"You don't know?"
"I haven't been getting out much."
"It was my grandmother's."
He smacked his forehead dramatically. "Of course! Tess Moran of the Moran Mills empire. I knew that. So Moran isn't your married name. Why did you choose to keep it?"
"You've just said the reason: the Moran Mills empire. My husband was fine with my decision. And since I wasn't married for long, it was the right decision."
"Huh. How's the textile business doing, by the way? Any mills left, or have you sold them all to developers and shipped the work to China?"
"I still own half the mills."
"Ah. Well—good for you. These are tough times for the industry."
She shrugged, not wishing to be drawn into a discussion of either fabrics or fortunes, and was surprised when he asked, "Do you plan to sell this place, too?"
Despite herself, she said, "Why would I do that?"
Now it was his turn to shrug. "After this summer, Newport will be just another tourist town. Like Provincetown. Or the Vineyard. The unique, international ambience will have gone—and with it, of course, your 'quality' people." There was heavy irony in his voice.
She saw where he was headed, but she refused to believe it. "Because?"
"The Cup will be in Australia," he said flatly. "Perth, Australia. Ever been there? Clean. New. Tall. Bland." He frowned and, averting her gaze, sipped from his mug.
"So you think the Cup will really go this time? After a hundred and thirty-two years of consecutive victories?"
"Of course. And so do you. So does anyone with twenty-twenty vision who's seen Australia II on the water."
"Well, count me out," she said firmly. "It's a fast boat, and well sailed, I admit. The Australians are better than any of the foreign challengers, I admit. So what? The U.S. is ... the U.S.," she added in a sublime flight of optimism. "No one is taking anything for granted, least of all Australia's winged keel—despite its illegality," she said, still appalled that the New York Yacht Club allowed the radical design into the competition.
Again he shrugged. "The keel's legal. Period. Ask the Brits, ask Olin Stephens, ask anyone who can discuss it without getting hysterical at the thought of the U.S. losing its beloved Cup."
"Which apparently you can do easily enough," she snapped.
"I've shed my last tear," he answered tiredly.
"Shadow is fast. Shadow may well be the fastest American boat," Mavis said stubbornly. She threw it down like a challenge.
He neither accepted nor turned away from it. "Shadow looks fast because I'm good on the helm," he said simply.
"Are you." He was so exasperating. She tried hard to keep herself from boiling over. Turn down the flame, she cautioned herself. "If you're so good," she said, "why are you leaving your country in the lurch?" In a low, intense rush she added, "Some might call you a traitor."
He pretended not to hear her last remark. "Well, Mavis, one or two things. First is the question of whether Cindy is actually dead or alive. Perhaps you didn't realize—no, of course you couldn't know," he said with a thin smile, "that someone has come forward with a description of a gentleman friend of Cindy's who seems to fit your description of this Delgado fella. They were once seen on a Cape Cod beach, which is possible but not likely since Cindy hated the sun. There's also the unworn high-heeled shoe that was found on the front seat. The investigation continues, discreetly, into whether my wife is not a suicide at all but the moll of a two-bit gangster."
Without acknowledging Mavis's look of sudden understanding, he plowed ahead. "Then there's the matter of the innocent Newporter she's crippled for life. His paralysis is a fact, whether Cindy is dead or alive; that I know. And so here's a question for you: is a yacht race—even a very old yacht race—between rich men worth two legs of an ordinary citizen?"
"You're so majestic," she interrupted with heat, "and you weren't even there at the time."
"Precisely. I wasn't even there at the time. And that was the whole problem. Cindy tells me—from the grave, from her hiding place, what does it matter?—that I'm not a caring person. And she must be right."
"Of course she's dead, Mavis answered.
He looked up at that. "Is that to make me feel better? So that I don't have to wonder, ever after, is she or isn't she? So that, the question resolved, I can slip behind the helm of the Shadow, win the race, and keep America great? Forget it, Mave. I'm not going back."
"Because the Aussies have you running scared, skipper?" she asked caustically.
"Because I'm not going back." He held the steaming mug between his large hands, his forearms resting on his thighs. He stared into the cup, she thought, as though he wished it were a deep, deep lake.
"Then sell me Shadow." She had no idea who said it, but obviously her lips moved.
He looked up at her, both alert and intrigued. "For your husband's syndicate?"
It was an evasion; she thrust it aside impatiently. "How much would you ask? For the boat, the entire sail inventory, all the gear, everything."
"Life jackets too? Gee, I'd have to think about it." He crossed his legs, Buddha-fashion—the robe slipped a bit; he tucked it demurely in place—and put on a thoughtful look.
Stalling again. "Dammit, Alan. Make up your mind. Either you're in or you're out. Let someone else have a chance. And it's not as though you can go cruising to Europe in Shadow. And I should add that the market for used 12-meter yachts is both limited and suffering from a glut."
"Ah, now you're trying to knock the price down." He drew out a small cigar and a pack of matches which he'd thought to tuck into a pocket of the spa robe, obviously enjoying himself.
