By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

BY THE SEA Series

A riveting saga/mystery.

--Rave Reviews

In the tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey, BY THE SEA is a four-book series that sweeps from the Gilded Age through the Gatsby Era's Roaring Twenties and then on to the Great Depression, culminating nearly a century later in Newport, Rhode Island, wealthy and alluring City by the Sea. Set against a backdrop of mansions, the glorious America's Cup Yacht Races, and new money, the series traces the passions and adventures of three families from three different classes. 

Book One:  TESS.  From the wild decadence of late nineteenth-century Newport comes the tale of Tess Moran, a beautiful Irish housemaid in one of the grand summer cottages, who makes a dark bargain with a man of commanding wealth — and falls in love in the bargain.

Book Two:  AMANDA.  Marrying American money to an English title is a tradition of its own; but Amanda Fain, a brash heiress with money to burn, has a fondness for Bolsheviks and bootleg liquor that makes her an unlikely match for the reluctant, ironic, and impoverished English aristocrat Geoffrey Seton, who has been ordered to America to find someone who can pay the bills for the family estate back home.

Book Three:  LAURA.  While the Great Depression grinds relentlessly on, Laura Andersson, a Midwestern farm girl with an improbable love of the sea, embarks on a bold adventure that promises riches but delivers passion, one that threatens all she holds dear.

Book Four:  THE HEIRS  is the dramatic conclusion to the four-book series BY THE SEA.  Economic hard times are a distant memory in high-flying, recent-day Newport, home of the oldest and most prestigious trophy in the world, the Holy Grail of sport--the America's Cup. Here, the descendants of Tess, Amanda and Laura play out their destinies, their paths crossing in unforeseen ways:  Mavis Moran, Neil Powers, his daughter Quinta, and America's Cup skipper Alan Seton all find themselves caught in a web of mystery, sabotage, and conflicting desires.

A quality novel [that] contains many of those little epiphanies, those moments of recognition.  [Part 1, TESS,] is what makes Stockenberg's book stand out from the rash of novels on class conflicts between Irish servants and their Yankee masters.

—Providence Journal

This was my first Antoinette Stockenberg novel.  I read it not long after it was published ages ago, but her writing is so vivid I can still picture some of the scenes from the novel. This [was written] before the ghost or mystery plots were woven into her novels: it is purely a story of life and relationships. I have been a huge fan ever since.

—A reader

Copyright

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

By the Sea, Book Four: THE HEIRS

Copyright © 1987 by Antoinette Stockenberg

Original title: The Challenge and the Glory

Newly revised and edited, 2013

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

BY THE SEA Series

Copyright

Book Four: THE HEIRS, Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

More for your e-Reader by Antoinette

About the Author

An Excerpt from TIDEWATER

An Excerpt from A CHARMED PLACE

Book Four: THE HEIRS, Chapter 1

Summer 1983

Neil Powers rapped on the opened door of his daughter's room. Hey? You coming to the Ball?

Quinta was lying on the quilted coverlet of her white spindled bed, reading. A huge bowl of fruit lay next to her. She plucked a grape from a half-eaten bunch and without looking up said, Nah. I think I'll pass. I'm really enjoying this novel.

What're you reading?

"Pride and Prejudice."

For pity's sake, girl. Why read about balls when you can go to one?

She looked up and laughed at that. "Because it's much easier to pretend I'm dancing at this one," she said, and her face, which still had a little growing up to do, sparkled with teenage superiority.

It was a pretty face, tanned and with a refreshingly un-pert nose, and framed by straight gold hair. She didn't look like her mother, and she didn't look like her father. Make her hair dark, and Quinta looked like her grandmother Laura more than any of her four sisters. That was one reason she was her father's secret favorite; another was that she was the youngest of his five children and naturally the one most doted upon.

Sure you won't come? When your sister's back up and around I can always drag her, but for now ... He was packing the loose tobacco in his antique pipe with an index finger, a careful study in abandonment.

