House of Royals(4)

The sky bleeds red and gold as the sun sets behind the Mississippi River. The air is hot and humid and oddly comforting.

Home. That’s what this place is now. Yet it feels so foreign.

“Would you like me to walk you back to your room?” Rath offers.

I just nod.

Soundlessly, we walk back through the grounds and into the ballroom, out into the grand entryway, and start down the hall. But my eyes catch on an open door and a painting on the wall.

I step into what looks to be a grand library. Filled shelves line the walls, all of them. They open in spaces, leaving room for a sculpture or a painting, and it is one of them that catch my eye.

“Your father was a great man,” Rath says. And it’s easy to hear the regret and sadness in his voice.

I know I shouldn’t touch the painting, but still my fingers reach out to touch his face.

The same strong brows and the same narrow, serious lips. Same dark hair. Our eyes are different, our jaws not quite the same, but still. I look like the offspring of this man.

He was my father and I can’t deny that. After all these years, twenty-two of them to be exact, he finally has a face. And it looks like my own.

Without a word, I turn from him and walk out of the library. We turn down the hall, and I open the door to the guest bedroom.

“Thank you,” I say to Rath. He nods, and just as he turns to leave, I call out to him. “What room is yours?”

“I don’t live in the house,” Rath responds with a shake of his head. “The old servants quarters on the property was converted to a workers lodge long ago. I live there with everyone who works at the Estate.”

I nod, my eyes starting to glaze over. “So it’s just me in the house?”

“That’s the way your father preferred it,” Rath says.

I nod, feeling something in my stomach sinking. Rath turns to leave again. “Would you mind staying in the house with me? Just for a little while?” I call. He turns back to look at me. “So I’m not alone?”

He looks at me for a long moment. “If you wish, Miss Ryan,” he says with a bow.

A bow.

“I will be in the Wayne room,” Rath says, indicating the room across and down one from mine. “Should you need anything.”

“Thank you, Rath,” I say. And I mean it.

He bows one more time, turns, and leaves.

I step in the room and close the door behind me.

The furniture throughout the house has been a mix of extreme classic and modern. An ornate four-poster bed is accompanied by glass-faced nightstands. Across the room is a pink and gold leafed dresser with an ancient jewelry box atop it. The old and the new flow seamlessly.

I open the doors that let out onto the veranda, the pool just feet before it. A soft breeze flutters through, rustling the curtains. I settle into a rocking chair.

Two weeks ago, I got a phone call from an attorney here in Mississippi. The woman on the other line started going off about a Henry Conrath and his passing away. She explained his will, which was helpful. I’d gotten the official, large envelope just the day before and hadn’t understood why it had landed in my mailbox.

I was the daughter of a wealthy man from Silent Bend, Mississippi. The daughter of a man I didn’t know the name of. And I had just inherited his Estate, his money, everything.

My mother had lived here in Silent Bend for all of three months after getting her associate degree at some community college in Levan—where she’d grown up, an hour east of here. She’d gotten a job here. One night she went to a party where she met a charming man—and one thing led to another.

It was the end of the summer, and she left for college two days later, heading to veterinary school in Colorado. Only three weeks later, she learned she was pregnant and barely remembered the name of the man. But she never said a word to him, and all my life she simply told me that we were strong women—we could do anything on our own.

She was strong. Right up until she was killed by a distracted teenage driver playing on a cell phone three years ago.

I was nineteen. Able to take care of myself, live on my own, but still miss her every day.

And then there was the phone call.

Apparently, my mother had told the man who made me that I existed, just a few months before she died, but asked him to not make himself a part of my life so late into my existence.

I wasn’t sure if I appreciated that or not.

So, here I am, fulfilling my unknown father’s will. I am his only child. So this plantation house is mine. His millions of dollars are mine. His workers and his cars are mine.

I know nothing about him, though. Only that he made me and was rich. No idea how he’d made his money. Nothing of his personality.

It leaves me feeling kind of empty.