The Heiresses

by Sara Shepard

  DEDICATION

  To Michael

  EPIGRAPH

  Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,

  like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.

  —JOHN WEBSTER

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Five Years Later

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  One Year Later

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Sara Shepard

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  You know the Saybrooks. Everyone does. Perhaps you’ve read a profile of them in People or Vanity Fair, seen their pictures in the society pages of Vogue and the New York Times Sunday Styles. When walking along that choice block on Fifth Avenue, you’ve been tempted to enter the ornate limestone building with their family name etched into the pediment above the door. At the very least, you’ve paused at their ads, pictures of Aster Saybrook’s stunning face framed by a galaxy of baubles, the diamonds so flawless and clear that even their glossy images make you dizzy. They make you dizzy too, for the Saybrooks are a family of beauties, entrepreneurs, debutantes, mavens, and mavericks, the type of people for whom doors open and restaurant tables open up. If you live in New York City and happen to catch a glimpse of them doing something normal, like walking into the office in the morning or rounding the Reservoir on an evening jog, you feel like you’ve just been touched by a sunbeam, a magic wand, a stroke of luck. They’re sort of like me, you think.

  Only they aren’t. And be careful what you wish for, because if you were a Saybrook, you’d be haunted by secrets as deep as a mine and plagued by a streak of luck just as dark. You’d have to go to a hell of a lot of funerals too. Larger-than-life though the family might be, they also have to contend with a lot of death.

  TEN HIGHLY POLISHED town cars idled in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the clear early September morning of Steven Barnett’s funeral, and at least five more had parked around the corner on Fiftieth Street. The church steps had been swept clean, the railings gave off a high shine, and even the pigeons had found somewhere else to roost. The activity on the sidewalk across the street continued apace. There were so many people that they seemed to move in one long, silken scarf of color. But when the town car doors opened simultaneously in a perfectly choreographed ballet, all movement stopped and the gawking began.

  Edith, the venerable matriarch of the Saybrook dynasty, was already inside the church along with her children. Now it was the younger generation’s turn to step out of the cool darkness of their cars into the flash of cameras and the screaming crowds. First to emerge was twenty-nine-year-old Poppy Saybrook, perfectly styled in a black Ralph Lauren sheath and showing off a large diamond engagement ring—a Saybrook’s, naturally. Her new fiancé, James Kenwood, trailed behind her casting unassuming smiles at everyone in the crowd—especially the women.

  Next were Poppy’s cousins, sisters Corinne and Aster. Though Corinne looked impeccable in a black wrap dress and taupe heels, her skin was ashen, and her balance seemed slightly off. Rumor had it her boyfriend, Dixon Shackelford, had broken her heart at the beginning of the summer. Maybe that was why she’d taken a yearlong assignment in Hong Kong as a Saybrook’s business liaison. Word was she was leaving the next day.

  Aster wore a dress that could have doubled for a negligee, her blond hair mussed. The eighteen-year-old, who had spent the summer modeling in Europe, didn’t lift the Dior frames from her eyes as she hugged Poppy. Maybe she’d been up all night crying. Or, more likely, partying.

  A door slammed on the corner as twenty-seven-year-old Rowan, Saybrook’s newest in-house lawyer, stepped onto the curb. Her two brothers, Michael and Palmer, were not in attendance—they hadn’t joined the family business and didn’t know Steven. Rowan looked up at her cousins, only to flinch as she caught sight of Poppy and James. Her pale blue eyes were bloodshot, and her nose was red. No one had realized that Rowan and Steven Barnett were close . . . or was she upset about something else?

  And finally eighteen-year-old Natasha Saybrook-Davis hurried over from the subway stop on Fifty-Third, her wild mess of dark curls pinned off her face, her lips twisted into a surly frown. The other cousins glanced at her cagily, no one knowing quite what to say. The fact that Natasha had recently disinherited herself was the subject of much speculation. Why would one of America’s heiresses give up her fortune?

