Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (145 page)

I said, trembling with rage, “What if I hadn’t waked up? First a conk on the head …
now
what had been planned for me? Smothered with a pillow or something? Imagine the — ”

“Jan, please, I don’t want to hit you again,” Tom said anxiously. “But you must
stop
. You know you’re hysterical. Please, Jan, can’t you stop?”

“Why should I?” I cried wildly, and then Toussaint walked into the room through the door Tom had left open. Or rather, he was just suddenly
there
, as if he had appeared after having been blown into the room on a puff of smoke, the devil himself.

He seemed to fill the room, his massive bulk looming in the doorway, his eyes — even at this hour of the night — concealed behind those dark glasses. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, in an expensive silk robe, probably from Alexander Shields, on Park Avenue.

It was Tom who spoke. “Jan heard something,” he told the man. “She says it was outside, about over there.”

Toussaint still said nothing, but he went out again, and I heard him tramping about outside. Then others came surging in through the open door, and I shivered in my thin robe, hating the fact that they had all heard my screams. I felt defenseless and mortified: the fear had retreated, and I was left with my defenses down.

Garrison was the first there, in a satin-revered bathrobe of a rich maroon shade. There was a cigarette between his lips, and on his face a cold, questioning look.

“Dad, I’m glad you’re here,” Tom said. “Jan was frightened by someone outside.”

“Outside where?” Garry asked, in a clipped, chilly voice, and then Bobo showed up, closely followed by the Lester Lestranges, all in nightclothes.

The only Lestranges who were absent were Caroline and Peter, but both their houses were so far distant from the cottage that it would have been difficult for my cries to have been heard that far away.

Yet Toussaint was here …

And Toussaint occupied the apartment above Caroline’s garage.

He returned in a few minutes, and addressed himself to Garrison. He said, in his dark, sonorous voice, that he had found no sign of any intruder.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” Garry asked. “Anything that would point to there having been someone loitering about out there?”

“Nothing,” Toussaint said; then, shrugging those massive shoulders, he cast a quick, contemptuous glance at me, and walked out the door into the night.

I willed myself back to control. I simply could not let these people, whose antipathy to me had finally revealed itself, see me vulnerable and quaking. I said that, whatever it had been, it was over, and please to go back to bed.

“You don’t scream your head off about nothing,” Kathy protested, smoothing her sleep-rumpled hair.

“No,” I agreed. “I thought there was something. But perhaps I was mistaken. I’m sorry about the disturbance.”

Bobo, sleep puffs under her eyes, asked me if maybe I hadn’t had a bad dream. I said I didn’t think it was that, but since Toussaint had found nothing …

“You can depend on Toussaint,” Lester said. “You see that he was here before all the rest of us. We’re wonderfully protected by him. We depend a great deal on Toussaint.”

“Yes,” I said, holding on to the last shreds of my pride and patience. “He was here on the double, which is very reassuring. Please go back to bed now, though. There will be no more screaming. Thanks very much for — ”

Bobo, with a broad, friendly smile, turned to me. “How about my staying with you for the rest of the night? I’m a quiet sleeper; I won’t bother you. And the bed’s a wide one. We’ll have a nice breakfast in the morning. I’ll make hotcakes.”

“I wouldn’t think of it, but it’s lovely of you. You’re a nice person, Bobo.”

“I don’t like seeing you scared,” she said.

“It’s all right. Really, it’s all right.”

I watched them trooping out, a retinue trailing Garry. Tom said, lingering, “I could stay, Jan.”

“Thanks, thanks, but no, love,” I said, and then I was alone again, feeling awful, feeling angry, embarrassed, helpless in the face of their family solidarity and more than ever an intruder in their lives. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep any more that night, and I made myself some coffee, thought about hitting the bottle, decided against it and tried to read.

But between me and the page a face kept appearing. Garrison Lestrange’s face.

The cigarette between his lips. And he hadn’t looked as if he had been awakened out of a sound sleep. There were no sleep puffs under
his
eyes … he might have just ended a business day, and come home for his evening martini.

