How had he got drunk so fast? She walked unwillingly to the low window. He was going to make a fool of himself.
"Guess what?" he said, looking up at her with slightly unfocused but remarkably long-lashed eyes.
"You've withdrawn," she answered calmly.
"Huh! Well, okay .... Guess what else?"
She lifted the empty glass from his hand and balanced it on the sill. "You've drunk a record amount of rum in record time." The air between them was redolent with it.
"Well ... well, I'll be damned. Fellas, you hear that?" he demanded, swinging his head around to the table inside where the Shadow crewmen sat, well on the way to the same sweet oblivion as their leader. Their ex-leader. "This woman is definitely ... psychic," he said in an awed voice. Then he turned back to Mavis with a look of suspicion. "Saa-a-y, wait a minute. Who told?" He turned back to the crew. "Which one of you blammermouths told?" he demanded loudly.
Mavis tugged at his sleeve, afraid that he might do something really silly. He'd been under an absurd strain for the past few days. "Alan. I was at the press conference myself. As for the rum you've knocked back—call it a lucky guess," she said, and despite the bewildering anger she had been feeling for him, she smiled.
"I knew it," he said instantly. "They're a great bunch of guys. They'd never tell. You'd have to cut their tongues out first."
He gave her the sweet smile of a neophyte drunk. And yet she'd seen him put away his fair share at a beer bash the Canadian syndicate had given for all the other crews and still stay stone sober. So it had to be the strain.
"I've enjoyed our little chat," she said ironically, "but I have to be getting home. I need to change for dinner." She felt self-conscious; the crowd, recognizing the handsome drunk in the window, was edging nearer. Alan was crazy, she thought, to appear in public now.
"Dinner! That's what we're having!" he said, thunderstruck by the coincidence. "Come inside. Eat with us."
"Another time, perhaps. I really must be going."
"Now wait. Now wait," he said, encircling her upper arm with a surprisingly callused hand. The roughness of his touch carried with it unmistakable authority, and she paused and stared coolly at the deeply browned fingers on the lighter, golden tan of her arm.
"Mavis, don't be that way," he argued, fuzzily aware that he was being cut. "Will you at least have a drink before you go? We, hmm, have a lot to talk about."
"Thank you, no."
"Or wait! Better yet, I'll come out," he answered, swinging one leg over the low window sill.
"Don't you dare," she said, aghast.
He paused mid-swing. "Mavis, I was a … I guess the word is, pig, when you offered your help last year. Right?"
"Definitely that," said Mavis, not about to throw him a bone of polite disclaimer.
He grimaced melodramatically, and she thought, there's black Irish in him, and it suits him very well. Even drunk he was blazingly handsome.
"I called you some awful things," he said humbly. "Right?"
"I don't really remember." She remembered every word. After he'd accused her of preying on human flesh and dealing in white slavery, he'd launched into a tirade about the corporate piranha mentality and demanded to know if she, Mavis, branded the rumps of all her cattle or whether she'd be satisfied with a complete set of his dental X-rays. She had merely smiled and said, "Either way." After that he'd stormed out of the Sans Souci and Mavis was left to pay the bill. That was their last real, if you could call it that, conversation.
"Mavis, I ... these last few days ..." He sighed deeply, still holding her arm. "A crystal ball ..." he began, and again he trailed off. Then the rambling intoxication lifted, just for a moment, and his eyes held hers with a look of complete, consuming regret.
The look shot through Mavis like a bolt of fire, short-circuiting her defense systems, leaving her standing and staring, astonished at the intensity of her response. His hand burned into her arm; for a wild second she thought they were fusing together, there on the wharf. Then: the flash of a camera, acting like an icy gin and tonic in her face. The press had found them. He, one leg on the window sill of the Black Pearl, wearing a look of inebriated anguish; she, resplendent in baggy khakis and a polyester shirt.
"Damn you," Mavis said under her breath, and she yanked her arm from Alan's grip. Shaking with fury and confused emotion, she murmured, "You maudlin fool! Who do you think you are?" And she turned and plunged into the crowd, brushing aside the photographers as though they were hollyhocks in a country garden.
