Property of a Noblewoman

by Danielle Steel

  “First, we send someone to get a statement from the nanny. At ninety-four, we don’t want to dilly-dally. If she dies in her sleep tonight, the story, and the corroboration, dies with her. I’ll try to get someone up there tomorrow. Do you think she’d be willing?”

  “As I remember her, she’s pretty chatty. Also, she wanted my mother to know the story. I don’t know why she didn’t tell her sooner. But at least she did now. If I hadn’t done that appraisal, my mother would never have seen those photographs, and would probably never have found out who her mother was, or that our grandmother wasn’t really her mother.” The story was so amazing, it shocked them both.

  “Fate moves in strange ways,” Penny said, and firmly believed it. “My next suggestion may not be something your mother wants to do, but it will simplify the whole story. I want her to get a DNA test. We’ll need an order to exhume her mother’s body, my aunt and your grandmother, I guess,” she said, considering it. “We have to get the court’s approval for that. And I don’t see why they would balk at it, as long as we’re willing to pay costs, which I assume we are.” He nodded confirmation. “And if it’s a match, it’s pretty straightforward. The court would then confirm your mother as the rightful heir, and what she does with the property after that is up to her. It takes six weeks to get the results of the DNA, and if it’s a positive match, it’s a done deal.”

  “What about your mother? Would she be a direct heir too, as Marguerite’s sister?” Penny thought about it for a moment, and knew how unpredictable people were when estates were involved, but she thought she knew her mother better than that, and her financial circumstances. Penny’s father had left her a very substantial fortune, and his parents had established a sizable trust for Penny. There was no need for the two women to fight over the money.

  “She could certainly make a claim on the estate,” Penny admitted, “but I think we should leave that up to the sisters. Let them work it out and come to an agreement. My guess is my mom won’t want it, and will be happy for your mother, and figure she deserves it, particularly after they cheated her out of her rightful mother. Let’s see what our moms work out between them over that. Is the jewelry worth a great deal?”

  “According to our estimate, twenty to thirty million, before estate taxes of course, which will cut that amount in half.” But it was still an impressive amount. Penny whistled.

  “That’s a nice chunk of change.” It could leave Valerie with ten to fifteen million dollars after taxes. She’d be set for life, even more so than with her late husband’s insurance. “This really is an amazing story. It feels like the hand of destiny is on this one. One forgets that good things do happen to good people, not just bad ones. This would be nice for your mom.”

  “Yes, it would,” Phillip agreed, and for him one day, but he wasn’t thinking about that.

  “Well, let’s get started. I’ll send someone up to see the old nanny tomorrow. Shoot me an email with her details. You ask your mom about the DNA test, and have her call me, and I’ll prepare an order to exhume Marguerite’s body. It’s all less complicated than it sounds. And if there’s no opposition to her being the rightful heir, there’s no problem.” At least the end of the story would be simpler and happier than the beginning, and hopefully with a good result for his mother, which was some consolation, although the jewelry, and proceeds from it, were no substitute for a mother.

  It was seven-thirty when Phillip left his cousin’s office, and he called his mother as soon as he got home. She was painting. He told her what Penny had said, and she rapidly agreed to the DNA test, and gave him Fiona’s address at the nursing home in New Hampshire, and said she’d call and warn her that someone would be coming to take a statement from her. When Valerie called Fiona, she said she would be happy to tell the story to the investigator when he arrived.

  Valerie was excited now to get the result of the DNA test. She was planning to call her doctor about it the next day. She seemed to have a deep visceral need now to prove that Marguerite had been her mother, which no one was denying. At least not now, not anymore. But she wanted to confirm it officially, as though to prove to herself that she’d had a mother who loved her after all.

  Finally, Valerie called Winnie. She just wanted to let her know what she was doing. Winnie listened carefully to what Valerie told her, and sounded somewhat jangled when she responded.

  “It’s all so messy,” she said, sounding unhappy. “Exhuming bodies, DNA tests. I wish we could just let it lie.” But then Marguerite’s estate would go to the state, which seemed wrong to her too. But she hated all the mess, and facing the reality that her parents had been liars. She wasn’t angry at Valerie anymore, she just wished that none of it had ever happened, or they hadn’t found out. She was a little annoyed at Fiona for telling Valerie the story. Winnie had preferred to be an ostrich all her life. And so had her parents. And it was painful for Winnie to admit they were liars.

  “I know you think I’m doing this for the money,” Valerie said sadly, “but as hard as it is to believe, I’m not. I just want to prove she was my mother. I never felt as though I had one. Now I do.” It was too late for it to change anything, and it seemed childish of her to Winnie, and she had had parents after all, even if they weren’t her real ones, but she could hear how much it meant to Valerie, and there was no stopping the process now. Pandora’s box had been opened. “And you have a right to a share of the jewelry too,” Valerie told her. “She was your sister.”

