The Secret Daughter

“You had a baby. My baby. Didn’t you?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“You had a baby. My baby. Didn’t you?”

The blood drained from Imogen’s face. “How did you find out?” she croaked.

“By accident.”

“I’m sorry.” She sounded as feeble-minded as she felt.

“Sorry for what?” Joe blazed. “For the way I found out I’d fathered a child, or that I found out at all? You could have told me yourself, at the time. But let me guess why you didn’t. Donnelly genes didn’t measure up to what it took to be a Palmer heir. It was easier to erase the mistake before anyone found out about it. How am I doing so far, princess? Batting a hundred?”

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Imogen whispered.

“Then what happened to my child?”

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin romances. Within two months she changed careers and sold her first book to Harlequin® in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus three dogs and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

Catherine always enjoys hearing from her readers, so why not drop her a line at the following address:

Catherine Spencer

Box 1713

Blaine, WA

98231 U.S.A.

The Secret Daughter

Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

TANYA seized the crumpled invitation from the wastebasket where Imogen had tossed it, smoothed out the creases and said, “What do you mean, you’re going to send your regrets? Your high school principal’s retiring and your hometown’s celebrating its centennial anniversary. This is a heaven-sent opportunity, Imogen!”

“To do what?” Imogen barely lifted her head from the design she was working on for Mrs. Lynch-Carter’s windows.

“Why, to mend fences with your mother, of course. Or do you plan to wait until she’s dead before you attempt a reconciliation? Because if you do, my dear, let me assure you that you’ll be eaten up with guilt for the rest of your life.”

“If my mother wants to see me, Tanya, she knows where I live.”

“But you’re the one who refused to go home again. It strikes me it’s up to you to be the one to make the first move now.” Tanya adopted her most winning tone, the one she used on clients who mistakenly believed that money and good taste automatically went hand in hand. “Let’s face it, Imogen. You’ve been dreadfully hurt by the estrangement, and the odds are your mother has, too.”

“I doubt it,” Imogen replied, recalling the speed with which Suzanne Palmer had hustled her out of town and out of the country within days of learning of her daughter’s fall from grace. “When I needed her the most, my mother abandoned me.”

“Does it make you feel better to go on punishing her for it?” Tanya persisted. “Do you never wonder if perhaps she regrets the way she acted but doesn’t quite know how to go about rectifying her mistake? We’re a long time dead, kiddo, and it’s too late then to put things right. Do it now, while you still can, is my advice.”

If truth be known, Imogen had thought the same thing herself many times. And lately, she’d missed her mother more than usual. Having someone care enough to want to orchestrate every facet of her life was better than having no one at all.

Was it possible they could start over, not as parent and child but as two adults with close ties and a mutual respect for each other? The teenager in trouble with nowhere to turn had evolved into an independent twenty-seven-year-old thoroughly in charge of her own life. That being so, should she put aside her injured pride and offer the olive branch?

Never one to lose an argument if she could possibly avoid it, Tanya said, “She’s a widow, and you’re her only child, for pity’s sake! Who else has she got in her old age?”

The mere idea of Suzanne growing old struck Imogen as ludicrous. Her mother simply wouldn’t allow it. She’d be tucked, lifted and dyed to within an inch of her life before she’d submit to the wear and tear of time. Still, she was almost sixty. And it had been nine years.

Sensing she was winning this particular debate, Tanya pressed her advantage. “If it’s an excuse you’re looking for that will allow you to save face, you’ve got it here,” she said, tapping the invitation. “What better reason for simply showing up at the door and saying something cool and offhand along the lines of, ‘I just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to see how you’re doing’?”

“Whatever else her faults, my mother is no fool, Tanya. She’d see through that in a flash.”

“And maybe it wouldn’t matter if she did. Sometimes a little white lie is the kindest route to take, especially if it spares people having their noses rubbed in past mistakes.”

