Her Own Rules/Dangerous to Know (26 page)

“Do you think he fell and hit his head, Jack? Or are you suggesting he was chased out of the house, and then struck by someone? The intruder? If there was one.”

“I don't know, Vivienne. I wonder if we'll ever know.”

“Oh, Jack, this is just horrendous! I can't believe he's dead. I just can't.” I found myself weeping once more.

“Don't cry. Please don't. It won't bring him back.”

“I know it won't but I can't help it. I've loved him for as long as I can remember, since I was a child. And I still cared deeply for him, despite the divorce.”

“I know,” he muttered.

There was a silence between us.

“How's Luciana?” I asked at last, endeavoring to ignore Jack's coldness, this seeming lack of feeling I was detecting.

“She's fine. Holding up. She'll be okay.”

“Would you like me to drive over to Cornwall? I can be there in half an hour, in three-quarters of an hour at the most.”

“No, you don't have to come. But thanks for offering. Anyway, this place is crawling with police. That's another reason I called. To alert you. They'll be over to see you. Some time today. You're in Sebastian's appointment book. They asked me who you were. I told them you were his ex-wife.
One
of his ex-wives. You were with him very recently I guess that's why they want to talk to you.”

“I understand, Jack, but I really can't tell them anything. Sebastian was in the best of spirits. And health, as far as I could tell last Monday. Oh God, it's a week ago exactly that we lunched. I can't believe this, I just can't,” I sobbed.

Fumbling for my handkerchief, I blew my nose and tried to get a grip on myself and my emotions.

“It's the shock,” I mumbled into the phone after a second or two, “the unexpectedness of it. How can Sebastian be dead? He was larger than life, and he seemed so invulnerable.
Invincible.
To me, anyway. I thought nothing would ever happen to him, that he would live forever. Well, at least that he'd live to be an old man. Actually, I always thought of him as being immortal, if the truth be known.”

“He was only too mortal,” Jack said in a low, tense voice. “Listen, I gotta go. I can see two detectives heading this way. Walking up the back lawn. Looking as grim as hell,” he snapped.

“Jack, please call me later!”

“Sure.”

“Please.”

“Okay! Okay!”

He sounded more impatient than usual.

“And please tell Luciana how sorry I am. Perhaps I ought to speak with her now.”

“She's out. Taking a walk. We'll all meet up later.”

He was gone without another word, without even saying good-bye. I sat there holding the phone in my hand, as if turned to stone, listening to the interminable dial tone. Finally, I replaced the receiver.

 

Ever since that call this morning, I have been numb from shock, full of grief, disbelieving. Now, suddenly, I felt drained. A vast emptiness settled within me. It was as if I were quite hollow, just a fragile shell.

I have never experienced such feelings before. No, that's not true. I have. When my mother died with this same kind of suddenness, this awful abruptness that always leaves others reeling and lost. And when my second husband Michael Trent suffered an unexpected heart attack, a fatal heart attack, I was devastated, floundering, cast adrift then just as I am today.

Life is hell; no, death is hell, I muttered to myself, and then wondered why it was those I loved had always been taken from me with such breathtaking unexpectedness.

Pushing myself up out of my chair, I left the library. In the corridor, I poked my head around the door of Belinda's cubbyhole of an office, told her I was going for a walk, and pulled an old wool cape out of the coat closet.

I stood on the back step and took several deep breaths. On this Monday afternoon at the beginning of October the weather was positively glorious, and mild, like spring. I glanced up. The arc of the sky was vivid blue and clear, and everything appeared to shimmer in the bright, golden sunlight. The trees had already started to turn, the leaves changing color from verdant green to yellow, russet, and scarlet; some were a deep, plummy purple, others a mellow gold tinged at the edges with the palest of pinks. It was fall, that special time of year when tourists from all over the world came to Connecticut to see the magnificent foliage, which was so breathtaking.

