She turned her head to look at the sleeping baby. “Not exactly, but...”
“The papers in my briefcase are probably worth half a million bucks.”
But she saw the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before she had a chance to be annoyed.
The miles inched by, and the hours crept. Wendy tried not to ask Mack about their progress; instead, she watched for road signs and kept tabs as the distance to Chicago edged downward with each town they passed.
“You’re awfully quiet,” he said.
“I thought you were concentrating.”
“I’d rather have something to distract me.”
She began to talk about whatever came to mind. She told him about movies she’d like to see, and books she’d enjoyed, and asked him about his favorites. Two hours went by, then three. Dull gray twilight had long since faded into evening, but the night was not as dark as she had expected, even when there was no town near. Light from any source caught against millions of snowflakes and reflected, and so at times it hardly seemed to be night at all.
Sometimes, in the lulls of conversation, the only sound was the steady, hypnotic thwack of the windshield wipers, industriously keeping the glass clear. Four hours – he’d hoped to be in the city by then, but the road signs told a different tale. Still, slow as it was, they were making progress.
The car was very warm for Rory’s sake, and after a while Wendy began to feel sleepy. That was dangerous, she knew. It wasn’t any problem if she napped, but if Mack were to doze off...
She started to talk again, determinedly, and after a while, when his easy answers had helped her feel more relaxed, she asked if there was anything she ought to know before they arrived at his parents’ home.
He shrugged. “You want to know what to expect? Normally we have rafts of people, but it’ll be a bit subdued this year. Just the family.”
With Marissa so recently gone, that was no surprise. “You and your parents,” Wendy prompted.
“And my brothers, Mitch and John, and John’s wife, Tessa. I think it’ll be less formal than usual.”
That wasn’t a lot of comfort; Wendy wondered what he meant by less formal. But she didn’t ask. No matter what his answer, it wouldn’t change the contents of her suitcase. She’d just have to do the best she could with what she had. Maybe her new suit would do, if she substituted her cream-colored camisole for the blouse she usually wore. Had she put that camisole in, or left it in the pile on her bed?
“You did get the luggage?” she heard herself asking.
“No. They weren’t unloading anything off the plane.”
Wendy closed her eyes in pain. She didn’t even have a change of underclothes; there hadn’t been room left in the carry-on by the time she got all of Rory’s necessities packed. Her trousers were rumpled from the long flight, and in the terminal Rory had spit up on the shoulder of her sweater.
“Oh, that’s just great,” she said wryly. “The only thing in the world which would make this whole affair worse is if you were bringing me home for your parents’ inspection.”
Mack glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. “Now why should a kooky idea like that occur to you?”
Embarrassed heat stung her cheeks. What had made her say such a crazy thing? If she’d stopped to think for a moment... “I haven’t the vaguest notion,” she snapped. “Native optimism, I suppose – there’s always something worse out there, and if I can find it, then I can pretend I’m not so bad off after all.”
Mack considered. “I see your point.”
Well, at least they’d agreed on that much. Wendy groped for something with which to change the subject. “Tell me about Marissa,” she said finally.
“Why? You knew her. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years. I only forwarded her trust fund checks once a month, after Dad retired.”
The crisp edge to his voice almost made Wendy back down, but she said stubbornly, “You’ve said some things about her – some very unflattering things. I just think you should explain them.”
“Since she can’t defend herself? I didn’t hate my little sister, Wendy, if that’s what you’re wondering. I just saw her more clearly than most people did, that’s all.”
“Tell me about it.” He looked doubtful, and she added, softly, “Please?”
“Marissa was beautiful, spoiled, and self-centered. She wasn’t evil, but she was manipulative and cold and calculating.”
Wendy frowned, trying to fit that picture into what she knew of Marissa. The woman had been beautiful, Mack was correct about that. And spoiled and self-centered – well, yes, that was true enough, but weren’t most young people, to some extent?
