"A daughter?" Matthew stared at Edward Strawbridge blankly. "I have a daughter?"
Strawbridge looked down at the transcribed wireless message propped up on his desk. "You have a healthy, six pound baby daughter named Katie. Mother and child are doing fine."
Matthew sank down into the chair opposite his friend and buried his face in his hands as a thousand conflicting emotions shot through him. All his plans to be with her when her time came had amounted to naught. She had faced childbirth alone and delivered a baby girl. In the blink of an eye Alex had gone from girl to woman to mother while he struggled in vain to obtain his freedom.
Suddenly he looked up. "Did you say her name was Katie?"
Edward nodded as he poured them each a celebratory brandy. "Katie, it is."
"That was my mother's name," Matthew said quietly. In conversation once he had spoken about his mother, about how hard she had worked for her family, about the love she'd shown him. Now, through their daughter, he and Alex were taking that fine woman into the next generation.
"What the hell do I do now, Edward? I have half a mind to kill Madolyn and that bastard Lowell and be done with it."
"And spend a lifetime in jail?" Edward handed him his brandy. "Madolyn is unstable and, from what I have ascertained, Stephen Lowell's greed is surpassed only by his passions. They'll tip their hands soon enough, Matthew. Be patient."
Matthew thought of the woman and child three thousand miles away. "I am tired of being patient."
"The stakes are too high, Matthew. She means what she says when she threatens to kill Alexandra. Do not risk it now."
But didn't Strawbridge know that he was the greatest risk of all? He had failed once and tragically with his son. What guarantee was there that he wouldn't fail again?
#
"Would you be looking at that now, missus?" Janine exclaimed. "The little sweetheart is smiling at me!"
Alexandra laughed and finished diapering the rosy baby gurgling up at her from the bed. She simply hadn't the heart to tell Janine that Katie's smile was the result of a gastric disturbance and not mirth.
"Katie is a brilliant child," she said instead. "She recognizes a friend when she sees one."
Janine chucked the infant under her pudgy chin. "This little one has changed the house. Why, Mr. Andrew smiles from dawn to dusk with love of her."
What an amazing addition an infant was to a household. In just four weeks, Katie had brought sunshine to the darkest corners of Sea View and Alexandra had even found it possible to write Marisa a letter informing her of the baby's arrival. The normally dour Cook actually smiled at Alexandra these days while Johnny went out of his way to drop in upon the baby every chance he got, bringing with him new rattles and stuffed animals bound to please an infant. Janine was quite literally beside herself with pleasure; although she had helped to raise eight little brothers and sisters, she still delighted in all the work surrounding babies—a fact for which Alexandra would be forever grateful. Dayla was a deep well of wisdom and calm and without her Alexandra doubted she would have survived the first days of Katie's life.
In the early hours of the morning as Katie nursed, Alexandra and Dayla had had long conversations during which Alexandra began to understand more about the woman her father loved. Dayla was from the Marquesas in the South Seas. She had been wed to a fisherman who went mad, killing their two young sons and leaving Dayla for dead on a lonely stretch of beach. Had it not been for Andrew, who had been traveling the islands, she would not be alive today.
Angry selfish Andrew Lowell, artist without conscience, had picked Dayla—broken and bleeding—from the sand and carried her back to his cottage where he willed her back to health. She owed him her life; her love was freely given.
And Alexandra believed it was Dayla's love that enabled Andrew to adore Katie the way he did. To see his stern face light up with pleasure at the sight of the blonde-haired cherub was to see a miracle in progress. It never failed to send Alexandra's heart soaring with pride and happiness.
In four short weeks, Katie had filled Alexandra's heart with joy, but that joy was incomplete without Matthew by her side. Each morning a letter from San Francisco arrived at the East Hampton post office and each afternoon Johnny delivered it to Alexandra in the library where she and Katie took the sun.
His words were filled with love and longing as he told her about how the three of them would live as a family one day soon. He told her about Madolyn and her excesses and how Edward Strawbridge swore that any moment now Madolyn would give up the fight and let Matthew go free. Wait, he said in his letters. Wait just a little longer.
