Lisa’s smile came again. “Oh, I’ll certainly let you know when I get tired of him,” Lisa promised mendaciously, thinking: Too bad you won’t be holding your breath, you cat.
Elise smiled again, but this time it had a teasing, taunting quality and was directed at a point directly above and beyond Lisa’s head.
“I knew you would. After all, we always shared our—toys—didn’t we, darling?” she purred. Then, casting another of those provocative smiles over Lisa’s head, she drifted away.
Lisa already had a sinking suspicion that amounted to a certainty about whom Elise had been smiling at so seductively. Turning, she saw that her suspicion was right.
“Making plans to pass me on to your friends already, Lisa?” Sam’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes had a hard, icy gleam to them that frightened her. “You should have told me I was starting to bore you: I’m sure I could have come up with a few more new tricks. After all, it would be a shame if your Christmas toy didn’t even last past New Year’s, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, Sam, don’t be silly,” Lisa murmured miserably. “You must know it was just—just party talk. I didn’t mean it—and neither, probably, did Elise.”
“I don’t like being the subject of ‘party talk,’ ” Sam bit off, still smiling that frightening smile. “In fact, I don’t much like this party. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take my leave.” He made a mocking little bow that underlined the ironic politeness of his last words.
“Sam!” Lisa practically wailed as he swung away from her. Her voice attracted several speculative looks from the people standing around them, and Lisa bit her lip as she hurried after Sam, who was already more than halfway across the room.
She caught up to him on the stairs, which he usually took with extreme care. This time he was paying scant heed to his crutches, swinging down the steps two at a time with apparent disregard for the ease with which he could break his neck.
“Sam!” Lisa hurried down the stairs after him, horrified at the hard recklessness of his actions. “For goodness’ sake, be careful!”
Sam maneuvered down the rest of the stairs without more than a glittering glance at her as she hovered helplessly beside him, her hands outstretched in a futile gesture to catch him if he should start to fall. Which she had about as much hope of doing as a butterfly had of toppling Mount Rushmore, she thought.
“What’s the matter, Lisa?” he taunted when he reached the bottom of the steps, barely pausing before swinging along the entrance hall toward the door leading to the right wing. “Afraid your toy might get broken before you’ve quite finished playing with it?”
“Oh, Sam, you’re being ridiculous!” Lisa was hurrying along beside him, practically having to run to keep up. “Would you please stop and listen to me for a minute? It was only a joke!”
“I don’t like being the butt of your jokes.” He did stop, abruptly, but Lisa knew that it was not because she had asked him to. His voice was vicious as he stood glaring at her, towering head and shoulders above her, leaning slightly toward her as he balanced on his crutches. They were still in the entrance hall, where anybody coming down the stairs or from the kitchen could have overheard what they were saying. At the moment, Lisa didn’t particularly care. “I don’t like being called a toy, either,” Sam added, snarling.
“You’re deliberately misunderstanding a perfectly innocent conversation!” Lisa snapped, beginning to get angry in her turn. “That’s just the way Elise always talks about men. I think she thinks she’s being sophisticated.”
“I’m not deliberately misunderstanding anything,” Sam said gratingly. “I watched you tonight, playing with every man in the room, leading them on, playing with me! And I think your friend hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what I am to you: a toy to be played with until you get tired of playing, then thrown into a corner somewhere while you go looking for a new one! Well, I don’t like being used that way, my little rich-bitch darling. And I won’t be! You can go buy yourself a new stud, honey, because I just quit playing!”
Lisa gasped in outrage at his insults. Before she thought, her hand came up to make stinging contact with his hard cheek. He sucked in his breath sharply, his hand flying to cover the spot that was rapidly beginning to suffuse with blood. The rest of his face was white with rage, while those blue eyes glittered furiously down at her.
“How dare you talk that way to me!” she said, hissing, her eyes as angry as his. “Who the bloody hell do you think you are, anyway? I don’t have to put up with this kind of abuse from you! We’re not married yet, you know!”
“No, we’re not, are we?” he said slowly, his eyes dueling with hers. “Thank God for small mercies!”
Lisa’s temper hit the flash point at that.
