The Heiress (34 page)

Heart pounding, more furious than she had ever been in her life, Charlotte walked back down the stairs and into the library. Ever so quickly and efficiently, she opened the wall safe.

Bypassing the jewels, cash and important family documents, she picked up two things. A red expanding file that had no business being there. And a small pearl-handled gun.

Walking over to the desk, she picked up the phone, punched in number one on her speed dial. When Iris answered, she said simply, “I’d like you to come here right now and meet me upstairs in your father’s bedroom.”

Giving Iris no chance to answer, she terminated the connection. Then punched in number two on her speed dial, called Daisy, told her the same thing, then added, “And bring your camera—and Jack.”

Regretting that she could not call their son, Connor, too, to witness this momentous event in all their lives, as he was still out of the country on business, Charlotte straightened her shoulders. Her heart set on what she had to do, for all their sakes, especially Iris’s and Daisy’s, she headed back upstairs.

“C
HARLOTTE SOUNDED
really funny, Jack,” Daisy said as she and Jack hurried toward his SUV.

“Did she say what was wrong?” Jack asked as he paused to open the passenger door for Daisy.

Trying hard to contain her building sense of foreboding, Daisy threw her camera bag onto the floor of
the front seat and replied nervously, “No. Just that we were to meet her in Richard’s bedroom at home.”

It wasn’t like Charlotte to be secretive in her requests, Daisy thought. She was always the first one with an explanation or rationale when she wanted one of her children to do something. But this time she had offered neither, just made a terse, implacable demand that was, upon reflection, very unlike Charlotte.

“But you’re sure she’s upset,” Jack said.

“Oh yes,” Daisy said. Very upset, as it happened.

Jack reached over to squeeze Daisy’s hand. “Well, we’ll find out in a few minutes what’s going on,” he said.

Daisy nodded. Whatever was happening, she was glad Jack was there with her. He was so strong and confident. He always seemed to know exactly what to do. And unlike her never-take-sides older brother, Connor, or her incessantly disapproving father, Jack didn’t seem to mind if she leaned on him for support. Instead, Jack welcomed the chances to nurture and protect her.

Iris was just pulling up when they arrived. Unlike Daisy and Jack, who had just returned from an evening run on the beach when the call came, and were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, Iris was wearing a shimmering evening gown with a name tag still affixed to one shoulder. Her expression as perplexed and worried as theirs, Iris immediately demanded, “Do you two know what’s going on here? I was supposed to meet Mother at the fund-raiser but she apparently left early—something about Father being ill.”

Daisy and Jack shook their heads. That would explain why her mother was upset. But it didn’t explain Charlotte’s wanting Daisy to bring her camera.

More curious than ever, the trio let themselves in and
hurried up the stairs. Iris was first into Richard’s bedroom. She had barely cleared the portal when she gasped loudly and said, “Oh my!
Mother, what are you doing?
”

Jack and Daisy crowded in after Iris. When Daisy and Jack saw what had Iris so upset, they both drew in quick, urgent breaths, too.

Richard was in bed with a naked woman. It was the same auburn-haired woman Daisy had seen on the beach, and she was ashen-faced, silently crying. Richard, on the other hand, merely looked peeved as all get-out to be caught with his pants down, so to speak. Charlotte was seated in a wing chair next to the fireplace, a gun clasped in her hands and pointed at the two occupants in the bed.

“Mother, you don’t want to do this!” Iris said desperately.

“Everyone, stay right where you are!” Charlotte demanded shrilly. Without taking her eyes off her husband or the woman, she said very steadily, “Daisy, I want some pictures of this. I’m going to need them for the divorce.”

“Charlotte, for pity’s sake. You don’t mean that,” Richard said, looking even more annoyed as the woman beside him clung to the sheet, holding it up to her voluptuous breasts.

Charlotte smiled, looking stronger and more defiant than Daisy had ever seen her. “The hell I don’t. You’ve humiliated me for the last time, Richard Templeton. Impotent, indeed! There was nothing nonfunctioning about what I saw when I walked in here, you lousy, cheating philanderer!”

Daisy decided her mother was right. Charlotte
did
need some pictures of this for verification. Otherwise,
no one would ever believe it. With trembling hands, Daisy pulled her digital camera out of the case and began snapping away, glad the sheet covered what she had no wish to see. But the fact they were in bed together, distressed, told it all. How did the saying go? Daisy thought. One picture was worth a thousand words. And these photos said her father was one of the biggest hypocrites of all time.