  “I don’t want anything from her estate,” Edwina said firmly. “Henry left me more than enough. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. And his parents took care of Penny. She has all she’ll ever need, and so will her children. I’ve set up generation-skipping trusts for them. Just worry about you and Phillip. If she really was your mother, that’s only right.” Winnie was not an easy person, or a particularly happy one, but she was honest and fair and had no intention of fighting with Valerie over the estate, or even expecting part of it. “If I turn out to be your aunt and not your sister, you can take me to dinner,” Winnie said with a wintry smile.

  “If you want, I’ll take you to Europe,” Valerie promised. “I want to see where she lived. Phillip just went to visit the château in Naples.” Valerie sounded wistful as she said it.

  “I always get sick in Italy,” Winnie complained. “The food is too rich. The last time it gave me diverticulitis,” she said, and Valerie laughed.

  “Well, think about it.”

  “You can take pictures for me,” Winnie said firmly, as Valerie admitted to herself silently that it would be easier traveling without her, but she was grateful too that Winnie planned to make no opposition to the estate, and wanted nothing from it. It would make the process simpler.

  The next day, Valerie went to get the DNA test, Penny filed a request with the state to exhume the body, and get a DNA test of Marguerite, and she sent a licensed investigator to interview Fiona in New Hampshire. They were on their way. And Jane was in Harriet’s office that morning, as soon as she arrived. “We have an heir to the Pignelli estate,” she said, looking excited, as Harriet’s eyes widened.

  “Someone answered the ad?” Harriet seemed startled but pleased.

  “It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Jane shared with her, and told her the whole story in detail, as Harriet listened in amazement.

  The form came across her desk two days later, requesting to exhume Marguerite’s body for a DNA match, and she submitted it to the court immediately to facilitate the process. And as Jane left her office, she couldn’t help thinking that if she had gotten the clerkship she wanted in family law, and not at the surrogate’s court, she would never have met Phillip, and his mother might never have discovered the truth about her own history.

  He had invited Jane to dinner that weekend, and to visit his boat when the weather got warmer. It gave her something to look forward to. Her life was looking up these days. And all thanks to Marguerite Pearson di San Pignelli and the jewelry she had left
in her abandoned safe deposit box. It was beginning to feel like a miracle to all of them.

  When Phillip got the letters from Jane, he brought his mother a set the same night. She would get the originals eventually but he knew she would want to read them right away, and not on a screen.

  He explained to her quietly what they were, and she started to cry even before she took them out of the manila envelope he had put them in. And she told him she wanted to read them alone, after she thanked him for bringing them to her. She suspected they would be painful, but she had no idea how excruciatingly poignant it would be to read of her mother’s decades of suffering and never-ending sense of loss, having given up her baby daughter, only to grieve for her, for her entire life. Valerie sobbed for hours as she went through them intently, and went over them again, but when she had finished, she knew exactly how loved she had been. She wished that her mother had dared to approach her when she was eighteen, instead of fearing it would ruin her life. It wouldn’t have – it would have improved it immeasurably to meet the mother who loved her instead of the one she had. And she wished that Marguerite had contacted her over the years, or when she moved back to New York twenty-two years before. At any point in her life, Valerie would have welcomed her with open arms, and now she would never have that chance. But now at least she knew who she had lost, the woman she had been, and the love her mother had had for her. Knowing that put balm on some very old wounds, of never having had a mother’s love, except from her nanny Fiona until she was ten. She had never had maternal love from the woman who had pretended to be her mother, her own grandmother, who had taken her just to avoid the scandal and not from any deep feelings for her, of which she had none. If anything, she had resented Valerie all her life for how she’d been conceived. And she had thrown away her own daughter, while stealing hers from her. Two daughters had been lost, not just one.

  It remained inconceivable to Valerie, and yet it had all happened, and all she wished, as she finished reading the letters, was that she could have held her mother once so they could tell each other how much they loved each other. Valerie would have given anything for that. But the letters would have to be enough, and they were an amazing gift, from the mother she had never known. She realized now in every fiber of her being that Marguerite had always loved her with all her heart and soul.

  Chapter 16

  THE NIGHT AFTER Valerie had her blood drawn for the DNA test, she was painting in her studio, and the figure she’d been working on of the unknown woman had begun to look more and more like the photographs of Marguerite. There was an eerie, wistful quality to it, like a mystery emerging from the mists. There was something sad about the painting, and Fiona’s words about her natural mother and father kept echoing in Valerie’s head, that they had been like Romeo and Juliet. Fiona had said that Tommy’s parents had been as upset as Marguerite’s about the pregnancy, so they couldn’t have harbored warm feelings for her either, as the tangible result of their son’s foolishness. And even when he died, they must have not wanted his child, or they would have reached out in some way, and they never did, not that she knew, although maybe her grandparents had concealed that too. And by now, she was sure that her paternal grandparents would be dead, they would have been over a hundred years old, like her own. But she couldn’t help wondering if some other member of the family had survived. Given how soon he died after Valerie was conceived, Tommy would have had no other children, but perhaps he had siblings or cousins. She had a thirst for her relatives now that nothing could quench. She wanted to know it all. She had half of the equation – now she wanted the rest.

