The Housekeeper's Daughter

He hadn’t even realized he’d been looking for her until he’d seen her.

He crossed the room, his footsteps soundless on the antique-gold rug and opened the door to the long, door-lined east wing. The other doors along the wide burgundy carpeted hallway were closed, hiding the unmade beds the maids would tackle now that everyone was up and moving.

The entire Kendrick clan had descended on the 125-acre estate in Camelot, Virginia, for the social event of the year. Gabe’s youngest sister, Tess, was marrying Bradley Michael Ashworth III tomorrow on the north lawn. According to the schedule of events he’d found waiting for him on his pillow last night, rehearsal was at three o’clock this afternoon. The rehearsal dinner was at a restaurant in town at six-thirty that evening. Breakfast had started fifteen minutes ago.

The tantalizing aroma of coffee drew him down the steps of the double, carved and curving staircase that embraced the marble foyer. The scent mingled with the fragrance of an enormous bouquet on the round glass table centered in the echoing space before he pushed through a small door beneath the stairs. By using the butler’s door, he could avoid the breakfast room.

Voices drifted toward him as he moved through the halls at the back of the house. The servants’ areas were separate from the family’s, but he was close to the breakfast room here. The clink of fine silver on china underscored animated conversation as he stepped into the brightly lit kitchen.

“Gabriel Kendrick.”

His name held a blend of surprise and pleasure as the pleasantly plump Olivia Schilling turned from her sauce on the eight-burner stove. That stove was in the middle of the huge, white-tiled center island. Copper pots hung from the high ceiling above it. Fresh herbs lined the long, multipaned window over the triple stainless steel sink.

Grinning, he buzzed a kiss over her cheek. “How’s my favorite chef?”

The Kendricks’ cook of twenty-five years smelled of soap and vanilla, just as she always had. And, just as she always had, she replied, “She’s just dandy,” and smiled back.

Olivia’s short, ruthlessly permed salt-and-pepper hair didn’t budge as she turned back to her task. A white apron, pristine except for a streak of egg yolk, protected a starched white blouse and black skirt. Her white running shoes sported a defiant slash of neon green.

“We heard you might be late rising this morning,” she informed him, referring to herself and the young maid backing through a swinging door with a silver tray of pastries. “I was just thinking I should set aside a tray for you. What do you need over there?”

“Not a thing,” he replied, heading for the coffeemaker under a long line of white birch and glass cabinets. “I just want some coffee.”

“Isn’t there any in the other room?” she asked, glancing toward the still-swinging door. “Hold on and I’ll have Marie refill the service.”

“I haven’t been in the other room. I’m avoiding it. Marie is new,” he observed, as much to avoid making excuses for why he wasn’t joining his family as to acknowledge new staff. “Is she permanent or just here for the weekend?”

“Permanent. She replaced Sheryl.”

“Sheryl.” He repeated her name flatly, trying to remember if he’d met her. “Didn’t Mom just hire her?”

“Three months ago. I swear we’ve gone through one after another since Rita retired.”

“So why did she quit?” Gabe asked, filling a thick ceramic mug his mom would never have allowed on any of her tables.

“She didn’t. Mrs. Lowe fired her,” she said, speaking of the head housekeeper. “She caught her snooping through a guest’s handbag and let her go on the spot.” Lifting her wooden spoon from the pot, she touched her finger to the thick sauce clinging to it. Frowning when she tasted it, she reached for a lemon. “She and your mom hired Marie a few weeks ago.”

The door swung back open. “She’s doing a fine job, too,” Rose Lowe announced, her voice low. “I just hope she works out. With the social season beginning, there will be teas, dinners and parties, and it’s so much easier to work with people familiar with the way we do things here.

“Hello, Gabe,” she continued, offering him a polite smile on her way to the paper towels.

The head housekeeper wore the same style of black dress as the maid, only without the white collar and apron. In the thirty-some years Addie’s mother had worked for the family, Gabe had rarely seen anything on her reed-thin body with much color to it. The past several years, she’d even worn black to the employees’ Christmas party.

The overhead lights caught hints of platinum in her dark and tidy bun as she ripped off a dozen sheets of towling. He had known Mrs. Lowe most of his life, too. But the incredibly efficient, fifty-something matron maintained a formal reserve around family that Olivia often did not.

“Now that you’re up,” she continued, folding the sheets as she retraced her steps, “we can set out fresh eggs Benedict. Olivia, we need more sausages, too. Young Trevor reached across the sideboard and knocked the pitcher of orange juice into the chafing dish. Miss Amber added milk.”

Trevor was his cousin Nathan’s youngest son. If he remembered correctly, Trevor had just started school. Amber was younger and belonged to his cousin Sydney.