Charlotte spoke to them. “Jack, Iris, Daisy, you are all witnesses to what was going on here tonight in my absence.”

“They’re all witnesses to the fact you are holding a gun on me!” Richard grumbled as Daisy, figuring she had enough now, checked her photos for accuracy, and finding them readable, put her camera away.

“Perfectly understandable, if you thought you had intruders,” Jack said. “Still, you don’t want to fire that or accidentally discharge it, and I’d feel a lot better if you handed that weapon over to me,” Jack said calmly. Holding out his hand, he took one step near her.

In answer, Charlotte took the safety off. “Stay right where you are, Jack. I don’t want to have to hurt you. As for the gun, I’ll hand it over when I’m good and ready, and not one second before,” she said.

Good for you, Mother,
Daisy thought.
Good for you.

“First, I have a few things to say and do,” Charlotte continued with a stubbornness that rivaled Daisy’s.

“We’re listening, Mother,” Daisy said quietly.

“First—” Charlotte picked up a stack of papers on her lap “—I believe these belong to you, Daisy.”

Daisy stared at her birth records and beneath those the red expanding file. “Where did you get this, Mother?” she asked, amazed.

“In the library safe downstairs.”

Iris glared at the woman in the bed. “You helped him break into Jack and Daisy’s cottage, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to, but it was the only way I could get him to pay me the money he promised me.” With a trembling lip, the woman explained about her daughter, Alyssa, and the college tuition that was due.

“I’ll see you get the rest of the money you are owed for all four years,” Charlotte said. “In return, I want you to tell the truth—and I mean the whole truth—about what happened between the two of you in any legal venue that I choose.”

The woman looked stunned, but more than willing to agree to Charlotte’s terms. “Agreed,” she said emphatically.

“And,” Charlotte continued, “I want you to swear to me that you will never get yourself in such a degrading and demeaning situation again.”

“Believe me, I won’t ever make a mistake like this again.” The woman turned and glared at Richard.

“Then I suggest you get your clothes and leave,” Charlotte continued coldly.

The woman slipped, naked, from the bed, grabbed her clothes and ran sobbing out the door and down the hall.

“Fool,” Richard spat, sending a disgusted look at his wife. “You should have had her sign a confidentiality agreement first. Otherwise, what assurance do we have that she’ll keep quiet?”

“None,” Charlotte said.

“Be quiet!” the person in the mask hissed.

Daisy froze, startled at the unexpected memory.

“At the very least,” Richard continued furiously, oblivious to the mystery unfolding in Daisy’s head,
“you should have threatened to hurt her or her daughter if she told what she saw or heard here tonight!”

“You tell anyone what you’ve seen and I’ll be forced to come back and hurt you!”

“Oh my God,” Daisy gasped out loud. She stared at her father, no longer seeing him—here—beneath the sheets, but with a mask on, his pants down around his ankles, a woman, one of the caterers, kneeling before him, his…

“Oh my God,”
Daisy repeated again, even more horrified, a hand to her mouth. “All those years ago! At Rosewood!” She pointed an accusing finger at her father. “It was you who locked me in the cellar. You who threatened me! You who was wearing that hideous Halloween mask!”

“Why would he have done that?” Charlotte asked, confused.

Iris looked at Daisy. And Daisy knew from the pained expression on Iris’s face that Iris had experienced the same. Shock turned to dismay, grief to revulsion. “You walked in on him, too, didn’t you?” Daisy asked Iris hoarsely.

Iris nodded, looking every bit as sick and miserable as Daisy felt. Tears filled Iris’s eyes. “I was ten when I saw Father with a woman in the potting shed out at Rosewood.”

Charlotte looked horrified. So did Jack. “You exposed our daughters to that?” Charlotte’s anger became all the more lethal.

“They wouldn’t have seen anything had they not been where they shouldn’t have been,” Richard countered coldly, not the least bit apologetic for getting caught in flagrante delicto. “Furthermore, a gentleman
is entitled to his pleasure wherever, whenever, however he wants it.”

“In other words, there are whores and then there are wives. Is that what you’re saying?” Charlotte asked, each word a chip of ice.