Four hours and one dinner party later, Mavis was still smoldering. More than a year earlier, the media had had a field day with the story of their tête-à-tête at the San Souci. One tabloid had run the headline: "Skipper balks, then walks, while heiress talks." Bill, still convalescing from his heart attack, thought it was screamingly funny. Mavis did not. And now here she was, grist for the media mill again, only this time with photos. Wonderful.
****
In the best bedroom of Beau Rêve, her grandmother's favorite room, Mavis got ready for bed. She removed her earrings—tonight, simple emerald studs—and stared at herself dispassionately in the mirror. With her usual ruthless precision she reminded herself that she had walked, not been dragged, to Bannister's Wharf, a known mecca for photographers. She had made herself fair game, just as Alan Seton had. Clearly her subconscious had a mind of its own. It was one of the unresolved oddities in her life, that she despised the gossip columns and yet read every word of every rag every day. In that, she was nothing at all like Grandmother Tess.
Mavis folded her arms across the hand-rubbed veneer of her dressing table and rested her head on the back of one wrist. She was horribly tired. And depressed.
"Is there anything else, Miss Moran?"
Lifting her head, Mavis answered dully, "Nothing, Lisa, thank you. Don't forget to flip on the alarm when you leave."
"You don't think he'd come back for more, do you? Because if you want me to, I'll stay. I mean there might be ... well, he must know where you live now .... Anything could ..."
"Lisa, I'm fine. Don't be theatrical. Besides, you know everything's in the safe deposit box." The insurance company, appalled at the cavalier way Mavis stored her jewels, had insisted on it.
"But does the robber know that? Beau Rêve is so by itself."
"Lisa."
Mavis heard the girl sigh, then hesitate for a long moment. "If you're really, really sure, then. Good night."
"Yes."
Mavis was alone at last. The night was very warm, very still. Crickets chirped in country harmony, drowning out the soft laps of the next-door ocean. She shed her dinner dress, unable to will herself out of her lethargy. The muggy night added to her sense of oppression. Under the thin batik of her dressing gown, she was obsessively aware of her left breast, convinced she felt a vague burning. Did breast cancer hurt? Was a burning sensation one of the seven warning signs? What were the other six, in any case? Her mother had been plagued by benign cysts; that, more than anything, allowed Mavis to circle idly around the questions without panicking at not having answers.
More questions. With Alan out of the running, which of the Americans would be chosen to defend the Cup? Dennis Conner, with his machine-like efficiency, or Tom Blackaller, Conner's flamboyant rival? If it were a popularity contest, John Kolius, sailing the two-time defender Courageous, would surely be given the nod. Even without Alan, it should still be an interestingly bitter campaign. Then there were the Australians, who had all the other foreign challengers running scared. Still more interesting.
Then why had it suddenly become anticlimactic to be a part of it all? The most interesting racing in a hundred and thirty-two years, and Mavis Moran was—bored.
She raised her head, her sea-green eyes suddenly wide with realization. Oh no. Not because of him! A blue-eyed, black-haired egotist with no follow-through? No. A penitent, self-righteous drunk with absolutely no regard for proper form? Dear God, no, she begged. Let her want someone
else. She could have virtually anyone she desired; she didn't want to want Alan Seton. Not even for sex, which is the only conceivable reason a woman could be attracted to him. Other than that, he was totally impossible.
She forced herself to think of other things as she brushed her teeth and cleansed her face of the little makeup she wore. She toweled her cheeks until they glowed a dull red, trying to remove all traces of the day, of the man, of her thoughts of him. She pounded her pillows with equal ferocity; they became too fluffy. She threw one on the floor. Too flat. She lay on her stomach; her back began to hurt. She lay on her back; her breasts began to throb.
Oh damn! she whispered over and over. An hour later the sheet was on the carpet, the blanket was over the footboard, and Mavis was on her way to a migraine.
"Yoo-o-o hoo-o. Miss Ma-ayy-vis!"
And now I'm hallucinating, she thought.
"Mavis!" came the hoarse cry. "Wake up!"
