It annoyed her when Andrew treated her like a pouting teenager, but she realized that was his way with women—some even liked it. She didn’t; she never had. But she had always been remarkably tolerant where the former Count András Balaton was concerned. She owed him that much. She said quietly, “I’m just telling you what I know.”

He gave her one of his cool aristocratic smiles. “You’ve always been rebellious and outspoken, Lillian. They’re qualities I admire in you.”

“Andrew, do you know who the Wakefield twins are?”

“Lillian, please. There are things even you don’t know.”

And, stepping up his pace, he passed her on the path and finished the walk to the main house alone.

The large portrait of Judith Land was hung on a starkly white wall opposite paned double windows that looked out across a perennial garden and a rocky cliff. Beyond was the Atlantic Ocean, bluish green and still, fading into the swirling mist on the horizon. It was a view for a legend, a view for Judith Land.

In the portrait, she was standing in a rose garden, her dark hair streaming down her back and shining in the sunlight She wore a simple white dress and strand of pearls. There was an air of gracefulness about her— in her fine slender hands, her long neck, in her liquid pose that the artist had captured.

Ashley held her breath as she scrutinized the angles of the legendary face and the smile that was at once elegant, mischievous, cool, worldly. Judith Land had been so talented, and so very young.

“There’s a portrait of Judith there. Look at it. Get to know her.”

When she’d returned to Badger Rock Island, Ashley had soaked in a long hot bath and considered everything Lillian Parker had told her on Jude’s Paradise. She avoided drawing any conclusions; she simply wanted to be able to remember all that had been said. Then, unhurriedly, she had dressed for dinner in the gown she had brought of midnight blue silk and iridescent sequins and put up her hair. She wore no jewelry, nothing, not even earrings.

Then she had poured herself a glass of white wine and found her way to the dining room, and to the portrait of Judith Land.

At footsteps on the gleaming hardwood floor, she looked up, startled, but smiled when she saw Jeremy. His double-breasted suit emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the slimness of his hips, and she could feel the air between them crackling with electricity. She thought of last night. And then she shook off the warmth of the memory and looked again to the portrait.

With her glass, she gestured. “She certainly was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“Very,” Jeremy said.

“I should have been so beautiful at twenty-three.”

He stood beside her; she liked the fresh tangy smell of him. “Weren’t you?”

“God, no. For one thing, I didn’t have the money. For another, I didn’t have the bones—don’t, I should say. And her smile. Stunning, isn’t it?” Ashley laughed to herself. “I was working so hard when I was twenty-three, I don’t know if I ever had time to smile.”