Put like that, it seemed mean-spirited and just plain immature not to seize the opportunity to end the estrangement. And Imogen liked to think that, in the years since Joe Donnelly had sped in and out of her life with the brief impact of a meteor shooting through space, she’d grown up enough to deal with whatever had to be dealt with and not fall apart in the process.

Still, there was more involved in going back to Rosemont than dealing with her mother. There was—

“Of course, if there’s some other reason holding you back, some other person you’re afraid to face, perhaps...”

The knowing, secret little smile with which Tanya finished the sentence found its mark. Too quickly and much too defensively, Imogen retorted, “Like who?”

“Oh, the name Joe Donnelly comes to mind for some reason.”

Cursing herself for falling into so obvious a trap, Imogen said blandly, “I can’t imagine why. I haven’t given him a thought in years.”

Tanya was tall and elegantly thin, beautiful and enviably sophisticated, cultured, educated and gifted. But none of that stopped her from crowing with the delight of a child, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

The devil of it was, she was right. If Imogen were to be honest, she’d have to admit she’d never been able to forget Joe Donnelly. Not that she didn’t try—and even come close to succeeding much of the time. Weeks, even months might go by without her thinking of him, especially when she was involved in a project. Helping a client decide between faux marble or French silk wall treatments didn’t exactly trigger her memory of him.

But when it came to romance, she’d find herself comparing the current man in her life to a black-haired, sultry-eyed rebel with a smile as handsome and dangerously knowing as sin and a way with words that could persuade a saint to stray.

By the time she’d tell herself that, in the nine years since she’d seen him, Joe Donnelly probably had degenerated into a shiftless, beer-swigging layabout, run to fat and, like his father, lost most of his hair, it was too late. Whatever spark might have existed between her and the Tom, Dick or Harry of the moment had already fizzled and died.

“I gather from your silence that I’ve touched a nerve,” Tanya observed.

“Not at all.”

“Oh, come on, Imogen! You’re still hung up on the guy. Admit it.”

“I remember him, of course,” Imogen said, truly trying to be objective, “but to say I’m hung up on him is absurd. The last time I saw him, I’d just turned eighteen and was barely out of school—a girl with a crush on a man who seemed attractive because he was a few years older and had something of a reputation around town. I’ve matured since then. Motorcycle hoods no longer strike me as appealing.”

“A woman never loses her fascination for the man who introduces her to love.”

“I have.”

“Then there’s no reason you can’t go home again, is there?”

“No reason at all,” Imogen said, the same pride that had kept her from reconciling with her mother rising up to back her into another kind of corner.

“And since you’re so mature, you’ll find it in your heart to kiss and make up with Mother?”

Well, why not? Imogen chewed the end of her pencil and considered the merits of such a move. Going home would necessarily mean raking up some painful aspects of the past, but wasn’t it time she laid to rest the ghosts that had haunted her for over eight years? The important thing was to be selective in her remembering, to focus only on her relationship with her mother and not to allow herself to become bogged down in useless regrets over a man who had never spared her a second thought once he’d introduced her to sex.

As long as she stuck to that resolve and remained in charge of her emotions, nothing could really go wrong. Or so she thought.

“All right, you’ve convinced me,” she told Tanya. “I’ll accept the invitation and see if I can’t work something out with my mother.”

But nothing went as planned, starting with her arrival, one afternoon toward the end of June, at Deepdene Grange, her family’s estate and possibly the only property in town whose house warranted the description “mansion.”

“Madam is not at home,” the maid, a total stranger, informed her, standing guard at the door as if she feared Imogen might take the place by storm.

Imogen stared at her, speechless. In the month before she’d set out from Vancouver, she’d suffered more than a few qualms about the wisdom of her decision to go home again, but her misgivings had taken serious hold when she’d picked up her rental car at Pearson International and headed northeast, away from the sticky humidity of Toronto and toward cottage country. What if all she did was make things worse and widen the gulf between her and her mother?

By the time she’d reached Clifton Hill, Rosemont’s toniest residential area, and turned in at Deepdene’s big iron gates, nervous anticipation the size and texture of a lump of clay hung in the pit of her stomach. But she’d come this far, and nothing, she thought, could deter her.

