The Bourbon Kings #1 (4 page)

As their father lifted his arm across his chest, the heavy gold signet ring he
wore on his left hand glinted like it was anticpating the strike—and looked forward to making contact with skin. Then, with an elegant, powerful slice, Edward was struck with a backhanded slap that was so violent, the cracking sound ricocheted all the way out into the ballroom.

“Now, I’ll ask you again—what are you doing with my liquor,” William demanded as Edward stumbled to the side, clutching his face.

After a moment of heavy breathing, Edward straightened. His pajamas were alive from his body’s shaking, but he remained on his feet.

Clearing his throat, he said thickly, “I was celebrating the New Year.”

A trail of blood seeped down the side of his face, staining his pale skin.

“Then do not let me ruin your enjoyment.” Their father pointed to Lane’s full glass. “Drink it.”

Lane closed his eyes and wanted to vomit.

“Drink it.”

The sounds of choking and gagging went on for a lifetime as Edward consumed nearly a quarter of a bottle of bourbon.

“Don’t you throw that up, boy,” their father barked. “Don’t you dare …”

A
s the jet bumped down on the tarmac, Lane jolted out of the past. He was not surprised to find that the glass he was holding was shaking, and not because of the landing.

Putting the No. 15 on the tray table, he wiped his brow.

That hadn’t been the only time Edward had suffered for them.

And it wasn’t even the worst. No, the worst one had come later as an adult, and had finally done what all the lousy parenting had failed to do.

Edward was ruined now, and not just physically.

God, there were so many reasons Lane didn’t want to go back to Easterly. And not all of them were because of the woman he loved but had lost.

He had to say, however … that Lizzie King remained at the top of that very long list.

T
he Amdega Machin Conservatory was an extension of Easterly’s southern flank, and as such, no cost had been spared when it had been added back in 1956. The construction was a Gothic-style masterpiece, its delicate skeleton of white-painted bones supporting hundreds of panes and panels of glass, creating an interior that was bigger and more finished than the farmhouse Lizzie lived in. With a slate floor and a sitting area with sofas and armchairs done in Colefax and Fowler, there were hip-height beds of specimen flowers down the long sides and potted greenery in each of the corners—but that was all just for show. The true horticultural work, the germination and the rehabilitation, the nurturing and pruning, was done far from the family’s eyes in the greenhouses.

“Wo sind die Rosen? Wir brauchen mehr Rosen …”

“I don’t know.” Lizzie popped the top off another cardboard box that was long as a basketball player’s leg. Inside, two dozen white hydrangea
stalks were wrapped individually in plastic, their heads protected with collars of delicate cardboard. “This is the whole delivery, so they’ve got to be in here.”

“Ich bestellte zehn weitere Dutzend. Wo sind sie—?”

“Okay, you need to switch to English.”

“This can’t be everything.” Greta von Schlieber held up a bundle of tiny, pale pink blooms that was wrapped up in a page of Colombian newspaper. “We’re not going to make it.”

“You say that every year.”

“This time I’m right.” Greta pushed her heavy tortoiseshell glasses up higher on her nose and eyed the stack of twenty-five more boxes. “I’m telling you, we’re in trouble.”

Annnnnd this was the essence of her and her work partner’s relationship.

Starting with the whole pessimism/optimism routine, Greta was pretty much everything Lizzie wasn’t. For one, the woman was European, not American, her German accent cutting into her pronunciation in spite of the fact that she’d been in the States for thirty years. She was also married to a great man, the mother of three fantastic children in their twenties, and had enough money that not only did she not have to work, but those two boys and a girl of hers didn’t have to, either.

No Yaris for her. Her ride was a black Mercedes station wagon. And the diamond ring she wore with her wedding band was big enough to rival a Bradford’s.

Oh, and unlike Lizzie, her blond hair was cut short as a man’s—which was something to envy when you were stuck pulling your own back and tying it with whatever you could get your hands on: trashbag twist ties, floral wire, the rubber bands off bunches of broccoli.

The one thing they did have in common? Neither of them could stand to be immobile, unoccupied, or unproductive for even a second. They had been working together at BFE now for almost five years—no, longer. Seven?

Oh, God, it was close to ten now.

And Lizzie couldn’t fathom life without the woman—even though
sometimes she wished Greta could be a half-full, instead of half-empty, kinda gal.

“Ich sage Ihnen, wir haben Schwierigkeiten.”

“Did you just say we’re in trouble again?”

“Kann sein.”

Lizzie rolled her eyes but fell into the adrenal trap, glancing over the assembly line they’d set up: Down the sixty-foot-long center of the greenhouse, a double row of folding tables had been lined up, and on them were seventy-five sterling-silver bouquet bowls the size of ice buckets.

The gleam was so bright, Lizzie wished she hadn’t left her sunglasses in her car.

And she also wished she didn’t have to deal with all this in addition to the knowledge that Lane Baldwine was probably landing at the airport at this very instant.

Like she needed that pressure as well?

As her head began to pound, she tried to focus on what she could control. Unfortunately, that only left her wondering how she and Greta were going to manage to fill those bowls with the fifty thousand dollars of flowers that had been delivered—but that still needed to be unpacked, inspected, cleaned, cut and arranged properly.

Then again, this was the crunch that always happened forty-eight hours before The Derby Brunch.

Or TDB, as it was called around the estate.

Because, yup, working at Easterly was like being in the Army: Everything was shortened, except for the work days.

And yes, even with that ambulance this morning, the event was still going on. Like a train, the momentum stopped for no one and nothing in its path. In fact, she and Greta had often said that if nuclear war happened, the only things left after the mushroom cloud dissipated would be cockroaches, Twinkies … and TDB.

