“Last night Dad told me that my grandfather and your grandparents were friends. I think that’s why he bought that house, so she could be near them.”
Jocelyn gave a sigh. “Yet another lie. Or something that was hidden. Miss Edi never told me that my grandparents were friends of her friend.” She took a breath. “So many secrets.” She looked at him. “Does the whole town know that the Harcourt family was destitute?”
“No.” Ramsey grimaced. “It was such a secret that until last night, even I didn’t know. My dad said he used to go to Bertrand twice a year, and they’d drink fifty-year-old brandy and laugh about the poverty of the Harcourt family. Jocelyn, you have to understand that I knew nothing about this. I believed the papers I saw and thought you were inheriting about three million dollars plus the house. Before you even came here, you asked me on the phone about the money, and I told you the truth as I knew it. I would never have—”
She could hear the pleading in his voice, hear that he didn’t want her to think badly of him. She didn’t, but she thought she’d save him from humiliation by saying nothing. “Whatever did she do to make your grandfather take care of her and her brother for so many years?”
“I don’t know. And neither does Dad. Last night he told me that when his father turned the Harcourt account over to him, he asked him that very question, but Gramps wouldn’t tell him. Dad said that over the years he asked a hundred times, but Gramps refused to confide in him. All Gramps would say was that Edi believed in him when no one else did, and if she hadn’t, his life would have been hell. He said he owed everything he had to Miss Edi.”
“What does that mean?” Joce asked. “Did she advise him to buy U.S. Steel at ten cents a share? He bought it, the stock went up, and voilà! He’s rich. Maybe it was something like that.”
“No, it couldn’t have been that simple. If it was something like that, Gramps could have set up a trust for her in the open. It would have become a town legend, and everyone would have agreed that Gramps owed her. But this was something that was done in secrecy. Whatever Miss Edi did for my grandfather, it was done without the town knowing about it.”
“In this town?! Two men visited Tess on a Saturday night and the next morning everyone knew about it.”
“Exactly. But something happened, something big, and because of that, after Miss Edi retired, my grandfather took care of her and her brother.”
“I’m beginning to think that everything she told me was a lie.”
“She didn’t lie when she said she loved you. She wrote Gramps that you were a gift from God, something for her old age. Jocelyn,” Ramsey said as he reached out and put his hand on her arm. “I’ll help you. I really will.”
“You mean that you’ll give me charity like your grandfather did? Your family are the true owners of Edilean Manor.”
“Then Luke would work for me?” Ramsey said, and there was so much glee in his voice that Jocelyn laughed.
“What would he say if he knew you were paying him?”
“Probably hit me in the face. He has the meanest left hook I’ve ever seen. I think my eyes were black half my childhood.”
“And what wounds did he carry?”
“None,” Ramsey said. “I turned the other cheek.”
She laughed again, only this time it was genuine. She looked back at the water. “Okay, so I have to find a job. Hey! I know. Why don’t you fire Tess and let me work for you?”
When Ramsey looked at her with eyes wide with horror, she grinned.
“Why not? I’ll wear dresses. They’ll have skirts down to my knees, and there won’t be any cowboy boots.”
“If you don’t quit saying these things I’m going to tell Tess on you.”
Jocelyn put her hands up, as though to shield her face from blows. “Did I tell you what she said to me when I first met her?”
“No,” he said, “but I heard what you said back to her. Something about honey catching more flies than a beautiful face?”
“Good synopsis.” She began to pack up the basket, but Ramsey sat where he was.
“I have something else to tell you.”
Jocelyn sat back down on the quilt. “What else could you have to say to me? That I’m in debt? Please don’t tell me there’s s
ome debt I’ve inherited and I have to pay it or I’ll be dragged off to debtors’ prison.”
He looked at her in astonishment. “Do you read the same books that Sara does?”
“Pretty much. So what else do you have to tell me?”
“I planned to keep this a secret.” He took a breath. “The truth is that I arranged this, and I wasn’t going to tell you, but last night when I found out the lies you’d been told…Well, I can’t bring myself to tell you even the tiniest lie to add to all the others.”