Holly

  Even though Holly said that she needed to get back to work, the truth was she was afraid to open a book. She was afraid of the solitude that reading required. If she had solitude, she was afraid she’d think, and that’s what she didn’t want to do. She didn’t want to think about why Laurence Beaumont had murdered Taylor. Holly was afraid that if she thought about it, she’d see that, somehow, it was her fault. If she hadn’t wanted Belle Chere so much, if she hadn’t wanted to marry the owner, if she hadn’t—

  Holly walked away from the dining room windows. Returning to Spring Hill was worse than she’d thought it would be.

  The truth was that guilt ate at her because what the house made her remember most was Nick. Not her sister, who’d been her best friend, but Nick.

  For a moment Holly stood in the empty kitchen and looked out through the garden toward the caretaker’s cottage—the house where Nick had lived. She was to sleep there tonight and she didn’t know how she was going to be able to do it. How could she live with the memories of her and Nick that that house held?

  Turning away from the window, she went into the living room.

  For six months she’d returned to being a little girl and had allowed her father to deal with all the reporters and investigators. Holly had answered some questions, but she truthfully knew of no reason why Laurence Beaumont would kill Taylor and Charles Maitland. She knew of no connection among the three of them.

  But no matter how she tried to avoid it, in odd moments, Holly had speculated. Had Taylor died because she’d been protecting her sister? Had Taylor found out what kind of man Laurence really was? Had she threatened to tell on him and that’s why Taylor had been killed?

  Every time Holly thought, she accepted another invitation. She didn’t want time to think.

  But, finally, the horror had caught up with them. Her father’s attorneys had informed them that Holly was needed to testify at the trial. She had to tell what she knew about Laurence Beaumont III, who was claiming insanity as a defense. They were saying that because he’d shot Taylor and Charles in front of half a dozen witnesses, this was proof that he was insane.

  “Like his ancestor,” Holly’s father said. “Like that Arthur Beaumont. Laurence Beaumont is a blood relative of that man and I should have realized when he told that story what he was capable of.”

  Neither Holly nor Marguerite had the energy to try to dissuade him of this absurd theory. Since neither James nor Marguerite had spent much time with Laurence, it was Holly who was asked to return to the U.S. to testify.

  On the plane back to the States, Holly tried to plan her testimony, but since she didn’t know what she’d be asked she couldn’t formulate her reply. She tried to read on the plane, tried to watch the movie, but she couldn’t keep her mind on either of them. Nick, she kept thinking. Nick.

  Where was he? What had happened to him?

  Three weeks after they’d left, she’d casually asked her father what had happened to the gardener at Spring Hill.

  “Quit or left, I don’t know. I sent checks which he never cashed, but somebody else sent a bill for mowing so I guess it’s being done. I put the house up for sale.”

  “Yes, of course,” Holly had murmured and asked no more. As she’d always known he was, Nick had been temporary. He had been a guy to have a few weeks of great sex with, then discard. Nick Taggert was the type of man you have an affair with, but you married men like…

  “Like Laurence Beaumont,” she’d said aloud.

  Somewhere in the six months they were away, Holly had seen what a mistake she’d made. She’d always thought that she judged people by what they were, not by their externals, yet, with nothing to base it on, she’d judged Nick to be…. Actually, she couldn’t figure out what she’d decided he was, but she knew she’d misjudged him.

  She kept remembering how he’d taken charge on the day Taylor had been killed. He’d given Holly words of comfort even before he’d known what had happened. During the rest of that day and night and into the next morning, she’d heard repeatedly from the many law officials who wandered through their house that Nick Taggert was being a great help to them.

  She’d wanted to stay and see Nick again, at least to say good-bye, but Marguerite had not been well. The doctor and her father had been insistent that they take her away as soon as possible.

  In the end, all Holly could do was leave Nick a note and hope he’d understand.

  She came back to the present and went upstairs. She had to see Taylor’s room.

