The Husband Contract

She scowled. His speech had the irritating ring of truth. “You could be wrong, you know,” she said haughtily. “You’re the dean of boys, not the Freud of females.”

“Yeah, I could be wrong. But I’m not” He tugged on her ponytail, grinning. “I don’t know exactly what would make you surrender yourself to Clay Logan’s authority—or any other man’s for that matter—but I know what won’t. Twelve million dollars won’t”

But five hours later, when the police called to tell her that Figgy, Bash and Nick were down at the police station, she discovered that Ted was wrong.

Twelve million dollars would.

The weather was gloomy all that Saturday morning. It never quite rained, but the sky was bad-tempered, growling and spitting irritably from the time Melanie woke up until the moment she parked her tiny sedan in the circular driveway of Cartouche Court.

She sat for a moment after turning off the ignition, listening to the crackles and snaps of the old engine as it settled. The noises got weirder every day. Hooking her hands over the steering wheel, she peered up at the mansion. She hadn’t been here in years, but the place looked depressingly the same. Big and boxy, ugly and unwelcoming. She felt a sudden urge to start the engine and go home.

Why was she being such a wimp? She wasn’t an eight-yearold orphan anymore. Climbing out of the car, she adjusted her calf-length navy blue skirt, did a quick button check, then used a forefinger to chase any stray lipstick back within the lines. Everything was where it belonged, she decided—except her heart, which was exhibiting a regrettable tendency to beat rather high in her throat.

She slowly ascended the marble front steps and rang the bell. While she waited, she studied the pseudo-Grecian statues that flanked the double front doors. She’d always found them disturbing—two naked, armless females who appeared to have been frozen midflight as they tned to escape the house. Probably Uncle Joshua’s definition of the perfect woman, Melanie thought. Mute, helpless and hopelessly trapped.

“Morning, ladies,” she said, patting the truncated shoulder of the nearest statue. “I’m back, you see. I thought I had gotten away, but apparently it’s not that easy.” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess I don’t have to tell you about that.”

Suddenly the front door swung open, and Melanie’s mouth went embarrassingly slack. For a minute, it was as if the past sixteen years had never even existed. In spite of her grownup clothes, in spite of the lipstick and the car keys, Melanie was eight years old again, staring up into the sourest face she had ever seen.

“Mrs. Hilliard.” Her voice even sounded like a child’s. She cleared her throat, swallowed, then tried again. “It’s good to see you, Mrs. Hilliard. How have you been?”

The woman’s long, square jaw tightened, and her black eyes, surrounded by dark smudges below and thick, slashing black brows above, narrowed. “I’ve been missing your uncle, that’s how I’ve been,” Mrs. Hilliard said flatly. “I don’t suppose you can say the same.”

If her life had been a children’s book, Melanie thought, like The Secret Garden or Pollyanna, Joshua’s housekeeper would have been rosy cheeked and cheerful, always ready to comfort the new little orphan with a hug, or a licorice twist, or a bracing bit of country wisdom. Instead, she had been like this. Cold, critical and painfully candid.

Melanie’s instincts told her she’d better establish new ground rules. She clamped her jaw shut, straightened to her full five-four and met the woman’s gaze straight on. “I believe Mr. Logan is expecting me, Mrs. Hilliard,” she said firmly, ignoring the woman’s question. And why shouldn’t she? It was a rude and nosy question.

The housekeeper blinked twice, then stood back, holding the door wide. “He’s in the library,” she said, her tone falling short of courtesy, but, at least for the moment, smothering the open hostility. After all, there was the off chance that Melanie might be able to claim her inheritance. Melanie hadn’t ever contended that Mrs. Hilliard was stupid. Just mean.

The housekeeper left her to find her own way to the library, which was at the extreme end of the entry hall—a hall that by itself was almost as big as her whole house in Sewage Basin Heights.

But something was different today…. She looked toward the curving central staircase and finally realized that two workmen were kneeling on the steps, pulling up the carpet. They talked softly in some melodic foreign language, and one of them even whistled while he worked. Their chatter paused as she passed, and they smiled at her.

She smiled back, grateful for the sense of life and energy that their presence lent to the house, which was usually as silent as a crypt. During Uncle Joshua’s reign, workmen never whistled.

Oh, how painfully vivid the memories were—how miserable she had been here! She felt her resolve hardening and quickened her steps. She deserved this inheritance, by God. Joshua owed her something for all those lonely years.

When she finally reached it, the dark-paneled library door was tightly shut, just as it had always been in her uncle’s day. She considered barging in, but old habits died hard. So she knocked, but she knocked briskly, determined to arrive with confidence.

“Damn, damn, damn! Who the hell is that?”

They were her uncle’s words. Joshua always cursed whenever the phone rang or a knock sounded at the door. Antisocial by nature and by habit, he always assumed that any contact from the outside world would be a nuisance.

Melanie put out one hand to steady herself on the paneling, but then she remembered. Not her uncle, of course not It must be Copernicus. How could she have forgotten Copernicus? Her uncle’s parrot, a bird as ill-tempered as its owner, had been uncannily precocious about picking up swearwords. His talents had delighted Joshua, who had taught him to be profane in six languages.

“Who is it? Who the hell is it?” The parrot was still posing the question querulously when Clay Logan opened the heavy door. The library within was dim. Though its domed ceiling rose to a huge skylight in the center, on a rainy day nothing but gloom came through. All that mahogany paneling was positively funereal—so it took her a moment to realize he was holding a magnifying glass in one hand and a map in the other.

