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THE MUSIC AND LAUGHTER filtering out open windows would have alerted him to the revelry inside the house if the long line of horse-drawn conveyances and automobiles clogging the driveway from its entrance at the road and around the keyhole outside it hadn’t.
Firming his grip on his suitcase and packages and ignoring the strong desire to turn around and walk back to town, he trudged off the gravel drive onto the shadow-carpeted keyhole lawn.
He should have asked Miss Lyons and her fiancé for a ride back to town the minute they were unable to advance up the obstructed drive. But it was too late. He’d already thanked them for their kindness in going out of their way, despite his insistence that it wasn’t necessary and he would grab a room in town for the night and wait for Magnus, who was scheduled to collect him off of the Sunday morning train. And young Geoff had already turned his Model T truck around and rumbled off. Besides, he’d been away from Maisie too long. He missed her. Terribly. Missed another certain redhead, too. Though from the sporadic sounds of merriment ahead, she wasn’t missing him.
A spur of anger caught in his throat. He swallowed it and focussed on what was in his control, like the fact Sugar Hill was crawling with strangers. Strangers to her, at least, and most everyone else at Sugar Hill except maybe Rufus and Miss Alma. They’d been around long enough to have encountered some if not all of the older, well-heeled people visible through the parlour windows back when Cyril and Sarah Sweeney used to host, not because they knew them on a friendly or even nodding acquaintance but because they’d likely served them tea or cake or helped them in or out of their coats more than once.
He inhaled strongly.
She should have warned him she was planning an event. He was still her overseer, still responsible for the estate’s well-being, which included the safety of its owner. Not that he thought her foolish enough to invite Barrister or Esther, or either of them foolish enough to crash the party and do something stupid like pull out a pistol or knife and threaten her in front a large group of witnesses. But then he’d never imagined Simmy would fake her death and marry a gangster.
Or that that gangster would send a henchman to threaten him and run him out of Atlanta.
He twitched but managed not to look over his shoulder.
No one had followed him from the train depot. That much he’d been able to ascertain on the drive out, faced backwards in the truck bed peering through the dust and growing dusk and trying not to chip a tooth on the wooden sideboards as Geoff wrenched him from side to side, dodging potholes and rocks without slowing down.
Maybe what Andy Emerson’s spokesman had meant about him being followed related to someone else remaining at the Atlanta depot to ensure he got on the train. Or maybe it had been an empty threat meant to scare him into getting on the train just in case he’d suffered delusions of doing otherwise.
Ten years of quiet if not monotonous—predictable—living, where he didn’t have to keep an eye out for mysterious henchman or worry about arsonists and murderous nephews, had been turned on its proverbial ear in less than two months. He wasn’t sure he could survive another two months under Mrs. Sweeney’s stewardship.
But her on top of him, naked, those fascinating green eyes looking into his as her hair hung loose and wild around them both...He growled, and gave thanks his teeth were made of stronger stuff than muscle. If not, he’d have splintered every one of his molars by now, as often as he’d had to bite down on romantic thoughts and lustful fantasies about her.
The gravel on the other side of the keyhole crunched like brittle bones breaking under his boots.
If not thinking about her had been hard prior to his trip to Atlanta, it was going to be all but impossible now.
Simmy’s adamant negation of any future contact between them, even if only related to Maisie, along with her faux grave and her husband’s third-party promise of lethal reinforcement of her wishes, had slammed shut a door to the past he’d left ajar for far too long. Miss Lyons’s recommendation that he take the Emersons at their word, combined with her father’s admonition and warning about a future life of emotional penury if he didn’t marry, and soon, burned a hole in his auditory memory and had blown open a bigger door. One to a world of impossible possibility. Impossible possibility that, on the train ride home, his foolish mind had spun like a spider’s web around his petite, red-headed boss.
Fool.
Not a complete fool. He had thought to send a telegram to the Guenthers before getting on the train home to advise them he’d personally collect Maisie and Miss Lisette from Lily Grove tomorrow evening instead of the girls being driven to Sugar Hill after church.
