Danielle Steel - Legacy: A Novel

By Danielle Steel

LEGACY FAMILY TIES BIG GIRL SOUTHERN LIGHTS MATTERS OF THE HEART ONE DAY AT A TIME A GOOD WOMAN ROGUE HONOR THYSELF AMAZING GRACE BUNGALOW 2 SISTERS H.R.H . COMING OUT THE HOUSE TOXIC BACHELORS MIRACLE IMPOSSIBLE ECHOES SECOND CHANCE RANSOM SAFE HARBOUR JOHNNY ANGEL DATING GAME ANSWERED PRAYERS SUNSET IN ST . TROPEZ THE COTTAGE THE KISS LEAP OF FAITH LONE EAGLE JOURNEY THE HOUSE ON HOPE STREET THE WEDDING IRRESISTIBLE FORCES GRANNY DAN BITTERSWEET MIRROR IMAGE HIS BRIGHT LIGHT: The Story of Nick Traina THE KLONE AND I THE LONG ROAD HOME THE GHOST SPECIAL DELIVERY THE RANCH SILENT HONOR MALICE FIVE DAYS IN PARIS LIGHTNING WINGS THE GIFT ACCIDENT VANISHED MIXED BLESSINGS JEWELS NO GREATER LOVE HEARTBEAT MESSAGE FROM NAM DADDY STAR ZOYA KALEIDOSCOPE FINE THINGS WANDERLUST SECRETS FAMILY ALBUM FULL CIRCLE CHANGES THURSTON HOUSE CROSSINGS ONCE IN A LIFETIME A PERFECT STRANGER REMEMBRANCE PALOMINO LOVE: POEMS THE RING LOVING TO LOVE AGAIN SUMMERS END SEASON OF PASSION THE PROMISE NOW AND FOREVER PASSIONS PROMISE GOING HOME

Legacy is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Danielle Steel

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D ELACORTE P RESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Steel, Danielle.
Legacy : a novel / Danielle Steel.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33975-5
1. GenealogyFiction. 2. Family secretsFiction. 3. Indians of North AmericaHistory18th centuryFiction. 4. Indians of North AmericaSouth DakotaFiction. 5. Indian womenFiction. 6. FranceCourt and courtiersHistory18th centuryFiction.
I. Title.
PS3569.T33828L44 2010
813.54dc22 2010009766

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

Brigitte

There was a heavy snowfall that had started the night before as Brigitte Nicholson sat at her desk in the admissions office of Boston University, meticulously going over applications. Other staffers had checked them before her, but she always liked to take a last look at the files herself to make sure that each one was complete. They were in the midst of making their decisions, and in six weeks acceptances and denials would be going out to the applicants. Inevitably, there would be some ecstatic prospective students and more often many broken hearts. It was difficult knowing that they had the lives and futures of earnest young people in their hands. Sifting through the applications was Brigittes busiest time of year, and although the ultimate choices were made by committee, her job was vetting applications, and conducting individual interviews when students requested them. In those cases, she would submit her notes and comments with the application. But essentially, grades, test scores, teachers recommendations, extracurricular activities, and sports contributed heavily to the final result. A candidate either looked like an asset to the school or not. Brigitte always felt the weight of those decisions heavily on her shoulders. She was meticulous about going over all the materials they submitted. Ultimately, she had to think about what was best for the school, not for the students. She was used to the dozens of calls and e-mails she got from anxious high school counselors, doing all they could to help their candidates. Brigitte was proud to be associated with BU, and much to her own amazement, had worked in the admissions office for ten years. The years had flown by, seemingly in an instant. She was number three in the department and had turned down opportunities for promotion many times. She was content where she was and had never been terribly ambitious.

At twenty-eight, Brigitte had come to BU as a graduate student, to get a masters in anthropology after assorted minor jobs post-college, followed by two years of working at a womens shelter in Peru and another one in Guatemala, and a year of traveling in India and Europe. She had a bachelors degree in anthropology with a minor in womens and gender studies from Columbia. The plight of women in underdeveloped countries had always been a primary concern to her. Brigitte had taken a job in the admissions office just until she could complete her degree. She had wanted to go to Afghanistan for a year after that, but like so many other graduate students who took jobs at the university while they were there, she stayed. It was comfortable, safe, and a protected atmosphere she came to love. And as soon as she got her masters, she started working on her Ph.D. The academic world was addictive and womblike, along with its intellectual challenges and pursuit of knowledge and degrees. And it was easy to hide from the real world and its demands. It was a haven of scholars and youth. She didnt love her job in admissions, but she really, really liked it. She felt productive and useful, and she was dedicated to helping the right students get into the school.

They had more than sixteen thousand undergraduate students, and over thirty thousand applications every year. Some were eliminated summarily, for inadequate test scores or grades, but as the number of eligible applicants got whittled down, Brigitte became more and more focused on the process. She was meticulous about detail in everything she did. She didnt have her doctorate yet, but was still working on it, taking a class or two every semester. At thirty-eight, she was satisfied with her life. And for the last seven years, she had been working on a book. She wanted it to be the definitive work on the subject of voting and womens rights around the world. While getting her masters, Brigitte had written countless papers about the topic.

Her thesis argued that how countries handled the voting rights of women defined who they were as a nation. She felt that the vote was crucial to womens rights. Her colleagues who had read what shed written so far were impressed by her eloquence but not surprised by her thoroughness and diligence. One criticism of her work was that she sometimes got so involved in the minutiae of what she was studying that she neglected the big picture. She tended to get caught up in the details.

She was friendly and kind, trustworthy and responsible. She was a deeply caring person and extremely hardworking, and thorough about everything she did. The only complaint that her best friend, Amy Lewis, made of her, to her face as a rule, was that she lacked passion. She intellectualized everything, and followed her brain more than her heart. Brigitte thought passion, as Amy referred to it, was a flaw, not a quality, a dangerous thing. It made you lose perspective and direction. Brigitte liked staying on course, and keeping her goals in plain view.

She didnt like rocking the boat or taking chances, on anything. Risk-taking was not her style. She was someone you could count on, not someone who would act impulsively, or without a great deal of thought. And she herself readily admitted that she was slow to make decisions while she weighed all the pros and cons.