Quinta flipped the book over and sighed. Her father was getting better and better at laying on guilt. For the last four years, ever since her mother died, he'd been wandering through life aimlessly, leaning on one daughter, then another, to share his activities. But daughters have a way of growing up, and now everyone had left the nest except Quinta. As she watched him, calmly aware that she was being manipulated, it suddenly became clear to her: Neil Powers would not grow up while she was there to minister to him.

With an almost painful effort she forced her body to stand up, stretch, and return to the twentieth century. Reaching for the nylon windbreaker on the back of her bedroom door, she said, If someone actually had handed you two tickets to the Yachtsman's Ball tonight, would you have gone?

Of course, he said, wondering.

I mean, with a—you know—a date?

He looked into her hazel eyes, so completely unlike his dark ones, while he drew flame through the bowl of his pipe. A date? he said between puffs, What's a date? as though the word had long since been dropped from his vocabulary.

Quinta trotted after him down the stairs of their now too-large house, aware that she was breaking new ground; none of her older sisters had ever suggested to their father's face that he pick up the pieces and get on with life. Come on, Dad, be serious. There must be someone in Newport you wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with. What about Mrs. Saunderson?

It never occurred to me, he said coolly, without turning around. And besides, she's way too old.

She's your age!

And looks it.

"Well, everyone can't be as pretty and lively as Mom. And besides, you are four years older than when, you know—" But she retreated; he wouldn't appreciate being reminded that life was passing him by.

They'd reached the foot of the stairs when Neil turned to his daughter. It seems to me that I should be worried about your boyfriends, and not vice-versa. How's Jake, by the way? He hasn't been around in ages.

"He's not my boyfriend. He's a kid," she said, thoroughly insulted.

He's your age!

And looks it.

I suggest a truce, her father said, which was what he always said when they got into one of these circular arguments. He was never willing to resolve anything, which drove Quinta crazy. Her mother had always been the one to take life's various bulls by the horns; Neil Powers had never had to bother. As a result he had developed a true genius for daydreaming and evasion, and he never knew which tie to wear with what shirt.

On the other hand, he was a wizard with computers. If he'd gone into teaching he'd have made an excellent absent-minded professor. For her birthday he'd bought Quinta the newest, fastest, latest Mac, and now she was miles ahead of everyone else in her class. In the evening Quinta would amble into his study with a question about C; in the morning he would beg her to tell him whether paisley went with pinstripes. It was comforting to her that he knew everything about programming languages. But shouldn't he know a little something about men's wear, too?

Her father was locking the entry door from the outside when Quinta suddenly changed her mind. The night had a damp, nasty edge to it, and thoughts of her cozy room and Austen's country gentry became suddenly irresistible. Right now all that mattered to Quinta was, what would proud Darcy say to Elizabeth's violent rejection of his proposal?

She reached into her shoulder bag and brought out her key—I'm not going after all, Dad—and stuck it in the lock.

Well, that's nice. Why not?

Because of the book and—do you really want to know? she asked, turning back to him. "Because I think it's dumb to stand around in the dark gawking at a lot of rich people making their grand entrances into a mansion. I mean, who cares? I'm not a debutante, and I don't own a yacht with a helicopter on it, and I'm not dating one of the America's Cup crew members, and I'm sure not racing on one of the 12-meter yachts that's trying to win the America's Cup—so what's the point? I'd rather read a book," she finished up, facing down the first chill blast of reproach that seemed to emanate from her father.

Fine. I need the exercise. I'll walk over myself. I didn't realize that you'd grown so blasé about the America's Cup. No doubt I bore you with my continuing interest. Fine.

He always did that, took that vague, offended tone whenever he was being opposed. "Oh, Dad," she said, and there was awful sadness in her voice. How could he be expected to change at fifty-seven?

Please. Spare me your sympathy, he said. But before I go I'd like you to know that I don't—necessarily—follow the balls because they're important to me. I do it because your mother used to enjoy it so much.

The last shot was right on target. Wounded and near tears, Quinta said, Dad—

No, fine. Really. He turned and walked quickly down the steps, heading up the hill to Spring Street, where he would turn right toward Ocean Avenue, millionaires' row.

