«Mr. Burke! How delightful to see you again!» She preened and sparkled, treating him to her most flirtatious smile as she came forward and offered him her hand.
«It's a pleasure, as always, Mrs. Talbot,» Burke said, treating her to the same once-over he had Serena. «I've just had the chance to meet your lovely sister as well.»
Shelby's smile tightened as she shot a look at Serena. «You're looking a little better tonight, Serena. Not quite as haggard as before.»
«Why, thank you,» Serena said, fighting a wry smile. She accepted her drink from Mason and sipped it, enjoying the bite of the gin a little more than she probably should have. This crowd was enough to drive anybody to drink. The room hummed with undercurrents.
«I've just been down to the kitchen to check on things,» Shelby said, batting her lashes at the big Texan. «We're having a lovely ham. I do hope you like ham, Mr. Burke. Our Odille's ham gravy is simply sinful!»
«What happened to the crown roast?» Serena questioned innocently.
Shelby flashed her a dark look. «That didn't work out as I'd hoped.»
«Pity.»
«Well, now,» Mason said expansively. «We're just waiting on Lamar and then we can go in.»
Shelby pouted, stirring the swizzle stick of the drink her husband handed her. «That doddering old fool. I don't understand why Gifford retains that man. It's an embarrassment that he won't let his own grandson-in-law handle his legal affairs.»
«Now, Shelby,» Mason cajoled. «Lamar has been Gifford's attorney since God was a child. I certainly wouldn't expect him to dissolve an old loyalty like that.»
«Well, I would,» Shelby said, fussing with one pearl earring. «What must people think? That he doesn't trust you to handle his affairs? It's disgraceful. I only hope it doesn't have an adverse affect on your campaign.»
Mason smiled at her benignly. «I'm not concerned about it, darlin.' Don't you be.»
«I'm sure securing new jobs for the community will more than outweigh it, Mrs. Talbot,» Burke said smugly, swirling the ice in his glass. «Bringing industry to a stagnant economy could take Mason here a long, long way.»
«Aren't you forgetting something, Mr. Burke?» Serena said mildly. «Our grandfather has no intention of selling his property to Tristar.»
Burke flushed again, his eyes narrowing. Shelby shot daggers at her sister with her eyes. Mason flashed a big politician's smile and said, «I do believe I hear Lamar's old Mercedes coming up the drive.»
Lamar Canfield was eighty if he was a day, a southern gentleman lawyer from the old school. He was a small, neat man with large dark eyes and thin white hair that now grew only on the sides of his head. He was dressed meticulously in a blue seersucker suit and starched white shirt with a jaunty striped bow tie at his throat and a fine Panama hat in his hands.
«Shelby! How good it is to see you again!» he said, beaming a smile as he came forward with the grace of Fred Astaire to take Serena's hand and plant a courtly kiss upon her knuckles.
«I'm Serena, Mr. Canfield,» she corrected him gently.
He pulled back, beaming a broad smile, his eyes gleaming with a sparkle that had set more than one female's heart aflutter in his day. «Yes, of course you are, my darling,» he said without missing a beat. «How lovely to have you home for a visit. You don't return often enough, you know,» he chided her, tilting his head in a look of reproach.
Serena couldn't help but smile at him. She had always liked Lamar. He was all flirtation and show and he had the voice of a snake-oil salesman-smooth and exaggerated, rising and falling dramatically. He displayed all the airs and mannerisms of a completely charming charlatan, all presented with a twinkle of amusement in his dark eyes that suggested he didn't take himself or anyone else too seriously.
«How doubly fortunate for us gentlemen to have the company of both our lovely Sheridan ladies,» he said, turning and bowing to Shelby, who regarded him with wary petulance, for once not swayed by a compliment. He straightened and turned his hat in his hands, directing his attention toward Serena once again.
«Are you back to stay, perchance, Serena? Heaven knows there is an abundance of warped minds in the immediate area. You could certainly keep yourself entertained.»
«No,» Serena said a bit hesitantly. «I'm just here for a visit, I'm afraid.»
Lamar looked at her speculatively from under his lashes and clucked his tongue.
Mason stepped forward. «Lamar, you've met Mr. Burke from Tristar, if you'll recall.»
«Yes… of course,» Lamar drawled, dragging the words out and letting them trail away as if they pained him. «You're that man from Texas, aren't you?» He pronounced it takes-us, though whether he had done so as a deliberate slight or whether it was simply his extravagant drawl was impossible to tell.
Burke gave him a stony look, rattling the ice in his scotch.
Odille slipped into the room then and cast a baleful glare over them all as she announced dinner.
«Odille, my love!» Lamar said brightly. «Charming as ever. Tell me what I might be able to do to entice you away from Gifford s employ.»
Odille sniffed indignantly, squeezing her light eyes into slits of disapproval. «Nothin.»'
«Loquacious, isn't she, Shelby?» Lamar said, arching one brow as he took Serenas arm and tucked it through his.
Dinner was served in a formal dining room that had changed very little in a hundred years. They were seated at a mahogany table that had hosted planters from antebellum days. They used silver that had spent the war in a gunnysack in the bottom of the well to keep it safe from Yankee plunder. The oil painting on the wall above the sideboard portrayed a Sheridan standing on the lawn of Chanson du Terre, holding the reins of a prized race horse; a brass plaque on the frame dated it to 1799.
«Such a lovely home,» Lamar remarked idly as he cut his ham. «So gracious and full of history.»
«Yes,» Serena agreed. «It would be a pity to see it destroyed.»
«There are more things to consider here than architecture,» Mason said. «Chanson du Terre is a graceful old home, I grant you, but should it be placed ahead of the welfare of an entire community?»
«That's a good point, Mason,» said Burke. He looked across the table to Serena. «You don't live around here, Miss Sheridan. Maybe you don't realize how hard the oil bust hit. People moved out of Lafayette by the convoy. Many of those who remained in South Louisiana were faced with unemployment. The new Tristar plant will employ two hundred fifty people to start with and eventually many more.»
«But at what cost to the environment, Mr. Burke?» Serena asked. «I understand your company has a rather bad reputation in that area.»
Burkes eyes went cold. A muscle in his jaw twitched. «I don't know where you get your information, but it simply isn't true. Tristar has never been convicted of anything regarding violations of pollution standards.»
Serena lifted a brow, singling out the word «convicted.» Tristar had never been convicted, that wasn't to say they had never been charged or had never committed any crimes. They had simply never been convicted, a fact that made her wonder what lengths they may have gone to to keep blemishes from their record. If Len Burke was an example of the kind of man they hired to make their acquisitions, she could well imagine the sharks they retained on their legal staff to help them work around inconveniences like EPA regulations.
Her gaze moved to Mason, the fledgling politician whose campaign would rely heavily on Tristar. She wondered if he realized just how neatly he was being maneuvered. Tristar was providing him with a platform on which to run. Directly or indirectly they would be providing him with funding. Had it occurred to him that eventually they would call in those markers?