"It takes two people to make a marriage." Laura sighed, making sure she kept her daughters in view as they walked along the edge of the garden. In the distance were the stables, the lovely old stucco and dark-beamed building, tucked behind the slope of the uneven land. She wished there were horses inside, or frisking in the paddock. She wished she had the time to tend to them as she did when she was a girl.
"I'm not taking it on, Josh. What Peter did was inexcusable. It was bad enough that he ignored his children, but then to take what was theirs—"
"And yours," he reminded her.
"Yes, and mine. I'm going to make it back. It's going to take a while, but I'm going to make it back."
"Honey, you know if you need money—"
"No." She shook her head. "No, I'm not taking money from you or Mom and Dad, I'm not using Templeton money I haven't earned to pay for my life. Not as long as the girls aren't doing without." She smiled a little, running a hand over his arm as they walked. "Let's be realistic, Josh. The three of us have a beautiful home, food on the table. Their tuition's paid. There are plenty of women who find themselves in my position and have nothing left."
"It doesn't make your situation any less rotten. How long are you going to be able to pay the servants, Laura, and the tuition if you're determined to use only your share of profits from the shop?"
She'd worried about the servants. How could she let them go when most of them had been at Templeton House for years? What would Mrs. Williamson or old Joe the gardener do if she had to cut the staff?
"Pretenses is bringing in money, and I have the dividends from Templeton stock—which I intend to start earning. I've got time on my hands, Josh, and I'm tired of filling it up with committees and lunches and fundraisers. That was Peter's lifestyle."
"You want a job?"
"Actually, I thought I might be able to work part time. It's not that I'm destitute, it's that it's long past time that I started to make my own way. I look at Kate and the way she's always worked toward what she wanted. And Margo. Then I look at me."
"Just stop it."
"I've got something to prove," she said evenly. "And I'm damn well going to do it. You're not the only Templeton in this generation who knows hotels. I know about putting events together, catering, entertainment. I'd have to juggle time with the shop and the girls, of course."
"When can you start?"
She stopped dead. "Do you mean it?"
"Laura, you have just as much interest in Templeton as I do."
"I've never done anything for it, or about it. Not for years, anyway."
"Why?"
She grimaced. "Because Peter didn't want me to. My job, as he told me often, was being Mrs. Peter Ridgeway." It would, she understood, always humiliate her to admit it. "You know what finally occurred to me a year or so ago, Josh? My name was nowhere in there. I was nowhere in there."
Uncomfortable, he looked over toward the pool where his nieces were having a contest to see who could hold her breath longer. "I guess marriage is a loss of identity."
"No, it isn't. It shouldn't be." It was salt in a raw wound to admit it, but… "I let it be. I always wanted to be perfect. Perfect daughter, perfect wife, perfect mother. It's been a hard slap in the face to realize I couldn't be any of those things."
He laid his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake. "How about perfect sister? You won't hear any complaints from me."
Touched, she rested her hands on top of his. "If I were the perfect sister, I'd be asking you why you haven't asked Margo to marry you." She tightened her grip when he would have slipped his hands away. "You love each other, understand each other. I'd say you have more in common than any two people I know, including fear of taking the next step."
"Maybe I like the step I'm on."
"Is it enough, Josh? Really enough for you, or for Margo?"
"Damn, you're pushy."
"That's only one required element of the perfect sister."
Restless, he moved away, stopped to toy with a pale pink rosebud. "I've thought a
bout it. Marriage, kids, the whole package. Pretty big package," he murmured. "Lots of surprises inside."
"You used to like surprises."