My Lady Caroline Read online

  “Hello,” she murmured. It was all she could summon at the moment.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to accompany you to the cemetery,” Benjamin said apologetically. “I have to be in court in less than an hour. But I’ve asked Drew and Cecelia to go with you. If you need anything, I’m sure you can depend on them.”

  “Of course, dear.” Cecelia spoke in a throaty voice. “We’re here for you, poor darling.”

  Alison shuddered in the cool sunshine. She didn’t want to go with these people. She’d counted on Benjamin Pierce to get her through the day. At least his was a familiar face, fatherly, comforting. If he wouldn’t go with her, she’d rather be left alone.

  Alone.

  It struck her again with a vengeance how very alone she really was.

  Not watching where she was going, Alison struck the toe of her shoe against the uneven pavement and stumbled. Drew Hawthorne took her elbow and attempted to guide her toward the waiting limousine, but she pulled away from him. She turned to Benjamin to object to his leaving her, but he had already disappeared into the crowd of mourners.

  Three weeks later, Alison stared out of the window of the jet as it lowered itself onto the landing strip of the sunny Florida airport. Palm Beach was a long way from Boston, but as far as Alison was concerned, it couldn’t be far enough. She’d had it with the big, cold, lonely mansion in Brookline. With Pierce, Buckner, Fromme and Withoff, Attorneys-At-Law. With wills and trusts and insurance policies and legal documents she couldn’t understand.

  And especially with Drew Hawthorne.

  She was disappointed that instead of remaining the client of Benjamin Pierce, she’d been shunted off to that idiot. Benjamin Pierce should have been the one to read the will and explain all the complexities to her. After all, he had been her father’s attorney for forty years, and she trusted him.

  But it was obvious now that her powerful, controlling father was no longer in the picture, the firm had transferred the Cunningham account into the hands of some lesser legal talent than Pierce, his son-in-law Drew Hawthorne. Alison wondered how competent Hawthorne was, if he came by his junior partnership in the firm honestly, or only by marrying that skinny, red-lipped woman.

  The plane bumped and squealed as the wheels met the tarmac, and Alison pressed her body into the back of the first class seat, closing her eyes, feeling the power of the engines slowing the beast down. She tried not to think about how her parents had died, or what their last moments might have been like. If she did, she’d never fly again.

  After the chill Boston springtime, Alison welcomed the warm gentle breeze that caressed her skin as she exited the plane, and the prospect of seeing her best friend Nicki bolstered her spirits. The last few weeks had been a living nightmare, and she’d had no one to talk to, no one to share her terror with.

  Nicki was there as promised, waving enthusiastically at Alison from the crowd in the airport. Sudden tears pricked Alison’s eyes, and she ran into the sisterly embrace of her tall, dark-haired friend, seeking the comfort no one had afforded her in Boston.

  “God, I’m glad to see you,” she managed.

  “Good to see you, too, Ali,” Nicki said, giving her an extra hug. “What a crummy thing to have happen.”

  Alison drew a deep breath. “You can say that again.”

  But neither mentioned the tragedy again as they retrieved Alison’s luggage, threw it in the trunk of Nicki’s convertible, and headed toward the Cunningham’s winter home on the Atlantic shore. It wasn’t until they were safely ensconced in her room on the second floor of the sprawling Spanish-style mansion and Alison began unpacking that either dared speak of what both wanted to talk about.

  “What are you going to do, Ali?” Nicki asked with her usual forthright approach.

  Caught off-guard, Alison dropped the blouse she was unpacking. She bent to pick it up, wishing she wasn’t such a klutz. Shrugging with pretended light-heartedness, she hung the garment in the closet and replied, “What I’ve always done, I guess. Go places. See my friends. Have a party.”

  A long silence stretched between them. Then Nicki spoke and again cut to the heart of the matter. “Who’s taking care of…your…affairs?”

