Jessie had been sleeping with another man. Men, for all he knew. Knowing Jessie as he did, he realized she had probably done it out of revenge, because he hadn’t kowtowed to her every whim. She’d been capable of just about anything when thwarted, but somehow he’d never expected her to cheat on him. Her reputation in Tuscumbia and Colbert County had been too important to her, and this wasn’t some fast-lane big city where lovers came and went and no one paid much attention to it. This was the South, and in some ways still the Old South, where appearances and genteel manners held sway, at least in the middle and upper echelons of society.
But she’d not only slept with someone else, she had neglected to use birth control. Again, out of revenge? Had she thought it would be a delicious joke on him to present him with a child not his own?
In one short, hellish week, his wife had been murdered, his entire life and reputation had been destroyed, and his family had turned on him. He had gone from prince to pariah.
He was fed up with it all. Booley’s bombshell today had just topped it off. He had worked like hell for years to keep the family in the manner to which they’d become accustomed, meaning the lap of luxury, sacrificing his private life and any chance he might have had of making a real marriage with Jessie. But when he’d needed his family in a united front, supporting him, they hadn’t been there. Lucinda hadn’t accused him but neither had she backed him, and he was tired of dancing to her tune. As for Gloria and Harlan and their bunch, to hell with them. Only Mother and Aunt Sandra had believed in him.
Roanna. What about her? Had she set this entire nightmare in motion, striking out at Jessie without any regard to the damage she would do to him? Somehow, on a different level, Roanna’s betrayal was more bitter than the others. He’d gotten so accustomed to her adoration, to the comfortable companionship he’d had with her. Her quirky personality and unruly tongue had amused him, made him laugh even when he was so dead tired he was about to fall on his face. Grand Pricks, indeed, the little imp.
At the funeral, she’d said that she hadn’t deliberately set up that scene in the kitchen, but guilt and misery had been written all over that thin face. Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t. But she too had avoided him, when he’d have sold his soul for comfort. Booley didn’t consider Roanna a suspect in Jessie’s murder, but Webb couldn’t forget the look of hate he’d seen in Roanna’s eyes, or the fact that she’d had the chance. Everyone in the house had had the chance to do it, but Roanna was the only one who’d hated Jessie.
He just didn’t know. He’d kept his mouth shut to protect her even though she hadn’t supported him. He’d kept his mouth shut about Jessie’s baby not being his, letting another possible murderer off scot-free, because he himself would have been the more likely suspect. He was goddamn tired of being caught in the middle.
To hell with them all.
He stopped the car in the driveway and stared at the house. Davencourt. It was the embodiment of his ambition, a symbol of his life, the heart of the Davenport family. It had a personality all its own, an old house that had sheltered generations of Davenports within its graceful wings. Whenever he was away on a business trip and thought of Davencourt, in his mind’s eye he always saw it surrounded by flowers. In spring, the azalea bushes rioted with color. In summer, the roses and old maids took their bow. In fall there were the chrysanthemums, and in winter the pink and white camellia bushes. Davencourt was always in bloom. He’d loved it with a passion he’d never felt for Jessie. He couldn’t put the blame for this totally on the others, because he too was guilty, in the final analysis marrying for the legacy rather than the woman.
To hell with Davencourt, too.
He parked at the walk and went in the front door. The conversation in the living room stilled abruptly, as it had been doing for the past week. He didn’t even glance into the room as he strode into the study and seated himself behind the desk.
He worked for hours, completing paperwork, drawing up forms, returning active control of all the far-flung Davenport enterprises into Lucinda’s hands. When it was finished, he got up and walked out of the house, and drove away without looking back.
BOOK THREE
The Return
CHAPTER 8
Bring Webb back for me,” Lucinda said to Roanna. “I want you to convince him to come home.”
Roanna’s face didn’t show her shock, though it reverberated through her entire body. With controlled grace she replaced her tea glass on the dainty coaster without even the tiniest betraying rattle. Webb! Just the sound of his name still had the power to slice through her, bringing up the old painful longing and guilt, even though it had been ten years since she’d last seen him, since anyone had seen him.
