The Bourbon Kings #1 (54 page)

Back at the door, she heard …

Shoot, the vacuum cleaner running right outside in the hall.

D
own in Miss Aurora’s quarters, Lane was struggling to get through his bacon and eggs.

“You don’t have to finish that,” she said next to him.

“Didn’t think I’d ever hear that coming from you.”

“The rules are suspended for today.”

Sitting back in the Barcalounger, he glanced over at her little galley kitchen. All the dishes were done, everything drying in the rack. The sponge was in the dish. The dish towel was folded neatly over the oven’s long handle.

“Do you think Reverend Nyce will do the service?” he asked. “At Charlemont Baptist?”

Miss Aurora looked at him sharply. “Really?”

“That’s my church. Edward’s and Gin’s and Max’s, too.” He looked at her. “You were the only one who ever took us to worship.”

“I think he would be honored.”

“Good. I’ll call him.”

As they fell silent, Lane stared straight ahead, seeing nothing, focusing on nothing. There wasn’t anything in his brain, either. He was numb from the floor up, an empty vessel reacting to the world around him rather than actually living in it.

“I’m not going to give you my blessing.”

He shook himself and glanced back across at her. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m not going to tell you it’s okay to leave.”

Lane frowned and opened his mouth. Then shut things up.

Funny, he hadn’t been aware of speaking that out loud, but then she knew him better than anybody. “Things didn’t work with Lizzie. Again. Father’s dead. Edward’s moved out. Mother is—well, you know. Gin’s going to marry that idiot and probably take Amelia with her. This whole era, it’s over, Miss Aurora. And what’s more, I don’t know that the future holds any of us on this land anymore. Easterly …” He moved his hand around, thinking of the estate and all the people and buildings on it. “Easterly’s part of the past, and you know, I can’t live in that. It’s poisonous. This family, this house, the way of life—it’s just poisonous.”

Miss Aurora shook her head. “You’re looking at it the wrong way.”

“I’m really not.”

Miss Aurora sat forward in her chair and reached for his hands. “This is … your time, Lane. God has provided you with a sacred duty to keep this family together. You are the only one who can do it. This is all falling into place because it is your destiny to bind the blood once again. It happens every couple of generations. It’s happening now. This is
your
time.”

Lane stared down at their fingers, the white and dark intertwined. “It was supposed to be Edward, you know.”

“No, or he wouldn’t be where he is right now.” Miss Aurora’s voice gathered strength. “I raised you better than to be a coward, Lane. I
raised you better than to leave your duty at the exit door. If you want to honor me when I’m gone, you will do it by taking this family and moving them forward—together. I did my sacred job with you—and you, son of my heart, are going to do it with them.”

Lane closed his eyes and felt a sudden weight settle all over his body, as if Easterly’s walls and roof had caved in and landed on him.

“You will do this, Lane, for me. Because if you don’t, everything I put into you means nothing. If you don’t, I have failed in my job.”

Inside, he was screaming.

Inside, he was already on a plane, going anywhere away from Charlemont.

“God does not give us more than we can handle,” she said grimly.

But what if God doesn’t really know us,
Lane thought to himself.
Or worse … what if God was just plain wrong?

“I don’t know, Miss Aurora.”

“Well, I do. And you are not going to let me down, son. You simply are not.”

T
he true definition of eternity, Lizzie decided, was when you were stuck somewhere you shouldn’t be.

With a camisole that wasn’t your own, shoved down your damn shorts.

When the sounds of people in the hall finally quieted, she waited another five or ten minutes before she poked her head out.

Lunchtime,
she thought.
Thank God.

Jumping into the middle of the hallway, she let the door close behind her and stayed where she was, listening.

Next stop was going down past Gin’s room and knocking on Chantal’s door.

No answer. Then again, the woman had left, right?

Sneaking inside, she shut herself in—

“Oh, God,” she muttered, fanning in front of her nose.

The stench of fancy perfume was enough to make her eyes water, but she had bigger fish to fry, as they say. Hightailing it into Chantal’s walk-in closet, she faced off at a wardrobe big enough to rival an entire
Nordstrom’s women’s department. Or Saks. Or whatever high-end place folks like Chantal got their clothes from.

Jeez, was she actually going to do this?

It was probably a really dumb idea, she decided as she began rifling through the hanging sections, breezing past all manner of silk and satin and lace. Then came the suits, the jackets, the dresses, the gowns.

“Where is your lingerie, Chantal …”

Of course. The dresser.

In the middle of the room, like an island of organization, there was a built-in stretch of double-faced drawers, and she started pulling them open at random.

Okay, this is stupid,
she thought. Did she really think she was going to find the bottoms—

She was third drawer from the bottom of the left side on the north-facing part when she found what she was looking for.

Sort of.

In the midst of a line-up of carefully folded and tissue-paper-separated slips and matching panties, she found … a purple camisole that was identical to the one she had taken from behind William Baldwine’s bed.

Just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, she took the peach one out and put them both side by side on the thick white carpeting. Same size, same maker—La Perla?—same everything except for the color.

Lizzie sat back on her butt and stared at the two.

