Already smiling, Meredith turned and put her hands into Parker’s outstretched palms, then felt her knees go weak as he pulled her forward and kissed her cheek. “You look beautiful,” he whispered, “and very tired. How about going for one of our walks after we get the social amenities over with?”
“All right,” she said, surprised and relieved that her voice sounded steady.
When they reached the alcove, Meredith found herself in the ludicrous position of being reintroduced to four people she already knew, four people who had acted as if she were invisible when she’d last seen them several years earlier, and who now seemed gratifyingly eager to befriend her and include her in their activities. Shelly invited her to a party the following week and Leigh urged her to sit with them at Glenmoor’s Fourth of July dance.
Parker deliberately “introduced” her to Jon last. “I can’t believe it’s you,” he said, but the alcohol was making his words a little slurred. “Miss Bancroft,” he continued with his most winning grin. “I was just explaining to these people that I’m in urgent need of a suitably rich and gorgeous wife. Would you marry me next weekend?”
Meredith’s father had mentioned Jonathan’s frequent rifts with his disappointed parents to her; Meredith assumed Jon’s “urgent need” to marry a “rich” woman was probably the result of one of those, and his entire attitude struck her as funny. “Next weekend will be perfect,” she said, smiling brightly. “My father will disown me for marrying before I finish college, though, so we’ll have to live with your parents.”
“God forbid!” Jonathan shuddered, and everyone laughed, including Jonathan.
Putting his hand on Meredith’s elbow, Parker rescued her from further nonsense by saying, “Meredith needs some fresh air. We’re going for a walk.”
Outside, they strolled across the front lawn and wandered down the drive. “How are you bearing up?” he asked.
“I’m fine, really—just a little tired.” In the ensuing silence, Meredith tried to think of some sort of witty and sophisticated repartee, then she settled for simplicity and said with sincere interest, “A lot must have happened to you in the last year. . . .”
He nodded and said the last thing Meredith wanted to hear. “You can be one of the first to congratulate me. Sarah Ross and I are getting married. We’re going to announce our engagement officially at a party Saturday night.”
The world tilted sickeningly. Sarah Ross! Meredith knew who Sarah was and she didn’t like her. Although she was extremely pretty and very vivacious, she’d always struck Meredith as being shallow and vain. “I hope you’ll be very happy,” she said, carefully hiding her doubt and disappointment.
“I hope so too.”
For a half hour they strolled about the grounds, talking about his plans for his future and then about her plans for her own. He was wonderful to talk to, Meredith thought with a feeling of poignant loss—encouraging and understanding, and he completely supported her desire to attend Northwestern instead of Maryville.
They were heading toward the front of the house when a limousine pulled up in the drive and a striking brunette got out of it followed by two young men in their early twenties. “I see the grieving widow has finally decided to put in an appearance,” Parker said with uncharacteristic sarcasm as he looked at Charlotte Bancroft. Large diamond earrings glittered at her ears, and despite the simple gray suit she was wearing, she looked alluring and curvaceous. “Did you notice that she didn’t shed a tear at the funeral? There’s something about that woman that reminds me of Lucretia Borgia.”
Privately Meredith agreed with the analogy. “She isn’t here to accept condolences. She wants the will read this afternoon, as soon as the house clears out, so that she can go back to Palm Beach tonight.”
“Speaking of ‘clearing out,’ ” Parker said, glancing at his watch, “I have an appointment in an hour.” Leaning forward, he pressed a brotherly kiss to her cheek. “Tell your father I said good-bye.”
Meredith watched him as he walked away, taking all her romantic girlhood dreams with him. The summer breeze ruffled his sun-streaked hair, and his strides were long and sure. He opened his car door, stripped off the jacket of his dark suit, and put it over the back of the passenger seat. Then he looked up and waved good-bye to her.
Trying desperately not to dwell on her loss, she forced herself to walk forward to greet Charlotte. Not once during the service had Charlotte spoken to either Meredith or her father; she had simply stood between her sons, her expression blank. “How are you feeling?” Meredith asked politely.