“Do you know where he is?” she asked composedly.
Unlike Roanna’s, Lucinda’s hand did shake as she set down her glass. Her eighty-three years sat heavily on Lucinda, and the constant tremor in her hands was just another of the tiny ways her own body was failing her. Lucinda was dying, in fact. She knew it, they all knew it. Not immediately, not even soon, but it was summer now and it wasn’t likely she’d see another one. Her iron will had stood up to a lot, but had slowly bowed under the inexorable crush of time.
“Of course. I hired a private investigator to find him. Yvonne and Sandra have known all along, but they wouldn’t tell me,” Lucinda said with a mixture of anger and exasperation. “He’s kept in touch with them, and both of them have visited him occasionally.”
Roanna veiled her eyes with her lashes, careful not to let any expression show through. So they had known all this time. Unlike Lucinda, she didn’t blame them. Webb had made it perfectly plain he had no use for the rest of the family; he had to despise them, and herself most of all. She didn’t blame him, considering. Still, it hurt. Her love for him was the one emotion she hadn’t been able to block. His absence had been like a slow-bleeding wound, and in ten years it hadn’t healed but still seeped pain and remorse.
But she had survived. Somehow, by locking away all other emotions, she had survived. Gone was the coltish, exuberant girl, brimming over with energy and mischief, that she’d been. In her place was a cool, remote young woman who never hurried, never lost her temper, and seldom even smiled, much less laughed aloud. Emotions were paid for with pain; she had learned a bitter lesson when her impulsiveness, her stupid emotionalism, had ruined Webb’s life.
She had been worthless and unlovable the way she’d been, so she had destroyed herself and built a new person from the ashes, a woman who would never know the heights but would no longer sink to the depths either. Somehow she had set in motion the chain of events that had cost Jessie her life and banished Webb from theirs, so she had grimly set herself to the task of atonement. She couldn’t replace Jessie in Lucinda’s affection, but at least she could stop being such a burden and disappointment.
She had gone to college—at the University of Alabama, as it happened, rather than the exclusive all-girl’s college that had previously been considered—and gotten a degree in business management so she could be of some help to Lucinda in running things, since Webb was no longer there to take care of everything. Roanna didn’t like anything about her courses but forced herself to study hard and get good grades. So what if she found it boring? It was a small enough price to pay.
She had forced herself to learn how to dress, so Lucinda wouldn’t be embarrassed by her. She had taken a course to improve her poor driving skills, she had learned how to dance, how to apply makeup, to make polite conversation, to be socially acceptable. She had learned how to control the wild exuberance that had so often gotten her into trouble as a child, but that hadn’t been difficult. After Webb had disappeared, her problem had been in working up any enthusiasm for life rather than the opposite.
She could think of nothing she dreaded more than having to face Webb again.
“What if he doesn’t want to come back?” she murmured.
“Convince him, Lucinda snapped. Then she sighed, and her voice g
entled. “He always had a soft spot for you. I need him back here. We need him. You and I together have managed to keep things going, but I don’t have much time left and your heart and soul isn’t in it the way Webb’s was. When it came to business, Webb had the brain of a computer and the heart of a shark. He was honorable but ruthless. Those are rare qualities, Roanna, the kind that aren’t easily replaced.”
“That’s why he may not forgive us.” Roanna didn’t react to Lucinda’s dismissal of her competence in managing the family empire. It was nothing less than the truth; that was why the burden of decision-making rested, for the most part, on Lucinda’s increasingly frail shoulders, while Roanna implemented them. She had trained herself, disciplined herself, to do what she could, but her best would never be good enough. She accepted that and protected herself by not letting it matter. Nothing had really mattered anyway for the past ten years.
