by Layne, Ivy
Griffen was at my side, looping his arm through mine. I tried to pull away, unsuccessfully. He shot me a glare as he said, “We just got here, haven’t seen much yet. Kitchen and dining rooms first?”
“Sure,” Savannah agreed, fishing her own notebook from her purse. Her kind gaze landed on me, taking in the flush in my cheeks and my wet eyes. “You okay, Hope?”
I nodded, my throat too tight to risk words.
“You’ll tell me if you’re not?”
I nodded again.
Griffen scowled at both of us. “I’m not going to hurt Hope, for fuck’s sake.”
Savannah only rolled her eyes. “It’s my job to keep an eye on you two and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Raising her pen, she pointed it at Griffen. “She married you to save this town, not because you’re Prince Charming. Don’t think I’m going to let you get away with treating her like crap because you don’t like how this all ended up. You got everything, including Hope. If you want to keep it, I better see her smiling.”
A laugh choked its way out of my throat. I yanked my arm free of Griffen and put some space between us. I was still too twisted up. Aroused, but hurt. Scared, but longing for more.
I wanted to be Savannah, years younger than me and bold enough to tell Griffen off. Bold enough to tell anyone off. She was Miss Martha’s daughter. She came by her ball-breaking honestly.
Humor in his eyes, Griffen said, “Yes, Ma’am.” He moved to take my arm again. I side-stepped him. I wasn’t playing the smiling bride in front of Savannah, the only person allowed to know I was anything but. Griffen’s brows drew together but he didn’t protest.
Good, it wouldn’t kill him not to get what he wanted for once, and we had work to do.
We started with the dining room. Aside from Prentice’s office, it was the only room on the main level we needed if we wanted to move in. Designed for formal entertaining, it was big enough to feed fifty, and every inch needed a thorough cleaning.
The kitchens weren’t as bad as I’d feared. Located in the lower level, the main kitchen was bigger than most houses, with two long rectangular islands, several commercial refrigerators, and enough ovens and gas burners to cook for an army. Adjacent were the butler’s pantry, the prep kitchen, and a room just for baking and making desserts. Heartstone Manor needed a cook.
Savannah was already making notes. “Needs a good cleaning—I’m already working on a crew—and someone to cook. You’ll have to put up with my cooking for now. Mom might chip in. Otherwise, everything seems like it’s in good shape.”
She opened and closed the first dishwasher, giving a hum of approval when the lights on the control panel came to life. A glance in one of the refrigerators had her wrinkling her nose and swinging it shut. Stacks of takeout containers grown pungent with mold along with half-cut limes, bottles of tonic, and four different bottles of vodka.
Sterling. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug her or smack her.
“I’ll get these cleaned out, make a grocery run for staples,” Savannah murmured. She scribbled on her pad for a few more minutes, then lifted her head and said brightly, “Bedrooms?”
“First, let’s check this,” Griffen said, leading us through a narrow hall off the back of the main kitchen. The hall opened into a sitting room with a narrow window set high in the wall. Despite the window’s small size, the room was filled with light. A small built-in desk with a corkboard above was against one wall, a comfortable looking chair and ottoman against the other.
Savannah stopped in the middle of the room and turned a slow circle, wonder in her eyes. “I forgot about this. We stayed here when I was little until Mr. Sawyer moved Mom to the cottage.” She trailed a finger over the dusty chair, lost in memory.
“Eventually, I figured you could move into the cottage, but I have a feeling it might need some work. And while you’re getting a handle on things here, it would be easier to stay in the house. Does that work?”
“Sure,” Savannah murmured as she opened the door off the sitting room into a decent-sized bedroom. Like the sitting room and the rest of the house, it was dusty, the air stale. Savannah turned another circle, her eyes darting here and there, the gears in her mind whirring.
“When I move into the cottage, can I turn this bedroom into a proper office and leave the sitting room as a kind of break room for staff? A place they can put their feet up for a minute without worrying about bothering the family?”
