But a niggling doubt kept picking at her. What if he didn’t understand? What if he was actually thinking of staying here? What would she do?
She didn’t know.
Picking Julie up, Kevin strode up the front steps, Anne running ahead of him to open the door. But just as he got to the threshold, the door opened and Marguerite appeared. She stepped back to let Kevin and Anne pass, but blocked Kerry’s way as he tried to follow. He stopped in confusion.
“C-Can I come in?” he finally asked.
Marguerite ignored his question. “What’s happened?” she demanded. “What has happened to my niece?”
As clearly as he could, Kerry explained. “It was an accident,” he finished. “I tried to warn her, but it was too late. I—”
But Marguerite didn’t let him finish. “How dare you?” she asked, her eyes glittering with anger. “What do you mean, an accident? There are no such things as accidents, young man. We entrusted Julie to you, and what happened? You bring her home half drowned!”
Kerry’s face reddened, and he took a step backward. “I—I’m sorry, Miss Devereaux,” he began, but once again Marguerite cut him off.
“Sorry? You’re sorry? My niece is a very special person, Kerry. She’s a dancer who has a brilliant career ahead of her. Today all that could have been taken away from her because of you, and all you can say is that you’re sorry?”
Kerry felt his temper rising. “Well, what do you want me to say?” he demanded. “It wasn’t my fault, and I tried to warn her, and I got her out of the water and brought her home! What else was I supposed to do?”
“You should never have let it happen in the first place,” Marguerite declared. “You’re just like all the rest of the boys—no sense of responsibility at all! And how dare you speak to me the way you just did?”
The rest of Kerry’s control snapped. “Me speak to you?” he shouted. “What about the way you were talking to me? Now I see why Mary-Beth wants to quit your stupid classes. If you talk to the girls the way you talk to me, I’ll bet they all quit!”
Marguerite lurched backward in the face of Kerry’s anger and had to grasp the doorjamb to keep from stumbling. “Quit?” she gasped. “I don’t understand—what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Mary-Beth Fletcher,” Kerry said, his voice still quivering with anger. “She was talking about quitting your classes today, and everyone else was trying to talk her out of it. But now I see why she wants out.” Turning, he stormed off the veranda, slammed back into his car, started it, and gunned the engine. Then he popped the clutch. The wheels spun in the grass for a moment before they caught, then left deep ruts as the car skidded across the lawn, slewed onto the road, and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Marguerite, stunned, stood on the veranda until long after Kerry’s car had disappeared from view.
What had he been talking about? Mary-Beth was going to quit her lessons? But it wasn’t possible. She couldn’t leave Marguerite. She couldn’t!
Then, as the thoughts tumbled through her mind, Marguerite felt a touch on her arm.
She spun around, half expecting to see her mother standing there.
But, of course, it wasn’t her mother—her mother was dead. She had to remember that and stop thinking that Helena was going to come back.
“R-Ruby?” she asked, her eyes blinking as they flooded with hot tears, “Oh, Ruby, what am I going to do? If Mary-Beth leaves me—”
“Now, now,” Ruby soothed. “Don’t you even think about that. We don’t have to worry about Mary-Beth Fletcher. I always said she’d come to a bad end, and if she quits your lessons, I say we’re well rid of her.”
But Marguerite shook her head. “No,” she breathed. “You don’t understand, Ruby. She can’t leave me. I love her, Ruby. I love her, and she can’t leave me.…” Her voice trailed off and she took an unsteady step, leaning heavily on Ruby to hold her balance. “She can’t …” she said once more.
“Then she won’t,” Ruby said firmly, leading Marguerite back into the house and closing the door behind her. “We’ll fix it, Miss Marguerite. There’s always ways of fixin’ things.”
Marguerite let herself be led into the small parlor, and settled into a chair, where she sat in silence for several minutes. “Yes,” she said at last, coming out of her reverie. “We’ll fix it, won’t we? There are ways of fixing everything.”
