Margaret Way - Hidden Legacy

Alyssa said the words angrily. She gave a slightly hysterical laugh, afraid of Adam’s effect on her, afraid of the sensation, the intimacy, of his touch.

His eyes held compassion. “If Elizabeth told you so little—after all, you were a child when she was already a middle-aged woman—surely someone in your family knows. Her sister, Mariel, perhaps?”

“My grandmother? And she kept it from us? No way! Zizi never married. She never had a child. Do you seriously believe we wouldn’t know?” Why were clouds of confusion blanketing her mind?

He sat back, staring at her. “It’s happened before,” he said. “The thing is, secrets don’t always remain buried. My aim isn’t to shock you, Alyssa, but you must trust me on this. Elizabeth did have a child. And for reasons of her own, she appears to have led a life of deception.”

“Why should I sit here and listen to you destroying all my illusions about the Zizi I loved?”

“The closer the link, the more intense the pain,” he said. “Elizabeth Calvert was a riddle. Secrets were her way of life.”

Dear Reader,

Most families, even dysfunctional ones who carry the baggage of old conflicts, have within their annals a story of enduring love, a love that triumphed over every obstacle thrown in its way.

It might be a great-aunt’s story, or that of a grandparent, an uncle, a sister. Or maybe it’s the story of a veteran of war who finally got to marry his foreign-born sweetheart and bring her home.

True love dreams, even when that love seems impossible. Is it any wonder, then, that families still get caught up in the passion and excitement of a love affair that played out long ago, whether it ended happily or not? The grand passion was there, and therefore miraculous. Miracles pass many of us by, so when it happens it must be celebrated.

The story you are about to read, Hidden Legacy, is just such a tale. It begins with our present-day heroine trying to unravel a mystery; during this exploration she has to reinvent a beloved great-aunt and in the process learn that time has no place in affairs of the heart. True love has the power to outlast it.

Now welcome to Australia’s beautiful north Queensland….

Margaret Way

Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves haunting galleries and auctions and is completely given over to French champagne “for every possible joyous occasion.” She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

This is for Debbie Macomber,

a woman much to be admired.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

SHAFTS OF LATE-AFTERNOON sunlight pierced the high arched windows of Alyssa Sutherland’s studio, turning the huge panes of glass into sheets of liquid copper. Inside the studio, it was as if someone had switched on dozens of electric lights. Caught in the golden illuminance was a large open area with white painted walls, dark, rough-hewn ceiling beams and dark-stained timber columns that supported the soaring ceiling. Visitors to the studio often expressed the opinion that it was more like a country antique shop than a workplace, for the room was filled almost to overflowing with all manner of beautiful and valuable objects, often used as props in Alyssa’s paintings. As a centerpiece stood an easel, with a half-finished canvas on it. The artist was at work, her blond head suffused by the sun’s radiance.

It took a few moments for the dazzling incandescence to pass by the windows, leaving the delicate, dusky mauve that heralded the brief twilight of the sub-tropics. Alyssa broke off with a sigh, placing her paintbrush in an earthenware pot of solvent, then wiping her fingers on her paint-spattered smock. She had lost all notion of time but a glance at the wall clock told her she’d been working all afternoon without a break, stopping now and then to stare at the painting—a still life of bread, wine and fruit in a Ming dynasty bowl—to see how things were progressing.

No magic there today. She doubted a good night’s sleep would help much, either—if she could even subdue her jangled feelings long enough to sink into oblivion. Despite the exquisite strains of Bach’s A Minor violin concerto blossoming out of one corner of the studio, her head was seething with angry words.

A serious relationship had been brought to a bruising end. Brett had packed up his possessions and left the house they’d settled into barely a year before. Only a year—that was how long their relationship had survived the initial pleasures of being together before taking the downward slope into the stresses and strains of two very different people trying to live in harmony.

Alyssa saw it as Brett’s relentless drive to back her into a corner. From the day he’d moved in, he had begun to assert an urge to dominate. That diminished her sense of guilt about the split-up. She believed in equality, but Brett had been more interested in exerting control. She’d finally had enough and found the courage to say so. What she’d often heard was painfully true—you had to live with someone to even begin to know that person…and maybe not even then.

Troubled in mind and spirit, Alyssa turned away to pour herself a cup of coffee. She knew she drank too much of it, but late at night when she was working, the caffeine kept her awake and her senses razor-sharp. Coffee in hand, she settled into a leather armchair, leaning her head against the plush upholstery, her mind returning to that final scene…

IT ALL BEGAN innocuously enough, as major upsets often do. One minute she and Brett were sitting on the deck finishing the steak and salad dinner she’d prepared for them, the next, something he said—something she found jarringly mean-spirited—triggered a powerful reaction in her. The straw that broke the camel’s back, as she now thought of it. In the preceding months she’d usually shut up at such provocative moments. Anything for peace although she realized now, with a pang of self-disgust, they hadn’t been her finest moments. But on that occasion she’d sprung up from her chair, distraught tears in her eyes.

Let it out, Alyssa! You can’t stand it anymore!

Her intense response had nothing to do with the topic at hand; it had everything to do with her growing feelings of repression. “I can’t be with you anymore, Brett! You…you damage my psyche.” That was the way she’d come to think of it. How had Brett Harris turned from the man who claimed to love and admire her unreservedly, into a partner determined on controlling her? And in such a short time? It was a side of him she’d never seen, let alone imagined.

That evening he, too, had jumped up, apparently as ready to engage in a major confrontation as she was. His action had toppled a beautiful long-stemmed crystal wineglass that predictably broke, breaking up a valuable set of six. Strangely enough, when she’d decided to use those particular glasses she had a presentiment one of them might break.

Brett cursed his clumsiness, sucked at a tiny cut on his hand, but ignored the dark-crimson wine stain that spread over the white cloth. “Damage your psyche?”

He had developed an irritating habit of repeating her words as though he found them incomprehensible. “What sort of mumbo jumbo is that?” He followed her into the house, a whipcord-lean young man just short of six feet, dark-haired, with hypnotic dark eyes and handsome if rather hawklike features. His hands, not as attractive as his face, clutched the back of the sofa. His dark eyes glittered with contained contempt. “You can’t mean that, Ally?”