CHAPTER 1
Maggie Martin settled herself in the back of the cab as the driver pulled away from the airport and into the thin sunshine of a late February afternoon.
She nodded when he leaned back to tell her that Westbury was an hour’s drive, and turned her attention to the countryside streaming by her window.
She was in no mood for idle chatter with a taxi driver.
The dormant farmland lay still and expectant.
Occasional clumps of leafless trees were silhouetted against the storm clouds that soon filled the sky.
Maggie was glad she had carefully folded and packed those extra sweaters.
She shivered in spite of the heat blasting from the vents and wondered how anyone could live in a cold climate.
Southern California might not have four seasons, but who in their right mind wanted winter?
Maggie chastised herself once again for even making this trip.
She was behind in her work—she needed the billings—and she probably wouldn’t find any answers, anyway.
As the monotonous scenery sped by, Maggie relived her final moments with Paul in the cardiac ICU.
Wired and tubed, he was hooked up to the best equipment modern medicine had to offer.
Their children, Mike and Susan, were both frantically making their way through traffic, but neither arrived in time.
It had been Maggie and Paul at the very end.
In his final moments, Paul rallied. He feebly squeezed Maggie’s hand and repeated breathlessly, “Sorry. So sorry. House is for you.” At least, that’s what she thought he said.
She had been crying, and the beeping monitors and wheezing oxygen machine made it impossible to hear.
She had been over this a million times. It hadn’t made any sense because she knew their house was hers.
Hadn’t they just paid it off and thrown a burn-the-mortgage party with the kids?
She had tried to reassure Paul, to quiet him, but he had been desperate to make his point.
Maggie now understood Paul’s deathbed confession.
That’s why she had decided to come to Rosemont before she listed it for sale.
She needed to get answers; to make some sense of her life.
Maggie planned to go straight to her hotel in Westbury to try to get a good night’s sleep before she and the realtor toured the house and signed the listing papers the next day.
But her plane had arrived forty-five minutes early, the only advantage of the bumpy flight through strong tailwinds.
God knows she was exhausted, having spent another sleepless night rehashing her sham of a marriage.
But she was far too curious to get a glimpse of Rosemont to wait any longer.
As they passed the highway sign announcing the Westbury exit fourteen miles ahead, Maggie retrieved her house key from the zippered compartment of her purse, leaned forward, and instructed the driver to take her directly to Rosemont.
The cabbie, as it turned out, didn’t need directions. “Everybody in these parts knows the place,” he assured her. “It’s been vacant for years,” he continued as he caught her eye in his rearview mirror. “Do you know the owner?”
“I am the owner,” Maggie replied with an assurance in her voice that surprised her.
“Actually, I just inherited Rosemont. I’m going to put it on the market, but I’m awfully curious to see it.
Since it’ll still be light when we get there, I thought I’d like to see it on my own, before the realtor and I get together tomorrow. ”
The cabbie nodded slowly, digesting this news, as he flipped on his left-turn signal and turned into a long, tree-lined drive that wound its way up a steep hill.
They rounded the final corner and Maggie gasped.
At the end of a deep lawn was an elegant manor house of aristocratic proportions.
Built of warm limestone, with regal multi-paned windows, a sharply pitched tile roof, and six chimneys, Rosemont had the kind of gracious good looks that never go out of style.
Dazed, she handed him his fare, with a more-than-generous tip, and secured his promise to drop her luggage at her hotel and return for her in an hour.
Maggie dashed through the now falling sleet to the massive front door.
The key fit smoothly into the lock but wouldn’t turn.
She tugged and jiggled the handle, to no effect.
It wasn’t moving. Maggie looked wistfully over her shoulder as the taxi took the last turn at the end of the drive and vanished beyond the trees.
Why did she have to insist on coming here tonight? Impatience did her in every time.
She buttoned the top button of her coat, fished the cabbie’s card out of her pocket, and unzipped her purse to retrieve her phone.
She’d have to call him to come back now.
It was too cold and damp outside to even walk around and look in the windows.
Maggie tugged off one of her gloves with her teeth and punched in his number on her phone.
She brought it to her ear and idly tried the lock one more time.
She felt something shift under her hand and the sturdy lock yielded.
The door creaked open. Maggie abruptly ended the call and stepped over the threshold.
Even in the gloomy light of a stormy dusk, the beauty of the house overwhelmed Maggie, and she knew, for perhaps the first time in her life, that she was home. And that nothing would ever be the same again.
The mahogany front door opened to a foyer that gave way to a generous living room.
A stone fireplace with an ornately carved mantel dominated one side of the room, and a graceful stairway swept up the opposite wall to the second floor.
An archway led to a room lined with bookcases.
An honest-to-goodness library, for Pete’s sake, Maggie thought.
She inched forward slowly, like a dog expecting to come to the end of its leash, and peered into the library.
Although all of the furniture was draped in heavy muslin covers, the room was stunning with its six-foot-high fireplace, French doors to a patio, and a stained-glass window.
“I’ve been transported to a movie set of an English manor house,” Maggie whispered.
She set her purse on a round table in the middle of the foyer and unbuttoned her coat.
The fatigue and apathy that had been Maggie’s constant companions since Paul’s death began to dissipate as she examined this elegant old house she had inherited.
Paul had never mentioned owning an estate on fifteen acres in Westbury.
At least not until his final moments. Maggie had learned there were a lot of things that Paul had never mentioned.
Unlike the others, this one was a pleasant surprise.
The remainder of the first floor was comprised of a large dining room, butler’s pantry, kitchen, breakfast room, laundry, maid’s quarters, and a large, sunny room whose function she couldn’t identify.
It had a herringbone tile floor and was lined with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall.
A conservatory, maybe? Holy cow—did she actually own a home with a library and a conservatory?
The perfect lines of the house were evident at every turn.
With mounting excitement, Maggie found the switch for the chandelier that lit the staircase and raced to the second floor.
A spacious landing gave way to six separate bedroom suites.
She opened the first door carefully and proceeded with increasing confidence.
Each suite was lovely and distinct in its own way, with huge windows and a sitting room and bathroom for each bedroom.
One had a balcony, two had fireplaces. “I actually own this place,” she murmured to herself in shock.
She was considering which bedroom she liked best when she thought she heard a door close below.
Was it already time for the taxi to return for her?
Could she possibly have been here for an hour?
Maggie tore down the stairs as surely as if she had been running down them all of her life and came face to face with a solidly built man wearing tidy work clothes. With a pounding heart but steady voice, Maggie demanded to know who he was and how he got into her house.
He stepped back and held up his hands. “I’m sorry to startle you, ma’am.
I’m Sam Torres. Your realtor expected you tomorrow, and he asked me to come by today to air the house out a bit and make sure that everything was in working order.
I’ve been in the basement for the past three hours fiddling with the furnace.
I’ve got it going now. I’m surprised we didn’t hear each other. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He paused a moment to wipe his hands on a rag.
He was never very good at guessing ages; he figured she must be in her fifties, but couldn’t tell which end of that age range she leaned to.
She was wrapped in a down-filled coat and wore those enormous Australian boots that were so popular.
His wife lived in hers from October to May.
She had a pair of glasses perched on her nose and was now regarding him imperiously through them.
“Welcome to Rosemont,” he continued. “I understand you plan to put it on the market right away?”