Heiress

by Janet Dailey

  Covertly, Lane studied the Babs before him, the face behind the veil still relatively unlined, her hair still femininely styled in soft curls, its color still the same shade of dark blonde—whether naturally or artificially retained, he didn't know. The sad, lost look in her hazel eyes, however, was poignant and real.

  "Dean never tired of their antics," Babs remarked when a half-dozen yearlings bolted away from the fence in mock fright as the limousine passed by. They streaked across the pasture with their tails flung high, and fanned out among the ancient oaks to watch the vehicle traveling up the driveway. "Beauty in motion, he called them. Living art."

  "Indeed." But he couldn't help thinking that even in death, she was clinging to him.

  The limousine rolled to a stop in front of the house. Lane waited until the driver assisted Babs out of the car, then he stepped out to join her. From the stable area, the shrill, challenging whistle of a stallion shattered the late-afternoon quiet. Drawn by the sound, Lane absently noticed all the improvements Dean had made since he'd taken over at River Bend following his father's death some nineteen years before.

  The old barn had been torn down to make room for the large stable complex with its attendant paddocks and support facilities, a complex that covered more than twice the area of the original. All the new structures mimicked the gabled roof and cupola of the mansion. In the distance, a bay stallion strutted along a high fence, its neck arched and ebony tail flagged, its small, fine head lifted high to drink in the wind's scents. Lane guessed that he was also the source of the shrill call that had rent the air a moment ago.

  "That's Nahr El Kedar." The statement came from Abbie Lawson, the first words he'd heard her speak since they'd left the cemetery. "You helped Daddy import him from Egypt."

  "I'd forgotten all about it. That was a long time ago." Somewhere around twenty years, if he remembered correctly. His participation in the project had been relatively minor, mainly consisting of putting Dean in touch with some of his contacts in the Middle East to facilitate the handling of all the red tape of importation.

  "Would you like to see him?" There was something challenging in the look she gave him. Lane suspected that Dean would have described it as one of his grandmother's "You come-with-me, and-you-come-with-me-now" looks.

  "Abbie," Babs began hesitantly.

  "Don't worry, Momma. I won't keep him long." Without waiting for his assent, she set off confidently toward the stud pen. Lane found himself walking along with her.

  After matching her for several strides, he realized that she wasn't as tall as he'd thought. The high heels she wore gave the illusion of height, plus she carried herself as if she were tall, but she was actually several inches shorter than he was. That seemed odd. He remembered. . . Lane caught his mistake. It was Rachel who had been his height.

  "I saw you talking with her at the cemetery."

  Lane was momentarily taken aback by Abbie's remark, coming as it did directly on the heels of his own thoughts. "You saw me. . . talking with whom?" he said, aware that he was treading on delicate ground.

  "I believe her name is Rachel Farr." She turned the full blaze of her blue eyes on him. "She claims that Daddy was her father. Is that true?"

  Lane didn't relish being the one who removed that last element of doubt. But it was equally pointless to lie. "Yes." Immediately she began staring at some point directly ahead of them and kept walking, but with a new stiffness of carriage that revealed the inner agitation she was tying desperately to control.

  "But why would he—" The instant Abbie heard the naïveté of her question, she cut it—off. She had already experienced firsthand the infidelity of a husband, with no real cause, no adequate justification. . . and no flaw in their sex life. Yet the idea that her father had been unfaithful to her mother—it shook Abbie. "I always thought my parents were happy together."

  Only now when she tried to remember how they had acted together did she realize how very little they had in common. Her father had been all wrapped up in the horses, but her mother took little interest in them, except to attend the social events at major shows. And their conversations: her mother never talked about anything but parties, clothes, new room decor, gossip, and, of course, the weather. Abbie hated to think how many times she'd heard her mother brightly declare, "I never discuss politics, business, or economics. That way I never show my ignorance." And she didn't. If any conversation took a serious turn, she either changed it or moved on. But that was just Babs. She was funny and cute, and engagingly frivolous. Everyone loved her.

