All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (50 page)

No. She isn’t yours. She won’t ever be. Stop seeing yourself in her.

Stop
wanting
to see yourself.

“Hey, can I ask you a question? How come there are three houses here? Did this used to be a plantation? Did your family have slaves?”

It was a relief to shift away from the St. Brides and back to the Ashmores. He felt a small pleasure in her interest. She was the last of the Ashmore blood; she deserved to know her heritage. He pointed back towards the gates, towards the smaller house. “It was built back in the early 1700s, before the other houses,” he said, “and it’s the smallest, so it’s always been called Ashmore Minor.” He told her about Julia Tremaine Ashmore, the Great Lakes shipping heiress who had transformed Ashmore Park into its present reality.

“Oh,” said Meg, and sparkled at him, “a TFB?”

Richard laughed. “Definitely. Very pretty, very headstrong – no one said no to Julia, including her husband. Julia did what Julia wanted.”

“Did you know her?”

“When I was a little kid. She died when I was seven.”

“Wow. She must have been really old.”

“She was.” He smiled in remembrance. “She lived to be 100. And she was still a TFB, right to the end. She drove my mother and grandmother crazy.”

He told Meg how Julia’s sister married an English earl – an American heiress willing to trade her fortune for the title of an impoverished English nobleman. “That was the fashion then. Julia actually turned down the earl first for my great-grandfather. Then she found out that they had to live in Ashmore Minor while her in-laws got to live in Ashmore Magna—” he nodded towards the main house. “Julia was not a happy camper. She didn’t like her mother-in-law having a bigger house. So, when her father died, she got the bright idea to dismantle his summer cottage in Newport and ship it down here stone by stone. Then she rebuilt it where her mother-in-law would see it every day when she came out onto the front portico.”

Meg giggled. “That was mean. But why do you say it was a bright idea like it wasn’t?”

“Because she built on very poor soil. The foundation started collapsing within ten years.”

“I think it looks weird,” Meg said candidly. “It doesn’t fit in.”

“It’s Beaux Arts. Very unusual in these parts.” He saw her consciously tucking all this away. For someone with numerous agendas in play at any given time – he didn’t believe for a moment that she had elected to walk with him just for the exercise – she had a surprising transparency. “The other two are more typical of what you see in Virginia.”

“Why didn’t Julia just move in there anyway?” Meg pointed ahead at Ashmore Magna. “Because two women can’t live under the same roof?”

That cynical observation gave him pause. “No, because, whether Julia liked it or not, the oldest son lives in Ashmore Minor while his father is alive.”

“Is your father still alive?” And, when he shook his head, “So why don’t you live there?”

“Because the Folly is my home. I rebuilt it to make it safe.” He had to smile. She didn’t miss a trick. “Eventually, I’ll move up to Ashmore Magna.”

“So your son would live in Ashmore Minor?”

He nodded.

“But,” Meg pointed out, “you don’t have a son.”

“Julie can live there if she wants. We don’t discriminate against girls in this family.” Although traditionally the Ashmores had done just that, with the oldest direct male descendant always inheriting. Only in the last three generations had inheritance not been an issue; his grandfather’s younger brother had died young, and the later Ashmores had produced only one male per generation.

He had once looked forward to raising sons, passing along the Ashmore name and heritage. It seemed to be his fate in life to be a father to daughters who could not carry on the name.

“Come this way.” They had reached Ashmore Magna, the front portico awash in early morning sunlight. “The gardens are around back.”

“So what about these?” Meg gestured towards the front gardens.

He laughed. “Just wait. These are just to pique your interest.”

She trailed after him around the side of the great house, and he heard her sudden intake of breath the second she saw the gardens. Everyone reacted like that the first time or two that they laid eyes on Peggy’s pride and joy. His mother hadn’t started the gardens – they had been the brainchild of the post-colonial Ashmores – but she had seen them as her trust, the legacy handed down by generations of Ashmore chatelaines. She had taken her job as trustee seriously. He could hardly recall a week gone by, even after arthritis had started slowing her down, that Peggy Ashmore couldn’t be found working in her gardens.

They stretched for several acres behind the great house: a grotto here, a whimsical rose garden there, a grove of olive trees providing an irresistible backdrop to a dramatic little waterfall. Some sections had been laid out geometrically with precise right angles; still others had been fashioned by a wild hand with only an eye to color. The totality was – and always had been – enough to steal breath from the body.

“Oh, wow! Oh,
wow!
”

Absurd to enjoy her obvious awe. The gardens were not his accomplishment, after all. At best, he was treading water, trying to keep everything going. He felt the familiar pressure descending – too much to do for one man, too little few hours in the day, but he was ever mindful of the dwindling accounts in the Great Lakes shipping trust. He had to make the money last as long as possible.

Meg wandered into a square of ruthlessly laid out roses. “So your mom did this?”

“She worked on it. After she married my father,” he pointed her in the direction of the grotto at the back of the gardens, “she decided to make the gardens her work. These were her baby.”

“Guess you weren’t her baby for long.” Meg gave him an arch look. “Did she do this all by herself? This is so cool. Do people get married here? I’ll bet this is a
fabulous
place for a wedding.”

It had been, eighteen years before. He said merely, “Sometimes. Over here. You’ll like this.”

She followed him down three steps and around a sundial. “It must take a lot of money to keep this place up.”

She sounded like an accountant. He shot her a pointed glance but decided to hold his fire.

That resolve lasted only a few seconds. “You must be very rich.”

Richard Ashmore felt a sudden swift fury, all the recognition of blood and likeness of thought dropping away. He swung around and saw that she was watching him, an odd little smile on her face. He fixed her in place with his eyes. She lifted her chin and stared back at him, not giving an inch under his glare, that smile never wilting.