Except this.

“Not at home?” she echoed, shaking her head in the way people do when they’re not sure they understand the language being spoken.

The maid didn’t so much as blink. “I’m afraid not.”

But it was four o’clock on Saturday, the hour when, winter or summer for as far back as Imogen could remember, Suzanne Palmer had taken afternoon tea in the solarium prior to dressing for whatever social function she was holding or attending that evening.

As though to verify that she’d come to the right house, Imogen peered over the maid’s shoulder. The foyer looked exactly as it always had. The Waterford crystal chandelier sparkled in the sunlight, the carved oak banister gleamed, the hand-knotted Persian stair runner glowed softly. Even the bowl of roses on the console beneath the ornate gilt mirror might have been the very same as that occupying the identical spot, the day she’d walked out of her home almost nine years before, believing, at the time, that she would never return.

The maid shifted to block her view and narrowed the angle of the open door. “Who may I say called?”

“What?” Already becoming enmeshed in the past, Imogen gave herself a mental shake and steered her attention to the present. “Oh! Her daughter.”

Too well-trained to betray surprise by more than a faint lifting of her eyebrows, the maid said, “Madam is gone for the weekend but she should be home by late tomorrow afternoon. She didn’t mention anything about a guest.”

Unwilling to give her mother the chance to reject her a second time, Imogen had booked a room at the town’s only good hotel—a wise precaution indeed, since Suzanne Palmer clearly had declined to inform her current household staff that she had a daughter. “She wasn’t expecting me. I’m staying at the Briarwood. However, I would like to leave a note telling her I’m in town.”

“I’ll be happy to give her a message.”

“I’d prefer to leave a note.” Not giving her time to protest, Imogen stepped past the maid into the foyer.

She’d have thought her familiarity with the layout of Deepdene Grange and the exact location of her mother’s private sitting room would have lent credibility to her claim of having grown up in the house but, face tight with suspicion, the maid stuck to her like glue.

“Madam prefers not to have her private papers disturbed,” she objected, as Imogen sat at Suzanne’s pretty little Empire writing desk and lowered the lid.

“Madam” had preferred not to acknowledge her wayward daughter’s behavior nine years ago, but she hadn’t been able to change its outcome. “I’ll make sure you’re not held responsible for my actions,” Imogen said, “and if it eases your mind any, I have no intention at all of invading my mother’s privacy.”

In fact, though, she did just that. Reaching into one of the pigeonholes for a slip of paper, she accidentally dislodged a sheaf of canceled checks, some of which fluttered into her lap and others to the polished floor.

With an exclamation of distress, the maid stooped to retrieve those on the floor while Imogen gathered the rest. “No harm done,” she said, aligning hers into a neat pile by tapping the edges smartly on the desk.

“But they were arranged by number,” the young maid almost whimpered. “Madam is very particular about things like that.”

Then little had changed, after all! “She always was,” Imogen said, “but as long as they’re left the way I found them, she’ll never know the difference.”

Quickly, she shuffled the various checks into the proper sequence: number 489, made out to the Municipality of Rosemont for annual property taxes, number 488 to the telephone company and number 487, a tidy sum payable to St. Martha’s, her mother’s old private school, in Norbury, about forty miles west of Niagara Falls.

Imogen wasn’t unduly curious or surprised. Suzanne had always contributed generously to those causes she deemed worthy and prided herself on her largess. It was only where her daughter and certain segments of Rosemont society were concerned that she lacked charity.

With the checks restored to order and replaced in the desk, it took Imogen only a moment to write her note. “I’m not planning to stay in the area more than a few days,” she said, handing the folded slip of paper to the maid, “so I’d appreciate it if you’d make sure my mother receives this as soon as she comes home.”

She was barely out the door before the maid closed it behind her. Faced with empty hours to fill, Imogen drove slowly toward the center of town, searching out familiar landmarks and, despite her best intentions, remembering too much.