And that was when she saw the stain on the rug.

Over in the far end of the room, there was a make-up vanity that was lined up in a windowed alcove that overlooked the gardens. It was the perfect place to do your makeup—or have it done—in natural light.

And under the ivory legs, in the corner, there was an unsightly yellow stain in a circle.

It was the kind of thing you’d find in a house with dogs.

Except Easterly had no dogs.

Crab walking over, she wedged herself under a second piece of furniture and patted at the discoloration. It was dry. But as she brought her
fingertips to her nose—yup, that was the source of the perfume smell in the air.

Frowning, Lizzie rose up onto her knees. “Oh … God.”

The glass-covered surface of the vanity had a crack down the center. And the mirror was smashed in a starburst pattern.

With blood in the center.

Time to get out of here,
she thought to herself.

Going back to the lingerie she’d laid out, she returned the purple one to where it had been. And then on a lark, she used the peach silk to clean her fingerprints off the drawer pulls.

All of them.

The last thing she needed was for the police to come in here and find out she’d been sniffing around, so to speak—

Lizzie froze at the sound of a man’s voice. Except it wasn’t in the wardrobe with her. It was next door—Gin’s room, she realized.

Two people were talking. Loudly.

Going over, she put her ear to the wall beside a painting of a French woman who was mostly nude.

“I don’t care,” came Gin’s voice with greater clarity. “It’s just at the courthouse.”

“Your father is dead.”

Lizzie recoiled, bringing her hand to her mouth.
What?

Richard Pford continued, “We will wait to be married until after the funeral.”

“I’m not mourning him.”

“Of course not. That would require having a heart, and we both know that the absence of one is an anatomical anomaly of yours.”

Lizzie backed off. Stumbled. Fell into the dresser.

After a moment, she continued with the wipe down and then went back to the door into the hall. Her heart was beating so loudly, she couldn’t hear well enough and decided, screw it. If she got caught, what were they going to do to her?

She could just tell anyone she was checking for flowers.

But no one was out there.

Blindly heading for the staff stairs, her mind was racing, her thoughts slamming into one another, splintering, falling to pieces.

At the core, though, she came to one, inescapable conclusion.

She had made a terrible mistake.

The kind for which forgiveness was going to be next to impossible.

Down on the first floor, she stopped dead in her tracks. And realized that, of all the places to stall out, she had picked Rosalinda’s office.

William Baldwine was dead, too.

How?
she wondered.
What had happened to him?

In a series of flashes, she saw Lane standing in the greenhouse, his face shut down, his voice flat as asphalt. Then she heard his friend telling her that, contrary to happily banging Chantal on the side, Lane had seen no one, done nothing.

And then the bomb burst in that mirror upstairs. And the lingerie.

Her last image was of Chantal out by the pool that morning when the woman had insisted on a refresher on her lemonade.

At the time, the fact that she had been wearing a silk wrap hadn’t seemed especially significant. But now …

She’d been pregnant and just starting to show. Which was why she had asked for a virgin—no alcohol.

Chantal had been sleeping with William Baldwine. Cheating on the son with the father. And she had become pregnant.

She must have told William,
Lizzie thought.
After the Derby.

And the man had lost it. And hit her up in that dressing room.

Then he had kicked her out of the house. Or something like that.

Shaking her head, Lizzie put her hands to her hot face and tried to breathe.

Her one and only thought was that she had to make it right with Lane. She had condemned him based on her own fear of being hurt again …

… when in reality there was a very, very strong possibility that, in fact, he’d had nothing to do with any of it.

Dropping her arms, she knew words were not going to be enough. Not for this one.

When the solution came to her, she checked her watch. If she hurried …

Breaking out into a run, she flashed through the kitchen, and Miss Aurora looked up from the stove.

“Where you going?” the woman asked. “What’s on fire?”

Lizzie skidded into the door out to the garages. “I’ve got to go to Indiana. If you see Lane, tell him I’m coming back. I’m coming back!”

I
t was actually pretty nice out here, Lane thought as he took a seat in the garden.

Looking around at the ivy-covered walls and the orderly flower beds, across the sparkling blue pool and the French doors of the business center, he imagined all the work that it took to maintain this “natural” beauty.

It was impossible not to picture Lizzie out here, but he shut that down quick.

No reason to bother with those kinds of things.

Bowing his head, he rubbed his eyes. Samuel T. had called about the situation with Chantal, and he knew he had to call the guy back. Mitch had also left a message, likely about the preliminary results of the autopsy. And meanwhile, up on the second floor, Jeff was going through all the financial stuff.

There were funeral arrangements to be made.

He had no energy to deal with any of it.

Damn it, Miss Aurora,
he thought.
Let me go. Just let me get out of this.

He loved that woman so much. He owed her even more. And yet
even with his momma kicking him in the can, he just wasn’t in this fight anymore.

Raising his eyes to Easterly’s incredible white expanse, he stared at the mansion as a real estate appraiser would. Sutton Smythe’s mortgage notwithstanding, they could probably clear most of the debt with Prospect Trust by a sale of the place.