Dream Trilogy (28 page)

“I don’t think she’d do that.” Muffling a yelp as she scraped a knuckle on rock, Laura sat back on her heels. “The dowry wasn’t important to her anymore. Nothing was. Poor thing, she was just a child.” She blew hair out of her eyes. “And speaking of children . . . look at us.”

It wasn’t the order that made Kate and Margo stop. It was
the laughter that rolled out of her. Such a rare sound these days, Laura’s low, gurgling laugh.

And getting a good look at one of society’s most respected matrons with her hair flying, her face streaked with dirt, her once well-pressed cotton shirt soiled with sweat and grime, Margo laughed with her.

Then she clutched her stomach and pointed at Kate, who was on her hands and knees staring at them. She managed to clutch a rock before the next spurt of laughter rolled her off the cliff.

“Jesus, Kate! Jesus, even your eyebrows are dirty.”

“You’re not exactly bandbox-fresh yourself, pal. Only you would go treasure hunting in white silk.”

“Oh, shit, I forgot.” Wincing, Margo looked down at herself. The once spotless and fluid tunic was now filthy and stuck to her skin. She let out a low moan. “This used to be an Ungaro.”

“Now it’s a rag,” Kate said smartly. “Next time try jeans and a T-shirt like the rest of the peasants.” Kate rose and brushed the dirt off her denim. “We’re never going to find anything this way. We need to organize. We need a metal detector.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” Margo decided. “Where do we get one?”

By the time Margo got back to the penthouse it was dark. She limped through the front door and began stripping as she aimed directly for the whirlpool.

Josh halted in the act of pouring a glass of Poully Fuisse. “What in God’s name have you been doing?” Glass cracked against wood as he rushed to her. “Was there an accident? Are you hurt?”

“No accident, and I hurt everywhere.” She whimpered as she reached to turn on the hot water. Her fingers cramped
painfully. “Josh, if you really do love me, you’ll get me a glass of whatever you were pouring and you won’t, no matter how much you want to, laugh at me.”

He couldn’t spot any blood as she eased her body into the water. Relieved, he went back and brought two glasses filled with pale gold wine. “Tell me this—did you fall off a cliff?”

“Not exactly.” She took a glass from him and downed the wine in a few greedy swallows. She took a breath, handed him the empty glass, then took the full one. “Thanks.”

He only lifted a brow, then went back for the bottle. “I know, you took the girls to the beach and let them bury you in your clothes.”

She leaned back, groaned. “I work out regularly now. How can there still be muscles I haven’t been using? How can they hurt this much? Can you order me a massage?”

“I’ll give you one myself if we can stop playing guess what.”

She opened her eyes. She wanted to see if he laughed. If she spotted so much as a quiver, he’d have to die. “I was with Laura and Kate.”

“And?”

“And we were treasure hunting.”

“You were . . .” He ran his tongue around his teeth. “Hmm.”

“Was that a chuckle?”

“No, it was a hmm. You spent the afternoon and a good part of the evening treasure hunting?”

“On the cliffs. We got a metal detector.”

“You got a—” He tried manfully to disguise the laugh with a cough, but her eyes narrowed. “Did you figure out how to work it?”

“I’m not an idiot.” But she pouted and, as the water level rose, hit the button for jets. “Kate did. And before you make any other smart comments, go check the pocket of my slacks
out there.” She sank deeper, sipped wine, and felt as though she might live after all. “Then you can apologize.”

Willing to play along, he set his glass down on the ledge of the tub and sauntered into the other room. Her slacks were near the door, less than a foot in front of where she’d stepped out of her shoes. And they were filthy enough to have him lifting them gingerly with two fingertips.

“You’re going to need a new treasure-hunting outfit, honey. This one’s shot.”

“Shut up, Josh. Look in the pocket.”

“Probably found a diamond that fell out of somebody’s ring,” he muttered. “Thinks she’s hit the mother lode.”

But his fingers closed over the coin. With a puzzled frown he drew it out. Spanish coin, more than a century old and bright as summer.

“I don’t hear any laughing out there,” she called out. “Or any apology, either.” She began to hum to herself as the churning water loosened her muscles. Sensing him in the doorway, she flicked him a glance from under her lashes. “You don’t have to grovel. A simple ‘Please forgive me, Margo. I was a fool’ will do nicely.”

