The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings #2) - J. R. Ward Page 0,90

one of the first things his father had learned to hate, no doubt.

“Well, thank you, dear. Now, do you know Edward?”

“Why, yes,” Lizzie said gently. “I’ve met him.”

“Tell me, are you helping out with the party, dear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I gather I have missed it. They always told me I would be late for my own funeral. It appears as if I’ve misjudged my father’s as well.”

When a couple of the waiters came in to start shutting down the bar in the corner, Lane shook his head in their direction and they ducked back out. Off in the distance, he could hear the clanking of glassware and bottles and a patter of talk from the staff as things were dealt with in the dining room—and he hoped her brain interpreted that as the party winding down.

“Your choice of color is always perfect,” his mother said to Lizzie. “I love my bouquets. I look forward to the days you change them. Always a new combination of blooms, and never a one out of place.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bradford. Now, if you will excuse me?”

“Of course, dear. There is much to do. I imagine we had a terrible crush of people.” His mother waved a hand as gracefully as a feather floating through thin air, her huge pear-shaped diamond flashing like a Christmas light. “Now, tell me, Edward. How are things at the Old Site? I fear I have been out of circulation for a bit of time.”

Lizzie gave his arm a squeeze before she left the two of them alone, and God, what he wouldn’t have traded to follow her out of the room. Instead, he sat down on the far side of the sofa, that picture of Elijah Bradford seeming to glare down at him from over the fireplace.

“Everything is fine, Mother. Just fine.”

“You were always such a wonderful businessman. You take after my father, you know.”

“That is quite a compliment.”

“It is meant to be.”

Her blue eyes were paler than he remembered, although perhaps that was because they didn’t really focus. And her Queen Elizabeth–coiffed hair wasn’t as thick. And her skin seemed as thin as a sheet of paper and as translucent as fine silk.

She looked eighty-five, not sixty-five.

“Mother?” he said.

“Yes, darling?”

“My father is dead. You know that, right? I told you.”

Her brows drew together, but no lines appeared and not because she’d had Botox. On the contrary, she’d been raised in an era when young ladies had been urged not to go in the sun—not because the dangers of skin cancer had been fully known back then, and not because of any worry about the ozone layer being depleted. But rather because both parasols and liesure had been stylish accessories for the daughters of the rich.

The sixties in the wealthy South had been more analogous to the forties everywhere else.

“My husband …”

“Yes, Father has died, not Grandfather.”

“It is hard for me to … time is hard for me now.” She smiled in a way that gave him no clue whether she was feeling anything or whether what he was saying was sinking in at all. “But I shall adjust. Bradfords always adjust. Oh, Maxwell, darling, you came.”

As she extended her hand and looked up, he wondered who in the hell she thought had arrived.

When he turned around, he nearly spilled his drink. “Maxwell?”

“Yes, through there, please. And out to the mudroom.”

Lizzie pointed a waiter holding a flat of unused, rented club glasses toward the kitchen. Then she went back to shifting the last of the unopened bottles of white wine into the sleeves of a liquor box on the floor. Thank God there was something to clean up. If she had to stand around all those empty rooms for any longer, she was going to lose her mind.

Lane hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other that essentially nobody came, but God …

Bending down, she hefted the box up and walked from behind the linen-strewn table. Proceeding out of the dining room through the flap door, she put the box with the other three in the staff hall. Maybe they could return them because the bottles were unopened?

“Every little bit helps,” she said to herself.

Figuring that she’d start on the bar out on the terrace, she hesitated at one of the approved staff doors, even though if she used it, she would have to walk all the way around to the other side of the house.

At Easterly, family were allowed to come and go in any fashion at any time.