  Her father’s former assistant, a man who could arrange anything, had flown to Edenton to oversee the packing of the house. Part of Holly had wanted to do it, but she couldn’t bring herself to say so. One look at the haunted eyes of her parents and she knew she couldn’t leave them.

  Taylor’s bedroom was empty and had been freshly painted pink. The color made Holly smile. How Taylor would have hated it. Too frilly, too childish.

  Sniffing, Holly straightened her back. She was done with tears. The new owners had a baby girl and Taylor’s room was to be the nursery.

  Holly went through the bathroom to her old bedroom and, immediately, memories flooded her mind. Smiling, she remembered all the underwear she’d bought to wear for Nick, and how she’d hidden it away so Taylor wouldn’t be jealous.

  Jealous! Holly thought. Where had that come from? She’d hidden the underwear to keep Taylor from teasing her.

  For a moment Holly put her hands to her temples. In the last six months, odd thoughts had run through her mind. She’d be dancing with some handsome young man and, suddenly, she’d look for Taylor’s angry face, angry because she’d say that Holly was making a fool of herself again, that she was “showing off,” trying to draw attention to herself.

  Holly took a deep breath and tried to get control of herself. On occasion she hated herself because, sometimes, she felt as though her life was better now that Taylor was gone. A couple of times she’d thought that it hadn’t been her father’s disapproval that had made her run from Nick, but a fear of Taylor’s sneers and put-downs.

  Ridiculous! she’d told herself each time the thought crossed her mind. She’d broken off with Nick because she’d known it wouldn’t work between them.

  And it had broken up because Nick was so different from her. She’d always smiled whenever she thought that. “Different” was the last word to describe Nick Taggert. He’d helped her with her research. Every other boyfriend she’d had had complained that she spent too much time working. Only Nick had become involved with her work.

  Even Lorrie, she thought, breaking her taboo against the nickname, had decreed that they not talk about her work, though her work was Belle Chere.

  Holly looked out the window. She couldn’t see it, but she knew that Belle Chere was through the trees.

  And Belle Chere was to be sold at auction tomorrow, on Christmas Day.

  It was true that Holly had returned to the U.S. to testify at the Beaumont trial, but that wasn’t scheduled until the third of January. She would have stayed in Europe for Christmas, could have been with her family on Christmas Day, except for a letter sent from one of her father’s attorneys.

  In order to pay his legal fees, Laurence Beaumont was putting Belle Chere up for sale. Notices had been sent to preservationists and society people all over the world; a huge crowd was expected to attend the auction.

  Holly had been eating breakfast when her father entered the room, the letter in his hand. She’d taken one look at him and known something was wrong.

  Silently, he handed her the letter, then sat down.

  She read it, and tossed it onto the table.

  “I want you to buy the place,” her father said.

  “I don’t want anything to do with anything that has the Beaumont name attached to it,” she said.

  When her father didn’t reply, she looked at him and saw all the misery of the past months in his eyes. He’d aged horribly.

  “I don’t know that man well,” he said and sh
e knew he meant Lorrie, “but I do know that he loved that old house of his. His pride when he spoke of the place was as great a love as I’ve ever seen. No man has ever loved a woman as much as he loves that place.”

  Holly looked away, knowing her father was right, knowing that she’d been a fool to try to be part of that love.

  “I want you to go there and buy that house. No matter what it costs, I want you to buy it, then I want you to restore it. For as long as that man lives he’ll know that someone else is married to the woman he loves.”

  Holly hadn’t liked what her father was saying, but she understood it—and she obeyed him. She’d flown into Dulles Airport in D.C. yesterday, rented a car, and driven down to Spring Hill this morning. She’d spend tonight in the caretaker’s cottage and tomorrow she’d go to Belle Chere and outbid everyone. No matter how much it cost, she was going to buy it.