He flipped the coin and caught it neatly before sitting on the ledge. “One doubloon does not a treasure make.”

“Rudyard Kipling?”

He had to grin. “J. C. Templeton.”

“Oh, him.” She closed her eyes. “I always thought he was cynical and overblown.”

“Take a breath, darling,” he warned, and dunked her.

When she surfaced, sputtering, he turned the coin over in his hand. “I admit it’s intriguing. Where exactly did you find it?”

She was pouting and blinking water out of her eyes. “I don’t see why I should tell you. Seraphina’s dowry is a girl thing.”

“Okay.” He shrugged and picked up his wine. “So, what else did you do today?”

“At least you could wheedle,” she said in disgust.

“I’ve cut way back on my wheedling.” He passed her the soap. “You really need this.”

“Oh, all right, then.” One long, gorgeous leg shot out of the water. She soaped it lavishly. “It was on the cliffs in front of the house. Kate put a pile of stones up to mark the spot. But we searched there for hours after I found the coin and didn’t find so much as a plug nickel.”

“And what exactly is a plug nickel? Just a rhetorical question,” he said when she hissed at him. “Look, duchess, I’m not going to spoil your fun. You’ve got yourself a nice little prize here. And the date’s right. Who knows?”

“I know. And Kate and Laura know.” She dragged her fingers through her wet hair. “And I’ll tell you something else. It meant something to Laura. She lost that look in her eyes, that wounded look that always seems to be there if she doesn’t know you’re watching.”

When his face went grim, she was sorry she’d said it. She covered his hand with hers. “I love her too.”

“Firing the bastard wasn’t enough.”

“You broke his nose.”

“There was that. I don’t want her hurting. I don’t know anyone who deserves it less than Laura.”

“Or who seems to handle it better,” she added, giving his hand a quick squeeze. “You should have seen her today. She was laughing and excited. We even got the girls in on it. I haven’t seen Ali smile like that in weeks. It was so much fun. Just the anticipation of what might be there.”

He eyed the coin again before setting it down to gleam on the ledge. “So when are you going back?”

“We decided to make it a regular Sunday outing.” She wrinkled her nose at the water. “I might as well be taking a
mud bath.” And pulled the plug. “I’m starved. Do you mind eating in tonight? I have to shower off and wash my hair.”

He watched her rise up, water sluicing off creamy skin in streams. “Can we eat naked?”

“Depends.” She laughed as she padded toward the shower. “What’s on the menu?”

The next morning, loose with love, she stretched as Josh maneuvered through traffic. “You didn’t have to drive me in,” she told him, “but I appreciate it.”

“I want to drop by the resort anyway. Check on a few things.”

“You haven’t mentioned any travel coming up.”

“Things are covered.”

She glanced out the window, as if engrossed in the passing scenery. “Once you replace Peter you’ll have to go back to Europe, I imagine.”

“Eventually. I’m handling things from here well enough for now.”

“Is that what you want?” She needed to keep the question easy, for both of them. “To stay here?”

He was as cautious as she. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve never stayed in one place for long.”

“There was never a reason to.”

Her lips curved. “That’s nice. But I don’t want you to feel tied down. Both of us have to understand that the other’s business has demands. If Pretenses continues to do well, I’ll have to start making buying trips.”

He’d considered that, had already begun working on a solution. “Where did you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure. Local estate sales won’t do. And for the clothing end of it, I want to try my contacts first. I could probably pitch a better ball in person. L.A. certainly, and New
York, Chicago. And if it all keeps rolling, back to Milan, London, Paris.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I want the shop to shine. Sometimes I miss Milan, the being there, the feeling of being in the center of something. Of having it all buzzing around me.” She sighed a little. “It’s hard to let go completely. I’m hoping that if I can visit there a couple of times a year, do business there now and again, it’ll be enough. Don’t you miss it too?” She turned to face him. “The people, the parties?”

“Some.” He’d been too busy changing his life, and hers, to think about it. But now that he did think, he could admit that the whirl was in his blood. “There’s no reason we couldn’t coordinate your buying trips with my business. Just takes a little planning.”

“I’m getting better at planning.” When he pulled to the curb in front of Pretenses, she leaned over to kiss him. “It’s good, isn’t it? This is good.”

“Yeah.” He cupped her neck to linger over the kiss. “It’s very good.”

