Taken. Unfortunate. He’d have made for a great fling.
She studied the blonde’s profile, a classic beauty despite her tear-blotchy skin. Rosalind frowned. The woman looked familiar, though she couldn’t place her. Maybe she was one of her sisters’ friends.
Edging along the side of the room, she eased herself next to Beatrice.
“You’re late,” Bea pointed out under her breath.
She was lucky she’d made it at all. Fog in San Francisco had delayed her flight. “It’s nice to see you, too, Bea.”
The corner of her sister’s mouth quirked, and, without a word, she reached over and held Rosalind’s hand.
The tension in her shoulders eased, and she leaned into Bea’s shoulder.
In the front row, her next oldest sisters, Viola and Portia, flanked their mother Jacqueline, who listened with razor-sharp focus, her face frozen in a mask of politeness. What could you expect given that she was embroiled in the scandal of the decade?
Viola was hard to read, but Portia looked like she was grieving hard. Portia had always chased their father’s love. None of them had ever had the heart to tell her it’d been pointless.
On Viola’s left, an adolescent sat looking sullen and resentful. Given the resemblance to Viola, Rosalind figured that was her niece Chloe. The girl looked different than the sunny four-year-old she’d been when Rosalind had left for the States ten years ago.
Fran, who sat next to Chloe, turned to give her a warm wink.
Rosalind smiled for the first time in the past forty-eight hours. Fran had raised them all. She’d been more of a mother to them than Jacqueline had been.
Exhaling those regrets, Rosalind craned her neck. “Where are Imogen and Titania?”
“Gigi is on a movie set somewhere in the Pacific,” Bea explained softly. “She couldn’t leave. No one knows where Titania is, like usual.”
She frowned. Imogen and Titania had been teenagers when she’d left. She didn’t know the women they’d grown into, other than the basics: Gigi was an actress and Titania a photographer.
The droning words of the man giving the eulogy filtered into her consciousness, and she transferred her attention to him. After listening for a minute, she whispered to Bea, “Pillar of the community? Giver to those less fortunate? A family man? Is he talking about Father?”
“Utter bollocks, isn’t it? Especially given that he died in a fiery car crash in France while on holiday with his mistress.” Bea shook her head. “It’s a shock, isn’t it? I thought he’d live to plague us forever.”
“Plague was a good way of putting it.” In public, Reginald Summerhill, Earl of Amberlin, was circumspect, but in private he never hesitated to make his displeasure known. And displeasure was all he felt for his daughters.
As if reading her mind, Bea said, “Remember the time I dressed as a boy and entered the Suncrest pheasant hunt without his knowledge? He was livid when he found out.”
“Because you outshot him.”
“And I was a girl.”
Rosalind nodded. The only thing their father had wanted in life was a boy to carry on the family title. He had six girls instead and held it against them no matter how successful they were. He’d hated that a distant American cousin would inherit the title upon his death.
Rosalind glanced at their mother. “Is she holding up?”
Her sister only arched her brow.
Right. She couldn’t imagine how embarrassing it was to have your husband die alongside another woman, even in a distant marriage like her parents’.
Beatrice leaned toward her. “We need to discuss Mother and her financial situation.”
“There’s a situation?”
“Yes, and it’s dire unless we sell some of the relics in this mausoleum.” Her sister nodded up at the chandelier above them. “That monstrosity is worth a fortune in itself, and there are three just in this ballroom.”
Viola glanced over her shoulder and gave them the same sort of look she’d been giving her teenage daughter.
Beatrice obviously didn’t care, because she didn’t stop whispering. “I’ve been paying Fran’s salary and the household expenses discreetly.”
“What?” Rosalind exclaimed, gaping at her sister. “I always knew we didn’t have much cash, but is it that bad?”
“Worse.” Beatrice pretended like she was paying attention to the eulogy, but out of the corner of her mouth she murmured, “Father made a bad investment a few months ago and lost the remaining savings. I tried to stop him, but he never listened to my advice.”
She groaned softly. “Shit.”
“Exactly,” her sister said, her voice grim.