Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (144 page)

He nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and turned, and then walked away quickly.

I kept my promise.

I was thinking about it, sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair in my living room. Or I was
trying
to think about it. My head was in such a muddle that no thoughts would coalesce with any degree of coherence. I was by turns stunned, infuriated, and despairing.

Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. A simple friendship had turned into a nightmare. The Lestranges had been wary of me and now they downright feared and hated me.

Eric had left me.

The holiday had become a nightmare.

When the doorbell rang I literally jumped. It was like a whiplash across my overwrought nerves. It brought me to my feet instantly, and then I sat down again.

No, I wouldn’t answer. To whom did I wish to speak? To no one. “Leave me alone,” I muttered, and the bell rang again.

Then I heard Tony’s voice through the open window.

“Let me in, Jan.”

“Go away,” I said.

He pushed open the window and climbed in: I only heard him coming into the room. I sat with my back toward him, stubborn, with my head low, but he sat down beside me.

“Feel rotten?” he asked.

“How do you suppose I feel?” I flashed back at him.

“How do you suppose Emily feels?”

I was sullen. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You must have some idea. The woman’s worked, not for a lifetime, but for some years for Caroline. And now she’s been told she’s left out in the cold.”

“You too,” I reminded him. “She wants to leave you out in the cold too.”

“Yes, that’s seemingly her intention.”

“How do
you
feel?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer, and finally I looked up grudgingly.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Do you know you have lovely eyes? Of course you do. You must have had that said to you a thousand times. Perhaps more than a thousand times.”

“Did you come to talk about my eyes?” I asked bleakly.

“No,” he said seriously. “I came to have it out about Caroline.”

“I’m listening,” I said, tensely.

“Jan. Do you know how many times I’ve heard her go on about her millions? So often, and so frequently, that I can’t possibly enumerate the occasions. That lawyer has been in and out of her house more times than I can say. She has a tantrum and threatens to change her will. Someone displeases her, and she contacts Prentiss Alcott. I’m sure he’s been roused out of a sound sleep at three in the morning more often than he can recall. Whenever Caroline has a tiff with someone. Love, you’re a newcomer to these climes. The woman has one thing left. Her money. She’s lost everything else — her pride, her conscience, her
raison d’être
. She never had babies, never saw babies grow and become men and women, never had an extension of herself. She gave her body to countless men, had admiration, adulation, and the heady excitement of the courtesan’s life. The one pragmatic thing she did was marry Lionel Muncie, and inherit his wealth. So now she has that, and she makes capital of it.”

He put a hand under my chin. “Love, it’s the only hold she has on anyone. That money. And she’s giving us all hard times about it.”

He smiled into my eyes. “You’re the one who, at the moment, stands to get most of it.”

“Which is mindless!” I cried. “If she cares so deeply about her money, why would she treat it so lightly? I can’t see her wanting to be taken for a fool! Like any witless spendthrift, leave the bulk of her estate to a stranger?”

“Such things have been known to happen,” he pointed out.

“Not to someone like her! Doing something like that would leave her open to ridicule, and Caroline wouldn’t want to be laughed at, even in death. Tommy Mansfield, maybe. No, Tony. She’s just … she’s sick, she’s still sick. There’s no doubt in my mind about that, only — ”

“Yes?”

“It makes me feel ghastly. To be put in this position. I liked her so much. And now everything’s gone so sour.”

“Sour?” he repeated, smiling. “Being told you’re to be richer by several millions is having things turn sour?”

“Why, yes,” I said passionately. “I came here for a vacation. All I did was rent a house on the Island, and now it comes out like this.”

I got up and walked the floor. “My God, is this really happening?”

He sat back. “Apparently it is,” he said calmly. “Whether you like it or not. Whether Emily likes it or not, and whether or not I like it. Not to mention the Lestranges. At the moment, the wires are almost undoubtedly humming. Caroline talking to her lawyer.”

“You think so?” I said savagely. “Well, I don’t give a damn, and I’m not going over to that house for dinner. You can tell her that.”

“Is that any way to show your appreciation?”

