He’d determined the division of labor quite arbitrarily. Now more than ever, he had no interest in Marguerite stumbling across any mention of his own family, so closely situated as it was to Holt House. If he was unlucky enough to run across such mentions, though, it would be good for him to know what was out there. His father had assured him that most of the records from the period had been destroyed, but a reminder of his family’s unsavory history would no doubt make for a bracing education.
“This is interesting,” Marguerite murmured. Steeling himself, Win glanced up at her. She had a pen in one hand, jotting down notations in a spiral notebook she’d brought along in the tantalizingly-sized tote, and she was staring at the monitor with such intensity that he allowed himself the pleasure of simply staring at her for a moment longer. Her hair had continued to curl in the afternoon heat, and now framed her face perfectly, all of her looking soft, feminine, and wholly desirable. Sixth-grade era Suzanne wouldn’t have stood a chance against her.
“Marguerite?” he prompted, and she looked up with a jolt.
“Oh! Sorry,” she said. “These local newspaper articles are from 1940, and they’re listing Holt House parties nearly every other week, and meetings of the gardening society on their grounds once a week. The way they’re written, it seems like these events have been going on for a long time, and the paper covered them with excruciating detail.”
Win nodded. “So it stands to reason that they’d cover the party where the fateful argument occurred.”
“You’d think so, but it doesn’t. The articles simply start to repeat themselves with only a few variations, starting in early 1941. But America didn’t enter the war until that winter, well after this repetition begins.” She tapped the machine. “It does list the son as a casualty of war—but not until April, 1942. He was only twenty-one, but there’s no mention of when or how he died, specifically. The timetable is all off.”
Win frowned. “Perhaps his enlistment has nothing to do with the curse?”
“I don’t know. Either way, by the time he died, Mr. Holt was no longer in the picture, and Mrs. Holt…I don’t know exactly when she died. But it was also during the war.”
“No mention of Mr. Holt’s departure?”
“Not one.” She looked up, clearly disappointed. “This is a dead end.”
“Not necessarily. Go back to where you find the first duplication of the garden party articles. Did you note that?”
“It’s…hang on.” Marguerite bit her lip as she searched her notes, then returned to scanning the machine. “May of 1941—that would be the beginning of the growing season?”
“More the middle of it—this is the south, remember, everything starts fairly early. But certainly long enough for flowers to be well established. If the blight, or whatever it was, struck that spring, I could see the author wanting to protect the Holts from embarrassment.”
“That author would be Kristopher Wellingford, with a K,” Marguerite said. “He seems to have covered all the society articles. Is it a well-known family?”
Win grimaced. “It’s a depressingly well-known family. Kristopher, of course, is long since passed, but his grandson of the same name is every bit as entrenched in the gossip mills. I hadn’t realized his grandfather was actually employed by the newspaper. They’ve scads of money now. It seems rather beneath them to do anything so menial as…work.”
His hesitation wasn’t lost on Marguerite. “What are you thinking?”
“It’s not material. But the trail has become a little more interesting, anyway. Kristopher loves nothing more than to hear himself talk. More importantly, he’s been nagging me for the better part of a year to contribute to some local cause I can no longer recall the name of. Either way, I’m sure I can arrange a meeting with him about what his grandfather might have said about the Holt’s. They’re a famous family among the local population, so chances are this isn’t the first time he’s told that story. “
“Well, I’m not sure if that will help us,” Marguerite sighed. “What’s common knowledge doesn’t seem to be adding up.”
“But the story may take a turn that it typically doesn’t, if we ask the right questions.” Win tapped his own monitor. “There’s nothing here, at least. Whatever happened at Holt House in its early going has no bearing at all at how they managed to get to the 1940s, and what we appear to need is everything that happened after Spring, 1941. So that does narrow the search.”
“Odd that Mr. Holt himself knows so little,” Marguerite said as she packed up her bag.
“Except that, by now multiple accounts, it wasn’t even his direct family line that had the trouble. Mr. Holt left, Holt the younger shipped off to war, Mrs. Holt died, apparently childless beyond her son, and the house eventually fell to a cousin with the good fortune to have the same last name. Quite a decided break in the lineage.”
“And there’s nothing about the founders of Holt House—how they came to have such a large home so far up the river, and where their money came from?”
Win grimaced. Based on his research, he knew the answers to those questions, but they struck a little too close to home. “Holt House thrived from the early 1770s until right around 1940, so I don’t think the question is buried in the distant path. We’re looking for something simpler than that.”
“Right, but even the house surviving the way it did is remarkable, right? Weren’t a lot of homes burned in the war?”
“Not…all of them were.” Marguerite did have a good point, however. The Grand had been burned then rebuilt, but the Holts by all account had a smaller plantation without the deep pockets of the Masters—and it had survived. He ran through news accounts for the late Civil War period with more specific parameters, but got only a single reference of a small pox outbreak, and slaves being carted to Holt House for treatment. Apparently, the home had been used as a hospital. If that was true, it was likely the reason it had been spared—no one probably wanted to get near the place.