All they had to do, she thought, was keep it that way. “I’ll take a cab back. No, I mean it.” She kissed him again before he could protest. “I should be there by seven, so try not to work too late. I’d love to go somewhere fabulous for dinner and neck over champagne cocktails.”

“I think I can arrange that.”

“I’ve never known you to fail.”

He caught her hand as she started to alight. “I do love you, Margo.”

She tossed him a brilliant smile. “I know.”

It was a smug feeling, spending the day in her own shop, among her own things, reaping the rewards of her first successful reception. And so she told her mother when Ann dropped by in the middle of the day with a box of Margo’s old favorite. Chocolate chip cookies.

“I just can’t believe it all happened,” Margo said over a greedy bite. “People have been coming in all day. This is the first break I could manage. Mum, I really think I have a business. I mean I wanted to believe it all along. I nearly believed it after the first day went so well. But Saturday night.” She closed her eyes and shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “Saturday night I really believed it.”

“You did a good job.” Ann sipped the tea she’d brewed in the upstairs kitchen. Though she raised an eyebrow at Margo’s choice of champagne—champagne at lunchtime!—she didn’t
comment. “You’ve done a good job. All these years . . .”

“All these years I’ve squandered my life, my time, my resources.” Margo shrugged her shoulder. “The old ant and grasshopper story again, Mum?”

Despite herself Ann felt a smile tug at her lips. “You never listened to that story, never stored your larder for winter. Or so I thought.” She rose to walk to the doorway, glanced into the tastefully decorated boudoir. “It looks as if you’ve been storing up after all.”

“No. That’s a different adage. Necessity being the mother of invention. Or maybe it’s desperation.” Since she was working hard on honesty in the new Margo, she might as well start here. “I didn’t plan it this way, Mum. Or want it this way.”

Ann turned back, studied the woman who sat on the fussy ice cream chair with its hot-pink cushion. Softer than she’d been, Ann thought. Around the eyes and mouth. She wondered that Margo, who had always been so aware of every inch of her own face, didn’t seem to notice the change.

“So you didn’t,” Ann said at length. “And now?”

“Now I’m going to make it work. No, that’s wrong.” She picked up another cookie, tapped it against her glass like a toast. “I’m going to make it fabulous. Pretenses is going to grow. In another year or two, I’ll open a branch in Carmel. Then—who knows? A tastefully elegant little storefront in San Francisco, a funky shop in L.A.”

“Still dreaming, Margo?”

“Yes, that’s right. Still dreaming. Still going places. Just different places.” She tossed her hair back and smiled, but there was an edge to it. “Under it all, I’m still the same Margo.”

“No, you’re not.” Ann crossed over, cupped her daughter’s chin in her hand. “You’re not, but there’s enough of the little girl I raised that I recognize you. Where did you come from?” she murmured. “Your grandfathers caught fish to live. Your
grandmothers scrubbed floors and hung out the wash with wooden pegs in high winds.” She picked up Margo’s hand, studied the long, narrow palm, the tapering fingers accented with pretty rings. “My mother’s hand would have made two of yours. Big and hard and capable it was. Like mine.”

She saw the surprise in Margo’s eyes that she should speak so freely, so casually of people she had never spoken of at all. From selfishness, Ann had come to realize. Because if she didn’t speak of them, it didn’t hurt so deeply to be without them.

Oh, she’d made mistakes, Ann berated herself. Big and bad mistakes with the one child God had given her. If it stung to try to fix them, it was only just.

“My mother’s name was Margaret.” She had to clear her throat. “I didn’t mention that to you before because she died a few months after I left Ireland. And I felt guilty about leaving her when she was ailing, and about being unable to go back and say good-bye. I didn’t talk to you of her, or to anyone. She would have been sad to know that.”

“I’m sorry” was all Margo could say. “I’m sorry, Mum.”

“So am I—for that and for not telling you sooner how she doted on you in the little time she had with you.”

“What—” The question was there, but Margo was afraid to ask it, afraid it would be brushed off again.

“What was she like?” Ann’s lips curved in a quiet smile. “You used to badger me with questions like that when you were a small thing. Then you stopped asking, because I never answered. I should have.”

