The Owner's Secret (A Secret Billionaire Romance Book 4)

by Kimberley Montpetit

  Britt gave her a quick hug, and admonishing her to be careful in case there were downed trees along the way.

  Once inside the Lincoln Navigator, Melody breathed in the new car smell with longing. She was still driving a fifteen-year-old rusted Honda, if it hadn’t been damaged during the storm.

  Using her phone app, she drove down the lane of oaks and then jumped onto Highway 1 into Plaquemine where the Iberville Parish records were kept.

  The parish courthouse records building was small, but the clerks were helpful when Melody told them she wanted to look up the records of the White Castle plantation.

  “What sort of records are you wantin’, miss?” the middle-aged woman with bleached-blonde hair asked from her desk on the other side of the counter.

  “Guess I’d like to know who owned the mansion over the years, ma’am. All the various owners, please,” she quickly added, not wanting to appear demanding.

  “That’s a tall order. It’ll take me awhile to pull them up. But it was John Randolph who came to Louisiana from Mississippi in the eighteen forties to plant cotton. Then he turned to sugar cane and built a sugar mill. After his success, he bought the property in eighteen fifty-five and had the castle built. Moved into the house in eighteen fifty-nine with his family. You should just go take a tour,” she added with a smile.

  “Tours are closed until next week. And it’s sort of a family question that I’m searching about.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Ah, I see. Did you know that there’s a cemetery on the property?”

  “A cemetery at White Castle?”

  “Yes. It has several family burial plots.”

  “Anybody buried there beyond the nineteenth century?”

  “Hm, not sure. I’m afraid you’ll just have to go lookin’ dear.”

  “If you don’t mind pulling up the list of owners, I’d sure appreciate that. Maybe I’ll search for some birth and marriage records if you have a computer?” Melody felt at a loss as to what to ask or where to find the correct documents. “Where would I find those?”

  “Next building over. Should be able to borrow their computers and search yourself.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try that and I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  Melody went out into the late morning sunshine and managed to settle at a computer for the next two hours with the help of the clerk who was reluctant to help at first.

  “We usually get requests by mail and send them out for a fee.”

  “Can I get records for anybody in the entire state, or do you just have Plaquemine Parish? I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before. Do you mind if I use a computer? I hate to take your time, but it’s sort of urgent. And I don’t live in the area and my home was hit by the hurricane.”

  “Oh, no, honey, I’m sorry. Guess you’re from New Orleans?”

  Melody nodded, hoping to play on her sympathy a little. “My bookstore got ruined, too.”

  “You own a bookstore? Well, how about that. How devastating. You with family up here?”

  “Not exactly, but I’m finding evidence that my family has connections up here.”

  “Hate to tell you this, sweetie, but we only have Plaquemine Parish records. State records are at the capitol in Baton Rouge. But Baton Rouge is only an hour from here—although you may have to order those by phone or email. We can accommodate a few walk-ins in the smaller parishes.”

  Melody’s heart deflated.

  “Genealogy work can be mighty interesting. Just be careful of potential skeletons hidden in the closet,” the clerk added with a grin.

  “Forewarned is forearmed,” Melody said, smiling back.

  The clerk set her up at the computer and logged her in for ten bucks an hour.

  Taking a deep breath, Melody punched in the code on the keyboard and searched for the correct tabs, headings, and links at the top of the home page.

  Birth records first. Where was Granny Mirry born and where had she married? Seemed like she should have known all of this already. She had always assumed New Orleans, or maybe the outskirts like Metairie or Slidell.

  Scrolling through names and decades—and spending a bit of time racking her brain trying to recall Mirry’s maiden name, Melody finally honed in on the dozens of pages of female Blanchards from the 1930s. Fingers crossed she could find her Mirry and not somebody else entirely.

  Despair settled in her gut when she thought about having to trek to the state courthouses, or send a request by mail. That could take months, and she wanted answers now.

  Ideas flickered through her mind. Did her grandmother have a box of personal records back at her flooded house? She’d never seen anything like that before, but they could exist. Baptismal records? Pictures? If they hadn’t been buried by water a few days ago.

  It occurred to her that her grandmother rarely spoke of the relatives of her own childhood. That seemed odd now that she thought of it. Oh, there were general comments about old-fashioned technology, movies or fashion styles, stories of listening to the radio as a child, that sort of thing, but not about aunts and uncle and cousins. Melody had always assumed they were gone since Granny Mirry was so elderly now herself. Melody’s uncles and cousins on her mother’s side mostly lived around Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

  When her parents died and Mirry and Papa had taken the three sisters in to raise them, the history of the past was firmly in the past. Her grandparents were already well into their fifties by then. Life revolved around Melody and Avery and Crystal, getting them raised, schoolwork, church events, sports, piano lessons, and then college.

  Melody kept scrolling through the pages, her eyes going wonky after a while.

  All of a sudden, she stopped. There. A Mirella Blanchard born in—Melody squinted at the old handwriting on the document. Born in 1931. Well, that couldn’t be her Mirry. That would make her grandmother eighty-seven and she was eighty-six. Wrong Mirella Blanchard.