  And after it was bought, she planned to never see it again. She’d hire people to restore it, hire people to live in it, or open it to the public. It didn’t matter what happened, so long as she never had to see it again.

  She looked at her watch. It was four o’clock and she was tired. She would go to the cottage, take a shower, eat the sandwich she’d bought, watch a little TV, then sleep. Yes, she thought, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

  With resolve, she went downstairs, put the beautiful hooded red cloak her father had given her, went out the front door and retrieved her sandwich and her suitcase from the trunk of the rental car. Yes, I’ll just go to Nick’s house and—Nick’s house, she thought as she slammed the trunk lid.

  In the next minute she’d tossed her handbag on the car seat and was driving away from Spring Hill—driving toward Belle Chere. Today was the open house so that prospective buyers and the curious could see the plantation.

  She tried not to think during the short drive to the house. So many people were attending the open house that she had to park half a mile down the road and walk down the long, tree-lined drive.

  She recognized some of the cars, and some had the name of their institutions painted on the doors, so she knew who was looking. She’d been right that every top museum in the U.S. would be there, and she knew that if one of them bought Belle Chere, it would be disassembled. The blacksmith shop would probably be set up on a lawn in Ohio; the dovecot would go to California; the smokehouse would go to Michigan. If the Metropolitan Museum of Art won Belle Chere, they’d probably take the dining room wallpaper back to New York to show in one of their display rooms.

  As Holly walked down the drive, she saw a car with a discreet logo: JAMES RIVER. Even the Montgomerys were here, she thought. No doubt they’d disassemble Belle Chere to use at their beautiful James River mansions.

  As she walked, she kept her eyes on the cars, refusing to look ahead to the house, afraid that it might cry out to her. “Save me,” it would say. “Don’t let anyone destroy me.”

  Holly refused to look up, but put her hands in her cloak pockets and raised the hood against the chill wind. Why had Lorrie chosen Christmas to do this? she wondered. Was it his sick humor to force all these people here on a holiday, a time when they wanted to be with their families? Lorrie was going to spend Christmas in a prison cell, so would he enjoy knowing that the people who coveted his house were as miserable as he was?

  Holly nodded to a couple of museum people as they got into their cars, but they stayed away from her. There was no cheek kissing, no affectionate hellos. They knew what Laurence Beaumont had done to Holly’s family, and they knew that in the competitive historical world Holly was a rival.

  She managed to keep her eyes averted until she reached the front door of Belle Chere. It was ajar and she went inside. She wasn’t surprised to see that the furniture was gone. No doubt it had been taken away to be sold separately.

  Slowly, she began to walk about the house, and slowly, Belle Chere began to seep into her veins. She saw paneling that she had scraped clean then repainted. As she stood there in a semitrance, remembering, her old, false visions fell away and she began to really see the reality of that summer with Lorrie. The truth was that they hadn’t worked on the house together. The truth was that Holly had worked while Lorrie had watched.

  She looked at the paneling in amazement. She’d seen what she’d wanted to see then and for many years afterward. Had she used Lorrie as an excuse? Had she wanted to break up with boyfriends and used her imagined “love” of Laurence Beaumont as an excuse to do it?

  She walked through the downstairs rooms, remembering things he’d done that summer, but she was no longer seeing that time through a haze of lies. What was it Nick had said? That Lorrie had used her for child labor.

  He did! she thought, and for some reason the knowledge made her smile. For the last six months she’d been in agony because she couldn’t see how someone as noble and good as Lorrie had been able to commit murder.

  “Still beautiful, isn’t it?” asked a voice behind her.

  Holly turned to see Nick standing there, and she nearly devoured him with her eyes. He looked great, a little thin maybe, but his blue eyes were still warm and laughing, and…cautious, she thought.

  Instinctively, she took a step toward him, but halted when he didn’t reach out to her. Okay, she thought, I deserve that.

  “Yes, it’s still beautiful.” She wanted to say, So are you.

  “How’s your family?”

