He was willing to be on time and that was it.
As soon as he hit the first floor, he started avoiding people’s stares and looking for a drink—and he ran into an old friend before he got to the Family Reserve.
“Well, well, well, the New Yorker has returned to his roots finally,” Samuel Theodore Lodge III said as he came over.
Lane had to smile. “How’s my favorite southern-fried attorney?”
While they embraced and clapped each other’s backs, the blond woman who was with Samuel T. hung off to the side, her eyes missing nothing—which was more than you could say about her dress. Anything shorter up top or on the bottom and she’d be in her underwear.
So she was right down Samuel T.’s alley.
“Allow me to introduce Miss Savannah Locke.” Samuel T. nodded to the woman as if giving her permission to come forward, and she was right on it, leaning in and offering her pale, slender hand. “Go get us a drink, darling, would you? He’ll have the Family Reserve.”
As the woman hightailed it for the bar, Lane shook his head. “I can serve myself.”
“She’s a stewardess. She likes to wait on people.”
“Aren’t they called flight attendants now?”
“So what made you decide to come back? It can’t be the Derby. That’s Edward’s thing.”
Lane shrugged off the question, not about to go into the situation with Miss Aurora. Too raw. “I need your help with something. In a professional capacity, that is.”
Samuel T.’s eyes narrowed and then moved down to Lane’s wedding ring-free hand. “Cleaning house, are you.”
“How fast can you make it happen? I want things kept quiet and over with quick.”
The man nodded once. “Call me tomorrow morning. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Thank you—”
Up on the grand staircase, his sister, Gin, made the corner at the landing and paused, as if she knew people were going to want to examine what she was wearing—and the red gown and all those jewels were in fact worth the check-out. With acres of crimson silk falling to the floor and that set of Princess Di diamonds, she was the Oscars, Town & Country, and the Court of St. James all at once.
The hush that quieted through the foyer was both from awe and condemnation.
Gin’s reputation preceded her.
Didn’t that run in the family.
When she caught sight of him and Samuel T., her eyebrows arched, and for a split second, she smiled honestly, that old light returning to her eyes, the years peeling away until the three of them were who they had been before so much had happened.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Samuel T. said. “I’ll go see about our drinks. I think my date got lost on the trip back.”
“The house isn’t that big.”
“Maybe to you and me.”
As Samuel T. turned away, Gin lifted the skirting of her red gown and finished her descent. When she hit the black and white marble, she came right across to Lane, her stilettos clipping over the floor that had been laid a hundred years before. He expected to do a gentleman’s hold on her as they embraced, in deference to her pinned-up hair and her jewels—but she was the one who squeezed until he felt her tremble.
“I am so glad you’re here,” she said in a rough voice. “You should have let me know.”
And that was when he did the math and realized it was Amelia’s birthday.
He was about to say something when she pulled back and put her mask in place, her Katharine Hepburn features falling into a perfectly vacant arrangement that made his chest ache.
“I need a drink,” she announced. “And where did Samuel T. go?”
“He’s not alone tonight, Gin.”
“As if that matters?”
When she walked off with her head high and her shoulders back, he felt sorry for that poor blond stewardess. Lane didn’t know who Samuel T’s escort was, but she had certainly gotten the right read on her date: Over at the bar, she’d set herself at his hip like a holstered revolver—as if she were fully aware that she was going to have to protect her turf.
At least he’d have something to watch over dinner.
“Your Family Reserve, sir? Mr. Lodge sends it with his highest regard.”
Lane turned and smiled. Reginald Tressel had been the bartender at Easterly forever, and the African-American gentleman in his black dress coat and shined shoes was more distinguished than many of the guests, as usual.
“Thank you, Reg.” Lane took a squat cut-crystal glass from the silver tray. “Hey, thanks for calling me about Miss Aurora. Did you get my voice mail?”
“I did. And I knew you’d want to come down.”
“She looks better than I thought she would.”
“She puts up a front. You’re not leaving anytime soon, are you?”
“Hey, how’s Hazel doing?” Lane deflected.
“She’s much better, thank you. And I know that you won’t go back up north until things are finished here.”
Reginald gave him a smile that didn’t change the grim light in those dark eyes, and then the man returned to his duties, walking through the crowd like a statesman, people greeting him as an equal.
Lane could remember when he was young people saying that Mr. Tressel was the unofficial mayor of Charlemont, and that certainly hadn’t changed.
God, he wasn’t ready to lose Miss Aurora. That would be like having to sell Easterly—something he couldn’t fathom in a universe that was functioning properly—