“Just tell her I won’t be there for dinner.”

“I won’t either,” he said affably. “And so, since we both seem to be at loose ends, how about dining together? I know a rather pleasant, modest little place in town. I can’t promise you pheasant under glass, or terrapin in Amontillado sauce. But it has a decent kitchen and there’s something English about it, which is why I’m partial to it.”

“Okay,” I said, abruptly.

“Delightful,” he drawled. “Say at about seven?”

“Seven will be fine.”

“Thanks awfully. I say, we shall have to go in your car.”

“What difference does it make?” I asked.

“To me, none at all.”

“Then why should it to me?” I asked again.

“I can’t think of any reason it should matter to you.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“Oh dear, are you being prickly again?”

“No!”

“Very well, then it’s all arranged for this evening?”

“Apparently.”

“Jolly good.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Why, love?”

Because I’m far too attracted to you, I thought, but didn’t voice it.

“Just because,” I said, instead.

“You’re a most perplexing person,” he said, as he let himself out the door.

• • •

So we drove to the Huntting Inn for dinner. It was very civilized and quiet and nice. We had lobster, with bibs around our necks, and two cocktails beforehand. I kept thinking … if it weren’t for Eric.

Because Anthony Cavendish was so attractive. So British, so masculine and so other-worldish. My thoughts kept straying to London, that fine city, with its Regent and Bond Streets, and Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square, St. Martin’s in the Fields, and Bloomsbury, where Virginia Woolf plied her craft.

But of course Tony’s estate was in Surrey.

“I’ve never seen Surrey,” I told him. “I had a creamed tea at Windsor, but of course I know that’s not really in the provinces.”

“Not really,” he agreed.

“It was nice, though.”

“Windsor’s charming,” he agreed. “But hardly representative of the outlying districts. I can see you’ve barely scratched the surface. Next time you’re in England, give me a buzz. I’ll show you properly around.”

“That would be nice.”

“For me it would be splendid,” he said. “You American girls have such marvelous long legs. Not to mention slim hips and thighs.”

“Are you leading up to a seduction?”

“Now you mention it, perhaps I did have that in mind.”

I went weak in the legs. He had such a way with him.

When we drove home, and were in front of my cottage, I had it out with myself. I could invite him in. There was no one monitoring me. And he was undoubtedly waiting for it. Why not? I asked myself. I had been deserted, abandoned, left to my own devices. There he stood, all six foot four of him, with his golden hair, his fine face, and those narrow hips …

For a second I wavered.

Then habit reasserted itself. There was Eric. He wasn’t here, but he was here. Damn it, he was here.

I could see his face, feel his warm breath, remember the first time we —

“Thank you for a very nice evening,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied. “Are we ending it now?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“You’re quite sure.”

“Yes.”

There was one more moment when I wasn’t all that sure.

I looked into his face and almost said, “Oh, don’t go …”

For a moment I wasn’t sure I hadn’t actually uttered the words, then I knew, by his face, that I had been silent.

And I knew why.

I had suddenly thought of a time when Eric and I had walked, through the aftermath of a winter blizzard, across Central Park to the Tavern On the Green.

Trekking it, in our snow boots, over the mounds of white; and we’d sat in the glassed-in terrace of the restaurant, facing each other over Grinorcos, cocktails of Eric’s invention.

The bartender had listened, with smiling interest, to Eric’s listing of the ingredients.

“Orange juice,” Eric said. “Gin.”

“Um hum. What else?”

“Creme de cacao, grenadine and limes.”

“Not a bad mixture,” the man said. “Maybe I’ll put it on the drink list.”

I thought of that white winter day, and afterward we had talked, for the first time, of marriage. “I just wish you and the kids got on better,” he said, frowning. “I mean for your sake. I see that wounded look on your face.”

“I can handle all that,” I said. At that time I had been sure I could.

“We’ll lick it,” he’d said, confidently. “It’s got to happen, right?”

“A snap,” I said, sipping my Grinorco. “Between us we can lick the world. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong; we can do it,” he said. “We have everything going for us.”

