She said something under her breath and stared off over his shoulder"

while he just waited in the quiet.

Eventually, she waved for him to come over, and he did right away, striding across the linoleum and getting down on his knees by her chair.

One of her hands, her beautiful, strong, dark hands, reached out and ran through his hair.

You need to get this cut.

Yes, maam.

She touched his face. Youre too handsome for your own good.

Like I said, you gotta stick around and keep me right.

Miss Aurora nodded. Count on it. There was a long pause. Thank you for my new car.

He pressed a kiss to her palm. Youre welcome.

And I need you to remember something. Her eyes, those ebony eyes hed stared into as a child, a teenager, a young man . . . a grown man, roamed around his face, like she was taking note of the changes that gathering age was bringing to the features she had watched for over thirty years. I got you and I got God. Im wealthier beyond { 39 }.

means" we clear, boy? I dont need no Mercedes. I dont need a fancy house or fancy clothes. There is no hole in me that needs filling" you hear me?

Yes, maam. He closed his eyes, thinking she was the single most noble woman hed ever met.

Well, she and Lizzie, that was.

I hear you, maam, he said hoarsely.

A bout an hour after the lemonade- Lane run- in, Lizzie left the conservatory with two large arrangements. Mrs.

Bradford had always insisted that fresh flowers be in the main public rooms and all of the occupied bedrooms" and that standard had been preserved even as she had retreated to her suite about three years ago and essentially stayed there. Lizzie liked to think if she continued the practice, maybe Little V.E., as the family called her, would once again come down and be the lady of the house.

Easterly had a good fifty rooms, but many of them were staff offices, staff quarters and bathrooms, or places like the kitchen, wine cellar, media rooms, or empty guest rooms that didnt require flowering. The first- floor bouquets were in good shape" shed already done a run- through and pulled out the occasional withering rose here or there the night before. These new ones were for the second- story foyer and Big Mr. Baldwines room. Mrs. Bradfords vase wasnt due to be refreshed before tomorrow, as were Chantals and . . .

Would Lane be staying in his wifes room?

Probably, and didnt that make her want to vomit.

Heading up the back staffing stairs, the two sterling silver fluted vases strained her hands and wrists and tightened up her biceps, but she toughed it out. The burn wasnt going to last long, and taking a time out somewhere along the way just prolonged things.

The main hallway upstairs was long as a racecourse, bifurcated by an upper level sitting area and the conduit to a total of twenty- one suites and bedrooms that opened off on either side. Big Mr. Baldwines quar- { 40 }.

ters were next to his wifes, with both sets of rooms overlooking the garden and the river. There was a connector that linked their dressing rooms, but she knew it was never used.

From what she understood, once the children had been born that part of the relationship had not been resumed, to use the old-fashioned verbiage.

When shed first started working at Easterly, shed been confused by the names" and had slipped up and called Mrs. Bradford by her le- gal name of Mrs. Baldwine. No go. Shed been firmly corrected by the head of staff: The lady of the Bradford house was going to be a Mrs.

and a Bradford no matter what the last name of her husband might have been.

Confusing. Until shed realized that that husband- and- wife team had no more overlapping lives than their separate sleeping accommoda- tions. So it was Mr. Baldwine in the suite with the navy blue accents and the heavier mahogany antiques and Mrs. Bradford in the ivory, cream, taupe, and blush suite with the Louis XIV furniture and the canopy bed.

Actually, maybe the pair of them did have something in common: He hid in his office in the business center, she in her bedroom.

Crazy.

Lizzie proceeded down to the curving formal stairs and swapped out the bouquet on the coffee table in that sitting area. Then she went over and stopped at Mr. Baldwines suite. Knocking twice on the broad panels, she waited even though there was no way he was on the other side. Every morning, he left for his business center next door on the property and he did not return until the seven oclock dinner hour.

Putting the old foyer bouquet on the floor, she cranked the ornate doorknob, pushed inside, and strode over to an antique bureau that be- longed in a museum. There wasnt anything hugely wrong with the flowers already in place, but nothing was allowed to fade at Easterly.

Here, in the cocoon of wealth, entropy was not permitted to exist.

As she switched the vases, she heard voices in the garden and went to the windows. Over a dozen men had arrived and were carting in the huge white canvas rolls and long aluminum poles that, with enough { 41 }.

manpower and some hydraulics, were going to be The Derby Brunchs eighty- by- forty- foot tent.

Great. Chantal was probably calling up Mr. Harris right now and com- plaining that the no- fly zone had been violated: If a member of the family or a guest were using the pool, the pool house, or any of the terraces, all work had to cease in the garden and all workmen had to beat feet out of the area until their royal highnesses were finished with their enjoyment.