  Heavens, there were times when Abbie had wanted to shake her. She had never been able to run to her mother with any of her childhood problems, no matter how trivial. She wanted more than her mother's pat answer, "I wouldn't worry about it. Everything always works out for the best." Too frequently, her father hadn't been available either. Abbie had invariably poured out all her troubles to Ben.

  Was that what her father had sought in a mistress? Someone to talk to? Someone who would listen and understand? Someone who was more than a decoration on his arm? Someone to stimulate him intellectually as well as sexually? Almost immediately, Abbie shied away from such thoughts that smacked of disloyalty to her mother. Even if her mother was a disappointment to him in some ways, her father had no right to take another woman. He had betrayed her. He had betrayed them all.

  As Lane and Abbie reached the stud pen, she walked up to the stout white boards. The dark bay stallion, his satin coat the color of burnished mahogany, strutted over to her, snorting and tossing his head, then arched his neck over the top board and thrust his finely chiseled head toward her.

  A picture of alertness, the stallion stood still for an instant, his graying muzzle nuzzling her palm, his large dark eyes bright with interest, his pricked ears curving inward, nearly touching at the tips, his nostrils distended, revealing the pink inner flesh of their passages. For all the refinement of his triangularly shaped head tapering quickly to a small muzzle, the width between his eyes, and the exaggerated dish of his face, there was a definite masculine quality about the horse.

  Abruptly the stallion lifted his head and gazed in the direction of the broodmares in the distant pasture, ignoring Abbie as she raised her hand and smoothed the long black forelock down the center of his forehead, the thick forelock concealing the narrow, jagged streak of white. With a snaking twist of his head, the stallion moved away from her and wheeled from the fence to pace its length.

  "Kedar's in remarkable shape for a stallion twenty-two years old," Abbie said, just for a minute wanting the distraction he provided.

  "He's a fine-looking animal," Lane agreed.

  "His legs aren't all that good. He's calf-kneed and a little down in the hocks. But he has an absolutely incredible head, and Daddy always was a headhunter. As long as an Arabian had a beautiful head, he assumed it had four legs. Arabians of straight Egyptian bloodlines are noted for having classic heads. That's why all the Arabians on the place trace directly back to Ali Pasha Sherif stock—all, that is, except for that two-year-old filly over there." Abbie gestured to the silvery-white horse standing at the fence in the near pasture. "Her dam was the last of the Arabian horses my grandfather bred. I wouldn't let Daddy sell her when he sold off all the others after Granddaddy died. Daddy gave me her filly last year."

  "You've obviously inherited your father's love for horses."

  "I suppose." When the stallion came back to the section of the fence where they were standing, Abbie idly rubbed his cheek. "If I wanted to spend any time with him, I didn't have much choice."

  Immediately she regretted the bitterness in her statement, especially since it was only part of the story. Horses had been her companions and playmates all her life. She loved working with Arabians and being around them—not just because of her father, but because of the feeling of satisfaction it gave her.

  Blowing softly, the stallion nuzzled the hollow of her hand Abbie returned to the subject that was really on her mind. "My mother mus
t have known about this all along. Why did she put up with it?" Abbie didn't really expect an answer, but Lane gave her one.

  "I think. . . they reached an understanding."

  "Momma does have a knack for ignoring anything remotely unpleasant," Abbie admitted, wryly cynical. But his answer explained why she had childhood images of her mother shutting herself in her room for hours and coming out with red and swollen eyes whenever her father left on a "business" trip to California; yet in recent years, Abbie could only recall her mother being unusually silent right after he'd gone. "How many other people knew about Daddy's. . . affair?"

  "Initially there was some gossip, but it pretty well died out a long time ago."

  "And this woman, the one he had an affair with—what happened to her?"

  "She died several years ago. Rachel's been pretty much on her own since she was seventeen."