He’d done it with the intention of taking over a bottle of Old Pepper Whiskey for Norm and some Hershey’s chocolate for Else and Miss Chloe to thank them for their kindnesses over the years with Maisie and, more recently, with regard to the clothing they’d sent over following the fire. He’d return those clothes tomorrow—at least those belonging to Norm, as the majority of his new ready-made wardrobe would be delivered next week. Now he was grateful he’d made the alternate arrangements because it offered him extra hours to rehearse the apology—and story—he planned to give Maisie about where he’d gone and why: how his trip to find her mother, who’d been alive and well the last he’d seen of her almost ten years ago, had ended tragically with the location of her grave—photographic proof of which Miss Lyons promised to have to him before end of week.
The thought of having to double down on his initial lie when he’d intended to clear the air with Maisie and ease his heart and conscience stirred a dangerous stew of guilt and anger inside him as he stomped up the brick walk.
“Welcome home, Mr. Banner.” Rufus tipped his head in polite greeting as he leaned back to swing open the front door. “Mrs. Sweeney said to—”
“I’m going straight to my quarters,” he said before Rufus could finish with any invitation to join the festivities Mrs. Sweeney might have left him with to pass on. “Don’t tell her I’m back. I want to reconnoiter the grounds and house and ensure everything is secure.”
“Yessir,” Rufus said.
The strains of “Ave Maria,” playing on what he could only assume was George’s Victrola—his first and only luxury purchase upon inheriting Sugar Hill and promptly decamping it again—and the deafening cacophony of multiple people moving and talking in a confined space assaulted him as he stepped inside the foyer. Head down and face angled away from the parlour doors to avoid having to play nice when he wasn’t in a nice mood, he made for the ground-floor guest wing.
“Joseph!”
He stopped cold, courtesy of the ice freezing his joints as his mother’s voice rang out. And then there she was, in a pale-yellow gown with long, flowing sleeves sluicing towards him through a knot of tailored and begowned guests clustered near the entrance to the parlour like a coal-fired ocean liner ploughing through a rowboat-filled harbour on a beeline for shore.
~~~
MARGARET FLINCHED AND tried hard to maintain her focus on Mayor Ivan Bellman-Winn, who was regaling her—between puffs of the stubby cigar he held between the index and middle finger of one hand and sips of bourbon from a short glass held in the other—with all the reasons he, of all the interested parties at the party—of which, to her surprise, there were far more than she cared to have to politely reject, though she would—was the perfect candidate to introduce her to the many wonders and social extravaganzas Georgia in general, and Quellentown in particular, offered. Like next week’s monthly Rotary dinner and dance that, unlike the Rotary’s weekly luncheons, welcomed the fairer sex, and that he, as chairman, was hosting at his estate, Deer Haven, as he did the third Saturday of the month. But Antonia Banner’s shouting of her son’s Christian name proved too distracting.
Rather, the sudden racing of her pulse and resultant skin-tingling rush at the knowledge he was back made it hard to concentrate on anything but holding her smile, when what she really wanted to do was to follow in Tonia’s wake and see him for herself.
“Hors d’oeuvres, sir?” Coral offered the mayor a benign smile as she presented a silver platter of salmon pâté on toast rounds garnished with slivers of radish and sprigs of parsley.
“Don’t mind if I do,” the mayor said and, shifting his cigar to his mouth, collected three rounds and fit them on the palm of his bourbon hand, his short crystal-cut glass still braced on the pads of stubby fingers, all without spilling a drop or dropping an ash.
This was a man who took his smoke, food, and drink seriously. Too seriously, perhaps.
For a self-confessed thirty-five-year-old, he looked at least two decades older, his bald brow and florid face dappled with sweat as he wheezed breaths between bites, each movement of his arm to his mouth testing the thread strength of his jacket’s seams.
“Ma’am?” Coral angled her body and platter in such a way as to block the mayor from seeing her face as she raised her brows, dark-brown eyes lit with question.