Quinta knew, even before she dragged herself back up the mahogany stairs of her father's comfortable colonial home, that her reunion with Jane Austen's amusing, impertinent heroine Elizabeth would not be much fun after all.

****

Neil Powers had put a mile and a half between himself and the painful scene on his front porch before he could ask the question: was he being an ass again? The look he got from Quinta was the look he'd gotten from his other four girls, each in her turn, during the last couple of years. Well, he did not need their pity; he was doing just fine as a widower, thank you. Tomorrow morning, for example, he planned to go out in his boat—if it wasn't blowing too hard—and do a little bottom fishing on Narragansett Bay. Alone. He didn't mind, not actually. Quinta had overreacted.

Or what the hell; maybe he had. After all, he was seriously overworked at the office lately. As soon as he hired another man—although where you could find a process control specialist in Newport, Rhode Island, was beyond him—as soon as the pressure let up, he'd be less touchy. And if he did get a kick out of following an America's Cup campaign through a Newport summer, damn it, then why should he have to apologize for it?

Still, fond as he was about the event, there were aspects of an America's Cup summer that he could do without. It was only July, and already Newport was under siege. Already he was sick of the tourists, sick of the media, sick of the small planes and helicopters droning overhead all day. He was even, God forgive him, sick of the Goodyear blimp. You couldn't go out to eat; restaurants were booked for days, sometimes weeks ahead. And none but the grim could possibly reach the waterfront by car anymore.

Which is why, after the last America's Cup yacht races three years ago, he'd had to move from his harbor front office to an industrial park outside of town. Not even the promise of a close-up look at Ted Turner or a 12-meter yacht had been enough to entice his savvier clients to fight for parking space. Besides, the office rent had become outrageous.

It was the forced move from his beloved harbor, where he'd taught all five daughters to fish and to sail, that offended him most. Everyone knew that the America's Cup Races were big business for Newport. Neil Powers was realistic enough to understand that if you weren't a crew member or a supporter of one of the America's Cup syndicates—and if you didn't assist, feed, clothe, write about, or sleep with those who were—then there really wasn't room for you on the crowded, jumping waterfront during a Cup summer.

But he was naive—and yes, sentimental—enough to believe that he deserved a place in the America's Cup rituals: because his father was Sam Powers, an oak tree of a New Englander who had crewed fifty years earlier on Harold Vanderbilt's Rainbow. That was when the yachts that raced for the America's Cup were yachts, not the stripped-out toys that competed nowadays. The Rainbow was twice as long as today's 12-meter boats and five times heavier, with a spread of sail that could cover a good-sized gym. The Rainbow was a J-boat, and the Js were it in yacht racing—ocean dinosaurs, the likes of which would never roam the seas again.

Neil stopped and held up his watch in the darkness, trying to make out the time. He'd been walking briskly for half an hour, he thought, and he had almost another half hour until he reached the Finnesterre mansion. By the time he got there even the fashionably late would have arrived; the show might be over. He'd convinced himself that Finnesterre was an easy walk from his modest house on Howard Street. It wasn't. And it was bound to rain shortly. If he had any brains he'd turn around and go back home.

But Neil Powers was, and always would be, an America's Cup junkie. He was on Coggeshall Avenue now, away from the harbor but close to the ocean, and he was careful to keep out of the way of the occasional automobile that slithered past on the unlit road. It was Saturday night, a dangerous night. Drunks were everywhere—in the bars, in the cars, in the bushes.

So much had changed in the past fifty years. Everything seemed smaller, more diminished. The boats. Newport. Even the men. He thought of his father, a powerhouse of a man, so aptly named: six feet and two hundred thirty pounds of unadulterated muscle, a giant of a man for a giant of a boat. Ham-fisted, quick-witted, and totally without pretension, Sam Powers had worked his ass off belowdecks for Harold Vanderbilt on the Rainbow and had loved every anonymous minute of it.

When Sam saw his young son at all during that fateful summer of 1934, he filled the boy's head to bursting with stories of harrowing races against Yankee, the other American J-boat trying out for the right to defend the America's Cup. It's nip and tuck, my boy, he would tell young Neil. "Nip and tuck in every race, and by God, it's exciting."

