by Tina Leonard
The eyes didn’t blink. If anything, they seemed to glow, as if any second the portrait might speak. “One more thing, Alexander. I’m not sure I ever told you I loved you when you were alive. I think I’ve been too afraid to tell you. You were pompous and arrogant and a stubborn old donkey, but I loved you, Alexander Banning, and I’m sorry I didn’t say so when you were alive. No doubt I would have gotten an impatient hmph! for my efforts, but at least it would have been said.”
She waited, her arms crossed rebelliously. “What’s the matter? No retort?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right, Alexander, me getting the last word. I have a funny feeling nothing’s ever going to feel right again, without your bellow rattling the roof. Did you know that every time you stomped up the stairs, Sinclair and Nelly had to straighten the portraits?”
His eyes held a cagey gleam. “Of course you did. That’s why you did it, you ornery old thing. You liked knowing people were taking care of you. You liked knowing you could affect their lives.” She ran a wistful hand over the frame of his picture. “Well, your sister is here, and some thing tells me if you were still around, Sinclair and Nelly would be doing a hell of a lot of picture straightening today.”
She backed away from the portrait. Her eyes held the painted ones, mesmerized. The strangest sense of doom suddenly assailed her, and she could no longer look Alexander in the eye.
Chapter Ten
The reading of the will commenced at two o’clock that afternoon. Daphne was seated next to Alex. Beatrice, Phillip and Gloria hovered on the edges of brocaded chairs, their expressions like expectant hawks, not even a mild attempt to appear regretful that Alexander was gone. It made Daphne sick to her stomach. I’d give anything to have that complaining old man back, and they’re just glad he’s gone, she thought angrily.
Nelly and Sinclair were also seated in the library, in chairs off to the side. To her surprise, Cos and Danita came in at the last moment. The youthful solicitor nodded from his place behind a wide mahogany desk before leaning to adjust the curtain panels to block the sunlight that streamed onto the papers in front of him.
“Now that we’re all here,” he said nervously, “I will intro duce myself. I am Joshua Farling, a representative of the law firm from which Alexander Banning required services.” He nodded toward Beatrice’s con tin gent. “I want to express my sincere sorrow to all of you at the loss of a man you all loved.”
“Where’s the old guy my brother had under his thumb?” Beatrice demanded suspiciously.
“As I mentioned to Alex on the phone,” the lawyer replied, running a hand over the knot in his tie, “his father’s previous lawyer had to leave the country unexpectedly on urgent business.”
“Likely story.” Beatrice waved an imperious hand. “Get on with it, then.”
Daphne felt frozen and out of place, but she touched her hand to her husband’s. He squeezed her fingers lightly and raised his eyebrows in a wish-this-was-over expression.
She wished it was over, too, and that they could leave the anticipatory Beatrice behind.
“Alexander provided in his will monetary amounts for his two loyal retainers, Nelly and Sinclair.” Joshua named sums that seemed staggering to Daphne. “It was his wish that the two of you live on these grounds for as long as you desire employment at Green Forks.”
For some reason, Joshua sent a stern look toward Beatrice. Daphne prayed her sudden stomachache would go away. She had the baby monitor with her so she could hear the babies if any of them awakened from their nap, but they were silent. She desperately wanted to leave the stiff, almost predatory atmosphere in this room. If Alex hadn’t needed her support, she would have made her excuses. For his sake, she remained still.
“For Cos and Danita Way, I have a letter.” Joshua handed across a thin white envelope.
Cos wouldn’t take it, so Danita did. “Dear Cos and Danita,” she read aloud. “As it was no secret to anyone that you would outlive me, I have written this letter concerning the recent purchase I made from your ranch. My relationship with your family has always been a difficult one. I didn’t much like you, Cos, for many years, and that’s some thing you won’t be surprised to hear. Many times I thought about sending my legal representative to simply offer you more money than you’d ever dreamed of for your ranch so I wouldn’t have to look at you anymore. However, even I am not that much of a coward. Your small, piddly spread of land seemed to hold all of that which I did not have, and I was jealous.