But it seemed to Alexandra that waiting was all she did these days. She waited for Katie to awaken each morning and for her to go to sleep each night. She waited for Johnny to bring the post to her each afternoon and, most important of all, she waited for Matthew to return to her.
Katie changed with each day that passed, and—with or without Matthew—she would continue to do so.
Alexandra would continue to wait for Matthew but Katie would wait for no one at all.
#
Winter came to an end and with it came the promise of spring. It would be wonderful to take Katie for long walks on the beach but it would be even more wonderful if Matthew were there to share it with them. Sharp painful stabs of anger and resentment surfaced frequently and Alexandra was finding it harder and harder to battle them down.
"There's mail, missus," Janine said, bustling into the library one day in late March, carrying a stack of envelopes and a large box. "Looks to be another present from Mr. Matthew."
Alexandra suppressed a sigh for there was nothing Matthew could send that could take the place of seeing his handsome face before her once again.
She took the package from Janine and carefully unwrapped it, then pushed aside the layers of tissue. "What on earth?" Two signet rings, one diamond bracelet and a tiny gold mesh reticule rested inside the box, along with two letters, one of which was addressed in her mother's childlike hand.
I enclose my valuables for you. They aren't much of a legacy but then nothing between us was ever the way it should be. Maybe one day your daughter will wear them. When you read this, I will be gone. I did the best I could, Alexandra. I hope you understand.
Your Mother.
The other letter was printed on a typewriting machine and signed by a Doctor Beaulieu, director of the Hospitale Sur in Geneva.
It was your mother's wish that you receive these effects upon her death.
I should like you to know the ending came peacefully in her sleep. She has arranged for all bills to be paid. You need not trouble yourself on that account. It is with deep sympathy that I am—
Claude Beaulieu
"Missus?" Janine shifted nervously from foot to foot. "Is there something I can do for you?"
Alexandra shook her head numbly. "I would just like to be left alone, Janine, if you would."
When the Charbonnes died, she had railed against Fate and cursed the gods for taking them from her. Her young heart had ached so that she feared she would die from grief.
But now she felt nothing.
Rising, she tucked the box and the letters under her home and made her way upstairs to Andrew's studio. Dayla was playing with Katie in the nursery and he was alone.
"Andrew?"
"Speak up, girl!" he called from his chaise longue near the window. "I do not take kindly to stealthy entrances."
She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the chaise. "My mother is dead." Her voice was flat, emotionless. "These letters just came."
He took them from her then read them quickly, lingering for a moment extra on Marisa's note. "She died much before her time," he said at last.
"I do not feel anything, Andrew. I want to cry for her, but I cannot."
Awkwardly he patted her hand. "Yours was a difficult relationship. Sorrow will take its own form."
"I always believed that someday we would find a common ground." She chuckled softly at the thought. "I had even believed Katie might be the miracle who brought us together."
What there was, was all there could ever be now—and it was a sad legacy.
For the next week, regret ate away at Alexandra each time she looked at her daughter. Katie would never know her grandmother. Alexandra would never have the chance to reconcile with her mother. The finality of death rocked her to the very core.
Who could say how much time he or she would be allotted on this earth? In each letter Matthew said, "Wait!" and "Be patient," but how could he know if the time would ever be right for them?
The child asleep in the crib was a pledge of love, an act of faith and yet he had still to meet her. The days and the weeks raced by her as Alexandra stood quietly, waiting for someone to tell her what to do.
Once again she was observing her life from a distance, allowing others to determine the path she took and when she took it. First Marisa played God with her life, and now Matthew was trying to, as well. Marisa had allowed an accident of birth to determine the course of her daughter's life; Alexandra would not allow that to happen to Katie.
Perhaps there might be no future in the cards for her and Matthew McKenna, but Katie was as much a part of Matthew as she was a part of Alexandra and Alexandra would be damned to hell for all eternity if she allowed her daughter to be deprived of a father's love. She had learned that lesson through bitter experience.
