Heiress (6 page)

The wedding ceremony was merely a prelude to the lavish buffet reception on the lawn that followed. The four-tiered wedding cake was an architectural wonder, each layer separated by frosted columns of white, stairstepping to the top tier where the figures of a bride and groom stood inside an exact replica of the gazebo. After the ritual cutting of the cake, the new Mr. and Mrs. Dean Lawson toasted each other. Glasses were raised by the guests, filled with either champagne from the silver fountains or, for those who preferred, hard liquor from the bars set up on the lawn.

The newlyweds posed endlessly for the official photographer, then mingled with their guests, always together, Babs clinging proudly to Dean's arm, reveling in her new status, the princess to her prince. As she deferred nearly every inquiry about their future to him, Dean seemed to grow taller by inches. "Whatever Dean wants," "I'll let Dean decide," "You'll have to ask Dean about that," were beautiful words to him.

Twilight was settling over River Bend as Dean and Babs, she in her pale pink traveling suit, made their dash amidst a pelting shower of rice to his car—a car that wouldn't start, creating hoots of laughter among the on looking guests. All sorts of advice was shouted to Dean, which he largely and wisely ignored as he raised the hood and checked the wires. When Dean attempted to enlist Babs's aid in starting the car, the typical husband-wife interchange created more peals of laughter.

"Dean, you know I can't drive," Babs protested.

"You don't have to drive. Just start the car. Now, when I tell you, turn the ignition and pump the gas pedal."

"Which one's the gas pedal?"

"The one on your right."

"This one?"

"Yes, honey, but. . . not now. I'll tell you when." After several attempts failed, Dean suggested, "Use the choke."

"What's that?"

Dean told her, and Babs promptly turned on the radio. In the end, Lane took pity on them and gave Dean the keys to his car so they could leave to spend their wedding night in the Houston hotel suite before boarding the train for New York the next day.

Chapter 4

As the white board fences that outlined the boundaries of River Bend came into view, Lane was momentarily disconcerted by the feeling he had been literally transported back in time. It was as if the same horses were grazing beneath the sprawling limbs of the oak and pecan trees, their satiny coats shimmering in metallic shades of bronze, copper, silver, and gold. Beyond them, he expected to see the grounds clogged with cars, the wedding guests still lingering.

After watching Dean and Babs drive away, he remembered turning and finding the usually brash and robust R. D. Lawson standing silently beside him, his look distant and thoughtful. Then R.D. had glanced sharply at him, as if suddenly realizing he was there.

Lane remembered that he'd said, "Well, they're off. They looked happy together, didn't they?"

R.D. had stared after the car. "I wonder about her," he had said, then added hastily and forcefully, "I like the girl. But if she keeps acting helpless and dumb, pretty soon she's going to believe it. It's a damned shame she never knew my mother. Now, there was a woman," he had declared and slapped Lane heartily on the back, clamping his hand on Lane's shoulder. "Come on. There's still some partyin' left to be done."

At the time, Lane had regarded R.D.'s description of Babs as unfairly demeaning. But after more than thirty years, Babs still possessed that endearing childish quality. She still reminded him of a little girl who needed someone to look after her. Babs, who loved parties and beautiful clothes. Lane wondered if R.D. had been right. Had she been playing a role? Had that role become reality?

Covertly, Lane studied the Babs before him, the face behind the veil still relatively unlined, her hair still femininely styled in soft curls, its color still the same shade of dark blonde—whether naturally or artificially retained, he didn't know. The sad, lost look in her hazel eyes, however, was poignant and real.

"Dean never tired of their antics," Babs remarked when a half-dozen yearlings bolted away from the fence in mock fright as the limousine passed by. They streaked across the pasture with their tails flung high, and fanned out among the ancient oaks to watch the vehicle traveling up the driveway. "Beauty in motion, he called them. Living art."

"Indeed." But he couldn't help thinking that even in death, she was clinging to him.

