Page 6 of The Lost Heiress
Ana searched in her purse for a pen but found none. She felt like she should be writing this down.
“Do you have any dietary restrictions?” Mrs. Talbot asked.
Ana shook her head. “No, none.”
“Very good,” Mrs. Talbot said, as if that was the first thing Ana had said or done since she met her that she found agreeable. “This way.”
Ana followed her through double doors into a dining room, which had a tall arched ceiling, two stories high. Light spilled in through the windows, which started halfway up the walls. There was a long oak table lined with upholstered chairs, and in the center of the table, every couple of feet or so, were vases overflowing with orange dahlias.
“The formal dining room,” Mrs. Talbot said, “where you’ll take your meals. The table seats sixty, so it’s used for smaller, more intimate gatherings. For larger parties, we use the grand ballroom.”
Ana would hardly call a dinner party of sixty asmall, intimate gathering, but she wasn’t about to voice that thought, so she simply nodded and followed Mrs. Talbot as she continued down the hall.
“The house was built in 1897 by Remington Towers as a wedding present for his young bride, Doris Oppenheimer, the oil heiress,” Mrs. Talbot went on. “Well, I should say, Remington Towersstartedbuilding the house in 1897. It wasn’t completed until 1935. Doris Oppenheimer Towers had exacting tastes. This is her, here.”
They paused outside a parlor, where there was a large oil painting of a couple in a baroque frame hanging over an ornate mahogany fireplace.The young woman in the painting was seated in an upholstered chair. She wore a pale-blue tea-length dress with a square neckline that exposed her collarbones. Her dark wavy hair was secured in a low twist with a jade comb at the nape of her neck. She had wide-set eyes and cheeks that still held the plumpness of a child’s.
“She looks so young,” Ana said.
“She was seventeen when they wed,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Remington was forty-nine. Such an age gap wasn’t unusual, back in the day.”
Ana looked at the man standing behind Doris in the painting. He had dark hair and dark eyes and a full beard that was beginning to gray around the edges. He was tall and rugged; he wore a Stetson hat and boots with his gray three-piece suit, like a cowboy who had not fully surrendered to being a gentleman. He was handsome, to be sure, and Ana could easily trace the family resemblance to his great-grandson, Ransom Towers. But still, she couldn’t get over the predatory grip of his hand on the back of Doris’s chair, nor the immense age gap between him and Doris, however “normal” it may have been for their time. Forty-nine years to Doris’s seventeen. Remington was nearly three times her age when they were wed and seemed better suited to be her father than her husband. Ana peered into the young woman’s eyes in the portrait. She couldn’t help but wonder: How had Doris felt about the arrangement? Had she had any say?
“This was Doris’s favorite room in the house,” Mrs. Talbot said, gazing wistfully at the parlor in which the painting hung, with its tall coffered ceilings, the large velvet tufted sofas, and the pianoforte near the picture window.
“It’s still arranged just to her liking,” Mrs. Talbot said. “She used to sit and play Chopin at that piano in the afternoons.”
Ana took a step forward, toward the room, and Mrs. Talbot grabbed her briskly by the forearm.
“You mustn’t go in,” Mrs. Talbot said sharply. “No one is allowed to step foot in this room, except the maid twice a week to clean.”
“Oh, I see,” Ana said. “Sorry.”
It felt absurd and outlandish to her—a room this large and grandiose, kept for an occupant who was long since deceased? The whole thing was appalling, really—a house this size, all for one family, and so much of it unused, unoccupied space.
Ana turned to follow Mrs. Talbot, who had fallen silent, only to realize that Mrs. Talbot had not moved. She was looking at Ana appraisingly, as if waiting for her to offer some remark about the room. Ana racked her brain. What compliment had she paid to the dining room? She didn’t want to repeat the same thing and seem insincere. Come to think of it, had she offered a compliment to the dining room, or had she simply nodded? She certainly hoped that Mrs. Talbot wouldn’t be stopping at each room, as this house was huge and Ana could think of only half a dozen ways to say, “Wow, nice digs.”
She cleared her throat. “It’s lovely,” she said.
Mrs. Talbot smiled at her, but the smile did not meet her eyes. “Lovely,” Mrs. Talbot repeated, but on her tongue, it sounded belittling, as if Ana had referred to the room ascute.
“Yes, well, I suppose good taste is not a virtue everyone inherits,” Mrs. Talbot said. “This way to the family’s quarters, where you’ll be staying.”
She turned, and Ana followed her up the grand staircase to the second floor and then down another hall, unsure whether she should be grateful that Mrs. Talbot did not stop to show her any other rooms along the way or insulted that Mrs. Talbot clearly thought she didn’t have the requisite taste to admire them properly.
“Miss Saoirse’s room,” Mrs. Talbot said, nodding toward a closed door as they passed it. They halted at the door just beyond it. Mrs. Talbot paused with her hand on the knob. “This will be your room for the duration of your stay,” Mrs. Talbot said. She nodded at the room across the hall from Ana’s. “That is Mr. Ransom’s room. I trust I don’t need to impress upon you the extreme discretion you’ll need to practice living in such close proximity to the family.”
“Is he home often?” Ana asked. “Ransom, I mean?”
Mrs. Talbot’s left eyebrow shot up at the question, and Ana felt like she had once again overstepped some sort of invisible line.
“Congressman Towers,” Mrs. Talbot said, enunciating his official title, as if Ana were not familiar enough to use his Christian name, “is not here when the House is in session, but he’s home as often as he can be. And when he is home,” Mrs. Talbot said sternly, “he is not to be disturbed.”
Ana nodded. It took her a moment to realize that Mrs. Talbot was waiting for some sort of verbal affirmation that she wouldn’t be a nuisance.
“Oh, um, got it,” Ana said. “When I’m not needed, I’ll make myself scarce.”
That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Talbot, because she nodded and turned the knob.