  Flashbulbs popped. Poppy shaded her fine-boned oval face with her quilted Chanel clutch. Aster squeezed her eyes shut, looking positively green. After a moment, Poppy, Aster, Corinne, and Rowan clutched hands. This was the first time they had been together since Steven was found on the shoals of their family’s summer property on Meriweather, a sunny island off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, one week earlier, after their annual end-of-summer party. This year they’d celebrated Poppy’s promotion to president of the company.

  “Excuse me?” said someone behind the four women.

  They turned and peered into the flushed, eager face of a reporter. A cameraman in jeans and a Yankees T-shirt stood behind her.

  The woman smiled brightly. “Amy Seaver, Channel Ten. How well did you know Steven Barnett?”

  Corinne ducked her head. Poppy shifted awkwardly. Rowan balled up her fists.

  Amy Seaver barely blinked. The cameraman leaned in. “It’s strange,” the reporter went on. “First your grandfather, who ran the Saybrook’s empire, and now his protégé, the man who was rumored to be next in line for the job . . .”

  Rowan frowned. “If you’re trying to connect the two deaths, you shouldn’t. Our grandfather was ninety-four. It’s not exactly the same thing.”

  “And Poppy was named president, not Steven,” Corinne jumped in, pointing to her cousin. Mason, Corinne’s father and the company CEO, had made the last-minute decision, saying he wanted to “keep things in the family.” It had been a huge surprise, but everyone knew Poppy was up to the challenge.

  The reporter kept pace with them as they walked toward the church, Natasha a few steps behind the rest of the cousins. “Yes, but didn’t Mr. Barnett row for Harvard, surf in Galápagos? Don’t you think it’s odd that he drowned in shallow water?”

  Rowan thrust an open palm toward the camera.

  “No comment,” Poppy said quickly, then hustled Rowan and the others toward the church. “Try to hold it together,” she whispered.

  “You know what she’s getting at, though,” Rowan whispered.

  “I know, I know,” Poppy answered. “But just let it go, okay?”

  It was something they never liked to think about—the family curse. The media had invented the concept long ago, and oh, how they adored it—there was even an anonymously run website called the Blessed and the Cursed that documented the Saybrook calamities and misfortunes, a
nd it received thousands of hits a day. No one could get enough of the legendary American family that was so blessed with fortune and beauty, yet cursed with a string of mysterious sudden deaths.

  When the girls were little, the curse had been their go-to ghost story when they camped out in the backyard in their family compound in Meriweather. It all started, they’d begin, flashlights positioned under their chins, when Great-Aunt Louise fell off a balcony at a New Year’s Eve party. She fell twenty stories, holding her martini the whole time. After Louise, a great-uncle was trampled at a polo match. Then a second cousin’s plane was lost at sea. Their now-divorced aunt Grace, the youngest of Edith and Alfred’s children, had a son who was kidnapped from their front yard.

  Though Steven Barnett wasn’t technically a Saybrook, it felt like he was. Alfred, who was always looking for new talent, had plucked Steven straight from Harvard Business School nearly fifteen years prior, impressed by his business acumen and poise. Steven was efficient and brilliant, with a keen business mind and a knack for PR, able to talk about anything from the hottest diamond bauble for the holidays to the future of socially responsible mining. He’d ascended the ranks quickly, a constant fixture at Alfred and Edith’s town house in the city or at the family’s island beach estate on long weekends, becoming a trusted adviser and honorary son. Now he’d suffered the same fate as all those other Saybrooks, claimed by the great gray cloud that followed their family. Yes, his drowning in the shallow water of the marina was strange. But Steven’s blood alcohol level had been sky-high, and the police had deemed it a tragic accident.