He hadn’t looked like a man who had turned over, in his sleep, and sluggishly oozed out of bed because someone was screaming.

The rest of them had … except for Toussaint.

But I didn’t dwell on Toussaint. Once I would have. But not now. I was preoccupied with Garrison Lestrange, with his tirade earlier in the day, his fight with Caroline. About me. The opportunist.

And young Tom’s saying, “We used to go to Bordeaux for the summer … or the Riviera … some place like that. But things are tight these days. Dad says we have to tighten our belts.”

A terrible coldness came over me. Suppose something really were to happen to me? Something lethal, for example. A paper or two would note that a young editor had come to grief while vacationing in the Hamptons.
The dead woman was strangled by an intruder
.

There would be no onus on the Lestranges. It would be a little publicity for them.
“We feel very badly about it … she was a fine girl, had a cheerful personality.”

When dawn broke, I watched it from the living room. Then, as the colors surged into the magnificence of strong pinks and crimsons, and the splendid hues rayed over the earth and the sea, I opened the back door and went outside to the patio. I sat there smoking, generally a tabu before breakfast, but I inhaled greedily, thankful for the light, and the disappearance of the darkness.

Every day is a new beginning … every morn is the world made new …

Then, in my weary state, clumsy from lack of sleep, I got up and bumped into the barbecue grill, nearly overturning it, and, while righting it, I saw that something which had been there before — which was always there, and belonged there — was not there now.

The can of lighting fluid was missing.

I canvassed the patio, but the container was nowhere to be seen. On a hunch, and with ripples of chill stippling my skin, I walked around to the side of the house. I looked around under the window from which I had heard the sound in the night; after the Lestranges had left, I had closed it. I would never leave it open again at night, cross ventilation or no. From now on it would be locked, like the others.

My car stood nearby … and then I saw it.

It was on the far side of the Triumph. There it was, the stout can of lighting fluid, its cap off.

I bent down to it, and the sharp smell of kerosene shot into my nostrils, bringing at once the recollection
of
many steaks and flatfish broiled on the barbecue.

There was the can of lighting fluid … and something else.

I drew in my breath.

The something else was a box of stick matches. My stick matches. EAGLE MATCHES.

The box was half empty. I had been running out of matches. But there were enough matches in the box still. Enough to —

I straightened up, and felt the blood rush to my head. I was mesmerized by the lighting fluid, and that box of matches.

There were enough matches … more than enough … to ignite the fluid had it been splashed over my car. Enough to make a merry blaze.

And now I knew it hadn’t been my imagination. Or a bad dream. There
had
been someone outside the cottage last night … and whoever it was had meant to cinder my car … as a final warning.

And if I didn’t take heed … then the cottage? With me inside it?

I was quietly methodical. I might be half out of my mind with terror, rage, disbelief and a kind of weird disorientation, but I was in control. There was a drain a few yards away, a small grill for excess water to filter off, and I poured the lighting fluid down that drain. Then I walked over to Garrison Lestrange’s house and placed the empty can on his front steps. It was a kind of message.
I
know what you tried to do, here’s the evidence
.

After that I lit the matches, one by one, until the last of them had expired. And then I went inside again and got into bed. I slept until noon, when the phone rang. It was Caroline; Tom had told her about the night’s events.

“Come over immediately,” she said grimly. “I want to get to the bottom of this thing.”

Of course there was no way to “get to the bottom of this thing.” I knew, anyway. It had to be Garry who had meant to burn up my car. But I couldn’t tell Caroline that. Caroline was trying to get her strength back, and I would certainly do nothing to impede her recovery. I knew that, when nighttime came, it would be hard going for me, alone in that cottage. But I would not go to sleep there without all the lights burning now. And I couldn’t imagine anyone, with my house blazing with light, trying to sneak up on me — too many of the others were too nearby.

I was going to stay. It had become a kind of challenge and my Irish was up. I had begun to live on my nerve and my own resources. I was fighting back.