“I’m feeling impatient to go home,” the woman retorted icily. “How soon can we get down to business?”
“The house is still full of people,” Meredith said, mentally recoiling from Charlotte’s attitude. “You’ll have to ask my father about the reading of the will.”
Charlotte turned on the steps, her face glacial. “I haven’t spoken to your father since that day in Palm Beach. The next time I speak to him, it will be when I’m calling all the shots and he’s begging me to talk to him. Until then you’ll have to act as interpreter, Meredith.” She walked into the house with a son on each side of her like an honor guard.
Meredith stared at her back, chilled by the hatred emanating from her. The day in Palm Beach Charlotte had referred to was still vividly clear in Meredith’s memory. Seven years earlier, she and her father had flown to Florida at the invitation of her grandfather, who’d moved there after his heart attack. When they arrived they discovered that they had not been invited merely for the Easter holidays, but rather to attend a wedding—Cyril Bancroft’s wedding to Charlotte, who had been his secretary for two decades. At thirty-eight, she was thirty years younger than he, a widow with two teenage sons only a few years older than Meredith.
Meredith never knew why Philip and Charlotte detested each other, but from what little she heard of the explosive argument between her father and grandfather that day, the animosity had started long before, when Cyril still lived in Chicago. With Charlotte within hearing, Philip had called the woman a scheming, ambitious slut, and he’d called his father a silly, aging fool who was being duped into marrying her so that her sons would get a piece of Cyril’s money.
That trip to Palm Beach had been the last time Meredith had seen her grandfather. From there, he had continued to control his business investments, but he left the operation of Bancroft & Company entirely to Meredith’s father, as he had done from the day he moved to Palm Beach. Although the department store represented less than one fourth of the family’s net worth, by its very nature its operation required her father’s complete attention. Unlike the family’s other vast holdings, Bancroft’s was far more than a mere stock transaction that yielded dividends; it was the foundation of the family’s original wealth and a source of great pride.
“This is the last will and testament of Cyril Bancroft,” her grandfather’s attorney began when Meredith and her father were seated in the library along with Charlotte and her sons. The first bequests were for large sums that went to various charities, and after that four more bequests were made to Cyril Bancroft’s servants—$15,000 each to his chauffeur, housekeeper, gardener, and caretaker.
Since the attorney had specifically requested that Meredith be present, she had already assumed that she was probably the recipient of some small bequest. Despite that, she jumped when Wilson Riley spoke her name: “To my granddaughter, Meredith Bancroft, I bequeath the sum of four million dollars.” Meredith’s mouth fell open in shocked disbelief at the enormous sum, and she had to concentrate on listening while Riley continued: “Although distance and circumstances have prevented me from getting to know Meredith well, it was apparent to me when I last saw her that she is a warm and intelligent girl who will use this money wisely. To help ensure that she does, I make this bequest with the stipulation that the funds are to be held in trust for her, along with any interest, dividends, etc., until she attains the age of thirty. I further appoint my son, Philip Edward
Bancroft, to act as her trustee and to maintain full guardianship over said funds.”
Pausing to clear his throat, Riley looked from Philip to Charlotte to her sons, Jason and Joel, and then he began to read Cyril’s words again: “In the interest of fairness, I have divided the rest of my estate as evenly as possible between my remaining heirs. To my son, Philip Edward Bancroft, I bequeath all my stock, and my entire interest in, Bancroft & Company, a department store which constitutes approximately one fourth of my entire estate.” Meredith heard it, but she couldn’t make sense of it. “In the interest of fairness” he’d left his only child one fourth of his estate? Surely, if he meant to divide everything evenly, his wife was entitled to no more than one half, not three fourths. And then, as if from a distance, she heard the attorney finish, “To my wife, Charlotte, and my legally adopted sons, Jason and Joel, I leave equal shares in the remaining three-fourths of my estate. I further stipulate that Charlotte Bancroft is to act as trustee over Jason and Joel’s portion until such time as they have both attained the age of thirty.”