As for manipulative, cold and calculating... Had Marissa changed from the time Mack had last seen her until she met Wendy? Or had she hidden herself so well that Wendy hadn’t seen those traits?
On the other hand, why was she assuming that Mack was right?
“Perhaps it wasn’t entirely her fault,” he went on thoughtfully. “When a longed-for girl arrives after three boys – well, from the day she was born she was treated like a princess.”
“Is that what she meant?” Wendy said, almost to herself.
“Since I don’t know what she told you, I haven’t any idea what she meant.”
She hadn’t intended him to hear that, but she could hardly deny what she’d said. “She didn’t want your parents to have Rory because she said they’d ruin her, too.” She put the emphasis on the last word, as Marissa had.
Wendy thought she saw a tiny frown draw Mack’s eyebrows together, but he didn’t answer. They were in the city by then, driving through one residential section after another. The side streets were busier than the highway had been, and slicker, too. The snow was coming down harder, and his eyes didn’t stray from the road. It was obviously not a time for further discussion of Marissa.
No longer afraid that Mack might doze off, Wendy drifted into silence herself. She studied the patterns left by tires in the street and watched the snowflakes fall in shifting formations against the streetlights – sometimes hard and thick like salt dashed from a giant shaker, sometimes more like the fragments of ivory in an old snow dome, shaken up and left to float gently down on a quiet scene.
In the back seat, Rory gave a baby snore and then a couple of grunts before she settled into silence again.
When Mack spoke, his voice was so soft that Wendy almost didn’t hear at first. “Thanks for coming with me. I could never have managed the trip alone.”
She turned her head slowly against the leather seat and looked at him. He was staring straight ahead, and she could almost pretend that she’d been dreaming, for there was no softness in his face.
She wanted to look straight into his eyes, to see if there was more behind his words than simple gratefulness. But she couldn’t; in the dimness, even if he were looking directly at her she couldn’t have read the expression in his eyes.
Before she could find an answer – or even wonder why it should matter so much – Mack said, “Here we are.”
The car turned abruptly into a driveway, skidding slightly as it drew to a halt. Wendy looked up at an enormous set of wrought iron gates, the biggest she had ever seen in her life. Each metal frame was at least ten feet tall and crafted of turns and spirals so delicate and elaborate the gates looked almost like lace. Beyond them, at the end of a long driveway, lay a house – an elaborate, sprawling Jacobean-style brick manor, with stone tracing around each door and window and wings going every which way.
“Good heavens,” she whispered.
She didn’t know she’d said anything at all till Mack answered. “It takes people that way sometimes.” He reached for his wallet and pulled out what looked like a credit card, then lowered the car window and inserted the card in a discreet black box at the edge of the drive. The gates swung silently wide.
“Much more thoughtful than making the gatekeeper stand out in the cold,” Wendy said. She was babbling because she was annoyed. He cou
ld have warned her.
No, she thought. Nothing could have prepared her for this. She had expected an exclusive neighborhood, a quiet street, a big house, but even if Mack had described this place, she couldn’t have imagined a country estate set in the middle of a city, complete with brick walls and acres of grounds and what looked like an enormous fountain in a courtyard by the front door. In a big stone-arched bay window, the lights of a Christmas tree gleamed.
She turned her back on the scene and reached around to swathe Rory in blankets again. The child’s eyes were wide open; they looked enormous and unusually dark in the indirect light which spilled in from the courtyard.
“Hello there,” Wendy said softly. “How long have you been awake?”
Rory grinned and waved her arms to be picked up. She strenuously objected to being covered up with a blanket again, and she was yelling lustily by the time they reached the huge, carved front door.
It swung open silently in front of them, and Wendy braced herself for the first encounter with Mack’s parents. She half-expected they might simply seize Rory from her arms.
The man holding the door was tall and very erect and formally dressed in dark evening clothes. His neat precision made Wendy feel even more grubby, and she tightened her hold on Rory. The child needed to be changed, she was certain – and she couldn’t bring herself to think about that wonderful tailoring encountering a wet diaper.
