Wolf at the Door

by Victoria Gordon

  In the afternoon, a lengthy visit to Mrs Scofield’s hairdresser turned Kelly from ponytailed schoolgirl into a woman of maturity and distinction, yet somehow also managed to retain both her youth and innocence. Her long red hair was piled high in a vaguely Grecian styling, with small ringlets that emphasised the length and vulnerability of her slender neck. The judicious use of make-up and minimal jewellery would enhance the flowing lines of the high-collared caftan over-blouse, and since Kelly knew exactly what she was planning, she could discuss accessories for the black outfit with Meg Scofield during that evening’s early tea with the easy knowledge that Grey would still not realise she had no intention of following through.

  She returned to her room with an hour and a half in which to get ready — an hour more than Kelly had ever needed in her life — and was almost contemplating a brief nap when there was a soft knock at the door and it opened immediately to admit her host.

  Kelly raised one eyebrow in silent query; they both knew why he was there, but she was determined not to be the first to mention it.

  Grey’s eyes raked briskly over Kelly’s slender figure, resting briefly on the crowning glory of her hairdo, then he reached one hand from behind him to expose a small parcel wrapped in delicate floral paper.

  ‘I should like you to wear this tonight, if you would,’ he said in a voice that seemed velvet-soft.

  Kelly smiled her thanks and turned to open the tiny parcel, making slow work of it because her fingers trembled so. But finally she succeeded, to find a box containing a delicate, almost totally realistic flower. It was of raw silk, and obviously designed especially for the outfit she had really chosen to wear that night. Tucked into her hair, it would make the perfect final accessory for the gown’s swirls of gentle sea colour and vivid highlights.

  With the black dress, it would look quite ridiculous.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely!’ Kelly breathed in honest admiration. ‘But ... but ... oh, Grey, I’m sorry. It just wouldn’t go with that black dress.’ No mention of the green; she didn’t dare to bring it up, knowing that he had planned this particular present deliberately to force her to change her mind.

  Grey’s eyes seemed to grow wider, smouldering like the ashes that grow upon charcoal as it sears into flaming life that grows into the burning. Then they seemed to glaze over, taking a subtle dullness from the intensity of his carefully held-in anger.

  ‘You’re not really going to wear that black dress tonight.’ He said it as a statement, with no hint of query. It was an aggressive, almost offensive denial of her right of choice.

  ‘But of course. Why? Do you object?’

  ‘You know damned well I do,’ he growled, the anger escaping now like poorly-trapped steam.

  Kelly lifted her small chin in obvious determination.

  ‘Firstly,’ she said, ‘I don’t see what business it is of yours what I wear. And secondly, I cannot imagine why you should object to the black dress. You said nothing at all when I bought it, not that I’d have listened anyway.’

  ‘Exactly! But I’ll damned well say something now. That dress is wrong for you. W.R.O.N.G ... wrong! It makes you look old and it makes you look ...’

  ‘It makes me look what?’ Kelly’s voice was almost a whisper as she tried to contain her own growing anger. She knew exactly what he meant; the dress would be perfect in the privacy of a love-nest, but in public — on Kelly — it teetered upon the brink of being expensively cheap. She lacked the cool sophistication that would allow Freda Jorgensen to wear such a gown with elan.

  ‘It’s too old for you,’ Grey muttered half to himself.

  ‘And so are you!’ The timing was perfect, and his bronzed features went ashen with undisguised shock at the accusation. ‘I don’t need a father figure in you,’ Kelly continued hurriedly before he could interrupt. ‘I already have a father — and he doesn’t tell me what to wear, either!’

  ‘Well, he damned well should, and when he sees that dress he damned well will,’ was the half-strangled reply. ‘1 just hope he paddles your pretty little rump for you while he’s at it.’

  ‘Get out!’ The demand coincided with the smack of Kelly’s small palm against Grey’s cheek as her brown eyes blazed with anger.

  Her wrist was clamped in an iron grasp as she swung her palm again, and she found herself meeting eyes like chips of grey ice. Grey was shaking his head angrily, oblivious to the angry palm mark upon his cheek. His jaw clenched as he forcibly restrained himself from returning her slap, and Kelly fiercely cried out her frustration.

