Secret Shores

by Ella Carey

  Tess sat bolt upright for the entire flight back to New York. She kept her seat upright, too, pretending to focus on the film that was showing on the hazy screen at the front of the airplane, even though it held no interest for her. At least she could pretend to be fascinated by it and avoid James’s questions.

  “I wish you’d talk to me,” he said, for about the thousandth time, once the credits were rolling. Tess couldn’t even recall the title of the film. She pulled out her eye mask. Nearly everyone around them was sleeping.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just work-related stuff.”

  Which was true—to a point.

  James tipped his seat backward a bit. He looked at her, clearly sleepy—and sexy. Stubble shadowed his chin.

  He reached out to her, tracing his hand down the side of her face. “Well. If you want to talk about it, you know I’m here.”

  Tess leaned toward him, but her stomach fluttered with doubt. So far, for the record, she’d lost her best client, kissed the man who stole him, then become hopelessly involved in a decades-old love story. If that wasn’t enough, now she faced a situation that she suspected could push not only Edward’s book but his life into the stratosphere. Excellent progress so far for a person who prided herself on her dedication to her career. She could see good reasons now for having avoided getting involved for so long.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Victor Harbor, 1946

  The sun made its final, graceful way down to the horizon before settling in a glorious explosion of fire against the horizon as Edward rowed them back from the island. As they neared the shore, the moon rose to replace the sun, sending an arc of light across the bay.

  Edward pulled the oars through the silent, still water. Evanescent drops fell from the polished timber of the oars into the secret depths below. He maneuvered the dinghy onto the shore and climbed out, his bare feet sinking into the soft sand while the water stung his calves. Rebecca helped him lug the wooden boat up the beach.

  He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead while she stood next to him, her feet bare in the sand. She looked more beautiful than ever tonight.

  “That was heaven,” Rebecca said.

  “It’s only the beginning,” Edward whispered, taking her slim frame in his arms and wrapping her in an embrace. Over the top of her tousled, salt-sprayed hair, he gazed up at the house.

  It was lit up as if for a party.

  He smiled and took Rebecca’s hand. “I think,” he said, as they wandered toward the path, “we should carve out a life like Sunday and John have.” He stopped, taking her shoulders in his hands. “Can I tell my family that’s what we want to do?”

  She leaned into him. “I adore you,” she whispered. “It’s exactly what I want . . .”

  They came out of the bracken-lined track and crossed the expanse of well-tended lawn on their way toward the house.

  His mother stood on the veranda, a lone figure.

  Edward waved to her. And felt a pang of regret for her, for her life. He hated to see her watching out for his and Rebecca’s return. If only, he thought for the millionth time, his father and brother were stronger, if only his mother could have the life that she deserved. He hated that everything had been such a disappointment for her. Brushing Angus and Robert’s alcoholism under the table was not the answer to their family’s problems. Edward knew he should do something, insist they get help, ensure that Robert could take over the role he was born to play. He’d be much better at running the family businesses than Edward; Robert had no qualms about fitting into their class. No. This hiding behind a pretense that the family was as it had always been for generations—strong, successful, and stable—had gone on long enough.

  Celia did not wave back. Instead, she seemed to melt into a wicker chair, her head throwing itself back as if of its own accord. Edward let go of Rebecca’s hand. He flew up the veranda steps to his mother, his footsteps punctuating the silence, and leaned over his mother’s frame. It struck him how small she was and how vulnerable she seemed. Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell, but only in small flurries.

  “Mother?”

  Suddenly, guilt engulfed him. Celia had too much responsibility. He should have stepped in before this. His mother had never signed up for marriage to an alcoholic.

  Edward shouted for his father, running a hand over his mother’s still face.

  “I’ll get someone,” Rebecca said.

  “No. I will. Wait here.”

  Everything was deadly still in the house as Edward dashed through the rooms. The old farmhouse kitchen was quiet. A leg of lamb sat abandoned on the wooden table. The stove was lit, and an odd assortment of vegetables littered the table. An onion was chopped in half, its pungent smell blending with wood smoke. Edward almost retched as he stared at it for one horrible second.