“Yes, I bought those cows knowing they were more valuable than you were aware. And I was glad when Alex brought Daphne to my home, because she was your only daughter. Far as I could see, I had you over a barrel, Cos, at last.
“But since you’ve outlived me, my triumph is short-lived. My solicitor will be returning to you the deed of sale for the cattle. The money I paid you need not be returned, for obvious reasons, my being dead the first of them. This is a bequest I am leaving to you and Danita because I don’t want it on my con science when I go to my grave. The better man has won, Cos, but I can rest easy knowing the children your daughter will bear Alex will wear your brand of honesty. sincerely, Alexander Banning.”
Danita looked up from the letter, her eyes meeting Daphne’s. “That’s all it says.”
Daphne held back a groan. She couldn’t meet Alex’s eyes. His father was making her feel guilty even from the grave! There would be no sons, no more children. Alexander had gambled on her and lost. It’s your own fault for meddling, she told Alexander mentally. You got your power and privilege confused with people’s lives.
“And that brings us to the matter of Green Forks,” Joshua said after handing Danita a tissue. He sent Alex a worried stare. “According to this document, which is British in origin, Alex, you are entitled to all funds and money from your father’s estate as his only heir. However, the house, any lands that were bought before your father’s possession of the ranch, and the contents of the estate that were part of the family inheritance are subject to the entailment provision originally set up by the founding members who bought the Green Forks property.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Alex rose from his chair.
“It means that, for the past several generations, Green Forks itself has been in the possession of male children of the first Banning, Alexander the First. And so, in turn, it will entail to your male child or children. If there are none, the property will pass to Beatrice’s son, and then his son.”
“What?” Alex demanded. “This is my home! An American court of law will find that to be the case. I don’t care where the original owners of the estate were from or where they’re buried.” He paced the room, stiff with rage and astonishment. “I’ve lived here, worked this land! How could it belong to people I never even knew about?”
“I’m not quite certain of this myself,” Joshua admitted. “I’m new to the firm, but I’ll need to look into this matter further. However, as it stands, Beatrice and her family must be considered in the event you have no male heir.”
“This is preposterous!” Alex glanced around the room, reminding Daphne of Alexander Senior. Impatient, wanting to hear answers that would favor his temper.
Cold fear swept over Daphne as the true enormity of Alexander’s gamble struck.
Gloria smiled and laid a manicured hand over her distended middle. “I’m having a boy.”
“OF ALL THE ridiculous things!” Alex paced in Daphne’s quarters, wild-eyed after the lawyer had left. “Why didn’t my father tell me?” He whirled to stare at her.
She cradled a fussy baby in her arms and shook her head. “Maybe he didn’t want to put any pressure on you, Alex. It certainly seems your father was carrying around enough of it for the both of you.”
“Yeah, but…damn it!” He sank into a chair. “How could he not mention that the roof over my head and the ranch I spent my sweat and blood investing in wasn’t even mine?”
Daphne put Danielle to her breast. Alex watched, momentarily distracted.
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“I don’t know,” Daphne replied, “except that he didn’t know for sure you weren’t going to have a son. He couldn’t predict that, Alex. Green Forks is yours, until…later.”
“So I work my butt off to turn the whole thing over to Phillip?” His incredulous tone threw an emotional knife into her, which she knew he didn’t intend.
“He tried his best to preserve the line by getting you married to me,” she said miserably.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know exactly!” she cried. “Let’s not pretend anymore! Your father needed sons to keep this ranch in your hands. My mother had borne six of them.” Her baby stopped nursing, its attention caught by Daphne’s tone. For some reason, anger at the situation suddenly flared inside her. “Alex, I over heard your father talking to you. He said he’d arranged our marriage. It’s clear your father thought he was buying those stupid cows as an installment payment, which is just as chauvinistic as that entailment provision on Green Forks. But the fact is, he thought he was getting a sure bet at male heirs to secure this place for you.”
