The Clarrington Heritage Read online

  Who could possibly have done violence to that room she had been intended to share with Ben?

  But she had not been intended to see it...not after Ben knew what had happened there. She could never ask him or anyone else, without betraying the fact that she had seen. Over the years, she had worried over the question like a dog with a bone, wondering without knowing.

  But on that first day after the rest of the family came she had inspected her makeup, fastened the modest pearl clips at her ears, and stood back to make sure

  The new dress, her first designer gown, fell in the same elegant lines she remembered from the fitting room. She wanted to look wonderful for her new in-laws, even though she was not beautiful and never had particularly wanted to be, except in Ben’s eyes.

  He was waiting for her in the sitting room. The way his eyes lit up as she floated down the six steps to join him told her that she had done her work well.

  “Never let anybody tell you that you’re not gorgeous!” he said, taking her hands and squeezing them lightly. “I’d hug the stuffing out of you, but I’m afraid I’d mess you up, and you look wonderful.”

  “Is my hair all right at the back? It’s hard to tell, even with the triple mirrors. I want it smooth but not glued-looking.” She turned so he could see.

  She felt his fingers touch the elaborate knot of curls that she had labored to erect and stabilize.

  “Just...exactly...elegant!” he breathed into her ear. “I can hardly wait to mess it all up tonight.”

  She giggled. “We’d better go down right now, or you’ll mess it up anyway, and it took me hours to get it just right.”

  They went down the broad staircase, hand in hand. Hildy, peeping through the curtain covering the open doors to the dining room, beamed at them and threw Ben a kiss from her wrinkled hand. Marise felt warmed by the old cook’s friendliness. She had done her best to fill the gap until the family arrived, and her good will had helped to ease any distress the newcomer had felt.

  They paused at the parlor door. “I love you,” Ben whispered in her ear. “They will love you too. Don’t be nervous. They’re great people.”

  But she had been terribly, frantically nervous, as the heavy doors opened wide.

  She knew at once that the big man who pushed back the wooden panels had to be Hannibal. Though he was older, heavier, somehow tougher-looking than Ben, he was so like him that she felt an immediate kinship. He was beaming down at her with such honest delight that she felt her tension ease and the beginning of warmth steal into her cold hands.

  “So you are the young lady who saved my brother’s life,” he boomed. Her hand was swallowed in his immense paw, which seemed to radiate confidence and warmth. “You’re such a frail-looking child it seems strange, your rescuing someone from death. But Ben says you just refused to give up and made him pull himself through, even when the doctors couldn’t decide what to do next. We owe you a big one, Marise. Welcome to the family!”

  Her stiff smile softened and became real as she looked up at her brother-in-law. “Don’t be fooled by appearances, Brother Hannibal. I’m really a good, tough peasant to my toenails. I helped my brother and my father farm until they died and left the farm to me. I tried going it alone, but it was too much, so I sold the place and went into nursing.

  “I do miss having good dirt to grub around in sometimes, but nursing is almost as good. If you can’t grow things, why, making people well is a fine substitute.”

  He laughed and pulled her into the room, where she could see several people waiting. “This is your new father, Emanuel. All of the hardest heads in the family can be blamed on him, I’m afraid. But he’s a sweetheart, just the same.”

  The nearest of the family, a tall, slender old man, rose to meet her. Though his face was pale and ascetic-looking, his eyes were Ben’s own black ones. Now they were inspecting her so sharply that she wondered if he might be angry to find this intruder in his household.

  When he smiled, she was reassured. “We have—or had—no daughter. We needed one. Welcome, dear child. I only regret that as things worked out there was no one here to welcome you in person when you arrived. But we’ll do everything we can to make up for that, rest assured. Come and meet your new mother.”

  Ben had told her earlier that his mother asked to be brought down from what they called the hospital suite for the occasion. She looked fragile but lovely, her iron gray hair carefully done. Her makeup, however, couldn’t hide her deathly pallor, and the nurse in Marise knew that she was in pain.