“If you feel that way about it, you swine, you can take your damned ring and stuff it!” she shouted, pulling at the offending piece of jewelry until it slid off her finger, then flinging it at his face. He put up a hand to catch it automatically, but his crutches impeded him and it struck his hard cheekbone, the stone catching in his flesh and tearing it slightly so that a little drop of bright red blood welled up. “I wouldn’t marry you now if you got down on your knees and begged me!”
“That’s just the way I feel myself,” he said, turning on his heel and swinging away. He made no move to retrieve the ring; it lay on the floor, the stones flashing green and white under the light from the chandelier. Lisa stared from it to the door that was already slamming behind Sam. As she stood there unmoving, her eyes as bright as the discarded emerald in her pale face, horns began to blow in the ballroom above, and dozens of excited voices yelled at once, “Happy New Year!”
XVII
B
Y
the time Lisa got up the next morning, both Sam and Jay were gone. Mary told her stolidly that Major Eastman had phoned for a cab to take them to the airport soon after six o’clock. It was now after nine. Lisa, absorbing Mary’s words slowly, felt almost sick to her stomach as the awful truth sank in. Sam wasn’t going to treat this as a lovers’ quarrel. He had actually accepted her hasty words of the night before and considered their engagement broken. He wasn’t going to marry her—not even if she got down on her knees and begged! Remembering the words she had flung at him the night before, Lisa shuddered. To a man as proud as Sam, they must have stung like blows from a whip. How could she have said such a thing? When Mary expressionlessly handed her the emerald ring that she had thrown so furiously at Sam, saying that she had found it on the floor when she was sweeping up after the party, Lisa felt the hard knot of pain that was cramping her stomach begin to dissolve. She barely managed to make it to the privacy of her bedroom before bursting into tears.
By the time she had cried herself out, Lisa’s emotions began to change. For one thing, she had recalled the very nasty things that Sam had said to her the night before, and the unreasonable way he had refused to listen to any explanation of what was really a perfectly innocuous conversation. She was certainly not the only one at fault in their quarrel; he owed her an apology every bit as much as, and perhaps more than, she owed him one! And he could just be the one to eat humble pie for a change! She was sure that when his temper cooled and he had time to reflect on the things he had said to her, he would realize that he had goaded her into breaking their engagement and would beg her pardon like the imminently fair man she knew him to be. In the meantime, there was no point in upsetting herself. Sam would soon realize the absurdity of the situation and come back to her. Of course he would!
Amos, when she confided this belief to him, seemed unconvinced. At first Lisa told him merely that she and Sam had quarreled, without going into details, but the habit of relying on her grandfather’s advice was too strong to break. Hesitantly at first, and then with words tumbling ont of her mouth one over another like a waterfall, she told him the whole miserable story, not leaving out even Sam’s touchiness on the subject of her wealth and his lack of it.
“I guessed that was the problem,” Amos said when Lisa confessed this last. “I could tell he didn’t like the whole setup here. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t like it myself, if I were in his shoes.”
“But that’s silly!” Lisa protested, chewing on her lip as she stared across the study at Amos. “I don’t care that he isn’t rich. So why should he make such a big deal out of it?”
“Because he’s a man, and he’s got a man’s pride,” Amos said bluntly. “I’d feel the same way myself. A man wants to provide for his woman, to give her things, to spoil her a little. There’s nothing he can give you that you haven’t already got, and probably a lot better than he can provide. He knows it—and it bothers him. Only natural.”
“Not to me,” Lisa muttered resentfully, sinking deeper into the comfortable armchair and looking pensively into the fire that blazed and crackled on the hearth. Then, rousing herself from her reverie, Lisa asked, “What would you do if you were me?”
“You want him back?” Amos sent her a piercing look. Lisa nodded miserably.
“Then go after him, girl. That’s what you need to do. It won’t be hard to find out where he’s gone: I’ll have somebody at the office get right on it.”
Lisa thought about this for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “No, I refuse to go running after him like some lovesick teenager. He’s the one who started the whole thing—let him be the one to apologize!”