“That’s a great idea,” I said, thinking of the desk in the sitting room. Knowing the scope of Savannah’s job, that desk wouldn’t be enough. The housekeeper’s bedroom wasn’t huge, but it was enough space to add a bigger desk, file cabinets, a printer, and whatever else she’d need.
Giving Griffen a sidelong glance, I said, “We need to put the cottage at the top of the list once we deal with the bedrooms and the kitchen. Savannah has Nicky. They need more space than this.”
“Shit, you’re right. I forgot Nicky,” Griffen said with an apologetic look at Savannah.
“I have an air mattress,” Savannah said. “Nicky loves sleeping on it, feels like he’s camping, so we can make do for a while.”
Griffen nodded in agreement. “All the same, once this place is livable, we’ll make the cottage top priority. This room makes a better office than bedroom.”
“And speaking of bedrooms…” I said, knowing we had to deal with them eventually. Every single Sawyer would be here on Tuesday, and we had no clue if there was anywhere habitable to put them. At the very least, Savannah had a metric ton of laundry on her hands.
When seen from the front courtyard, Heartstone Manor appeared to be a simple rectangle of a building. The original architect had cleverly hidden the east and west wings, angling them out from the back of the house, camouflaged by trees, so the shape of the house was more of a V with a flat bottom, that bottom being the front. The west wing held the garages on the first floor and guest rooms above. The east wing was for family. On the first floor were Prentice’s office, two sunrooms, the card room, billiards room, and the family gathering room. Above were the family apartments.
In the kitchens, we were on the opposite side of the house from the family bedrooms we’d need to inspect. Just walking around the house was going to keep me in shape.
I turned to head back to the closest staircase, following Griffen back up the main level and further still to the second floor. As we walked, he said over his shoulder, “Keep an eye out for any improvements or modernizations we need. Your mother might be able to give you ideas. If there isn’t a laundry room on the second floor, you need one.”
He had a point. As far as I remembered, the laundry was on the lower level, past the kitchens. That was a lot of stairs considering the amount of sheets and towels Savannah would be hauling around.
“I can live with it for now,” Savannah said as she made notes on her list, “there’s a few dumbwaiters and laundry chutes off the main hall.”
Griffen let out a surprised chuckle. “I forgot about those. We used to drive Miss Martha crazy trying to take rides in the dumbwaiters. And once, I threw all of Avery’s dolls down the chute and they got stuck. I got a hell of a spanking for that one.”
The staircase let us out just where the west wing joined the main house. Savannah stopped in the hall, studying the faded wallpaper in the dim light. After a moment, she reached out and hooked her fingers through a hidden loop of wire, pulling to reveal a door. We stepped into a utility room, the bare bulb on the ceiling flickering, the shelves stacked with sheets and towels that appeared clean enough, if a little musty.
With a look around, Savannah said absently, “We could put in a washer and dryer here. There’s plumbing in the mudroom below us.” She scribbled notes on her pad. “And enough linens to get started.”
We exited into the hall, the door disappearing behind us as if part of the wall. I turned to study the wal
lpaper, squinting until I could see the faint lines of the door and the tiny round handle hidden in the design of a flower.
Reaching out, I ran my finger over the seam in the wallpaper. “I never knew this was here.”
“Heartstone has all sorts of secrets,” Savannah said, half to herself. I’d known she’d be a good choice because she’d grown up in this house, first as a child, then as her mother’s helper, and later as paid staff herself. Savannah probably knew more about Heartstone than anyone, excepting Miss Martha.
We crossed the hall that ran along the back of the main house from the west wing to the east, passing the main staircase on our right, windows looking into the formal gardens on our left. I only glanced that way once. Once was enough. I’d been right. If the front courtyard was an overgrown mess, the formal gardens were worse.
In the family wing, a wide hall ran through the center, closed doors all the way down on both sides. The sconces in the wall were half burned out, the wallpaper just as faded as the rest. The first door we came to had a cockeyed, hand-painted sign tacked to the door. Keep Out, That Means You!