  "You expect her to be named as one of the beneficiaries in Daddy's will, don't you?"

  "I think it's logical to assume he would have included her."

  "And if he didn't, she could contest the will and demand her share of his estate, couldn't she?" Abbie challenged, voicing the fear that had been twisting her insides all during the long ride from the cemetery—a fear that filled her with anger and deep resentment. River Bend was her home. It had been in the Lawson family for generations. This Rachel person had no right to any part of it.

  "That will depend on how the will is written. Dean may have directed the bulk of his estate to go to his widow, Babs, or he may have set up a trust, giving her a life estate on the property and providing for it to pass on to his heirs upon her death."

  "'Heirs'? If you're going to use the plural, shouldn't it be 'heiresses'?" she suggested stiffly.

  "Until the will is read, Abbie, I don't think we should be anticipating problems."

  "I'm not like my mother, Lane. I prefer to face every possible contingency; And you can't deny that this might end up in a long and messy court battle."

  "It's possible."

  Looking away from him, Abbie gazed out over the shaded pastures all the way to the distant line of trees that hugged the banks of the Brazos. She knew every foot of River Bend, every bush and every tree. The horses out there—she could call them all by name and list their pedigree. This was her heritage. How could Lane stand there and tell her not to feel that it was threatened?

  "Who was his mistress? What was she like?" She sensed his hesitation and swung back to face him. "I want to know. And don't worry about sparing my feelings. It's better if I know the truth after all these years. Momma probably doesn't know what it is anymore. You're the only one who can give me that."

  After studying her thoughtfully for several seconds, Lane began telling her all he knew. "Her name was Caroline Farr. She was from somewhere in the East, I believe. Dean met her at a private showing of an art exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Houston."

  Chapter 5

  Hot and tired, Dean tugged at the knot of his tie as he climbed the grand staircase to the second-floor suite he shared with his wife. He wished to hell he could shed all the pressure and frustration of the office as easily as he could shed the business suit and tie he wore to it. For three damned long years he had tried, but he just didn't fit the mold. Whereas making business decisions was so easy for R.D., Dean would agonize for days before recommending a course of action, and even then, most of the time he hadn't considered half the options R.D. raised. He had never felt so inadequate.

  A long gallop before dinner, that's what he needed, Dean decided as he pushed open the door to their bedroom and walked in. He paused when he saw Babs, clad in a dressing gown and seated at the vanity table, primping in the beveled mirror.

  "There you are, darling," Her reflection smiled at him from the mirror. "How was your day?"

  "Rotten." Dean pulled the loosened tie from around his neck and closed the door behind him.

  "That's too bad. But tonight you can relax and forget all about it and just enjoy yourself," she declared airily and waved a hand in the direction of the four-poster bed with its delicately carved maple posts ending in ornate finials and its Marlborough feet. "I had Jackson lay out your clothes, and your bathwater is already drawn."

  Dean stared at the evening suit so precisely laid out on the peach and green floral-striped spread and began to tremble with anger. "What's going on? Don't tell me. Let me guess. It's another one of your damned parties." He couldn't hide the disgust he felt. Night after night, there was always something: a formal dinner invitation, a charity benefit—or if they stayed at home, they invariably had company over to dine, when they weren't the ones giving the party.

  "Darling." Babs partially turned around to look at him, her hazel eyes widened by the look of hurt surprise he had come to know so well after nearly three years of marriage. "Tonight they're holding that private showing at the museum. When I asked, you said you wanted to go."

  Maybe he had. He didn't remember. Too many other things were on his mind. "I've changed my mind, and we're not going."

  "But everyone's expecting us to be there."

  "Just once, can't we have a quiet evening at home?" "And talk," he wanted to add, but he had already learned that Babs didn't want to listen. Every time he tried to express the doubts he had about his role in the company and the dissatisfaction he felt, she brushed them aside with some variation of "It's hard now, but I know you'll work it out. You always do." He tried to tell himself that it was wonderful to have a wife who believed in him, who believed he could handle it. But he couldn't handle it. What would she think of him when she found that out?