Pain flickered across Lucinda’s lined face. “I’ve missed him every day that he’s been gone,” she said softly. “I’ll never forgive myself for what I let happen to him. I should have let folks know that I believed in him, trusted him, but instead I wallowed in my own grief and didn’t see what my neglect was doing to him. I don’t mind dying, but I can’t go easy until I make things right with Webb. If anyone can bring him back, Roanna, you can.”
Roanna didn’t tell Lucinda that she had reached out to Webb at Jessie’s funeral, and been coldly rebuffed. Privately she thought that she had less chance of convincing Webb to come home than anyone else did, but that was something else she’d taught herself: if she couldn’t manage to block out her feelings, then her private pain and fears were just that, private. If she kept them inside, then no one but she knew they were there.
It didn’t matter what she felt; if Lucinda wanted Webb home, she would do what she could, no matter the cost to herself. “Where is he?”
“In some godforsaken little town in Arizona. I’ll give you the folder of information the investigator gathered for me. He’s … done well for himself. He owns a ranch, nothing on the scale of Davencourt, but it isn’t in Webb to fail.”
“When do you want me to leave?”
“As soon as possible. We need him here. I need him. I want to make my peace with him before I die.”
“I’ll try,” Roanna said.
Lucinda looked at her granddaughter for a long moment, then a tired smile quirked her mouth. “You’re the only one who doesn’t put on that fake cheerfulness and tell me I’ll live to be a hundred,” she said, a hint of acerbic approval in her voice. “Damn fools. Do they think I don’t know that I’m dying? I have cancer, and I’m too old to waste my time and money on treatment when old age is going to get me pretty soon anyway. I live in this body, for God’s sake. I can tell that it’s slowly shutting down.”
There was no response that wouldn’t sound either falsely cheerful or callous, so Roanna made none. She was often silent, letting conversation flow around her, not thrusting out any verbal oars to deflect the tide her way. It was true that everyone else in the household tried their best to ignore the situation, as if it would go away if they didn’t acknowledge it. It wasn’t just Gloria and Harlan now; somehow, within a year of Jessie’s death and Webb’s departure, Gloria had managed to move more of her family into Davencourt. Their son, Baron, had decided to remain in Charlotte, but everyone else was there. Gloria’s daughter, Lanette, had moved in her entire family: husband Greg and children Corliss and Brock. Not that they were children; Brock was thirty, and Corliss was Roanna’s age. Lucinda had let the house fill, perhaps in an effort to banish the emptiness left by losing both Jessie and Webb. Assuming Roanna could convince Webb to return—a major assumption—she wondered what he would make of all this. True, they were all his cousins, but somehow she thought he might be rather impatient with them for taking advantage of Lucinda’s grief.
“You know that I changed my will after Webb left,” Lucinda continued after a moment, taking another sip of tea. She gazed out the window at the profusion of peach-colored roses, her favorite, and squared her shoulders as if bracing herself. “I made you the main heir; Davencourt and most of the money would go to you. I think it’s only fair to tell you that if you can convince Webb to come back, I’ll redo it in his favor.”
Roanna nodded. That wouldn’t make any difference to her efforts; nothing would. She would do her best to talk Webb into coming back but not let herself feel any personal loss when Lucinda changed her will. Roanna accepted that no matter how hard she tried, she simply didn’t have the knack for business that Lucinda and Webb possessed. She wasn’t a risk taker, and she couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the game of big business. Davencourt would be better off with him in charge and so would the myriad financial investments and interests.
“That was the deal I made with him when he was fourteen,” Lucinda continued, her voice abrupt and her shoulders still held stiffly erect. “If he would work hard, study, and train himself to take care of Davencourt, it would all be his.”
“I understand,” Roanna murmured.
“Davencourt …” Lucinda stared out over the perfectly manicured lawn, the flower gardens, the pastures beyond where her beloved horses bent their sleek, muscular necks to graze. “Davencourt deserves to be in the best hands. It isn’t just a house, it’s a legacy. There aren’t many like it left, and I have to choose who I think will be the best caretaker for it.”