Savannah sighed.
“Sterling,” she said, gingerly turning the handle after a brief double knock. The three of us stood in the doorway, no one willing to venture in any further. Calling it a disaster would have been too generous. Sheets half torn off the bed. Piles of dirty clothes almost knee-high. A not-so-faint odor of spoiled food and stale vomit.
With a low growl, Griffen nudged us back into the hall and slammed the door shut. Anger hot in his eyes, he turned to Savannah. “You do not go into that room. When she comes back, hand her a shovel and a bottle of cleaning spray. She can clean it herself or she can pitch a tent in the woods.”
He strode to the next door, his jaw set, swearing to himself. Savannah shook her head, giving me a sympathetic glance. “He’s not wrong, but I still feel bad for her.”
“Me, too.” Sterling was a hot mess, no question. She wasn’t my favorite Sawyer. She wasn’t even in the top five. She was reckless, spoiled, petulant, and generally a brat. She’d also lost her mother when she was three, Darcy only four years later. Since then, Miss Martha was the closest thing she had to a parent. Prentice had barely noticed she was alive. Braxton, the only sibling close to her in age, had hated her practically since birth.
She’d call me a liar if I said it out loud, but Sterling Sawyer was the loneliest person I knew, and I knew a lot about loneliness.
Uncle Edgar was far from perfect—as my current circumstances proved very well—but he’d taken care of me. He might not have been kind about it, but if I’d started to slide out of control as Sterling had, he would have yanked me into line. Sterling had no one who cared enough to save her from herself. Until now.
Griffen was pissed, but if he held any shred of the boy I’d known, he wouldn’t give up on his little sister. I refused to believe he had that in him.
The rest of the rooms were anticlimactic after Sterling’s. Only Braxton’s room showed any sign of current use. As the youngest siblings, Brax and Sterling had single bedrooms. Enormous bedrooms, at least twice as big as my apartment, but single rooms nonetheless.
The other Sawyers had small apartments, each complete with generous bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room. I’d grown up well off in Uncle Edgar’s home, thinking it was a palace compared to the pit he’d rescued me from. Heartstone Manor was something else entirely.
We continued on, making notes of any areas that needed extra attention, linens replaced, curtains repaired. Everything needed a thorough cleaning and a gallon of furniture polish, but otherwise, we didn’t find anything unexpected.
I was almost relaxing when we opened the door to what had been Griffen’s room. The entire space was completely empty, not a trace of Griffen left behind. No furniture, no carpet. Not even a curtain hung in the room. The wallpaper had dark squares showing where paintings and posters had hung, where furniture had been placed along the walls.
Griffen said nothing, his jaw clamped tight, eyes blank in an expression I was growing to hate. In a thin, tight voice, I asked, “Did you take your things with you when you left?”
Chapter Fifteen
Hope
I walked out with the clothes on my back and my driver’s license. Nothing else.”
We turned to Savannah, who looked back at us with an embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I forgot about this. I wasn’t here when it happened, but I think your father—” She swallowed hard, “I think the furniture was moved to the attic, and he had the rest thrown away. My mother might know more. I can ask,” she offered.
Griffen shook his head, shutting the door on the empty room. “Forget it. I don’t care, I left that life behind a long time ago.”
He could pretend he didn’t care, but it still had to sting. I made a note to see if Miss Martha knew where his things were. I doubted he cared about the furniture, but the rest—trophies and pictures and books—he had to want those back.
“Where to now?” Savannah asked. “Are you and Hope going to stay in your room? Do you want me to find furniture for it? I know there’s a stash of unused pieces up in the attics.”
“No,” Griffen said shortly and paced down the hall. We followed, waiting to see what he had in mind. He led us to the main hall at the top of the stairs, the dull floor of the entry hall far below.
Savannah gave the dusty chandelier a glance. “I’ll get on that once I deal with the bedrooms and the kitchen. I think there’s a crank in the attic to lower it.”
