“California has water and seafood. What brought you here?”
“Believe it or not, my great-great-grandfather is from Charleston. He left here ten years before the Civil War began and chased gold all the way to California.”
“Did he have any luck?”
“A little. But there were nearly a hundred thousand people who descended on California in 1849 alone, and the chances of getting rich weren’t all that high. In the end, he decided there was more money to be made in supporting the gold-seekers and married a widow nearly ten years his senior. Together, they ran her hotel business.” Claire’s lips twitched.
“What?” Linc prompted.
“It’s been argued among my family that it might have been more of a gaming establishment or brothel than a hotel.”
“You don’t say.”
“It’s pretty scandalous, don’t you think? Especially when the story goes that James Robbins came from an elite Charleston family.” Claire laughed. “Of course, none of it’s true about my great-great-grandfather’s background. But it sure makes for a good story.”
“What makes you think it’s not true?”
“Did you miss the part where James was a scoundrel? He probably told people he was from a wealthy Charleston family so they’d take him seriously as a businessman. At the time, Charleston was one of the richest cities in the country.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Grandma Sylvia kept diaries. She and her first husband traveled from Massachusetts in 1848. He died on the way, and when she got to California, she figured out that men coming out of the mountains with gold would want all the creature comforts they could afford.”
“You know a lot about this.”
“My great-aunt Libby was really into all this genealogy stuff. She was a women’s studies professor at Berkeley.”
“Did she ever look into James Robbins of Charleston?”
“I don’t know. Libby died five years ago.”
“You should talk to Sawyer about this. Her friend Ruby likes to dig into old records. Maybe she could find some mention of James.”
As a member of the preservation society, Sawyer would be a good resource for such a quest. “I wouldn’t want to bother her.”
“Are you kidding? One thing about this town is they love their history. I’ll bet Ruby would enjoy hearing your story.”
Although Claire knew Sawyer wasn’t prone to gossip, she didn’t want anyone to start poking around her background and discover that she wasn’t a widow. The best thing would be to let the whole matter drop, but she knew Linc wouldn’t understand why she wanted to do that. Abruptly, Claire wished she’d never said anything about her family.
“I’ll give Sawyer a call,” she said and hoped her promise would pacify him, because the last thing she needed was for Jasper’s parents to find her in Charleston.
Four
Dinner wasn’t going quite the way Linc had hoped. Claire had become subdued and distracted after talking about her husband. He’d intended for the evening to be fun and entertaining. Instead, he’d dredged up her past and reminded her of all she’d lost.
How terrifying it must have been for her to lose the man she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with. What must it have been like for her to be widowed with a newborn? Claire didn’t talk much about the family she’d left behind in California except to say that she didn’t have a relationship with her mother—who’d left when Claire was seven—and that her father had his hands full with three kids from his second marriage.
“You know, it occurs to me that you haven’t had any significant time off since you came to work for me,” Linc said. “If you want to go visit your family over Christmas or Thanksgiving, I’m sure we could make that work.”
Claire’s eyes widened and she immediately started shaking her head. “That’s really nice of you, but I remember how much you entertained last year, and now that you aren’t seeing London, you’ll be hosting all the parties.”
“I don’t have to be the host. My mother is always happy to show off the Mills-Forrest House.”
“I wouldn’t feel right about it,” Claire said, smiling in a way that was both polite and firm. Arguing with her would get him nowhere.
“Fine, not the holidays, then. Maybe you could take some time off in January and go see them.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You know, Charleston is a great place to visit. You could invite them to come out here and see you.”
She was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking. “With the kids in school and all their activities, it’s just too hard for them to take time off during the winter. Plus, it’s really expensive to fly everyone.”
“What about your in-laws? How long has it been since they’ve seen their granddaughter?”
“Jasper didn’t get along with his parents,” Claire said in a breathless rush. “And didn’t want them anywhere near his daughter. So it’s really just Honey and me. She’s all the family I need.”
As close as Linc was to his mom and Sawyer, his father had been mostly absent during Linc’s childhood, so he recognized Claire’s reluctance to reach out. Had her family not been there for her after her husband’s death? Was a lack of support the reason she came to Charleston in search of her ancestors?
Interesting about her great-great-grandfather’s connection to Charleston. Linc didn’t have a passion for the city’s history like Sawyer and Knox, or his mother’s obsession for improving the Thurston family’s status in society, but he knew enough that the surname Robbins wasn’t familiar. Likely, the entire story was little more than a family legend. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to bring the matter to Sawyer’s attention. Who knew what his sister might dig up?
As much as Linc wished they could linger over dessert and coffee, Honey was up past her bedtime and she was getting fussy. So he paid their bill and carried the sleepy toddler