The words legally adopted tore at Meredith’s heart as she saw the look of betrayal flash across her father’s ashen face. Slowly, he turned his head and looked at Charlotte; she returned his stare unflinchingly while a smile of malicious triumph spread across her face. “You conniving bitch!” he said between his teeth. “You said you’d get him to adopt them, and you did.”
“I warned you years ago that I would. I’m warning you now that our score still isn’t settled,” she added, her smile widening as if she was thriving on his fury. “Think about that, Philip. Lie awake at night, wondering where I’ll strike you next and what I’ll take away from you. Lie awake, wondering and worrying, just like you made me lie awake eighteen years ago.”
The bones of his face stood out as he clamped his jaws to stop himself from dignifying that with a reply. Meredith tore her gaze from the two of them and looked at Charlotte’s sons. Jason’s face was a replica of his mother’s—triumphant and malicious. Joel was frowning at his shoes. Joel is soft, Meredith’s father had said years ago. Charlotte and Jason are like greedy barracudas, but at least you know what to expect of them. The younger boy, Joel, makes my skin crawl—there’s something strange about him.
As if he sensed that Meredith was looking at him, Joel glanced up, his expression carefully noncommittal. He didn’t look strange to Meredith or at all threatening. In fact, when she’d last seen him on the occasion of the wedding, Joel had gone out of his way to be nice to her. At the time, Meredith had felt sorry for him because his mother openly preferred Jason, and Jason, who was two years older, seemed to feel nothing for his brother but contempt.
Suddenly Meredith couldn’t stand the oppressive atmosphere in the room any longer. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said to the lawyer, who was spreading some papers out on the desk, “I’ll wait outside until you’re finished.”
“You’ll need to sign these papers, Miss Bancroft.”
“I’ll sign them before you leave, after my father has read them.”
Instead of going upstairs, Meredith decided to go outside. It was getting dark and she wandered down the steps, letting the evening breeze cool her face. Behind her, the front door opened, and she turned, thinking it was the lawyer calling her back inside. Joel stood there, arrested in midstep, as startled as she by their confrontation. He hesitated as if he wanted to remain but wasn’t certain he was welcome.
It had been hammered into her head that one was always gracious to anyone who was one’s guest, so Meredith tried to smile. “It’s nice out here, isn’t it?”
Joel nodded, accepting the unspoken invitation to join her if he wished, and he walked down the steps. At twenty-three, he was shorter by several inches than his older brother, and not as attractive as Jason. He stood, looking at her, as if unable to think what to say. “You’ve changed,” he finally said.
“I imagine I have. I was eleven years old the last time I saw you.”
“After what just happened in there, you must wish to God you’d never laid eyes on any of us.”
Still a little dazed by the terms of her grandfather’s will and unable to assimilate what it all meant in terms of the future, Meredith shrugged. “Tomorrow I may feel that way. Right now I just feel—numb.”
“I’d like you to know—” he said haltingly, “that I didn’t plot to steal your grandfather’s affection or his money from your father.”
Unable to either hate him or forgive him for cheating her father of his rightful inheritance, Meredith sighed and looked up at the sky. “What did your mother mean in there—about settling a score with my father?”
“All I know is that they’ve hated each other for as long as I can remember. I have no idea what started it, but I do know my mother won’t stop until she’s satisfied with her revenge.”
“God, what a mess!”
“Lady,” he replied with deadly certainty, “it’s only just begun.”
A chill raced up Meredith’s spine at that grim prophecy, and she snapped her gaze from the sky to his face, but he merely lifted his brows and refused to elaborate.
8
Meredith yanked a dress out of her closet to wear to the Fourth of July party, tossed it across the bed, and pulled off her bathrobe. This summer, which had begun with a funeral, had degenerated into a five-week battle with her father over which college she would attend—a battle that had escalated into a full-fledged war the previous day. In the past, Meredith had always bent over backward to please him; when he was needlessly strict, she told herself it was only because he loved her and was afraid for her; when he was brusque, she rationalized that he had responsibilities that tired him, but now, now that she’d belatedly discovered that his plans for her were on a collision course with her own, she was not willing to give up her dreams to pacify him.
