He stopped the car in the driveway and stared at the house, Davencourt. It was the embodiment of his ambition, a symbol of his life, the heart of the Davenport family. It had a personality all its own, an old house that had sheltered generations of Davenports within its graceful wings. Whenever he was away on a business trip and thought of Davencourt, in his mind's eye he always saw it surrounded by flowers. In spring, the azalea bushes rioted with color. In summer, the roses and old maids took their bow. In fall there were the chrysanthemums, and in winter the pink and white camellia bushes. Davencourt was always in bloom. He'd loved it with a passion he'd never felt for Jessie. He couldn't put the blame for this totally on the others, because he too was guilty, in the final analysis marrying for the legacy rather than the woman.
To hell with Davencourt, too.
He parked at the walk and went in the front door. The conversation in the living room stilled abruptly, as it had been doing for the past week. He didn't even glance into the room as he strode into the study and seated himself behind the desk.
He worked for hours, completing paperwork, drawing up forms, returning active control of all the far-flung Davenport enterprises into Lucinda's hands. When it was finished, he got up and walked out of the house, and drove away without looking back.
BOOK THREE
The Return
Bring Webb back for me," Lucinda said to Roanna.
"I want you to convince him to come home."
Roanna's face didn't show her shock, though it reverberated through her entire body. With controlled grace she replaced her tea glass on the dainty coaster without even the tiniest betraying rattle. Webb! Just the sound of his name still had the power to slice through her, bringing up the old painful longing and guilt, even though it had been ten years since she'd last seen him, since anyone had seen him.
"Do you know where he is?" she asked composedly. Unlike Roanna's, Lucinda's hand did shake as she set down her glass. Her eighty-three years sat heavily on Lucinda, and the constant tremor in her hands was just another of the tiny ways her own body was failing her. Lucinda was dying, in fact. She knew it, they all knew it. Not immediately, not even soon, but it was summer now and it wasn't likely she'd see another one. Her iron will had stood up to a lot, but had slowly bowed under the inexorable crush of time.
"Of course. I hired a private investigator to find him. Yvonne and Sandra have known all along, but they wouldn't tell me," Lucinda said with a mixture of anger and exasperation.
"He's kept in touch with them, and both of them have visited him occasionally."
Roanna veiled her eyes with her lashes, careful not to let any expression show through. So they had known all this time. Unlike Lucinda, she didn't blame them. Webb had made it perfectly plain he had no use for the rest of the family; he had to despise them, and herself most of all. She didn't blame him, considering. Still, it hurt. Her love for him was the one emotion she hadn't been able to block. His absence had been like a slow-bleeding wound, and in ten years it hadn't healed but still seeped pain and remorse.
But she had survived. Somehow, by locking away all other emotions, she had survived. Gone was the coltish, exuberant girl, brimming over with energy and mischief, that she'd been. In her place was a cool, remote young woman who never hurried, never lost her temper, and seldom even smiled, much less laughed aloud. Emotions were paid for with pain; she had learned a bitter lesson when her impulsiveness, her stupid emotionalism, had ruined Webb's life.
She had been worthless and unlovable the way she'd been, so she had destroyed herself and built a new person from the ashes, a woman who would never know the heights but would no longer sink to the depths either. Somehow she had set in motion the chain of events that had cost Jessie her life and banished Webb from theirs, so she had grimly set herself to the task of atonement. She couldn't replace Jessie in Lucinda's affection, but at least she could stop being such a burden and disappointment.
She had gone to college-at the University of Alabama, as it happened, rather than the exclusive all-girl's college that had previously been considered-and gotten a degree in business management so she could be of some help to Lucinda in running things, since Webb was no longer there to take care of everything. Roanna didn't like anything about her courses but forced herself to study hard and get good grades. So what if she found it boring? It was a small enough price to pay.
She had forced herself to learn how to dress, so Lucinda wouldn't be embarrassed by her. She had taken a course to improve her poor driving skills, she had learned how to dance, how to apply makeup, to make polite conversation, to be socially acceptable. She had learned how to control the wild exuberance that had so often gotten her into trouble as a child, but that hadn't been difficult. After Webb had disappeared, her problem had been in working up any enthusiasm for life rather than the opposite.
She could think of nothing she dreaded more than having to face Webb again.
"What if he doesn't want to come back? 11 she murmured.
"Convince him," Lucinda snapped. Then she sighed, and her voice gentled.
"He always had a soft spot for you. I need him back here. We need him. You and I together have managed to keep things going, but I don't have much time left and your heart and soul isn't in it the way Webb's was. When it came to business, Webb had the brain of a computer and the heart of a shark. He was honorable but ruthless. Those are rare qualities, Roanna, the kind that aren't easily replaced."
"That's why he may not forgive us." Roanna didn't react to Lucinda's dismissal of her competence in managing the family empire. It was nothing less than the truth; that was why the burden of decision-making rested, for the most part, on Lucinda's increasingly frail shoulders, while Roanna implemented them. She had trained herself, disciplined herself, to do what she could, but her best would never be good enough. She accepted that and protected herself by not letting it matter. Nothing had really mattered anyway for the past ten years.