She came to a small shop owned by a young clothing designer, Alexandra Rankin Hunt. Alexandra was at a frosted-glass counter. She was a slim, angular, attractive woman in her late twenties, the great-granddaughter of Lady Helena Ashworth and Philip Rankin, Grace Webster’s jewel thief.
Alexandra greeted Olivia with a warm smile. “You’re Olivia Frost.” She noted Olivia’s surprise. “Dylan McCaffrey was here earlier. He’s gone to see my mother and my grandmother. I’ll take you.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“You aren’t. Dylan said to expect you, and I offered. Please. No arguing. I’m delighted to meet you.”
Dylan said to expect her? The man did have his nerve, Olivia thought, amused and, she admitted, pleased. He’d known she’d get on a plane and come to London. No one had told him.
She drove with Alexandra out a twisting, scenic road to a graceful brick house in the green and scenic countryside. Alexandra—the granddaughter of Duncan McCaffrey’s half-sister—led the way to the back of the house and a flower garden, one of the most beautiful gardens Olivia had ever seen. Dylan was there with two older women, Philippa Rankin Hunt and her daughter, Elizabeth.
Philippa remembered her father as a fighter pilot and hero. When the war started, she went to live with the Ashworths, her mother’s family, although she never got along well with her uncle Charles. Olivia couldn’t guess what Philip Rankin had planned for, hoped for all those years ago, but he must have wondered if he’d die in the war. Had he dreamed of bringing Grace to England? Of moving with his small daughter to New England?
“I was only three, but I can remember my father coming home from America. My aunt always said he was a different man. I realize now that he wasn’t sad.” Philippa smiled, tears shining in her deep blue eyes. “He was in love.”
Olivia saw Dylan withdraw a new, red velvet bag from his jacket and set it on a small table on the veranda, next to a silver tea service. Lady Helena had inherited the Ashworth jewels from her grandmother. They were meant for her daughter. Philip had known that, and in whatever grip of grief and anger he’d been in that September of 1938, he’d done what he could to make it happen.
The rest was for Philippa Rankin Hunt and her daughter and granddaughter to sort out.
After tea and a pleasant visit, Dylan walked around to the front of the house with Olivia. He, of course, had rented a shiny, expensive car. He grinned at her. “I see, despite all your careful planning, you don’t have a way back to London.”
“I figured I’d wing it and call a cab if it came to it.”
“It’d cost you a fortune. Where are you staying?”
“A little hotel. It’s charming. I read reviews on the internet.”
“Of course you did.”
“Where are you staying, Buckingham Palace?”
“That’s Noah. I don’t have a place for tonight. I didn’t plan that far ahead.”
“I didn’t plan past tomorrow.” She grinned at him. “I figure I’m due for an adventure.”
“Good. Let’s see what happens.”
The next morning Dylan spirited Olivia away to a cottage on the Cornish coast that Noah had found for them. “It’s perfect,” she said, her eyes shining with excitement.
“Olivia…” Dylan looked at her, amazed at how much his life had changed. “We’re going to have such a life together.”
Her breath caught. He thought she said his name but couldn’t be sure.
“Noah’s fine. He knows he doesn’t need me all the time anymore, and he knows I’ll slay any dragons he needs me to slay. We’ve got some venture capital projects in mind. In the meantime, I want to paint old furniture, make basil soap, coach small-town hockey and try my hand at adventure travel.”
“You’d be happy in Knights Bridge?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I’ve started talking to Mark about how you and I could combine our two properties—” He stopped, angling her a look as he noticed her smile. “What?”
“I’ve talked to Mark, too.”
“Imagine that. I figure Knights Bridge has been waiting for the better part of a century for me to show up and just didn’t know it.”
“Dylan…I’d move to San Diego or England or anywhere else to be with you.”
“I know you would.”
“That confident, are you?” She took his hand. “When I saw you standing in the freezing rain with Buster that night…”
“I thought he was going to chew my leg off. Where is Buster?”
“He’s staying with Jess. Dylan—”
He squeezed her hand. “Me first. I love you, Olivia. I love you for who you are, and I belong with you, wherever you are.”