In answer, Margaret inclined her head and murmured, “Thank you, Coral. I’ll have to pass, as I believe we have a new arrival. I should go say hello. If you’ll excuse me, Mayor.” She slipped away into the crowd before the mayor could swallow his second hors d’oeuvre and reply.
Academia might not be her strongest suit, but Coral had so far aced every lesson in the art of strategic social intervention and polite redirection Margaret had taught her.
Twice, now, she’d freed her from untenable unmarried bores, like the mayor who’d recounted his ancestry and social and business affiliations as if his being Rotary chairman, mayor, and Henrich Bellman’s great-great-grandson on his mother’s side was aphrodisiac enough to incite her into a sexual frenzy in which she’d happily trade vows—and title of Sugar Hill—in exchange for an opportunity to bed him.
Not bloody likely.
If she was in the market for a husband—which she wasn’t—it wouldn’t be to a blustering braggart, no matter his wealth or connections, even if his poor health suggested he might leave her thrice a widow before she’d had time to recover her senses.
She had wealth. She wasn’t sure she wanted connections—at least not to the likes of men like Barrister Griffiths, who the mayor had mentioned was also a Rotary member.
She liked men with integrity. Courage. Humility. And if she ever banged her head hard enough to consider marriage again, it would be to someone like that. Someone down to earth and honest, who treated her intelligence as an asset, as William had, and her interest in teaching as valid, as George had. And who wasn’t after her solely for the purpose of getting his grubby hands on her body and money.
But he would have to offer her more, too, than simple courtesy and respect. He’d have to give of himself. The good and the bad—and in bed.
She was tired of stuffy two-dimensional cut-outs. She wanted a man full of life, vigour, and passion, who always did the right thing, even when it hurt.
Like Mr. Banner.
And not Mr. Banner. That was something she must ensure Miss Alma understood. For it had been on Alma’s recommendation that most of the single men in the market for a wealthy wife had ended up on the guest list. And if she believed there was even a hint of possibility between Margaret and Mr. Banner, she’d pack a minister in the next picnic basket.
“Oh, Mrs. Sweeney.” Mr. Lyons held out a broad, freckled hand to her as he tipped his bearded head to the tall, black gentleman standing beside him. “I have a late arrival I’d like to introduce you to. My protégé, Nathan Lewis.”
Mrs. Lyons, on the other side of her husband, smiled and nodded encouragingly.
But what made it impossible for her to ignore either spoken or nonverbal invitation was the man himself.
Trim and clean-shaven, and dressed in a dark three-piece suit, white shirt and black bowtie and shoes, he was, quite possibly, one of the most attractive men she could recall having met. And that was saying something, given the number of men she’d been introduced to during her years squired about on William’s arm—princes, dukes, archdukes, all the way down to barons, knights, theatre stars, and commoners with an uncommon knack for building great fortunes. She’d met them all in one country or another. But none had been as symmetrically beautiful as this man was, with his twinkling brown eyes and perfectly even white teeth.
“He snuck in about twenty minutes ago while you were in Ivan’s snare,” Mr. Lyons said as she approached, guarding her attraction to his protégé behind a pleasant hostess smile.
The man returned her smile with a wider flare of those spectacular white teeth. “How do you do, Mrs. Sweeney,” he said, extending a long-fingered hand.
“Mr. Lewis.” She inclined her head as she offered up her hand. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“It is, ma’am. It is.” He bent and brushed the air above her skin with his lips without actually touching her, and straightened, his gaze as warm and seductive as the feel of his fingers still holding hers, inspiring a teeny tiny tremor of lust in her that the mayor couldn’t, and wouldn’t, in a million years.
But it was nothing like what Mr. Banner induced in her, and she dismissed it as her body having a minor tantrum now that its favourite playmate was, for all intent and purpose, unavailable to her, despite sleeping under the same roof. So it wanted a new one. A want, she sensed from the interest flickering in Mr. Lewis’s sultry gaze, he’d happily fulfil.
Reclaiming her hand and angling away from the room’s entry doors to reduce the urge to watch for Mr. Banner’s entrance—should he actually join the party, something she highly doubted after the way she’d abandoned him the other night—she forced a platonic smile.