“My sentiments exactly. Sloane and Stewart.”

“Stewart and Sloane,” he amended. “Jeez, I just realized. You won’t even have to change your initials.”

“Why do you suppose I latched on to you of all people?” I retorted. “With all my expensive Vuitton luggage I should change initials; are you kidding?”

“You’re a kook.”

Walking back to the East Side, in the quiet, white world of winter.

I remembered him saying, after he had gotten me down and rubbed my face in the snow, “Your mascara’s running, you look awful, but I love you even when you have two black eyes.”

So I didn’t say to Tony, “Don’t go.”

I said instead, “See you some time tomorrow.”

“It’s not at all late,” he interjected.

“As a matter of fact, it’s rather too late. Good night, Tony.”

So off he went. Maybe some day I’ll regret it, I thought.

• • •

What woke me was the slightest of sounds.

Just the whisper of a sound … a faint rustling in the night, but in view of my hypertensive state, enough to pull me out of an easy sleep.

I lay, scarcely awake, and listened.

It was nothing, I finally told myself, and, turning over, closed my eyes again.

I started to drift off.

And then —

A clear and distinct sound in the silence of the night.

An unaccustomed sound. I had lived in that cottage for weeks, and now knew every quirk of its character: the shutter on the dinette window that had lost a hinge and therefore thudded on a windy night. The whirr of the refrigerator when the motor recharged. The eccentricities of house beams, which groaned softly when the weather changed from hot and damp to cool and dry.

The sound was not inside the house.

It came from outside, the part of the house that faced the road, where my car was parked. My bedroom was on the other side of the cottage, its windows the ones at which Tom threw his pebbles, and through which Anthony Cavendish had called to me on those nights when he had made his nocturnal visits. A window was open on the opposite side of the house, and my bedroom windows were open. This afforded cross ventilation, so that I would not have to use the wheezy air conditioner.

And the sound had come through that other open window.

For a long while there was utter silence.

But I was by this time fully alerted, and listening with every nerve tense. I was lying on my back now, still and waiting. Waiting to know if my imagination was playing tricks on me, or if there really was someone outside.

I could hear the ticking of my bedside clock. The seconds were crawling by like hours. And after a bit, a kind of paralysis set in. As I lay there, I began to feel without will; my eyes were wide open, and staring …

It was because of the attack in the dark, in Caroline’s house. Otherwise it would have been simply a disturbance, unsettling but not terrifying. I realized, belatedly, that my reaction to that assault on the night of the storm was a delayed one, and that the full impact of it was just now hitting me. I hadn’t taken it in stride, after all … the shock had been dormant in me, but now, as I remembered that clout on my head, coming from nowhere, in the impenetrable dark, I began to shake, and I broke out in a cold sweat.

There was someone outside the cottage …

Then I was screaming.

I had never had occasion to scream before. Nothing had ever happened to make me open my mouth and scream. But I discovered, all in a moment, that when danger lurks in the near distance, you scream, and thought has nothing to do with it.

I was screaming while I scrambled out of bed and got into a robe, and I was still screaming as I plunged out of the bedroom doorway, and when the light went on in the living room and Tom Lestrange stood there with his hand on the switch I faced him screaming.

Tom was in pajamas and a bathrobe, and he walked up to me, closed his eyes and winced, and then whammed me across the face.

I stopped screaming.

Tom said, “I’m sorry, but I had to do it, Jan.”

I started talking rapidly. “There was someone outside,” I said jerkily, and turning, pointed. “Out there. I know every sound. It wasn’t inside the house, it was outside. I thought about what you said, Tom, and I’m not leaving. Even more so now. Because first I got hit on the head in the dark and now someone was outside the cottage. In the middle of the night. No one would dare harm me if Eric was here. But you’ve only to be alone and everyone gangs up on you. A woman, of course. No one takes on a
man
. It’s always a woman. They won’t get the best of me. They can all turn against me, but they won’t drive me away. This is my cottage, I’ve paid for it, and it’s mine and I’m staying put. Period and end of sentence.”