The good news? Greta was out there already, corralling the men.

The bad news? The German was probably telling them to set it all up right next to where Chantal was sitting.

Deliberately.

Fearing that confrontation, Lizzie wheeled"

She froze as a flash of color caught her eye. What the . . . ?

Leaning down, she wasnt sure what she was looking at. Like every- thing at Easterly, William Baldwines room was spotless, all objects and belongings where they should be, the masculine accoutrements of a powerful businessman in drawers, tucked away in shelves, waiting for him in that walk- in wardrobe.

So what was a piece of peach silk doing between the back of the headboard and the wall?

Well, she could guess.

And the lingerie sure hadnt been taken off Virginia Elizabeth Brad- ford Baldwine.

Lizzie couldnt wait to get out of the room, going across to the door fast, opening it"

Oh, Im sooooooo happy to see youuuuuuuu!

The Southern drawl was like fingers on a blackboard, but worse was looking down to the right and seeing Chantal Baldwine throw her arms around Lanes neck and hang off his body.

Fantastic. The two of them were between her and the staff stairs.

I cant believe you surprised me like this! The woman took a step back and posed, like she wanted him to have a good look at her. I was just down at the pool, but came up because the tent people are here. I { 42 }.

decided to remove myself so they could be on that part of the grounds to set up.

Well, dont you deserve the Purple Heart, Lizzie thought. And werent you heading to the club soon, anyway?

Lizzie turned around to go for the main stairs to escape. Even if it was against regulation, it was better than having to pass by"

As if on cue, Mr. Harris came up onto the landing with Mrs. Mollie, the head of housekeeping. The English butler was running his fingertip over the top of the balustrade and holding it out for her inspection, shaking his head.

Great.

Her only exits were either over hot coals or through a bonfire. Or ducking back into Mr. Baldwine- who- was- cheating- on- his- wifes room.

Oh, the choices.

She just loved her job sometimes.

{ 43 }.

FIV E.

Bradford Bourbon Distillery, Ogden County E dwin Mack MacAllan Jr. walked along the forty- foot- tall stacks of bourbon barrels, his handmade leather boots clapping against the ancient concrete floor, the scent of a hundred thousand planks of hardwood and millions of gallons of aging bourbon as good as the perfume of a woman in his nose.

Too bad he was too pissed off to enjoy it.

In his fist, a memo from corporate was crushed into a trash ball, the white paper with its laser- printed words unsalvageable. Hed had to read the damn thing three times, and not just because he was severely dyslexic and written English was a largely insurmountable obstacle course for his brain.

Talk about lighting him up. He was not a hillbilly. Hed been raised in an educated family, and hed gone to Auburn University, and he knew everything about making bourbon from the chemical processes involved to that intangible artistry stuff.

{ 44 }.

In fact, he was the highly respected Master Distiller of the most prestigious bourbon brand on the market, and the son of the most respected Master Distiller in the history of the commercial alcohol industry.

But at the moment? He wanted to get in his half- ton and ram the grill of that F- 150 right into the lobby of William Baldwines office at Easterly. Then he wanted to take his hundred-year-old hunting rifle and put some holes in the desks of all those corporate idiots.

Coming to a halt, he leaned back and looked at the racks that stretched up to the warehouses exposed beam ceiling. The branded number codes and dates that had been burned into the fronts of the bar- rels had been put there on orders first by his father, and then by himself, and there was a progression of both, the precious containers resting in peace for four years, ten years, twenty years, longer. He regularly in- spected them, even though he had plenty of people who worked for him who could do that. The way he saw it, though, these were the only chil- dren he was ever going to have and he wasnt going to let them get raised by the equivalent of a nanny.

At thirty- eight, he was a loner, thanks to both choice and necessity: This job, this twenty- five- hour- a- day, eight- day- a- week job was his wife and his mistress, his family and his legacy.

So getting this memo, which hed found on his desk when hed come in, was like a drunk driver ramming into the minivan that his entire life was riding in.

The recipe for bourbon was really simple: grain mash, which by Kentucky law had to be made up of a minimum of fifty- one percent corn, and which was, here at the Bradford Bourbon Company, a further com- bination of rye, malted barley, and about ten percent wheat for smoother taste; water, drawn from an underground limestone aquifer; and yeast.

Then, after the magic happened, the nascent bourbon was put into white oak barrels that were charred on the inside and left to grow up to be big and strong and beautiful in storage houses like this one.