The limousine rolled to a stop in front of the house. Lane waited until the driver assisted Babs out of the car, then he stepped out to join her. From the stable area, the shrill, challenging whistle of a stallion shattered the late-afternoon quiet. Drawn by the sound, Lane absently noticed all the improvements Dean had made since he'd taken over at River Bend following his father's death some nineteen years before.

The old barn had been torn down to make room for the large stable complex with its attendant paddocks and support facilities, a complex that covered more than twice the area of the original. All the new structures mimicked the gabled roof and cupola of the mansion. In the distance, a bay stallion strutted along a high fence, its neck arched and ebony tail flagged, its small, fine head lifted high to drink in the wind's scents. Lane guessed that he was also the source of the shrill call that had rent the air a moment ago.

"That's Nahr El Kedar." The statement came from Abbie Lawson, the first words he'd heard her speak since they'd left the cemetery. "You helped Daddy import him from Egypt."

"I'd forgotten all about it. That was a long time ago." Somewhere around twenty years, if he remembered correctly. His participation in the project had been relatively minor, mainly consisting of putting Dean in touch with some of his contacts in the Middle East to facilitate the handling of all the red tape of importation.

"Would you like to see him?" There was something challenging in the look she gave him. Lane suspected that Dean would have described it as one of his grandmother's "You come-with-me, and-you-come-with-me-now" looks.

"Abbie," Babs began hesitantly.

"Don't worry, Momma. I won't keep him long." Without waiting for his assent, she set off confidently toward the stud pen. Lane found himself walking along with her.

After matching her for several strides, he realized that she wasn't as tall as he'd thought. The high heels she wore gave the illusion of height, plus she carried herself as if she were tall, but she was actually several inches shorter than he was. That seemed odd. He remembered. . . Lane caught his mistake. It was Rachel who had been his height.

"I saw you talking with her at the cemetery."

Lane was momentarily taken aback by Abbie's remark, coming as it did directly on the heels of his own thoughts. "You saw me. . . talking with whom?" he said, aware that he was treading on delicate ground.

"I believe her name is Rachel Farr." She turned the full blaze of her blue eyes on him. "She claims that Daddy was her father. Is that true?"

Lane didn't relish being the one who removed that last element of doubt. But it was equally pointless to lie. "Yes." Immediately she began staring at some point directly ahead of them and kept walking, but with a new stiffness of carriage that revealed the inner agitation she was tying desperately to control.

"But why would he—" The instant Abbie heard the naïveté of her question, she cut it—off. She had already experienced firsthand the infidelity of a husband, with no real cause, no adequate justification. . . and no flaw in their sex life. Yet the idea that her father had been unfaithful to her mother—it shook Abbie. "I always thought my parents were happy together."

Only now when she tried to remember how they had acted together did she realize how very little they had in common. Her father had been all wrapped up in the horses, but her mother took little interest in them, except to attend the social events at major shows. And their conversations: her mother never talked about anything but parties, clothes, new room decor, gossip, and, of course, the weather. Abbie hated to think how many times she'd heard her mother brightly declare, "I never discuss politics, business, or economics. That way I never show my ignorance." And she didn't. If any conversation took a serious turn, she either changed it or moved on. But that was just Babs. She was funny and cute, and engagingly frivolous. Everyone loved her.

Heavens, there were times when Abbie had wanted to shake her. She had never been able to run to her mother with any of her childhood problems, no matter how trivial. She wanted more than her mother's pat answer, "I wouldn't worry about it. Everything always works out for the best." Too frequently, her father hadn't been available either. Abbie had invariably poured out all her troubles to Ben.

Was that what her father had sought in a mistress? Someone to talk to? Someone who would listen and understand? Someone who was more than a decoration on his arm? Someone to stimulate him intellectually as well as sexually? Almost immediately, Abbie shied away from such thoughts that smacked of disloyalty to her mother. Even if her mother was a disappointment to him in some ways, her father had no right to take another woman. He had betrayed her. He had betrayed them all.

As Lane and Abbie reached the stud pen, she walked up to the stout white boards. The dark bay stallion, his satin coat the color of burnished mahogany, strutted over to her, snorting and tossing his head, then arched his neck over the top board and thrust his finely chiseled head toward her.