  "We'll stay home if that's what you want. I honestly didn't know that you didn't want to go tonight. I'm sorry. Truly I am." She rose from the peach velvet cushion covering the seat of the carved maple bench and crossed the room to cup his face in her hands. "I want to do whatever you want. So if you don't want to go, neither do I."

  She smiled brightly, but he knew it was a lie. She loved all these social functions. It gave her the chance to be a little girl again and play dress-up. He felt guilty for depriving her of that. Just because he was miserable, that was no reason to make her evening miserable, too.

  "We'll go." He caught one of her hands and pressed her fingertips to his lips. "You're probably right. I need to go out and take my mind off the office."

  "I know I am." Raising on her tiptoes, Babs kissed him warmly. "Now, hurry and take your bath before the water gets as cool as rain."

  Minutes later, Dean was stretched out in the long, claw-footed bathtub, letting the tension float away and sipping on a bourbon and water Babs had thoughtfully fixed for him. He listened with only half an ear to Babs as she chatted away to him from the other side of the door to their private bath.

  "You're just going to love the new gown I'm wearing tonight, Dean." There was a slight pause before she continued. "Remind me to wear these stiletto heels the next time we're going to a party where there will be dancing. They are positively deadly. Once and for all I'm going to cure that left-footed Kyle MacDonnell of stepping on my feet. Oh, talking about cures, that reminds me. . . I was talking to Josie Phillips the other day, and she told me that if I wanted to guarantee myself of getting pregnant that we needed to make love on a night when there is a full moon."

  "What?" The water sloshed around him as Dean sat bolt upright in the tub, hoping his hearing had deceived him.

  "A full moon. Isn't that the wildest thing you've ever heard? But Josie swears that all four of her children were conceived when she and Homer did it on nights when there was a full moon outside. I checked the calendar, and there won't be a full moon again until the middle of this month."

  In a flash, Dean was out of the tub. He was still dripping water as he opened the connecting door and walked into the bedroom, absently tying the sash of his terry-cloth robe around his waist.

  "Babs, just how many people have you told that you haven't been able to get pregnant?"

  She gave him
a blank look, then shrugged. "I don't know. It's hardly a secret. People aren't blind. They can see for themselves that I'm not going to have a baby," Babs declared smoothing a hand over the close-fitting waistline of her off-the-shoulder evening dress in a black-on-white floral silk. "What am I supposed to say when people ask when we're going to have a baby? That we don't want one yet? You know we do. And you know how anxious poor R.D. is for us to have one."

  "I don't think it's something you should be going around telling every Helen, Mary, and Jane about." He had enough trouble without having to face friends who knew he couldn't even manage to get his wife pregnant. "If you want to talk to someone about it, talk to a doctor."

  "I have." She slipped on a long white-kid evening glove, carefully fitting the snug material between each finger. "He said I was just being too anxious and that what we needed to do was stop trying. Have you ever heard anything so preposterous? How in the world does he expect me to get pregnant if we don't do anything?" She reached for her other glove. "You really need to hurry and get dressed, honey. R.D. is already waiting for us downstairs."

  At the private showing of the art museum's latest acquisitions, Dean viewed the new paintings with indifference. A low hum of voices surrounded him, the volume mostly subdued, although occasionally a cultured laugh rose above it. Despite the setting, there was a sameness to the gathering—the same people, the same conversation, and the same high-fashion look that made up nearly every affair Babs insisted they attend.

  He wished now he hadn't given in and agreed to come. He could have been home at River Bend with the horses. There was a show in two weeks and he wanted the half-dozen Arabians they were taking to be in top condition. Not that he really needed to worry about that—not with Ben on the job. He envied Ben being able to work with the horses every day, all day. All he could manage was an early-morning ride.