That was it. Every single bourbon maker had those five elements of grain, water, yeast, barrel and time to work with, period. But as the { 45 }.

good Lord turned out an endless variation of people from the core ele- ments of what made a human, so, too, did each family or company pro- duce different shades of the same thing.

Reaching out, he put his hand on the rounded flanks of one of the barrels he had first filled when hed taken over as master. That had been almost ten years ago, although he had worked for the company since he was fourteen. It had always been the plan to step into his fathers shoes, but Pop had died too soon, and there you had it. Mack had been left behind in classic sink or swim territory, and he sure as hell had had no intention of drowning.

So yeah, here he was, at the top of his game and young enough still to create a dynasty of his own" supposedly working for the aristocracy of bourbon makers, the company who created The Perfect Bourbon.

It was the tagline on everything BBC did, the tip of the spear of the companys brewing, business and marketing philosophy.

So why in Gods green earth was management expecting him to accept these proposed delays in grain delivery? It was like those idiots with the MBAs didnt understand that while they had enough product that was four years old today, if he didnt keep the sills going, they were going to run out of that kind of bourbon to sell forty- eight months from now" and that applied to every level, running out ten years from now, twenty years from now.

He knew exactly where all this was headed. A nationwide shortage in corn, the result of global warming coming home to roost and screwing up the weather patterns last summer, meant that the bushel price was sky high right now" but it wasnt likely to stay that way. Clearly, the bean counters in the home office, a.k.a. Mr. Baldwines estate, had decided to save a couple of bucks by halting production for the next couple of months and expecting to catch up when the corn prices self- regulated.

Assuming that the drought that had rocked the nation the year be- fore wasnt repeated.

Which was not a bet he, personally, was willing to take.

There were many faults to this business logic, but the core issue was that those suits and ties didnt understand that bourbon was not a { 46 }.

widget produced on an assembly line that had an easy on/off switch. It was a process, a unique and special culmination and expression of trial- and- error choices that had been made and refined over a period of over two hundred and fifty years: You had to cultivate the bourbons taste, coax out the flavors and the balance, guide the elements to their apex of existence" and then send it out to your customers under a label of distinction. Hell, he took as much pride in safeguarding the No. 15 brand, the companys most successful but less- expensive line, as he did the higher- cost, longer- aged products, such as Black Mountain, Bradford I, and the ultra- exclusive Family Reserve.

If he interrupted production now? He knew damn well they were going to come back to him in six months and tell him to mislabel the barrels.

Six months to the suits was just half a year, twenty- six weeks, two seasons.

But to his palate, he could distinguish a nine-and-a-half-year bour- bon from a ten-year and one-day bourbon. And maybe a lot of their customers couldnt tell the difference, but that wasnt the point, was it.

And the fact that many of their competitors mislabeled on a regular basis? Hardly the standard to follow.

If Edward were here, he thought, he wouldnt have to worry about it. Edward Baldwine was that rarity in the Bradford family" a true dis- tiller, a throwback to the early era of the august lineage, a man who valued the product that was produced. But that presumptive heir to the throne was now not involved with the company anymore.

So there was nowhere to go with this.

And the fact that the memo had just been left on his desk to be found? It was typical of the way things had been running ever since Edwards tragedy. The pussies at the business center knew hed have a fit over this, but they didnt have the balls to come and tell him in person. Nope. Just write a memo and throw it on top of all the other papers, like it wasnt going to fundamentally affect the core of the business.

Mack went back to staring up at the rafters that were made out of old- growth timber felled a century ago. This was the very oldest of the { 47 }.

companys storage facilities, and it was used to house the very special barrels. Located by the original still site" which was now both a mu- seum for tourists as well as where his office was housed" this place was a damn shrine.

The soul of his father walked these corridors.

Mack was convinced he could feel his old man at his heel right now.

Convinced, too, that on a quiet day like today, when the only things in the warehouse with him were the sunlight that drifted in from the cloudy windows, the sound of his boots on the concrete, and the mist of the angels share drifting in and out of those shafts of illumination . . .

he was one of the very few champions of tradition left in the company.

The new kids that were coming in" even the ones who wanted to get where he was" professed love for the rituals and the fundamentals and claimed to be committed to the process, but were really just corpo- rate minions in khakis rather than suits. They were from a generation of special snowflakes who expected trophies for showing up, and every- thing to be easy, and for everybody to care about them and safeguard them as their parents would.

They had no more depth than their Facebook posts. Than their re- lentless egoism. Than their soulless frivolities.

In comparison to the forebearers of this company, who had shep- herded this product through famines and wartime, disease and the De- pression . . . through Prohibition, for godsakes . . . they were boys trying to do a mans job.

They just didnt know it, and with a corporate culture like this?

They never would.