  “You mean my money?” Suddenly angry, Alison turned on her friend. “Well, certainly not me. Those lawyer boys in Boston seem to have everything fairly well in hand. They worked it all out with my father. In fact,” she added, unable to hide the bitterness she felt, “they told me not to worry about a thing. I swear to God they treated me like a six-year-old.”

  Nicki studied her. “It’s hard for me to say what I would do if I were in your shoes,” she said carefully, “but it would make me real nervous if a lawyer who was in charge of the kind of money in your parent’s estate told me not to worry.”

  Alison slumped onto the bed with a sigh. “I’m sure they have my best interest at heart. Besides, what choice do I have? I don’t know beans about finance. Daddy always took care of everything. I never thought…”

  And then there they were…the tears she’d fought every minute of every day for three weeks. Tears for the deaths of her parents, despite their years of estrangement. Tears of frustration at finding herself so unprepared to face the massive responsibilities of her inheritance. Tears of self-pity, self-hatred, anger. “Damn it, why did they have to die and leave me like this?” she sobbed.

  Nicki sat down beside her, and Alison felt the warmth of her best friend’s arms around her. “I don’t think they planned it this way, Ali,” she said softly.

  Alison took comfort in her friend’s embrace and allowed herself to empty her heart of tears. “Oh, Nicki,” she moaned at last, hiccupping between spasmodic sobs. “What am I going to do? I was such a dumb-ass not to finish college.”

  “Can’t disagree with you there,” her friend replied with an understanding squeeze of her hand. “But you can always go back, you know. You only lack a year.”

  Alison straightened. She’d never thought of returning to college. There hadn’t been any need to. Her father paid all her bills, and she only had to show up at Christmas. The rest of the time, the world was her playground. It hadn’t mattered before that her knowledge of high finance and money management was inadequate to her position as sole heir to a fortune both old and vast. She simply hadn’t cared. Daddy always took care of everything. In her mind, that somehow proved he loved her, she guessed, even if he never said it directly.

  But sitting across the polished mahogany desk from Drew Hawthorne as he made his way through the will and the terms of the Cunningham trust and the foundation her father had established and all the other complexities of the estate, she’d felt like an immature schoolgirl in the principal’s office. She’d understood little of what he’d read, other than that her father had placed most of her assets in trust, and she couldn’t touch them until she was thirty-five.

  Nine years from now.

  At first, she had been furious that her father would have done such a thing. Did he trust her so little? But then, she thought ruefully, she’d never given him much to trust in. How could she blame him? What did she know about money management? Investment strategies? Estate planning? She didn’t even know what questions to ask.

  For the first time, Alison regretted that she’d chosen early on to butt heads with her domineering father, doing everything she could to disobey him. For the first time, she wanted desperately to hear, and heed, his advice.

  However, that, like hearing him say “I love you,” was no longer a possibility.

  But perhaps returning to college was. She looked up at Nicki. “That’s a thought,” she said. “Maybe I will. But right now, I just wish I could talk to Daddy.”

  Nicki stared at her. “That’s a switch. But it’s a little late now,” she added solemnly. “You’d get more answers from your lawyer.”

  “Hawthorne’s a nerd, and half the time I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

  “Then fire his ass and get someone you can work with.�
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  “I wish it was that easy,” Alison replied morosely. “The way it’s set up, it looks to me like I’m stuck with Hawthorne unless his own firm takes him off my account.”

  She walked to the window and looked out onto the lush landscape below. The exotic fuchsia blossoms of ancient bougainvillea vines draped the high walls that surrounded the estate, and clumps of pink and red and white impatiens bloomed in profusion at the bases of the swaying palm trees. She had always loved this place, but according to what Hawthorne had told her, even though she was to have free use of it at any time, this home—her home—didn’t belong to her. Wouldn’t, until the trust expired in nine years. She swallowed over the tightness in her throat.

  “Oh, Nicki, I have screwed up so royally. I would give my soul just to have one hour with my father right now.”

  To her surprise, Nicki smiled. “There might be a way.”

