I lost track of time as I sat in the dark and talked to a man that I saw only in silhouette, on and on telling the story of the Casteels and their poverty; Leigh VanVoreen and what I knew of her, which was pitifully little, and when I"d finished, Tony had a thousand questions to ask. "Jailed brothers, five of them . ." he repeated. "And she loved him enough to marry him. And your father hated you right from the beginning? Did you ever have a clue as to why he hated you?"
"My birth caused my mother"s death," I answered simply. All the security my new clothes gave me had vanished. In the gloom and chill of that early evening, with the party guests so far away now even their loudest laughter couldn"t be heard, the hills came again and surrounded me, and I was again a hillbilly sc.u.mbag Casteel, no good, no good, no good. Oh, G.o.d, why did he stare at me like that? Little bits of all my doubts congealed to form a mountain in front of me. I wasn"t good enough for the Stonewalls; I couldn"t possibly be suitable for a Tatterton. So I perched, uneasily, waiting, waiting.
It seemed thirty minutes pa.s.sed after I answered his last question, and he just sat with his back to the window, while the moonlight fell upon my face, and turned the rose of my summer dress to ash. When he spoke his voice was calm, perhaps too calm. "When you first came I thought you were an answer to my prayers, come to save Troy from himself. I thought you were good for him. He"s a withdrawn young man, difficult for most girls to know, I suspect for fear he will be hurt. He"s very vulnerable . . and he has those strange ideas about dying young."
I nodded, feeling blind in a world that only he could clearly see. Why was he talking so cautiously? Hadn"t he encouraged us to marry by not saying anything to prevent us from making plans? And why, for the first time since I"d known him, was he devoid of humor, of all lightheartedness?
"He"s explained to you about his dreams?" he asked.
"Yes, he"s told me."
"Do you believe as he believes?"
"I don"t know. I want to believe because he believes that dreams often foretell the truth. But I don"t want to believe his dream about dying young."
"Has he told you . . . about how long he thinks he will live?" His voice sounded troubled, as if a little boy who had cried in the night had partially convinced him--when he should know better.
"When Troy and I are married and there are no more lonely, shadowed nights in his life, he"ll forget all about dying. I"ll study him. I"ll learn what gives him pleasure. I"ll make him the core and essence of my life, so he can be set free from worries that no one will ever care enough to stay. For that is the seat of his anxieties, fear of losing again."
At last he turned on his desk lamp. I had never seen his eyes burn so blue, so deeply blue. "Do you think I didn"t do my best for Troy, do you? I was only twenty when I hastened into marriage just to give Troy a mother, a real mother and not just some teenage girl who wouldn"t want to be bothered with a needing little boy who was frail and often seriously ill. And there was Leigh to be his sister. I was trying my best."
"Perhaps when you explained his mother"s death you made paradise seem better than what he could find in life."
"You may have something there," he said with sadness in his voice, shrugging and leaning back, looking around as if for an ashtray, and finding none he put his sparkling cigarette case back in his pocket. (I"d never seen him pull out a cigarette before.) "I"ve thought the same thing myself--but what was I to do with a child who cherished grief and never let it go? After I married Jillian, Troy attached himself to Leigh, so when she ran from this house he cried every night, blaming himself as the cause for her leaving. For three months after she went he was confined to bed. I used to go to him when he cried out in the night and I"d tell him one day she"d come back, and he fastened on that like a leech. I suspect he began daydreaming about the time when she did come home again, and she"d be just nine years older, not so old he couldn"t love her as he wanted to love her . . . and so all these years, until your father called, Troy has been biding his time, waiting for your mother to return, and be the woman he couldn"t seem to find anywhere. And you showed up, not Leigh."
Thunderstruck, I felt my head swim. Now I was the one to wince and blanch! "Are you trying to tell me I am just a subst.i.tute for my own mother?" I cried out in rising hysteria. "Troy loves me for what I am! I know he does! A little boy of three, four and five can"t possibly fall in love and stay in love over a period of seventeen years! That"s too ridiculous to even suggest!"
