Dream Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  Table of Contents

  Daring to Dream

  Holding the Dream

  Finding the Dream

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve often written books about family, the relationship between sisters and brothers. But family isn’t only blood and shared ancestors. It’s memories and affection, loyalties and frustrations. At its best, family is friendship.

  In Daring to Dream, I’d like to introduce you to three women of different backgrounds who through circumstances were raised in the same household. They shared childhood, and those loyalties, and the friendship that comes to mean family. They also share a dream inspired by a tragic legend. But each has a separate and personal dream of her own.

  For Margo, the housekeeper’s daughter, it is to be someone. And when her world falls apart, there is nowhere to go but home. What does a woman do when she’s lost everything she thought mattered to her? How does she handle the humiliation of public scandal and financial ruin?

  Margo starts from scratch with a new dream, a daring one. With the women who are the sisters of her heart, she works to make that dream a reality, one they can share. Margo’s story is one of self-discovery, of risk and reward. And, of course, of love.

  The attraction between Joshua Templeton and Margo has simmered since they were children. Acting on that attraction as adults—stubborn, headstrong adults—and learning to accept each other as they are, is another risk, and still another dream. I hope you enjoy sharing it.

  Nora Roberts

  Daring to Dream

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Daring to Dream

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by Nora Roberts

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguin.com

  ISBN: 1-101-14600-1

  A Jove BOOK®

  Jove Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Jove and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): August 2001

  To old friends

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Prologue

  California, 1846

  He was never coming back. The war had taken him from her. She felt it, felt his death in the emptiness that had spread through her heart. Felipe was gone. The Americans had killed him—or perhaps his own need to prove himself had done so. But as Seraphina stood on the high, rugged cliffs above the churning Pacific, she knew she had lost him.

  Mist swirled around her, but she didn’t draw her cloak close. The cold she felt was in the blood, in the bone. It could never be vanquished.

  Her love was gone, though she had prayed, though she had spent countless hours on her knees begging the Virgin Mother to intercede, to protect her Felipe after he had marched off to fight the Americans who so badly wanted California.

  He had fallen in Santa Fe. The message had come for her father to tell him that his young ward was killed in battle, cut down as he fought to keep the town out of American hands. His body had been buried there, so far away. She would never, never look on his face again, hear his voice, share his dreams.

  She had not done as Felipe had asked. She had not sailed back to Spain to wait until California was safe again. Instead, she had hidden her dowry, the gold that would have helped to build their life together—the life they had dreamed of on so many bright days here on these cliffs. Her father would have given her to Felipe when he came back a hero. So Felipe had said as he kissed the tears from her cheeks. They would build a beautiful home, have many children, plant a garden. He had promised he would come back to her and they would begin.

  Now he was lost.

  Perhaps it was because she had been selfish. She had wanted to stay near Monterey and not put an ocean between them. And when the Americans came, she hid her bride gift, afraid they would take it as they had taken so much else.

  Now they had taken everything that mattered. And she grieved, afraid it was her sin that took Felipe from her. She had lied to her father to steal those hours with her love. She had given herself before the marriage was sanctified by God and the Church. More damning, she thought, as she bowed her head against the vicious slap of the wind, she could not repent of her sins. Would not repent them.

  There were no dreams left to her. No hope. No love. God had taken Felipe from her. And so, defying sixteen years of religious training, against a lifetime of belief, she lifted her head and cursed God.

  And jumped.

  One hundred thirty years later, the cliffs were drenched in the golden light of summer. Gulls winged over the sea, turning white breasts to the deep blue water before wheeling off with long, echoing cries. Flowers, sturdy and strong despite their fragile petals, pushed their way through hard ground, struggled toward the sun through thin cracks of rock, and turned the harsh into the fanciful. The wind was as soft as a stroke from a lover’s hand. Overhead, the sky was the perfect blue of dreams.

  Three young girls sat on the cliffs, pondering the story and the sea. It was a legend they knew well, and each had her own personal image of Seraphina as she had stood in those final despairing moments.

  For Laura Templeton, Seraphina was a tragic figure, her face wet with tears, so alone on that windswept height, with a single wildflower clutched in her hand as she fell.

  Laura wept for her now, her sad gray eyes looking out to the sea as she wondered what she would have done. For Laura the romance of it was entwined with the tragedy.

  To Kate Powell it was all a miserable waste. She frowned into the sunlight, while plucking at stubby wild grass with a narrow hand. The story touched her heart, true, but it was the impulse of it, the mistaken impulse that troubled her. Why end everything when life held so much more?