She turned away, crossed to the pretty eyebrow windows that offered the sounds and sights of busy streets. Her sin, she realized, had been one of cowardice, and self-indulgence. If the penance was the pain of remembering, it was little enough.

“Before I answer, I want to tell you that I never did before because I told myself not to look back.” With a small sound
of regret, she turned and walked to her daughter. “That it was more important to raise you up right than to fill your head with people who were gone. Your head was always filled with so much anyway.”

Margo touched the back of her mother’s hand briefly. “What was she like?”

“She was a good woman. Hardworking, but not hard. She loved to sing, and she sang when she worked. She loved her flowers and could grow anything. She taught us to take pride in our home, and in ourselves. She wouldn’t take any nonsense from us, and she doled out whacks and hugs in equal measure. She’d wait for my father to come home from the sea with a look in her eye I didn’t understand until I was grown.”

“My grandfather? What was he like?”

“A big man with a big voice. He liked to swear so that my mother would scold him.” A smile ghosted around Ann’s mouth. “He’d come home from the sea smelling of fish and water and tobacco, and he’d tell us stories. Grand stories he could tell.”

Ann steadied herself, brushed a few crumbs from the table. “I named you for my mother. My father called her Margo when he was teasing with her. Though I can’t see her in you, nor much of myself when it comes to it. The eyes sometimes,” she continued while Margo sat silently staring. “Not the color of them, but the shape and that stubborn look that comes into them. That’s me right enough. But the color’s your father’s. He had eyes a woman could drown in. And the light of them, sweet Jesus, such a light in them it could blind you.”

“You never speak of him.”

“It hurt me to.” Ann dropped her hand and sat again, tiredly. “It hurt, so I didn’t, then I got out of the habit, and robbed you of him. It was wrong of me not to share him with you, Margo. What I did was keep him for myself,” she said
in an unsteady voice. “All for myself. I didn’t give you your father.”

Margo took a shaky breath. It felt as though a huge, hard weight was pressing on her chest. “I didn’t think you loved him.”

“Didn’t love him?” Shock came first, followed by a long, rolling laugh. “Mother of God, girl, not love him? I had such a love for him my heart couldn’t hold it. Every time I looked at him it flopped around like one of the fish he’d toss on the table after a catch. And when he’d sweep me up as he liked to do and swing me around, I wouldn’t be dizzy from the spinning, but just from the smell of him. I can still smell him. Wet wool and fish and man.”

She tried to picture it, her mother young and laughing, caught up in strong arms and wildly in love. “I thought . . . I assumed that you’d married him because you had to.”

“Well, of course I had to,” Ann began, then stopped, eyes wide. “Oh,
had
to. Why, my father would have thrashed him within an inch of his mortal life. Not that he didn’t try, my Johnny,” she added with a quick smile. “He was a man, after all, and had his ways. But I had mine, as well, and went to my wedding bed a proper, if eager virgin.”

“I wasn’t—” Margo picked up her glass, took a bracing sip. “I wasn’t the reason he married you?”

“
I
was the reason he married me,” Ann said with a lilt of pride in her voice. “And I’m sorrier than I can say that you had that thought planted in your head, that I didn’t realize it until this very moment.”

“I thought—I wondered . . .” How to put it, Margo wondered, when there were so many emotions spinning? “You were so young,” she began again. “And in a strange country with a child to raise on your own.”

“You were never a burden to me, Margo. A trial many a time,” she added with a wry curve of her lips. “But never
once a burden. Nor were you a mistake, so get that idea out of your head for good. We had to get married, Margo, because we loved each other. We were desperate in love. Sweet and desperate and so young, and it was all that sweet and desperate love that made you.”

“Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? I had more in those four years God gave us than a less fortunate woman could pack into two lifetimes.”

“But you lost him.”

“Yes, I lost him. And so did you. You didn’t have much time with him, but he was a good father, and, God, he adored every inch of you. He used to watch you sleeping and touch your face with his fingertip, as if he was afraid he’d break you. And he’d smile so it seemed his face would split open with it.” She pressed a hand to her mouth because she could picture it too well, still. Feel it too well, still. “I’m sorry I never told you that.”

“It’s all right.” The weight was off her chest now, but it welled full of tears. “It’s all right, Mum. You’ve told me now.”

