel—underhanded. Why didn’t you tell me, for God’s sake?”

“I didn’t know until they arrived. There were just rumors.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you tell me when they got here? Why’d you wait until now to spring the news?”

He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have come. Now you can’t go. You’re moved in. You might like them, love. They’re probably your cousins. I’ve heard the woman’s nice, but the bloke’s a bit of a layabout.”

“This is unforgivable,” Marie accused.

“I’m doing it for your own good. It’s what Colette wanted and I did it for her, as well. Don’t go all high and mighty on me. Just do your job like the trouper you are. It’s not just me that drew you here. It’s destiny. Bye, love. Talk to you soon.”

With that, he blew her a kiss, drove off and left her standing there.

She stared after him, bewildered, fighting back tears. But for now she had no choice but to brazen it out until she could make her escape. She squared her shoulders and forced herself to march to the kitchen door.

A red-and-yellow object lying in the grass caught her eye, and she bent to pick it up. She stared at it curiously: it was a carved wooden bird with a large yellow beak. The rest was patterned in black and white and red, and it hung from a broken red string.

It was the charm Andrew Preston had worn. He must have lost it, she thought numbly. She slipped it into the pocket of her slacks as she entered the kitchen, her mind dazed, her body working on automatic pilot.

“Welcome back,” said Mrs. Lipton. “I’ll be with you in a little while, but must catch up on my paperwork. I’ll be in my office if anyone wants me. Tonight’s staff menu is on the bulletin board. You could start the potato salad if you like. We need to feed about eighteen.”

“I’ll be glad to,” Marie said. The baked potatoes were already cooling on a large metal sheet on the counter.

“And could you make a meringue for tonight? Miss Louisa loves her meringues and Pavlovas.”

“Certainly,” Marie said, still stunned, but hiding it with all her might.

Mrs. Lipton bustled off.

Alone, Marie again felt almost overwhelmed by the modernity of the shiny white-and-chrome kitchen. What would Mama have done in a kitchen like this? she wondered with a pang. What couldn’t she have done?

Yearning for Colette stabbed through her. I’ll find out who this Fairchild woman is, she promised her mother’s spirit. And if she’s not worthy of you, I’ll walk away and never look back. And she’ll never know what a fine daughter she had—and lost.

But she couldn’t yet think about Colette or Louisa or Megan and Patrick Stafford who might be cousins—and she couldn’t yet deal with what Reynard had done. She simply couldn’t sort it out yet. It was all too sudden.

Get control of yourself, she thought sternly. Get control and keep control, no matter what. There’s work to be done. Do it.

She began to peel potatoes.

Andrew pulled up again at the Fairchild mansion’s kitchen door. He knew he’d been wearing the charm this morning when he’d left Lochlain Stables. A hand from Whittleson’s, Sandy Sanford, had been helping build a sleep-out addition onto the main house. Sanford had given him a condescending look. “Hey, mate, goin’ native?” he’d asked with an unpleasant grin. Andrew’d ignored him and gotten into the Jeep.

The charm must have dropped off on his walk from the Jeep to Mrs. Lipton’s kitchen—or the walk back. If it had hit the kitchen’s tiled floor, he would have heard it, wouldn’t he?

He had no rational reason for attaching any importance to the thing, except it had been given as a friendly gesture. And the Aborigine culture fascinated him; it seemed rich and mysterious. He’d spent a lot of time in Kentucky reading about more exotic cultures than his own. And now, at last, he was seeing them first hand.

He got out of the Jeep and retraced his path to the back door. He looked three times, but saw no sign of the necklace. He pulled the bell, and an instant later Marie Lafayette appeared, wiping her hands on a dish towel she’d pinned round her waist for an apron.

She didn’t seem taken aback to see him, and smiled her cheery smile. She looked like a woman almost totally sure of herself. “Oh, Mr. Preston. Can I help you? Mrs. Lipton’s not here, but she should be back in a minute. Would you like to step inside where it’s cool?”

She swung open the door and he entered, glad to escape the heat. He said, “Sorry to bother you. I was driving back and I missed a—a kind of charm someone gave me. I thought maybe I’d lost it here.”

For a moment she looked strangely blank. But then her face lit up, and he realized for the first time that she was not merely pretty, she was exquisite. Her thick cap of hair shone like spun gold in the artificial light. She wore no makeup except pink lip gloss, but she didn’t need makeup. She was stunning without it. And those dimples. Good Lord.

She reached into the pocket of her slacks and drew out the charm. “Is this it?”

She must have seen by his expression that it was and held it out on her palm. “I thought it was yours. I meant to tell Mrs. Lipton, but she was involved in something else.”

Her smile flickered away as he took it from her, his fingertips brushing the smoothness of her palm.

But that too-brief smile made his heart quicken with pleasure. It had been a smile that hinted at mystery and complexities. And her eyes, he suddenly realized, were the most startling and pure green he’d ever seen. Men must fall at her feet like flies. What was such a woman doing, working in a kitchen?

“Thank you,” he managed to say, wondering why he seemed to have something stuck in his throat. “I—I don’t really know much about it, but a blacksmith gave it to me, and…”

She looked up, listening, and he realized he didn’t have an end for the sentence.

“And?” she questioned.

“I hated to lose it,” he finished lamely. “In this age of plastic and—”

“Mass manufacturing?” she supplied.

“Exactly,” he said, trying not to get lost in those depthless green eyes. “That’s it.”

Maybe she wasn’t as poised as she seemed. Almost subliminally he sensed emotions coursing through her, emotions she guarded carefully.

“The string wore through.” She pointed at the frayed edges. “Odd. It looks good and stout.” Her voice was low and soft, her accent delightful.