Amos sighed. “It’s your decision, granddaughter, but I think you’re making a mistake. However, if that’s the way you want it, so be it. Only, I don’t think you ought to count on him running back here like a mongrel dog with its tail between its legs. If I’m any judge of men, he won’t do it.”
Amos, as usual, was right. Lisa waited for almost a month, hoping every day that Sam would appear on the doorstep, properly penitent, or at the very least call. As weeks passed—weeks when she did nothing but hang around the house waiting for the phone to ring—she stopped caring whether he was properly penitent. All he had to do was get in touch, and she’d take his apology as read. But he didn’t. Finally, toward the end of January, Lisa was gradually brought to the realization that if she wanted Sam she would have to go to him. Swallowing her pride took some doing, but she finally managed it. Then she went to Amos and asked him if he could have someone discover where Sam and Jay had gone. Amos, it seemed, had anticipated her request by some days. He had the answer almost as soon as the question was out of her mouth. Jay was back in school, he said; Sam was in Montana, living out at some ranch he was in the process of buying.
“The Circle C,” Lisa said, remembering.
Amos, looking at her compassionately, nodded. “It’s just outside of Anaconda. Your best bet would be to fly to Butte and then rent a car. I’ll call the airport and have a plane readied. When did you want to go?”
Lisa’s every instinct urged her to say “now.” Now that she had decided to go to Sam, she was dying to see him. She couldn’t wait. How would he look, she wondered, when she appeared? What would he say? She imagined him sweeping her into his arms and kissing her, and her knees went weak at the idea.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said, knowing that it would take time to pack. If all went well, she might not be coming back. She should take enough for at least a week. In that length of time, Amos could have the rest of her things packed and sent on to her.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Amos said, and Lisa smiled gratefully at him, then turned to leave the room, eager to get started on her packing.
Amos’s voice halted her with her hand on the doorknob. “If you think you’ll need moral support, I’ll be glad to come with you,” he offered gruffly.
Lisa, knowing that he disliked flying and that his arthritis had been acting up again, was touched to the heart. She turned to look at him. He was regarding her anxiously.
“It would probably work out better if I went alone,” she said softly. “But, Amos—thank you.”
He nodded at her jerkily. Lisa blew him a quick kiss and left the room.
It was nearly four the following afternoon when the small jet belonging to one of Amos’s many companies landed in Butte.
“Do you want us to wait, Mrs. Collins?” the pilot asked, coming back to speak with her after the plane had rolled to a stop outside the terminal.
Lisa shook her head. “No, thanks. That won’t be necessary.”
The pilot nodded. “Okay. We’ll be taking off again as soon as we’ve chowed down. Have a pleasant stay,” he added as the door opened and the steward let down the steps.
“Thank you,” Lisa replied, smiling sunnily at him, and allowed herself to be assisted off the plane.
She hired a cab to take her the rest of the way, a distance of about fifty miles. There was no point in renting a car, she thought, and then having to worry about returning it. Settling back in the rather grubby rear seat, she looked out the window at the passing scenery. Excitedly, she realized that she was getting her first glimpse of the state that would be her new home.
Her first impression was that it was very cold. Snow lay everywhere, covering the ground in deep swirls that looked like vanilla icing. The wind blew steadily, shifting across the surface of the snow, bending the branches of the tall pines that were sprinkled thickly across the landscape, whistling in through gaps around the cab’s windows. The sky was dark gray, heavy with clouds. More snow had been forecast for later in the day, the driver told her. Might even be a blizzard. They got a lot of those, this time of year. Tall mountain peaks rose all around to disappear into the clouds. Looking at them, Lisa remembered that Anaconda was located in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. The sheer majesty of the land had her marveling. It had a dark, frozen kind of grandeur, and she found it beautiful.
The Circle C was located some distance from the main highway, down a little two-lane road that seemed to get narrower and narrower the farther they went. At last the driver pulled off onto what seemed to be a dirt driveway. Covered with deep drifts of snow, as it was, it was hard to be certain.
“House is about a half-mile up that way,” the driver said laconically, pointing. “If you want to get up there, you’ll have to walk. Car can’t go no further. Take my advice, and I’ll take you back to town.”