From the time she was a young girl, she’d assumed that someday she would have the chance to follow in the footsteps of all her forebears and take her rightful place at Bancroft & Company. Each successive generation of Bancroft men had proudly worked their way up through the store’s hierarchy, starting there as a department manager, then moving up through the ranks to vice president, and later, president and chief executive officer. Finally, when they were ready to turn the direction of the store over to their sons, they became chairman of the board. Not once in nearly one hundred years had a Bancroft failed to do that, and not once in all that time had any Bancroft ever been ridiculed by the press or by the store’s employees for being incompetent or undeserving of the titles they eventually held. Meredith believed, she knew, she could prove herself worthy too, if she were just given the chance. All she wanted or expected was that chance. And the only reason her father didn’t want to give it to her was that she hadn’t had the foresight to be his son instead of his daughter!
Frustrated to the point of tears, she stepped into the dress and pulled it up. Reaching behind her back, she struggled with the zipper as she walked over to the dressing table and looked in the mirror above it. With complete disinterest she surveyed the strapless cocktail dress that she’d bought weeks before for that night’s occasion. The bodice was sheared at the sides so that it crisscrossed her breasts, sarong-style, in a multicolored rainbow of pale pastel silk chiffon, then it nipped in at the waist before falling in a graceful swirl to her knees. Picking up a hairbrush, she ran it through her long hair. Rather than expend the effort of doing anything special with it, she brushed it back off her face, twisted it up into a chignon, and pulled a few tendrils loose at her ears to soften the effect. The rose topaz pendant would have been the perfect accent for her dress, but her father was also going to Glenmoor tonight, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her wear it. Instead, she clipped on a pair of ornate gold earrings inset with pink stones that sparkled and danced in the light, and left her shoulders and neck bare. The hairstyle gave her a more sophisticated look and the golden tan she’d acquired looked lovely against the strapless bodic
e of the dress; if it hadn’t, Meredith wouldn’t have cared, nor would she have changed into something different. How she looked was a matter of complete indifference to her; the only reason she was going was that she couldn’t stand the thought of staying home and letting frustration drive her insane, and that she’d promised Shelly Fillmore and the rest of Jonathan’s friends that she’d join them there.
Sitting down at the dressing table, she slipped on a pair of pink silk moiré heels she’d bought to wear with the dress. When she straightened, her gaze fell on the framed copy of an old issue of Business Week that was hanging on the wall. On the cover of the magazine was a picture of Bancroft’s stately downtown store, with its uniformed doormen standing at the main entrance. The fourteen-story building was a Chicago landmark, the doormen a historic symbol of Bancroft’s continuing insistence on excellence and service to its customers. Inside the magazine was a long, glowing article about the store, which said that a Bancroft label on an item was a status symbol; the ornate B on its shopping bags the emblem of a discriminating shopper. The article also commented about the remarkable competence of Bancroft heirs when it came to running their business. It said that a talent for—and love of—retailing seemed to have been passed along in Bancroft genes from its founder, James D. Bancroft.
When the writer had interviewed Meredith’s grandfather and asked him about that, Cyril had reportedly laughed and said it was possible. He’d added, however, that James Bancroft had begun a tradition that had been handed down from father to son—a tradition of grooming and training the heir from the time he was old enough to leave the nursery and dine with his parents. There, at the dining table, each father began to speak to their sons about whatever was happening at the store. For the child, these daily vignettes about the store’s operation constituted the equivalent of ongoing bedtime stories. Excitement and suspense were generated; knowledge was subtly imparted. And absorbed. Later, simplified problems were casually brought up and discussed with the teenager. Solutions were asked for—and listened to, though rarely found. But then, finding solutions wasn’t the real goal anyway; the goal was to teach and stimulate and encourage.
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