  The birth certificate included parents’ names of course, but Melody didn’t know if they actually were her great-grandparents since she wasn’t familiar with their names.

  Place of birth was—Melody stared hard, then rubbed her eyes. Had she read that correctly? The place of birth of Mirella Blanchard in 1931 was White Castle.

  That was a peculiar coincidence. How many Mirella Blanchards were there, in all reality?

  A prickly sensation ran up her neck and climbed across her scalp.

  If Mirry had been born at White Castle, wouldn’t she have said something—anything—these past thirty years?

  A light touch came to her shoulder. “We’re breaking for lunch, miss. But you can come back in an hour.”

  Melody blinked. “Of course, thank you. Is the property records office closed now, too?”

  “Yes, but there’s a café up the road you can grab a bit to eat at.”

  Melody rose from the table, her eyes blurry from all the strain of the computer screen.

  Checking her phone, she saw that she had been sitting there for nearly two hours. Her stomach rumbled so she found the café and ate lunch, returning quickly to pace the sidewalk of the first records office while waiting for it to open.

  A text had come through from Britt. Having any luck? The house is quiet without you. The Mississippi misses you—and so do I.

  Melody wrote back: Thought you were working in the yard, or are you playing hooky and watching Netflix movies instead?

  Britt: Haha! Calling a tree trunk removal company right now. Lost one of the cypress about quarter mile from the mansion.

  Melody: That’s too bad. Be careful! I’ll be back in a couple hours I think.

  Britt: Are you memorizing all the birth certificates of the entire past hundred years?

  Melody: Very funny, Mr. Mandeville.

  The door of the office opened at last and Melody leaped forward and slipped through, approaching the desk again. “Find anything for me?”

  “I did,” the parish clerk said. “Here’s a folder you can look through. There’s a
chair and table in the corner you can use, but please don’t remove the documents from the premises.”

  Melody sat down in the far corner and opened the folder. Old property papers in ancient cursive gazed up at her. Dates, names, numbers. Deeds of trust. Deeds of Sales.

  All of them about White Castle plantation.

  She shivered when she looked at the top document, the spidery writing giving her chills, the past staring up at her. Hands from nearly two hundred years ago held this, filled it out, signed and dated. Parts of it were in French, the common language of the nineteenth century. Thank goodness, Melody had learned some French while growing up and then taken more while at college.

  The stack of deeds was in numerical order by date.

  John Randolph was the original owner, purchasing the property from the state of Louisiana, Plaquemine Parish. Eventually Mr. Randolph died in 1883, leaving it to his wife, Emily. She sold it to a partnership of two people from New Orleans who bought the planation in 1886.

  In 1899, it sold again to another partnership for $100,000.

  Then, in 1920, it sold to a man by the name of Charles Blanchard who owned it and lived at White Castle with his family until 1949 when his sugar cane crops failed for the third year in a row due to drought.

  Charles Blanchard. Was this Mirry’s father? Was Mirella Blanchard who was born in 1931 her grandmother? The dates matched. In 1949, she would have been eighteen years old.

  Granny Mirry would have watched her parents’ financial struggles and endured the humiliation of losing their farm and the anguish of having to move away from their beloved home.

  It was bought by a Dr. Whyte Owen for only $54,000. The Blanchards—her relatives—had taken a big loss in more ways than one.

  Emotion burned at the back of Melody’s eyes. What had happened to Mirry’s parents after that? Where had they gone and how had they survived?

  All of a sudden, she was brimming with questions about her ancestors. Where had they moved to? What had they done for a living in those years after World War II? How had Mirry met Melody’s grandfather? Where had they married?

  She’d known him just before they moved though—because a black & white photograph had been taken of them right there inside the mansion. And left behind.

  What else of the Blanchard family had been left behind? Mirry’s parents had owned the place for nearly thirty years!

  Melody vowed she would open every single box and crate and trunk in the attic.

  Her family’s history was there. Her roots were here. This is where they had lived and loved and lost.

  This was the reason that Granny Mirry insisted Melody go to White Castle. She was ill, she feared she might be dying, and she could only think about home. A home she obviously had dearly loved and had mourned for the rest of her life.

  A tear slipped down Melody’s nose. She wiped it away surreptitiously, hoping the woman at the desk couldn’t see her weeping.

  Grabbing a tissue out of her purse, she wiped at her eyes and took a deep breath.

  She could hardly comprehend this sudden information about her family.

  Mirry had hidden away her heartache—just like she steeled her back and hid the pain of losing her son and his wife more than twenty-five years ago to a horrible car crash. Melody barely remembered them, but Mirry did speak of her parents frequently, telling stories and pulling out the photo albums so that she and her sisters would know them. At least Avery and Crystal actually did remember them. Melody was often envious of that.

  But Melody couldn’t overlook the fact that at some point, Mirry had taken her to White Castle when she was about three to four years old. Some sort of party or public event that was held there. Decades after her family had lost the plantation.

  “Goodness,” Melody whispered aloud, sinking back into the straight-backed chair. It was all so unexpected and overwhelming.