  He called for Marie, the cook. Silence.

  Edward ran to his father’s bedroom, annoyed suddenly that his father had always slept separately from his mother. Had Angus ever tried to treat his mother as anything other than the breeding mare that the family so obviously required? Everything was in its place because the maids kept the room just so, but there was no sign of his father.

  Edward tore down the hallway to Vicky’s room.

  As he ran and called out, the house seemed to pulsate and blur around him.

  He would check on Celia, then call for an ambulance or drive her to the local hospital himself if she was awake. But should he move her? Probably not. He raked his hands over his head and pushed open the screen door that led from the living room back out to the veranda.

  She was awake. Her eyes darted from Rebecca to Edward and back.

  “You are here.”

  He hated that it was resignation, not relief, that clouded her voice.

  Edward crouched down next to her.

  She looked helpless. Her life had been directed at first by her father, whose business interests had taken a dive during the Great War, when bad management of the family’s assets had been confounded by the loss of Celia’s only brother in the Somme. Celia’s marriage to Angus Russell was viewed as salvation by her family. She had sacrificed herself while Angus’s father had paid off her father’s debts and taken over her family’s steel production interests.

  When he was young, Angus had been besotted with the beautiful Celia. His father had bought him his bride. She’d been treated by her own father as if she were a commodity.

  A small moan escaped from Celia’s lips. Her body was racked with tremors and her teeth chattered.

  Edward turned to Rebecca. “Could you get something to wrap her in, Rebecca?”

  He’d seen this in the war. Shock. Probably not a heart attack. What had she witnessed?

  He cast about for something to cover her with. His instinct to protect her was fierce. He had memories of her walking him around the gardens at Haslemere when he was a child. When she had started travelling with Vicky, she’d placed him far away from the troubles—in boarding school so that he could get the education he needed away from his father’s drinking and outbursts, which would only become worse. As he stared at her, helpless, he had to confront thoughts that had bothered him in the past. What if in sending him away, she’d protected Edward, rather than abandoned him as he’d always thought? What else could his mother have done? She had no training, no way to support herself if she left his father.

  Silently, Rebecca appeared with a blanket. Edward tucked it over his mother. Celia still trembled and her breathing was quick.

  “Rebecca. Brandy,” he said. “In the butler’s pantry. The glass-fronted cabinet.”

  Rebecca nodded, returning with a large spoon and the bottle.

  Edward cradled his mother’s head in his arms while spooning the rich amber liquid down her throat and tipping her head back like a baby’s. “Everything will be all right,” he murmured. Dull, useless words.

  Celia sat up, her eyes flickering as if in surprise at his presence. But then she darted a
look at Rebecca, before her eyes lit up with panic again. In one ghastly movement, she thumped her hand on top of Edward’s, which held the spoon, causing it to crash and clatter onto the wooden slats of the veranda.

  “I’ll take you to the hospital. It’s going to be faster than calling an ambulance out here.”

  But Celia placed both hands on the arms of her chair as if to stand up, only to fall back again, hard. “It’s not me,” she whispered.

  The back of Edward’s throat thickened. He’d pushed suspicions away since the moment he laid eyes on her, and now he prepared himself.

  When she spoke, his mother’s voice was as faint as the faraway call of a bird. “Edward,” she whispered. “Oh, heaven help us, Edward.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  New York, 1987

  At last morning came after an interminable night spent alone with jet lag. The moment the sun was up, Tess was too.

  “Mom?” she said, the second her mother answered. Glimpses of light were just appearing around the edges of Tess’s curtains. Her mother was an early riser. She would not mind a call at this hour.

  “Tess!”

  “How are you, Mom?” she asked.

  “Fine. I’m fine. Honey, Dad’s playing golf later this morning, but would you like to—”

  “Could I come over for breakfast?” Tess cut over her mother’s voice.

