Ready for Marriage? (12 page)

“H
ow long will you be staying, ma’am?” the hotel clerk, whose name tag read B. Walding, asked, a wide smile on his boyish face.

“I’m not sure,” Kate replied. “A few days, possibly longer. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. Will it be a problem?”

“We aren’t overbooked by any means,” Mr. Walding told her. “We have more vacancies here at Magnolia House during the winter months and this being January, we’re practically empty. Of course we fill up pretty quick over the holidays and in May, during Pilgrimage Week, we’re always booked solid.”

Oh, yes, she remembered Pilgrimage Week, one of Mary Belle Winston’s favorite times, when Prospect’s Junior League and the various garden clubs joined forces with the historical society to act as hostesses at the historical places in the little town and surrounding
county. Aunt Mary Belle opened up Winston Hall to tourists and excelled in her role as mistress of the grand old estate. During her two-year marriage to Trent, Kate had been allowed to dress in costume, too, and assist Trent’s aunt as a hostess. Kate had always felt out of place in the pantaloons and hoop skirt. Since she knew for a fact that her family had been poor dirt farmers for generations, she doubted any of her ancestresses had ever owned anything half so fine.

Kate shook off the memories, unsnapped her shoulder bag and removed her wallet. “I don’t suppose y’all have room service, do you?”

The freckle-faced clerk grinned and shook his head. “No, ma’am, we don’t. But if you want a plate lunch or a sandwich, I can run over to McGuire’s and get something for you.”

McGuire’s. Best barbecue and ribs in southeast Alabama. She and Trent had often eaten at McGuire’s when they’d been dating. “Is that place still open?”

“Sure is.” Mr. Walding studied her closely. “You been to Prospect before, have you?”

“Yes. Years ago.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you back, Miss—?”

“Ms. Malone.” Kate handed him her credit card. “Kate Malone.”

“Ms. Malone, we’re glad you’re back in Prospect for a visit. You got folks hereabouts?”

“No, I— No I don’t have any relatives here in Prospect.” Not unless you counted an ex-husband and his aunt. Or a few of her stepfather’s distant cousins.

“I can run over to McGuire’s for you, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, Mr. Walding, but I’ll just pick up something later.”

“Please, call me Brian.” He zipped her credit card
quickly and returned it to her, then handed her a key. A real key. “Room one-oh-four. Want me to carry your bag for you?”

“No, thanks,” Kate told him. “I travel light.” She hoisted the vinyl carryall over her shoulder and glanced around the lobby.

“One-oh-four is to your right.”

Kate smiled at the clerk. “Oh, by the way, Brian, does the Winston family still live at Winston Hall?”

“Do you know the family?”

“I knew Trent Winston.”

Brian grinned. “I guess that Trent Winston knows every pretty girl who’s ever lived in Prospect and at least half who’ve just passed through.”

“Is that right?”

“Well, Ms. Malone, if you ever knew him…of course that depends on how long ago you knew him. But for the past ten years, he’s been quite the man about town, if you know what I mean. Ever since his wife up and left him…” Brian leaned over the reception desk and lowered his voice. “Do you know about his wife and daughter?”

Kate’s stomach knotted painfully. She shook her head, falsely denying any knowledge.

“I wasn’t living here, then, mind you. I came here from Dothan about seven years ago. But it seems Trent Winston’s baby daughter was kidnapped and his wife left him. Folks say his wife went kind of funny in the head after—”

“That’s terrible about his wife and child,” Kate said, not wanting to hear the local gossip about how she went crazy after Mary Kate was abducted. She knew only too well how close she came to a complete nervous breakdown. “Does Trent…does Mr. Winston and his aunt still live at Winston Hall?”

“Yes, ma’am. Miss Mary Belle still lives there and despite the stroke she had last year, she manages to oversee what little real society there is left in Prospect. And Mr. Trent’s a circuit court judge now. Got elected by a landslide. Heck, every female in the county voted for him.”