“So you’re going to work with Mr. Lyons. In the courtroom?”
“That is the plan, ma’am,” Mr. Lewis said, nodding. “Though I expect it’ll be a while before I’m allowed to do more than assist. I only passed the bar last week.”
“A Harvard Law graduate,” Lyons chimed in like a proud father.
“Harvard? Well, bully for you, Mr. Lewis,” she added with sincerity.
“Not bully enough, ma’am,” he said. “I was only one of two coloured in my class, and if we’re ever going to find equal footing, especially here in the south, we’re going to need a lot more of us out there fighting the good fight.”
The air around her suddenly turned brittle as a few nearby guests, who’d clearly been eavesdropping, angled a look at him, and then at her, as though expecting her to say or do something.
She obliged them, as every good hostess should.
“I applaud you, Mr. Lewis,” she said loud enough to ensure she was heard without seeming to purposefully project her voice. “Your achievement, and your cause. And I wish you every success in it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you. I’m a firm proponent of race equality.”
The social temperature in some parts of the room dipped lower—so much so she heard a crack, like ice breaking.
But it was only the mayor biting down hard on a cracker. The look he gave her was equally hard.
Guess she wouldn’t be waltzing with him at Deer Haven anytime soon.
Pity, that.
She tensed then, not in response to Mayor Bellman-Winn’s cold stare, but because Mr. Banner had suddenly materialised at her elbow, and her body wanted to wriggle around like a delighted puppy whose beloved master had returned home after an interminably long absence.
“Mr. Banner,” Mrs. Lyons exclaimed with joy and volume enough to shift most people’s attention from Mr. Lewis to Mr. Banner.
But not Coral’s. She stood just off the entry doors, holding a platter of canapés and covertly sizing up Mr. Lewis.
A Harvard Law graduate was definitely a catch, especially for a young woman in paid service. But was he a worthy replacement of a life’s dream?
Margaret didn’t think so. Especially this particular Harvard graduate lawyer, who’d dared to reveal to her his carnal interest, and to the rest of the room his plans to help agitate and upset the current social order.
Marriage to him would test even the staunchest of women, and she wasn’t sure Coral possessed her grandmother’s fortitude—something she would need a great deal of to support Mr. Lewis’s valiant cause.
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
Coral may not have heard the Voltaire quote before, but even if she had, Margaret would make sure she understood its implications where Mr. Nathan Lewis and his aspirations were concerned—and the toll marriage took on a woman’s autonomy, never mind her heart, even when one’s husband wasn’t intent on inciting a legal revolution. Her Paris dream wouldn’t just slip away; it’d be wrenched away, stamped and trampled on, then left bloody.
L’insurrection est le plus saint des devoirs.
And the hallmark of any holy duty, including and especially insurrection, was sacrifice. Heart, body, mind, soul—and personal dreams.
Either sensing her reproving gaze or finally hearing the grating scratch that indicated the Victrola’s needle had become lodged in the record’s final groove, Coral blinked and looked at her. Then, ducking her head, her cheeks turning a dusky hue, she hastened off with the canapés in the direction of the Victrola.
Margaret hid an amused smile behind a sip of champagne as she brought her attention back to her guests, who’d moved on from the introduction of Mr. Banner and Mr. Lewis to a discussion of Mr. Lewis’s recent addition to Mr. Lyons’s firm.
Coral’s taste in men might be suspect, but her handiness with needles was without question. She could swap out the Victrola’s steel needle for a new one and change records faster than Margaret could choose an evening gown from a wardrobe of one.
If the girl’s fashion dreams didn’t find footing, she might consider a career in medicine, where she could wield any variety of needles with impunity.
“I understand you were up in Atlanta, Mr. Banner,” Mrs. Lyons said after discussion of Mr. Lewis’s admirable curriculum vitae and future plans petered out. “My husband told me—”
“Gayle,” Mr. Lyons said, but his wife barrelled on as though her husband hadn’t tried to interrupt.