CHAPTER 9
Kevin waited until dinner was over and Ruby had begun clearing off the large dining room table before he brought up the idea that had been growing in his mind ever since Sam Waterman had left a few hours earlier. His whole family had known something was up, and all through the meal they wanted to know what he was smiling about. He hadn’t told them, waiting until just the right moment. But finally, with a soft breeze wafting gently through the open French doors and the scent of wisteria perfuming the air, he decided the time was right. He turned to Julie, who was sitting at his right scraping up the last crumbs of Ruby’s rhubarb pie. “What would you think,” he asked, drawing each word out for the maximum effect, “of living here? I mean on a permanent basis?”
Julie stared at her father in shocked surprise, and her brow furrowed slightly. “You mean not go back home at all? Just stay here?”
“Well, of course we’d go home,” he told her. He glanced toward Anne, and the first pang of doubt suddenly came over him, for instead of smiling encouragingly at him, she seemed to be stiffening in her chair at the opposite end of the table. He turned his attention quickly back to Julie. “We’d have to pack up, sell the house, and take care of a lot of details. But what I want to know is how you feel about living here.”
Now Julie looked dazed. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “I mean—well, I just haven’t thought about it, that’s all.”
“I think it would be neat!” Jeff declared, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
“And I,” Anne said from the end of the table, her cool voice washing the glitter from Jeff’s eyes, “would like to know what on earth you’re talking about.”
Kevin shifted his eyes to his wife and silently took a deep breath before he spoke. “I’ve just been thinking about our problem,” he said. “And it occurs to me that even though Mother was trying to control me with her will, she might have done us all the biggest favor of our lives.”
Anne’s eyes flashed briefly toward Marguerite, who was sitting quietly, her own eyes fastened on her brother. “All of us?” she asked, her skepticism clear in her voice. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“An inn,” Kevin said, deciding it was time to lay his cards on the table. “We all know I’ve always wanted to run my own place, and it seems to me that Sea Oaks is perfect. It’s way too big for a family, but we’ve got nine bedrooms—every one of them with its own bath—and plenty of space down here for public rooms. Not to mention the rest of the island. There’s more than enough land for a golf course, condominiums, swimming pools, and tennis courts—the whole works!”
Anne stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Kevin, what are you talking about? It sounds like you’re thinking of turning this place into another Hilton Head!”
“Exactly!” Kevin exclaimed, the enthusiasm for the project that had been building in him all afternoon spilling out. “Why not? I’m not saying it wouldn’t take a lot of work and a lot of money, but everything we need to start is right here. We’ve got one of the best beaches on the whole coast, a house that’s perfect for a small hotel—at least to start with—and all the land we need! And we already own it. And think of the benefits to the town—my God, if it’s any kind of a success at all, land values would skyrocket, there’d be more jobs than we have people to fill them—”
But Anne didn’t let him finish. She stood up abruptly, her face expressionless. “I think you and I had better talk about this later, when we’re by ourselves,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me …” As her family sat in silence, she left the dining room, and a moment later her foot
steps on the stairs echoed through the house. It was Julie who finally spoke.
“You goofed, Dad,” she said. “How come you didn’t at least talk to her about it first?”
Kevin knew his daughter was right, but the whole idea of the inn had seemed so perfect to him that he’d allowed himself to hope that Anne would see it too. But he also knew Anne hated surprises, and, even worse, hated the idea of having decisions made for her. And the way he’d been talking … He dropped his napkin onto the table and stood up. “I’d better go talk to her.”
“Well, I still think it would be neat,” Jeff said after his father was gone.
Julie hardly even heard her brother. Instead, she was looking at her aunt, who was sitting perfectly still in her chair, her eyes almost blank. “Aunt Marguerite?” Julie finally asked. “Do you know what this is all about? Why is Dad talking about turning your house into a hotel?”
Marguerite shook her head as if trying to clear something out of her mind, then managed to smile at her niece. “It’s … well, it’s not really my house anymore, darling,” she said. “It’s your father’s now. And, well, there are some problems.” As simply as she could, Marguerite explained the terms of her mother’s will to the children. When she had finished, Julie was filled with indignation.