“Chauvinistic? You think the entailment provision is chauvinistic?”
She paused, hearing some thing in his tone she couldn’t label. “Well, yes. Of course I do. I mean, how old-fashioned can you get? Women can do things as well as men. They’re certainly no less capable. It’s the way I intend to approach rearing my daughters. Would you have me teach them that they are second best to men?”
“Hell, no!”
“Well, you wouldn’t be in this snarl if the Banning men hadn’t had a rather narrow view of women. Obviously, Beatrice feels she’s entitled to some thing, and we don’t know that she isn’t right.” She took a deep breath, anguished. “All I know is, I can’t stay married to you knowing I’ve cost you what you love the most.”
Alex’s jaw sagged. “Daphne, you’ve gotten some thing confused, or a lot of things confused, but you’re wrong on just about everything you just said. Dad liked to think he was a king who arranged things at the crook of a finger but he didn’t arrange our marriage. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have married anybody I didn’t love even if I had known about the entailment. Which I didn’t, so that should ease your mind. Leave my father’s maneuvering out of this, hon.” He crossed the room to put his arms around her. “There has to be something we can do.”
“Not without me being able to conceive again.” She couldn’t meet his gaze.
“This is crazy! I can’t believe my whole way of life revolves around whether I got my wife pregnant with the right kind of baby.” He lowered himself to the edge of the bed, taking Daphne with him in his lap. “Okay,” he said with a long sigh. “So what? We still have each other. We’ll just have to live here with Phillip and Gloria and Beatrice. It’ll be like a ‘Dallas’ rerun, but I suppose there’s no way around it.”
Her heart beat crazily. “Alex, I’m not living here with them.” She would never be able to look at Gloria’s growing stomach knowing that child was the one who would inherit what Alex should have had. “I am going ahead with the divorce.”
“The hell you are.” He pushed her against the sheets gently and took his time kissing her neck. “You can have all the baby blues and pregnancy hormones you want and feel guilty all you like, but you are my wife and you’re staying that way, lady.”
He ran a hand under her dress.
Daphne heated up like a hot summer day. Reminding herself of their situation, she tried to push his hand—and him—away.
“I can’t live here with them,” she said desperately. “I would feel guilty, Alex. I’m not cut out for living like Sue Ellen Ewing. I’m just a girl from a dirt-poor farm down the road. Intrigue isn’t my specialty.”
“Mmm,” he murmured against her ear, “I like it when you talk like that. Say it again.”
“Say what?” One hand caressed her breast, and Daphne’s urge to push him away was quickly waning. “Alex…”
“Say that intrigue isn’t your specialty.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“I like knowing I married an honest woman. That’s what my dad was really after, Daph. He said so in the letter he wrote to your father.”
“Alex, honesty isn’t going to keep this house for you!”
“No,” he said, stroking her in places she had for got ten she loved to be stroked by this man, “but you’re mine, Daphne Way Banning. I may not be able to keep this ranch forever, but I can keep you. And I’m going to.”
He lowered his mouth to her lips and stroked the most sensitive part of her body over and over again. Daphne gasped as spasms washed over her. He cradled her in his arms, holding her tightly the way she’d always liked to be held when they’d made love.
But he couldn’t hold her forever, because she wasn’t a possession, which ran counter to the Banning male thought process. He might not give her a divorce, but she wasn’t staying in a house where she didn’t belong to watch another woman give birth to what she hadn’t been able to.
For the first time, Daphne truly under stood why Alexander Senior had felt the way he had. She tasted the bitter envy he had drunk for many of his days.
And she knew that, just as it had poisoned his life, the envy would poison her life with Alex.
ALEX SLIPPED AWAY from Daphne’s side as she lay sleeping. He checked on the babies, none of whom appeared to be ready to awaken. Danita said they were in a resting period of their lives, recovering from being pushed out into the world.