Win scanned further, his brows drawing together as a name in the next paragraph jumped out at him: the Grand.
He powered down the machine. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t want to explore his own family’s history too closely. Not today.
“Everything okay?”
Win nodded crisply. “But we should be getting you back,” he said. “It’s two hours back to the island, without traffic. God knows what it will be like with it.”
“God knows,” Marguerite murmured, a blush quickly suffusing her cheeks. Despite it, she soldiered on. “Ah, I was wondering…since we’re already here, would you—would it be a terrible imposition if you let me see your home?”
“My home?” Win frowned.
“I know it’s in the other direction, and if it’s too late, I completely understand. But even to see it briefly, would be lovely. If you don’t mind, of course.”
He did mind, actually. Fool that he was, he wanted her to see where he lived, but the strategist in him was already clamoring at how dumb that idea was.
“Of course,” he said, hiding all his trepidation with the years of practice he’d accrued. “In fact, we should simply have dinner there, and wait for traffic to clear.”
“Oh! That sounds marvelous,” Marguerite said, her whole face brightening. “What a perfect solution.”
Yes, Win thought grimly, perfect.
For just a moment longer, he drank in the intoxicating beauty of Marguerite’s smile, the energy of her laugh, and tried desperately to ignore the need for her thrumming through his body. Now he was going to half to ignore the woman in a house with fifteen different bedrooms, all of them empty.
He blew out a careful, measured breath. He could do this.
Chapter Nine
You can do this.
Marguerite clasped her hands in her lap, smiling gamely as Win’s doorman trotted down the steps of the enormous mansion, pausing in front of her car door. Another was positioned at Win’s side, and the two men opened the vehicle’s doo
rs with exact precision, allowing Win and Marguerite to exit simultaneously.
“There’s a tote in the trunk. Could you get it for us?” Win’s voice, always cultured, had taken on even more hauteur since they’d left the Records office, and for the millionth time, Marguerite questioned what she was even doing here. With this man, in his house, any of it. She’d never thrown herself so boldly at anyone in her life, and here she was inviting herself into his house!
But that kiss in the gazebo hadn’t been an accident. Had it? Or had he found her attractive originally, and then the kiss had ruined everything for him?
“Marguerite?” Win now looked at her oddly, and she shook herself out of her distraction.
“My apologies,” she murmured. “You have a lovely home.”
“The Grand,” he said the words with an unmistakable tinge of sarcasm, but dutifully turned to take in the enormous house. It was well named, as far as she could see. Like Holt House, it stood far back from the main road behind a wall of trees that blocked it from curious eyes. A gentle slope of finely manicured grass rose up to meet the home, and she expected that the grounds flowed with equal grace behind the building, all the way down to the Ashley River, nearly as close to that body of water as Mr. Holt’s residence was.
The similarity between the buildings absolutely ended there, however. Where Holt House lay in ruins—at least on the outside—the Grand looked like it had never suffered more than a stray cobweb for longer than twenty minutes in all the years of its existence. A towering structure of rose brick and black and white shutters, with balconies and porches ringing the various terraces everywhere she looked, the building looked like something out of an architectural magazine. The land to either side of the mansion had been fully cleared and cultivated, with split-rail fencing and a far-off stand of horses. To the other side of the house, tidy looking barns fronted more acres of land that looked like it had been recently cleared of whatever crop they’d once held.
Closer at hand, flowers still bloomed in bold profusion at the base of the home’s large staircase, and as Win and one of his men mounted those steps, Marguerite was surprised at the redolent smell of the blossoms in the heavy, humid air. Of course the flowers would have a scent, and yet—they were almost too perfect, as if they’d been unboxed that morning and set out just for show.
“When was this built?” she asked, not even bothering to hide the awe in her voice. The houses of Garronia were pretty, of course—but nothing but the royal residences came close in size to this home.
“In the mid 1800s, originally, though it’s been rebuilt several times. There were, ah, fires at various points of its existence, and we’ve lost some of the more vital records.” Win’s voice seemed slightly clipped, and she wondered if he must be asked questions about his home all the time. She blushed, but he wasn’t looking at her. “My family originally came down from the North, eager to take part in the rich farming opportunities that this area boasted. They bought three adjoining plantations and tore down the existing houses on them, using some of the material to build…here.” He finished that last bit somewhat lamely, and she looked the question at him.
He sighed. “Slave quarters. They used the other homes’ materials to build slave quarters. No pictures remain of those either, I’m happy to say, and the quarters themselves were converted into Union garrisons during the civil war, then torn down.”
“So your family was sympathetic to the North.”
“Only when it suited our needs to do so, I’m afraid. And it didn’t so much matter. In the end, the original home here burned as part of Sherman’s March.” Once again, the tension was there. Marguerite had never considered what it must have been like to have lived through a Civil War, when countrymen turned against themselves and your very neighbors’ lives hung in the balance. But Win’s discomfort was enough to discourage her from asking more questions.
Or it would have been, except for what she saw next.