"I guess you"re right." His eyes narrowed before he sighed, and again he reached inside his jacket for that same cigarette case. Again he absentmindedly looked around for an ashtray. "It just occurred to me that Troy put Leigh on a pedestal and compared all other women to her, and it seems only you can measureup.
Heat flushed my face. My hands rose to my throat. "You"re talking nonsense. Troy loved my mother, yes, he"s told me that. But not as a man loves a woman. He loved as a lonely, needing little boy who had to have someone for his very own. And I"m glad to be that someone. I"ll make Troy a good wife." And as much as I"d tried to keep the pleading from my voice, I was pleading. "He needs someone like me who has not lived inside a cultured pearl, who has everything and still can"t enjoy. I have been deprived, starved, beaten, burned, humiliated, and shamed, and still I find life rewarding, and under no circ.u.mstances would I give up my life. teach him the same thing."
"Yessss," he said slowly, "I suspect you would be good for him, and have been good for him. Until you went away and left him, I"ve never seen him look better, or more contented. I thank you for that. However, you can"t marry him, Heaven. I can"t allow it."
There it was, what I"d feared!
"You said you liked me!" I cried, again stunned. "What have you found out? If you are thinking of the Casteel part of me, you must remember I also have VanVoreen genes!"
His eyes filled with pity, and it seemed he aged a little as he sat and stared at me with so much regret. "How lovely you are in your tragic wrath, how very beautiful and appealing. I can understand why Troy loves you and wants you. The two of you have so much in common, although you don"t know the connection. I don"t want to tell you the connection. Just tell me you will go to him, and as gently as possible, with sensitivity for his feelings, break your engagement. Of course you can"t keep on living here, so accessible, but see to your financial welfare. You"ll never want for anything, I promise."
"You want me to break my engagement to Troy?" I repeated with incredulity. "You and your great concern for his welfare! Don"t you know the last thing in the world he needs is for me to disappoint him? He feels he"s found the one woman in the world who can understand him! The only one who will stay and love him until the day he dies!"
He stood up, looking around, refusing to meet my eyes. "I am trying to do what I think is best." His calm underlined the pa.s.sion I had displayed. "Troy is the only heir I have. The Tatterton Toy Company will pa.s.s into his hands when I die, or into the control of his son. It has been this way for three hundred and fifty years, from father to son, or brother to brother . . that"s the way it has to be. Troy has to marry and produce a son--for I have a wife too old to bear children."
"There is nothing physically wrong with me! I can have children! Troy and I have already discussed that and have decided on two."
His look of abstraction became more profound. He stood, leaning heavily on his desk. "I was hoping to save myself some embarra.s.sment. I prayed you would withdraw politely. I see now that it isn"t possible. But I"m going to try one more time. Just believe it when I say you cannot marry Troy. Why don"t you just leave it like that?"
"How can I? Give me one good reason why I can"t marry him? I"m eighteen, I"m of legal age. No one can stop me from marrying him."
He sat down again, heavily sat down. He shoved his chair from his desk, crossed his legs, and moved his foot back and forth. And for the life of me I couldn"t understand how I could still admire his polished shoes and the kind of dark socks he wore. His voice sounded different when he spoke again. "It"s your age that has brought this all about. You see, I thought you were younger than you are. I didn"t know your true age until one day while you were gone Troy casually mentioned it. Not once did any suspicions cross my mind until then. I"d look at you and you"d be all Leigh, but for your hair. Your mannerisms are very like hers when you are happy and when you feel at ease in your surroundings, but there are other times when you remind me of someone else." He stared again at my hair, which during the summer had taken on streaks of brighter brown, with reddish highlights. "Have you ever worn your hair short?" he asked, quite out of context.
"What has that got to do with anything?" I almost shouted.
"I suspect the weight of your hair pulls out the natural curl, and that"s why your hair "frizzes" as you say, when it rains."
"What has that got to do with anything?" I again shouted. "I"m sorry my hair isn"t platinum like my mother"s hair and like Jillian"s! But Troy likes my hair. He"s told me so many times. He loves me, Tony, and it took him so long to tell me that. He had given up on life until I came along, he told me that, too. I"ve convinced him that his precognition of his own death doesn"t have to happen."