But I thought, some holiday. Caroline having a stroke, and someone trying to do me in. And Eric leaving me in the lurch.

That night, alone and with every nerve taut, I went to bed with every light in the place ablaze. Sleep was never more distant. I closed my eyes and light filtered through my shut lids. I opened them and squinted into the glare. Just the same, I told myself, there’s nothing to be nervous about, because all the lights are on; no one would dare.

But still I couldn’t sleep.

I did doze once, but woke almost instantly, starting in my sleep. What’s that? I asked myself; I heard the sound of my own voice in the quiet of the country night, and groaned. I really needed rest.

If I had any sense I’d go home.

But going home meant something unconscionable. Giving up and going home meant home without Eric. Why didn’t he come back to me? I asked myself, and tears filmed my eyes.

Then I started, suddenly, in the bed, my heart thudding. I’d heard a slight sound. Just a small sound … but I was awake, and I’d heard it.

I lay, stiff and quiet, and listened.

Nothing.

Well, I was upset, I told myself. So upset that I
thought
I’d heard a sound.

I turned to the other side, smoothed the pillow, and closed my eyes.

Then it came again. I tensed. I had heard something!

I grew cold, and lay poised for flight. So, even with the lights on, I was in danger.

I sprang out of bed and flew to the window. Someone was out there … I knew it … and someone wanted to —

Then I saw him. Quiet, moving stealthily, nearing the window. A dark shadow. I stifled a scream … this time I would bolt out of the house. There would be no more shrieking. This time I would race for Caroline’s house. No one was going to take me by surprise in the dark.

Moonlight lit the area. In seconds, my fright was gone. It was Tony. It was only Tony. There he stood, watching my window, hesitant and perhaps thinking it over. In spite of what I had said, he had sought me out again. He hadn’t given up.

I put myself in his place. In his place I probably would have done the same thing. I was still fair game. And why not?

Eric hadn’t made an appearance. Eric was, for all intents and purposes, out of the picture.

So why not?

A sense of assurance, of sweet security, came over me. I was not alone. The others were sleeping, not caring about me, some of them loathing me, some — or one — wanting me frightened … perhaps frightened to death.

But Tony Cavendish was an outlander like me. He too was not wanted. He too was in alien corn, and he was here, he wanted me.

To the Lestranges, I was an undesirable, a threat.

But not to Tony.

I leaned out the window.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

He stood stock still.

“I thought I told you not to do this again, Tony.”

Then I heard his voice.

“Did I wake you, then?”

“No. You didn’t wake me. I couldn’t sleep. Obviously, neither could you. Just the same — ”

“Let’s go down to the beach.”

“What I want to do is sleep for a hundred hours.”

“I too. But it seems improbable. Therefore, why not an alternative? It’s up to you. I want you to decide.”

He wasn’t going to sweep me off my feet, I saw. It was up to me.

“I want you to decide …”

I wanted very much for him to insist. Carry me out, with brute force, like a prehistoric man carting a woman off by the hair of her head.

Decisions seemed to come hard to me these days.

Many thoughts flicked through my mind. Eric had left me alone, without his protection. Distressing things had happened to me. Eric didn’t know that, didn’t care. It was abysmal to have given love and then been left with cold words and no attempt at a decent understanding. It was rotten to be on my own.

Why not Anthony, then? Why not give in to it?

“I’ll meet you on the beach.”

“Quite,” he said, and strode off.

I watched him go, the long, lean lines of him, like a marble sculpting, his wonderful body provocative and memorable. When he was out of sight I got into a swimsuit, let myself out, and climbed down the big dune. As I walked across the cool sand, I saw him standing at the water’s edge, tall, and limned against the semi-light, so perfect in form that my heart wrenched.

For a moment I almost turned, silently, to walk off as silently.

But only for a moment.

I knew what I was doing. I knew well what I was doing. And I had a right to do it. I had every right.

He heard me, and turned, smiling. “Hello,” he said.

“Hello.”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“That’s good.”

“Somehow,” he said, “I was almost sure you’d come.”