Caprice

by Amanda Carpenter

  Voices sounded in an incomprehensible murmur from the family room, and, as she checked briefly in the library and found no one there, she headed toward the back of the house. She could identify Pierce and Mrs. Langston long before she could distinguish words, and quickened her pace.

  “…You weren’t out there, you couldn’t see her face. She was in absolute terror,” Pierce was snapping impatiently. In automatic reflex, her steps lagged, and she felt acutely uncomfortable to be overhearing two people discussing her.

  “All right, maybe she didn’t put on an act. Maybe I misjudged,” said Mrs. Langston. Caprice felt an acute shock. “After all, I saw it from the back window, and God knows I didn’t understand what was going on. But you must admit, darling, you have been paying her an awful lot of attention, and we all saw you both this morning.”

  “Drop it, I’m warning you,” Pierce said, his voice going silken.

  “But I can’t! Just let me say this one thing, please! She’s an inconsistent butterfly, all color and no direction. Why, she’s got Jeffrey, that dear boy, Emory, and now you after her, and after just one weekend!”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said harshly.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt she’s a lovely person! That’s not the point. But you’re so different, Pierce! You’re older, mature, you’re responsible and steadfast.”

  “This is a ridiculous conversation.”

  Angry. What an intriguing emotion to be wasting.

  “My dear, I never try to run your life, you know that. Heavens, you’re too old and far too strong a personality for that. But I couldn’t help but say this. You’d just find yourself weary of her in a little while, or she would weary of you, and one of you would get hurt.”

  “Have I suggested a deep and intimate relationship between us yet?” Now exasperation. Caprice found that she was clasping her hands together so hard they hurt. “We should end this. She’ll be down any moment.”

  “You’re complete opposites.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” His sigh.

  She backed away noiselessly, suddenly ashamed to find herself caught by the same weakness Pierce had confessed just that morning, and when she was safely away so that neither would hear normal footsteps, she walked to the library and sank into one of the armchairs and bowed her head.

  Everything Mrs. Langston had said was true. Everything, and she had known it all along. It had been the underlying reason why she’d tried to avoid him after that first evening of dancing under golden hung lanterns. What could he possibly see in her after a while? Her life was indeed shallow, and she had lived it too long, for she didn’t know how to change. She’d been taught her lifestyle since she was a small girl, and had to truthfully admit she loved the parties and the outings and the light chatter. If she yearned for something else, why, didn’t everyone yearn for something different, even in the most ideal of lives?

  A senseless, useless, ceaseless attraction for a man she barely knew, and she was suddenly unhappy with everything. She would just hold on until she got home. Her perspective would change then. She didn’t know enough about Pierce to have founded anything lasting or concrete—she didn’t even know his main interests in life, his goals, his dreams, his hobbies. She knew nothing about him except for the look in his eyes, the low laugh in his voice, the feel of his arms, and the sight of his naked chest. A mere infatuation!

  The last thing she wanted was to hurt or be hurt. It had gone on far enough. No. That first, mocking kiss of hers had been too, too far.

  Pierce said from the doorway, “How are you feeling?”

  Fine and dandy, yessir. A slight smile to him, and she said, “I’m much better. Feeling silly and a little tired.” The smile faded, leaving her looking somehow older.

  He walked forward slowly. Light gray slacks this time, and a short-sleeved matching shirt. His eyes were on her sharply. “Is anything wrong?” he asked. “You look—odd.”

  She shook her head a bit absently.

  “Would you like something to drink?” He sat in the armchair opposite her, the same that Emory had occupied that morning.

  “No, thank you.” Her reply was distant, scrupulously polite. There was certainly nothing to suggest the utterly humbled and crushed emotion she’d experienced when hearing herself discussed so disparagingly. But, oh, no doubt she was a lovely person. Something tight lay, leaden, in her chest.

  Pierce was frowning, his mouth held thin as he took a slow and deliberate assessment of her. “Something is wrong. Still dwelling on earlier? You shouldn’t be.”

  Swift anger. “You don’t know me. Don’t make assumptions.”

