Promises to Keep (11 page)
Less than a quarter mile from Annie’s house, Travis pulled to the side of the road and let the motor idle while he scraped his hands over his face and wondered what the hell he was going to say to her family. He’d bet money they knew nothing of Franklin Turner’s fondness for young, virginal girls.
The Turners used to live in Roanoke. He remembered Annie telling him how her parents moved back to Thompkin after Mark’s birth. They’d have never returned to town with a scandal hanging over their heads if they’d known about it.
Jesus, what a mess.
He’d looked forward to a day of Christmas shopping in Charlottesville with Annie. Maybe a movie later on before heading back to town. Now, all he could think about was the fury on his mother’s face when she figured out her story hadn’t affected him the way she hoped. No doubt she thought he’d recoil in horror, drop all contact with Annie, and then immediately call Catherine Cabot for a date. As usual, his mother had underestimated the importance of Annie in his life and in his future.
Not any longer. She knew exactly how much he and Annie wanted each other.
His mother was more than capable of making trouble for the Turners. He knew his dad could control some of it, but his mother had a lot of influential friends in town. A few phone calls, some words in a half dozen willing ears, and the town’s attitude toward Henry Turner and his family could quickly change from “well-liked and respected” to “undesirable and unsavory.”
Thompkin was a nice place, but it was also a typical small town. Gossip fed the grapevine, and everyone knew each other. Older people in town thought his relationship with Annie was “sweet.” As if it were a summer breeze passing through, to blow away like so many dried-up leaves come autumn.
Would Annie’s folks put pressure on her to stop seeing him, if his mother started any kind of trouble? The Turners cared about him, and they approved of him for their daughter. If they hadn’t, they would have put the kibosh on the friendship a long time ago. But they’d yank her out of his grasp if association with him and his family caused her pain.
His mother was capable of anything. No matter what, someone would get hurt.
Confused about everything except his need for Annie, Travis tried to set aside his worry as he shifted back into gear and headed toward her house.
While she waited for Travis, Annie peeled apples for pie, a mindless task handled easily with low thought process. Nearby, her mother rolled out flaky pie dough. Mama always made sure everyone got their favorite dessert, each Christmas. Apple pie, chocolate brownies, peach cobbler, pumpkin pie . . . Christmas was a bonanza of deliciousness because her mama thought to please her family. Even the blueberry pie she and Travis enjoyed last night had been made just for him.
Annie’s heart melted as she watched Mama’s capable hands lay the dough in pie pans. How lucky she was to have such a caring mother.
“Mama? Mama, I love you.” The words burst from her throat as Annie tossed down her paring knife, launched herself out of her chair and straight into her mama’s arms.
Her mama moved the pie pans aside and hugged Annie tightly. “I love you too, honey. Are you ready to tell me what’s making you so sad? Did something happen at the Quincy’s dinner last night?” she prodded.
“Travis’s mother is a bitch! Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, but it’s true.” Annie condemned the woman, asked forgiveness and reaffirmed her original assessment all in one fast hiccupping breath. She pressed her damp cheek into her mama’s neck. “The way she treated Travis and his daddy last night was awful.” She looked up with blurry eyes. “She was mean to them. I don’t care for myself, I know she hates me. I know it’s because she thinks she’s better than anyone else. But she hurt Travis. I can’t stand to see him hurt, Mama.”
“I know, honey. Travis is a good boy. What else happened last night?”
“She was really mad I was there. She got Mr. Quincy all upset. He was nice and acted calm, as usual, but I could tell he was upset. He was so sweet to me. Why can’t she be nice, too? What makes one parent so mean and the other so nice, and they can stay married to each other? I don’t understand it.”
“Neither do I. But honey, she’s his mother. Right or wrong, the way she deals with her son is her business. And she does love him.”
Annie wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and clung. “I’m so lucky, Mama. I wish Travis could be as lucky as me.”
“Oh, honey. Nothing you could ever say to me could be sweeter. Thank you.”
For several seconds they cuddled together as Annie struggled to get her emotions under control.
Finally, her mother stepped back. “My pie crust is drying out, young lady. You pick up that knife and keep slicing. And I hope you and Travis enjoyed the pie you gobbled up last night. Not a crumb left for your poor father to put in his lunch this morning. Just who did you think you were fooling, covering the empty plate with foil?” Her voice held just the right amount of teasing admonishment to shake Annie out of the sniffles.
Annie managed a smile as she picked up the abandoned apple. “It was good pie, Mama. Thank you.” She blinked away fresh tears when she felt her mother’s hand brush over her hair.
