"Why didn't your grandfather simply get a divorce if he didn't care about her?"
"I asked my grandfather that same question the summer before I went away to Yale. He and I were celebrating my forthcoming college career by getting drunk together in his study. Instead of telling me to mind my own damned business, he'd had just enough to drink to tell me the truth and not so much that he wasn't lucid." He reached for his brandy and tossed down the rest of it as if he were trying to wash away the taste of his words, then he stared absently into the empty glass.
"What did he tell you?" she asked finally.
He glanced at her as if he'd almost forgotten she was there. "He told me that my grandmother was the only woman in the world he'd ever loved. Everyone thought he'd married her to merge the Harrison fortune with what was left of his own, particularly because my grandmother was a long way from being beautiful, but my grandfather said that wasn't true, and I believe him. Actually, when my grandmother grew older, she became what is sometimes called a handsome woman—very aristocratic looking."
He stopped again and Julie said in disgust, "Why did you believe him? I mean, if he loved her, it seems to me he wouldn't have cheated on her like that."
A sardonic smile tugged at his lips. "You had to know my grandmother. No one could meet her high standards, least of all my devil-may-care grandfather, and he knew it. He told me he just gave up and quit trying to do it soon after they were married. The only one of us my grandmother ever actually approved of was Justin. She adored Justin. You see," he explained with something closer to genuine amusement, "Justin was the only male in the entire family who looked anything like her people. He was fair like she was, medium height instead of tall—in fact he had a striking resemblance to her own father. The rest of us, including my father, all had the Stanhope height and features—me, in particular. I happened to have been a dead ringer for my grandfather, which, as you can imagine, did not endear me to my grandmother in the least."
Julie thought that was the most ridiculously biased thing she'd ever heard, but she kept her feelings to herself and said, "If your grandmother loved Justin so much, I'm sure she would have stood by him if he'd told her he was gay."
"Not on your life! She despised weakness, any and all weakness. His announcement would have revolted and shattered her." He slanted her a wry look and added, "Considering all that, she certainly married into the wrong family. As I mentioned earlier, the Stanhopes were rife with every kind of weakness. They drank too much, drove too fast, squandered their own money, then married people who had enough to revive their flagging fortunes. Having fun was their one and only avocation. They never worried about tomorrow or gave a damn about anyone but themselves, not even my own parents, who died on their way home from a drunken party, driving over a hundred miles an hour on a snowy road. They had four children who needed them, but it didn't slow them down."
"Are Alex and Elizabeth like your parents?"
He answered in a matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental voice, "Alex and Elizabeth possessed the usual Stanhope weaknesses and excesses. By the time they were sixteen, they were both heavily into drugs and booze. Elizabeth had already had an abortion. Alex had been busted twice—and of course released with nothing on the record—for drugs and gambling. In fairness to them, there wasn't anyone to try to take them in hand. My grandmother would have, but my grandfather wouldn't hear of it. We were, after all, created in his own mold. Even if she'd tried, it wouldn't have done any good because we were only at home for a couple months during summers. At my grandfather's insistence, we spent the rest of the year in exclusive private schools. Nobody really gives a damn in those schools what you do so long as you don't get caught and cause them trouble."
"So your grandmother probably didn't approve of your sister and brother, is that it?"
"That's it. They didn't like her either, believe me. Although my grandmother believed they had possibilities if they could have been gotten under control in time."
Julie had absorbed every word he'd said so far, more than that, she'd absorbed every subtle nuance of his tone and expression. Even though he'd invariably included himself when he discussed the Stanhope "weaknesses," she'd caught the disdain lacing his voice when he spoke of them. She was also drawing some very interesting conclusions from what he had not said. "And what about you?" she asked cautiously. "How did you feel about her?"
He quirked a challenging brow at her. "What makes you think I felt any differently about her than Alex and Elizabeth?"
She didn't hedge. "I sense you did."
He nodded silent approval at her acuity. "Actually, I admired her. As I said, she had impossibly high standards for us, but at least she had standards. She made you want to try to be something better than you were. Not that you could ever satisfy her. Only Justin was able to do that."
"You told me how she felt about your brothers and sisters. How did she feel about you."
"She felt I was the image of my grandfather."
"In looks," Julie corrected.
"What's the difference?" he said shortly.
Julie had a feeling she was treading into forbidden territory, but she took the leap anyway. With quiet firmness, she said, "I think you must know the difference, even if she didn't recognize it. You may have looked like your grandfather, but you weren't like him at all. You were like her. Justin resembled her physically, but he wasn't like her. You were."
When he couldn't intimidate her into retracting her opinion with a revolted scowl, he said dryly, "You're awfully confident of your opinions for a child of twenty-six."
"Nice tactic," she replied, looking impressed and matching his tone perfectly. "If you can't fool me, ridicule me."
"Touché," he whispered softly, bending his head to kiss her.
"And," she continued, turning her head so that his only available target was her cheek, not her mouth, "if ridiculing me fails, try to distract me."
His chuckle was rich and deep as he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and firmly tipped her mouth up to his. "You know," he said with a slow smile, "you could become a real pain in the ass."
"Oh, please, no—don't resort to flattery now," she laughed, effectively preventing him from kissing her. "You know I go all to pieces when you say sweet things to me. What happened to make you leave home?"