  “Get serious,” Alison replied bitterly. “Nobody talks to the dead. I was just wishing out loud.”

  “I am being serious,” Nicki said, astounding Alison further. Nicki was usually the most down-to-earth one in the crazy set of friends they ran with.

  “I suppose you’re going to suggest we have a séance,” Alison replied dryly.

  “You’re reading my mind,” Nicki said with an encouraging grin. “I’m game if you are.”

  Twilight strained through the high windows at the man’s back, illuminating dusky dust motes dancing in the day’s waning moments. Outside the old warehouse where he’d just taken delivery of his latest prize, London rushed noisily through crowded streets, straining homeward at the end of the work day. But Jeremy Ryder heard nothing as he ran strong, sure fingers over the wooden surface of the fine old desk, stroking the grain as if it were a lover’s skin.

  The wood on the underside of the desktop, although smooth, had the uneven texture of a piece that had been planed by hand, and the intricate maze of drawers within could only have been created by a master woodworker in a time when craftsmanship was art. The desk, Jeremy was certain, was a superb specimen from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, when George IV was Prince Regent of England and Napoleon sought to rule the world. This piece, he decided, would stay in his private collection.

  Unless, of course, someone came along and offered him enough money for it.

  He laid his palm flat against the desktop and closed his eyes, palpating the wood with the expertise of a doctor seeking a patient’s pulse. He had intentionally scheduled the desk to arrive after his staff had left for the day, for he had never shared the secret to his meteoric success with anyone.

  Jeremy had learned as a boy from his Uncle Clive, an Oriental rug merchant, to respect the antiquities that passed through his hands. Clive had taught him to use his imagination to “listen for,” or create if necessary, the history of each piece.

  “People want to know something exciting about what they are buying, son,” he’d said. “A good story is worth money.” Jeremy took his uncle’s instruction seriously, as a piece of practical business advice to enhance profits, but he’d found to his astonishment when he’d opened his own business that often he could honestly “feel” the history of an important piece like this. When he took the time to “listen”, as he was now, he almost always intuited a history that, if not completely accurate, was realistic and believable, and which satisfied his increasing clientele.

  Who was the artisan who had built this desk? he wondered, letting his mind go back into his extensive knowledge of English history. Who was the original owner? What stories could it tell, if it could only speak?

  This was an aspect of his profession he secretly enjoyed, but rarely these days did he have the opportunity to indulge in its practice. His taste and genuine appreciation for the antique, the elegant, the rare and beautiful, coupled with a sharply-honed business acumen, had rapidly transformed his small one-man enterprise into a thriving antiquities dealership with a world-class reputation. Now time constraints prevented him from giving each piece his personal attention, unless he suspected it had unusual potential, like this desk.

  He smiled, turning over a small drawer and noting the hand-chamfered wood and carefully carved dovetails, features that made him ever more certain that the desk was manufactured before the invention of machines that stamped out more modern versions like cookie-cutters.

  Jeremy had come across the desk in a ramshackle junk shop north of London, and from the relatively low price asked for it, he’d realized the owner had no idea of its possible true value. Of course, he wouldn’t know for sure until he’d appraised it personally, but he’d felt from the moment he’d first seen it that it was likely an authentic Regency piece, worth far more than the price tag on it.

  That’s why he’d offered the shopkeeper even less.

  “Each party to a negotiation must feel as if he’s gotten the best deal possible,” he’d once explained to a lovely but naive young woman who expressed her shock over his tactics. “My uncle always told me, if you give in too soon, or don’t negotiate at all, the seller believes he didn’t ask enough. It makes him very unhappy, you know.” And then he’d turned his sexiest smile fully on her, looked deeply into her eyes with an expression that left no question as to what he had on his mind, kissed her lightly along her delectable neck, and added in a sensuous voice, “I never want to make anyone unhappy.”

  He’d won that negotiation as well.