  “We’d love that.”

  Tess winced at the relief in her mother’s voice.

  “I’ll come over right now.” She hung up her phone and grabbed her house keys.

  Once she was inside the apartment, the “New York pad,” as her father called it, with its white tiles and columns, black leather sofas, and sleek minimalist decor, it was clear that her father was itching to go play golf. Dale Miller’s golf cap was ready for him by the front door, along with a sports bag, which no doubt Tess’s mother had packed for him first thing this morning. In some ways, Tess’s father reminded her of Leon. His life was measured out, run meticulously. Tess’s mother was his social secretary. It worked for some, Tess thought, as she felt her shoulders tighten.

  She wished she knew how life was going to work for her. The last thing she wanted was to end up as the support person for someone else’s career. At thirty-four, she’d come to love her independence. If she were going to consider a relationship, things would have to be equal.

  James was attractive and charming; that was true. But Tess knew now that underneath it all, he was also funny, kind, and loyal. That kiss had loomed large in her jumbled thoughts last night. She still worried that if things developed further between them she could end up being left in James’s wake.

  “So, what’s up, Tess?” Her father finished his bowl of muesli—one of his latest dietary fads. Dale Miller had the figure of a young man.

  Tess had one question to ask her father. There was no point putting it off.

  “Dad,” she said. “You know those sketches you have in your study? The ones by Rumer Banks?”

  Dale Miller nodded. “Always buy art with an eye to future growth, Tess. Don’t think much of them, but I got a tip from someone in the know about art that Rumer was on the rise. I’ll hang on to them until she’s dead. Then I’ll auction them off.”

  Tess swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. No matter how much her father’s attitude repelled her, she knew she herself would not have questioned it a few weeks ago. But for now, she had to keep on his good side if he was going to agree to what she wanted to do.

  “So, where did you get them?” That was a neutral-enough question.

  “Picked them up at auction, from a private owner back in the sixties. Damned good price.”

  “But they’re ghastly!” Lucille started clearing up plates.

  Tess swiveled her head around to face her mother.

  “That’s why they’ve never seen the light of day beyond your father’s study, Tess. Just a few brushstrokes on a piece of canvas. Stupid stuff. Honestly, Dale, Tess could have done them when she was in grade school!”

  Just a few brushstrokes. Tess steadied her breathing, which had suddenly begun to rush.

  “Mind if I take a look at them, Dad?” Tess asked the question easily. Her father’s study was his sanctuary.

  Lucille surveyed her husband from the kitchen. “Dale, you make some weird investments, but those, surely, have to take the cake. I’m not into that modernist stuff. I prefer something more realistic and traditional myself. At least I could have a Thomas Kinkade painting in my house without grimacing every time I looked at it.”

  Tess smiled at her mother. “Just interested, though—they’re from the 1950s, right?”

  “Nineteen fifty-eight and nineteen fifty-nine,” Dale said, looking at Tess with a little more respect. “The old Rumers ended up doing damn well. Despite your mother’s reservations, the point is, no matter what sort of art you’re talking about, I know what’s a good buy and what’s not. All art is a commodity, Tess. Don’t you ever forget that.”

  “Dale, you’ll be late for golf! I’m going to my Jazzercise class this morning. It’ll be a gossip catch-up as well. They’re all having grandchildren.” Lucille shot Tess a pointed look. “Suppose you can’t tell me that you’ve met someone since we caught up last?”

  Tess reeled with the memory. She stared at her parents and could barely mumble a word.

  “Do you mind if I go take a look at the sketches?” she asked.

  “Oh, go on, if you must, Tess.” Lucille dismissed her with a wave of her manicured hand.

  Tess stumbled her way down the staircase, her chest thumping out its own hard beat.

  The office seemed to loom in front of her, expansive and modern and well-kept. The two Rumer Banks sketches hung precisely one above the other on the wall to the side of his black desk.

