Prologue

      Boston

      He caught the phone on the fifth ring, breathing heavily, swearing silently. “Yeah, McCloud here!”

      “John Stone, is that you?” Aunt Alice. Alice Hardisson was the only person in the world who called him John Stone.

      “How are you, Aunt Alice? It’s been a long time.”

      “I’m right well, thank you. I understand you were in the hospital. I hope you’re feelin’ better now.” The quiet, well-bred Southern voice waited politely for him to fill her in on all the pertinent details.

      Now, how the hell could she have known that? Other than the occasional family funeral, when he happened to be in the country, and the basket of jams and jellies she ordered sent to his mail drop every year at Christmas, there had been little contact between them for years.

      Unless there’d been something in the news. He’d been in no condition to know or care at the time. “I’m fine, Aunt Alice. Or as fine as a man can be after overdosing on hospital food. How’s Liam? Still hunting rabbits on his day off?” Liam was the Hardissons’ butler. He was seventy-five if he was a day, and he’d been Stone’s mainstay in the years he had spent in the old Hardisson mansion after his parents had been killed.

      “Liam’s retired now. Mellie died last year, and I thought it best to let him spend his last days with his grandchildren.”

      Best for whom, Aunt Alice? Stone thought wryly. Despite the code of noblesse oblige that was bred into the bones of women like Alice Hardisson, his aunt seldom put herself out to any great extent for any interest but her own. Unless it was for her only child.

      Stone himself was a case in point. His mother and Alice had been sisters. Stone’s parents had been killed by a drunk driver when he was six and a half years old, and Alice had taken him in. Noblesse oblige. Her own son, his cousin Billy, had been five then.

      But while Alice, accompanied occassionally by Billy and his nanny, had traveled to Scotland for the salmon fishing, to Paris for the fashion hunting or to some spa in Arizona twice a year for whatever benefits she derived there, Stone had invariably been left with Liam and Mellie.

      Noblesse oblige. Take in needy kinfolk, put food in their mouths, a roof over their heads and inquire graciously once or twice a year to be sure there’s nothing more they need.

      And as soon as they’re weaned, pack them off to boarding school.

      “Are you in town, Aunt Alice?” Stone asked, hoping she wasn’t.

      “No, I’m still down here in Atlanna.”

      She always called it Atlanna. With her gentle, unconscious arrogance, she probably spelled it that way.

      “How’s Billy? Still thinking about making a run for the senate one of these days?”

      “Well now, that’s what I called you about, John Stone. I reckon you heard Billy got hisself mixed up with this perfectly awful woman a while back and ended up married to her.”

      Stone lowered himself carefully onto the sofa and tucked the phone against his neck. “I seem to remember seeing an announcement.”

      “I had Ella Louise mail out announcements so it wouldn’t look like such a hole-in-the-wall affair, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Naturally, I made the best of it for Billy’s sake, but she just wasn’t Our Kind of People.”

      Stone smiled grimly. Very few people made Alice’s list of Our Kind of People. He himself had certainly fallen far short, despite their kinship.

      “I took her in hand for poor Billy’s sake. The girl had no more sense of how to go on than a stray cat. All that hair, and those cheap clothes! Naturally I did my best to show her how to dress and speak and how to act around decent folk without embarrassing herself.”

      Without embarrassing Alice Hardisson, Stone interpreted, making a noncommittal murmur. Alice would be the mother-in-law from hell, no matter who Billy married. Stone could almost find it in his heart to be sorry for the poor girl, but then, any female with no more sense than to marry Bill Hardisson probably deserved what she got.

      He picked up the monologue still in progress. “Been hearin’ these awful rumors. Nothing in the papers yet, thank goodness, but I’m afraid she’s out to make mischief. I can’t think of anyone else who would do such a thing.” She sighed. “John Stone, I’m worried.”

      “Why’d he marry her? Was she pregnant?”

      “Good heavens, certainly not! Billy has better sense than to get hisself involved with a tramp like Lucy Dooley!”

      “I thought you said he married her. That’s about as involved as you can get.”

      “He’s just too trustin’ for his own good. Poor Billy. When a flashy tramp like that Dooley woman keeps flauntin’ herself at the club pool, wearin’ little more than she came into the world with—”

      “That’s where he met her? The club?”

      “That’s what I said, didn’t I? Oh, I’ll admit the girl has a common type of looks that men seem to like—she certainly took my poor boy in, but before they’d even been married six months, she showed her true colors. Poor Billy, he pleaded with her to behave herself. But when she started carryin’ on in front of all their friends—why, he had to ask her to leave.”

      “They’re divorced now, I take it. So what’s the problem?”

      “Well, naturally he divorced her. At least she had the decency to leave town, but we’re afraid now that he’s runnin’ for the state senate, she’ll come back and cause trouble.”

      “Why?”

      “Well, for goodness’ sake, John Stone, for money! What else would her kind want?”

      “You mean