  If only women were as uncomplicated as the exquisite antiquities he bought and sold, he mused absently as he continued to explore the complex network of drawers that had been intriguingly designed into the desk. Jeremy generally liked women, and women definitely liked Jeremy, but he’d managed to stave off any serious involvement for his entire thirty-three years. The women he had dated were like the objets d’art in which he dealt—beautiful, exquisite, and expensive—but unlike his beloved antiques, they were not content to be admired and then set aside. He could inquire into the history of a piece like this desk with no further obligation. But if he showed the slightest interest in a woman beyond mere flirtation, he often found later that the lady had set her cap for him and was contriving ways to place his wedding band on her left hand.

  That would be one cold day in hell, he laughed to himself. As it was, he had his pick of the beautiful women of London, the Continent even. Why would he want to settle down with only one woman and ruin a perfectly civilized existence?

  “Ow!” A splinter from the edge of one of the drawers stabbed Jeremy’s finger, and in jerking his hand away, he tore a bit of the thin lining from the wood. He placed his finger in his mouth, frowning, and then looked more closely into the drawer. He spied something white peeking from beneath the faded rust-colored fabric. “What’s this?”

  With the touch of an expert preservationist, he pulled gently at the musty lining, which gave way easily, revealing beneath it what appeared to be a letter. Gingerly, not wanting to damage the fragile paper, he slowly unfolded his find. He raised an eyebrow. The desk, it appeared, was going to give up its secrets more easily than he’d expected.

  It was indeed a letter, addressed to a Mr. John Pembroke, Esq. of London. The handwriting was faded, almost illegible, but he made out the date to be June 12, 1824.

  Jeremy’s heart picked up several beats. Quickly, he took the paper into his adjoining office and switched on the high intensity lamp on his desk. With a tingle of anticipation, he settled into the rich, well-worn leather of his favorite chair and began to make his way through the message that was traced on the paper in a fine feminine script.

  When he finished, he sat staring at the page, not daring to believe that what he held in his hands could be authentic.

  But hoping like hell it was.

  Chapter Two

  Albemarle Street, London

  May 17, 1824

  The last of the men invited to the private meeting had arrived, and John Murray hurriedly ushered them in, locking the door behind them.

  “Shall we beg
in then?” he asked, following the men upstairs and into his large office, where listless, nervous conversation was stirring between the rest of the gentlemen assembled. “We all know we are gathered here to…uh, discuss how best to protect the interests of our late friend and respected poet, Lord Byron, God rest his soul.”

  “His interests, or yours?” growled Thomas Moore, into whose keeping Byron had entrusted a thick sheaf of papers, his personal memoirs, before his death in far-away Greece.

  “As you well know, Sir, I above all, as his publisher, stand to lose the two thousand guineas I have already paid you for the privilege of publishing them, not to mention the considerable income they would yield when sold. But after reading them, I have changed my mind. I will never print them. I swear, they must not see the light of another day.”

  “Preposterous!” Tom Moore glared at Murray. “I will gladly give you back your damned two thousand. Byron was a great poet. A great man. These memoirs belong to the world. If you do not wish them to be published, then they must be stored in a vault somewhere, for posterity.”

  “They belong to Augusta. As his sister and only living relative.” This from Wilmot Horton, a slender, balding solicitor who was attending the meeting as Augusta’s representative. “And Augusta wishes them destroyed.”

  “As well they should be,” added John Cam Hobhouse in a quiet voice. He paused, then continued. “Long have I been called friend by Lord Byron. Long have I sought to keep the prying public from knowing…certain aspects of his behavior lest he be further ostracized. Mr. Moore, even you must agree that our mutual friend had a penchant for…shall we say…overstatement? Especially when it came to his personal affairs. I have not read the memoirs, but I can imagine they differ little in content from his letters, some of which describe true events whilst others are composed solely and deliberately to shock.”

  “You mean he fabricated stories that could in the end harm him? Why would he write such things?” asked Colonel Doyle, representative of Lady Annabella Byron, widow of the deceased.