“Win!” She couldn’t help the outburst, as they stepped into the reception foyer for the house. It was like stepping into a museum—or into another time entirely.
The walls were painted a deep crimson, and were trimmed in bright white at their bases and tops—complete with a ornate crown molding that ran the length of the room. But you could barely see the walls for all the paintings. There were dozens of them, nearly all in impressionist style, hung floor to ceiling. The march of so many images was broken only by gold framed mirrors that were positioned to capture and refract the light of the enormous chandelier above, and it was all Marguerite could do not to stare.
“We’ve kept it much like it was in—I believe this renovation was done in the late 1800s, which explains the emphasis on impressionist paintings. We were lucky enough to acquire many of these before the artists had fully developed their style—or their cachet. If you’ll excuse me, for just a moment?”
Win pulled out his phone and Marguerite nodded quickly. “Of course.”
He gestured to the man accompanying them. “John will show you into the sitting room—the veranda is quite nice, and affords a view of the river. I won’t be long.”
She managed a nod as Win headed out of the room, and his houseman turned and gestured her down a long, painted corridor. The floor was wood-paneled, the walls here echoing the crimson of the front room, and the profusion of paintings continued. These were of far more pastoral subjects, soft, diffuse oils that had the look of water colors, and once again, more mirrors.
“That’s a lot of glass to polish,” she murmured, not expecting a response.
To her surprise, the houseman laughed. “When the Masters’ redecorated, they did so for show and for socializing. There is nothing the well-mannered rich prefer to do quite so much as look at themselves.”
John’s good humor put Marguerite at ease, and when she stepped into the sitting room, she felt true relief. Unlike the unrelenting formality of the hallway, this room was built for obvious comfort.
“One of the personal rooms of the family,” John said, continuing deeper into the room. It was painted in a soft blue, again with white trim, and the wood paneled floors were broken by thick, heavily loomed rugs in white and cream. The furniture was understated and collected in conversational seating, there was a large desk set into a sunny window, with bookshelves on either side, and she could see the wide screened porch that extended back from it in the distance. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll bring you some drinks. Water, certainly, but anything else?”
“Water would be lovely.”
John was already turning away as Marguerite walked toward the screened porch, and, stepping out onto it, her attention was riveted to the view. As Win had mentioned, the porch looked out toward the river, but the view…
“How much money can one family truly have?” she muttered. The grounds of the Grand had been landscaped to create enormous grassy steps descending toward the water—but that wasn’t all. Before reaching the river proper, twin ponds had been carved out of the earth, each boasting a sparkling fountain. There was no dock to mar the effect here. She could only guess how much river frontage the house commanded, but she expected there was some sort of dock further up. But in the waning light of the afternoon, it looked like the Masters’ property continued all the way to the sunset—a perfect fairytale kingdom.
Someone stepped out onto the porch and she turned, expecting John.
Instead, Win was there, emerging from the house that suited him so well it took her breath away. Marguerite’s family was semi-royal, and they were financially well-off…she’d never wanted for anything in her life. Yet this level of opulence, tucked into this out-of-the-way corner of the countryside, was frankly overwhelming. She would never have imagined that she’d feel like the poor country mouse, yet if she spoke now she feared she’d do little more than squeak.
“I’m sorry that took a few minutes,” Win said, his smile broader now than she’d seen it since they’d left Holt House with its magical gazebo. “But I’ve got
news. Kit Wellingford will be joining us for dinner.”
Win wasn’t ashamed of his attempt to manipulate the evening. If he was successful, and he generally was, he’d manage to accomplish two cherished goals—three, if it got Kit Wellingford to stop annoying him in the process. But he legitimately wanted to see if the windbag had any information on the Holt question—and he legitimately wanted to keep himself from body tackling the Countess Saleri onto the living room rug.
“Your drinks, sir.”
He turned as John stepped out onto the porch, his tray laden with waters and mint juleps, along with a small tray of grapes and cheeses. The major domo moved officiously to the low table and laid out the repast, and Win waited until the older man acknowledged him again. John didn’t have much cause to do his official duties, and he seemed to enjoy the rare occasions that Win dined at the old home.
“There will be a third for dinner,” he informed the man gravely. “I hope that won’t be an inconvenience.”
“Not at all sir. We’ll be dining still at seven?”
Win nodded. That was nearly an hour off, but it would give Kit time to dress and redress himself the required dozen times. The man’s home was only about twenty minutes away, but he’d need every spare moment to prepare, he expected. As it was, Win had already nixed the photo shoot Kit had requested of the Grand’s interior. If the evening went well, he’d said, he might allow it later in the month.
By then, he suspected, Marguerite would be well out of the country, and he’d no longer need to worry about her learning too much…about anything.
John left, and the woman in question stepped forward quickly, ignoring the food. “How did you manage that so quickly?” she asked.
“Because Kit’s been trying to get a look inside this house for the better part of five years.” He eyed her meaningfully. “Whatever you do, don’t ask him about his book. Once you get an author started on that topic, it’s impossible to get him back on track.”
Chosen: Gowns & Crowns, Book 7 Page 9