Sharley shook her head. “That would just make more work for you, Libby.”
“You can’t quit eating.”
“I’ll come out.” Sharley tried to smile. “I have to face the music sometime. I might as well do it tonight, while I’m still numb.”
“Good thing you were almost grown when you came to live with them,” the housekeeper mused. “They’d have ruined you otherwise, fussing over every tear and every case of hurt feelings. Not that this is a little thing, exactly. But you’ll come through it all right.” Her step was so quiet that she was almost to the door before Sharley realized she was leaving.
“Libby!” she called. As the woman turned, with one eyebrow raised inquiringly, Sharley cleared her throat. “Thank you. For having confidence in me, I mean.”
“You’re strong and you’re sensible, Sharley. You’ll find your way through this.”
Sharley smiled a little. Aunt Charlotte would have had an attack if she had heard that flat and unemotional assessment, and she would probably have scolded Libby for being unsympathetic. Sharley, on the other hand, found Libby’s quiet conviction to be reassuring, something to live up to.
Spence would appreciate the ironic humor of that contrast too, Sharley thought idly. She’d have to tell him about it...
Then reality descended on her with a rush. For a few seconds, she had actually forgotten that she wouldn’t be telling Spence anything more at all.
She tried to swallow the choking pain in her throat, without success. Spence, she thought. How could you do this to me?
Sharley stared at the ceiling. As dusk settled across the estate, the ornamental lights in the garden came on one by one. Each cast long shadows of the nearby branches through her window shades and onto the delicate tracings in the plaster ceiling. The shadows moved silently, overlapping and merging in confusing patterns — patterns just like the ones in Sharley’s mind.
If there had been any sensible explanation, why hadn’t Spence offered it right there in the cottage? On the other hand, if there wasn’t an explanation, why had he chased Sharley to the main house? But then, if he had any excuse at all, why hadn’t he offered it, once he caught up with her? Why had he said only Trust me, Sharley...?
“Damn it,” Sharley said crossly. “It’s ridiculous to torment myself this way!” If there had been any justification of Spence’s behavior, he’d have given it — and since he hadn’t, there wasn’t any explanation. It was as simple as that.
One thing was certain. He had acted — and sounded — as guilty as any man could be.
And yet, he had managed to make it sound as if he was the innocent party — that Sharley was in the wrong...
She tried to shake away the feeling of guilt that nagged at her. It was completely irrational for her to feel guilty. Spence had been caught, flat-footed and obviously, and he felt so bad about it that he couldn’t face up to what he’d done. He had to blame someone else, in order to excuse his own behavior. He was probably thinking that if Sharley hadn’t walked in, there wouldn’t have been a problem, so therefore she was the one at fault.
On the other hand, he had told Wendy that the affair couldn’t go on; perhaps he had honestly felt that made the whole thing none of Sharley’s business...
The explanation was simple, and it even made a crazy kind of sense. And yet, she thought, that kind of thinking was so unlike Spence. He wasn’t one to duck responsibility or sidle away from difficult situations. The Spence Greenfield she knew—
Sharley drew herself up short. Do I really know Spence at all?
*****
Libby had waited till the last possible instant before tapping on Sharley’s door to tell her that dinner was served, so Charlotte and Martin were already seated when Sharley came in. She knew they had been talking about her, of course, for their conversation broke off awkwardly the moment she stepped into the dining room.
Martin jumped up to hold her chair with even more than the usual solicitousness, and Charlotte toyed with her crisp linen napkin and waited until he was settled in his arm chair again before she picked up her soup spoon.
Sharley followed suit, though she expected the rich, creamy vichyssoise would probably choke her.
Martin shook out his napkin with a snap which made Charlotte frown. “The crocuses are up, Sharley, and the daffodils are peeking through, too. I was just telling Charlotte.”
The tightness in Sharley’s throat relaxed just a little. Bless Uncle Martin for trying to make things a bit easier. She smiled at him, thinking what a contrast he was, in his blue velvet smoking jacket, to the disreputably grubby gardener of this afternoon. He had never made much effort to hide his age; in fact, his steel-gray hair and the lines in his face lent him a distinguishing appeal which was absent in the photographs of him as a young man.
On the other hand, Sharley thought, Charlotte had been trying for years to deny the passage of time. Her hair was always carefully tinted and coiffed, her nails were manicured, and her makeup was in the latest mode. In the last few months she had even taken to wearing high necklines to conceal the inevitable effect of gravity on her throat.
Occasionally Sharley couldn’t help being amused by some of her aunt’s wilder attempts to hang onto youth, but mostly she felt sad. Charlotte’s ill health had robbed her of so many opportunities. Beauty was the least of them.
There was a fretful little line between Charlotte’s brows, and Sharley saw that her aunt wasn’t eating much, either.