“But it’s not fair!” she declared. “How could she do that?”
Marguerite shrugged. “I know it doesn’t seem fair, darling, but life never is, really, is it? And what your father is doing is trying to find a way for us all to deal with Mother’s will.” Her eyes drifted around the room, lighting for a moment on each piece of furniture, then moving on. Finally she sighed quietly. “But a hotel,” she mused. “I don’t know—to fill the house with strangers—well, it just seems such a peculiar idea.”
Now Julie cocked her head thoughtfully. “But it isn’t, really, Aunt Marguerite. Daddy’s right—this house would make a wonderful inn. And places like this are what everybody wants to find now. Daddy says everyone’s tired of new hotels. They want to stay in places that have history, and are really old-fashioned, and—” She fell silent with sudden embarrassment at her thoughtless remark, but her aunt only smiled at her.
“Yes, the house is old-fashioned,” she said. Then she brightened a little. “And certainly the kitchen is big enough to feed an army. Way back in my grandmother’s day it wasn’t at all unusual for there to be twenty or twenty-five people here for meals.” Marguerite’s face began to light up as she remembered the past. “Even when I was a girl, we still had balls here. Everyone would come from miles around, and we’d hire extra staff, and the house would be all decorated like something out of a fairy tale. We’d have a little orchestra in the ballroom, and we’d dance all night.” Her eyes, sparkling now, came to rest on Julie. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could be like that again?” she asked. “Why, it would be just like it used to be, before—” Abruptly she stopped talking and the light faded from her eyes.
“Before what?” Julie asked.
But Marguerite only shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just, well, sometimes I let my mind drift, that’s all. And I mustn’t do that.”
“Why not?” Jeff asked. “I do it all the time. I like to lie on my back sometimes, and look up at the sky, and pretend I’m a bird, or a cloud, or something. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” Marguerite said, but her voice was vague, as if she were thinking about something else. “But you can’t let yourself do it too much. If you do, you can forget what’s real and what’s not. And then …” Her voice trailed off, and once more her features took on the faraway look they’d had before. Jeff, who’d been watching her as she spoke, looked nervously toward his sister. But when he started to say something, Julie shook her head.
“Come on,” she said. “We better go help Ruby do the dishes.”
A few minutes later, when they were in the kitchen, Jeff looked up at Julie, his eyes serious. “What’s wrong with Aunt Marguerite?” he asked. “How come she was talking so weird? And what’s wrong with pretending?”
But before Julie could answer, Ruby spoke. “Nothing’s wrong with pretending. But your aunt wasn’t pretending. She was remembering. And whenever she remembers all the good times she had, she remembers the bad ones too.”
Jeff glanced at his sister then back to Ruby. “Bad times?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
Ruby seemed about to speak, then appeared to change her mind. “Nothing,” she said. “I guess I was just talking.”
“How am I supposed to feel?” Anne demanded. “This afternoon I had to deal with your mother’s insane will, my daughter nearly drowning, and my son being attacked by a rattlesnake. And what happens at dinner? You act as if the most wonderful opportunity in the world has just dropped into your lap!” Her anger growing, she stood in the center of the bedroom, her eyes flashing. “And you didn’t even talk to me about it! That’s the worst of it—you just made up your mind what you wanted to do, and now you expect me to go along with it! Well, I won’t, Kevin. I simply won’t do it.”
Kevin moved toward her, but Anne stepped back, effectively ducking away from his touch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Honey, I know I should have talked to you about it, but the whole idea just seemed so perfect that I couldn’t imagine you wouldn’t see it too.”
But Anne wasn’t mollified. “Perfect? For Heaven’s sake, Kevin, do you have any idea what it would cost? Where are we supposed to get the money for this crazy idea?”
“We have the house—” Kevin began, but Anne cut him off.
“Which is mortgaged to the hilt. We’ll be lucky to break even on it, and you know that as well as I do!”
“This house,” Kevin said hastily. “I think I can mortgage it, but even if I can’t, I think I’ve found a way around the will.”