“Did you know our Abby’s been up there all week, too?” She tilted her blonde head to one side, piercing blue eyes wide as she raised her eyebrows at Mr. Banner. “Perhaps you saw her?”
“I did, actually,” he said, and Margaret’s stomach lurched as her fingers contracted on the stem of her champagne flute. “We travelled home together on the train, and then she and Geoff drove me home.”
“Oh, so you met our soon-to-be son-in-law?” Mrs. Lyons beamed. “Isn’t he a peach? I love him so much. Abby couldn’t find herself a better man if I had chosen him myself. Well, present company excluded, of course,” she added, dimpling at Mr. Banner, her husband, and Mr. Lewis.
“He’s a likeable man,” Mr. Banner agreed. “Very friendly. And he would not take no for an answer when I told him I didn’t need to be driven out. Said it would be his pleasure. And he really did seem keen, so I could hardly refuse.”
“Oh, he is keen,” Mrs. Lyons nodded. “He’s always looking for any excuse to drive that automobile. His daddy gave it to him as a gift when he and Abby announced their engagement. His daddy is Brighton F. Young, the philanthropist who founded Brighton Oil. Have you heard of him? Anyway, he has scads of money, so I don’t expect it pinched his pocket even the slightest, buying that truck for Geoff. He probably could have bought him a whole fleet of them, and oh, how he would have loved that. He loves anything with a motor in it, that boy. Doesn’t he, Clifford?” She tilted a smile up at her husband, who returned it with a resigned sigh.
Margaret had to wonder how many times Mrs. Lyons had blurted out something Mr. Lyons had rather she hadn’t, and then offered him that innocent look.
Whatever he thought of his wife’s loquacity Margaret was grateful for it. It had veered conversation towards Ford’s four-wheeled marvels, which afforded her opportunity to scan the room and check the comfort of a few special guests, like Mr. and Mrs. Guenther, seated side by side on one of the sofas, the former lovingly dabbing the latter’s mouth with a napkin while holding her plate of edibles in his other hand; Miss Minerva, who blushed when their eyes met, but who also gave her a discreet thumbs-up despite being the mayor’s latest quarry; and Mrs. Bellman, who, along with her granddaughter Grace, sat at a round table in the corner, teaching Mr. Banner senior a variation of rummy she called conquián. From the way she cackled and clapped her hands and the way Tonia, who’d rejoined her husband, slapped palms with her, it appeared the nonagenarian was winning.
But, more than time, what Mrs. Lyons seemingly innocuous prattle had gifted her, however inadvertently, was information she’d not known. One, the C in C. W. Lyons stood for Clifford. Two, Mr. Banner had been in Atlanta. And three, whatever his reason for being there, Mr. Clifford W. Lyons, Esq., had knowledge of it.
Which excluded a tryst. She couldn’t imagine Mr. Banner sharing his sexual adventures with the elder man. Then again, maybe he had. Not directly, but obliquely, as in, “I’m heading to Atlanta for a few days. I’ll be at the such-and-such hotel if anyone needs me.”
But if it was a woman, it wasn’t the Lyons’s daughter.
Thank goodness. Besides lowering her opinion of him at discovering he wasn’t above having an affair with another man’s fiancé when a perfectly unattached widow caused him such emotional conflict, she couldn’t imagine having to find a different trustworthy solicitor, especially as that meant extending her search outside Quellentown. She certainly wasn’t going to hand Sugar Hill’s files back to Aston, Griffiths, and Gowdy, the only other legal firm within thirty miles, especially now that Judge Fairview had ruled in her favour in regard to the second will.
That was news she looked forward to sharing with Mr. Banner. It might help ease the menacing tension she felt oozing from him in conflict with Coral’s rather opportune choice of the optimistically romantic “In My Merry Oldsmobile” now playing on the Victrola.
“Speaking of coming along with me, my love,” Mr. Lyons said, touching his wife’s elbow and smoothly parlaying the song’s lyrics into a segue, “we should get on home and see how Abs’s shopping trip went.”
“Shopping?” Mrs. Lyons frowned. “I thought you said she was—”
“Coming, Nathan?” Mr. Lyons raised an expectant, hoary eyebrow at his new protégé.
