Read By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs Online
Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
Tags: #romantic suspense, #adventure, #mystery, #family saga, #contemporary romance, #cozy, #newport, #americas cup, #mansions, #multigenerational saga
By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs
"A riveting saga/mystery."
--
Rave Reviews
In the tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs and
Downton Abbey, BY THE SEA is a four-book series that sweeps from
the Gilded Age through the Gatsby Era's Roaring Twenties and then
on to the Great Depression, culminating nearly a century later in
Newport, Rhode Island, wealthy and alluring "City by the Sea." Set
against a backdrop of mansions, the glorious America's Cup Yacht
Races, and new money, the series traces the passions and adventures
of three families from three different classes.
Book One
: TESS.
From the wild
decadence of late nineteenth-century Newport comes the tale of Tess
Moran, a beautiful Irish housemaid in one of the grand summer
"cottages," who makes a dark bargain with a man of commanding
wealth — and falls in love in the bargain.
Book Two
: AMANDA.
Marrying
American money to an English title is a tradition of its own; but
Amanda Fain, a brash heiress with money to burn, has a fondness for
Bolsheviks and bootleg liquor that makes her an unlikely match for
the reluctant, ironic, and impoverished English aristocrat Geoffrey
Seton, who has been ordered to America to find someone who can pay
the bills for the family estate back home.
Book Three:
LAURA.
While the
Great Depression grinds relentlessly on, Laura Andersson, a
Midwestern farm girl with an improbable love of the sea, embarks on
a bold adventure that promises riches but delivers passion, one
that threatens all she holds dear.
Book Four:
THE HEIRS
is the
dramatic conclusion to the four-book series BY THE SEA.
Economic hard times are a distant memory in high-flying, recent-day
Newport, home of the oldest and most prestigious trophy in the
world, the Holy Grail of sport--the America's Cup. Here, the
descendants of Tess, Amanda and Laura play out their destinies,
their paths crossing in unforeseen ways: Mavis Moran, Neil
Powers, his daughter Quinta, and America's Cup skipper Alan Seton
all find themselves caught in a web of mystery, sabotage, and
conflicting desires.
"A quality novel [that]
contains many of those little epiphanies, those moments of
recognition. [Part 1, TESS,] is what makes Stockenberg's book
stand out from the rash of novels on class conflicts between Irish
servants and their Yankee masters."
—
Providence Journal
"This was my first Antoinette Stockenberg novel. I read it
not long after it was published ages ago, but her writing is so
vivid I can still picture some of the scenes from the novel. This
[was written] before the ghost or mystery plots were woven into her
novels: it is purely a story of life and relationships. I have been
a huge fan ever since."
—
A
reader
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1987 by Antoinette
Stockenberg
Glory
Newly revised and edited, 2013
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Antoinette
HEIRS,
Chapter 1
Summer 1983
Neil Powers rapped on the opened door of his
daughter's room. "Hey? You coming to the Ball?"
Quinta was lying on the quilted coverlet of
her white spindled bed, reading. A huge bowl of fruit lay next to
her. She plucked a grape from a half-eaten bunch and without
looking up said, "Nah. I think I'll pass. I'm really enjoying this
novel."
"What're you reading?"
"
Pride and Prejudice
."
"For pity's sake, girl. Why read about balls
when you can go to one?"
She looked up and laughed at that. "Because
it's much easier to pretend I'm dancing at
this
one," she
said, and her face, which still had a little growing up to do,
sparkled with teenage superiority.
It was a pretty face, tanned and with a
refreshingly un-pert nose, and framed by straight gold hair. She
didn't look like her mother, and she didn't look like her father.
Make her hair dark, and Quinta looked like her grandmother Laura
more than any of her four sisters. That was one reason she was her
father's secret favorite; another was that she was the youngest of
his five children and naturally the one most doted upon.
"Sure you won't come? When your sister's
back up and around I can always drag her, but for now ..." He was
packing the loose tobacco in his antique pipe with an index finger,
a careful study in abandonment.
Quinta flipped the book over and sighed. Her
father was getting better and better at laying on guilt. For the
last four years, ever since her mother died, he'd been wandering
through life aimlessly, leaning on one daughter, then another, to
share his activities. But daughters have a way of growing up, and
now everyone had left the nest except Quinta. As she watched him,
calmly aware that she was being manipulated, it suddenly became
clear to her: Neil Powers would not grow up while she was there to
minister to him.
With an almost painful effort she forced her
body to stand up, stretch, and return to the twentieth century.
Reaching for the nylon windbreaker on the back of her bedroom door,
she said, "If someone actually had handed you two tickets to the
Yachtsman's Ball tonight, would you have gone?"