  Astonishment, then a darkening anger of his own. “In case you’d totally missed the point,” he said bitingly. “I’m trying to be thoughtful, and to see that you’re all right after having a nasty shock.”

  She lifted her eyes from her hands clasped in her lap, a sudden, queerly stern glare. “You want to help? Then don’t push, don’t pry at me, and don’t make conjectures about my possible state of being!”

  He held himself quite still, an elegant man with quick-moving, quick-assessing eyes. His expression had changed after the astonishment and fleeting anger to settle into hardened lines of remoteness. At the look, she strangely wanted to cry, for all she could think of was the gentle, comforting touch of his lips against the back of her neck. “My goodness,” he said, slow and sardonic. “Anything else you’d like to add to that?”

  Her elbow leaning on one arm of the chair, she put her head down and rubbed at her eyes. “That seems,” she replied wearily, “to be quite comprehensive.” She wished she could feel hostile to him, but all she could feel was regret.

  Mrs. Vandusen said from the doorway, “Pierce, you have a phone call. Would you like to take it here or upstairs?”

  He raised a dark brow at her and said, with a causticity that made the housekeeper raise her own in sharp surprise, “An inadequate end.”

  Caprice rose from her chair. “But so appropriate. Don’t bother going upstairs.” She smiled without humor. “It’s far easier for me to leave.”

  Outside the library, she heard his voice, already so familiar, and it changed from abruptness to a far more businesslike tone. She bowed her head, put on her happy face and went outside.

  The others were just climbing out and drying off with a pile of towels that had been laid close by the pier. When she approached, there was a moment of awkward silence as everyone tried to think how they would say what they were feeling. Then Jeffrey met her eyes, which were calm and smiling. There was true mortification in his glance. “Look, I’m sorry—” he began.

  She laughed, and, feeling sorry for his hangdog look, she walked over to snake her arm around his slim waist for a brief, tight hug. “Don’t be more stupid than you can help, hmm?” she said, and pressed her lips to his cheek to take the sting out of her words. “You weren’t to know I don’t like getting my head under water! For heaven’s sake, forget it!”

  After that, she moved away and acted so utterly normal and carefree that everyone else relaxed with a collective sigh, and soon the atmosphere was lighthearted once more.

  Lunch was a laughing affair, and Caprice was much relieved to find Roxanne being warmer to her. Soon after the meal, she found an occasion to ask the brunette if they could leave fairly soon, and raised a blonde eyebrow at the other girl’s apparent eagerness to be gone. The weekend had not turned out like either had expected it to.

  So it was that, when Lane finally mentioned that he would have to be leaving, both Caprice and Roxanne were quick to add that they, too, should be departing. They would rather drive in full daylight; Roxanne had an early appointment the next morning; of course they would much rather stay; it had been a lovely weekend; too bad it had to end. But Jeffrey understood, didn’t he? Of course he did, so they would just pop upstairs to get their things.

  She parted with Roxanne in the hall, entering the room that had been hers for a few days with
out bothering to shut the door. As she was a tidy person by nature, repacking her suitcase took a matter of minutes, and she soon went to her tiny bathroom to make sure she hadn’t forgot anything before going back down. She walked in, pivoted on her heel and was out again, almost in the same motion. Then she stopped, as abruptly as running into a wall.

  Pierce leaned casually against the side of the door, letting his dark gaze roam the bedroom before settling on her tense, still face. He had apparently been out, either walking or driving with his window down, for his black hair was blown out of its sleek style, whipped back. “Heard you were leaving,” was his laconic opener.

  She forced herself to walk calmly to her suitcase, which was lying open on her bed. With a snap, it was closed, and she pressed the twin catches with her thumbs. The double snick was abnormally loud in the room. “I heard a rumor to that effect,” she said, surprising herself by the sarcasm evident in her voice.

  “Was that supposed to be funny?” He was still angry with her. She could feel it, sense it almost as she would see a physical color, a dark, hazy red. Did she transmit her anger as clearly as he? Was that how he’d intuited it so accurately yesterday? Or, more disturbingly, were they that sensitive to each other?