A picture of alertness, the stallion stood still for an instant, his graying muzzle nuzzling her palm, his large dark eyes bright with interest, his pricked ears curving inward, nearly touching at the tips, his nostrils distended, revealing the pink inner flesh of their passages. For all the refinement of his triangularly shaped head tapering quickly to a small muzzle, the width between his eyes, and the exaggerated dish of his face, there was a definite masculine quality about the horse.

Abruptly the stallion lifted his head and gazed in the direction of the broodmares in the distant pasture, ignoring Abbie as she raised her hand and smoothed the long black forelock down the center of his forehead, the thick forelock concealing the narrow, jagged streak of white. With a snaking twist of his head, the stallion moved away from her and wheeled from the fence to pace its length.

"Kedar's in remarkable shape for a stallion twenty-two years old," Abbie said, just for a minute wanting the distraction he provided.

"He's a fine-looking animal," Lane agreed.

"His legs aren't all that good. He's calf-kneed and a little down in the hocks. But he has an absolutely incredible head, and Daddy always was a headhunter. As long as an Arabian had a beautiful head, he assumed it had four legs. Arabians of straight Egyptian bloodlines are noted for having classic heads. That's why all the Arabians on the place trace directly back to Ali Pasha Sherif stock—all, that is, except for that two-year-old filly over there." Abbie gestured to the silvery-white horse standing at the fence in the near pasture. "Her dam was the last of the Arabian horses my grandfather bred. I wouldn't let Daddy sell her when he sold off all the others after Granddaddy died. Daddy gave me her filly last year."

"You've obviously inherited your father's love for horses."

"I suppose." When the stallion came back to the section of the fence where they were standing, Abbie idly rubbed his cheek. "If I wanted to spend any time with him, I didn't have much choice."

Immediately she regretted the bitterness in her statement, especially since it was only part of the story. Horses had been her companions and playmates all her life. She loved working with Arabians and being around them—not just because of her father, but because of the feeling of satisfaction it gave her.

Blowing softly, the stallion nuzzled the hollow of her hand Abbie returned to the subject that was really on her mind. "My mother must have known about this all along. Why did she put up with it?" Abbie didn't really expect an answer, but Lane gave her one.

"I think. . . they reached an understanding."

"Momma does have a knack for ignoring anything remotely unpleasant," Abbie admitted, wryly cynical. But his answer explained why she had childhood images of her mother shutting herself in her room for hours and coming out with red and swollen eyes whenever her father left on a "business" trip to California; yet in recent years, Abbie could only recall her mother being unusually silent right after he'd gone. "How many other people knew about Daddy's. . . affair?"

"Initially there was some gossip, but it pretty well died out a long time ago."

"And this woman, the one he had an affair with—what happened to her?"

"She died several years ago. Rachel's been pretty much on her own since she was seventeen."

"You expect her to be named as one of the beneficiaries in Daddy's will, don't you?"

"I think it's logical to assume he would have included her."

"And if he didn't, she could contest the will and demand her share of his estate, couldn't she?" Abbie challenged, voicing the fear that had been twisting her insides all during the long ride from the cemetery—a fear that filled her with anger and deep resentment. River Bend was her home. It had been in the Lawson family for generations. This Rachel person had no right to any part of it.

"That will depend on how the will is written. Dean may have directed the bulk of his estate to go to his widow, Babs, or he may have set up a trust, giving her a life estate on the property and providing for it to pass on to his heirs upon her death."

"'Heirs'? If you're going to use the plural, shouldn't it be 'heiresses'?" she suggested stiffly.

"Until the will is read, Abbie, I don't think we should be anticipating problems."

"I'm not like my mother, Lane. I prefer to face every possible contingency; And you can't deny that this might end up in a long and messy court battle."

"It's possible."

Looking away from him, Abbie gazed out over the shaded pastures all the way to the distant line of trees that hugged the banks of the Brazos. She knew every foot of River Bend, every bush and every tree. The horses out there—she could call them all by name and list their pedigree. This was her heritage. How could Lane stand there and tell her not to feel that it was threatened?