Sharley put her spoon down, grateful for the excuse to stop trying to swallow. “If you don’t mind,” she said quietly, “I’d just as soon get this discussion behind us. I know you both got the general idea this afternoon, but perhaps I should tell you that Spence was in the cottage—”
“Right here on the estate?” Charlotte asked sharply.
Sharley nodded. “And the woman…” She paused. If she told Martin about Wendy Taylor, the woman would no doubt be out of a job by tomorrow morning.
But even if she wanted to protect Wendy, there wasn’t any way to keep that fact under wraps; Hammond’s Point was too small a town to keep secrets of that caliber. Charlotte would not rest easy until she knew who the woman was, and her first move would be to tell Martin — so it made no difference whether or not Sharley kept silent.
Of course, it wouldn’t be any surprise if half the town already suspected what had been going on. It would undoubtedly be better to tell Charlotte the truth now than to let her ask the members of her bridge club, who might even gloat — with sympathetic overtones, of course — about Sharley’s short-sightedness. And it would be better to tell Martin he had a problem in his executive offices than to let him hear the gossip from his golf buddies.
Sharley looked down at her soup and said quietly, “The woman was his secretary.”
“Wendy Taylor?” Charlotte said. “Why, the little hussy! I told you she was no good, Martin. But I must say I’m surprised at Spence — putting Hudson Products at risk like that, when you’ve given him such a wonderful opportunity.”
That was a side of the equation Sharley had not looked at before. For Spence to be involved with any woman was bad enough, Charlotte seemed to be saying, but for him to mess around where his job was concerned was really crazy.
She could understand Charlotte’s point. Still, she thought, it doesn’t matter much to me whether it’s Wendy, or my best friend, or some bimbo I don’t even know!
Sharley glanced at Martin. His normally-ruddy cheeks were pale, and for the first time in all the years she had known him, his voice quavered like that of an old man. “I’ll speak to Spence in the morning,” he said, almost to himself.
Sharley stared at him in surprised disappointment. Obviously, he too was suddenly finding the situation even more critical than he had thought at first. It was almost as if Sharley’s feelings were not important at all, beside this threat to the integrity of Hudson Products.
A moment later, sanity reasserted itself. For the last couple of years, eve
r since Spence had come to work for Hudson Products, Martin had been grooming him to take over the firm someday. Now that Spence’s judgment had been so harshly called into question, of course Martin would consider the additional impact on the business. He would hardly be human if he hadn’t. His reaction didn’t belittle his concern for Sharley — but he loved Spence, too.
Like the son he had never had.
Before she spoke, she had considered the almost certain consequences to Wendy. But it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder if this was going to cost Spence his job as well.
Why should that bother me? Sharley asked herself. All she had done was tell the truth. She was not the one who had made the bad choices; Spence had done that by himself. If he really had no idea of the severity and stupidity of this lapse, then he deserved to lose his position, didn’t he?
The argument didn’t soothe the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Quietly and efficiently, Libby cleared the almost-untouched soup plates and brought in the main course. Sharley looked at the tiny elegant lamb chops and baby vegetables in a picture-perfect array on the china plate and thought that she would probably never be able to face that combination again.
Charlotte picked up her knife and fork. “I am disappointed, of course. I thought Spence was more stable than that. Though I suppose it’s not surprising, with his father being what he was, for him to be—”
“That’s ridiculous, Charlotte,” Martin interrupted. “John Greenfield was a fool, but that doesn’t mean Spence is, too.”
“John Greenfield was also a cheat and a liar,” Charlotte said crisply. “And he could charm the devil into believing his stories. Say what you will, Martin, there is a taint in families sometimes. Perhaps it’s just as well that it has come out in the open now.”
Before I was committed to him, Sharley thought. Before there was another generation to carry that taint...
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to ward off the raw pain which ripped through her body. “If you will excuse me, please, Aunt Charlotte,” she began. “I don’t think I…” She pushed her chair back.
As she left the dining room, she heard Charlotte add, “In any case, Martin, when a woman provides the money in a marriage she has the right to call the shots. Whatever else Spence might be, he isn’t very wise not to have realized that, you know.”
Sharley stumbled on the steps to the bedroom wing. When a woman provides the money...
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Please, dear heaven, not that.”
Sharley had always known, in the back of her mind, that Martin and Charlotte intended her to benefit from their wealth. Even before her mother had died, that much had been clear, though it had never been openly discussed. She was their only niece. Of course they would provide for her.
And, after she had come to live with them, they had done exactly that. They had paid her tuition at an expensive private college. They had given her a car. And she had quickly learned to be cautious of what she admired, because more times than not if she said she liked something, one of them would buy it for her.
Now and then, Martin had talked to her of investments and safe yields, and Charlotte had instructed her about charities and good works and the social responsibility that money represented.