  ‘Why don’t you hit me back? It would be just your style, wouldn’t it? I shouldn’t be able to attend the party with a black eye, should I? But I would!. And I’d take the greatest of delight in telling everyone who hit me, too.’

  ‘Even your father?’ The question came too easily, too softly through the clenched teeth.

  Kelly winced. Of course she couldn’t tell her father Grey had struck her. And of course he couldn’t strike her, either. Neither of them would risk GeofF Barnes’ health or anger for the sake of their own bitter rage.

  She yanked her hand away, pointing imperiously towards the door of her room. ‘I shall wear what I choose,’ she snarled. ‘Now please leave.’

  Grey was already turning towards the door when a sudden impulse made him turn instead to the closet where both gowns hung side by side.

  His huge hand closed around the black gown on its hanger, lifting it from the closet in a swishing sound of sheer, feather-light gossamer. Kelly thought in sudden terror that he would rip the gown to shreds before her eyes, but instead he turned and threw it at her, hanger and all.

  ‘Wear it and be damned,’ he said, in a voice that was so deathly, frighteningly calm that Kelly reeled back from the frigid, tangibly icy anger in it.

  Her fingers reached out to catch the gown as it struck her, and the folds of sheer black gauze floated up before her face like huge, inky wings, smothering in their softness. The chill of Grey’s hostility seemed to transmit itself to the material itself, and Kelly almost dropped the gown again as her fingers felt the chill.

  Before she could do that, much less speak, he was gone, and the door smashed itself futilely against the jamb with the fury of his passing.

  She stood there, trembling, for several minutes. Then, staggering slightly, she moved to the closet and hung the dress up again before throwing herself face down on to her bed and fighting back the tears before they could surface.

  She was, for a moment, successful. Then, singly, each tiny tear began its slow, uncertain journey down through the maze of her fists to the cover beneath. So much anger, so much hostility. And for what? To prove what? She would wear the dress that Grey preferred. She would even wear the tiny silk flower.

  But neither, she knew, would reduce his antagonism in any useful way. At best, he would consider she had changed her mind as a measure of common sense. At worst, he would see it as a sign of submission, which was the last thing she wanted.

  She would submit to him, to the love of him, but if that love were not returned he must never realise her own submission.

  It took her extra care with her make-up to mask, as much as she could, the emotional turmoil within her, but Kelly still managed to leave her room spot on time for their departure.

  She found Meg Scofield in the lounge room, swathed in a simple basic black gown that exactly suited the tall woman’s erect carriage and dignified stature. Kelly’s father strolled in a moment later, fingering awkwardly at his collar but looking splendid if slightly wan in his dinner suit. He let his eyes show his appreciation of both women while muttering mild curses about ‘damned monkey suits’ and slippery bow ties. Of Grey there was no sign.

  ‘Grey has gone on ahead,’ Mrs Scofield explained to a rather surprised Kelly. ‘Something about business, he said, and it couldn’t have been good if his expression meant anything.’

  It was left to Geoff Barnes, under Meg’s direction, to chauffeur them to the stately Jorgensen home.
It was nearly seven miles away by road, but as Meg explained during the journey, corners of the two properties actually touched. ‘If we drink too much we’ll be able to walk home,’ she laughed, realising full well that none of them would do any such thing.

  Kelly’s first impression of the Jorgensen home was one of amazement. It was huge, at least in appearance, and instead of blending with the surroundings as did Grey’s home, it loomed and dominated like a mausoleum.

  ‘Isn’t it ridiculous?’ Meg asked with a tinkling laugh. ‘Grey always calls it “early Swedish awful,” which upsets Freda no end.’

  Able only to stare at the gargantuan structure, Kelly suddenly realised the true meaning of the term ‘nouveau riche’ in all of its bad-taste reality. The house was so hideous, so revolting awesome, that only a person of great personal insecurity would ever think of living in it. Certainly it didn’t fit her assessment of Freda Jorgensen; could her father be so tremendously different than his chic, worldly daughter?