Banners proclaiming the town’s centennial anniversary flanked the columns fronting the courthouse, baskets of flowering plants hung from the wrought-iron lampposts on Main Street, Judge Merriweather’s house had been turned into an accountant’s office, and the old Rosemont Medical Building was now a youth center.

Once past the railroad station, Main Street split in two, the right lane following the curve of the lakeshore and the left leading to Lister’s Meadows, where the Donnellys used to live.

“Definitely the wrong side of the tracks,” her mother had determined when, the summer she turned fifteen, Imogen had insisted on attending a birthday party there. But Imogen had loved the friendly neighborliness of the area. Although the houses were small and close together, with long narrow gardens at the back, there were no fences separating one place from the next, no signs warning trespassers to stay away.

The Donnelly house had been at the end of the last street, she recalled, with a creek running beside it. But whether or not they’d moved, she had no idea. She and Patsy Donnelly had lost touch when Imogen went to stay with her mother’s cousin the autumn after her eighteenth birthday and Joe...

Oh, Joe Donnelly had not cared enough to pursue a relationship with Imogen Palmer and had left Ontario within days of his one-night stand with the richest girl in town. He did not deserve to be remembered.

So there was no earthly reason for her to head east to where Donnelly’s Garage used to be open for business fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Did she seriously expect to see Sean Donnelly manning the pumps or Mr. Donnelly bent over the open hood of a car? Or Joe Donnelly straddling his idling Harley-Davidson and surveying the unending parade of girls willing to show off their physical assets in the hope of luring him even further into temptation than his natural inclination had already led him?

Apparently she did. How else to account for the wave of disappointment that washed over her when she saw that what used to be Donnelly’s Garage was now a slick, twelve-pump, self-serve gas station owned by a major oil company? She ought to have rejoiced that nothing remained to remind her.

“Oh, grow up, Imogen!” she muttered, annoyed by what could only be described as blatant self-indulgence. “Instead of wasting time dwelling on a man who, except for one memorable occasion, never spared you a second glance, think about what you’re going to say when you see your mother again because, whatever else might happen, at least she can’t deny you ever existed!”

Swinging the car in an illegal U-turn and consigning Joe Donnelly to that part of her past she had determined not to revisit, she headed to her hotel. It was almost six o’clock. By the time she’d showered and changed, it would be dinnertime.

Imogen’s room on the second floor of the Briarwood was handsomely furnished and looked out on the lake. Preferring the flower-scented breeze to the sterile discomfort of the air conditioner, she opened the French windows and stepped out on the small balcony overhanging the gardens. Immediately below, a wedding reception was in progress, with tables set out on the lawn and a wasp-waisted bride, lovely in white organza and orange blossom, holding court beneath an arbor of roses.

Imogen was unprepared for the envy that stabbed through her at the sight of that young woman. Not because she had a husband and Imogen had not—remaining single was, after all, her choice—but because the bride wore an air of innocence Imogen had lost when she was a teenager.

Though only just twenty-seven, she felt suddenly old. And bitter. By most standards, she had all those things that mattered in today’s world. She was successful, she had money, and men seemed to find her attractive enough that they asked her out often. One or two had even proposed marriage.

But inside, where it counted, she was empty. Had been empty for the better part of nine years. And it would take a lot more than a shower and a good dinner to restore her to the kind of optimism that left the bride so luminous with joy.

If only...

No! Grief softened with time, the sharp edge of heartbreak melted into kindly nostalgia, and only a fool dwelled on horror. She might have been born and raised in Rosemont, but her future lay half a continent away in Vancouver, and she’d do well to keep reminding herself of that.

The courthouse clock struck seven. Too keyed up to face dinner, Imogen changed out of the smart linen suit she’d worn for the meeting with her mother and slipped into a thin cotton dress and sandals. A brisk walk would go a lot further toward relaxing her and insuring a good night’s rest than beef Wellington or lobster thermidor in the formal elegance of the hotel dining room.