“Good evening, sir,” the man said, and bowed just a little. “Good evening, miss. Mr. Burgess is in the library, Mr. Mack. I’m afraid Mrs. Burgess has already retired to her rooms, since you were delayed.”
She went to bed? Wendy thought unbelievingly, and then told herself not to make rash judgments. Had Mack even called his parents to let them know what was going on? If not, his mother had good reason to assume they wouldn’t arrive till tomorrow.
Mack nodded, apparently unsurprised. “You might tell her nurse that we’re here, Parker, in case she’s still awake.”
Her nurse? Wendy felt a bit ashamed of herself. If Mrs. Burgess was ill, that would explain a lot.
“Certainly, sir. Shall I show you into the library?”
“No. Just take these coats and we’ll fend for ourselves.” He shrugged his coat off, then took the safety seat from Wendy’s arms and set it on a nearby table to unwrap the top layer of blankets. The table was dark, rich wood, polished to an almost mirror-like shine. Wendy shuddered at the thought of putting a scratch on it.
Through an arched doorway she caught sight of the tree. It was both tall and broad, and there must have been thousands of pure white lights glistening like icicles on the boughs. Underneath were heaps of packages. If this was what Mack called a subdued Christmas...
The butler helped her remove her coat; Wendy felt his hands tremble just a little and looked over her shoulder at him in surprise. He was watching Rory. As Mack lifted the baby out of the seat, she blinked warily in the bright light, then caught sight of Wendy and gave a breathtaking smile.
“And this is Miss Marissa’s little one, sir?” Parker said softly. “We’re all so glad you’ve brought her home.” He picked up the carry-on bag Mack had set down.
“I think we’ll need that,” Mack told him. “She feels a bit damp.”
Wendy found a diaper and a clean sleeper in the bag, and Parker showed her into a powder room, lined with pink marble, that was far larger than the bath in her apartment. She took an extra couple of minutes to freshen Rory up. The sleeper wasn’t new, and it had never been fancy, but at least the child could be appealingly clean and neat. She wished that she’d thought of adding a hair ribbon to the supplies in the bag; Rory was starting to get a few curls now, and a ribbon might have stayed in place long enough for introductions.
She stole a minute as well to touch up her own appearance. The first principle of marketing was to put the best possible face on the product, and that was as true of herself as of Rory. She didn’t want the Burgesses to think their granddaughter had been in the care of a slob. There wasn’t much she could do, of course, except touch up her braid and apply fresh lipstick – but at least she’d know she’d tried. They would probably scarcely look at her, anyway.
Mack was still in the hallway, lounging against a walnut coat tree, when she came back. The mirror stretched a good two feet above his head, but it was still dwarfed by the height of the room. She glanced up at the ceiling. If she was any judge at all, that was a masterpiece of carved plaster.
Mack straightened up, and his gaze lingered for a moment on her mouth. Wendy felt warmth surge over her; at least he’d noticed the effort she’d made. “Ready?” he asked softly.
She almost said no, but she took a deep breath instead and nodded.
The library was warm. In the massive stone fireplace, a blaze had burned down almost to embers, and its glow mingled with pools of soft light from several lamps. A man rose from a leather wing chair beside the fire and turned to greet them. He was quite a little shorter than Mack, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance in the shape of his face and the set of his eyebrows. “Ah, there you are, Mack,” he said. “And Miss...”
“Miller,” Mack supplied. “Wendy, my father.”
Wendy shifted the baby a little so she could hold out her hand if Samuel Burgess offered to shake it. He didn’t, however; his eyes were on Rory. But he didn’t make a move to touch her. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet as if he was uncertain of himself and annoyed at feeling that way.
Rory didn’t cry or duck her head against Wendy’s shoulder, but watched him attentively. Finally she smiled – a wide, engaging, friendly grin.