  The man who greeted them inside the huge home was Kelly’s first surprise of the party. Far from insecure, he was virtually the archetypal Nordic or Viking warrior. A huge man, blessed with a fiery red beard and only slightly less burnished hair, he loomed in the entry hall like a gigantic bear.

  ‘Welcome, beautiful Meg,’ he roared, hugging Grey’s mother to him like a bear trying to climb a slender sapling. Then he released her after a hearty buss on the cheek, shook hands vigorously with Geoff Barnes, and turned upon Kelly with such vivid enthusiasm she almost flinched.

  Enormous hands lifted her own as he planted kisses upon both her fingers and palms, having to bend almost double just to reach her. ‘And to you, Miss Barnes, welcome to the ugliest house in the world,’ he boomed. ‘Ah, such hair! We must talk later, you and I. You are not yet married and I am a poor but honourable widower. You must consider me … with our hair we could produce absolutely astounding children.’

  The sheer volume and overwhelming aliveness of the man followed them as he escorted them into the main hall of the home, where they received a substantially less warm welcome from Freda Jorgensen.

  Or at least Kelly did. Geoff and Meg were hurried off to meet somebody Kelly had never heard of, and it was done in such a way that she was left standing alone at the edge of the huge room wondering at the ease with which it had all happened. Freda had come close to ignoring Kelly as if she didn’t exist, and when she was still alone a few moments later, Kelly began to wonder if the other woman was a witch, and if she herself was now truly invisible.

  Then she turned at a slight sound behind her and wondered if she were seeing things.

  ‘Marcel!’ she exclaimed with undisguised surprise. ‘But ... but what are you doing here?’

  ‘I am thinking I have been invited as, what do you call it, a diversion,’ he replied with surprising candour. ‘You look wonderful, Kelly. I can see why the Viking princess arranged for me to be here.’

  ‘She arranged it?’ Kelly understood Marcel’s comment well enough. What she doubted was the logic of what he seemed to be saying.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘You have her just a teeny bit worried, little red fox, so she invited me here to try and draw you away from her own quarry, as it were. It would have been such a good plan, too, except that she doesn’t know what you and I do.’

  ‘You’re teasing me,’ Kelly replied shakily. How could she possibly pose any threat to the cool beauty of Freda Jorgensen? Marcel had to be joking, though she couldn’t imagine why.

  It was all too mystifying. Certainly Marcel looked utterly splendid in his rich evening clothes, indeed he outshone the various more citified men Kelly noticed around the room by his sheer physical size and pantherish movements. But what could Freda hope to gain by inviting him to this party? Did she plan to use Marcel to make Grey jealous? It was highly possible, since she was certainly in a position to understand that the two men didn’t get on together. But if that were the case, why would she steer Marcel on to Kelly?

  ‘I was clearly given to understand that I am to ensure you do not feel ... lonely ...’ he said to her, steering her out into the throng of milling dancers. Kelly moved with him unquestioningly; there was so much she didn’t understand about this situation, and neither Grey nor Freda seemed to be in evidence.

  At one turn, they saw Kelly’s father dancing slowly with Meg Scofield, but if Geoff Barnes saw anything strange in Marcel’s presence at the party he gave no sign of it.

  Kelly twirled happily enough in Marcel’s arms. He was a marvellous dancer indeed, and after their last encounter in camp she knew he could only be a friend.

  ‘You didn’t exactly argue about coming here tonight, did you?’ she asked with sudden inspiration, and was rewarded with a sly grin.

  ‘Moi? Of course not,’ he chuckled. ‘Miss Freda is a bit ... ah ... transparent to an old roué like me. She thinks that I fancy the little red fox for my own, so I am ... flattered ... by her confidence in me.’

  He gave a short bark of typically Gallic laughter, then switched into soft French to explain his presence as much as he himself understood the situation.

  Kelly had Freda Jorgensen just a bit worried, he said. Not terribly worried, but just a little. And since Freda imagined there might be something between him and Kelly, she had apparently decided Marcel might occupy Kelly sufficiently at the party to leave Freda a clear field with Grey.

  ‘She is a fool,’ he said vehemently. ‘If she were just a little smarter she would have made the play for me herself. Your grey wolf, he dislikes me just enough that such a move might have gained her his undivided attention. This way, I think she defeats her own purpose. Grey will see you with me ... and poof! — the blonde will disappear into the wallpaper, if such a thing is possible. Mon Dieu! Have you ever seen such an ugly house?’