Anne shook her head. “You heard Mr. Waterman. There isn’t any way around the will. If there were, he’d have found it.”
“But that’s just it. It’s not quite going around it. I think I can sell options to buy when the leases run out. I can sell them to the tenants—as many of them as want to buy their land—and I’ll bet I can sell the rest to outside developers. Same thing with the land on the island …”
Anne stared at him as if he’d gone crazy. “But you can’t do any of that,” she objected. “You can’t sell anything for ten years, and you can’t even do that unless you stay here. And if you think I’m willing to do that—”
“Wait,” Kevin pleaded, holding up his hand. “Will you please just wait and think about it? I know I was wrong not to talk to you about it right away, and I didn’t really mean to present it the way I did. But I still think it’s a way we can turn Mother’s will to our own advantage. All I’m asking you to do is think about it. Can’t you at least do that?”
Anne opened her mouth to voice still another objection, then changed her mind. What was she doing? Making her own mind up as unalterably as she thought Kevin had made his? She took a deep breath, then forced a small smile. “All right,” she agreed. “I’ll think about it. But I want to think about it myself, without you trying to talk me into anything.”
“Just let me tell you how I think I can work it,” Kevin began, but Anne shook her head.
“We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Right now, I have to think about whether or not I can even live here. And there are the kids to think about too. What about school? I don’t know much about South Carolina, but I know they don’t spend a lot on education down here.”
“I went to school here,” Kevin pointed out.
“You went to the Fortress, and you know perfectly well you hated every minute of it.” Suddenly she grinned, almost in spite of herself. “Pretty clever of your mother to threaten to leave everything to the Fortress, wasn’t it? She must have known you’d do almost anything to keep that outfit from getting their hands on this place.”
The corners of Kevin’s mouth twitched slightly. “Nobody can say Mother wasn’t smart,” he
agreed. “But I hadn’t really thought much about that aspect of it.”
“Well, you’d better,” Anne sighed, “because I have to tell you I think there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to get it.” The grin faded from her face, and she met her husband’s eyes. “I love you very much, Kevin,” she said. “But I don’t know if I can live here. I promised to think about it, and I will. But what if I decide I can’t? What then?”
Kevin’s stomach felt hollow. What, indeed, if she said she couldn’t live here? What would he do? It came as a jolt when he realized he didn’t know. He didn’t know what meant more to him—his wife, his family, and the life he’d lived for twenty years—or this ancient mansion—the symbol of the unhappy years of his childhood, and now the possibility of a future he’d never been able to do anything but dream about. His mind raced, but before the right words came, it was already too late.
“Well,” Anne said quietly, her voice trembling, “I guess I have my answer, don’t I?”
It was past midnight, but the temperature had dropped only slightly and the light breeze that had stirred the air earlier had died completely. A heaviness lay over the house, and as Anne sat in the dimly lit living room, she felt the atmosphere closing around her, suffocating her. Outside, the night buzzed with the whirrings of insects, and she could hear them batting at the window, trying to get to the beckoning light of the table lamp.
She’d been sitting alone for hours now. Until ten-thirty, when the children had finally gone to bed, she’d felt their eyes on her, watching her warily. They’d already made up their minds, she knew. They wanted to stay.
And why shouldn’t they? For Jeff the island was paradise on earth, acres and acres of wilderness to be explored, his own private beach, a house that was more like a castle to an eight-year-old. In his mind, everything about Devereaux and Sea Oaks was a fantasy come true.
For Julie it was much the same. She’d already made friends, friends she seemed to like better than the kids she’d known all her life. And, of course, there was Kerry Sanders—tall, blond, and blue-eyed, and he had already saved Julie’s life. Even alone in the semidarkness Anne had to smile at the knowledge of how Julie must feel right now. Kerry, obviously, was destined to be the first big love of Julie’s life, and Anne could well imagine the heartbreak Julie would go through if she were forced away from him. But it was a heartbreak she would get over, no matter what she thought right now.