Jokes aside, the brunch was so long-standing and exclusive, it was its own proper name, and slots on the guest list were guarded and passed down to the next generation as heirlooms. A gathering of nearly seven hundred of the city’s and the nation’s wealthiest people and political elite, the
crowd mingled and milled around Easterly’s gardens, drinking mint juleps and mimosas for only two hours before departing for Steeplehill Downs for thoroughbred racing’s biggest day and the first leg of the Triple Crown. The rules of the brunch were short and sweet: Ladies had to wear hats, no photographs or photographers were allowed, and it didn’t matter whether you were in a Phantom Drophead or a corporate limousine—all cars were parked in the meadow at the bottom of the hill and all people filed into vans that ran them up to the front door of the estate.

Well, almost all people. The only folks who didn’t have to take the shuttle? Governors, any of the Presidents if they came—and the head coach of the University of Charlemont’s men’s basketball team.

In Kentucky, you were either U of C red or Kentucky University blue, and basketball mattered whether you were rich or poor.

The Bradfords were U of C Eagles fans. And it was almost Shakespearean that their rivals in the bourbon business, the Suttons, were all about the KU Tigers.

“I can hear you muttering,” Lizzie said. “Think positive. We got this.”

“Wir müssen alle Pfingstrosen zahlen,”
Greta announced as she popped the top on another carton. “Last year, they short-changed us—”

One half of the double doors that opened into the house swung wide, and Mr. Newark Harris, the butler, came in like a cold draft. At five feet six inches, he appeared much taller in his black suit and tie—then again, maybe the illusion was because of his perma-raised eyebrows, a function of him being on the verge of uttering “you stupid American” after everything he said. A total throwback to the centuries-old tradition of the proper English servant, he’d not only been born and trained in London, but he had served as a footman for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and then as a butler for Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, at Bagshot Park. The House of Windsor pedigree had been the linchpin of his hiring the year before.

Certainly hadn’t been his personality.

“Mrs. Baldwine is out at the pool house.” He addressed only Lizzie. Greta, as a German national who still rocked that Z-centric accent, was
persona non grata
to him. “Please take a bouquet out to her. Thank you.”

And
poof!
, he was back out the door, closing things up silently.

Lizzie closed her eyes. There were two Mrs. Baldwines on the estate, but one only of them was likely to be out of her bedroom and down in the sunshine by the pool.

One-two punch today, Lizzie thought. Not only was she going to have to see her ex-lover, she was now going to have to wait on his wife.

Fantastic.

“Ich hoffe, dass dem Idiot ein Klavier auf den Kopf fallt.”

“Did you just say you hope a piano falls on his head?”

“And you maintain you don’t know German.”

“Ten years with you and I’m getting there.”

Lizzie glanced around to see what she could use of the massive flower delivery. After the boxes were unpacked, the leaves needed to be stripped off the stalks and the blooms had to be fluffed one by one to encourage petal spread and allow for a check of quality. She and Greta hadn’t gotten anywhere close to that stage yet, but what Mrs. Baldwine wanted, she got.

On so many levels.

Fifteen minutes of choosing, clipping, and arranging later and she had a passable bunch shoved into wet foam in a silver bowl.

Greta appeared in front of her and held out her hands, that big mine-cut diamond ring flashing. “Let me take it out.”

“No, I got this—”

“You aren’t going to want to deal with her today.”

“I never want to deal with her—”

“Lizzie.”

“I’m okay. Honest.”

Fortunately, her old friend bought the lie. The truth? Lizzie was so far away from “okay,” she couldn’t even see the place—but that didn’t mean she was going to wimp out.

“I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be counting the peonies.”

“Everything’s going to be fine.”

She hoped.

As Lizzie headed for the double doors that opened into the garden, her head really started to thump, and getting hit with a solid wall of hot-and-humid
as she stepped outside didn’t help that at all. Motrin, she thought. After this, she was going to take four and get back to the real work.

The grass underfoot was brush-cut cropped, more golf-course carpet than anything Mother Nature dreamed up, and even though she had too much on her mind, she still made a mental To Do list of beds to tend to and replantings to be done in the five acre enclosed garden. The good news was that after a late start to spring, the fruit trees were blooming in the corners of the brick-walled expanse, their delicate white petals just beginning to fall like snow on the walkways beneath their canopies. Also, the mulch that had been laid down two weeks before had lost its stink, and the ivy along the old stone walls was sprouting new leaves everywhere. In another month, the four squares marked with Greco-Roman sculptures of robed women in regal poses were going to be all pastel pinks and peaches and bright whites, offering a contrast to the sedate green and gray river view.

But of course, it was all about the Derby right now.

The white clapboard pool house was in the far left corner, looking like a proper, doctor/lawyer/family-of-four Colonial as it sat back from an almost Olympic-sized aquamarine body of water. The loggia that connected the two was topped by a controlled wig of wisteria that would soon enough have white and lavender blooms hanging like lanterns from the green tangle.

And beneath the overhang, stretched out in a Brown Jordan recliner, Mrs. Chantal Baldwine was as beautiful as a priceless marble statue.

About as warm as one, too.

The woman had skin that glowed, thanks to a perfectly executed spray tan, blond hair that was streaked artfully and curled at the long ends, and a body that would have given Rosie Huntington-Whiteley an inferiority complex. Her nails were fake, but perfect, nothing Jersey about either their length or color, and her engagement ring and wedding band were right out of
Town & Country
, as white and blinding and big as her smile.

She was the perfect modern Southern belle, the kind of woman that people in the Charlemont zip code whispered about having come from “good stock, even if it’s from Virginia.”