"Of course," he said, wondering.
"I mean, with a—you know—a date?"
He looked into her hazel eyes, so completely
unlike his dark ones, while he drew flame through the bowl of his
pipe. "A date?" he said between puffs, "What's a date?" as though
the word had long since been dropped from his vocabulary.
Quinta trotted after him down the stairs of
their now too-large house, aware that she was breaking new ground;
none of her older sisters had ever suggested to their father's face
that he pick up the pieces and get on with life. "Come on, Dad, be
serious. There must be someone in Newport you wouldn't be ashamed
to be seen with. What about Mrs. Saunderson?"
"It never occurred to me," he said coolly,
without turning around. "And besides, she's way too old."
"She's your age!"
"And looks it."
"Well, everyone can't be as pretty and
lively as Mom. And besides, you
are
four years older than
when, you know—" But she retreated; he wouldn't appreciate being
reminded that life was passing him by.
They'd reached the foot of the stairs when
Neil turned to his daughter. "It seems to me that I should be
worried about your boyfriends, and not vice-versa. How's Jake, by
the way? He hasn't been around in ages."
"He's
not
my boyfriend. He's a kid,"
she said, thoroughly insulted.
"He's your age!"
"And looks it."
"I suggest a truce," her father said, which
was what he always said when they got into one of these circular
arguments. He was never willing to resolve anything, which drove
Quinta crazy. Her mother had always been the one to take life's
various bulls by the horns; Neil Powers had never had to bother. As
a result he had developed a true genius for daydreaming and
evasion, and he never knew which tie to wear with what shirt.
On the other hand, he was a wizard with
computers. If he'd gone into teaching he'd have made an excellent
absent-minded professor. For her birthday he'd bought Quinta the
newest, fastest, latest Mac, and now she was miles ahead of
everyone else in her class. In the evening Quinta would amble into
his study with a question about "C"; in the morning he would beg
her to tell him whether paisley went with pinstripes. It was
comforting to her that he knew everything about programming
languages. But shouldn't he know a little something about men's
wear, too?
Her father was locking the entry door from
the outside when Quinta suddenly changed her mind. The night had a
damp, nasty edge to it, and thoughts of her cozy room and Austen's
country gentry became suddenly irresistible. Right now all that
mattered to Quinta was, what would proud Darcy say to Elizabeth's
violent rejection of his proposal?
She reached into her shoulder bag and
brought out her key—"I'm not going after all, Dad"—and stuck it in
the lock.
"Well, that's nice. Why not?"
"Because of the book and—do you really want
to know?" she asked, turning back to him. "Because I think it's
dumb to stand around in the dark gawking at a lot of rich people
making their grand entrances into a mansion. I mean, who cares?
I'm
not a debutante, and
I
don't own a yacht with a
helicopter on it, and
I'm
not dating one of the America's
Cup crew members, and
I'm
sure not racing on one of the
12-meter yachts that's trying to win the America's Cup—so what's
the point? I'd rather read a book," she finished up, facing down
the first chill blast of reproach that seemed to emanate from her
father.
"Fine. I need the exercise. I'll walk over
myself. I didn't realize that you'd grown so blasé about the
America's Cup. No doubt I bore you with my continuing interest.
Fine."
He always did that, took that vague,
offended tone whenever he was being opposed. "Oh,
Dad,"
she
said, and there was awful sadness in her voice. How could he be
expected to change at fifty-seven?
"Please. Spare me your sympathy," he said.
"But before I go I'd like you to know that I
don't—necessarily—follow the balls because they're important to me.
I do it because your mother used to enjoy it so much."
The last shot was right on target. Wounded
and near tears, Quinta said, "Dad—"
"No, fine. Really." He turned and walked
quickly down the steps, heading up the hill to Spring Street, where
he would turn right toward Ocean Avenue, millionaires' row.
Quinta knew, even before she dragged herself
back up the mahogany stairs of her father's comfortable colonial
home, that her reunion with Jane Austen's amusing, impertinent
heroine Elizabeth would not be much fun after all.
****
Neil Powers had put a mile and a half
between himself and the painful scene on his front porch before he
could ask the question:
was
he being an ass again? The look
he got from Quinta was the look he'd gotten from his other four
girls, each in her turn, during the last couple of years. Well, he
did not need their pity; he was doing just fine as a widower, thank
you. Tomorrow morning, for example, he planned to go out in his
boat—if it wasn't blowing too hard—and do a little bottom fishing
on Narragansett Bay. Alone. He didn't mind, not actually. Quinta
had overreacted.