Ten minutes later Travis knocked on the door, and Annie’s heart burst as it always did when she saw him standing in their small foyer. He opened his arms and she flew into them, uncaring if her mama or anyone else saw. He swung her off her feet and she released a breathless giggle.
“Put me down! You’re all wet.” A light snow mixed with rain had kicked up in the time it took for him to park the car and walk to the door.
He rubbed his cold nose against her neck and made her squeal. “Just a little snow. You’ll have to tough your way through it.” He pulled back and grinned at her, but she saw tension around his eyes. “Are you ready to go?”
“You sure you still want to? You look kind of tired.” She traced the edge of his eyelid with a finger. “We don’t have to do this today, Travis.”
“And miss out on watching you buy out the mall with all that Coffee Hut money you’ve been hoarding? No way. I’m fine, sweetheart. Get your coat and let’s take off.” He squeezed her once more before letting her go, and Annie turned to lift her coat from the hall chair.
As she slid her arms into the sleeves, her mama came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Mind those slick roads, Travis. And don’t forget dinner tomorrow night, all right? Mark got home yesterday, and he says he wants to talk to you.” She laughed when Travis’s face went white.
“Uh-oh. My big, bad Air Force brother wants to ‘talk’ with my boyfriend,” Annie chuckled. “Maybe we should shop for a weapon while we’re in Charlottesville.”
“Annie, don’t tease him.” Her mama ruffled Travis’s hair and tugged on the lock that always seemed to curl over one eye. “I doubt Travis will need to arm himself.” Her hand cupped his face before she stepped back toward the kitchen. “Not too late, you two. No speeding and fancy driving, you hear?”
Travis was still pale from the mention of Mark. Her oldest brother loved to intimidate the younger kids, and Travis had gotten his share over the years. She heard him swallow with an audible gulp as he answered her mama. “Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am.” He grabbed Annie’s hand and pulled her out the door. She didn’t stop giggling until he shoved her into the front seat of his car.
Standing in the middle of the study, her arms wrapped protectively across her chest, Ruth’s bitterness showed on her pinched, angry face.
“You have
no
right to dictate to me when it comes to raising our son. No right to tell me what I can’t take away from him if he fails to do as he’s told and refuses to obey. He’s a child, Ronald. You have let him control his own life for far too long. You rewarded him when he should have been punished. You gave him the lofty idea he can choose his own path, even though that path will be destructive to this family. So don’t,” Ruth’s breath hitched in her throat, “don’t stand there and tell me I have no right to take away what our son sees fit to destroy.”
Ronald fought the urge to yank his hair out in frustration. “Ruth, listen to yourself. Our son is not some spawn of Satan, trying to rip apart the Quincy name and annihilate the entire town while he’s at it. And he’s
not
a child. Open up your eyes and see. See what kind of man our boy will become. I’m proud of everything he’s accomplished so early in his life, proud of where he’s going.”
Lord, he was tired. It was almost an effort to sit upright, but he forced his spine to stiffen, and gripped the arms of his wheelchair. He had to make her see reason. Before she tried to do something she’d forever regret.
Finally, he said, “Ruth, there isn’t a thing you can do to oust our son from the family will. It’s set up much the same as it was when I was a boy, except Travis’s name replaced mine in the wording as my sole heir. You know this. I explained it, years ago.”
“What if I told the Board of Trustees you weren’t in full possession of your faculties, Ronald?” Her voice lowered, turned sly. She looked at him with glittering eyes. “You said yourself Travis is old enough to choose his own future and mate. What if the board got wind of the scandal surrounding the girl our son has chosen? You think they’d wax sentimental over the course of true love, versus the kind of damage a merger with the Turner family would instigate?”
He could only regard her with crushing disappointment. “You’d reveal your past after years of secrecy, all you went through, just to spite the Turner family and make the board doubt my ability to run the legacy?”
It had come to this. To bend their son to her will, she’d rip her privacy wide open to the opinions and gossip of a typical small town and its small town mentality, ruin the name of a good family, break her son’s heart. All in an attempt to control not only Travis’s life, but Annie’s, too. And, in an indirect way, Catherine Cabot’s as well, for she’d never stopped trying to force a match between Trav and Catherine.
It was too much. It had to stop.
His chest ached, heart sore from the confrontation and the fury of what had been spoken in this room, this morning. He needed to rest. But first he had to nip it in the bud, once and for all. Then he could rest.
Weariness dragged at him as he struggled to maintain his authority. “Ruth, there’s nothing you can do to hurt the Turner family. Let it go, for God’s sake. It’s over. If you want it in terms of black and white, then fine: you have lost the war, my love. Stop this insanity,
now
. Or you’ll lose your son’s respect and affection, too.” With nothing left to say, Ronald wheeled through the side door of the study.
