Secrets

by Jude Deveraux

  “I think you look like one of those Victorian women with their hourglass figures,” Brent said. “But that’s beside the point. In case you haven’t noticed, Althea doesn’t have much on top. You’d never be able to button most of her clothes, but this one might fit.”

  Cassie blinked at him. Did all men everywhere look at the figures of all women? And how could he tell about her? Every day she’d worn loose, baggy clothes.

  “Try it on,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t dare,” Cassie said, but she couldn’t keep the desire out of her voice. Try on a costume that Althea Fairmont had worn?

  “Come on, she and Thomas and the kid left an hour ago. I think they were going plantation visiting, so they won’t be back before evening. Let’s go down to her bedroom and you can try it on. I’ll get my camera, then we can go somewhere and take photos.”

  The idea of seeing Althea’s bedroom, plus putting on the famous dress, was too tempting to pass up. “You’re on,” she said.

  “Isn’t there a hat with that thing?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A little velvet cap with a net that goes over the hair.”

  He looked in the tall box but didn’t see it. “Why don’t you go down and I’ll see if I can find it. I think there are some shoes on the bottom.”

  Cassie was holding the dress draped across both arms. “Where is her bedroom?”

  “See that door there? It leads to the ground floor. Her bedroom is at the bottom.” He looked up. “Rosalie went to the grocery, so we’re alone in the house, so look around if you want to.”

  Cassie didn’t know if she was brave enough to go snooping. Trying on a dress without permission was more than she could handle in one day. At the far end of the attic was a door she hadn’t noticed before and she went down two flights until she came to the bottom. Quietly, she opened the door and listened. Not a sound in the house. Even though she was alone, she tiptoed across the corridor, then cautiously opened the door into Althea’s bedroom.

  It was as romantic as she’d hoped. The room was mostly white—as for a virgin, Cassie thought—but had splashes of red and green here and there. The bed, as big as a small stage, was draped in gauzy white silk. The bed skirt was white and embroidered with a border of red rosebuds, the leaves entwining with one another. The coverlet was white with red buttons, and there were tiny red silk pillows among the many white pillows.

  She walked carefully across the pristine white carpet to the open door into the white marble bathroom. As soon as she saw it, Cassie smiled. It was an exact copy of the bathroom in the 1936 classic To One and All . Art Deco to its core.

  Feeling like a criminal—and maybe she was, since she was trespassing—she stripped off her ugly, modern clothes and slid the big costume over her head. It wasn’t easy to get into, and it caught, with something hanging on to her hair and not letting go. When she heard the soft knock on the door, her heart nearly stopped.

  “It’s me,” Brent said.

  “I’m stuck,” Cassie called out, and in the next moment she felt Brent’s hands on the dress. Part of her was aware that she was just in her underwear, but then, didn’t she show as much at the pool?

  “Be still,” he said. “There! I got it. Now careful.” He helped her slide the dress downward over her body.

  The dress had been heavy in her arms, but when it was on her body, it seemed even heavier.

  “Suck in,” Brent said, “and I’ll get this hooked.”

  As Cassie stared at herself in the wall-to-wall mirror over the gold sink, she could see herself transforming with every hook that Brent fastened in the back. Her waist was going in, hips out, and breasts up. Cassie’s neat French braid had come undone, and now her thick dark hair was cascading around her face and over her shoulders.

  He moved her hair to the front, over one shoulder, as he fastened the last hook. “There. I told you it would fit. Perfect.”

  He looked at her in the mirror, his hands on her shoulders. He was a foot taller than she was, and his blond hair was as thick as Cassie’s. “Beautiful,” he said. “Really beautiful.”

  Cassie ran her hands down the sides of the dress. It was uncomfortable and it was cutting off her breathing, but a girl could put up with a little discomfort to look like this, she thought.

  Suddenly, Brent’s head came up and he turned toward the door. “Houston, we have a problem.”

