“Is there something wrong with Zach?” Kaitlin couldn’t help but ask. Ginny had been alluding to Zach’s lack of desirability since they arrived.
“Those Harper boys are heartbreakers,” said Ginny with a disapproving click of her tongue. “Always have been, always will be.”
Kaitlin had to admit, she could easily see Zach breaking hearts. He’d been darn near perfect last night. He’d driven through the dark to rescue her from a storm, then made exquisite love to her, teased her and sympathized with her. If a woman were to let herself fall for a man like that, heartbreak might well be the inevitable outcome.
Ginny turned to Lindsay. “Now, my Dylan. That one’s a catch. He’s wealthy, you know.”
“I do have my own money,” said Lindsay.
Ginny chuckled and gave a coquettish smile. “A girl can never have too much money.”
Lindsay was obviously puzzled. “You don’t mind me marrying your great-nephew for his money?”
Ginny looked askance. “What other reason is there?”
Lindsay’s brows went up. “Love?”
“Oh, pooh, pooh.” Ginny waved a dismissive hand. “Love comes and goes. A bank balance, now there’s something a gal can count on.”
“Your lovers didn’t have money?” Kaitlin asked, fascinated by Ginny’s experiences and opinions.
A sly look entered Ginny’s eyes, and once again she glanced around the kitchen as if checking for eavesdroppers. “They had youth and enthusiasm. I think they wanted
“Do you have any pictures?” asked Lindsay, obviously as interested as Kaitlin in the older woman’s love life.
“Indeed, I do.” Ginny wiped her hands on the big apron, untying it from the back. Then she beckoned both women to follow her as she made her way toward the kitchen door.
In the stairwell, Kaitlin asked, “Did the other Harper men break women’s hearts?”
“Every single one,” Ginny confirmed with a decisive nod.
“But not their wives.” Kaitlin’s tone turned the statement into a question.
“Sometimes their wives, too.”
“What about Sadie? Wasn’t Sadie happy with Milton?”
“Milton was a fine man. He’d have made a good lover. But once they were married, Sadie, she worried all the time.”
“That he was unfaithful?” asked Kaitlin.
Ginny stopped midstair and turned on her. “Oh, no. A Harper man would never be unfaithful.” She turned and began climbing again.
“Then why did Sadie worry?”
“She was the groundskeeper’s daughter. Oh, she pretended all right. But at her heart, she was never the mistress of the castle. That’s why she wouldn’t make any changes.”
They came to the second floor, and Ginny led them down a wide hallway. Overhead skylights let in the sunshine, while art objects lined the shelves along the way.
“The castle is really beautiful,” said Kaitlin. She wasn’t sure she’d have changed anything, either.
“So was Sadie,” said Ginny in a wistful voice. “Before Milton, we swam naked in the ocean and ran across the sand under the full moon.”
“Do you really think he broke her heart?” Kaitlin persisted. Like Emma, Kaitlin really wanted to believe Sadie had been happy here.
“No. Not really. But sometimes she felt trapped, and sometimes she worried.” Ginny swept open the double doors of a closet. She moved aside a fluffy quilt and extracted a battered shoebox, opening it to reveal a stack of photographs. “Ah, here we are. Come meet my lovers.”
Nine
Zach found Kaitlin in the portrait gallery, gazing at a painting of his grandmother when she had been in her twenties.
“Hey,” he said, coming up behind her. He didn’t ask and didn’t wait for permission before wrapping his arms around her waist, nestling her into the cradle of his body.
“Do you think she was happy?” Kaitlin asked.
“Yes.”
“Did she love your grandfather?”
“As far as I could tell.” He hadn’t spent much time looking at the portraits over the past years, and his memory of his grandmother was that of an old woman. He’d forgotten how lovely she was. No wonder his grandfather had married her so young.
“Ginny says she felt trapped sometimes.”
“I love Ginny dearly,” Zach began, a warning in his tone.
There was a thread of laughter in Kaitlin’s voice when she interrupted him. “She doesn’t seem too crazy about you.”
“But you know she’s not all there, right?”
“She’s a blast,” Kaitlin responded. “And her memory seems very sharp.”
“Well, it had to be a pretty big cage. They went to Europe at least twice a year, and spent half their time in Manhattan. You should have seen the garden parties. The governor, theatre stars, foreign diplomats.”
“Okay, so it was a big cage,” Kaitlin conceded.
“Come here. Let me show you something.” Zach shifted his arm around her shoulders, guiding her down the gallery toward the staircase.
“Your room?” she asked.
“No. But I like the way you’re thinking.” He steered her down to the first floor then back through the hallways to Sadie’s parlor.
“What are we doing?”
“I want to show you that she was happy.”
He sat Kaitlin on the settee and retrieved an old photo album from Sadie’s bookcase. Sitting next to her, he flipped through the pages until he came to one of the Harpers’ famous garden parties. The pictures were black and white, slightly faded, but they showed the gardens in their glory, and the sharp-dressed upper crust of New York nibbling finger sandwiches and chatting away the afternoon.
“That’s her.” Zach pointed to his grandmother in a flowing dress and a silk flower-brimmed hat. Her smile was bright, and Zach’s grandfather Milton had a hand tucked against the small of her back.
“She does look happy,” Kaitlin was forced to admit.
“And that’s a hedge, not prison bars,” said Zach.
Kaitlin elbowed him in the ribs. “The bars are metaphorical.”
“The hedge is real. So were the trips to Europe.”
Kaitlin flipped the page, coming to more party photos, people laughing, drinking punch, playing croquet and wandering through the rose garden. There was a band in the gazebo, and a few couples were dancing on the patio. Some of the pictures showed children playing.
“That’s my father,” said Zack, smiling to himself as he pointed out the five-year-old boy in shorts, a white shirt and suspenders standing next to the duck pond. He had a rock in his hand, and one of his shoes was missing. He looked as if he was seconds away from wading after the ducks.
Kaitlin chuckled softly. “Were you anything like that as a child?”
Zach rose to retrieve another album.
“Here.” He let her open it and page her way through the pictures of him as a young child.
“You were adorable,” she cooed, moving from his toddler pictures to preschool to Zach at five years old, digging up flower bulbs, dirt smeared across his face and clothes.
“Yeah, let’s go with adorable.”