She would head for San Francisco and introduce the man she loved to the child he had fathered and suffer the consequences later.
One thing was certain: Katie McKenna would grow up knowing both of her parents.
#
Andrew was not pleased about her decision but he allowed Alexandra to ask Janine if she would accompany her to San Francisco as a combination of ladies' maid and nanny and the young girl almost collapsed with excitement at the prospect of traveling clear across the country.
There was much to be done in the two weeks before they boarded the Penn Railroad train for Philadelphia on the first leg of the journey. Dayla offered to help with Alexandra's wardrobe and between her and Janine, Alexandra found herself with more stylish outfits than at any time in her life.
Finally the day arrived. The suitcases and trunks were neatly stacked in the main hallway, waiting to be loaded into the coach for the trip to the Bridgehampton railroad station. Katie, sensing the excitement, was wide-eyed and fretful and her goodbye visit with her grandfather Andrew was abbreviated.
Then it was Alexandra's turn.
"I have given it much thought, Alexandra," he said in his cool, upper-class voice, "and it occurs to me that in many ways besides the obvious I have fallen short of being a good father to you."
"You cannot be a father before you know your daughter," she said gently.
"Be that as it may, you are my only child, girl, and my legal heir."
"Andrew," she said, standing up, "I do not want to hear talk of death. The coach is almost ready and I—"
"Sit down!" he commanded. "There are things that need to be said."
To her utter astonishment, Andrew produced a copy of his will, revised the day after her identity was revealed. In an emotional and most uncharacteristic step, he had eliminated Stephen and bequeathed Sea View and much of his fortune to Alexandra.
"I have no desire to acquire your wealth," she said bluntly. "I only wish to learn more about you... to have Katie know you."
Andrew, however, was determined. "All my life I have understood the power of money, the way it gives one person dominion over another. Many times I have been guilty of wielding that power." He had told her the story of Mary Margaret Kilbride kneeling before him to pick up the scattered dollars and he had not spared himself in the telling. "In this society it is always men who have money and women who are without and therein rests the problem." Without further preamble, he handed Alexandra a letter from his attorney which freed fifty percent of her inheritance for her use—and Katie's—now.
"Matthew McKenna is a good man and a kind one," he said, his voice suddenly cracking with emotion. "I believe he truly loves you. But love, at times, is not enough. I want you to enter this relationship as his equal in all ways, for that is the only way to build a marriage."
"I cannot," she began but he raised a gnarled hand to stop her.
"This is not charity, girl, nor an attempt to ease a guilty conscience. This is your birthright long-denied and the legacy you will pass on to your child." He took her hand in his and her throat ached with unshed tears. "Take what is yours, Alexandra, and use it well."
"Thank you," she whispered, as he folded her into an embrace. "Thank you for everything, Father."
#
It seemed to Alexandra that Janine talked all the way to San Francisco. For seven days as they traveled by rail through Philadelphia and Roanoke, through Chattanooga and New Orleans then across the vast prairies, Janine provided an endless stream of conversation that at times drove Alexandra close to madness.
On their sixth travel day, Alexandra pleaded a headache and spent much of the afternoon in the private car Andrew had provided for them, rather than in the parlor car where most passengers converged. Even the sunny-tempered Katie was fractious and spent much of the day fussing.
"Twenty-four hours," Alexandra whispered as the train wound its way toward San Francisco. Twenty-four hours until Matthew McKenna met his daughter.
#
To Matthew's surprise, Madolyn left early that morning for a week-long visit to friends in Sacramento, leaving him alone in the house with an infinite supply of whiskey and dark memories.
If it hadn't been for the fact he was expecting Edward Strawbridge for dinner, Matthew would have called for a coach and headed north to the country house. He had not been back to the estate since the day Christopher died and it seemed long past time he returned, if not to confront his memories then to retrieve some personal belongings.