  Cassie heard the voices and especially heard the distinctive voice that was heading toward the bathroom. It was Althea, and she was about thirty seconds away from finding them. Cassie was petrified, too scared to move.

  But not so Brent. He scooped her clothes off the floor as he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door on the right-hand side of the bathroom. They were in an enormous walk-in closet, and she could see that it held winter clothes. There was a glass-doored area that was full of furs, and incongruously, Cassie wondered if it was a refrigerated room.

  Brent didn’t let her stand in the middle of the room but opened a white, louvered door and pulled her inside, then shut the door behind them. They were slammed together in the tiny room-within-a-room, chest to chest. She could feel his heart beating against her own.

  Part of her thought the whole thing was funny. After all, what would happen if they were caught? Cassie couldn’t be fired from a job she didn’t really have. And she was sure that if Brent were fired he could get a better job than being a gardener/bodyguard.

  But common sense had nothing to do with reality. They waited, their bodies pressed together, and listened for the quiet sounds of Althea’s heels on the marble bathroom floor. When she came close to the door to the closet, they held their breaths, then let them out when she moved away.

  For a moment they heard nothing. Had she left? Or was she in the bedroom? Cassie looked up at Brent, and he put his finger to his lips. Silently, he opened the door and looked out. Nothing and no one.

  But just as he started to step out, the door to the closet opened and Brent stepped back inside with Cassie. His arms went around her and he pressed her face to his chest as they listened to Althea’s footsteps on the carpet. They could hear drawers being opened and closed, then a door was opened. Cassie hadn’t had much time to look about, but there were at least three doors inside the closet. The area they were in now had floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with what seemed to be cashmere sweaters. If what Althea was looking for was a sweater and she opened the door, they would be exposed.

  They heard her just outside the door and Brent held Cassie tightly, as though to protect her from something, but Althea didn’t open the door. Instead, they heard her call out in answer to someone that she was ready to go. Seconds later, they heard her heels on the marble floor, then the bedroom door was closed and all was silent.

  “I think it’s safe now,” Cassie said several minutes later. Her voice was muffled because her face was pressed against Brent’s chest—his beautifully sculpted chest, that is.

  “Mmmm,” was all Brent said as he put his cheek against the top of her head.

  Cassie’s arms were around him, the two of them holding on to each other as though they were under siege, but she dropped her arms. His grip on her didn’t loosen. “Brent!” she said. “I think it’s safe to leave now.”

  “Do we have to?”

  It wasn’t easy, but she managed to step back from him about two inches. “Yes, we have to,” she said. She put her hand on the door to open it. It was dark in the little room, but she could still see his eyes gleaming.

  He put his hand over hers. “Will you go out with me? On a date?”

  “I’m not sure this is the time to—”

  “This is the perfect time. How about Saturday? I’ll pick you up at eleven and we’ll have lunch, then we can…I don’t know. I’ll think of something. How about it?”

  “And what if I say no?” she asked, teasing.

  “I won’t unfasten the back of that dress.”

  “Is that extortion or blackmail?”

  “
It’s the plea of a desperate man.”

  His words were, of course, absurd, but they made her feel good. Maybe it was the dress that made her feel as though she were beautiful, but she could almost believe he was sincere. “Saturday at eleven it is,” she said. “I’ll meet you at—“

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Brent said, his voice changing from seductive to firm. “I am not to be denied the pleasure of picking you up at Jefferson Ames’s house. He’ll be there, won’t he?”

  “I assume so,” Cassie said as Brent opened the door and looked around. Why was it that so many people seemed to know Jeff? Was it from his work? He worked on commercial buildings and bridges, anything that had a superstructure of iron and steel. Maybe he’d calculated where the I-beams for Althea’s house had been placed.

  Brent took Cassie’s hand as she stepped out of the tiny room. “Don’t tell him I’m going to pick you up,” he said. “I want to surprise him.”

  “Do you want to take out Jeff or me?”

  “You. Definitely you.”