Moving quickly along the stone-flagged path, I headed across the lawn toward a small gazebo that stood at the edge of a copse of trees. I loved this remote corner of the garden where everything was bosky still and silent.

My grandmother had built this gazebo many, many years ago, long before I was born. It had been created for my mother when she was a child. She had grown up in this old colonial stone house which stood in the hills above New Preston, a picturesque little town in the northwestern highlands of Connecticut.

Climbing the three wooden steps, I went inside and sat down on the bench, pulling the cape around me, shivering slightly. Yet it wasn't cold today. The sun was a huge bright orb, and in this part of the world we were enjoying an extraordinary Indian Summer, the likes of which had not been seen around these parts for a long while. I had shivered a moment before only because I felt the presence of ghosts here in this rustic little structure, saw them all . . . all of them. I found myself falling backward in time to be with them.

 

Gran Rosalie, with her pretty pink complexion and snow-white hair piled high on top of her head, was sitting there so proudly, with such dignity, on the bench in front of the round table.

She was pouring tea from her old brown china pot with the chip on the lid, which she would not throw away because she said it made the best tea. Gran was telling me stories about this lovely old house, Ridgehill, which had been in her family for generations. Built in 1799, it had been passed down from mother to daughter and had always been owned by a woman, never a man. That was the stipulation in the will of Henrietta Bailey, my great-great-great-great-grandmother. It was she who had built the house with her own money and who had been one of the most powerful matriarchs of the Baileys. My gran was a Bailey, descending directly from her; Bailey was even part of my name.

My grandmother had the most beautiful of voices, cultured, lilting, full of musicality. She was reminding me that one day the house would be mine. Carefully, she explained about Henrietta and her will, told me how my amazing ancestor had wanted the women of the Bailey family always to be protected. So the house must pass from mother to daughter, even if there were sons. If there were no daughters then the house passed to the wife of the eldest son. I loved to hear the history of my family. I cherished Gran's marvelous tales . . .

My mother was here now . . . all golden-light and brightness, a shimmering kind of woman with her abundance of red-gold hair, perfect, milky skin, and startling green eyes. His emerald eyes, my father called them.

Now he was with us too . . . the Irishman. Black Irish, Liam Delaney was, my gran told me that. Black Irish and something of a charmer, a twinkling rogue of a man, a man whom women fell for at the drop of a hat, at least so my gran said to me time and again when I was growing up.

He was tall and dark, with rosy cheeks, sparkling brown eyes, and a brogue as rich as thick clotted cream. The Black Irishman, the twinkling rogue, had been a writer. I suppose I have inherited his penchant for words, his flair for stringing them together so that they make some sort of sense. His had been a powerful gift; I'm not so sure that mine is of quite the same magnitude. Gran always said that if it wasn't, then it was only because I hadn't kissed the Blarney Stone in County Cork, as my father had claimed to have done. Gran used to say it was surely the truth, for no one else she knew had such wondrous powers of persuasion as he.

He left us, though, my father did, one day many summers ago, telling us he would be back within three months. But he never did return, and I have no idea to this day whether he is dead or alive. I was ten years old when he went off on that journalistic forage for new material, traveling into the far, far blue horizons of the world. Twenty-six years ago. Perhaps he
was
dead by now.

My mother had been sad at first; she had cheered up only when his letters began to arrive at regular intervals. She read parts of them to me as they came in one by one; but only small portions, skipping the intimate bits, I suspect. I've been brought up to believe that my father was quite a man with the fancy words, especially when it came to wooing women.

First he was in Australia, then he went to New Zealand, and finally he left the Antipodes and traveled to Tahiti. Fiji was another port of call as he wandered around the Pacific, God knows in search of what. Other women? More exotic women? Not long after my mother received a letter from him postmarked Tonga communications had abruptly ceased. We never heard from him again.

When I was small I used to think that my mother was suffering from a broken heart, that she was endlessly yearning for my father. I had not known then that eighteen months after Liam Delaney had set sail for those exotic isles of Micronesia, she was already falling in love with Sebastian Locke.