For the second time he rose, like a cat undulating and stretching until he leaned to crease his trousers between thumb and index fingers. "I confess I"m not partial to dramatic confessions such as this. I would prefer all dramas to be confined to the stage or to movie screens. I am an even-tempered person, and I have to admire someone like you who can ignite and explode so easily. Perhaps you don"t know this, but Troy has the same kind of temper, only he is a slow burn, and when he explodes it turns inward on himself. That"s why I"m trying to be careful. If I never speak another true word the rest of my life, I say again I love my brother more than I love myself. He is like my son, and because of him I honestly confess I"ve never truly wanted my own son, who would disinherit Troy. You see, or I guess you"ve already seen, Troy is the genius behind Tatterton Toys. He is the one who creates, designs, and invents, while I fly about the world as a glorified sales rep. I am a figurehead ruler. If given ten years I couldn"t come up with one original idea to create a new toy or board-game, yet Troy originates without effort; he suggests themes for games, indoor and out, like he invents those eternal sandwiches he loves."
I could only stare at him. Why was he telling me all of this now? Why now?
"It"s Troy who deserves to be president, not any son I might have. So please, ease out of his life with little to-do. I"ll stay to see him through. You can go to your boyfriend Logan what"s-his-name, and I"ll put in your bank account two . . . million . . . dollars. Think about it. Two million. People kill for that much money."
He smiled at me charmingly, winningly, pleadingly. "Do it for Troy. Do it for yourself and the career you want. Do it for me. Do it for your mother. Your beautiful, dead mother."
I hated what he was doing to me! "What has she got to do with this?" I screamed, terribly angry that he would have the bad taste to bring her up at a time like this.
"Everything . . ." and his voice was growing louder, angrier, as if my pa.s.sion were consuming the air and putting fire under his feet.
Twenty My Mother, My Father .
"WHATEVER IT IS, I WANT TO KNOW!" I.
CRIED, TWISTING in my chair and leaning forward. Tony"s tone of voice turned hard. "This isn"t easy for me, girl, not easy at all. I am trying to do you a favor, and in so doing I am not serving myself well at all. Now keep your silence until I"ve finished . . .
and then you may hate me just as I deserve." Those cold blue eyes glued my tongue. I sat without moving.
"From the very beginning of my marriage to Jill, Leigh seemed to hate me. She could never forgive me for taking her mother away from her father. She adored her father. I tried to win her affections. She wanted none of that. I didn"t do a thing to harm her, and eventually I stopped trying to win her over. I knew she blamed me for her father"s desperate unhappiness.
"I came home from my long honeymoon with Jill disillusioned. Horribly disillusioned. I tried not to let anyone see it. Jill isn"t capable of loving anyone more than she loves herself and her everlasting youthful image. My G.o.d, how that woman loves to look in mirrors!
"I grew disgusted seeing the way she had to have every hair in place all the time, always glancing to check on the shine on her nose, checking for lipstick smudges."
His smile was crooked, bitter. "And so I came to realize too late that despite all the beauty Jill possessed, no man could love Jill for anything other than her facade. Jill has no depths. She"s just a sh.e.l.l of a woman. Everything sweet, and thoughtful and kind went into her daughter. I began to be more aware of Leigh in a room than I was of her mother. Soon I was noticing a lovely adolescent girl who seldom glanced in any mirror. A girl who loved to wear simple, loose garments that fluttered when she moved, and her hair was long and loose and straight. Leigh waited on Troy, with pleasure and joy she waited on Troy. I loved and admired her for doing that.
"Leigh was sensual without knowing she was.
She radiated health that exuded s.e.x. She moved with undulating hips, her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s jiggling unfettered beneath those fluttery garments. And Leigh was always angry with her mother, resenting me, until finally she discovered one day that her mother was very jealous. And that"s when Leigh began to play up to me. I don"t think it was malicious, it was just her revenge against a mother she thought had ruined her father"s life."
