Dixie Browning - Lucy And The Stone

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to two writers’ groups that provided great ideas and even greater hospitality: First, my daughter Sarah and her fifth-grade class at the University School. And second, Peg McCool and her Friday critique group in Tacoma—Carol, Micky, Mary, Melinda and Anita…and Charlie, of course. Many thanks!

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

He caught the phone on the fifth ring, breathing heavily, swearing silently. “Yeah, McCloud here!”

“John Stone, is that you?” Aunt Alice. Alice Hardisson was the only person in the world who called him John Stone.

“How are you, Aunt Alice? It’s been a long time.”

“I’m right well, thank you. I understand you were in the hospital. I hope you’re feelin’ better now.” The quiet, well-bred Southern voice waited politely for him to fill her in on all the pertinent details.

Now, how the hell could she have known that? Other than the occasional family funeral, when he happened to be in the country, and the basket of jams and jellies she ordered sent to his mail drop every year at Christmas, there had been little contact between them for years.

Unless there’d been something in the news. He’d been in no condition to know or care at the time. “I’m fine, Aunt Alice. Or as fine as a man can be after overdosing on hospital food. How’s Liam? Still hunting rabbits on his day off?” Liam was the Hardissons’ butler. He was seventy-five if he was a day, and he’d been Stone’s mainstay in the years he had spent in the old Hardisson mansion after his parents had been killed.

“Liam’s retired now. Mellie died last year, and I thought it best to let him spend his last days with his grandchildren.”

Best for whom, Aunt Alice? Stone thought wryly. Despite the code of noblesse oblige that was bred into the bones of women like Alice Hardisson, his aunt seldom put herself out to any great extent for any interest but her own. Unless it was for her only child.

Stone himself was a case in point. His mother and Alice had been sisters. Stone’s parents had been killed by a drunk driver when he was six and a half years old, and Alice had taken him in. Noblesse oblige. Her own son, his cousin Billy, had been five then.

But while Alice, accompanied occassionally by Billy and his nanny, had traveled to Scotland for the salmon fishing, to Paris for the fashion hunting or to some spa in Arizona twice a year for whatever benefits she derived there, Stone had invariably been left with Liam and Mellie.

Noblesse oblige. Take in needy kinfolk, put food in their mouths, a roof over their heads and inquire graciously once or twice a year to be sure there’s nothing more they need.

And as soon as they’re weaned, pack them off to boarding school.

“Are you in town, Aunt Alice?” Stone asked, hoping she wasn’t.

“No, I’m still down here in Atlanna.”

She always called it Atlanna. With her gentle, unconscious arrogance, she probably spelled it that way.

“How’s Billy? Still thinking about making a run for the senate one of these days?”

“Well now, that’s what I called you about, John Stone. I reckon you heard Billy got hisself mixed up with this perfectly awful woman a while back and ended up married to her.”

Stone lowered himself carefully onto the sofa and tucked the phone against his neck. “I seem to remember seeing an announcement.”

“I had Ella Louise mail out announcements so it wouldn’t look like such a hole-in-the-wall affair, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Naturally, I made the best of it for Billy’s sake, but she just wasn’t Our Kind of People.”

Stone smiled grimly. Very few people made Alice’s list of Our Kind of People. He himself had certainly fallen far short, despite their kinship.

“I took her in hand for poor Billy’s sake. The girl had no more sense of how to go on than a stray cat. All that hair, and those cheap clothes! Naturally I did my best to show her how to dress and speak and how to act around decent folk without embarrassing herself.”

Without embarrassing Alice Hardisson, Stone interpreted, making a noncommittal murmur. Alice would be the mother-in-law from hell, no matter who Billy married. Stone could almost find it in his heart to be sorry for the poor girl, but then, any female with no more sense than to marry Bill Hardisson probably deserved what she got.

He picked up the monologue still in progress. “Been hearin’ these awful rumors. Nothing in the papers yet, thank goodness, but I’m afraid she’s out to make mischief. I can’t think of anyone else who would do such a thing.” She sighed. “John Stone, I’m worried.”

“Why’d he marry her? Was she pregnant?”

“Good heavens, certainly not! Billy has better sense than to get hisself involved with a tramp like Lucy Dooley!”

“I thought you said he married her. That’s about as involved as you can get.”

“He’s just too trustin’ for his own good. Poor Billy. When a flashy tramp like that Dooley woman keeps flauntin’ herself at the club pool, wearin’ little more than she came into the world with—”

“That’s where he met her? The club?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I? Oh, I’ll admit the girl has a common type of looks that men seem to like—she certainly took my poor boy in, but before they’d even been married six months, she showed her true colors. Poor Billy, he pleaded with her to behave herself. But when she started carryin’ on in front of all their friends—why, he had to ask her to leave.”

“They’re divorced now, I take it. So what’s the problem?”