He had tired of San Francisco and of city life in general, but Madolyn's constant presence in the mansion had kept him on a short lead. At each turn he expected to see Stephen Lowell appear on the scene; the man had not as yet shown himself, but both Matthew and Strawbridge knew it was only a matter of time.
The grandfather clock in the library tolled the noon hour. Another endless, useless day far from the woman he loved stretched before him and, at the moment, there seemed to be no end in sight.
#
The train reached the station at nine p.m. on the seventh day of their trip. Once again, Alexandra blessed her father's presence of mind for she had given no thought to how she and Janine and an infant would manage to find Matthew's house and were it not for the coach and driver awaiting her at the station—well, it didn't bear thinking about.
Swiftly the driver and two railroad employees loaded her trunk and valises into the hold of the carriage and they were on their way.
A heavy fog blanketed the Bay and coupled with the darkness she could see little of the sprawling city as they headed up a series of steep hills with twists and turns so dangerous she feared the coach would tip over.
Katie finally slept soundly and Janine had fallen silent, leaving Alexandra alone with her thoughts as the coach rumbled closer and closer to Matthew.
What if he did not want her there?
What if he had moved or gone away on a trip?
A thousand scenarios, all of them terrible, screamed inside her brain.
Panic rose in her chest. Had she made a terrible mistake? Should she have continued to wait for him at Sea View, hoping for a miracle?
But it was too late now. The driver stopped the coach before a huge house that, even with the darkness and the fog, loomed majestic atop Nob Hill.
Janine met her eyes in the dimly lit interior of the coach. "God bless you, missus," the girl whispered.
Alexandra prayed He was listening.
#
Dinner was over and Edward was ensconced in the leather wing chair in the library with a brandy in his right hand and a Cuban cigar in his left.
"Wonderful," he said, sipping the brandy. "I could learn to enjoy this life, Matthew."
"It's yours," said Matthew, pacing the room. "I am damned sick of it."
All evening Matthew had sought to discuss the real problems at hand but Edward had neatly danced around them with clever dinner conversation. Now that they were alone and away from the prying eyes of Madolyn's servants, it was time for some real talk.
Unfortunately, a knock at the door put a stop to his plans.
"Aren't you going to answer it?" asked Edward as they heard a second knock.
"It is Benjamin's job to answer the door," Matthew said. "Let him earn whatever outrageous amount it is that Madolyn pays him."
"Apparently Madolyn is not paying him near enough, Matthew," Edward observed as a third and fourth knock followed in quick succession.
Muttering an oath, Matthew strode to the door and swung it open, ready to unleash his anger on the hapless soul on the doorstep only to find his anger evaporating in the San Francisco fog.
"Alex?" She was a dream, an apparition conjured up from loneliness and need. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."
"If you are dreaming, then so am I," she said, a hesitant smile flashing across her beautiful face. "I know I've dreamed this moment so many times that I—"
Wildflowers.
The unmistakable scent of wildflowers in spring caught him and he knew beyond doubt that sometimes miracles happened even to men who had given up believing in them.
"Oh, Matthew," she whispered as he drew her into an embrace. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't looked at me exactly the way you did."
He said nothing, simply brought his lips to hers in a kiss of such dizzying sweetness and love that it took their breath away.
"How?" he managed between kisses. "I don't understand—"
"It's simple," she said, cradling his face in her hands. "I couldn't live without you any longer."
He dipped his head to claim her mouth once again, but she extricated herself from his embrace and moved toward the door.
"Stay there," she ordered him. "I have someone who is eager to meet you."
A sweet rush of anticipation flowed through his body as Alexandra stepped back outside then swiftly returned with a tiny, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. His heart twisted painfully and he had to remind himself to breathe as memories of Christopher rose up from the depths of his soul. Could he love a child again? Would he forever look at his future children and see his son mirrored in their eyes?
"Matthew McKenna," Alexandra said softly, "I think it is time you met your daughter."
She pushed back the blanket. He looked at Alex then down into the face of a little girl so like her mother—and yet so miraculously like him—that he threw back his head and for the first time in years, he laughed with joy.