“I’ll try to bring him back,” Roanna promised, her face as still as a pond on a hot summer day, when no breeze existed to ripple the surface. It was the face she lived behind, a face of indifference, unreadable and serene. Nothing could pierce the safe cocoon she had woven for herself, except Webb, her only weakness. Despite herself, her thoughts drifted. To have him back … it would be heaven and hell combined. To be able to see him every day, listen to his voice, secretly hug his nearness to her in the long, dark nights when all her nightmares became real … that was the heaven. The hell was in knowing that he despised her now, that every look he gave her would be one of condemnation and disgust.
But, no, she had to be realistic. She wouldn’t be here. When Lucinda—she never thought of her as Grandmother anymore—died, Davencourt would no longer be her home. It would be Webb’s, and he wouldn’t want her here. She wouldn’t see him every day, perhaps not at all. She would have to move out, get a job, face the real world. Well, at least with her degree and experience, she should be able to get a decent job. Maybe not in the Shoals area; she might have to move, in which case it was certain she’d never see Webb. That, too, didn’t matter. His place was here. Her thoughtless actions had cost him his inheritance, so it was only right that she do what she could to return it to him.
“Doesn’t it matter to you?” Lucinda asked abruptly. “That you’ll lose Davencourt if you do this for me?”
Nothing matters. That had been her mantra, her curse, for ten years. “It’s yours to leave to whomever you want. Webb was your chosen heir. And you’re right; he’ll do a much better job than I ever could.”
She could tell that her quiet, even voice disturbed Lucinda in some way, but injecting any passion in her words was beyond her.
“But you’re a Davenport,” Lucinda argued, as if she wanted Roanna to justify her own decision for her. “Some folks would say Davencourt should be yours by right, because Webb is a Tallant. He’s my blood relative, but he isn’t a Davenport, and he isn’t nearly as closely related to me as you are.”
“But he’s the better choice.”
Gloria came into the living room in time to hear Roanna’s last comment. “Who’s the better choice?” she demanded, sinking into the depths of her favorite chair. Gloria was seventy-three, ten years younger than Lucinda, but while Lucinda’s hair was unabashedly white, Gloria still stubbornly resisted nature and kept her fluffy curls tinted a delicate blond.
“Webb,” Lucinda answered tersely.
“Webb!” Shocked, Gloria stared at her sister. “For goodness sake, what could he possibly be
the better choice for, except the electric chair?”
“To run Davencourt, and the business side of things.”
“You have to be joking! Why, no one would deal with him—”
“Yes, they would,” Lucinda said, steel in her voice. “If he’s in charge, everyone will deal with him, or wish they hadn’t been so stupid.”
“I don’t see why you even brought up his name anyway, since no one knows where he—”
“I found him,” Lucinda interrupted. “And Roanna is going to talk him into coming back.”
Gloria rounded on Roanna as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads. “Are you out of your mind?” she breathed. “You can’t mean to bring a murderer among us! Why, I’d never be able to close my eyes at night!”
“Webb isn’t a murderer,” Roanna said, sipping her tea and not even glancing at Gloria. She had stopped thinking of Gloria as Aunt, too. Sometime during the awful night after Webb had walked out of their lives, the titles of kinship had faded from the way she thought of people, as if her emotional distance couldn’t accommodate them anymore. The people in her family now were simply Lucinda, Gloria, Harlan.
“Then why did he disappear like that? Only someone with a guilty conscience would run away.”
“Stop that!” Lucinda snapped. “He didn’t run, he got fed up and left. There’s a difference. We let him down, so I can’t blame him for turning his back on us. But Roanna’s right; Webb didn’t kill Jessie. I never thought he did.”
“Well, Booley Watts certainly did!”
Lucinda dismissed Booley’s thoughts with a wave of her hand. “It doesn’t matter. I think Webb’s innocent, there was no evidence against him, so as far as the law’s concerned he’s innocent, and I want him back.”