  They walked out of the closet, through the bathroom, and into the bedroom. Brent opened the door of the bedroom and looked in the hallway, but saw no one. He turned back to Cassie. “Promise?”

  “That I won’t tell Jeff that I have a date?” She was confused. “Why would he care if I have a date or not? He’s about to get engaged to Skylar Beaumont.”

  “Think so?” Brent asked, turning to look at her. “I think we should take your photo in the conservatory. With the orchids.”

  “I need to brush my hair.”

  For a moment, Brent put his hand on Cassie’s long, dark hair. “It’s perfect as it is. Don’t touch it. Stay here and let me have a look, but I think the cars are gone.”

  She didn’t ask how he knew that, but then she was still thinking too hard about what he’d meant about Jeff to think of anything else. There was no reason why Jeff would care if Cassie dated or whom she went out with, but it was nice to think that he would.

  The house was empty, and when Brent returned, they went to the beautiful conservatory and spent over an hour taking photos of Cassie in the heavy dress. It seemed that Brent’s hobby was photography and he showed up with a big tripod and a professional-quality digital Nikon. Under his direction, Cassie was able to laugh and enjoy herself, and not worry that Althea was going to return at any moment.

  “Isn’t that the dress the queen wore to beg for her life?” Brent asked as he looked at her over the camera.

  “Yes,” Cassie said. “But the king wouldn’t listen to her.”

  “Remember any lines?” he asked.

  Before Cassie knew what she was doing, she was performing. As a lonely child, she’d often replayed the roles she’d seen in old movies, and she had a good memory for even lengthy scenes. With Brent’s subtle urgings, Cassie soon found herself on her knees, her hands clasped, and she was begging a selfish king to spare her life. She put herself so deeply into the role that when the tears came, they were real. She felt as though she was there in the moment and that she was actually begging for her life.

  When she finished the scene, she came back to the present and heaved herself up, the weight of the dress making it difficult to stand. Brent was staring at her in an odd way. “What?” she asked.

  “I think you’re the daughter Althea wanted.”

  Cassie knew he was just being nice, but the compliment pleased her so much that she blushed. Anyone who knew much about Althea had read that the great disappointment of her life was her daughter, her only child. The girl had left her mother’s house when she was eighteen, and refused to have anything more to do with her. As far as Cassie knew she was still alive, but she had no idea what had happened to her.

  “Okay,” he said as he began to pack up his equipment. “It’s time to get back upstairs and pretend we’ve been hard at work these last hours.”

  A minute later, they heard voices. This time there was no hesitation as they grabbed the equipment and began running. They stopped to pick up Cassie’s clothes from the bathroom, then scurried up the back stairs to the attic. Quickly, he unfastened the hundred or so heavy-duty hooks and eyes at the back of her dress. She stepped behind a wooden screen and put her own clothes back on.

  When Elsbeth came upstairs to see them, Brent and Cassie were on opposite sides of the attic, quietly cataloging.

  Now, in the bathtub, Cassie thought about the whole week with fondness. Most of the time she’d spent alone in the attic, going through the artifacts, but sometimes Brent joined her. He called her “Houston,” from when he’d said that they had a problem. She’d never had a nickname before and she liked it.

  And now it was Saturday and she had a date. An old-fashioned, ordinary date. Like she’d had in college, she thought. She told herself not to be so excited, but she was. This is good for me, she thought. It was good to get away from Jeff—and even from Thomas and Elsbeth. As much as she loved them, they weren’t her family. She wasn’t Elsbeth’s mother and she wasn’t Jeff’s wife and she wasn’t Thomas’s daughter.

  For a moment those thoughts made her heart lurch, but she took a breath, got out of the tub, and began to dry herself. Yes, indeed, this was good. She would go out with Brent, and later, she’d make an effort to meet other men and go out with them as well. She had foolishly thought she was “in love” with some guy she’d met when she was a kid, and even more foolishly, she’d pursued him. And look where it had got her, she thought. She was twenty-five years old and had nothing. She had no home, no family—her mother didn’t count—and soon she’d have no job.