But they had never given her any details about their plans, or their wills, or what would eventually happen to their wealth. Sharley had listened politely to the lectures but assumed that — like so much of what Martin and Charlotte said — this was overkill. When all was said and done, she expected she might get a few thousand dollars to remember them by. And that was just fine with her; in Sharley’s opinion, the Hudsons had done quite enough for her as it was. They had equipped her to make her way in the world, and they continued to give her a home. She hoped, herself, that they spent every dime they possessed on themselves.
But was she being naive? Did they intend to make her their heiress?
And was that why Spence Greenfield had suddenly become so interested in her last Christmas?
*****
Sharley spent most of Saturday afternoon on the telephone, cancelling the arrangements for the wedding. The caterer, the florist, the organist, the manager of the country club — each of them was stunned by her request and insisted that Sharley say it again before the news actually sank in. By the time she had finished repeating the endlessly agonizing sentences, she was trembling from the effort.
She put down the telephone and cradled her head in her hands for a moment. She’d take a break, she decided, and make herself a cup of tea with honey to soothe the ache in her throat. Then she’d start down the long list of invited guests to let them all know that the wedding was off.
Charlotte had offered to help with that duty. But she had looked wan and weak this morning, as if she hadn’t slept at all, and Sharley thought that nosy questions were likely to do her no good. There would be plenty of those for all of them to face in the next few weeks; no need for Charlotte to go looking for more.
Sharley started for the kitchen to brew her tea. Preoccupied with the incredible number of calls she had yet to make, she was actually in the solarium before she heard the murmur of voices, and she stopped abruptly just inside the door. “Excuse me, Aunt Charlotte,” she managed. “I didn’t realize you had guests.”
Three ladies were grouped around Charlotte’s chaise longue. Each was as well-groomed and sleek as Charlotte herself, and each looked at Sharley with barely-restrained curiosity.
Word travels fast, Sharley thought. The other half of the bridge club would no doubt be dropping in any minute. She wondered what they had all used as excuses for stopping to see Charlotte on a Saturday afternoon.
Her aunt waved a thin hand at a nearby chair. “Come and join us, darling.”
Sharley shook her head. “Thank you, but I’ve got so many phone calls to make...I was just going through to the kitchen.”
“Then would you tell Libby we’d like coffee now?” Charlotte asked.
As Sharley retreated through the dining room, she heard one of Charlotte’s guests murmur, “The poor darling. She’s being so brave, isn’t she?”
“I’m glad she has a vacation coming up,” Charlotte said. “She’ll feel better when the pressure of school is relieved for a while.”
As if that was going to help, Sharley thought. She’d just have more time to think, then — and to remember that she should have been in Nassau, basking on a beach...
Libby was bustling about the kitchen setting up a tray with the big silver coffeepot. “I know,” she said crisply, just as Sharley opened her mouth. “When they came, I was making a raspberry gateau for the scholarship fund-raiser, and I couldn’t stop in the middle. So now I’m rushing to catch up. There are some chocolate baskets up in that cabinet. Would you put a scoop of ice cream in each of them while I wash the rest of the raspberries?”
Sharley was relieved to have her hands busy. She unwrapped each delicate chocolate confection, set it carefully on a crystal dessert plate, and added a generous dollop of rich vanilla ice cream.
Martin came in from the garden before she was finished, smelling of damp earth and peat moss.
“Don’t go in,” Libby warned. “The bridge ladies are here.”
“On Saturday?” Martin eyed the desserts. “Those look awfully good.”
Sharley pointed with her ice cream scoop at a chocolate basket which had fallen apart as she unwrapped it. “There’s a broken one if you want to nibble. Or if you’ll be patient a minute, I’ll make you a super-special dessert as soon as these are done.”
Martin pushed his hat back off his forehead, picked up the defective bit of chocolate and began snapping it into bite-sized bits. “This is fine. Come out into the garden with me for a while, Sharley.”
“Thanks, but I’m afraid I’m not exactly in the mood to commune with crocus today, Uncle Martin.” She filled the last basket, then leaned against the refrigerator and licked the ice cream scoop, studying him suspiciously.
“Why? Have you got Spence hidden in the boxwood or something?” There was a strange sensation in her stomach, as if she was a spring-powered toy which had been wound too tight. Martin had been gone all morning. Was it possible…
Martin shot a look at Libby and then shook his head.
The spring inside Sharley seemed to pop and sag and lose its power.
Libby sprinkled fresh raspberries across each scoop of ice cream and picked up the tray. She backed through the swinging door and disappeared toward the solarium.
“I talked to him,” Martin said, and stopped as if he didn’t quite know where to go from there.
“I take it that means he didn’t have any explanations for you either? Have you finally realized that this is not just a silly misunderstanding after all?”
A Singular Honeymoon Page 3
