Lost Lady Read online

  In spite of Regan’s small size, it was an easy birth. Her water broke all over Brandy, and they laughed together for just a second before a large, perfect baby girl came flying into the world. She screwed up her face, clenched her fists, and started screaming. “Just like Travis,” Regan murmured before reaching for her daughter. “Jennifer. Do you like that name?”

  “Yes,” Brandy said, cleaning Regan and the room. She was too exhausted to consider what the baby’s name was. Glancing at Regan cuddling her baby, she felt she was the one who’d been through the worst ordeal.

  Within a month the women had settled in to the new routine of running the boarding house and caring for the baby. When spring arrived, so did hundreds of new settlers. One man, whose wife had died on the journey to Scarlet Springs, decided to remain with his two young children in the sparse little settlement and began building a large, comfortable house.

  “This town’s going to grow,” Regan murmured, her baby on her arm. Looking back at the drafty old farmhouse, she began to see it with a fresh coat of paint, and, as her imagination took over, she saw an addition on the front, something with long porches.

  “That’s a funny look,” Brandy said from behind her friend. “Mind sharing what’s causing it?”

  Not yet, Regan thought. She’d had too many dreams in her life, and all of them had fallen through. From now on she was going to concentrate on one goal, and she was going to work hard at achieving it.

  Weeks later, when Regan did finally, tentatively, talk to Brandy about her ideas for remodeling and enlarging the farmhouse into a full-size hotel, Brandy was somewhat shocked.

  “It…sounds like a wonderful idea,” Brandy hesitated. “But do you think we—I mean, us two women—can do something like that? What do we know about a hotel?”

  “Nothing,” Regan said in all seriousness. “And don’t let me consider what I can do versus what I want to do, or I’ll never even try it.”

  Laughing, Brandy didn’t know how to address that statement. “I’m with you,” she said. “You lead; I’ll follow.”

  That was another statement Regan didn’t want to consider. In fact, she wanted to keep so busy that she had no time to think. Two days later she had found a wet nurse for Jennifer, unearthed the jewels from their hiding place, and boarded a stage heading north. She went to three towns before she found someone willing to pay a decent price for the bracelet and earrings. And everywhere she went she visited the local inns. She found that an inn was not only a place for wayfarers but a social and political gathering place as well. She drew sketches and asked questions, and her earnestness and youth gained her many hours of discussion and answers to her probings.

  When she returned home, tired but exhilarated and more than eager to see her daughter and her friend, she had a fat leather case filled with notes, drawings, and recipes for Brandy. And sewed inside her clothes were bank drafts for the jewelry. From that moment on there was never any doubt about who was the leader in this partnership.

  Chapter 15

  FARRELL BATSFORD STEPPED OFF THE STAGE IN THE BUSY little town of Scarlet Springs, Pennsylvania, on a cool March morning in 1802. Dusting himself off, smoothing the rich blue velvet of his coat, he tugged at the lace at his cuff.

  “This where you stoppin’, Mister?” the stage driver asked from behind the slim, tailored man.

  Farrell didn’t bother to look at the driver but merely gave a brief nod of acknowledgment. Seconds later, he twirled about as the first of his two large, heavy trunks were tossed to the ground from the top of the stage. With a wide smile, the driver blinked at Farrell angelically.

  “You want me to take those to the inn for you?” a burly young man asked.

  Again Farrell only nodded curtly, ignoring as best he could the entire American race. As the stage pulled away, Farrell got his first glimpse of the Silver Dolphin Inn. It was three and a half stories high, with double porches across the front and tall white columns reaching to the steep roof. After tossing the young man a quarter, Farrell decided to walk about the town.

  There’s money here somewhere, he thought as he viewed the clean, neat buildings. Across from the inn were a print-shop, a doctor’s office, a lawyer, a druggist. Close by were a blacksmith shop, a large mercantile shop, a school, and at the other end of town a tall, well-kept church. Everything was prosperous, fat-looking.

  Turning his attention back to the inn, it was easy to see that the manicured building was the dominant one in the town. In the back was an additional wing, a well-tended older part of the building. Every window was sparkling clean, all the shutters newly painted, and even as Farrell watched many people came and went into the obviously thriving establishment.

  Once again he took a worn newspaper article from his pocket. The article stated that a Mrs. Regan Stanford and Brandy Dutton, a spinster, practically owned an entire town in Pennsylvania. At first Farrell had thought it couldn’t possibly be the Regan he’d been looking for for so many years, but a man he had sent to the town came back with a description that just could be the Regan he once knew.

  Again, he thought of that night nearly five years ago when Jonathan Northland had thrown his niece from her own house. Poor, simple Regan had never realized that Weston Manor was hers, and, instead of her living on her uncle’s income as Jonathan said that night, it was Northland who was living on the interest off Regan’s fortune. Smiling, Farrell wondered if Northland ever realized who had alerted the executors of Regan’s estate to what her uncle had done. It was a small but not adequate revenge for the things Northland had said about Farrell that night when the executors tossed Jonathan out of Weston Manor without so much as a penny. Six months later, Jonathan Northland was found stabbed to death in a wharfside gin shop, and finally Farrell’s revenge was complete.

  As the months and years passed, Farrell began to think more and more about Regan’s millions, just lying in a bank, growing daily through the careful, wise investing of her executors. He began looking for a bride, someone with money enough to support him and his estate in a gentlemanly manner, but all the young women fell short of having the money Regan Weston possessed. Any women of her wealth wanted nothing to do with a penniless, titleless gentleman of dubious habits.

  After two years of fruitless searching, Farrell persuaded himself that Regan had jilted him and had ruined his reputation with women. Therefore, the honorable thing to do was to find the child, marry her, and let her money mend his damaged reputation.

  It had taken a while to trace Regan’s old maid, Matta, to Scotland where she was living with relatives. The old woman suffered permanently from the pain of a misaligned jaw bone, a bone Jonathan Northland had broken for her when she tried to answer an American’s questions about a young girl he’d found.

  Drooling, slurring her words, drinking constantly to dull the pain, Matta disgusted Farrell until he could hardly bear being near her. Her memory was cloudy, and it took hours to get what he wanted from her, but he left with some idea of where to look.

  Following one answer to another, he soon realized that Regan had sailed for America. It wasn’t easy to make the decision to go after her, but he was fully aware that after years in that uncivilized country she’d probably be dying to return home.

  America was larger than he’d imagined, and there were a few isolated points of civilization, but the people were disgusting, never aware of their station in life, each man believing he was a member of the peerage.

  He was almost ready to return to England when he saw the small article in the newspaper. When the man he had hired to go to Scarlet Springs returned, he described a woman very like Regan in looks, but she did not seem to be the simpleton he remembered.

  Now he walked across the green lawn that made a lush oval between the two main streets and entered the inn.

  A large reception hall lined with white-painted paneling greeted him. Several well-dressed men and women were just entering a room to his right, and he followed them to an even larger room furnished