"How much, Alan?" Suddenly Mavis knew what it was she wanted to do: head an America's Cup syndicate on her own. She was not naive enough to consider picking up the whole tab herself; only enough, the major part, to give her the final word in everything. It was the obvious way. Alan—if he stayed in, and she thought he might—Alan would then be free to do what he did best, to steer Shadow to victory. She believed in Shadow, even more than she believed in Alan Seton. She pressed him. "How much?"
"Three million bucks," he said serenely.
She fell back into the soft cushions of her sofa, genuinely stunned. "You're nuts."
"Some say that." He puffed contentedly on his cigar, a cheerful study in repose. And yet five minutes ago he had been an equally convincing study in tragedy.
"You're a fake," Mavis said, feeling oddly wounded. "I don't believe a word of what you've said tonight, and I wish," she added wearily, "that you'd just go home." She stood up. "Good night."
He yawned what seemed to be a spontaneous, wide yawn and said sleepily, "You're right, of course. I'm a bum. Good night, Mavis." And he plumped up one of the silk-covered pillows, reclined full-length on the couch, and sighed deeply.
She stood there, amazed at his presumption and, though she never would have admitted it, mesmerized by the movie star lines of his tanned profile against the pale cushion. She stared at him, studied him. But no; he wouldn't do. Mavis prized consistency above all else. She needed to be able to predict behavior, because that allowed her to stay one step ahead of the opposition. Barring that, and if she were matched equally to her opponent, she needed a consistent set of rules to play by. But Alan Seton was a dilettante who ignored the rules. A typical aristocrat: nothing, apparently, was worth the effort. Not even the Cup. The little man at the press conference was right. Alan Seton, grandson of a peer, wasn't patriotic enough to keep going when the going got tough.
He was asleep. She hadn't even decided her next move, and he was asleep. He couldn't possibly be faking it, she thought; no one slept that unself-consciously except the totally exhausted. His mouth was open a little, and he was snoring, not really gently. Pale white squint lines showed through his tan, and lines from his straight nose to his square jaw. His five o'clock shadow was eight hours old, and his black hair had reverted to the shape it liked best—undisciplined curls. His brow w
as slightly furrowed, as though sleep had caught him unawares and knocked him down in the middle of some weighty pondering.
She declined to wake him, not because she felt sorry for him but because she refused to feel that he made a difference in her life. She would let him sleep it off the way she would let a visiting child nap: because it was best for him. Because she decided that it was best for him.
In her room, in her bed, Mavis discovered that her eyes, too, were lined with lead; she could not keep them open. For her, too, the day had been interminable. The amazing thing was that she was falling asleep despite the fact that Alan Seton was under the same roof. Or was it, she wondered in a rapid slide into sleep, because of it?
Chapter 6
The first knock was absorbed into her dream. She was dreaming that she was a little girl again, riding her pony along the beach, and she became lost, and it was nearly dark. So she knocked on the door of a cottage—a little teahouse, actually, Mandarin style—and someone tall and handsome and very famous, but whose name escaped her, answered the door. She was thrilled but too shy to ask the stranger's name, so she contrived to run back to her pony to get her little writing pad; she would ask the famous man for his autograph and solve the mystery of his identity. But when she ran back to where she'd tethered her pony, the animal was gone, and he was there instead. She screamed, "What have you done with Jezebel?" and flew at him, enraged. Only now she was a woman, tall and strong, but not strong enough to push him into the sea. He held her, blocking her assault, and she knew she could not overpower him.
The second knock woke her and Mavis bolted up, fearful and disoriented. Against the dim background light of a distant room she saw Alan, leaning against the door jamb to her room, his body a silhouette of dejection. His head was bowed, his gaze aimed at the floor, his right arm stretched to the opposite side of the jamb. With his free hand he knocked again on her bedroom wall, outrageously courteous.
"Yes? What?"
"Mavis." His voice was low, determined. "Let me come to you."
She said nothing, but she was aware, as she never had been in her life, of sexual desire. The sheet fell away from her as with one hand she swept the auburn strands from her damp, flushed face. She wanted someone, that she knew. Whether it was the man in her doorway or the stranger in her dreams or the first damn man off the street—it had been too long since her husband's death. She wanted someone to wrap around; she wanted someone to hold her.
Now Alan was standing beside her, pensively, she thought. Still without a word from her, he unbelted his robe and tossed it across the bed. The room was dark. They were two shadows, reflections of one another's desire. What Mavis wanted was a man; what Alan needed was a woman. Their longing could not be spoken of aloud. What could they say that hadn't already been said by generations of warring men and women who somehow found themselves in bed together?
She was still sitting up, her hands folded almost demurely in her lap. Silently he sat on the bed, supporting himself on one arm alongside her. With his free hand he drew aside, with hesitant precision, the remaining strands of hair that clung damply to her neck. The gentleness of his touch was itself a question; the low sigh that emerged from Mavis was his answer.
With light, skimming kisses he traced a path along the nape of her neck to a secret place just below her ear, and there he stayed, tormenting her with tiny nips and caresses, until with a moan of desperation she turned his face to hers and kissed him deeply. It was an evasion tactic on her part, an attempt to reverse the sudden meltdown in the core of her self.