He forced some words out. “I hope I didn’t interrupt you.”

“No,” she said, with a nonchalant shrug. “I’m just making potato salad.”

“Potato salad,” he repeated.

“I was looking for the mayonnaise,” she said. His gaze must have been too intent because she glanced away.

“Mayonnaise,” he echoed. Good Lord. I’m talking like a parrot, and I was the captain of the college debating team. What’s wrong with me?

But her bearing was almost carefree. Almost. “Yes. None in the fridge. I thought there must be some in the cabinet. I couldn’t find a kitchen stool to see on the top shelf.”

She was petite, almost tiny, beside him. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m tall. I’ll like if you look,” he offered. “I mean, I’ll look if you like.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

He peered at the row of top cupboards. He went to the nearest, opened the door, looked on the top shelf, and behind eight jars of mustard found four quarts of mayonnaise. He pulled one down. “Do you need more?”

“Oh, no. Thank you. That’s plenty.”

He handed it to her, careful not to touch her this time. He realized he still had the charm in his hand.

She licked her lips, and the tip of her tongue was daintily pointed and daintily pink. He felt carnal stirrings. She set aside the jar and murmured, “Maybe you should buy a thong.”

“A thong?” he asked, picturing her in a thong, her arms crossed modestly across her breasts. It was a most arousing image and not the sort that often popped into his head. He was usually a man of stern self-control.

“Leather,” she corrected. “A strip of leather for the bird.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Leather. The very thing. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

“I’d better be going,” he said. “Um. See you later.”

“Yes. Perhaps.” She gave him an unreadable smile.

He made his way out the door and into the Jeep. He got onto the road again and felt the blood roaring in his ears.

What the hell had gone wrong with him back there? When he’d seen her earlier this morning, he’d thought she was singularly pretty, but this time—she’d affected him as few women ever had. Why?

Because you got a closer look at her, he told himself. You looked into those green, green eyes for the first time. And she had such a unique air about her. You touched her. You were alone with her.

He’d slipped the charm into the front pocket of his jeans, and it seemed to spread the heat of desire through his groin. He smacked himself in the forehead with the heel of his palm. Why did she make him react this way?

But he knew why, and had known, perhaps unconsciously, from the moment he’d seen her again.

She somehow reminded him of Kellie Maguire, whom he’d loved all those years ago. The girl who’d been so strong of purpose, but turned out to be so vulnerable.

Marie was small, like Kellie, and beautiful, but in a completely different way. He remembered her at the Scepter, speaking foreign languages fluently, working so gracefully and with such sparkle—and defending herself like a champion. And yet there was vulnerability there, he could feel it, and it brought out an almost fiercely protective urge in him.

Again he seemed to hear Kellie’s voice. “I don’t know how you did it, Preston. It’s broad daylight. But maybe you just found the door into the moon. Glimpse of the future, Mr. Serioso?”

Chapter Five

That afternoon, the Fairchild household bustled, readying itself for Louisa’s return. Helena, the kitchen assistant, made sure all spices and condiments and baking goods were in perfect alphabetical order; Bindy and Marie polished the counters and appliances to an even higher sheen.

“How long has Miss Fairchild been gone?” Marie asked, puzzled by cleaning things that already seemed spotless.

“Only since last night,” Bindy said. “But she gets irked if there’s any sign of people slacking off when she’s not here. And nobody wants her irked.”

Marie wondered if the very ground would shake when Louisa Fairchild drew near and if small animals would run for cover. “Is she as fearsome as everybody seems to think?”

Bindy rolled her pale blue eyes. “That girl who was here before you? Annabel? Fired for kissing one of the Lochlain stable boys. He was always hangin’ about. Miss came and found them snogging and groping outside, while inside eight apple pies was burning. She made Annabel weep like a waterfall and told her to get off the property by sunset. She watches her single girls, Miss does. She’s strict.”

“But what if you want to go out?” Marie asked.

“We go on our time off and we have to be back here by midnight—alone. The guard lets us in.”

“Do you go out?” Marie asked curiously. Bindy wasn’t traditionally pretty, but she had a lot of bubble and bounce to her.

“Me? Oh, yes. I mean, there’s nothing to do around here at night except watch detective shows on the telly. I’ve got a boyfriend, but I’m careful. Still, lately I’ve found my eye roving. That Andrew Preston’s major sexy.”

Marie hoped her cheeks didn’t flush. “Is he?” she asked with false innocence.

“Can’t you see?” Bindy demanded. “My word! Every woman here’s noticed, even the laundress, Mrs. Fife, and she’s at least a hundred and fifty!”

“He’s too tall,” Marie said, improvising. “Looking at him’s like staring up at a giraffe.”

Bindy laughed, then suddenly looked alarmed. She went pale. “Oh, dear! I see Miss Fairchild’s car! She’s home early. I need to change my apron. And hide my book. She hates it if she catches me sitting about reading.”

She snatched her mystery novel off the counter and rushed to the restroom off the kitchen, just as Mrs. Lipton ran in from the dining room. “She’s here, she’s here. I must make coffee,” she cried. “She’s at least an hour early.”

“She’s driven all this way alone?” Marie asked.

“No, no. The deputy housekeeper drives, Agnes. Have you started those desserts yet? Oh, my God, she’ll be expecting her coffee and a lovely snack.”

“I’ve done a banana meringue with raspberry-brandy sauce,” Marie said. “I can have it ready in a few moments.”

“Bless you, my girl,” Mrs. Lipton panted, flying about the kitchen. “Oh, Lord, I hear them at the front door. Can you do the espresso? I must go greet her.”

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