Ann closed her eyes a moment. How could she explain that grief and love and joy could carry in a heart for a lifetime? “He loved us both, Margo, and he was a fine man, a kind one, full of dreams for us, for the other children we were going to have.” She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and wiped away her tears. “Silly to cry over it now. Twenty-five years.”

“It’s not silly.” To Margo it was a revelation, a beautiful, wrenching one. If there was grief after a quarter of a century, then there had been love. Sweet and desperate. And more, enduring. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

But Ann shook her head, blinked her eyes dry. She would finish and give her child, her Johnny’s child, what should have been her birthright. “When they came back that night in the storm. Oh, God, what a storm it was, wailing and blowing and
the lightning breaking the sky into pieces.” She opened her eyes then, met her daughter’s. “I knew—I didn’t want to believe but I knew he was lost before they told me. Because something was gone. In here.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “Just gone, and I knew he’d taken that part of my heart with him. I didn’t think I could live without him. Knew I didn’t want to live without him.”

Ann linked her fingers together tight, for the next would be harder still to speak of. “I was almost three months along with another baby.”

“You—” Margo wiped at tears. “You were pregnant?”

“I wanted a son for Johnny. He said that would be fine because we already had the most beautiful daughter in all the world. He kissed us good-bye that morning. You, then me, then he laid his hand on me where the baby was growing. And smiled. He never came back. They never found him so I could look at him again. One last time to look at him. I lost the baby that night, in the storm and the grief and the pain. Lost Johnny and the baby, and there was only you.”

How did anyone face that and manage to go on? Margo wondered. What kind of strength did it take? “I wish I had known.” She took her mother’s clasped hands in hers. “I wish I had known, Mum. I would have tried to be . . . better.”

“No, that’s nonsense.” After all these years, Ann realized, she was still doing it wrong. “I’m not telling you enough of the good things. There wasn’t only grief and sorrow. The truth is I had him in my life for so many years. I first set my eyes on him when I was six, and he was nine. A fine, strapping boy he was then, Johnny Sullivan, with a devil’s laugh and an angel’s eyes. And I wanted him. So I went after him, putting myself in his face.”

“You?” Margo sniffled. “You flirted with him?”

“Shamelessly. And by the time I was seventeen, I’d broken him down, and I snapped up his proposal of marriage before
he could finish the words.” She sighed once, long and deep. “Understand and believe this. I loved him, Margo, greedily. And when he died, and the baby died inside me, I wanted to die too, and might have, but for you. You needed me. And I needed you.”

“Why did you leave Ireland? Your family was there. You must have needed them.”

She could still look back to that, to rocky cliffs and tempestuous seas. “I’d lost something I’d thought I would have forever. Something I loved, something I’d wanted all my life. I couldn’t bear even the air there without him. I couldn’t breathe it. It was time for a fresh start. Something new.”

“Were you frightened?”

“Only to death.” Her lips curved again, and suddenly she had an urge for a taste of champagne herself. She took her daughter’s glass, sipped. “I made it work. So maybe there’s more of me in you than I thought. I’ve been hard on you, Margo. I haven’t understood how hard until just recently. I’ve done some praying over it. You were a frighteningly beautiful child, and willful with it. A dangerous combination. There was a part of me that was afraid of loving you too much because . . . well, to love so full again was like tempting God. I couldn’t show you, didn’t think I could dare, because if I lost you I’d never have been able to go on.”

“I always thought . . .” Margo trailed off, shook her head.

“No, say it. You should say what’s inside you.”

“I thought I wasn’t good enough for you.”

“That’s my fault.” Ann pressed her lips together and wondered how she could have let so many years slip away with that between them. “It was never a matter of that, Margo. I was afraid of and for you. I could never understand why you wanted so much. And I worried that you were growing up in a place where there was so much, and all of it belonging to others. And maybe I don’t understand you even now, but I
love you. I should have told you more often.”

“It’s not always easy to say it, or to feel it. But I always knew you loved me.”

“But you haven’t known that I’m proud of you.” Ann sighed. It was her own pride, after all, that had kept her silent. “I was proud the first time I saw your face in a magazine. And every time after.” She drank again, prepared to confess. “I saved them.”

Margo blinked. “Saved them?”

“All your pictures. Mr. Josh sent them to me and I put them in a book. Well, books,” she corrected. “Because there got to be so many.” She smiled foolishly at the empty glass. “I believe I’m just a little tipsy.”