  He then turned to describing the house in such vivid gutter French that Kelly howled with laughter, and several other dancers threw strange looks in their direction. When the set was ended. Marcel steered her to a quiet corner and slipped away to find drinks for both of them, leaving her to contemplate the rather strange implications of his appearance at the party.

  Fair enough, she thought, for Freda not to realise that she and Marcel had never been romantically involved, and that indeed they were closer to being true friends than lovers. But Kelly couldn’t accept Marcel’s presence in the simple terms that he himself did. It made no feminine sense.

  Freda was too shrewd a woman to ignore the rivalry between Marcel and Grey, and if she intended to use it to her own personal advantage, she would have brought Marcel as her own partner.

  ‘At least that’s what I’d have done,’ Kelly muttered half aloud, then grinned mischievously at the thought. She knew herself too well to really imagine such a ploy; she simply wasn’t that devious a person. Which, she thought, was really too bad, because a more devious woman would make Freda’s apparent blunder into her own advantage — if a blunder was what the gambit really turned out to be.

  Kelly was far more inclined to think that Freda had invited Marcel as a gesture of ... what? Contempt, perhaps. Something to show Kelly that Freda felt so secure about Grey’s feelings that she could afford to be magnanimous and ensure Kelly’s comfort during the party? Even that didn’t make sense, but Kelly still didn’t accept the simplicity of Marcel’s explanations. There was something going on she didn’t understand, and maybe she never would.

  When Marcel returned with the drinks, she tossed hers back with unexpected relish and slipped another one immediately from the tray of a passing waiter. The move gained her an upraised eyebrow from her impromptu escort, but Marcel said nothing.

  The alcohol combined with the unexpected turn of events and Kelly’s own emotional turmoil to make her surprisingly lightheaded after a few more dances, and she had to retire to the powder room. There, a glance into the mirror revealed a Kelly she had seldom ever seen before.

  Her critical if somewhat giddy appraisal revealed enormous brown e
yes in a face flushed with excitement. The high-piled hair and the high neckline of the caftan top gave her an air of maturity and in the full-length mirror she could see that the rest of her outfit was equally complimentary. Where the black gown would have created a cheap, gauche impression, the rich colours and unusual style of the one she had chosen had turned her into a lovely and desirable young woman even by her own standards. Gone was the impression of a wild-haired teenager. She even looked taller!

  Not that Grey was likely to notice, she thought. He hadn’t yet put in an appearance, and she could only presume he was closeted with Sven Jorgensen over some business deal. The huge, bear-like host had also disappeared soon after Kelly’s arrival, although she had noticed Freda circulating among the guests like a pale-haired Norse goddess.

  Freda should have worn the black gown, Kelly thought. It would have suited her perfectly, perhaps even more so than the pale, icy-blue creation that graced the woman’s astounding figure. In the blue dress Freda was the ice-maiden supreme; in the black she could have been queen of the witches — a role Kelly privately favoured.

  When she returned to the party, Kelly’s eyes automatically scanned the room for a sign of Grey, but he still seemed to be somewhere else, and she noticed with a tinge of antagonism that Freda, too, seemed to have disappeared. Marcel was speaking to her father in one corner, and Kelly drifted that way to join them.

  A momentary lull in the music allowed her to shift quickly through the crowd, and she was nearly at her father’s side when a huge paw closed around her wrist and the music frothed into a quick disco beat. Sven Jorgensen’s voice boomed in her ear as the tall, bearded man avowed his intention to dance with her and quickly proved himself the equal of any younger man on the floor.

  Almost any! During one swirling turn Kelly suddenly noticed a flash of unmistakable silver hair and her heart first leapt, then sank in despair as she saw the icy blue dress that flashed and merged against the dark handsomeness of Grey Scofield. He and Freda made an astonishingly handsome couple, she had to admit, while she and Freda’s amazing father ... ? ‘It’s like a grown man dancing with a child,’ she breathed half aloud, suddenly angry with herself for making such an absurd comparison.