LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      SHE hadn’t been back to Belvoir in eleven years, not since the year that she’d lost the baby. At the very least the place could have looked as if it had missed her a fraction as much as she’d missed it—shown its age a little, the way she was sure she showed hers. But no. It rose out of the morning mist, as pale and beautiful today as it had been then, evoking not just the innocent pleasures of her childhood but the sharp unhappiness of unrequited love and lost dreams as well.

      Wisteria still wound in mauve clusters around the pillars supporting the upper balconies, the way it had every spring since her grandmother had come there as a bride. Gauzy white curtains still swirled over the windows of the comer turrets, and the brass bell at the massive front entrance gleamed with the same golden brilliance.

      How often, when they’d been children, had they rung that bell for the sheer mischief of it, and brought one or other of the servants running and scolding? But not today.

      “Miss Emily!” Consuela, who’d served as general factotum at Belvoir since before Emily had been born, bared her yellow old teeth in a smile. “What a welcome sight you are! Madame will be so pleased to see you.”

      “Humph!” her grandmother grumbled, scowling over the half-glasses perched on her patrician nose when Emily stepped into the morning room. “I suppose I should be grateful that they had the good grace to send you to badger me, Emily Jane. Of them all, you at least have the wit to keep me entertained. You may kiss me, child.”

      Emily bent, touched her lips to the papery cheek, and clamped down viciously on the tears suddenly damming behind her eyes. “You’re looking well, Grand-mère.”

      “And you lie graciously but badly,” Monique Lamartine said. “Having you here might prove even more diverting than I’d anticipated, provided you understand that I am not about to move out of my house no matter what sort of pressure you bring to bear on me. I lived here with your grandfather and I intend to lie beside him in my grave, though not quite as quickly as my son and daughters might like. The body is a little frailer but the mind...” She tapped her forehead. “It’s still sound, never doubt that, and I will continue to lead my life as I see fit. So you’re very welcome to visit for a while, Emily Jane, but when you decide to leave you will not be taking me with you.”

      Emily murmured something innocuous and tried again to hide her dismay. Monique Lamartine rose in her memory tall and proud and invincible; this shrunken, enfeebled old lady with the stick propped next to her chair bore little resemblance to the woman she knew as Grandmother.

      Consuela reappeared, wheeling before her a trolley laden with sterling and translucent Limoges china. A tiered silver cake stand of delicacies baked fresh that morning occupied pride of place on the lower shelf.

      “Pour the tea, Emily Jane, and give yourself something to do until you’ve composed yourself,” Monique ordered tartly.

      In all the years Emily had known her, her grandmother had preferred coffee, a rich, full-bodied French roast in keeping with her ancestry. “I didn’t know you drank tea, Grand-mère.”

      “There are a lot of things you don’t know,” her grandmother retorted. “That tends to happen when you avoid a person for over ten years.”

      Emily was thirty and long past the age, or so she’d thought, when anyone could make her flush and feel as awkward as a teenager. But her grandmother’s barbed observation found its mark. The telltale pink spread over her face despite her attempt to rationalize what she knew must seem like inexcusable neglect on her part.

      “I haven’t avoided you! You were at my wedding, and we saw each other again at Suzanne’s, a few months after. We celebrated New Year’s together in San Francisco four years ago, and met at the family reunion in Charleston when Peter graduated from the academy. We’ve talked on the phone, I’ve written, and sent you postcards whenever I’ve gone traveling.”

      The rest of her might have dwindled, but Monique’s scorn had lost none of its sting. “I don’t know how long it took you to memorize such an impressive list, Emily Jane, but let me assure you it was a waste of time. On all those occasions, we were surrounded by other relatives and, of necessity, confined to meaningless exchanges which neither one of us particularly enjoyed. Of course, there was, as there always has been, another option, one which would have allowed us the privacy to reinforce those ties formed when you were a girl, but you chose not to employ it. You have not set foot in my home since the summer you turned nineteen.”

      Emily looked away as a different sort of shame overwhelmed her. “It wasn’t you I was avoiding, Grand-mère, it was this house, this place. I wouldn’t be here now—”

      “If it weren’t for the fact that my children think I’m incapable of looking after myself, so they’ve bribed you to try to get me to see things their way because they know that, for all that you’ve neglected me so abysmally for far too long, you’re still my favorite. Well, it doesn’t say much for you, Emily Jane, does it, that I had to be half crippled by a stroke before you could bring yourself to put aside your own feelings and give a thought to mine?”

      “I’m sorry, Grand-mère.”

      Emily didn’t for a moment expect that such an answer would be

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