  “No,” she said slowly. “It was stupid.” Though her back was to him, she knew he had relaxed somewhat. She asked shortly, “What do you want?”

  “To say good-bye, what else?” Now it was his turn to mock. What was that strange ache she felt?

  “So, good-bye.” Insolent, repelling.

  “Oh, no.” His low laugh, sounding briefly, still angrily. “You’re not getting off that easily.”

  Her head jerked up and around in startlement. “What is that supposed to—” she began. But she lost the thread of her question; indeed, she lost all remembrance of it as Pierce thrust away from the doorpost, strode her way and pulled her by the shoulders right to him.

  Too surprised to react, she met his chest with a distinct jar. A golden chest, sleek and sun-kissed, smooth, flexing muscles and warm against her cheek, with sweet-smelling air filling her nostrils instead of filthy lake water. Her shiver and his steadiness. Hand holding arms.

  Hard, and snaking around her once again while she reacted sluggishly, slowly, far, far too slowly, and she knew it even as his hand slid under her hair to tilt back her head. His lips. Which touched her nape with a lost gentleness, lost as anything possible between them was, too different, too different, man and woman, warm body to warm body. Mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue, unexpected. So unexpected, in fact, that she was intensely shocked. Not by his open mouth, moving hard and urgent on hers, which in turn was feverishly eager on his. No, she wasn’t shocked by the kiss. She’d been kissed far too many times for that type of reaction. She was shocked by her own response to it, deep and heartfelt, acutely and passionately aware of the hard muscles in his clenched thighs, the heartbeat she felt pounding in a roar against her own breast, his bent head, those long, moving fingers. Something uncontrolled in her loins leaped surging, and it scared her half to death.

  Not in control.

  He raised his head slowly, reluctantly. Through blurred vision, she could see his own blind shock and knew that he was experiencing the same jarring emotion that she had. He stared down at her for a full, pulsing moment, eyes dilated. Then, without a word, he released her and walked out the door.

  She stared at the empty rectangle, feeling a deep, bone-weakening tremble in her limbs. Then she turned her head to one side, whispering quietly, “Damn you.” What it meant, not even she knew.

  Roxanne found her a few minutes later, sitting on the edge of the bed, quite still, staring toward the floor at her feet, her face a white blank. The brunette’s voice was subdued as she asked, “Are you ready to go?”

  “What?” Caprice said tiredly. She looked up, and then her eyes really focused, and expression came back to her face, though not color. “Oh yes. Of course.” She calmly reached for the handle of her suitcase and followed her friend down the stairs.

  Good-byes and thanks were effusively made. Caprice felt the weary lies even as she mouthed them with a smile on her pale lips, but knew of no other way to get through it. She spoke a few words with Mrs. Langston, that poised, attractive lady, and in her eyes was a dry knowledge, which brought a disconcerted frown to the other woman.

  Then there was the moment when Caprice was turning to Emory and hugging him affectionately, regardless of the interested, speculating look of the others. She stood on tiptoe to whisper into his ear, “I want to hear how things turn out between you and Petra. Let me know, all right?”

  She drew back, and he smiled down at her. “All right. Drive carefully, you two.”

  “We will,” promised Roxanne, while Caprice caught a frank glare from Petra. She smiled, positively sunny in the face of the other girl’s ill-concealed hatred.

  Though she was terrible at reading maps, she held routes well in her memory, and had to consult Roxanne for directions only a few times on their way back. Their drive up had been nice, as the sun had been shining, but on their return Caprice found the sun so fierce, she had to resort to dark glasses to combat a headache and the bright glare.

  “Cap,” said Roxanne in a small voice when they had been traveling for some time.

  After a moment, stifling a sigh, she grunted, “Mmm.”

  “Are you glad you went?”

  How should she answer that? She was too tired for any dissembling. “No,” she said.

  “Neither am I.” A long pause. Wind whistled at the speed of their passage, a constant, high, inhuman sound. “Cappy. Why did you agree to come?”