Keeping her smile in place, Kate quickly escaped from the chatty Mr. Walding and hurried down the corridor toward one-oh-four. After unlocking the door, she entered the small but rather elegant room. Magnolia House had been built at the turn of the century, and except for a dozen years in the early sixties to mid-seventies, had been open for business. Over thirty years ago the town had purchased the building and statewide investors, with a penchant for preserving history, had restored the old place. Most buildings and houses in Prospect were steeped in history, and keeping the past alive was important to a lot of people, but the only part of the past that mattered to Kate was eleven years and nine months ago. One particular Easter Sunday when Mary Kate Winston had been stolen from her mother’s arms.

After laying her handbag and suitcase on the bed, Kate shed her black wool coat and hung it in the antique armoire which served as a closet. After all these years, it seemed odd to be back in the sleepy little Southern town where she’d been born and raised. Her father had been killed in Vietnam, leaving her mother a young widow with a child. When Kate was five, her mother had remarried a likable man named Dewayne Harrelson and Kate’s childhood, though poverty-stricken, had been relatively carefree and happy. She’d loved growing up on her stepfather’s farm and hadn’t minded helping her mother with the never-ending chores. She’d
graduated from Prospect High at seventeen, as the valedictorian, and earned a scholarship to the University of Alabama. For a high school graduation gift, her parents had given her an older-model car—a blue Chevy Impala—that she knew they hadn’t been able to afford.

During her junior year in college her mother had died from pneumonia and six months later, her stepfather succumbed to congestive heart failure. Discovering that her parents’ farm was mortgaged to the hilt, Kate had had little choice but to let the bank foreclose. That last year at the University of Alabama had been a lean one. She’d lived practically hand to mouth, worked two part-time jobs and somehow managed to maintain a grade point average that allowed her to graduate summa cum laude.

At Christmas time of her senior year, her stepfather’s elderly aunt Opal had invited her to spend the holidays with her family in Prospect. Kate made it more than halfway home before her old car laid down and died. She’d been on a lonely stretch of Highway 82, between Montgomery and Prospect, and almost in tears when a sleek gunmetal-gray Jaguar pulled in behind her. The minute Trenton Bayard Winston IV emerged from the sports car, Kate’s heart had stopped for a millisecond and then began beating ninety-to-nothing. Of course she’d known who Trent Winston was. Everyone in Prospect knew him. He was the heir to the Winston fortune, a descendant of Prospect’s founding fathers, and a student at the University of Alabama’s School of Law. And everyone knew that when he graduated from college that coming spring and passed the bar, he would begin work at the local law firm of Winston, Cotten and Dickerson. Trent’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather had been lawyers.

Trent had given her a ride home that cold December day, and not in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined that before the next Christmas, she would be Mrs. Trenton Bayard Winston IV.

The Congregational church chimes ringing the hour jerked Kate back from her distant past to her present. She walked across the room, pulled back the sheers and looked out the window. The view, although limited, allowed her to see directly across the street at the town square where the county courthouse presided over downtown Prospect. Looking left along Main Street, she saw Corner Drugs and to her right was the office that housed the
Prospect Reporter
, the weekly newspaper. And next door was the building, over a century old, that housed the Winston, Cotten and Dickerson law firm.

Mr. Trent’s a circuit court judge now. Every woman
in the county voted for him
. The hotel clerk’s comments echoed inside her head.

She supposed that after their divorce Trent had reverted back into the ladies’ man he’d been before they married. And why shouldn’t he have done just that? Every unmarried woman in Prospect and half the women at the university had nearly died of broken hearts when Trent married her. Looking back now, she wondered why he’d married her when he could have had any woman he’d wanted. She’d been crazy in love with him. So much so that even now, she was probably still halfway in love with him…despite everything that had happened between them. But she could not allow any leftover feelings for Trent to resurface. She wasn’t there to rekindle their fiery romance. After all, apparently Trent hadn’t loved her as much as he’d told her he did. Otherwise, Mary Kate’s kidnapping wouldn’t have ripped them apart the way it did.