  It had been Margo Sullivan’s turn to tell the tale, and she had done so with a rich dramatic flair. As always, she envisioned the night electrified by a storm—raging winds, pelting rain, flashing lightning. The enormous defiance of the gesture both thrilled and troubled her. She would forever see Seraphina with her face lifted high, a curse on her lips as she leapt.

  “It was a pretty stupid thing to do for a boy,” Kate commented. Her ebony hair was pulled neatly back in a ponytail, leaving her angular face dominated by her large almond-shaped brown eyes.

  “She loved him
,” Laura said simply. Her voice was low, thoughtful. “He was her one true love.”

  “I don’t see why there has to be just one.” Margo stretched her long legs. She and Laura were twelve, Kate a year behind them. But already Margo’s body had begun to hint at the woman just waking inside. She had breasts and was quite pleased about it. “I’m not going to just have one.” Her voice rang with confidence. “I’m going to have hordes.”

  Kate snorted. She was thin and flat-chested and didn’t mind a bit. She had better things to think about than boys. School, baseball, music. “Ever since Billy Leary stuck his tongue down your throat, you’ve gotten wacky.”

  “I like boys.”

  Secure in her femininity, Margo smiled slyly and brushed a hand through her long blond hair. It streamed past her shoulders, thick and wavy and wheat-colored. The minute she’d escaped her mother’s eagle eye, she’d tugged it out of the band that Ann Sullivan preferred she tie it back with. Like her body, and her raspy voice, her hair belonged more to a woman than an adolescent girl.

  “And they like me.” Which was the best part, in Margo’s estimation. “But I’ll be damned if I’d kill myself over one.”

  Automatically Laura glanced around to make certain the swear word wasn’t overheard. They were alone, of course, and it was blissfully summer. The time of year she loved most. Her gaze lingered on the house crowning the hill behind them. It was her home, her security, and it pleased her just to look at it with its fanciful turrets and high, arching windows, the soft red tiles of the roof baking in the California sun.

  Sometimes she thought of it as a castle and herself as a princess. Just lately she had begun to imagine a prince somewhere who would one day ride up and sweep her away into love and marriage and happy-ever-after.

  “I only want one,” she murmured. “And if something happened to him it would break my heart forever.”

  “You wouldn’t jump off a cliff.” Kate’s practical nature couldn’t conceive it. You might kick yourself for bobbling a routine fly, or bombing a test, but over a boy? Why, it was ridiculous. “You’d have to wait to see what happened next.”

  She, too, studied the house. Templeton House, her home now. She thought that of the three of them, she was the one who understood what it was to face the worst, and wait. She’d been eight when she lost her parents, had seen her world rip apart and leave her drowning. But the Templetons had taken her in, had loved her, and though she’d only been a second cousin on the unstable Powell branch of the family tree, had given her family. It was always wise to wait.

  “I know what I’d do. I’d scream and curse God,” Margo decided. She did so now, slipping as easily as a chameleon into a pose of abject suffering. “Then I’d take the dowry and sail around the world, see everything, do everything. Be everything.” She stretched up her arms, loving the way the sun stroked her skin.

  She loved Templeton House. It was the only home she remembered. She had been only four when her mother left Ireland and came there to work. Though she had always been treated as one of the family, she never forgot that she was a servant’s daughter. Her ambition was to be more. Much more.

  She knew what her mother wanted for her. A good education, a good job, a good husband. What, Margo wondered, could be more boring? She wasn’t going to be her mother—no way was she going to be dried up and alone before she was thirty.

  Her mother was young and beautiful, Margo mused. Even if she played both facts down, they were facts nonetheless. Yet she never dated or socialized. And she was so damn strict. Don’t do this, Margo, don’t do that, she thought with a pout. You’re too young for lipstick and eye powder. Worried, always worried that her daughter was too wild, too headstrong, too anxious to rise above her station. Whatever her station was, Margo thought.

  She wondered if her father had been wild. Had he been beautiful? And she’d begun to wonder if her mother had had to marry—the way young girls did. She couldn’t have married for love, for if she’d loved him, why didn’t she ever speak of him? Why didn’t she have pictures and mementos and stories of the man she’d married and lost to a storm at sea?

  So Margo looked out to sea and thought of her mother. Ann Sullivan was no Seraphina, she reflected. No grief and despair; just turn the page and forget.

  Maybe it wasn’t so wrong after all. If you didn’t let a man mean too much, you wouldn’t be too hurt when he went away. But that didn’t mean you had to stop living too. Even if you didn’t jump off a cliff there were other ways to end life.

  If only Mum understood, she thought, then shook her head fiercely and looked back out to sea. She wasn’t going to think about that, about how nothing she did or wanted seemed to meet with her mother’s approval. It made her feel all churny inside to think of it. So she just wouldn’t.