Now, leaning forward on the bench, I squinted slightly, narrowing my eyes, peering out into the sunlit garden . . .

In my mind's eye I saw him quite clearly, walking across the lawn toward me, just the way he had done all those years ago.

Sebastian Locke, heading in my direction, long-limbed, slender, the embodiment of nonchalant grace, walking toward
me
.

That summer's afternoon, the first time I ever set eyes on him, I thought he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He was far more handsome than my father, which was saying a lot indeed. Sebastian was tall and dark-haired like my father, but whereas Liam's eyes were velvet-brown and depthful, Sebastian's were a clear, vivid blue, the brightest of blues. Like bits of sky, I recall thinking that day, and they had a piercing quality to them. It was as if they could see right through you, as if they could see into your mind and heart. I really believed he knew exactly what I was thinking; even last Monday I had thought the same thing over lunch.

Sebastian was wearing white gabardine pants and a pale blue shirt on that stifling July day in 1970. The shirt was made of voile, almost flimsy in weight. I've liked voile shirts on men ever since. The shirt was open at the neck, with the sleeves rolled up, and his face and arms were tan. His body was tanned as well. I could see it through the voile. He was a lithe man, very fit, athletic.

He had leaned against the posts of the gazebo and smiled at me. His teeth were very white and even in his sun-bronzed face, his mouth sensitive, and the vivid eyes were set wide apart in that arresting face.

Those eyes regarded me unblinkingly and with great interest for a few seconds. It was when he said, “Hello, young lady, you must be the famous Vivienne,” that I had felt myself becoming hot around my face and neck. Then he had stretched out his hand toward me. As I had taken it he had nodded slightly, as though acknowledging me yet again. He held onto my hand much longer than I expected, and as I looked up into that open, clean-cut face, my own very serious in its expression, my heart had skipped several beats.

And of course I had fallen hopelessly in love with him. I was all of twelve years old at the time, but I felt much older on that particular day. Very grown up. After all, it was the first time a man had actually made me blush.

Sebastian was thirty-two but looked much younger, extremely boyish and carefree. Vaguely, I somehow knew that he was the kind of man women automatically gravitate to; somehow I understood that he had charisma, sex appeal, that
je ne sais quoi
the French forever talk about.

In any case I was all agog over him. I never did get him to admit it to me, but I was certain he felt something special for me that day.

On the other hand, he might have liked me simply because I was the daughter of my mother, the beauteous Antoinette Delaney with whom he was having a grand love affair at the time.

That afternoon, when he had sauntered up the steps of the gazebo and seated himself next to me, I had known he was going to play a huge part in my life, in my future. Don't ask me how the young girl that I was then sensed this. She just did.

We had talked about horses, which he knew scared me to death. He had asked me if I would like to come to Laurel Creek Farm in Cornwall to learn to ride.

“I have a son, Jack, who's six, and a daughter, Luciana, who's four. They're already astride their ponies and doing well. Say you'll come and ride with us, Vivienne, say you'll come and stay at the horse farm. Your mother's a fine equestrienne, as you well know. She wants you to ride as proficiently as she does. You mustn't be afraid of horses. I will teach you how to ride myself. You'll be safe with me.” He was correct in that, I did feel safe with him, and he did teach me to ride well, showing much more patience and understanding than my mother. And I loved him all the more for that.

A long time later, many years later, I realized he had been trying to make us into a family, that he had wanted my mother for himself. For always. But how could she have been his forever? She was married to Liam Delaney, and
he
had gone missing far across the ocean. Until she got a divorce she could never remarry. Not Sebastian. Not anyone.

Still, Sebastian
had
tried to blend us into a tight-knit little circle, and in certain ways he succeeded.

That afternoon, staring up at him, I had only been able to nod mutely as he talked about horses, tried to reassure me about learning to ride. I was rendered speechless by this man, totally mesmerized by him.

I was under his spell.

And I was forever after, for that matter.