He had a few other young second cousins in there, too. No doubt the twenty-some adults gathered around the table were reminding them all of their manners right about now.

“Don’t set out anything on my account.” Pulling his mug from beneath the tap on the industrial-size coffeepot, he headed past the pine table where house staff shared their meals. With the touch of chaos going on in the other room, no one would even miss him. “I’m just passing through.”

Olivia visibly stifled the urge to tell him he needed to eat. Mrs. Lowe said nothing. Her mouth just pinched the way it inevitably did when he spoke. He had no idea why that was. But, more often than not, she tended to regard him with that faint but distinct disapproval.

Too accustomed to the look to think anything in particular of it now, he excused himself with a nod. “Ladies,” he said, and headed for the back door.

“If you run into Addie out there,” he heard Olivia call, “ask her about her news.”

“What kind of news?”

“Let her tell you.”

“He doesn’t need to take Addie from her work,” he heard Mrs. Lowe insist.

“She can work while they talk.”

“She doesn’t need the distraction.”

“Oh, lighten up, Rose,” Olivia insisted right back. “It’ll take all of a minute.”

“Will do,” he called back, intending to talk to Addie, anyway, and let the door bump to a close on their debate.

Taking a sip of Olivia’s wonderfully strong coffee, he stepped into the late-September sunshine. The spicy scent of petunias drifted on the warming morning air. Huge pots of the thick white blooms lined the sprawling verandah with its wicker tables and lounging chairs. The lawn spread like a thick emerald carpet past the reflecting pond and formal gardens lush with color.

Addie would have been responsible for all of it, he thought, crossing the freshly swept boards to step onto the lawn.

His long stride, normally so purposeful, began to slow as it tended to do whenever he entered the immaculate gardens or the pathways in the woods beyond. Often when he came home, no one was there other than his parents. In the summer, when his parents left for their house in the Hamptons, there was only staff present. Addie’s father, who had been the groundskeeper until he’d passed away five years ago, had been the one person he had always looked forward to seeing there.

He still missed the guy. The seclusion of the estate was Gabe’s refuge when he faced decisions or needed to work a problem through. It always had been. During breaks from college and as a young man getting his feet wet in local politics, he had spent hours talking—and listening—to Tom Lowe. While the older man had tended the grounds, Gabe had followed him around the property soaking up his earthy, plain-spoken wisdom, pestering him with questions, challenging him and being challenged. Addie had been there, too, a small shadow trailing after her adored father. Because they lived in such different worlds, the man who had once owned his own farm had provided a down-to-earth candor that his own father and his uncle could not. No Kendrick knew what it was like to earn a living from the land, to suffer the whims of nature or have nothing but wit, grit and common sense to fall back on.

His mother’s side of the family might be royalty, but his father’s side had always been rich.

Taking another sip of much-needed caffeine, he watched Addie where she crouched by a border thick with golden-yellow chrysanthemums. Without looking behind her, she dropped dead blooms in the galvanized bucket by her knee and reached out again to check for anything faded. In the bright sunshine, her short brown hair gleamed with hints of ruby and topaz. Her shoulders and hips were as slender as a young girl’s.

There was a fragility about her that seemed entirely too feminine for the denim she wore, and the work she did. A pair of clippers hung from the narrow waist of her slim jeans. The sleeves of the blue chambray shirt tucked into them were rolled up to expose her tanned and slender arms.

As if sensing his presence, or maybe realizing she was being stared at, she glanced over her shoulder. Genuine pleasure lit her delicate features. Her darkly lashed brown eyes glowed with welcome.

“I’m glad to see you’re surviving my mother.” Liking the way her smile always made him feel, he raised his mug to her. “I can only imagine how obsessed she’s been about the grounds.”

From a distance came the throaty hum of a riding lawn mower. One of the two part-time men she supervised was mowing the lawns lining the long front drive.

“I won’t mind at all when this is over,” she quietly confessed, checking her watch as if gauging the man’s progress. “I’m already behind on fall pruning because we need everything full and green for tomorrow. I just hope no one looks underneath some of these bushes and plants,” she murmured. “I’ve had to fill in with pots from the nursery.”

Still kneeling, she pushed aside her bangs with the back of her hand. “I’m surprised to see you here so early. I wouldn’t have thought you’d arrive until time for the rehearsal.” The soft smile in her eyes turned to curiosity. “Did you come early to meet with your uncle Charles?”

There were times when Gabe felt she knew him as well as her father once had. Tom Lowe had been the first to recognize that he hated being idle, unless it was on his own terms. He had to be doing, seeking, accomplishing. He gave a hundred percent to whatever he needed to do once he got wherever he needed to be, but he scheduled himself so tightly that he was never ahead of schedule without a purpose.