  The reporter finally fell back, and the cousins continued into the cathedral. An organist played a Bach fugue, and an empty pew waited for the cousins near the front of the church. In the first pew Steven’s wife, Betsy, dabbed her gray eyes, though her grief looked rehearsed. His brothers sat shoulder to shoulder, like fun-house mirror versions of the deceased. Two red-haired women stood in front of the casket, hands folded in prayer. One wore a diamond tennis bracelet the Saybrook women recognized immediately.

  “Danielle?” Corinne said.

  The woman turned, her expression shifting. “It’s so awful,” she whispered.

  Aster inched away, but Corinne pulled Danielle into a hug. Danielle Gilchrist was the daughter of the caretakers at the Meriweather estate, and she’d been around so much when they were kids that she was practically like family. She and Aster had been the closest—Aster had given her the bracelet—though Aster refused to look at her now. Danielle’s mother, Julia, stood next to her daughter, dressed in a black sheath that showed off her slender figure. Though she was nearly fifty, with her lithe physique and the same stunning red hair as her daughter’s, she could almost pass for Danielle’s sister.

  “I still can’t believe he drowned,” Danielle said as Natasha approached the group.

  Natasha placed a hand on the casket. “It is a convenient explanation,” she murmured, “given everything that happened that night.”

  Poppy whipped her head around. Aster pressed her lips together, looking caught. Corinne visibly paled. Even Rowan seemed nervous. They hadn’t exactly talked about what they’d been doing the evening Steven drowned—or much else that had happened that summer. Maybe there had been too many other things to discuss, or maybe they’d avoided it on purpose.

  Julia touched Danielle’s arm. “Come on,” she said sharply. “Let’s leave them be.”

  The organist broke into the opening bars of “So My Sheep May Safely Graze,” and they all took their seats. Supporting their grandmother, Edith, the priest walked slowly down the aisle. He grasped her dripping-with-diamonds, liver-spotted hand, although she kept trying to swat him away. Despite the humidity inside the church, Edith pulled her sable even tighter around her, as though it were a brace to hold her neck in place. She pushed her large, dark, round-framed glasses higher up her face and smiled coolly at the mourners.

  When she reached their pew, Edith gave each of her granddaughters a papery kiss. “All of you look lovely.”

  Then she sat, crossing her slim legs at the ankles, and folded her hands in her lap, as though she assumed all eyes were on her. And likely, they were. She always gave her granddaughters one piece of advice: You, my dears, are the heiresses. Remember that, always. Because no one else will ever forget.

  The girls were the future of Saybrook’s Diamonds, and they had to act accordingly. They were to live their lives with the utmost decorum, smile for the cameras, speak several languages, hold many degrees, cultivate the art of conversation, and, most important, refrain from doing anything that might bring scandal upon the family.

  And yet they had. All of them. It had been a summer of secrets. Secrets that set them apart and made them tighten inside—secrets that they hadn’t even told one another. As they glanced around the sweeping cathedral, they each suddenly feared a bolt of lightning from above. They were the heiresses, all right, the sparkling princesses of a family that might or might not be doomed. But by Edith’s standards, they hadn’t been behaving like heiresses at all.

  And it was only a matter of time before the world found out.

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  1

  On a late April morning, as rain smeared the windowpanes, washed the dirt off the sidewalks, and slowed traffic on every block in New York City, twenty-seven-year-old Corinne Saybrook stood barefoot in a dressing room, talking on her cell phone in clipped, precise Turkish.

  “So we have permission to establish the liaison office?” Corinne asked Onur Alper, her contact at the Turkish branch of the General Directorate of Foreign Investments, whom she’d met the last time she’d visited.

  “Yes, all of the documents are in place,” Mr. Alper answered, the phone connection crackling. “We’ll still need you to register with the tax office, but Saybrook’s International is cleared to set up a branch of your business in the Republic of Turkey. Congratulations to you and your company, Miss Saybrook.”

  “Thank you so much,” Corinne said smoothly, adding a salaam before clapping the phone closed. She smiled at her feet, feeling the satisfying swell of victory. Her family’s jewelry empire was one of the most prominent retailers in the country, both for the masses and the fabulously wealthy, but it was Corinne’s job to make it number one in the world.