Numbed, Ruth sank onto a side chair. He wasn’t going to change his mind. He wasn’t going to stop their son from this path of madness. She buried her face in her hands as she recalled some of Travis’s final words.
“Someday soon the Turners will be my in-laws.”
She couldn’t bear it. The thought of her son’s blood mingled with the trashy Turners caused her own blood to freeze in her veins like ice.
Mingled. A child.
Merciful heavens, what if there was a child? Ruth dropped her hands from her face as fresh horror assailed her. Of course, there’d be a child. What else did trash do, but impregnate each other and beget
more
trash?
As soon as she thought it she chastised herself for lumping her own son in with the kind of lowlifes who only wanted to fornicate and thus make babies the world could surely do without. Travis wasn’t
anything
like those Turners. Even at his most defiant, after he infuriated her past the point of reason, he wasn’t anything like them. Deep in her heart, she had faith in her son and in his sensibilities. He was merely under some kind of spell. It was that horrid girl’s fault, all of it.
She didn’t know what sort of influence the Turner family had over her son, but she would find out. And then she’d obliterate it.
Obliterate them.
The urge to hibernate appealed to Ronald as he wheeled into his suite. Maybe he could pretend the morning’s heartaches had never happened. But life went on inside Quincy Hall, regardless of the family dynamics. He supposed it would have to.
He pressed chilled fingers to his temples to ease the pain of another tension headache. He’d been getting them more often. His nurse, Phoebe, clucked over him daily. She’d take his blood pressure and order him to relax more often. His doctors, too, told him to let go of any stress, or risk a second stroke. He’d tried, Lord only knew. He released a great deal of the daily responsibilities to his board of trustees and to his assistant, Dan Marley, who held the position open until Travis graduated from Yale.
Weary and sad, Ronald maneuvered his chair to the French doors that led onto his private terrace and looked out at the glitter of sun-dappled snow on the sculptured landscaping. How long had it been since he’d sat in the sun and enjoyed its warmth on his face? And how many years had it been since Ruth sat next to him on one of the pretty marble benches, holding his hand?
After today’s painful revelations, another relaxing interlude with his wife might never again happen.
He should have gotten professional counseling for Ruth and helped her to find whatever closure possible. Instead, he’d allowed her to bury her head and her emotions under a blanket of false security, and he turned a blind eye to her increasing phobias. Now he needed to fix it as much as he could. He needed to do right by his son.
Even if it meant hurting the woman he loved so much.
Phoebe Sherman paused in the kitchen doorway and viewed the late-morning bustle with a smile on her freckled face. The aromas coming from the huge stove and oven were heavenly. She needed to get upstairs and see to Mr. Ronald, but she couldn’t resist a fast visit to the kitchen, especially when it smelled this wonderful.
Martha chattered with Jenny and Bette, the other day maid, as she deftly frosted a layered cake. The long butcher-block table was already covered with crystal dishes heaped with delicious food. Glazed fruit tarts and an elaborate tower of cold shrimp took up space next to bowls of dipping sauces, several pies, and trays of cheeses. A wide silver tray of thinly sliced meats almost edged out a fancy display of delicate iced petits fours. There would be champagne punch and an assortment of crisp and fruity wines from the Quincy’s extensive wine cellar.
Phoebe sighed in delight. She and the rest of the household staff would have their own fun luncheon in the kitchen later on, for Martha always prepared more than enough food each year.
She smiled at everyone and announced, “I’m going up to check on Mr. Ronald. Save me some of that cake, Martha, if you know what’s good for you.” Phoebe made a face at Martha and was happy to see her co-worker grin at her. They needed a bit of levity today, when Mrs. Quincy and her lady friends would just about run Martha and the maids off their feet, catering to their every whim.
Martha shooed Phoebe out the door, flapping her apron. “Go on with you. I’ll put together an especially delicious plate for Ronnie’s lunch. And don’t worry, no roast beef. I’ll make sure he has several slices of turkey, and some shrimp, too.”
“You’re a saint, Martha. I’ve always said so.” With a wink, Phoebe ran from the kitchen before Martha could snap her apron again. The great hall was empty and quiet, the drawing room door tightly shut. Either Mrs. Quincy was in there, or in the study. Phoebe shrugged and headed up the stairs. Maybe she’d cajole Mr. Ronald into a short nap before his lunch. She stepped through the door of his suite with a lingering smile on her face.
That smile faded into white-faced horror when she looked toward the windows.