The Secret Heiress. Bethany Campbell

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СКАЧАТЬ her uncle’s latest number. It was after midnight, but Reynard was a night owl. He answered after only a few rings. “Marie!” he exclaimed. “How are you, love? And how’s my dear Colie?”

      Marie heard background noise and supposed he was in a pub. “Rennie, Mama’s not well. She’s very weak—and she doesn’t look good—I’m afraid for her.”

      Reynard’s voice went serious. “She’s taken a turn for the worse?”

      “I sense it. She’s getting weaker. The doctors don’t seem able to help her.”

      Reynard spat out several colorful oaths concerning doctors. Then his tone grew solemn again. “Should I come? Would it help if I was with you?”

      “Rennie, you’ve got a job. You just can’t walk away.”

      “I can if I need to be with her and you, pet. No man owns Rennie Lafayette.”

      Marie feared she’d sounded too alarmist. “Wait until I know more. But Reynard?”

      “What, love?”

      “Mama gave me a letter that a woman wrote her. This woman said she’d worked in a home for unwed mothers and remembers when Mama was born. And she named Mama’s birth mother. Do you know anything about this?”

      “Stone the crows!” he said in surprise. “I never—she never said a word to me. When did she find this out?”

      “Over two years ago. And the woman died shortly after. I don’t know how to check this out. Or even if I should. Mama’s mother might be dead, too, by now. But she lives or lived in Hunter Valley. Have you ever heard of a Louisa Fairchild?”

      “Heard of her?” Reynard demanded. “Crikey, I know her! She’s supposed to be Colie’s mom? Hold on. I’m going outside for a bit of privacy.”

      Marie heard him tell someone to deal him out; he had a family emergency. The background noise faded. She pictured him stepping, alone, into the Southern night.

      “There,” he said. “Now—Louisa Fairchild is supposed to be Colie’s mum?”

      “So said the Gates woman.”

      “That’s a jolt. Colie’s such a nice woman. So much for the bloody theory of heredity.”

      “Louisa Fairchild’s not a nice woman?”

      “The old girl’s a snorter, she is. But now that I think on it, she does bear a certain likeness to Colie. It’s truth.”

      Marie remembered the photo and somehow she managed to feel both numbed and anxious at once. “You really know her?”

      “I live at a neighboring horse station, not far from her. I’m the handyman there. I’ve actually been in the old girl’s house. Fixed the lock on her famous gun cabinet. She’s an old boiler, she is, a right old hen. But I get some smiles out of her—pruny smiles, but I get ’em.”

      Marie didn’t doubt it. If Reynard put his mind to it, he could make a cat laugh. She said, “Gun cabinet? Mama had a clipping about Louisa Fairchild. Something about her shooting a man—do you know about it?”

      “All New South Wales knows about it. She said the bloke stormed into her house, raving about water rights, and attacked her. Conveniently, she was cleaning a gun at the time. Said it went off accidental-like.”

      “And people believe that?”

      “Some do. And some say she got off the hook because she had more money than Whittleson. She could out-lawyer him.”

      “What do you think?” Marie asked, frowning in uncertainty.

      “I think it’s odd to be cleaning a loaded gun. It’s a point Whittleson’s lawyer never brought up. But lawyers? Pah—they’re about as useful as a third armpit.”

      Reynard always resented authority and officials; unlike Colette, he was a born rebel, and it was part of his raffish charm. Marie tried to nudge him further into the subject.

      “You’ve met her. Do you think she could shoot somebody?”

      “She’s a scrapper. And she can shoot. Rumor says she can blast the head off a snake at thirty meters. Still,” Reynard said silkily, “she’s rich as a queen. No known direct descendants. If she’s your gran, she might open her scrawny arms to you in welcome.”

      “I might not open mine,” Marie said. She liked nothing she’d learned about this woman.

      “She’s a hard one to know,” he returned. “Not a happy person. Lonesome, I think.”

      Reynard’s take on Louisa confused Marie. He sounded critical one moment, sympathetic the next. But he was often mercurial; that was his nature.

      “I wonder why Mama waited so long to tell me.”

      “I don’t know, pet. But from what you say, I think I’ll drive right up there. She may be franker with me than with you about Louisa Fairchild. I am her baby brother, eh?”

      Marie protested, but Reynard insisted. “Today’s Monday. If I start early tomorrow, I can make it in two days. Don’t argue, dear heart. My womenfolk need me!”

      My womenfolk need me! He sounded so swashbuckling, she almost smiled.

      “You’re sure you won’t lose your job?” she asked.

      “Who’d be fool enough to fire a jack-of-all-trades like me?” he said with the same bravado. “I’m indispensable, if I do say so.”

      Marie smiled. Although Colette worried about her footloose brother, he always cheered her as no one else could. “Then come to us,” she said.

      But shortly after 3:00 a.m., Marie’s phone rang. It was the hospital, calling to inform her that Colette had died in her sleep.

      Chapter Three

      Marie was stunned, but didn’t cry. What she’d feared most had happened, but it seemed unreal. It was as if she was trapped in a terrible, incomprehensible dream.

      She phoned Reynard, who sounded stricken and said he’d be there as soon as he could.

      The next morning, zombielike, Marie arranged for her mother’s remains to be cremated. She had it done as soon as possible, without ceremony, for that had been Colette’s wish.

      Then, somehow, she went to her classes, still feeling trapped in the numb, unbelievable nightmare. That night she waited tables at the Scepter, functioning on autopilot. But under her business-as-usual facade, she was in a maelstrom of emotion.

      All of Marie’s life, it had been the two of them, she and Colette. When the Lafayette family’s fortune failed, Colette went to work as soon as she could and had never stopped. Reynard had left Darwin. Some called him a drifter, but he called himself “a free spirit.”

      He returned to visit two or three times a year, and then he’d be off again to wherever his whim took him. He was clever enough to always find a job, СКАЧАТЬ