With a sense that she was about to do battle against unequal forces, Mavis threw the batik wrap around her too-warm, naked body and slipped through the French doors onto the stone balcony.
Part of her was outraged, and she tried to hold that note as she peered down from the balcony into the silver-mooned night below. The backdrop of bright light let her see Alan quite clearly, still in his press conference clothes, but minus his shoes and socks.
"If you've come to recite Shakespeare, I prefer Yeats," she said cooly.
"I only know the Bard," he answered, and he began, indeed, reciting.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate—
"Uh, wait, let me rephrase," he corrected. "Lovely, yes—but I dunno about temperate."
Snorting, Mavis said, "No gentleman, but clearly a scholar," and turned to leave.
With a startling shift in tone he quoted in a light, teasing voice: "O! When she's angry she is keen and shrewd."
For a man in his cups he was too quick by half, she thought, a smile of appreciation hovering on her lips. Seton and Shakespeare were a natural combination. Over her shoulder she called out, "Good night, skipper."
"Mavis, open the damn door," he commanded impatiently.
"Or you'll blow the house down? Try." It was absurd to goad him, of course. But satisfying.
"All right, then; I'll let myself in!" He said it in a shout, injecting a dramatic note into the proceedings.
The stone wall supporting the balcony was overrun with thick ivy. Mavis heard a rustling in the ivy, then, "Ow! Ow!" and a thud. She leaned over the balcony.
"No shoes," Alan said sheepishly, looking up at her from his seat on the grass.
With Queen-of-England restraint, Mavis smiled formally and waved her farewell. She wouldn't have to call the police after all.
She was locking the French doors from inside when she saw the top four feet of a ladder pass over the balustrade.
"Really, this is too much." She'd been riding an emotional Ferris wheel long enough that night; it wasn't fun anymore. Annoyance erupted into steadily burning anger as she re-crossed the terrace in two strides and grabbed the ladder ends.
"Alas, no boiling oil," she said with real regret. "You'll forgive this more practical approach." And she shoved the ladder from the balustrade with all of her considerable strength.
"Whoa!" In a flash Seton grabbed her wrist in one hand, the balustrade with the other, slamming the ladder back into position between them. "Are you crazy?"
Suddenly it wasn't a game any longer, but an elemental, almost primitive contest of force. Mavis had the advantage of position; he, of physical strength. Towering above him, imperious in her fury, she said, "I'll have you charged, Seton."
"Over my dead body," Alan answered in a calmer voice. "Which it very nearly was," he added, and she could imagine the slow smile gathering momentum behind the afterthought.
It infuriated her still more, this male inability to take her threat seriously. He was so near. His scent—rum, tobacco, the sweat from camera lights and a long day's tension—mocked her own washed and perfumed womanliness. Dared her. Again she tried to shove the ladder into oblivion; again he held fast to her. Both were breathing heavily now.
"Mavis," he said, and this time his voice was entreating, "Don't you get it? I have nowhere else to go."
"I ... don't believe you." It was barely a whisper, definitely a lie. She did believe him. "Where are all your crew?"
He held her wrist, though she was still. "Scattered. Some of us got out of the van on Ocean Drive; we split in different directions, trying to ditch the press. The guys can hitch rides back to Seacliff. Me, I can't go back there," he added quietly.
She didn't bother asking why. The media; memories of his wife; the end of his dream. Mavis couldn't have returned either, in the same situation. "All right, then. For a cup of coffee. You sure as hell need one."
He released her, his face absolutely expressionless. It threw her. Everything about him threw her. She led the way across the softly lit terrace, suddenly aware that she was wearing nothing but a thin robe. They both reached for the door latch at the same time and she jumped back from the touch of his hand; it allowed him the point for chivalry as he got the door, a point she hated to concede.
Inside her bedroom Alan looked around briefly, said, "Nice," and nodded across the ivory and delft Chinese rug toward the adjoining bathroom. "Would you mind if I grabbed a quick shower? Anything to feel a little less like a beast of the jungle," he added.
"Shoes might help," said Mavis, distracted by her pulse rate.