“Exactly. Although…” Richard shot dagger-filled looks at both Daisy and Iris. “From the licentious behavior of our two daughters, you’d never know the difference here.”

Charlotte’s jaw tightened. Fury unlike anything Daisy had ever seen shimmered in her kind eyes.

“Mother, please, don’t shoot!” Daisy rushed forward, heedless of her own safety. Jack was right behind her, pushing Daisy aside, shielding her with his body. “I don’t want anything to happen to you!” Daisy cried.

“It won’t,” Charlotte said calmly. She sent an apologetic look at Jack, Iris and Daisy, sorry she had frightened them. “There are no bullets in this gun, Daisy,” Charlotte said gently. Demonstrating the truth of her words, she put the safety back on, opened the chamber, showed them all this was so and then handed the weapon to Jack.

Aware he had been cowed by a humiliating trick, Richard swore virulently. Letting the sheet drop to his waist, he folded his arms in front of him angrily. “You’re going to pay for this, Charlotte.”

Charlotte scoffed, stood. She moved to stand next to Daisy and Jack. “No, Richard, you are the one who is going to pay. Jack here is going to help me find a killer divorce attorney who’ll make sure I end up with everything—the house, the business, the jewels.”

Richard chuckled nastily. “You don’t believe in divorce.”

“Once upon a time, I didn’t.” Charlotte let Daisy
wrap a comforting arm around her waist. “But that was just one of many mistakes. For instance, I should never have allowed you to talk me into separating Iris and Daisy. I knew how important the mother-child bond was. I should have championed that above all else.” Charlotte sent an apologetic look at Iris, too. “But instead, I let him convince me that we couldn’t live without money. That Iris’s marriage to Randolph Hayes IV was our only hope for survival. And I helped push you, Iris, to a life of marital servitude that was in many ways worse than the one I’ve endured all these years.”

“Mother, I agreed to it,” Iris interjected compassionately, coming forward to put an arm around Charlotte, too. “You didn’t force me into anything.”

“I didn’t help you, either.” Charlotte’s eyes blurred with tears as she reached out and hugged both her daughters. “And I should have,” she said in a low, choked tone. “I should have helped you both.”

“I
JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND
how Father could do something like that,” Daisy said as she and Jack got ready for bed a few hours later.

Jack layered toothpaste onto his brush. “A lot of people have affairs, Daisy.”

Daisy sat down on the rim of the tub and smoothed lotion onto her legs. “Would you?”

“Cheat on you?” Jack’s eyes followed the caressing motions of her hands as she worked the soothing cream from ankle to upper thigh. “No. Never.” His glance returned to her face. “What about you?”

“No.” In fact, Daisy couldn’t imagine ever making love with anyone but Jack, now that they’d been together. And it had as much to do with how she felt about him, as it did that they were married, and hence,
had promised each other to be physically intimate with only each other as long as that lasted. Because she not only cared about him, she felt connected to him in some fundamental way. It wasn’t a tie she wanted to end. To the point, she had begun to think about asking him if maybe, just maybe, he might want to try and have another baby together.

But that was neither here nor there now, she thought, given the rather messy and difficult family circumstances they found themselves in. Because like it or not, Daisy thought, Jack was now—by virtue of his marriage to her—going to be embroiled in a lot of nasty talk about the Templetons, and their sudden and surprising divorce, too.

Silence fell between them as Jack brushed his teeth, rinsed, spit.

Once again, Daisy’s thoughts turned to the traumatic revelations of the evening, and her father’s part in it. For the life of her, she could not understand how Richard could have behaved the way he had. “I still can’t get over it, Jack,” she said as she recapped the lotion. “How could my father have taken that woman home, to his bed, while Mother was out?”

Jack blotted his lips on the towel. “I agree it was lousy.”

But, Daisy thought, it had given her mother—indeed all of them—the wakeup call they needed to finally see the light about Richard and his selfishness. She understood now why she had never liked or trusted or respected him, why she had been unable to earn his love. Because the simple truth was, her father was not capable of love. The only person he loved or cared about was himself. Knowing that freed and relieved Daisy in some fundamental way. Because she knew now, bottom
line, it wasn’t her, it was him. Richard was the one who was flawed and unlovable. Not her.