Separate Worlds     Review       Buy Here

       Chapter One 

Taylorsville County, Illinois

May, 1904

        Ten miles north of Taylorsville, acres of emerald grass served as the stage for a four-story pink marble château—an outrage of waste and pomposity to the inhabitants of the austere Dutch Apostolic community. Iron railings on the structure’s scattered balconies slanted downward, as if grimacing over the interment of their owner earlier in the day. In the chapel, chilly, dank air challenged a sporadic net of sunlight. The contradiction matched Taylor Pickett’s topsy-turvy mood. A few hours before the death of François ducLaFevre who occupied the golden coffin ahead, her lifetime search to learn the identity of her father had ended.

        Her long legs lagged, not pressing Amanda, the tiny daughter beside her, to keep up. Have my children and I inherited his evil seed? How could François, as my father and the grandfather of three children he seemed devoted to, profess love, all the while knowing he would deny that affection in a bitter battle to ruin me, my mother and her family? Or had he hated the world?

        As if believing François had deliberately died to avoid answering her, Taylor’s frustration drew her toward his corpse.

        An absent father, he drove me into a nomad’s existence, erected life-threatening obstacles in my path, and yet, pursued Momma and me from the day he discovered I existed. Still, demonstrating an unwavering fascination that ended only with his death, he both celebrated and disgraced Momma. And me in turn. This banished Frenchman destroyed everything good that came into his life—as retribution for his own sins? Or because by nature he harbored evilness?

        His silence taunted her. She needed an answer, ideally to prevent the children who carried his blood from growing into his likeness. Am I a fool to agree to his ghostly demand that James carry on the LaFevre name on his behalf? Am I endangering all my children to act in accordance with this dead mad-man’s wishes?

        The pungent oil masking François’s decaying flesh offended the serenity of the small private chapel. None of his Dutch Apostolic neighbors who attended cared enough to gather flowers in his honor. For this, they would suffer their personal guilt and penance later. François would enjoy knowing that even in death, the discord he had created disturbed the grace of the ritual.

        The puritanical men and women of Taylorsville squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the pews of the obscenely lavish chapel. Their uninspired dark dress contrasted sharply with the gold adorned saints, vibrant stained glass windows, and a white marble altar draped with the French red and gold crest of François’s royal line. Reflecting the significance of the occasion and their severe upbringing, the occupants did no gawking or talking, only bent their heads in somber meditation.

        Except for the worldliness of profit, Taylorsville was almost publicly cosseted so strict were the reigning Elders. François ducLaFevre, however, had been the one tolerated wolf in the flock of lambs. His gold and obsession with Louise Taylor had bought his way. As Taylor walked up the aisle, barely discernable whispers trailed her. The steady gait of her carriage carried her authority. I am here to protect my children from your censure, she wanted to shout. We are of his seed but not of his nature.

        None of them would see the results of her exhaustive days of wrestling to understand François’s chameleon passions. She had come so far, a lifetime, to end her tormenting obsession in the angst-ridden unveiling of her true father. Reliving his betrayal minute by minute had swept the spark from Taylor’s green eyes and robbed her face of its liveliness. Still, her tall frame appeared imperial, especially in perspective to the delicate, dark-haired girl alongside her.

        At the altar Taylor’s hand strummed the shimmering metal. The tension had sapped her more than she realized, enduring the legal queries, staff inquisitions, and the plain nosy exercised their concern about the mansion, the hotel, the cartel, her future here in Taylorsville. She cared only about the future of her children.

        She turned toward the assembled’s waiting faces. Three platinum blond heads peeped from the family pew. Her angelic looking mother, Josie Taylor Broderick, held the hand of Taylor’s first born, Lillian Pickett, a twin-like version. The eleven-year-old exasperated Taylor at every turn. Why must Lily keep harping to leave them behind and accompany her grandmother to Holland?

        At the end of the row, Josie’s intended husband, Chess Tuffet, used his huge frame to box the heir apparent, James Pickett, the proposed future Duke LaFevre, against his sister.

Thank you. Taylor sighed, feeling the tightness in her chest ease. I need you all here with me. They guaranteed her survival with the same welcome of an oasis in a desert. 

        The space reserved for Josef Taylor—Taylor’s grandfather and François’s partner, waited empty, a lifeless dark cavity. A testament to the fear the men carried for each other and yet, they remained companions and business partners for decades.

Amanda wrenched her hand free of Taylor and ran to Lily who was reaching out for her younger sister.

        Taylor turned back toward the closed coffin, unable to break the magnetism the cold, sleek metal held on her. Why can’t I accept that he was flawed? Taylor’s mindless battle whirled in a frenzy, wanting to bask in the beauty of the jeweled windows, but drawn to the darkest corner of the sanctuary. I am in control of my full faculties, and still, like a child, I excuse his devil’s ways—my father, a stranger— and look to blame other’s failings. I wanted a father who would be proud of me, who would readily parade me before his colleagues—and he had fulfilled that wish—just hours before he betrayed me.

        A sob tore from her throat. Francois had to have loved me—but his duplicity went beyond her understanding and charity. Her clenched fist muffled another unwanted cry. Weeping for him or myself? Her knees quaked. I am worthy of love, I must believe that, and I must believe François truly incapable of loving.

        A firm hand gripped her arm. “Don’t fail now. Don’t give him—or them—the satisfaction!” Josie whispered, her tiny body shielding her daughter while she gently removed Taylor’s hand from the coffin. Unquestioning, Taylor leaned into her mother, letting the petite woman steer her toward the front pew.

        At that moment a form blocked the sunlight streaming in the open chapel door, causing a shadow to fall over the entire assemblage and across the coffin, stopping at the base of the altar. An abnormal chill permeated the warmth as the perfunctory mourners shifted and twitched in their pews. 

        Taylor cinched her elbows close to her body in a self-formed hug.      Sister Maria, formerly Marianne ducLaFevre, formidable in her billowing stark nun’s habit, marched to the coffin, genuflected, and with bowed head bent onto the kneeler. Her beads clicking, she prayed loudly. “Our Heavenly Father, render unto my father his just rewards. Send him to the bowels of Hell for the devilment he spewed.” Her voice slashed with the wounding of a woodsman’s axe felling a tree.

        The harshness of the plea in the hushed sanctuary shattered everyone’s musing and plunged through Taylor’s preoccupation. Marianne publicly vented her hatred against their father. Taylor had known for less than a month that Sister Maria, her mother’s childhood friend, was not François’ younger sister as he had claimed, but was in fact, his first illegitimate daughter and Taylor’s half-sister.

        Sister Maria’s voice thundered the Latin fluid and repetitive, the French harsh, and the English condemning. “God, punish him for his wickedness that others may not follow his path.”

Taylor grabbed her mother’s arm. “Oh, Momma, how I hate him, too. And yet, I would seek his approval—my father’s acceptance—were he standing before me. I fear for my children, the blood that runs through their veins. Should I carry out his wishes?”

        “I know what my reply would have been years ago when I agreed to François’s contract, but I have learned much since then.” Josie’s eyes remained steady. “You must follow your heart as you have in the past, my child, and wherever it leads, you will find peace and your answer.”

Taylor sat in silence. Both times she had listened to her heart, she had invited danger into the midst of her little family.