  She would think of the places she would someday visit. Of the people she would meet. She’d had tastes of that grandeur living in Templeton House, being a part of the world that the Templetons moved in so naturally. All those fabulous hotels they owned in all those exciting cities. One day she would be a guest in them, gliding through her own suite—like the one in Templeton Monterey, with its staggering two levels and elegant furnishings and flowers everywhere. It had a bed fit for a queen, with a canopy and thick silk-covered pillows.

  When she’d said as much to Mr. T., he’d laughed and hugged her and let her bounce on that bed. She would never forget the way it felt to snuggle against those soft, perfumed pillows. Mrs. T. had told her the bed had come from Spain and was two hundred years old.

  One day she would have beautiful, important things like that bed. Not just to tend them, as her mother did, but to have them. Because when you had them, owned them, you were beautiful and important too.

  “When we find Seraphina’s dowry, we’ll be rich,” Margo announced, and Kate snorted again.

  “Laura’s already rich,” she pointed out logically. “And if we find it we’ll have to put it in the bank until we’re old enough.”

  “I’ll buy anything I want.” Margo sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Clothes and jewelry and beautiful things. And a car.”

  “You’re not old enough to drive,” Kate pointed out. “I’ll invest mine, because Uncle Tommy says it takes money to make money.”

  “That’s boring, Kate.” Margo gave Kate’s shoulder an affectionate jab. “You’re boring. I’ll tell you what we’ll do with it, we’ll take a trip around the world. The three of us. We’ll go to London and Paris and Rome. We’ll only stay at Templeton hotels because they’re the best.”

  “An endless slumber party,” Laura said, getting into the swing of the fantasy. She’d been to London and Paris and Rome, and she thought them beautiful. But nothing anywhere was more beautiful than here, than Templeton House. “We’ll stay up all night and dance with only the most handsome men. Then we’ll come back to Templeton House and always be together.”

  “Of course we’ll always be together.” Margo slung an arm around Laura’s shoulders, then Kate’s. Their friendship simply was to her, without question. “We’re best friends, aren’t we? We’ll always be best friends.”

  When she heard the roar of an engine, she leapt up and quickly feigned disdain. “That’s Josh and one of his creepy friends.”

  “Don’t let him see you.” Kate tugged hard on Margo’s hand. Josh might have been Laura’s brother by blood, but emotionally he was every bit Kate’s too, which made her disdain very genuine. “He’ll just come over and hassle us. He thinks he’s such a big shot now that he can drive.”

  “He’s not going to bother with us.” Laura rose as well, curious to see who was riding shotgun in the spiffy little convertible. Recognizing the dark, flying hair, she grimaced. “Oh, it’s just that hoodlum Michael Fury. I don’t know why Josh pals around with him.”

  “Because he’s dangerous.” She might have been only twelve, but some females are born able to recognize, and appreciate, a dangerous man. But Margo’s eyes were on Josh. She told herself
it was because he irritated her—the heir apparent, the perfect golden prince, who continually treated her like a slightly stupid younger sister, when anyone with eyes could see she was almost a woman.

  “Hey, brats.” With the studied cool of sixteen years, he leaned back in the driver’s seat of the idling car. The Eagles’ “Hotel California” blasted out of the radio and rocked the breezy summer air. “Looking for Seraphina’s gold again?”

  “We’re just enjoying the sun, and the solitude.” But it was Margo who closed the distance, walking slowly, keeping her shoulders back. Josh’s eyes were laughing at her beneath a shock of windblown, sun-bronzed hair. Michael Fury’s were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, and she couldn’t tell where they looked. She wasn’t overly interested, but she leaned against the car and gave him her best smile. “Hello, Michael.”

  “Yeah,” was his reply.

  “They’re always hanging out on the cliffs,” Josh informed his friend. “Like they’re going to trip over a bunch of gold doubloons.” He sneered at Margo. It was much easier to sneer than to consider, even for a moment, the way she looked in those teeny little shorts. Shit, she was just a kid, and practically his sister, and he was going to fry in hell for sure if he kept having these weird thoughts about her.

  “One day we’ll find them.”

  She leaned closer, and he could smell her. She arched a brow, drawing attention to the little mole flirting with the bottom tip of it. Her eyebrows were shades darker than all that pale blond hair. And her breasts, which seemed to grow fuller every time a guy blinked, were clearly outlined under the snug T-shirt. Because his mouth was painfully dry, his voice was sharp and derisive.

  “Keep dreaming, duchess. You little girls go back and play. We’ve got better things to do.” He roared away, keeping one eye trained on the rearview mirror.