  She licked dry lips and immediately gave it up, for the wind whipped them dry again instantly. “I didn’t want you hurt.”

  “Jeffrey.” Roxanne’s voice was flat.

  “He’s an unreliable fool, and wholly likable. But I wouldn’t count on devotion from him.”

  She could sense the other girl’s dark head jerking to stare at her. “I don’t—really know you at all, do I?”

  She said quite gently, “No. But I shouldn’t get worked up over it, if I were you. I don’t think I know myself very well either.”

  Roxanne said, quick and sudden, “I think I’m glad I went after all. I kept getting mad at you every time Jeffrey would pay attention to you instead of me. But after this morning, I can’t—like him as much as I did.”

  “He wasn’t to know that I’d get so upset,” Caprice reminded her.

  “No, but anyone could see that you weren’t eager to horse around. Even Ralph said that you were so careful in the water, he hadn’t the heart to splash water at you. And instead of respecting that, Jeffrey acted pettily. I was very angry at him.”

  She shot her friend a smiling glance. “It wasn’t hard to tell.”

  She could almost hear Roxanne’s mind working, wheels grinding busily away. They had known each other for a long time, but somehow totally open conversations had been rare between them, and Caprice rather felt that they were embarking on a new and fragile beginning. The brunette tried another leading remark. “Petra is furious with you, did you notice?”

  She couldn’t resist the totally wicked grin that brought her face to unexpected animation. “Well,” she said composedly, increasing the car’s speed as they neared the Virginia state line, “she shouldn’t have refused Emory’s proposal, then, if she’s going to get so worked up about it.”

  “You sly devil! Is that what’s going on, then?” Roxanne was warming to her more and more.

  “Yes, but Emory’s quite innocent of it. He’s just grateful I let him pour out all his woes on my sympathetic shoulder. His perspective is not exactly, well, penetrating. I can’t wait to see what happens!”

  Her friend laughed and strangely sobered again, quickly. “Cap,” said Roxanne for a third time, and it was the most hesitant of all. “I—came to your room, and found you with Pierce. I left and came back again, since I didn’t want to disturb you.”

&n
bsp; Dear heaven. A dark color tinged her cheeks, a swift, jaw-clenched reaction. Roxanne wouldn’t have disturbed her unduly. Pierce had been the one to completely destroy her composure. “Forget what you saw,” she said from stiff lips. “It was nothing.”

  “It looked like a lot more than nothing to me,” Roxanne retorted.

  “I said forget it.”

  “You fell for him.”

  “Let’s change the conversation.” They were nearing the other girl’s home, thank God.

  “But anyone could see it. And he was attracted to you too. What’s wrong with that? He seems like a gorgeous man; you always have the luck. And I’ve never seen you so seriously interested in someone like that. You should keep in contact with him.”

  From a warm, relaxed sharing to this sudden, shaking discomposure. Couldn’t the other girl see how this was upsetting her? She tightened her trembling fingers on the steering wheel until the bone showed white through the skin at her knuckles. “It was nothing,” she repeated, like a litany. “He’s not my type. Now please, Roxanne, just drop it!”

  They pulled on to the street where the brunette lived. “All right,” Caprice heard her say, clearly confused. She pulled in to the driveway and came to a stop near the front door. The silence between them drew out until she turned her blonde head to stare at the other girl, who was steadily studying what could be seen of her face behind the dark glasses. “I still don’t know you very well, do I?”

  Her lips trembled obviously. With a quick gesture, she touched Roxanne’s shoulder and then turned her face away. The other girl’s good-bye was gentle.

  Caprice pulled in to her own driveway twenty minutes later with the haggard feeling that she had survived a war. Wearily she dragged out her suitcase and made her way inside the house. The evening sunlight led her to suspect that she would find things very quiet, and she was right. After letting Liz know she was back, she went to her room, dropped her suitcase uncaringly to the floor, locked her door behind her and stripped. A hard yank had her bedcovers tugged back, and she crept between her sheets with a deep, shuddering sigh. The day had been incredibly draining, and she concentrated single-mindedly on falling asleep as quickly and easily as she possibly could.