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Flowers for Seraphina, she thought, and nearly smiled. How romantic it had seemed then, the legend of that young girl hurling herself over the edge in grief and despair.
She remembered that Laura had always cried a little and that Kate would solemnly watch the flowers dance toward the sea. But she herself had always felt the thrill of that final flight, the defiance of the gesture, the bold recklessness of it.
Margo was just low enough, just tired enough to admit that looking for thrills, being defiant and embracing recklessness were what had brought her to this miserable point in her life.
Her eyes, a brilliant cornflower blue that the camera loved, were shadowed. She'd retouched her makeup carefully after her plane had landed in Monterey and had checked it again in the back of the cab she'd taken out to Big Sur. Christ knew she was skilled in painting on any image required. Only she would be aware that beneath the expensive cosmetics her cheeks were pale. They were, perhaps, a bit more hollow than they should be, but it was those slashing cheekbones that had boosted her onto the cover of so many magazines.
A good face started with bones, she thought and shivered as the next flash of lightning bolted across the sky. She was fortunate in her bone structure, in the smooth, poreless skin of her Irish ancestors. The Kerry blue eyes, the pale blond hair had undoubtedly been passed on by some ancient Viking conqueror.
Oh, she had a face all right, she mused. It wasn't a matter of vanity to admit it. After all, it and a body built for sinning had been her meal tickets, her pathways to fame and fortune. Full, romantic lips, a small, straight nose, a firm, rounded chin and expressive brows that needed only the slightest bit of darkening and shaping.
She would still have a good face when she was eighty, if she lived that long. It didn't matter that she was washed up, used up, embroiled in a scandal, and bitterly ashamed. She would still turn heads.
A pity she no longer gave a damn.
Turning away from the cliff edge, she peered through the gloom. Across the road and on the crest of the hill she could see the lights of Templeton House, the house that had held so much of her laughter, and so many of her tears. There was only one place to go when you were lost, only one place to run when you had no bridges left to burn.
Margo picked up her flight bag and headed home.
Ann Sullivan had served at Templeton for twenty-four years. One year less than she'd been a widow. She had come, her four-year-old daughter in tow, from Cork to take a position as maid. In those days, Thomas and Susan Templeton had run the house as they ran their hotels. In grand style. Hardly a week would go by without the rooms overflowing with guests and music. There had been a staff of eighteen, to ensure that every detail of the house and grounds was seen to perfectly.
Perfection was a trademark of Templeton, as was luxury, as was warmth. Ann had been taught, and taught well, that fine accommodations were nothing without gracious welcome.
The children, Master Joshua and Missy Laura, had had a nanny who in turn had boasted an assistant. Yet they had been raised by their parents. Ann had always admired the devotion, the discipline, and the care with which the Templetons had reared their family. Although she knew it could, wealth had never outdistanced love in this house.
It had been Mrs. Templeton's suggestion that the girls play together. They were, after all, the same age, and Joshua, being a boy and four years their senior, had little time for them.
Ann would forever be grateful for Mrs. Templeton, not only for the position and the simple kindnesses but for the advantages she had offered Ann's daughter. Margo had never been treated like a servant. Instead, she was treated as the cherished friend of the daughter of the house.
In ten years, Ann had become housekeeper. It was a position she knew she had earned and one she took great pride in. There was no corner of the house she hadn't cleaned with her own hands, no scrap of linen she hadn't washed. Her love for Templeton House was deep and abiding. Perhaps deeper and more abiding than for anything else in her life.
She had stayed on after the Templetons moved to Cannes, after Miss Laura married—too quickly and too rashly, to Ann's mind. She'd stayed after her own daughter ran off to Hollywood, and then to Europe, chasing glitter and glory.
She had never remarried, never considered it. Templeton House was her mate. It stood year after year, solid as the rock on which it was built. It never disappointed her, defied her, questioned her. It never hurt her or asked more than she could give.
As a daughter could, she thought.
Now, as the storm raged outside and rain began to lash like whips against the wide, arching windows, she walked into the kitchen. The slate-blue counters were spotless, earning a nod of approval for the new young maid she had hired. The girl had gone home now, and couldn't see it, but Ann would remember to tell her she'd done well.
How much easier it was, she mused, to earn the affection and respect of staff than it was to earn that of your own child.
Often she thought she'd lost Margo the day the girl had been born. Been born too beautiful, too restless, too bold.
As worried as she was about Margo, after the news had broken, she went about her duties. There was nothing she could do for the girl. She was bitterly aware that there had never been anything she could do for, or about, Margo.
Love hadn't been enough. Though, Ann thought, perhaps she had held too much love back from Margo. It was only because she'd been afraid to give the girl too much, for to give her too much might have made her reach even farther than she had seemed to need to.
And she simply wasn't very demonstrative, Ann told herself with a little shrug. Servants couldn't afford to be, no matter how kind the employer. She understood her place. Why hadn't Margo ever understood hers?
For a moment she leaned on the counter in a rare show of self-indulgence, her eyes squeezed tight against threatening tears. She simply couldn't think of Margo now. The girl was out of her hands, and the house required a final check.
She straightened, breathing deep to balance herself. The floor had been freshly mopped, and the same slate-blue as the counters gleamed in the light. The stove, an aging six-burner, showed no remnants of the dinner it had cooked. And young Jenny had remembered to put fresh water in the daffodils that stood sunnily on the table.
Pleased that her instincts for the new maid had been on target, Ann wandered to the pots of herbs sitting on the windowsill above the sink. A press of her thumb showed her the soil was dry. W
atering the window herbs wasn't Jenny's responsibility, she thought, clucking her tongue as she saw to it herself. The cook needed to care for her own. But then, Mrs. Williamson was getting up in years and becoming slightly absentminded with it. Ann often made excuses to remain in the kitchen during meal preparation, just to be certain that Mrs. Williamson didn't chop off anything important, or start a fire.
Anyone but Miss Laura would have pensioned the woman off by now, Ann mused. But Miss Laura understood that the need to be needed didn't diminish with age. Miss Laura understood Templeton House, and tradition.