I knew what was coming!
I just knew it! I pulled back and raised my hands to ward off his words, wanting to cry out and say no, no!
"Leigh began to flirt with me. She dared to mock and tease me. Often she danced around me tugging at my hands, taunting me with words that often stung, for they hit the mark so often. "You married a paper doll,"
she"d chant to me time and again. "Let Mother go back to my father," she pleaded, "and if you do, Tony, and if you do, I"ll stay! I"m not in love with myself like she is." And G.o.d help me, I wanted her. She was only thirteen years old and she had more s.e.xuality in one small, white finger than her mother had in her entire body."
"Stop!" I screamed. "I don"t want to hear any more!"
He went on relentlessly, like a river of melted snow that had to flood and destroy. "And one day when Leigh had taunted and teased me ruthlessly, for it was her game to punish me as much as she punished her mother, I grabbed her by her arm and pulled her into my study and locked the door behind me. I planned only to frighten her a little bit and make her realize she couldn"t play a girl"s game with a man. I was still just twenty years old, thwarted and angry, disgusted with myself for falling so witlessly into the trap Jill had set. Before we married, Jill had her lawyer draw up papers that would put half my gross worth into her hands if ever I sued her for divorce. And that would mean I could never divorce her and hope to salvage anything for Troy. And so when I slammed and locked that door, I was punishing Jill for cheating me, and punishing Leigh for making me so aware of my stupid mistakes."
"You raped my mother . . . my thirteen-year-old mother?" I asked in a low, hoa.r.s.e whisper. "You, with your background and your education, acted like some sc.u.mbag hillbilly?"
"You don"t understand," he said in a desperate kind of voice. "I had thought only to tease her, frighten her, believing she"d be more sophisticated and laugh and call me a fool, and then I wouldn"t have been able to perform. But she excited me with her fright, with her panic, with her innocence that was so appalled by the thought of what I planned to do. I told myself she was pulling an act, for the girls of Winterhaven are notoriously open about s.e.x. Yes, I raped your mother. Your thirteen-year-old mother." "You beast! You horrible man!" I yelled, jumping up and throwing myself at him and striking his chest. I tried to scratch his face, but he was quick.
"No wonder she ran away, no wonder! And you drove her into my father"s arms so the hills and the cold and the hunger could kill her!"
I kicked at his shins, so he released my hands to back off, and then I ran back at him, to strike again at his face. "I hate you! You killed her! You drove her from here into another kind of h.e.l.l!"
He easily seized my fists and held me off, his cynical smile growing more ironic. "She didn"t run after the first time. Nor did she run after the second or the third. You see, your mother found out she enjoyed our forbidden lovemaking. It was exciting, thrilling.
For her, and for me. She"d come to me, stand in the doorway, and wait. And when I advanced, she"d begin to shiver and quake. Sometimes tears would streak her face. When I touched her she"d fight and scream, but she knew no one could hear her screams, and in the end she"d succ.u.mb to my lovemaking like the promiscuous child she was beneath all that angelic sweetness."
The flat of my palm found his face this time! The sting of my slap left a red stain there. I curled my fingers and tried to scratch his eyes from his face!
"Stop it!" he commanded, thrusting me away so I staggered backward. "I won"t have it! I meant never to tell you."
Again I threw myself at him, striking at his face. He held me firmly by my shoulders and shook me until my hair flew wild. "Until I heard your birth date I didn"t count the months. Now I have. Leigh ran from this house on the eighteenth day of June. And you were born on the twenty-second of February.
That"s eight months. She had lain with me at least two months off and on, and so, I have to presume there is a strong possibility that you are my daughter." I stopped flailing my arms in useless efforts to inflict some further harm to him. My blood drained from my face. A tingling started behind my ears, and my knees went weak. "I don"t believe you," I said brokenly. I felt bruised, beaten. "It can"t be true. I"m not Troy"s niece, I can"t be!"
"I"m sorry, Heaven, so sorry. For you would have been perfect, the very one to save him from himself. But I have sat here this evening and heard your story of how Leigh met Luke Casteel, and heard the day of their marriage, and there is no way you can be Luke Casteel"s daughter, unless you were born prematurely. Did your granny ever hint that you came early?"