  Marise knelt beside the electric wheelchair and looked up into the woman’s pale eyes, which were totally unlike those of both her sons. Mother Clarrington looked deeply into her eyes, as her husband had done, as if searching for something, fearful of finding it. The sadness of her gaze warmed as she smiled at last.

  The thin hand reached to grip her shoulder with surprising strength. “I can see it,” said Mother Clarrington. “You are good for Ben. He is more relaxed, happier than I have ever seen him. We are more than grateful, my dear, for your care of him.

  “I must confess I was afraid, when we heard of your sudden marriage, that some gorgeous hussy had taken advantage of his weakened condition. Once I saw him, this morning, I knew the truth. You saved him when we were all bound by our own illness and responsibilities and could not even be beside him. Be happy, my dear.”

  She sighed deeply and made a gesture with one frail hand. The stocky little nurse came forward as she said, “Forgive me. I must leave you now. Edenson!”

  The nurse was at her side at once. Marise smiled at her. “Miss Edenson, if you need a day off sometime, just let me know. I will gladly look after Mrs. Clarrington. I am fully qualified, and I understand how confining it can be to have a patient who needs round-the-clock care.”

  The woman’s steely eyes glinted at her with something like resentment. “I am able to care for Mrs. Clarrington quite adequately without help,” she said in a brusque tone. “But thank you.” There was no gratitude in her expression as she opened the big doors.

  Mother Clarrington looked up as Marise rose from her knees to stand beside her. There was apology in her glance; then she turned her chair and trundled away to the small elevator let into the wall beyond the stair.

  As she watched the elevator door close, becoming a tapestry instead of a door, she felt a strong hand grasp her elbow. “I’m Ben’s Aunt Lina,” a gruff voice said.

  Marise turned to meet this last member of the family. “Ben has talked about you so much!” She reached to hug the old woman. “He says you raised him even more than his mother was able to. He was lucky to have you, with her so ill all through his childhood.” The scent of sandalwood wafted from Aunt Lina’s sweater as she put her arms about the woman’s shoulders.

  Aunt Lina returned the hug awkwardly, as if she were unused to demonstrations of affection. Her furrowed features relaxed, and the startling jade green eyes examined Marise closely. As had been true with every member of this odd family, it seemed that she was looking for something specific, something indefinable. Perhaps something menacing?

  Marise felt that anyone as small as she could hardly be a menace to anyone, and Aunt Lina seemed to decide the same thing. She grinned, a frank and engaging tomboy grin that woke her weathered features to liveliness.

  “Come along to dinner,” she commanded. “Leave the men to find their own way. I want to get to know you before they surround you and take up all your time. And they will! This is a house full of spoilt menfolk, make no mistake!” She tucked Marise’s arm beneath her elbow and led her through another set of double doors into the immense dining room, which was lit by a cut-glass chandelier and hung with portraits so old the subjects seemed to be veiled in dark fog.

  Hannibal’s booming laugh followed them into the dining room, where everyone took a place as he or she chose. Lina put Marise beside her and kept her busy answe
ring questions. Ben, on her left, seemed both hungry and happy, ragging his brother and his father, teasing Lina and his wife.

  Marise, watching him from time to time, was reassured. He had, indeed, regained his health at last. She followed him into the parlor, once dinner was over, and felt full and content as she accepted a cup of coffee before the crackling logs in the marble fireplace.

  When they were settled comfortably, Father Clarrington had turned his dark eyes toward her. His voice was quiet, but it carried well in the small circle of velvet-covered chairs. “You cannot begin to know, Marise, what pleasure you have brought us tonight. It has been a very long while since we had so much laughter, so much cheerful conversation in this old house. I’m afraid we’ve let ourselves become rather grim over the years.”