  By the time she dressed, she was feeling much better. She’d get over Jeff. In fact, after days around a gorgeous hunk like Brent, she thought she might get over Jeff rather quickly.

  Downstairs, Thomas and Elsbeth were sitting on the couch in the big living room, watching a DVD. Or, rather, Elsbeth was watching and Thomas was dozing. Cassie put her finger to her lips for Elsbeth to say nothing and let the man sleep. Althea had worn him out in the last week.

  Jeff was in the library, sitting at his desk and looking at his laptop. He didn’t look up when she entered.

  “I don’t mean to bother you,” she said quietly, “but I’m going out, so you’ll have to do something about lunch.”

  “Sure,” he said distractedly. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing. I’m going out.”

  “Okay, then you pick up something.” Obviously, his mind was on whatever was on his computer.

  She stepped farther into the library. “ I am going out, so you must get lunch. And maybe dinner. Elsbeth is too young to make lunch, and your father is too tired.”

  He looked up, blinking at her. “If you’re going to the grocery, you can get something there. I really need to—”

  “I’m not going to the grocery,” she said, looking at him hard. “I am going out. ”

  It was then that he looked her up and down and saw that she wasn’t in her usual big cotton clothes. She had on nice linen trousers and a pretty blouse. She was also wearing makeup and jewelry. “Where are you going?” he blurted.

  “On a date,” she said, then turned to leave the room.

  But Jeff bounded across the room in a few steps and stood in front of her. “You’re going on a date?”

  “Yes,” she said and took a step to walk around him.

  He blocked her way. “Why are you going on a date?”

  She looked at him in disbelief. “Because I want to. Because I need to get out of this house. Because I want to have some fun. Why does anyone go on a date? You go on dates all the time.”

  “Me? Oh, yeah, Skylar.”

  “Yeah, Skylar.” Again, she started to step around him, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “So who are you going with? Albert?” He was grinning in a smirking way.

  Albert was the man who came once a month to trim the hedges. He was about ninety. Cassie glared at Jeff. “Yes, I’m going out with Albert. We’re going to spend the afternoon having wild
sex. Would you please move?”

  He stepped aside with a flamboyant gesture, but he followed her into the kitchen. As Cassie straightened up the room, Jeff sat down on a bar stool at the island. “So if it’s not Albert, who is it?”

  She started to tell him that she was going out with Brent Goodwin, but she’d promised she wouldn’t tell. She said nothing.

  “Okay, so don’t tell me,” Jeff said, “but I think you should leave a number where you can be reached. In case of an emergency. You never know what could happen. To Elsbeth, I mean.”

  “If anything bad happens to Elsbeth, call a hospital, not me .”

  “Yeah, of course I would, but she’ll want you. It would be horrible if she were in a hospital and crying for you and you were out with some stranger having a good time.”

  Cassie looked at him in disbelief. She really couldn’t believe he was saying these things. “You’re her father. If she was crying for anyone, it would be for you. I’m the paid employee, remember?”

  “Come on, Cassie, you know that you’re a great deal more to Elsbeth than just an employee.”

  Cassie threw up her hands. “I don’t believe this! You’re about to discharge me in…however long it is until you get married, but you’re dumping guilt on me for going on a date. I need a life. A real life. One of my own. I need something to do besides fold your socks and take care of your house.”

  Jeff’s eyes widened. “Discharge you? Why would I do that? You know that Elsbeth loves you.”

  She leaned across the island so her face was close to his. “But Skylar hates me.”

  “Oh, well,” he said. “She’s one of those women who hates all women. It’s nothing personal.” He smiled at her.

  Cassie wanted to throw something at him, but the ringing of the doorbell made her straighten. She took a couple of deep breaths and straightened her shoulders. “That’s probably my date.”

  Turning her back on him, she walked to the entrance hall. She opened the door to a smiling Brent; he was holding a large bouquet of flowers.

  “For you,” he said. “Hope you like them.”