Then he'd grin at Neil and add, And wildly foolish, son; I know. (Sam's own boat was a working cargo schooner, and fancy yacht racing embarrassed him a little.)

How desperately Neil had wanted someday to sail in an America's Cup contest like his dad. And yet while Cup fever continued to burn brightly in Neil, the wreck of his father's beloved schooner Virginia seemed to make Sam Powers lose interest completely in the contests.

At the end, when his father turned more and more to the bottle, he sometimes confessed to being disillusioned. But that was when he was in his cups, and Neil had never believed him.

After his father's death, Neil followed the 1937 races as closely as a stockbroker the Dow-Jones report. And then after 1937 no more challenges for the Cup came from abroad: Europe had turned to less trivial pursuits. Not until 1958 did someone—England again—finally get around to challenging the United States for the Holy Grail of trophies. By then, personal fortunes had shrunk and so had the size of the boats.

And so, of course, had Neil's desire to sail on a Cup defender. He had a bit of a paunch, a college degree, a wife, two little girls, and a job at an electrical engineering firm which would frown on the idea of his flouncing off to go a-yachting all summer.

But still, he had liked to keep his hand in, and now at fifty-seven, Neil Powers was a nicely mellowed connoisseur of the sport. Because he was old friends with an engineer who had worked for the French challenger during the 1977 races, Neil had been slipped a decent number of invitations to minor events—cocktail parties, brunches, Cup-related exhibits (posters, watercolors, bronzes), and even an occasional syndicate party. Balls were much iffier. He and his wife had never quite managed to get into one. Nancy had died between challenges, but in 1980 he had continued his strolls without her to the great mansions on Bellevue Avenue whenever there was a ball being held. Like so many of Newport's servant and middle classes, Neil Powers was a rubbernecker at heart.

That was why, despite the imminent threat of serious rain, he was now standing a discreet distance from the exquisitely lit porte-cochère of the Finnesterre mansion, watching fantastically jeweled ladies and black-tied gentlemen descending from their motorized carriages. If he stood there for a million years, it would not have occurred to him that his youngest, dearest, most stubborn daughter of all, Quinta Cameron Powers, would one day rival the undisputed queen of just such a ball.

****

Cindy Seton brought the silver Mercedes to an abrupt stop and waited impatiently for the top-hatted valet to open her door. She hated driving big cars, and she particularly hated arriving at balls unescorted. She deduced that therefore she hated Alan Seton, since he was responsible for both conditions. The door to the Mercedes was opened, and Cindy, remembering in time that her driving foot was bare, slipped into a glove-soft, high-heeled shoe, scooped up the bottom few yards of her gown of black Crêpe de Chine, and swept out of the sedan and under the raised sabers of an honor guard of soldiers in Revolutionary War uniform.

The Great Hall of Finnesterre was ablaze with dozens of electrified candelabra whose soft, shimmering light seemed designed to enhance the almost old-fashioned paleness of Cindy's heart-shaped face and the subtle blondness of her silky hair. In a town which virtually insisted on at least a minimum depth of tan, Cindy turned heads: her paleness, strikingly beautiful as it was, labeled her as uninvolved. It was obvious that she was not spending any time out on the water following the 12-meter yachts during the elimination trials, all who saw her agreed. Beyond that, opinions as to who she was differed.

The hangers-on guessed that she was a hanger-on herself, one who lacked the simple decency to bother making the effort to look as if she belonged. The politicians saw at a glance that she was wealthy and therefore either was powerful or had access to someone who was. The yachting community (including the skippers and their crews, the major syndicate backers, the Race Committee, the Selection Committee, various yacht club commodores, and the vast network of worker bees and industrious ants known as the Syndicate Support Groups) knew very well who she was: Cindy Seton, wife of Alan Seton, the skipper of Shadow, one of four American yachts hoping to defend the Cup in 1983. Cindy Seton—a charmer on land; a whiny bitch at sea. Immature. Terminally bored. Not strong enough, they whispered, to be a Skipper's Wife.