  His black gaze probed hers, seeming to hold some hidden message. “Life has a habit of taking the starch out of us. Out of our ambitions, our good humor, even out of our small stock of virtues. Things happen that nobody can foresee or forestall. They’re nobody’s fault, they just happen.

  “You do the best you can with them. Or sometimes you don’t do your best but jump up and down and curse fate, but neither one seems to change things one iota. We’ve done a lot of both, in this house, but now the sad old place has a chance to wake up. We’re glad you’ve come. We’re happy for Ben and happy for ourselves.”

  “Hear! Hear!” rumbled Hannibal. “My thoughts exactly. I’d have brought home a little porcelain lady myself, if I’d realized how it would perk things up. I haven’t seen Mother look so happy in years.

  “And Hildy! You’ve given her cooking a new lease on life. She used to complain that we could eat sawdust and never know the difference, but tonight she outdid herself. She had cooked for this same old crew for so long she was bored, but now she has a new palate to tempt. You’d better watch it, or she’ll put more meat on your bones than you might want to acquire. I believe she thinks thin is sinful.”

  Marise smiled at him. “I love Hildy. She was so sweet, after we got here. She tried to be the entire family rolled into one because she felt so bad about the way things turned out. But I never have met Andy yet. Does he stay all that busy?”

  Hannibal glanced aside at Ben. Ben looked over at his father, who made a wry face. “Andy is the cross we bear in order to keep Hildy. He’s a good enough fellow, of course, does what he’s asked to do cheerfully enough, when he’s able. But he drinks. Not just a bit or just at times, but constantly. If I ever saw him sober, I probably would think he was drunk.

  “He does get things done, though not always the way we’d like. For heaven’s sake, never give him any vital message or depend on him to carry out anything of real importance. He can’t remember at the top of the steps why he started up at the bottom.”

  Aunt Lina snorted. “He’s not as far gone as he pretends to be,” she said. “You will notice that Andy can tend to Andy’s business very well indeed. Hildy used to beat him, back when she was younger and had more energy, and that would keep him straight for months at a time. But now she’s given up on reforming him.” She laughed suddenly and blushed.

  “Hildy’s fond of the old villain, that’s the long and short of it. And Clarrington House without Hildy is unthinkable. Losing her would be just like losing the roof or the walls.”

  Everyone laughed, and Marise sank more deeply into the comfort of her chair before the blazing logs. The coffee was hot, the room was warm, and the company was a close circle composed of family. She had not admitted to herself how she missed her own kin, and now she had another family who seemed to like and to welcome her.

  She glanced at Ben, who leaned back in a wing chair, his legs stretched toward the fire. He grunted with satisfaction. “It’s good to be home. I dreaded coming back for a long time, and business made sure that there wasn’t time to.

  “I hated to see Mother so ill, and I don’t particularly like Edenson, though I know she’s good to Mother. The old place has been...gloomy...for a long, long time. But that was my fault as much as anybody’s, and now I feel I could spend the rest of my life here without any problem.

  “Hanni, if you still want me to take over the logging interests, I’ll be glad to. I never liked the work I did for that timber company up north. I think they’re short-sighted in their management of resources, and I’d like a chance to take hold of our timber lands to see if my theories hold water. Do you think you can trust me with them?”

  Hannibal was grinning widely, gripping his cup so tightly that Marise expected to see the thin china shatter. Father Clarrington was beaming as he swallowed audibly and gazed into the fire. “Ben, it’s what we’ve been waiting for since you got your forestry degree. We need your input and ideas, and we’ve just been waiting until you got ready. You were the one who left, remember?”

  Ben and Hannibal reached across the space between their chairs and grasped hands. “The family firm,” Hannibal said. “The Clarrington family firm. We’ve waited a long time, Ben.

  “Father will be Chairman of the Board. I’ll be the lawyer and investment expert. You’re the forestry specialist. Only the farm is left without someone taking a real interest in it.” He cocked a slantwise gaze at Marise.