“I always wondered about that,” I murmured as Griffen turned the corner and threw open the double doors to the master suite.
Prentice Sawyer’s personal rooms had always been strictly off-limits, even to his children. While I’d run tame through much of this house as a young child, I’d never, ever been in here. What I saw had my breath catching in my throat.
This was a world unto itself. If the older Sawyer children had luxurious apartments, Prentice had a mini-palace all his own. The suite had a small foyer, with art deco black-and-white tiled floor and dark-red silk wallpaper, a table to the side with an empty crystal vase. Oil paintings hung on every wall, mostly of the mountains and rivers of Western North Carolina. A few of what I imagined were Sawyer ancestors.
Once past the foyer, the sitting room spread before us, filled with more antiques and graceful velvet couches, the floor covered by a thick, deep red carpet. A study was off one side of the room, the walls paneled with the same dark oak as the rest of the house. Beside it was an entertainment room with a massive television on the wall and an enormous leather sofa big enough for two adults to stretch out side by side. I never thought I’d see a couch bigger than my velvet monstrosity, but here it was. I still liked mine better.
On the other side of the sitting room, double doors led to the master bedroom. Griffen shoved them open and I stood in the doorway, jaw dropped. Not to my taste. That was the most polite thing I could think. Yuck was a lot closer.
The bed was massive, covered in a gold spread, with a gold-framed mirror on the ceiling. Ugh, I did not need to imagine Prentice Sawyer and that huge, tacky mirror over that even bigger, tackier bed. Double yuck. Savannah choked on a laugh as Griffen stood motionless, taking in the room.
Finally, he said, “Can you organize movers to clean this shit out? Take that mirror down and repair the ceiling?”
“I’ll get it done over the weekend,” Savannah muttered, scribbling furiously on her notepad. “What about the sitting room and the rest of it?”
Griffen turned to me. I thought I saw a hint of a plea in his eyes when he said, “Can we move your furniture in here? Your couch in the sitting room and the rest of it in the bedroom?”
Relief spilled through me. I loved my things. If I had one space in this huge house that was all my own, I could relax. I’d still have a nest. A haven. A place that was mine
.
In a rush, I said, “Yes, absolutely,” never thinking that I was fundamentally wrong about one thing.
No space in this house could be mine. Not while I was married to Griffen. I could hide from the rest of them, but never from him.
The rest of the master suite had me alternating between glee and head shakes of disbelief. At one point as we cruised through the closet, Savannah said, “Now I know how Prentice caught all those wives. I’d marry the devil himself for this closet.”
I had to agree. The dressing rooms were massive, with built-ins for everything from shoes to scarves to jewelry. Griffen’s section had a whole wall rack just for ties. And the bathroom… decadent didn’t cover it. There were two separate spaces for the sink and vanity, each with its own small room with a toilet. That’s right, two master baths, joined by the huge bathing room.
I guess the master and lady of the house didn’t floss their teeth together. Though they must have taken baths together considering the size of the claw-footed tub. I couldn’t even look at the square, glassed-in shower without blushing. No single person needed a shower that size.
“Isn’t this all a little big?” I had to ask, trying to pretend I wasn’t suddenly obsessed with thoughts of Griffen’s sleek, soapy skin in the huge, tiled shower. “I’ve toured the Biltmore and a few other gilded age mansions. They were all luxurious for the time, but none of them had bathrooms like this.”
Savannah answered as I’d suspected, knowing more about the house than Griffen did. “Prentice completely re-did this whole section of the house five years ago. What’s now the dressing rooms and bathrooms used to be a guest suite. Or two. My mom would know. She never said exactly, but I had the feeling Prentice was getting it ready for a new Mrs. Sawyer.”
Griffen suddenly came alert. “Any idea who?”
“No. And I don’t think Mom knew either because she thought it was weird he’d spend so much money renovating for a woman he’d never even brought back to the house. She thought—” Savannah shut her mouth so fast her teeth clicked.