  Tess moved across to the sketches, her stomach somersaulting as she reached for the glossy photos of Rebecca’s work that she had in her bag.

  Her eyes flew to the one that had catapulted into her thoughts the moment Edward had pulled Rebecca’s sketches out of his satchel in Rome. Two arched eyebrows, an elongated nose, an older man wearing a suit and tie, his head distorted against his body. Rumer Banks had drawn triangular shapes around his eyes, and long lines ran from the sides of his nose to his chin. Tess held her photos of the sketches close to the frames on the walls.

  The second sketch was of the out-of-shape woman Tess remembered so well from long ago, her eyes sagging, her nose bulbous. The woman’s dark eyes stared somewhere out into the distance, and her lips were drawn downward in a grimace.

  Tess swung around when her mother appeared at the door, hiding the photographs behind her back.

  “Darling, we’re both heading off now. Happy to see yourself out?”

  Tess nodded, almost dumb with relief that her mother hadn’t seen her photos. Tess moved over to the door, leaning in for Lucille’s kiss on her cheek, flush with her favorite perfume—Arpege by Lanvin.

  Tess winced and turned back.

  “I’ll let myself out, Mom.”

  “Okay!” Lucille trilled, glancing at Rumer’s sketches on the wall. “I have no idea what your father sees in those, but never mind. It’s all in the name of progress, I suppose.” She adjusted her velour tracksuit.

  “Yes, progress . . .” Tess murmured.

  Once Lucille had tripped off, Tess reached for the phone on her father’s desk.

  It seemed Rebecca was the key. To everything.

  Before any doubts could stop her, Tess picked up the phone and dialed Flora at home.

  “Flora,” she said, with a sense of relief when Flora picked up.

  “Tess! Good to hear from you! More to the point, have you done anything about your delectable Mr. Darcy character? I loved the way he was marching around after you at the ball! I am one hundred percent certain that you’re viewing him in the wrong light.”

  Typical Flora.

  “Well,” Tess said, sitting down in her father’s leather swivel ch
air, leaning back in it, and giving it a twirl. “I may have kissed him in Rome.” She waited a beat.

  It only took two seconds.

  “Tess! Fabulous! He’s gorgeous! So what’s happening now?”

  “I’m not sure. Not rushing into anything, obviously, but he has kind of . . . gotten under my skin. He worked hard to prove that he didn’t take Alec from me on purpose. And, well, I think I believe him now.”

  “I’m thrilled!”

  Tess chewed on her lip and gazed around her father’s all-black office. “Yes . . .” she murmured. “So. I’m sitting in my father’s office, staring at two early sketches by Rumer Banks from the 1950s. Dad bought them as an investment years ago. Since I’m editing a book on modernists, do you know anything about the elusive Rumer Banks?”

  “Elusive’s the word, honey. Nobody knows anything about Rumer Banks.”

  Tess scrutinized the pictures in front of her.

  “The story goes like this: only her dealer is aware of her real identity. I think the art world and buyers have come to respect that about her. She doesn’t want fame, doesn’t court any of that. But she’s viewed as one of the most talented artists of her generation. Her works sell for millions these days.”

  Tess sighed. “She hates publicity, I know that. Does anyone have any idea why?”

  “Nope.”

  Tess’s mind was working in more logical circles now. “Do you happen to know how old she might be, Flora?”

  “She’d be at least in her sixties now.”

  So, in her twenties in 1946.

  “Does anyone know where she might live?”

  “There have been rumors about Carmel-by-the-Sea. Journalists have tried, believe me, but it’s kind of a taboo thing. You know, people respect her privacy in some ways, which is odd in this day and age.”

  Tess sat up. “Carmel?”

  “Now about that gorgeous man . . .”

  “Flora, I have to go. We’ll talk soon. Ciao!”

  Tess was in the office first thing on Monday morning with all her information set out on her desk. After spending hours in the library on the weekend, she’d confirmed the one lead that Flora had suggested—Carmel-by-the-Sea.