Billionaire Flawed 1(43)

“Hello, Eliza!” Anne said, going up the stairs quickly and taking the little girl in her arms. She turned to Joyce. “This is Eliza. Say hello, Eliza, this is Miss Joyce come to take care of you.” She looked at Joyce. “I don’t know if we should introduce mama to her until papa says it’s okay to do so. He would not be happy if he thought we were trying to take the remembrance of Lizzie away. Especially in his current state of mind.”

Joyce nodded. “I completely understand.” When Anne made to hand Eliza to her, she took a step back, shaking her head. Anne gave her a slightly frightened look and then recovered herself quickly. “Let’s go in, shall we? I’ll show you around some of the areas that you will be occupying the most. This is Mattie. She takes care of the housekeeping.”

“For the entire house?” Joyce gave her a sympathetic look. Mattie just smiled.

“There are many rooms that only have one piece of furniture in them and some that have none at all. They don’t require much cleaning.”

“Why does he keep adding rooms?” Joyce asked quietly as if he might hear her and be angry.

Anne shrugged, moving the baby to her hip and stopping when Joyce did. She looked up to see Joyce staring all around her.

The front entrance led to a long wide foyer with a polished mahogany round table directly in front of them. It was adorned with a huge bouquet of roses. She went to them and breathed in the scent. “These are beautiful.” She murmured. She looked up and around. “It’s all beautiful.”

The floor under her feet was made of stone tile. On the other side of the table, a carpeted staircase led up to the second floor. From the second, a staircase led up to the third floor, one to the left and one to the right, depending on which side you were going from. Each door looked like the others, with hand-carved designs in only the best woods available.

“You’ll want to see this.” Anne led her into one of the side rooms on the bottom floor. Joyce sucked in a breath, taking it all in. It was furnished with soft looking couches; high hard-backed cushioned chairs that looked less comfortable and an area rug that must have been bought for at least a hundred dollars if not much more. Her green eyes widened as she stared around her.

The most notable thing about the room was the portraits that hung all around them. They were expensive paintings, from the look of them. Joyce couldn’t imagine having enough money for one of them, much less all of them. Even if they weren’t real.

“Here is Sir William Henry Huffman.” Anne stopped by one of the portraits. She looked up at it proudly, as if she had known the man. “He was the first in line for this family to have a lot of money. They say that he got it all trading with other countries. I don’t know much about the family business, but Gary and Tom are both widely known with the governments both here and in England.”

“When did they immigrate to America?” Joyce asked.

Eliza seemed to be getting restless, so Anne put her on the floor. Joyce watched the child waddling around the room while Anne just stared at the portrait. “Tom was in his teens when they came here. He and Gary are only a year apart and are very close. Gary has become…” Anne gave her a sidelong glance before looking back to the portrait. “…protective of Tom. He’s the older one, you know. So he feels responsible for Tom. And since Lizzie died, Tom has been unreachable.”

Joyce tried to hold back a sigh. It certainly sounded like she had been called to be a nursemaid to baby and father. She kept her face as neutral as possible and listened to Anne when she continued.

“Last year, Tom got an invitation from President Cleveland to visit the White House.”

“Did he go?”

Anne looked at her with a shocked expression. “Did he go? Of course, he went! We all did. There could be nothing better!”

“Did he take Eliza?”

Anne glanced back to where Eliza had taken fascination with a large stone sculpture of an elephant. She was running her hand over its head as though it was a live pet. She was talking to it, too, but neither of them understood exactly what she was saying. They caught a few phrases, but it was mostly unintelligible words strung together. At least, she knew the word “elephant.”

“Sadly no. She was too young to travel all the way across the country. And he would not have been in any condition to have her there with him.”

“Why was he invited?”

“President Cleveland was campaigning at the time – to become president, you know. Tom is very influential with many of the businessmen on the West Coast, especially here in Colorado. The president knew how much things were changing, are changing out here. He wanted to talk to Tom about it. Plus, he’d heard that Lizzie had died and wanted to give his condolences.”