Backing off from him, I shook my head numbly. I wasn"t Pa"s daughter. Pa. A sc.u.mbag Casteel.
"You said your father hated you, hated you from the day you were born. Heaven, it is entirely possible, Leigh being what she was, that she told your father she was pregnant before she married him. And now I am certain about who you are. It"s your hair, Heaven, and your hands. Your hair is the same color and texture as Troy"s, and your hands and fingers are shaped like his. Like mine. We both have the Tatterton fingers."
He spread his hands, displaying his long, tapering fingers, before I gazed down at mine. They were the same hands I"d seen all my life, small with long fingers and long oval nails--and half the women in the world had hair my color. Nothing exceptional.
And I"d always believed Granny"s hands would have looked like mine if she hadn"t kept them working slavishly most of her life.
Stunned and aching, sickened almost into vomiting, I turned and left his office. Stumbling up the stairs and into my room, I threw myself on my bed and cried.
Not a Casteel? Not a no-good, rotten, sc.u.mbag Casteel with five uncles imprisoned for life? Tony strolled into my bedroom without knocking, to perch lightly on the foot of my bed, and this time his voice was soft and kind: "Don"t make it so difficult, darling. I"m so sorry to ruin your romance with my brother. Though I am delighted to have you for my daughter. Everything will work out, you"ll see.
I know I have shocked and hurt you, and despite all that I"ve told you, I did love your mother. She was only a kid, and still I can"t forget her. And in my own way I love you. I admire you and what you have done for my brother. I will be more than generous, so keep that in mind when next you see Troy. Tell him anything that will sound plausible. Don"t give him pain that would drive him to end his life. For don"t you know that"s what his dreams are all about? He was born self-destructive! He is disappointed in the world, in everyone who died or went away and failed him, and so he seeks to escape."
He moved to lay his heavy hand briefly on my shoulder before he got up and half turned toward the door. "Be good to him, for he"s fragile, not like you or me or Jillian," he said in a choked voice. "He is an innocent in a world of vultures. He doesn"t know how to hate. He only knows how to love, so he can later suffer and feel inadequate. So give to him the best you have in you, Heavenly, the very best you have to give.
Please."
"I already have!" I screamed, sitting up to hurl a pillow at the door where he stood. "Does he know?
Have you told him that you could be my father?" I saw the shiver that ran down Tony"s body. "I could not bring myself to tell him. He respects me, admires me, loves me. He has always been the best thing in my life, despite all the trouble he was. I am begging you, on my knees, to find some other reason for breaking your engagement. He will hate me if he knows the truth. And will I be able to blame him?
You could have saved him . . and I am responsible for taking you from him. I only hope and pray you can find the right words, for I cannot."
An hour pa.s.sed during which my tears evaporated. An hour in which I bathed my face and eyes with ice water, and very carefully I applied makeup. Then, with no real words stashed in my brain to help him survive without me, I slipped through the maze. I knocked on Troy"s blue door. There was no response, just as Tony had warned me there would be none.
It was late now, about ten. There had never been a more glorious evening. Birds snuggling down for the night chirped and cheeped sleepily. Hundreds of rose bushes wafted sweet perfume to tickle my nostrils. Primroses and pansies glimmered beside his blue door. Gardenia bushes waxed brightly in the moonlight, their blossoms huge and almost blue. The air was as soft as a lover"s kiss, and he was inside, shut away.
"Troy," I called as I opened his door and hesitated on the threshold. "It"s Heaven. I"m back. I"m so sorry I fell ill and couldn"t return on the day I promised . ."
There was no response. There was no scent of bread baking in the oven, or bread that had recently been baked. The cottage was too still, too orderly, frightening.
I ran to his bedroom, throwing open the door.
He lay on the bed, with his head turned toward the open window. Soft breezes fanned out his curtains, almost brushing a vase full of roses from a table. "Troy," I said again, moving closer to the bed.