Not everyone disliked Cindy. There were those in society whose hearts overflowed for the neglected, unsung wives of the men who sailed the twelves. Mrs. Cyril Hutley, for one, liked Cindy very much, and Mrs. Cyril Hutley counted. She was wife to the heir of a Providence manufacturing dynasty, and perhaps because she was childless and Cindy was a trust-fund orphan, Mrs. Hutley had recently taken the young woman up. The imposing, middle-aged socialite spotted Cindy immediately as she wove her way uncertainly through the waltzing couples in the Great Hall, and intercepted her on the edge of the dance area.

Alone again, poor darling? Mrs. Hutley cried, taking Cindy lightly in her arms and kissing her cheek. He isn't coming, then?

"I don't know what he's doing, Cindy moaned. Apparently it's still complete chaos down on the dock. Alan said the spare mast was too long or too short or some stupid thing, so they've got to add something or subtract something, I'm not sure which. All of the crew are still down at the dock, undoing things from the broken mast and putting them on the new mast. I'm sorry, she added, but I don't think any of them will be coming. And you've worked so hard. Cindy looked around through glazed eyes, unseeing. Everything looks so perfectly lovely."

Thank you, dear. It's not the America's Cup Ball, of course, she said deprecatingly, but it's a lovely warm-up for the main event, if I do say so. She looked around contentedly. "We couldn't decide on a motif, so we thought perhaps just lots of flowers and palms. You know—a tropical look. But still … it's terribly time-consuming. This is positively my last ball."

She squinted appraisingly at Cindy. Your gown is marvelous, dear, but I must say you look piqued. Have you had dinner?

Cindy's laugh was short and bitter. Dinner! As a matter of fact, Alan called me a little while ago. He actually wanted me to bring a dozen pizzas and a case of beer down to the dock for the crew and him.

"He didn't! Tonight?" Mrs. Hutley squealed. "What can the man be thinking? Someone should be right here, right now, from the Shadow syndicate. I mean, really. There are dignitaries here! Ambassadors, governors, commodores, from five different countries! And it's not as though they're from banana republics. These are our allies, darling: Australia, France, Canada, Italy, and ... and ..." She struggled for the name of the fifth foreign challenger.

Great Britain.

Of course. England. It goes without saying. So what does your husband hope to achieve, internationally speaking, by his undiplomatic behavior?

I suppose he hopes to win, Cindy said with a shrug.

Cindy, even Cindy, was startled by Mrs. Hutley's complete failure to grasp the exhausting mechanics of a successful defense effort. First you had to knock out all the other competing Americans; then, having won the right to defend the Cup, you had to beat the equally successful foreign challenger. Alan was still trying to whip the other Americans, and already Cindy had gone through every boutique in Newport, dined at every restaurant, attended fêtes at every mansion, driven every mile of coastline, gone to countless teas, brunches, and cocktail parties—and all without Alan. Life had become a complete and utter bore.

Reading the obvious chagrin on the young woman's face, Mrs. Hutley said, "Does Alan have any idea that a Cup summer should be fun?"

Fun? He doesn't know the meaning of the word, Cindy answered sullenly. He has this idea that I'll be closer to the crew if I feed them pizza. I don't know why he just doesn't have me shine all their shoes and be done with it.

"Poor dear. I do understand. After all, your picture isn't going to be splattered on the cover of every sports magazine in the country. The America's Cup is just like the Olympics. Who knew what Eric Heiden's wife—if he had a wife—looked like? Who on earth cared? You just come along with me. I'm going to find you a crushingly handsome partner for the evening."

Mrs. Hutley gave the unhappy girl a hug, and in doing so, upset the tiara that sat precariously on her thin gray hair. The coronet was a pearl-and-diamond-encrusted token from Mrs. Hutley's great-grandfather to his wife, presented on the night she hosted her first great ball.

Oops! Your crown's come undone, Cindy said with a high-pitched giggle. She could not get herself under control tonight.

Be a dear and fix it for me, would you? Mrs. Hutley asked.

Cindy, shorter than her patroness, reached up to fasten the tiara