"Yeah. I lost one in a crevice between two rocks on Cliff Walk. I threw the other one in the ocean."
Mavis lifted her eyebrows slightly. "Nice touch." Then, on her way out of the room, she turned suddenly and said, "Are you part Irish?"
Seton, already stripped of his shirt and on his way out of his shorts, stopped mid-zip and grinned. "Who isn't? Why? Do you sense a kindred soul in me?"
It was Mavis's turn to smile. "Please. It's inconceivable to me that I would ever throw a shoe into the ocean."
"You've never done anything impulsive?"
"Never."
"Put your shoes on then—and maybe clothes," he said promptly, "and I'll take you for a stroll along Cliff Walk. Big tourist stuff around here, and you've probably never even seen it."
"I spent lots of time in Newport as a child, thanks. I've seen it."
"But not by night, I'll bet."
Unconsciously she touched the bruise on her chin, which he seemed to notice for the first time.
Whether he remembered the details from the robbery or whether he took his cue from her pained look, Alan said nothing more, and she left him.
She headed for the kitchen, a true chef's fantasy. There, function reigned supreme; it was not a place for friendly gatherings among friends and family. Acres of stainless steel, restaurant-sized appliances, food processors that really worked—caterers would surely fight for the right to prepare food in it for the inevitable cocktail parties that filled a Newport summer.
If Mavis ever chose to host one, that is. Despite her wealth, she had declined to go the route of Newport's legendary grandes dames. She had long ago convinced herself that she neither needed nor valued the opinion of others. The intricacies of social one-upmanship bored her; in that, she wasn't the first to believe that the real purpose of Society was to make one's friends miserable.
And why was she convinced? Because when she was ten years old, her grandmother had sat her down and administered a no-nonsense dose of reality to her.
"I was a laundry maid; my mother was a cook," Tess Moran had said, "and nothing can change that. Never will you be admitted to the few dozen backbones of American Society. Nothing—not even marriage—will make you into an Astor or a Wilson or a Baker, or even a Vanderbilt."
Mavis remembered still the sudden, puzzling rush of feeling ordinary. It must have shown in her face because her grandmother had hugged her and offered consolation: "Never
mind, my darling," she had said. "With my money and your face you'll be able to do anything, go anywhere, and be anyone you want. You can be your own woman; that's all that matters. If you don't want to marry, you certainly won't have to."
So here she was, a fully independent woman, trying to sober up an inebriated ex-rival in the most elitist of sports. If her grandmother could see her now.
Annoyed by the mission thrust on her, Mavis swept past the espresso machine, the electric coffee grinder, and the commercial twin-station drip coffee brewer. She took down the smallest pot on the rack overhead, a four-quart copper saucepan, filled it with tap water, and set it to boil. Rejecting the bone china tea cups, she chose instead two souvenir mugs emblazoned with images of the America's Cup trophy which someone had given her as a joke. They were deep and substantial and probably offensive, given Alan's afternoon, but she did not want to have to return to the kitchen, like the little missus, to get a refill for Alan Seton. One mugful, and out.
The freeze-dried crystals had barely dissolved when Alan ambled in, wrapped in a spa knee-length robe. "I filched this from another bedroom. It had no gentleman's name label sewn in, so I assume it's generic."
She gave him a narrow look. "And your clothes are …?"
"A little ripe at this point; I'll put 'em back on after I've enjoyed my coffee. Which hopefully I can drink somewhere else than in this engine room," he added, blinking in the crisp white light. "May we?" And with a courtly gesture he indicated the large living area which lay adjacent.
Without speaking they took seats opposite one another, each in an L-shaped sofa covered in creamy silk. The sofas jutted out from a spectacular pillared fireplace of rose marble; a low wide table topped in inlaid mahogany squatted between them, keeping them at a safe distance from one another.
Like diplomats of unfriendly nations, they eyed one another warily.
"So," he said. "This would be what, the family room?"
"If I had a family."
He ran a hand across the silk cushion. "Not exactly pet-friendly. Your place, or rented?"
By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs Page 7
