“You have to swear on your life you will never reveal what I’m about to tell you. My mother would kill me if she knew I’d told. Actually, she might kill me if she knew I knew.”
“I do indeed swear,” he said, trying not to smile.
“My mother likes to tell people she’s from an old Virginia family, but the truth is, she grew up in a shack in the Smoky Mountains. She grew up without an education and only the minimum of food and clothing.”
“But she was beautiful?”
“Very. When she was seventeen she left home and went to New York. I don’t know where she got the money for her travel expenses—Brat says she stole it from her family, that her father had sold some hogs the day before and while the family slept my mother stole the money and went to New York. But I always take the stories my sister tells me with a grain of salt. However she got the money, she showed up in New York wearing an expensive suit and got a good job at the perfume counter of a fancy department store. Then she met my father, fell in love with him, and they were married and have lived happily ever after.”
“I see,” Trevelyan said after a moment. His face had lost that soft look of seduction. Now he looked interested, as he always did when he had a puzzle to figure out. “And together the two of them used that great American freedom of yours, earned a vast fortune so you could be an heiress and become a duchess.”
“Not exactly.”
“How exactly?” His eyes were so intense she was sure his look could pierce metal.
“My grandfather, my father’s father, was known as the Commander.”
Trevelyan looked up at her, eyes ablaze.
“I see you’ve heard of him,” she said, and it was her turn to give a smug smile.
“How convenient that your mother fell in love with the son of such a rich man.”
“Yes, it was. You can laugh if you want but Grandfather didn’t give the newlyweds any money. Not any real money, anyway, only about $10,000 a year.”
“Poverty!”
“It is if you’ve grown up as wealthy as my father did,” she said quickly.
“But he and your mother struggled by. After all, they did have love.”
She ignored his comment, ignored the cynicism in his voice. “My grandfather died fifteen years ago and left approximately thirty million dollars. He—”
“Give or take a few mill.”
“He left ten million to my father, ten million to my mother—he believed women should be independent—and ten in trust for me.”
“What about your adorable little sister?”
“She wasn’t born yet.”
“I imagine there’s enough for her.”
&n
bsp; Claire was silent.
He studied her face for a moment. She was busying herself straightening the items on the table by the bed. “What’s the rest of the story?” he asked.
She didn’t want to tell him any more. Why couldn’t he accept a story the way it was told? Why did he always have to look underneath the surface? “I guess the rest of it is that my parents spent their money.”
The expression on Trevelyan’s face could only be described as horror.
Claire gave a weak smile. “My father is a lover of fine things: horses, brandy, sea travel on his yacht.”
Lazy, Trevelyan thought. “And your mother? How did she manage to spend so much?”
“I think she wanted to be part of a society she’d never had access to as a child. So she built a house and gave parties.”