  Gathering her own steel spine and nerves, she gazed down at the folder again, curious as to who owned White Castle now. How many more hands had White Castle gone through over the last sixty-five years? She was obsessed with knowing everything she could find out now. Even though going through the contents of the house could take years—and she probably had to get permission from the local historical society to touch or document anything.

  The next owner was a man named Arlin Dease who bought the property from Doctor Owen’s daughter-in-law in 1980.

  He sold it a mere five years later to an Australian named Sir Paul Ramsey in 1985.

  Sir Paul Ramsay owned White Castle and refurbished it extensively until his sudden death of a heart attack on his yacht in Spain.

  Lord Ramsey owned it until last year—when a man named Britt Mandeville bought the White Castle Estate for a cool fifty million dollars.

  Chapter 21

  Britt Mandeville. The man who had proposed to her sister, given her a diamond ring worth twenty-thousand dollars, and owned a small fleet of luxury sports cars.

  The man who had called her an angel at midnight, had driven her down to the city to help her muck out her disaster of a bookstore, comforted her, bandaged her leg, pulled her away from falling into the Mississippi, and then got as excited as a kid talking about how he would renovate the White Castle dollhouse in the attic.

  The same man who cooked up a storm in the kitchen, and then let her drive his Ferrari, but not before kissing her with more passion and tenderness than any man ever had before.

  The man she was seriously falling in love with—and was forbidden from being with.

  Her mind was reeling from it all. Emotion grew thick in her throat, pounded through her body and sent waves of pain in the center of her chest. Now she had a headache, too, with exploding spasms traveling down her neck all the way to her toes.

  When she slid back into the driver’s seat of the Navigator and shut the door, Melody gripped the steering wheel so hard her fingers turned white. She laid her forehead on the edge of the wheel and shook her head in disbelief.

  “Britt owns White Castle! Britt Mandeville really is a billionaire. Now what do I say to him?”

  She wasn’t shocked—well, yes, she was. And she knew the man could afford the place—but still. Britt had lied to her about being the landscaper, the gardener, the caretaker, the alternate chef. The regular guy who hauled logs and went to antique auctions.

  Needling at her conscience was the question about the trust she had placed in him. If he’d lied to her about owning the mansion, what else had he lied about? How did he make his billions? Was he a con man? A Romeo who was stealing her heart while he couldn’t be trusted?

  Her eyes were red and bloodshot, tears leaking the entire time she drove the ten miles back to White Castle.

  She didn’t want to see him or speak to him. She wanted to run upstairs to her room and have a good cry. Melody also wanted to confront him. Demand answers. Tell him he wasn’t going to get away with the lies and deception.

  Not with Melody de Lyon.

  She’d pack up and leave. Get her bookstore and apartment cleaned and repaired by herself. Insurance money and a loan, a couple of good contractors and she’d be back in business. Meanwhile, she’d live with Granny Mirry—although Mirry didn’t have a house to go back to either. That made another residence that needed major work. She and her grandmother would be homeless for the next several months.

  “Well, blast it all!” she sputtered, stomping on the gas pedal and zooming down the long drive up to the parking lot of the house. She stared at the sign.

  White Castle Historic Tours On The Hour

  Tickets At The Gift Shop

  Sliding out of the Navigator, she gazed up at the magnificent Greek Revival manor house. How very spectacular it was, and she loved it so much, it already seemed like home.

  A melancholy sense of loss came over her. She might have grown up here. Might have married in the elegant white ballroom.

  “Well, at least Avery would have married,” she said, reflecting on her husband-less and boyfriend-l
ess state once again. “Oh, Granny Mirry, I need to talk to you.”

  A deep male voice spoke behind her. “Sounds like you’re talking to yourself.”

  Melody whirled around. Britt stood there, a smile on his lips to welcome her back home.

  “Don’t be so amused, Mister Mandeville,” she shot back, striding past on the gravel parking lot.

  Those stupid tears were pricking at her eyelids, making them swim and water and her nose sniffle. Before he could respond, she marched across the lawns—the same darn color of his eyes—and ignored his calls for her to stop.

  Holding her head high, she didn’t have any sort of plan. Disturbing news that came out of the blue always caught her off guard. If she confronted Britt she’d probably burst into tears and embarrass herself for the rest of her life.

  His footsteps crunched along the gravel as he ran after her. “Melody, what’s going on? Is your grandmother okay? Have you had bad news?”

  Goodness, the man wouldn’t stop!

  And why did he think of her grandmother as the very first thing out of his mouth? Why was he so darn considerate and such a problem-solver—with smiles on steroids?

  Suddenly she was at the Mississippi, climbing up the massive berm and parading down the bank, arms swinging. The sound of the water soothed her, calmed her pounding heart.

  “Melody, you’re scaring me,” Britt said, his voice behind her shoulder. “Tell me what happened up in Plaquemine.”

  His arm caught hers, turning her around to face him. She bit at her lips, willing herself not to heave blubbering words out of her mouth.

  “You look like you’ve had a bad shock. Let me help you.”

  “You can’t help me, Britt. I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be living under the same roof.”

  Frown lines appeared between his green eyes. “But you’re in the upstairs guest room and I’m two floors below you in the old servant’s quarters.”