He waved her in with the map hand. “Melanie. Come in. I’m just finishing up here, but for God’s sake, come show yourself to Copernicus before he has a stroke.”

“He won’t have a stroke,” she assured him, her tone slightly acid. “He thrives on irascibility. Just like my uncle.”

But she walked over to the old parrot anyway and presented herself in front of his perch. She had been sixteen the last time she saw Copernicus. The bird was silent as if he’d recognized her but couldn’t believe his eyes. He shifted from foot to foot and bobbed nervously, watching her through first one eye and then the other.

“Good Lord, he’s speechless.” Clay had retreated to the big carved desk in the middle of the room, but he’d looked up from the map he’d been studying and was observing their interplay curiously. “That’s a first”

“Oh, he’ll recover. He’ll be swearing at me in Portuguese pretty soon.”

Clay chuckled and went back to his perusal of the map before him. Looking at him, Melanie felt a strange confusion in the pit of her stomach. He had explained that he was staying at Cartouche Court for a while, appraising her uncle’s antique map collection, but somehow actually seeing him behind that desk was a shock. Joshua had spent so many hours there, bent over those same maps.

And yet Clay couldn’t have looked less like her uncle. Joshua’s interest in the collection had been dry, brittle, precise. The only emotion they evoked in him was greed.

In contrast, Clay seemed to be all vibrant masculinity even in repose. With his shirtsleeves rolled back to his elbows and his aristocratic profile bent over the mottled paper, he seemed excited by the map, more like an explorer than an academic. A ship’s captain, perhaps, or a warring king studying the charts that would lead him to some new, exotic adventure, some thrilling conquest.

Melanie mentally shook herself. What nonsensical fancy was this? Clay Logan might have walked into her life as a black knight, but he was just an ordinary man, nothing more, nothing less. The fact that her uncle had given him so much power over her future was making her imagine things.

Striving for a more natural air, she strolled toward the desk and stole a peek over his shoulder. The map was very old, its colorful pictures quite strange and beautiful. Ships and sea monsters lurked in the oceans; heraldic emblems decorated the borders, while in each corner a face with puffed cheeks blew the four winds toward the land.

“It’s fourteenth century,” Clay said. He ran a long forefinger across the youthful, garlanded head of Zephyrus, the west wind. “Hand colored. Beautiful, but not terribly accurate. I would have hated to try to use it to actually get anywhere.”

She looked again. “Well, at least it warns you where not to go. It shows quite clearly where the monsters are.”

“True.” Leaning back, Clay gazed up at her thoughtfully. “The only problem is that they were wrong. The most terrifying monster on this map swims in what’s now the best fishing water around the Bahamas.” He smiled. “Like many people, mapmakers created monsters out of their own ignorance. Out of their own fears.”

His smile seemed slightly wry. Did that comment carry a double meaning? Was he suggesting that she had demonized Uncle Joshua out of her own insecurity? Watchful of her temper, she chose not to address that issue.

“I can sympathize with that,” she said. She hoped she sounded confident, only slightly self-effacing. “I certainly let my fears get away from me when you came to Wakefield the other day. I want to apologize for flying off the handle like that.”

He was still smiling. “No apology is necessary. I expected you to find the terms of Joshua’s will disagreeable. I wasn’t at all surprised that you decided I was one of your monsters. How are you feeling now? Has your attorney had time to look over the will?”

“Yes,” she said uncomfortably. He must know what her lawyer had said. If she still cherished any hopes of getting the will thrown out, she would never have come here. “He tells me that my uncle’s will is quite legal and probably unbreakable.”

“He must be an unusually ethical man, then,” Clay said, sounding surprised. “A lot of lawyers would assure you it was worth a try, just so they could bill you for hundreds of hours of ‘trying’.”

She bit her lower lip, wondering how honest she needed to be. Completely honest, she decided unhappily. A woman mature enough to inherit twelve million dollars didn’t shrink from confronting an embarrassing fact or two.

“Well, he didn’t really have any incentive to mislead me. I asked him to take the case on a contingency basis. He wouldn’t have earned a cent if he hadn’t overturned the will.” She lifted her chin. “I can’t afford to contest this will frivolously, Mr. Logan.”

“Then don’t contest it at all,” he said softly. “Your uncle wanted a will that would stand up to any challenge, and that’s what I gave him.” Standing, he came around the side of the desk. “Look, Melanie, I’ve got an idea.”

His smile was warm and utterly charming, which made her instantly suspicious. Warm, charming people didn’t ordinarily work well—or very long—with Joshua Browning.

“Since you’ve acknowledged that I’m not technically a monster,” he said, his tone teasing. “why don’t we start over? We’ll sit down, you’ll agree to call me Clay, and we’ll talk this whole thing over calmly.”

She nodded slowly, banishing the suspicion. This was, after all, what she had hoped would happen. Calm. Cooperative. That wasn’t so hard. She could do that

“Good. How about over here, then?” Clay gestured to a large leather sofa directly under the skylight, the most cheerful spot in a room like this. Its only drawback was that it faced a small, strange display of antique handcuffs and thumbscrews that Joshua had collected over the years. More obsession with power.

But rather than quibble with Clay’s choice of seats—that was no way to start a cooperative chat—Melanie sat, settling herself at an angle to the display. If she didn’t turn her head much, she couldn’t even see the nasty little items.