"Please look-my way. Please say you forgive me for not keeping my word; I wanted to, desperately wanted to."
Still he didn"t look my way. I drew closer, then moved onto the bed, and gently turned his head my way. The moonlight through the windows showed me his gla.s.sy eyes, his blank stare. He was a million miles. away, snared in some horrible dream. I knew that, just knew that!
My lips pressed down softly on his. I murmured his name over and over. "Come back to me, Troy, please, please. You are not alone. I love you. I will always love you."
Over and over I called him back, until at last the gla.s.siness in his eyes departed, and slowly they came into focus. Delirious and happy delight took away the stare, even as his fingers reached to trail over my face. "You did come back . . . oh, Heaven, I was so terrified you wouldn"t. I had a weird feeling you went to that Logan Stonewall again, and discovered you love him, and not me."
"You, only you!" I cried pa.s.sionately, raining kisses all over his chilled, pale face. "I had the flu, darling. I ran a high fever for days and days. The telephones were down, the bridges were out, and the roads were flooded. I returned to you as soon as I could."
His smile was thin and weak. "I knew I was being silly to allow myself to become so depressed. I knew you would come back, subconsciously I knew that . . ."
I snuggled into his embrace and felt his hands slip into my hair. My face pressed down against his chest. I heard his heart beating slowly, so slowly-- how fast was a normal heart supposed to beat? "I don"t want a big wedding, Troy. I"ve changed my mind about that. We"ll slip away from Farthinggale Manor and have a small private ceremony."
He held me tightly against him, stroking my hair, putting small kisses on the top of my head. "I"m so tired, Heaven, so tired. I thought you wanted a large wedding."
"No, I want only you."
"Tony has to be at the wedding," he whispered with his lips brushing my forehead. "It wouldn"t be real without him. He was like my father . . ." "Whatever you want," I mumbled, holding his frail body closer. How thin he"d become. "You are totally recovered from your pneumonia, aren"t you?" "As recovered as I ever am from any disease." "You"ll never be sick again! Not when you have me to take care of you!"
All through the night he held me, and I held him. We talked of our dreams, our life together, and for the life of me it all seemed like smoke spiraling out the windows and fading into the night. How could I marry him now? How could I not marry him, no matter what our relationship?
Toward dawn, I brought up the portrait doll of my mother again. Did he know if Tony had made the model? Did at one point in time Tony feel more than a stepfather toward her?
His dark eyes clouded. "No! Not in a million years! Heaven, Tony could have any woman he wanted! He was madly in love with Jillian! There wasn"t a woman around who didn"t make a play for him . . . why since the time he grew his first beard, he"s never had to chase any woman. They chased him."
I knew as I lay in the circle of his arms that he"d never admit to himself that Tony used women, and had used Jillian in his own thoughtless way, to provide his younger brother with a mother and a sister while he went his own merry way chasing every skirt in town, and all over Europe. Tears were in my eyes as I turned to embrace him before I returned to the big house. "I"m sorry to be so suspicious. I love you, love you, love you--and I"ll be back as soon as I catch up on some sleep. Don"t go away, promise?"
He sat up, clinging to both of my hands. "Have lunch with me, darling, about one."
I thought I could return to my bed and sleep the sleep of the deeply justified, but I tossed and turned, and finally ended up at the dining table downstairs where Tony was already ensconced, eating one slice of honeydew melon after another. He began to ply me with questions immediately. Had I seen Troy? Had I broken our engagement? What had been his reaction?
What had been my explanation? I had been kind, considerate, caring, hadn"t I?
"I said as little as possible about you." My voice was cold, hostile. I hated him every bit as much as I hated Pa. "Out of consideration for Troy, I covered for you, though if Troy wasn"t so sensitive, I would have let him know exactly what kind of man his beloved brother is, and was."
"What reason did you give him?"
"I gave him none. We are still engaged. I don"t know how to destroy him, Tony, I just can"t do it!" "I can see you are building a tower of hate for me. Maybe you are right to wait a few weeks before you tell him you"ve found out you are still in love with that young man of yours. Logan, isn"t that his name?