Would Lane be staying in his wife’s room?
Probably, and didn’t that make her want to vomit.
Heading up the back staffing stairs, the two sterling silver fluted vases strained her hands and wrists and tightened up her biceps, but she toughed it out. The burn wasn’t going to last long, and taking a time out somewhere along the way just prolonged things.
The main hallway upstairs was long as a racecourse, bifurcated by an upper level sitting area, and the conduit to a total of twenty-one suites and bedrooms that opened off on either side. Big Mr. Baldwine’s quarters were next to his wife’s, with both sets of rooms overlooking the garden and the river. There was a connector that linked their dressing rooms, but she knew it was never used.
From what she understood, once the children had been born that part of the relationship had not been “resumed,” to use the old-fashioned verbiage.
When she’d first started working at Easterly, she’d been confused by the names—and had slipped up and called Mrs. Bradford by her legal name of Mrs. Baldwine. No go. She’d been firmly corrected by the head of staff: The lady of the Bradford house was going to be a “Mrs.” and a “Bradford” no matter what the last name of her husband might have been.
Confusing. Until she’d realized that that husband-and-wife team had no more overlapping lives than their separate sleeping accommodations. So it was Mr. Baldwine in the suite with the navy blue accents and the heavier mahogany antiques and Mrs. Bradford in the ivory, cream, taupe, and blush suite with the Louis XIV furniture and the canopy bed.
Actually, maybe the pair of them did have something in common: He hid in his office in the business center, she in her bedroom.
Crazy.
Lizzie proceeded down to the curving formal stairs and swapped out the bouquet on the coffee table in that sitting area. Then she went over and stopped at Mr. Baldwine’s suite. Knocking twice on the broad panels, she waited even though there was no way he was on the other side. Every morning, he left for his business center next door on the property and he did not return until the seven o’clock dinner hour.
Putting the old foyer bouquet on the floor, she cranked the ornate doorknob, pushed inside, and strode over to an antique bureau that belonged in a museum. There wasn’t anything hugely wrong with the flowers already in place, but nothing was allowed to fade at Easterly. Here, in the cocoon of wealth, entropy was not permitted to exist.
As she switched the vases, she heard voices in the garden and went to the windows. Over a dozen men had arrived and were carting in the huge white canvas rolls and long aluminum poles that, with enough manpower and some hydraulics, were going to be The Derby Brunch’s eighty-by-forty-foot tent.
Great. Chantal was probably calling up Mr. Harris right now and complaining that the no-fly zone had been violated: If a member of the family or a guest were using the pool, the pool house, or any of the terraces, all work had to cease in the garden and all workmen had to beat feet out of the area until their royal highnesses were finished with their enjoyment.
The good news? Greta was out there already, corralling the men. The bad news? The German was probably telling them to set it all up right next to where Chantal was sitting.
Deliberately.
Fearing that confrontation, Lizzie wheeled—
She froze as a flash of color caught her eye. “What the …?”
Leaning down, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Like everything at Easterly, William Baldwine’s room was spotless, all objects and belongings where they should be, the masculine accoutrements of a powerful businessman in drawers, tucked away in shelves, waiting for him in that walk-in wardrobe.
So what was a piece of peach silk doing between the back of the headboard and the wall?
Well, she could guess.
And the lingerie sure hadn’t been taken off Virginia Elizabeth Bradford Baldwine.
Lizzie couldn’t wait to get out of the room, going across to the door fast, opening it—
“Oh, I’m sooooooo happy to see youuuuuuuu!”
The Southern drawl was like fingers on a blackboard, but worse was looking down to the right and seeing Chantal Baldwine throw her arms around Lane’s neck and hang off his body.
Fantastic. The two of them were between her and the staff stairs.
“I can’t believe you surprised me like this!” The woman took a step back and posed, like she wanted him to have a good look at her. “I was just down at the pool, but came up because the tent people are here. I decided to remove myself so they could be on that part of the grounds to set up.”
Well, don’t you deserve the Purple Heart, Lizzie thought. And weren’t you heading to the club soon, anyway?
Lizzie turned around to go for the main stairs to escape. Even if it was against regulation, it was better than having to pass by—
As if on cue, Mr. Harris came up onto the landing with Mrs. Mollie, the head of housekeeping. The English butler was running his fingertip over the top of the balustrade and holding it out for her inspection, shaking his head.
Great.
Her only exits were either over hot coals or through a bonfire. Or ducking back into Mr. Baldwine-who-was-cheating-on-his-wife’s room.
Oh, the choices.
She just loved her job sometimes.
FIVE
Bradford Bourbon Distillery, Ogden County
Edwin “Mack” MacAllan Jr. walked along the forty-foot-tall stacks of bourbon barrels, his handmade leather boots clapping against the ancient concrete floor, the scent of a hundred thousand planks of hardwood and millions of gallons of aging bourbon as good as the perfume of a woman in his nose.