“Well, naturally he divorced her. At least she had the decency to leave town, but we’re afraid now that he’s runnin’ for the state senate, she’ll come back and cause trouble.”

“Why?”

“Well, for goodness’ sake, John Stone, for money! What else would her kind want?”

“You mean that flock of tame lawyers you keep on a leash didn’t sew her fingers together before they let Billy marry her?”

“I was out of the country at the time, and that girl had poor Billy so besotted he just up and married her without makin’ her sign doodlysquat! Lord knows what she threatened to do, but he ended up paying her two hundred thousand dollars a year for three years just to stay out of Georgia. Poor Billy, he’s always been too softhearted for his own good.”

Or too softheaded. Six hundred thousand was a lot of loot!

“Now that the payments have ended, we’re afraid she’s goin’ to try and get more by threatenin’ to go to the papers with her vicious lies. She knows good and well he’s lookin’ to go to Washin’ton after one or two terms in Atlanna. That’s just the sort of thing her kind would do. Like all those hussies who end up on the television by threatenin’ decent men in high places. You know who I mean, John Stone?”

“I seem to recall a few such incidents, but why would you—”

“I just told you—there are already rumors circulatin’ around town. They can’t have come from any other source, because everybody here loves Billy. He’s always been a good boy.”

Stone grimaced. Billy loved Billy. Aunt Alice loved Billy. The rest of the world probably knew him for what he was—the spoiled, immature product of privilege and neglect. Not for the first time, Stone was glad he’d broken with the family at the age of fourteen, when he’d been shipped off to military school, and that it had never been “convenient” for him to spend much time with his aunt after that.

“Exactly what is it you think I can do?” he asked.

She didn’t beat around the bush. “I understand you’ve been hurt right bad, and you’re goin’ to be laid up for a while. I thought you might like to—”

“You thought I might like to go down to Atlanta and take her out for you?”

“What? Don’t be foolish, John Stone. If you want to take her out, that’s your concern, but I warn you, she’s not Our Kind of People.”

“I didn’t mean— That is, take her out means—” He gave up. He spoke three languages fluently and got by in a couple more. He had never spoken his aunt’s language, and probably never would.

“It just so happens that I’ve arranged for this woman to spend the summer at a place called Coronoke—it’s a little speck of an island off the North Carolina coast. I understand there aren’t any telephones there, and certainly no reporters, so I thought if you could go along and kind of keep an eye on her, just make sure she doesn’t get up to any more mischief—”

“Whoa! Aunt Alice, I don’t even know this woman, and you want me to be her jailer?”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, John Stone. I didn’t say that. All I ask is that you go down there and take advantage of the cottage I’ve leased in your name. You don’t have to let her know who you are—in fact, it’s probably better if you don’t—but you can keep her entertained so she’ll forget about causin’ trouble for Billy, at least until after his weddin’.”

“His wedding? ”

“Oh. Did I forget to mention that Billy’s gettin’ married again in August? This lovely girl—she’s the granddaughter of old Senator Houghton—”

“In other words, you want me to pen this woman up on a deserted island— What did you call it?”

“Coronoke, and it’s certainly not deserted.”

“Right. Pen her up, don’t let her near a phone, and if she makes any suspicious moves, sic the federales on her, right?”

By the time he finished, Alice had very politely hung up on him. Feeling worse than he had when he’d come out of the hospital five days earlier, Stone called her back and, after apologizing, found himself reluctantly agreeing to finish up his recuperation on the island of Coronoke.

And, incidentally, to do his best to distract the greedy little hustler who was out to ruin Billy’s chances for marital happiness and political success.

Actually, he’d sort of had other plans, but...

“How’d you find out I’d been in the hospital, Aunt Alice?”

“Carrie Lee Hunsucker’s great nephew works for the Constitution. Carrie Lee belongs to the Wednesday Morning Music Club.”

And he’d thought he had contacts.

“I’m doing this partly for your sake, John Stone, because I understand you don’t even have a decent place to live. This way, you can just lie around until you’re feelin’ well enough to go back to work doin’ whatever it is you do these days.”

Whatever it was he did. As if she didn’t know. Why else had she tracked him down and sicced him on some bimbo who was out to ruin her son’s political career before it even got off the ground? Which just might, incidentally, be the best thing that could happen to the state of Georgia.

On the other hand, he did need a vacation. Gazing around at the hotel room he had taken when he’d left the hospital, Stone compared it to a cottage on a small island somewhere down South. The room was about average for a residential hotel. He’d bunked in far worse, under far worse conditions, but now that he thought about it, soaking up the sun on a private beach didn’t sound half bad, either.

“I guess I can do that,” he’d said finally, adding a halfhearted thanks.

“You don’t have to thank me, John Stone. It’s the least I can do for my own sister’s boy.”