  Holly waited until two men and a woman from a museum in Dallas left the room. “Not well,” she said softly. “They’ve taken it hard.”

  Nick nodded and waited for another person to leave. “Did they find out—” He cut off as two men entered the room and looked at Holly.

  “Planning to open a factory here?” one of them asked snidely. “Hammers, maybe?”

  “Better that than hanging polyester curtains,” she said, smiling coldly at the man, referring to the tiny budget of his tiny museum.

  Before the man could say anything else, Nick took Holly’s arm and escorted her into the hallway.

  “They’re just looking,” she said. “Half these people can’t afford to buy Belle Chere. I don’t know why they’re here. They’re just—” To her disbelief, tears rose in her eyes.

  “Come on,” Nick said, “let’s go outside. The cold will feel good.”

  Nodding, she tried to get control of her emotions as they went down the stairs, passing five people on the way down. She couldn’t help the anger that was rising in her. Belle Chere was one piece but she knew that these people, if they won it in the auction, would take it apart, break it up. They would—

  “Better?” Nick asked once they were outside. It was sunny, but the air felt of snow, and Holly pulled her cloak tighter around her.

  “A white Christmas,” she said, breathing deeply. She could feel Nick looking at her, waiting for her to say something. “About that back there,” she said at last. “That man meant…He said that about the hammers because…” She couldn’t figure out how to explain.

  “Because you’re heir to Hollander Tools,” Nick said softly.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Not until after we’d made love on about fifty things with ‘Hollander’ written on them.”

  “I see,” she said, walking, looking ahead and not at him. “So you came here after you found out that I…”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “I came here because I’d found out you were rich and I wanted your money.”

  She looked at him sharply, saw anger in his eyes. Smiling, she turned back and put her hands in her pockets. They passed two women and a man, who nodded at her.

  “No,” Holly said slowly, “you wanted my body.”

  “Still do,” he said, and his words sent a little thrill up her spine. “If you’ve come to your senses, that is.”

  “Venice,” she said, but didn’t look at him. All the outbuildings were open for inspection and she was heading for the overseer’s house. “I came to my senses in Venice. I was in a gondola with two beautiful youn
g men and all I could think of was you.”

  “Yeah?” Nick said.

  “Yeah.”

  He caught her arm and turned her to face him. He started to kiss her but stopped as two women walked past them.

  It wasn’t easy, but Holly pulled away from him. “Could we wait on this?” she asked softly. “I mean, could we postpone us for a couple of days? I have something to do for my father.”

  “To buy Belle Chere?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but how did you know?”

  “It makes sense, considering what happened.” He put his hand on her arm. “I have a lot to tell you. I haven’t stopped searching since you left and I found out some things.”

  “You found the treasure?” she asked, teasing.

  “I haven’t been researching Belle Chere. I was searching for the truth of what happened the day you left.”

  Frowning, Holly pulled away from him. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “But—”

  “Does what you found out disparage my sister in any way?”

  “Yes,” Nick said quietly.

  Holly turned on her heels and started walking.

  “Okay,” Nick said from beside her. “So maybe I’ll just talk about how much I love you.”

  “Not now,” Holly said. “Not yet. I have to go to court in two weeks and—” She looked away.

  They stood in silence for a few moments as two men came out of the overseer’s house and looked at her with fallen faces. “Are you going to bid?”

  “No,” Holly said firmly. “I’m going to buy.”

  The men left and she went into the house, Nick behind her. “Do you think it was wise to say that?” he asked. “Maybe you should have sent an agent to buy the place for you.”

  She turned on him. “I want Laurence Beaumont to know that I bought what he loves so much. I want him to be in jail and read that I gave a fabulous party here, and that I’m enjoying what he wanted enough to kill for.”

  Nick raised one eyebrow at her. “Now that James Latham has spoken, could Holly come out and play?”

  “I’d completely forgotten how infuriating you can be.” She turned away and went into the sitting room.