“That is none of your business.”

Unbelievably, she said, “So how much do you have?”

“Listen, young lady.” Let her run crying to Laura about her mean uncle. “Don’t you
ever
—”

Appallingly, she cut across his words. “I have to.”

“No. No, you don’t. You don’t have to do anything except apologize.” He made his voice icy. “Keep your thoughts to yourself. It isn’t necessary for everything that goes through your head to come out your mouth.”

“I have to.” Meg’s back was ramrod straight. “Mom has a lot of money. I have to make sure you’re not – what do you call someone who pretends to fall in love but it’s really just for the money?”

Her comment struck him speechless. Then he said stiffly, “A fortune hunter. For your information, I am not interested in your mother’s money. I’ve known her for over thirty years. When I knew her before, she had practically nothing. Your grandfather was a poor man.”

“Huh,” Meg shot back. “So you knew her before, and she was poor, and you weren’t interested. Now she’s back, and now she’s rich, and
now
you’re interested.”

He said nothing; he didn’t trust himself to speak through his rage at that calmly delivered logic. She wasn’t quailing under his wrath, either. She stood there in his mother’s gardens, her hands stuck in her jeans, wearing those ridiculous overpriced shoes, with her cool, knowing smile.

So this was her agenda. Not to get some exercise, not even to make the acquaintance of the new man in her mother’s life. She’d had a message to deliver, and deliver it she had.

Through the rage came a small nagging thought. In finding Laura again, in the dawning recognition that his little friend might turn out to be the last love of his life – their relative economic statuses had not mattered to him. He’d been far more concerned with the impact of his marriage than he had with the fact that Laura was, by any standards, a very rich woman. He’d seen her as a vulnerable woman, a friend of the heart, a gentle and fulfilling lover. He’d thought to take care of her, protect her against any further anguish that life could inflict on her. He hadn’t stopped to consider that she could, to a certainty, buy and sell him many times over.

God! He mentally recoiled at the thought. He did not want to follow his great-grandfather, coolly choosing a hard-to-handle heiress in order to keep his estate afloat.

He could handle one thing, though, right now. He could put this cynical little soul in her place.

“When I knew your mother before,” he said, and didn’t care how cold and flat he sounded – in fact, he hoped he chilled her through and through – “I was married, and I was six years older. That was a big age difference then. It isn’t now. As to my motives – give your mother some credit. She can make her own decisions about me.”

“Oh, please.” Meg refused to back down. She hadn’t broken eye contact with him once. “Mom doesn’t watch out for herself. She can’t even get herself to a doctor.”

So Laura had a pint-size guardian, whether she wanted one or not. He wondered if she knew that Meg intended to take over where St. Bride had left off. “You are very rude,” he said bluntly, and started to walk towards the grotto without looking to see if she followed him.

She did, of course. “Don’t be mad. If you’re after her money, she won’t even know. She never thinks the worst of anyone. That’s why I have to watch out for her.”

Did this kid ever give up? “Your mother is a smart woman. She can take care of herself.” Hadn’t that been the gist of Laura’s insistence that she could fend for herself, he didn’t even need to drive her to the airport? “I doubt she wants you watching out for her. She’s the adult, not you.”

“I have to, don’t you get it?” For the first time, she sounded worried. Apparently, he wasn’t getting it at all. “Mom – well, Mom is such a dreamer. Come on, if you’ve known her that long, you’ve got to see that. She’s off in another world half the time. And she trusts people she loves. She always believes people are telling her the truth.”

Laura hadn’t impressed him as being off in another world. Where had that come from? St. Bride? Had he really held his wife in such contempt?

“If you’re after her money, she won’t even know. She’ll believe in you.”

Richard said shortly, “For the last time, I am not after her money. I don’t want or need any of it.”

“Well, then,” Meg sounded conciliatory, “that’s good, right? You’re not like Mark.”

St. Bride’s brother? “Your uncle? What about him?”

“He wants to marry Mom. Didn’t you know? He says they’re getting engaged, but Mom says no.” She stopped. “Wow, that makes two uncles who want to marry her. You’ve – uh,” she looked at him playfully, “got competition.”

The hell he did.

He bit off his instinctive retort. “What are you talking about?”

If she was going to talk – and, short of taping her mouth shut, there didn’t seem to be any way to make her stop – he might as well see what he could learn. Laura had scarcely mentioned Mark St. Bride, other than to say on their weekend that she had to turn her cell off to avoid his calls. Richard had gathered that St. Bride’s brother was as big a control freak as St. Bride himself.

“You want the 4-1-1?”

“Yes.” He needed to understand more about the St. Brides. It had been too easy to overlook the fact that Laura – and Meg – belonged to another family.

“Well,” Meg shifted into confidante mode, “Emma thinks Mark wants to marry Mom because she inherited so much of Dad’s money. A lot more than Mark got, or Emma either. Dad left most of his money to Mom and me.”

That fit in with St. Bride’s will. He had the uncomfortable thought that he had deliberately avoided the enormity of St. Bride’s estate, or what
To my wife,
I leave one-third
entailed.

Thanks to this outrageous girl, he couldn’t ignore it any longer.

“Mark is really worried about you,” Meg said chattily. “He told Emma Mom was probably hooking up with you, but he figures she needs to get you out of her system, then they can get married.”

He muttered, “Wonderful.” So he and his sex life had already been a topic of conversation in the St. Bride family. He knew enough teen slang from Julie to know what “hooking up” meant.

He reached the entrance to the grotto and halted to let her catch up with him.

“Plus, Mark is hot to keep Mom from adopting these kids, you know? Guess he’s afraid everything will just get split up more.”