He under stood that feeling. The after noon with the lawyer had pushed him out into the world, and if he could have, he, too, would be sleeping.
There wasn’t time for that. He needed to talk to Beatrice and see exactly what she planned to do. Surely that particularly ugly arm of his family didn’t plan on staying? Maybe they meant to get what they could and run. People who had never worked land usually didn’t have an appreciation for it. They only saw the money the soil could yield. Perhaps a check or two every year would see them on their way to Philly.
In the great hall, he found Sinclair and Nelly working quietly. One by one, they had removed the ancestral portraits from the walls. Dark outlines on the silk-papered walls gave a naked and harsh appearance to the stair case.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Nelly and Sinclair jumped in tandem, the picture of his father bumping oddly between them.
“Oh, sir, Ms. Beatrice told us to take down all these portraits.” Nelly’s red, twisted hair was completely askew with her efforts. Tiny beads of sweat dotted her face, but it was her eyes that held the most distress. “She said a female’s running the ranch now, and we don’t need to be looking at a bunch of dead men in out-of-date suits.”
Sinclair met Alex’s eyes, chagrined. “We’re wrapping them care fully for storage. Ms. Beatrice says we’re to have the walls repapered in gold and have a decorator in to choose more modern artwork. Copies, of course, but some thing suitable to her taste.”
“I see.” Fury boiled inside Alex. Did Beatrice think she could just come into his home and rip apart the very fabric that seamed the memories and heritage of Green Forks? A female running the ranch, indeed. He’d never thought of himself as a true chauvinist, but he felt that Beatrice was more likely to ruin the ranch than run it. “I will have to speak to my long-lost aunt.”
“She’s in the parlor, sir.” Sinclair looked away, while Nelly looked at the patterned carpet beneath her feet.
It wasn’t their fault, and Alex didn’t want them feeling he was angry with them. Without another word, he strode to the parlor.
Gloria and Phillip were ensconced in chairs on opposite sides of the room, apparently having a long-distance conversation. Beatrice eyed some papers she held in her hands.
She glanced up and motioned to him. “Come on in,” she stated with an imperative wave of her hand. “I want to talk to you about these.” The papers she held fluttered as she thrust them at him. “What, exactly, is Green Forks worth? I can�
��t tell from this statement.”
His jaw dropped as he glanced at his father’s private bank statement. “Where did you get this?”
“From Alexander’s office,” she said, thrusting her chin at him belligerently.
He gave her a narrow stare. “You did not inherit my father’s personal money and acquisitions.”
“No, but I want to make sure I’m being treated fairly.” She thrust a finger toward the papers. “So tell me what I’m worth. I don’t want to call that lawyer back to the house. No doubt he charges a bundle for his services. I’ll have to hire a solicitor immediately who can sift through all these documents, just in case your father’s lawyer might be of a mind to play partial.”
“I don’t appreciate your insinuation.” Alex stared at her, his posture stiff. “But you don’t inherit a dime until after I’m gone, as I see it. You’re far over step ping your due place.”
“Don’t give me that.” She snapped her fingers at him as if he were an in attentive dog. “It’s time for better treatment of my side of the family.”
He shook his head. “Why would you be treated unfairly?”
Her eyes turned to angry slits. “As long as Alexander was alive, he could pretend I didn’t exist. Well, I do, and I’m here now, and I’m going to be accorded respect.”
Alex frowned. “What exactly was the reason for your estrangement from my father?” He felt like he was dealing with a dark wall of mystery. Until he knew what was behind the wall, he couldn’t knock it down.
“The reason—” Beatrice bit the words off “—was that our parents died in a car accident. Rather than take care of me as a brother should, Alexander sent me off to live with our mother’s relatives. I was just ten,” she said defensively. “He was eighteen, and even then determined to have Green Forks only for himself. I was too young to know how I was being shuffled off, never to know that my birth right was at risk.”