Although the air was warm, a slight breeze blew across the lake, stirring the surface of the water to dazzling ripples. Slipping on a pair of sunglasses, Imogen turned right at the foot of the hotel steps and headed west on the shoreline boardwalk, past the pier, the public beach and the band shell, then through the park, to end up some forty minutes later at what used to be the Rosemont Tea Garden.

Like so many other places, though, this, too, had undergone change. A smart awning covered the fenced patio where faded sun umbrellas had once given shade to patrons. Wicker furniture and woven place mats had replaced the old plastic tables and chairs. And instead of scones, homemade strawberry jam and tea served in mismatched china cups, a chalkboard menu propped by the patio gate offered a selection of chilled soups, salads and trendy pasta dishes.

Tempted by the thought of langostino salad, Imogen passed through the gate and waited to be seated. It was as she was being shown to a table that a voice exclaimed, “Imogen Palmer, is that you hiding behind those dark glasses?”

Startled, she looked around to see Patsy Donnelly, of all people, rising from a table just inside the patio’s wrought-iron railing, her dark blue eyes and black hair so much like her brother’s that, without warning, all Imogen’s fine resolutions to stay in charge of herself and the events surrounding her wilted like roses left too long without water.

Mistaking her stunned silence for nonrecognition, Patsy said, “It’s me, Imogen. Patsy Donnelly. Surely you haven’t forgotten?”

“Of course not,” Imogen said weakly. “I’m just surprised to see you here, that’s all.”

But if her response was less than enthusiastic, Patsy didn’t seem to notice. Inviting Imogen to join her by pulling out one of the chairs at her table, she laughed and said, “I don’t see why. It is Rosemont’s centennial celebration, after all, not to mention Miss Duncliffe’s big retirement bash. Just about everyone we went to school with is in town, even Joe. I’m just the first of a long line of familiar faces you’ll be running into. How long are you staying?”

“Not long at all,” Imogen said, suppressing the urge to bolt to the hotel, pack her bags, race to the airport and climb aboard the first flight headed west. Why was Joe Donnelly here when, from everything she’d ever heard, the only time he’d shown the slightest interest in school had been during basketball season?

Patsy flagged down a waiter, asked him to bring an extra wineglass, then sat regarding Imogen expectantly. “So, tell me about yourself. Are you married? Do you have any children?”

“No.” Her answer was brief to the point of rude, but not for the life of her could Imogen get past the fact that Joe Donnelly was in town. She couldn’t face him. It was as simple as that! Bad enough that he was resurrecting himself in her memory without her having to confront him in the flesh.

Patsy leaned forward, her pretty, vivid face creased with concern. “Did I ask the wrong question, Imogen?”

Realizing she was committing the kind of social gaffe that would have put her mother under the table with shame, Imogen struggled to rally her composure. “No, no. I’m just...surprised you remember me.”

It wasn’t an entirely moronic observation. She’d been tutored by a governess until she was thirteen and would have been sent to boarding school after that if Suzanne had had her way. But Imogen, desperate to be “ordinary” like the teenagers she saw around town, had prevailed on her father to allow her to attend Rosemont High.

But she’d never really belonged. Her circle of friends had been limited to those few girls her mother had decided were sufficiently gently reared to associate with a Palmer. In fact, she could count on one hand the number who’d been allowed to set foot inside Deepdene’s gates to enjoy a game of tennis or dabble their well-bred toes in the swimming pool.

Although Patsy had been universally popular with her schoolmates, she had not met Suzanne’s rigid standards, and the best Imogen had been able to establish with her was an association that, though friendly, had rarely extended beyond the school grounds.

“Not remember you?” Patsy hooted, gesturing to the waiter to fill both glasses from the open wine bottle on the table. “Imogen, you were the most unforgettable girl ever to pass through the school doors. When we weren’t all terrified of you, we wanted to be just like you. You were—” she stopped and waved both hands as if invoking divine intervention “—a princess in our midst. Mysterious, regal. The Grace Kelly of Rosemont High, which is why—”