“That’s what I was going to say.” She smiled. “I’m a little jet-lagged, but let me try. I love you, Dylan. I love you for who you are, and I belong with you, wherever you are.”
He lifted her off her feet. “Do you know where you are now?”
“England.”
“Olivia…”
She threw back her head, laughing, teasing him. “I’m in your arms, right where I’ll always want to be.”
Thirty-Two
On a warm early summer morning, Grace Webster sat in her favorite chair in the sunroom and listened to the birds through the screen. She had just received an invitation, designed by Olivia Frost, to the autumn wedding of Jessica Frost and Mark Flanagan at The Farm at Carriage Hill.
According to Audrey Frost, Olivia and Dylan were planning a Christmas wedding.
Dylan…my grandson…
Audrey and the rest of the residents at Rivendell still weren’t over the shock of that one. Grace smiled, thinking not just of their shock but their support and love.
Everyone has their secrets, she thought.
Louise and Randy Frost were planning a trip to Tuscany next spring, after the weddings.
Grace knew that her traveling days were long past, but Olivia and her friend Maggie O’Dunn had asked her and Audrey to teach them all they knew about old-time soap-making. They’d looked at each other and figured, well, why not?
A breeze floated into the sunroom, bringing with it the scent of mowed grass and summer flowers. Grace took out a pad of yellow-lined paper and the fountain pen she’d bought for her journaling class, and she wrote in wavering but clear script:
“As I write this, I am dressed for a bridal shower for Jessica Frost at The Farm at Carriage Hill. I’m taking a moment to add this postscript to my book. So far every night this beautiful summer, I’ve dreamed about that long-ago summer when I lost my town, my valley, my home and very nearly myself…when I fell in love for the first and only time of my long life.
If Philip had come back to me, I’d have gone with him anywhere. I know that. We would have raised his daughter and our son together. But he didn’t come back, and I stayed on the path I was always on… I became a teacher, a woman destined never to marry but to have a full, good life and to keep her secrets close.
All these years, I thought I’d lost my son, but I never did. He had his own path in this life, and at the end, he brought Dylan to us all here in Knights Bridge.
My grandson is a swashbuckler of a man, and he and Olivia are so much in love.
My story is their story now.
Ah. I see an eagle flying high over Quabbin. I’ll put my pen down now, and I’ll sit here a moment and let myself be a girl again, snapping beans on a summer afternoon with my grandmother, dreaming of romance and adventure.
* * * * *
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Secrets of the Lost Summer! I hope you enjoyed the story. Knights Bridge and the Websters are fictional, but the Swift River Valley is a real place, a beautiful place in West-Central Massachusetts where I grew up. My family home, a former eighteenth-century carriage house, is on the western edge of the Quabbin Reservoir. No doubt being so close to that vast “forbidden” wilderness fueled my storyteller’s imagination.
For help with research, I wan
t to thank my mother, M. Florine Neggers, and her friends at the Stone House Museum in Belchertown, Massachusetts. It’s a “must visit” if you’re in the area, as are the Swift River Valley Historical Society in New Salem and the Quabbin Visitors Center. During the research for this book, I enjoyed revisiting and exploring many of the trails and old roads of Quabbin that are open to the public.
I also appreciate the detailed and fascinating histories of Quabbin by J. R. Greene; Quabbin: A History and Explorers Guide by Michael Tougias; Quabbin Valley People and Places by Elizabeth Peirce; and the many websites with photographs and information on Quabbin. The photography of Les Campbell opened my eyes as a teenager to the beauty of the area right outside my door; his work and his talent are as amazing as ever.
I want to pay tribute to the people my family and I knew who gave up their homes and livelihoods in this idyllic valley to provide pure, safe drinking water to millions. I especially remember Eleanor Griswold Schmidt, who once called the lost town of Prescott home. Her well-known quote says it all: “Now I have two beauties; one to remember and one to enjoy.”
For more information, please visit my website, www.carlaneggers.com.
Thanks again, and happy reading!
ISBN: 9781459220324
Copyright © 2012 by Carla Neggers
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Author’s Note
Secrets of the Lost Summer Page 29