Samuel Burgess smiled back, and suddenly Wendy was fiercely glad that she was here to see this moment. “Perhaps you should hold her, sir,” she said gently.
Mack shot her a look of surprise, which annoyed Wendy. Did he honestly think she would cling to the baby now? The sooner Rory became familiar with these new surroundings, these new people, the easier it would be for her.
“Well...” Samuel Burgess cleared his throat. “Yes, I suppose.” Gingerly, he lifted the baby out of Wendy’s arms. He held her awkwardly, as if he’d forgotten how. Wendy held her breath, but Rory seemed to understand that he meant well, and she didn’t make a fuss.
Within a few minutes he was chucking the baby under the chin and she was giggling at him.
The child looks like a born diplomat, Wendy thought. After all that fuss on the trip, when conduct really counted she had come through like a trouper.
She turned to Mack with a smile. He, too, would have seen the contrast, and he would appreciate the humor.
But he was looking at her strangely. His eyes were dark and steady and there was not even a hint of humor in his face. The smile froze on Wendy’s lips, and an empty, yawning ache chewed at the pit of her stomach. Why was he studying her like that?
Confused, she turned back to Samuel and Rory just as a knock sounded at the door. Samuel called permission to enter, and a young woman came in.
Obviously the nurse, Wendy thought. She wasn’t quite sure how she knew, for the woman wore tailored slacks and a bright-colored blouse, not a uniform. Then she realized it was the shoes which had tipped her off; they were the kind chosen by women who spent lots of time on their feet.
The nurse spoke softly to Mack. “Mrs. Burgess asks if you’ll come upstairs when you’re free, sir.”
But it was Samuel who answered her. “Of course,” he said hastily and handed Rory back to Wendy without hesitation. “Yes, my boy, take Aurora up to see her grandmother.”
At the foot of the massive carved staircase, Wendy hesitated and looked up. It was an incredible distance to the upper floor; the stairs were wide and shallow and there seemed to be a thousand of them.
Mack paused with one foot on the lowest step and looked down at her. “Well?”
“You don’t need me for this.” She held Rory out to him.
Parker came down the
passage, silent-footed, and Mack called his name. “I need a favor. We didn’t stop for dinner, so perhaps you could warn Mrs. Cardoza that we’ll be raiding her kitchen a little later.”
“I’ll see what I can do, sir.”
“You’re a good man, Parker.” Mack beamed at him and turned to Wendy. He didn’t reach for the baby. “Come on. You’re only losing your nerve because you’re hungry.”
She was, indeed, starving; perhaps the empty ache she’d been feeling a few minutes ago had been caused as much by hunger as the beginnings of loneliness. But she wouldn’t bet on it.
She stood stubbornly at the foot of the stairs. “Surely your mother would rather just have you and Rory. If she’s not feeling well…”
“Maybe. But no matter what she wants, she’s getting all of us.” He held out a hand and coaxed, “Don’t you think it’ll be easier to meet her tonight, when her mind’s on Rory? That way, by tomorrow you might be old friends.”
Wendy rolled her eyes at the idea, but she supposed he was right. When she met Mrs. Burgess wouldn’t make any real difference; Wendy Miller wasn’t important enough in the Burgesses’ lives to make any kind of splash. It would be better to get it over with right away. And at least this way she’d have Mack to lean on.
What was wrong with her? She’d never needed a man for moral support before!
Mack led the way up the stairs and along a wide hallway which ran through the main wing of the house, and turned onto a side corridor. The passage here was only slightly narrower. It was dimly lit and lined with oak carved in a linen-fold pattern. Wendy wanted to stop and run her hand admiringly over the superb workmanship.
Mack tapped on a wide, arched door, and pushed it partway open. “Mother?”
“Come in, Mack.”
The moment Wendy heard her speak, she knew where Mack had gotten his rich, vibrant voice. He’d inherited it from his mother, and probably learned at her knee how to use it to best effect.
The Only Solution Page 6