  She shivered with excitement. “I am a new and untried member of the family,” she said. “But I’d love to manage that farm. I miss farming terribly, and I was truly a sound agriculturist. My father taught me all he knew, and he had learned from his father and so on for generations.

  “We’d farmed right there on that same bit of ground since 1790. If one woman could have done the work of three strong people, I’d still be farming it. I had great plans and a lot of new theories I wanted to try.”

  “Then it will be a four-member firm,” Father Clarrington said. “Welcome to Clarrington Enterprises, my dear. May we all work together happily for years to come.” His pale face was tinted by the flames to a healthy glow, and the lines had smoothed away for the moment. For an instant she saw his great likeness to Ben.

  She reached impulsively to take his hand. “I’m so happy!” she said. “Right here, right now, I think I am as happy as it’s possible to be.”

  Hannibal glanced at her sharply, his black eyes wary. “Touch wood!” he said. “It’s dangerous to be too happy, and to know you are. We found that out a very long time ago.”

  Not until long afterward had Marise understood what he meant.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Sewing Room

  Marisa had no need of many clothes nowadays, but she still used the small sewing room on the first floor from time to time. When you do housework vigorously, it results in ripped seams and pulls or tears in shirt tails, no matter how careful you are.

  This was one room she never locked. Seldom did she allow herself to think about what had happened there, though once in a while, as she turned the knob, she could hear Aunt Lina’s gruff voice....

  * * * *

  “Who is it?” asked Aunt Lina, in answer to Marise’s knock.

  “Only I, Auntie. I need to snip a loose thread in my hem.”

  “Then come in, dear, and close the door. I’ve been wanting a word with you in private for a while, and there was no reason to make some kind of production out of it. Come take that little chair by the window, and we’ll kill two birds with the same stone. Where’s the thread you need trimmed?” She took her small gold scissors and snipped off the offending ravel.

  The sewing room was square with windows on adjacent walls, both looking out into the rose garden. A light snow, unusual this far south, had layered the shrubs and bare rose vines and the edging of lawn with crisp white.

  Marise looked out at the scene, filled with pleasure. The snow light lit the room almost blindingly.

  She glanced away from the window to find Aunt Lina watching her, head cocked to one side, eyes speculative behind her rimless glasses. The older woman set down the sock she was
mending and turned her low chair to face Marise’s.

  “Do you want children?” she asked. The question was so sudden and unexpected that Marise was startled. But Lina was sober to the point of grimness, and the younger woman felt a stab of concern.

  “Why...we haven’t discussed it yet, Aunt Lina. We married in quite a hurry, and there wasn’t time to talk over a lot of things that people usually come to some agreement on beforehand. Ben was so ill...I asked his doctor, before he dismissed Ben, about that.

  “I told him we were about to marry, and I needed to know if I should start birth control measures, but Dr. Field thought his sickness, whatever it might be, would not be hereditary.” She thought back to that interview, trying to remember Field’s exact words.

  “He said it would be months before Ben would be fertile again, because of the array of drugs they tried on him. Some of the treatments leave traces in the system for a long time. But he didn’t seem concerned at the prospect of Ben’s marrying and possibly having a family, when the time comes.” She grinned cheerfully. “And my family is about as healthy as you can get, which farmers tend to be.”

  Lina shook her head. “You don’t quite understand, child. It isn’t your heredity I’m...but it relieves me to know that it will be a while before you have to worry about it, anyway. There are things you don’t know about this family.” She picked up the sock and bit off a thread with the same crisp motion Marise recalled, dimly, her own mother using.

  Lina threaded her needle, picked up another sock, and took three tiny stitches, one on top of the other, to anchor her thread. For some odd reason she seemed to be delaying the beginning of this private talk as long as she could.

  Marise rose and knelt beside the low chair, reaching to hold Lina’s hands still. “Aunt Lina, what are you trying to tell me?” She felt the chill of the long fingers between her own, and rubbed her hands together to warm them.