  Then she gazed down at herself, almost startled to see where she was—and what she was wearing. She was clad in an ivory Monique Lhuillier gown. The Chantilly lace fabric clung to her body, accentuating her porcelain skin. The hem ended neatly at the floor at the front and spilled into a long, romantic train at the back. A diamond necklace, on loan from her family’s private collection, sparkled at her throat, the jewels cold and heavy against her skin. Today was the final fitting for her wedding dress. Corinne had already canceled several times because of work obligations, but with the wedding in a month, time was running out.

  There was a knock on the dressing room door. Corinne’s cousin and matron of honor, Poppy, poked her head inside, dressed in a classic white shirt, khaki trench, skinny black pants, and a pair of bright red Hunter boots that only Poppy could pull off. Poppy had grown up on a farm in the Berkshires, spending as much time picking wild berries and milking cows as she did learning French and playing tennis.

  “Everything all right, honey?”

  Corinne turned to her and broke into an exuberant smile. “I just secured the liaison office in Turkey,” she said excitedly.

  “That’s wonderful.” The corners of Poppy’s mouth eased into a smile. “Although you are allowed to take a break, you know.” Poppy gazed down at Corinne’s dress and swooned. “Gorgeous. C’mon. Let’s show you off.” But just before she led Corinne out of the dressing room, Poppy touched her arm, her expression shifting to one of concern. “I meant to ask you,” she said in a low voice. “Tomorrow is May first. How are you . . . feeling?”

  Corinne sucked in her stomach and looked away. She was about to say that she was fine. But then she felt a peppery sensation behin
d her eyes. “Sometimes I wish I’d just told him,” she blurted. “It seems so selfish that I didn’t.”

  Poppy clutched Corinne’s hands. “Oh, honey.” A timorous look crossed her face. “You know, there’s still time.”

  Corinne straightened up and looked at herself in the three-way mirror. Her skin was flushed, her eyes a little dilated. “Forget I mentioned it, okay? I can’t believe I even said anything.”

  She grabbed her cell phone from the ottoman in the corner as Poppy gathered up her train. Her mother, Penelope, and her wedding planner, Evan Pierce, sat on an ivory divan in the main salon. Both women turned at the sound of Corinne’s swishing skirt. Penelope rose and walked shakily across the room—she had been in a skiing accident in Colorado that winter and no one had seen who hit her. It was just yet another incident chalked up to the Saybrook curse. The press had had a field day with that, especially as it was common knowledge that Corinne’s father, Mason, was supposed to have been on the private plane that had crashed two years earlier, killing Poppy’s parents and the pilot. He’d canceled at the last minute to attend a work meeting. Two near misses for the Saybrook patriarch and his wife in as many years.

  Penelope took Corinne’s hands.

  “Darling.” She smoothed down Corinne’s hair, fussed with the lace straps on the dress, and then stood back. “It’s simply beautiful.”

  Corinne nodded, tasting the waxy lipstick she’d just applied a few minutes ago. It wasn’t lost on her that her mother had said the dress was beautiful, not Corinne.

  Bettina, Lhuillier’s tailor, smiled proudly. “The alterations are perfect,” she murmured.

  Evan inspected the dress too. “Good. Fine,” she said in her nasal voice, her bluntly cut black hair falling across her sharp features.

  Poppy shook her head. “You’re so hard to please.”

  Evan shrugged, but Corinne knew it was just about the best compliment Evan could give. She was Poppy’s old roommate from boarding school; Corinne had never really clicked with her, but she was a shark in the Manhattan wedding industry, getting her way even if she had to step on a few pedicures along the way. Corinne appreciated that ferocity. Evan also kept all details about Corinne’s upcoming wedding a secret from rabid reporters and bloggers, even the anonymous masterminds behind the Blessed and the Cursed.