Kate let the sheers fall back into place, then she turned and walked into the bathroom. She needed to freshen up before driving over to Winston Hall. Maybe the polite thing to do was telephone first, but she preferred a surprise attack. As she washed her hands, Kate chuckled. Even after all these years, she still thought of facing Mary Belle Winston as engaging in battle with the enemy.
That old woman isn’t your enemy anymore
, she told herself.
She has no power over you
. But Aunt Mary Belle wouldn’t be happy to see Kate, that she knew for certain. After drying her hands, she looked into the mirror. When she’d left Prospect eleven years ago, she’d been barely twenty-four; now she was thirty-five and no longer the young beauty Trent had proclaimed her to be. But she was attractive. And she was tough. She had the guts to face not only Aunt Mary Belle, but to look Trent in the eye and tell him she’d been right and he’d been wrong. Mary Kate wasn’t dead. Their daughter was alive.

You can’t tell him she’s alive
, Kate warned herself. Kate had no proof that Mary Kate was one of the three little girls who were abducted from southeast Alabama around the same time Mary Kate was. But all three baby girls had been sold to adoptive parents within one month of that fateful Easter Sunday. And all three had been approximately three to four months old when adopted.

Kate drank a glass of water. Her hand quivered ever so slightly.
Stay calm. Stay in control
. She retrieved her purse from the bed, removed her lipstick and compact, put on a fresh coat of hot-pink gloss and then powdered her face.

Perhaps she should eat supper first and fortify her body with some of McGuire’s ribs. She hadn’t eaten a
bite since breakfast in Memphis early this morning.
Stop looking for excuses to delay the inevitable
, an inner voice chided.

She took her coat from the armoire, slipped into it and draped the straps of her handbag over her shoulder. Squaring her shoulders she marched out of her room, down the corridor and out the hotel’s back entrance. Magnolia House’s guests parked in the rear. When she got into the rental car—a white Mercury—she suddenly wished she could drive up to Winston Hall in her own car, her very expensive Mercedes. The purchase of that car had been Kate’s one and only extravagance. She lived in a small duplex in Smyrna, outside of Atlanta. She bought her clothes off the rack and the only jewelry she owned consisted of a watch, a pair of small gold hoop earrings and a single gold bracelet. For the past ten years, most of the money she’d earned, first as an Atlanta policewoman and later an agent for the prestigious Dundee Private Security and Investigation firm, had been spent searching for Mary Kate. Even with all of the Dundee Agency’s resources, she’d run into one dead end after another. It appeared that her daughter had disappeared off the face of the earth. But Kate had never given up hope, never allowed herself to think that her child might be dead.

Although the Deep South often had very mild winters, this winter wasn’t one of them. Today’s temperature had dropped into the low forties and the clouds had a look of rain about them. Cold winter rain, perhaps even sleet or ice. Kate turned up the heat in her rental car as she headed down Main Street. Before she realized what she was doing, she turned off on Madison and drove slowly by the old Kirkendall house. The house had been fully restored, with fresh paint on the exterior
and a new white picket fence had replaced the dilapidated one. Heavy white wooden rockers and a large swing graced the front porch. A decorative Christmas wreath still hung on the front door, nearly three weeks after the holiday. Some lucky family had purchased Kate’s dream house. Apparently whoever lived here loved the old place as much as she had and had restored it with tender care. Whatever family lived there, Kate hoped they were very happy. As happy as she had believed Trent and Mary Kate and she would have been.

Emotion lodged in her throat. She willed herself not to cry. Now was not the time for tears. When she saw Trent again, she had to be in full control of her emotions. And when she faced Aunt Mary Belle, she had to show the old biddy that she wasn’t in the least bit intimidated by her.

“Goodbye, dream house,” Kate whispered as she drove away from four-ten Madison.

In no time at all, she pulled up in front of Winston Hall, a magnificent Federal-style mansion that presided over almost a whole city block. The black iron fencing circled the estate and the massive black iron gates always stayed open, welcoming the elite of Prospect to come calling. And at holiday open houses and during Pilgrimage Week, even the lowly were allowed admittance. She’d forgotten how much she hated this house and how miserable her ex- husband’s aunt had made her life for the two years of her marriage.

Don’t look back
, Kate reminded herself.
Nothing
can change the past
.

She drove her rental car up and around the circular driveway, stopped directly in front of the mansion and killed the engine. After taking several deep breaths, she got out and walked up the steps and onto the porch. She
checked her watch. Four-ten p.m. Too early for dinner. Kate smiled at the thought of her being invited to dine with the family.