“Uh, yes.” Mr. Lewis angled to put his half-empty bourbon glass on a side table and, turning back, graced Margaret with a charismatic smile as he took her hand to airbrush another kiss over the back of it. “Thank you for a wonderful afternoon, ma’am,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “You’re a gracious and beautiful hostess. I enjoyed meeting you, and hope to again soon.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you, too, Mr. Lewis,” she said, trying to ignore the sudden arctic blast off Mr. Banner’s aura, and the simultaneous lustful fire his nearness stoked inside her, as she withdrew her hand.
Mr. Banner struck out a stiff arm to indicate Mr. Lewis take the lead in following the Lyonses out, and then his entire body went rigid.
Frowning, Margaret looked to where he was staring.
“Oh, dear,” she whispered, but forced herself to remain with the Lyons and Mr. Lewis, who were slowly making their way out, paying respects to various other guests as they did, while Mr. Banner scooped Maisie up out of the hallway and hastened off with her in the direction of the guest wing, Reba trotting in his wake.
“Was that your daughter and dog?” Mr. Lewis asked, pausing to angle a smile at her as he gestured for her to precede him.
“Ah, no,” she said. “That was Maisie. And Reba. Mr. Banner’s daughter and her dog. Maisie must have heard he was back from his trip and come to look for him.” But that didn’t explain why Miss Lisette wasn’t with her. Or who had told her he was home.
Mr. Lewis nodded and offered her another charming smile as she moved past him, but in the gilded mirror above the table in the hallway, where she paused to deposit her champagne flute as they exited the parlour, she noted his darting frown at the spot where Maisie had been and the longer assessing look he gave the back of her head, as though he didn’t quite believe that with those vivid red curls trussed up in diamond-studded hair combs, she wasn’t Maisie’s mother.
The Lyonses and Lewis’s departure acted like a plug pulled from a cooling bath, for the next hour heralded a steady stream of departing partygoers.
Cheeks aching, feet throbbing, and pulse tapping out an erratic tempo of impatience as she tried not to think about Mr. Banner or Maisie during the slow but persistent exodus, she kept up a continual reciprocal murmur of gratitude for invitation and attendance—along with other short-lived but exhausting inanity—until all twenty-two guests had trickled out the door.
When the final wheeled transport rolled off down the drive into the deepening dusk, she returned to the parlour, where Antonia Banner sat on a sofa, sipping a glass of champagne, while her husband stood behind it at the drink cart, pouring a measure of bourbon into a short glass.
Stifling her disappointment that Mr. Banner had not yet returned from seeing Maisie back to bed, she forced a smile.
“Well, that went better than expected,” she said as she lowered to the sofa opposite Tonia.
“Not for me.” Daniel Banner came around and plopped down next to his wife. He took a sip of his drink. “It went exactly as I expected. And I’m glad it’s over.”
Margaret bit back a real smile as Antonia cuffed his arm.
“Really, Daniel,” she said.
“It’s quite all right,” Margaret said. “I used to host these kinds of gatherings all the time. And I loved them. Then. Now...” She glanced around, seeing the images of her guests like a panorama, the crumbs dusting the mayor’s lapels, the harsh repudiation in his and some of the other guests’ gazes when she expressed her support of Mr. Lewis’s cause. Mr. Lewis’s daring invitation to her with his eyes and, in the mirror, his skepticism. “I’d honestly forgotten how much work it is to keep a smile when you really want to kick someone.”
“Or pinch,” Antonia said.
“You wanted to pinch someone?” Margaret asked, intrigued.
Coral, at the back of the room, stopped in the midst of helping Winnie gather dishes and cutlery to hold up an open bottle of Moët & Chandon and look at Margaret. She nodded.
“Still do,” Antonia said. “But my son has conveniently disappeared.”
“Can you blame him, after you cornered him and insisted that he give his luggage to the butler and join a party he clearly had no interest in attending? You didn’t even give him a chance to change his clothes, Tonia. Or wash the road dust off. And you know how he feels about these events in the first place. Like me, he’d rather be dragged across hot coals naked than rub shoulders fully dressed with the likes of those people.”