  She set down her brushes and left her studio, to sit at her computer at her desk, and she put Tommy and his parents’ names into a search engine. She Googled them in different ways, using Tommy’s birth date and a guess at when he was killed. Thomas, Muriel, and Fred Babcock – eventually the information came up that they were deceased. Then she tried Thomas Babcock, thinking that a relative might have named a child after her father, since he died during the war. She found one in New York, who was ten years younger than she was, which might have been about right, if Tommy had a brother who had named a child after him.

  Feeling her heart pound in her chest, with a shaking hand, Valerie called the phone number on her cell phone, and held her breath while it rang. It would be just too incredible if she got it right on the first try, but the possibility of it was exciting. She’d heard stories like this before, of people seeking long-lost parents, often who had put them up for adoption, and as the result of a random call, they were united via the Internet. She had become one of them, children born out of wedlock, looking for their roots, compelled to find their parents or relatives, trying to gather up the fragments of a lost life before it was too late. Or was it already too late? Were all of Tommy’s relatives dead? Had he been an only child?

  A man answered on the third ring. He had a pleasant voice, and Valerie launched nervously into her story about Tommy Babcock and her mother, seventy-five years before. Separated young lovers, an unwanted pregnancy, and his untimely death in the early weeks of the war. It sounded like a strange story even to her, as she described it. The man at the other end of the phone was silent as he listened. “Did you have an uncle or a relative named Thomas Babcock?” she asked hopefully, and waited anxiously for his answer.

  “Yes, I did,” he said, “but I don’t think he’s the one you’re looking for. I had an uncle Tom, and my grandfather was named Thomas too. I don’t think my uncle’s your man, though,” he said, chuckling.

  “Why not?” Valerie asked, curious, and wondering if he actually was the right one. So many coincidences that had seemed wrong at first had proved to be true.

  “My uncle was gay. He was an early activist in gay rights, and moved to San Francisco in the sixties. He was a great guy, and he died of AIDS in 1982. I don’t think he fathered any babies. He was a very talented set designer on Broadway, and became a well-known interior designer in San Francisco.” His nephew sounded proud of him, but this clearly wasn’t who she was looking for. “I hope you find some relative of your father’s. It sounds like a sad story. Why did you wait so long to look for his family?”

  “I only discovered the true story recently myself. In those days, babies born out of wedlock were pretty shocking, and no one talked about it.”

  “I guess that’s true,” he said kindly. “Well, good luck.” They hung up a moment later, while Valerie wondered how many wrong Babcocks she’d have to call, and if she’d ever find the right one, who’d been somehow related to her father.

  She tried the same name again, and dozens came up, some as young as four years old, from a variety of states. And finally one of them struck her as possible again. He was seventy years old, born the year after the war ended, and he lived in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Angela, and a Walter Babcock, who was ninety-four years old. The possible fantasy struck her immediately. What if Tommy had had an older brother, who married and had a son after the war, and named him after his deceased brother? She believed that anything was possible now. She would have liked to call Fiona to ask her, but it was too late, she would be sound asleep.

  Valerie sat staring at the names and number, desperate to call. She no longer cared if people thought she was crazy. She picked up the phone and called. It was only seven o’clock at night in California, and the worst they could say was that she had the wrong number and hang up. She had already decided to ask for Thomas Babcock, and not his father. Thomas would have been the nephew of her natural father, if she guessed right. A woman answered in a slight southern accent, when Valerie asked to speak to Thomas Babcock and closed her eyes as she waited. She had nothing to lose, except time and face, and she didn’t mind losing either one.

  A moment later a man with a deep, vibrant voice came on the line. He didn’t seem upset to be called by a stranger, and she explained rapidly, and as clearly as possible, the reason for her call.

  “I know this must sound craz
y, but I was born in June 1942, out of wedlock, to a young woman named Marguerite Wallace Pearson, and a boy named Tommy Babcock. His parents were Muriel and Fred. My mother and father were seventeen years old when I was conceived, in New York. My mother was sent to Maine to have me in secret. My father went into the army right after Pearl Harbor and was killed in an accident in January 1942 in California, before I was born. My grandparents brought me up and claimed me as their own. They sent my mother away to Europe after I was born, and I never saw her again. I learned all this very recently, and never knew anything about either of my parents till now. I just located my mother, unfortunately six months after she died.

  “And now that I know something about him, I was wondering if some members of my father’s family were still alive. Maybe they knew the story of my parents and remember it. I was wondering if your father, Walter, had a brother who matches this description and died in the war.” She fell silent then. Thomas Babcock had kindly and politely listened to her entire recital, even if he was the wrong one. Something about the way she told the story, and the impact of it, touched his heart. She sounded like a rational woman, and it moved him that she was searching for her parents at seventy-four. His assumption, though not correct, was that she must have an empty life. And he would like to help, if he could.

  “Actually,” he said, sounding very kind, “I was named after an uncle, who did in fact die during the war, at just that time. He was only eighteen, but he didn’t have any children. He was my father’s younger brother, and they were very close growing up, almost like twins, from what he says. He still cries when he talks about him, and he’s ninety-four. I’d let you talk to him, but he’s very frail now, he goes to bed early, and he’s asleep.”