every possible way. She was spectacular, beautiful, smart as hell, but she wouldn't fit into the New York, Stork Club, 21, Colony Club mold. And more than ever, as he looked at his peacefully sleeping aristocratic Italian bride, Brad realized to his very gut that there was going to be trouble.
20
Margaret Fullerton came home that afternoon at exactly three fifteen, looking precisely as she had when she left the house that morning. Impeccable and elegant, in a pearl-gray silk suit from Chanel with a dusty-rose silk blouse and matching lining in her jacket. She wore delicate gray kid shoes, gray stockings, a small gray lizard bag, and her smoothly coiffed white hair looked as perfect as it had at eight o'clock that morning. As was her usual routine, she came in, greeted the servants, set down her handbag and gloves on a large silver tray in the front hall, glanced at the mail carefully laid out by one of the maids, and walked into the library.
There, she would, as a matter of course, either ring for tea, or make some phone calls in answer to the list of messages always neatly left on her desk by the butler. But this afternoon she knew that Brad was coming home. She wasn't entirely sure if they were back yet or not, and she was sorry that she had been unable to meet him, but she sat in the library now, looked at her watch with a feeling of anticipation, and rang for the butler. He appeared in the doorway a minute later with a look of expectation.
“Yes, ma'am?”
“Is my son here, Mike?”
“Yes, ma'am. Two of them. Mr. Theodore is here, and also Mr. Bradford.” Mike had been with them for almost thirty years.
“Where are they?”
“Upstairs. In Mr. Theodore's den. Should I call them?”
“No.” She stood up quietly. “I'll go to them. Are they alone?” She looked hopeful. As though Serena might already have been disposed of. But the butler carefully shook his head.
“No, ma'am. Mrs. Fullerton—Mrs. Bradford Fullerton,” he explained, “is with them.” Margaret Fullerton's eyes raged, but she only nodded.
“I see. Thank you, Mike. I'll go up in a moment.” She had to think now, just for a minute, of what she was going to say and how she was going to say it. She had to handle it right or Brad would be lost to her for good.
She also knew that Teddy would have to be kept in the dark. She had already made the mistake of telling him what she had in mind. It had been a stupid thing to do and she knew it, her youngest son had a warm heart and dreamy eyes, and his philosophies about life belonged in a romantic novel, not in a real world filled with opportunists and fools, and little Italian tramps after her son's fortune.
Margaret Hastings Fullerton had been orphaned at twenty-two, when both her parents had been killed in a train collision abroad. They left her with an enormous fortune. She had been well counseled by the partners in her father's law firm and a year later she had married Charles Fullerton and merged her fortune with his. Hers had been born of the country's steel mills, and had been sweetened over the years with important land holdings and the acquisition of numerous banks. Charles Fullerton, on the other hand, was of a family whose money had been derived from more genteel sources. They had made a fortune in tea in the previous century, had added to it enormous profits from coffee, had huge holdings in Brazil and Argentina, England and France, Ceylon and the Far East. It was a fortune that had boggled even her mind, and Margaret Hastings Fullerton didn't boggle easily. She had always had a remarkable understanding of the financial world, a fascination with politics and international affairs, and had her parents lived, her father would probably have seen to it that she married a diplomat or a statesman, possibly even the President of the United States. As it was, she met Charles Fullerton instead, the only son of Bradford Jarvis Fullerton n. Charles had three sisters, all of whose husbands had gone to work for Charles's father. They traveled extensively and constantly throughout the world, managed the companies well and satisfied the old man in all possible ways, except one. They were not his sons, and Charles was, but Charles had no interest whatsoever in inheriting his father's throne at the head of the empire.