“There’s nothing wrong with those people, Daniel,” Antonia admonished. “Or with the clothes Joe was wearing. Didn’t you notice? They were new. And the latest fashion, too, which is unheard of for him. And he was clean, and his hair recently cut. He looked very dapper for a man who’d spent the day travelling.”
She paused, as though listening to the echo of her words, and then narrowed her eyes at Margaret in a look almost as calculating as the one Mr. Lewis had given her.
Fortunately, Coral arrived with Margaret’s new glass of champagne, providing her reason to look away from Tonia as Daniel turned on the sofa to glower at her.
“Dapper?” he said, incredulous. “Sometimes, woman, I swear it’s you who’s blind, not our granddaughter. Deaf too. Did you not hear how quiet the room got when that Mr. Lewis said what he said, or see the way some people looked at him? Or you, for that matter. And me whenever I spoke. I could see in their eyes the distaste they tried to keep from their faces. Why do you think I spent the evening in the corner playing cards with a lady who kept whooping my—”
“Daniel,” Tonia cautioned.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “Joe told us what it was like around here, and for once, we got to see it for ourselves.”
“I know. And that is why I still can’t understand why he prefers it here.” Tonia scowled into her champagne flute she held low on her lap, like the answer might be found floating in the content’s fizz. “He’d find it far more welcoming in Tarpon Springs.”
“I don’t think it’s a welcome he’s looking for, Tonia.” Daniel Banner finished his drink and waved off Rufus, who’d started forward from where he’d positioned himself by the parlour doors after all the guests had gone. Twisting, Daniel grabbed the decanter off the cart behind him and replenished his glass. “He’s looking for a place to call his own. A man needs that. What he doesn’t need”—he plunked the decanter on the low oval table in front of the sofa—“is his mother breathing down his neck and threatening to pinch him when he’s not at her beck and call every minute of every day.”
“He took Maisie back to her chamber,” Margaret said before the couple escalated into a full-on row.
“Maisie?” Tonia frowned at her. “She was supposed to stay in her room. Was she out here? Where’s Miss Lisette? Why wasn’t she watching her?”
“Maisie was in the hallway, and only very briefly,” Margaret said, distracted by Coral and Winnie’s progression towards the parlour doors, each carrying a stack of small plates.
They had really stepped up in helping Miss Alma make the dozens and dozens of hors d’oeuvres. Then they’d served them while Rufus kept libation carts stocked between excursions to and from the front door and Miss Alma steadily refilled empty platters in the kitchen so the girls could keep a continuous rotation.
To make things easier on all of them from the start, Margaret had intentionally made the event informal and early, from six to nine, after the midday heat had tapered off but before full darkness forced the lighting of a full complement of heat-and smoke-generating candles and candelabras. She’d also encouraged her guests to help themselves to champagne and punch bowls on a table at the back of the room, or to stronger options off the carts positioned around the room. Many, like Miss Minerva, Mrs. Bellman and Grace, and even the Guenthers, had gladly helped themselves, while a few, like the mayor, had stood fixedly, awaiting delivered service.
It was always nice when guests helped curate her invitation list for her by removing themselves from future consideration.
“We noticed Maisie when the first guests started to leave,” she said, retraining her attention on Tonia. “She looked fine, Tonia. Really,” she added with a reassuring smile, noting Tonia’s anxious pique. “She was in her nightdress but otherwise looked well. And Reba was with her. I can’t say where Miss Lisette was except to say that she or Mr. Banner usually tuck Maisie in for the night around eight thirty. So I suspect she was in her own chamber, if not asleep then assuredly believing that Maisie was.”
Mr. Banner had looked rather dapper, come to think of it. His roguish mane had been trimmed above the stiff collar of a crisp and new white shirt that, like the dark-blue trousers he’d been wearing, fit well, embracing and sculpting his rounded musculature as he hastened to collect Maisie rather than compressing it as Mr. Guenther’s loaned clothes had. The red suspenders were a new addition, too. At least she hadn’t seen him wearing them before. He usually wore brown ones.
Maybe there really was a woman.
The thought hollowed her, and she sought to fill the cramping emptiness with more champagne.
“Your guests started leaving around nine,” Tonia said abruptly, rising off the sofa. “And it’s now half past ten. So why hasn’t Joe joined us yet? Do you think Maisie is unwell?”
“No,” Margaret said. “I suspect he’s reading to her to help her fall back asleep. He probably missed her. If there was a problem, I’m sure we’d hear of it.”
“So sit down, Tonia”—Daniel Banner grasped his wife’s wrist as she made to move past him—“and leave the lad alone before you drive him all the way to Canada with your pestering. Georgia’s far enough to have to come to visit.”
“He’s checking the grounds, ma’am.” Rufus’s soft-spoken statement startled her and the Banners, for they jerked to look at him, too. Unruffled by their combined stares, Rufus continued in his measured baritone, “He told me on his way to return Miss Maisie to her bed that after she was settled, he was going to take a look around, ensure the grounds were clear.”
“Clear of what?” Daniel let go of Tonia to push to his feet beside her. “Is he expecting more trouble? Maybe I should go—”
“I’m sure everything is fine, Mr. Banner,” Margaret said carefully, setting her champagne on the low table to stand, too. “He’s been away a few days and probably wants to ensure everything on the estate is buttoned up, as it should be before everyone retires for the night.”
Unless...Had he had seen something, or someone, to prompt him to go outside instead of back to the parlour to spend time with his parents, whom he hadn’t seen in months? Or was he simply being his usual cautious—enigmatic—self, prowling around like a wolf in the shadows?
“Mr. Banner didn’t seem to be alarmed, missus,” Mr. Rufus said. “Just interested in taking a look around outside. And just so’s you know, ma’am, it’s my fault Miss Maisie was up. She heard me putting Mr. Banner’s belongings away and opened her door. She thought it was him. I told her that yes, he was home, but that she should get on back in bed and wait to see him in the morning. I guess she couldn’t wait.”
“See?” Margaret said to her anxious house guests. “All’s well. I’m sure he’ll join us very soon.”
The Banners finally relaxed, and resettled on the sofa. She joined them in sitting but not in relaxing as she reclaimed her drink and nursed it.
He would join them soon. But considering how frosty he’d acted towards her before he’d rushed out after Maisie, she had to wonder if it wasn’t prudent of her to retreat to her chamber now and leave the Banners to enjoy a quiet visit with their son untainted by the awkwardness she knew would plague her and Mr. Banner’s interactions no matter how carefully they tried to pretend she hadn’t turned down his offer of friendship, if not something more, after barging into his room and quite deliberately seducing him.
But how best to excuse herself?
The minute she stood up, Tonia would too. And once up and moving, she was a hard woman to rein in. The last thing Margaret needed was for her to go out in annoyed search of her recalcitrant son, who himself had been annoyed by the sight of his daughter in her nightdress at a party when he’d undoubtedly believed her safely tucked away in bed at Lily Grove, where he’d left her before leaving town.
She could almost see and hear the explosion as mother and son’s strong personalities and similar, if divergent, expectations for their own child collided like a pair of war planes midair.
“He hasn’t changed a bit,” Daniel said. He grabbed his drink off the table and, taking a sip, settled it on his knee to tip his chin towards the window. “He was like that at home, too, wandering around in the dark. Always the last of our boys to settle down and go to sleep, even though he was the youngest.”
“Yes,” Antonia agreed wistfully. “I asked him once why he was always awake so much later than his brothers.” She offered Margaret a faint smile. “He told me it was because he needed to know everyone was safely in bed and the doors and windows secure before he could sleep. He’s always been such a responsible soul.”
Margaret shared her smile and then put the champagne flute to her lips to hide their tremble.
Oh, Margaret, you silly, silly fool. You let your guard down, and now you’re done for, aching for a man you could love but can never have, the way his mother pines for the boy that used to be hers and never will be again.