But Alan had other ideas. He began a slow perusal of her body, and his touch was unerring. She had had lovers with distractingly busy hands, and lovers with clumsy, heavy hands. Invariably she had had to guide them, train them practically. It had become a challenge to get satisfaction, and she had felt always in charge.
But this was new. It was impossible for her to avoid feeling that she was being handled as expertly as any 12-meter yacht. His sense of timing was superb. In the split millisecond when she might have thought, "Too long," he moved on to another flashpoint, fine-tuning her, bringing her to her full potential for arousal.
Mavis knew what was being done to her and she considered whether she should say, Stop, I don't want any more. She thought it would be good discipline to say, Stop. She thought it would certainly preserve her sanity if she said, Stop. But she only moaned more deeply, intensely aware of every part of her that he touched. And then he was inside her and, lying still, said his first words since coming to her bed. "Mavis … quitting hurt more than I thought."
"I know," she whispered. "I know."
And then, "Mavis," again, with a groan, and suddenly she was like Shadow, off with him on a flying reach, tearing for the mark, ecstatic, hell-bent on winning after all.
It was over quickly. But whether she won, or he did, she didn't know or care.
They lay in one another's arms for a long while in the near dark and near silence. Idly Mavis wished that she had a remote control to turn off the dim light in the other room, and to silence the crickets. She wanted completeness: all dark, all quiet, all satisfied. Alan's breathing had become slow and easy, and Mavis, the woman who almost never stopped planning ahead, was lulled into sleep with no thought of the morning.
Still, the dawn did come, and though the sun was not yet on her lawn, the neighbor's spaniel was; its cheerful, wide-awake yap roused Mavis and her lover from equally deep slumbers. Mavis heard a muffled groan in the softness of her own pillow, where Alan had burrowed in the predawn coolness.
"God in heaven, what's that noise?" he muttered, half asleep.
"A rabbit."
There was a pause. "You're joking."
"I mean: the barking is coming from a springer spaniel who's undoubtedly chasing a rabbit across my lawn." There was sleepy affection in her voice, something she didn't want to admit to.
He pulled the sheet over his head. "It's going to be stew in another minute."
"The rabbit?" Her eyes were still closed.
"Him too."
She sighed and stretched luxuriously, refusing to open her eyes, dragging out the anonymity of the night. If she opened her eyes and saw who he was, they would be at war again, she felt sure of it. Still, give the man credit. "You were masterful last night," she admitted.
"Thank you, mum," he said with a yawn. "I try to please."
He slid his hand around her front, though he was still half asleep. The gesture seemed instinctive, mindless, all too male. For some reason it bothered her, and she became awake. "But," she said crisply, throwing the sheet off them both, "I have lots and lots of things to do today. I do think it's time we tracked down your runaway clothes."
She had overreacted, of course, but what surprised her was the look on his face when she glanced at him. There was no resentment; it was almost a grateful look. Out of bed he leaped.
"I owe you, Mavis," he said seriously, slipping back into the spa robe. "I was a basket case last night, I know. You were good to take me in."
"Anytime," she answered dryly, reaching for her dressing gown and feeling surprisingly used, despite the fact that she had used him as well.
He sensed her hurt anger—only the very dimmest could have missed it—and he paused in his getaway to make things right. Propping one foot on a little needlework footstool, he leaned toward her, arms folded over one knee—the lawyer in everybody's courtroom—and delivered his cross-examination.
"It wouldn't work, would it," he said in a matter-of-fact way.
Still sitting on the edge of her bed, she declined to give him the answer he wanted. She pulled her robe partly around her. "Are you asking me or telling me?" she said.
"You're a high visibility object; I might as well take the Statue of Liberty out on a date." He tried a rueful grin.
Mavis had no idea why, but she was curious to see how he was going to talk his way out of it. She said nothing.
"It really wouldn't bother you?" he went on. "A rich hei
ress being seen in the dubious company of an impoverished quitter and only recently widowed husband? Or a still-married man, as the case may be?"
"I don't bother about scandal sheets," she said, although she did. "Anyway, what about the boat?" she added, suddenly tired of all the rest of it.
"Ah, Shadow. That darling, expensive jade of mine." He stood up and rumpled his hair with a squint-eyed grimace that showed all of his teeth. He sucked in, then dropped, a frustrated sigh in the air between them. "I lied at the press conference, you know. The well's running just a tad dry. Cash-flow issues." He considered a moment and then asked, "What's your best offer?"
She wanted the boat; she could afford to be generous. "Eight hundred thousand."
"What? For the fastest twelve on the water?" He puffed his cheeks, then blew air out of them, a perfect used-car salesman. "Miss Mavis, Miss Mavis," he chided gently, reaching out to stroke and pat her sleep-tossed hair, "you and I have some serious dickerin' to do."
****
It's sad but true that on hot, sunny days the visitors' parking lot of the Newport Hospital is noticeably emptier than on wet, soggy ones. Alan's silver Mercedes, which only a week ago had been found bloody and bent on the Newport Bridge, was now clean, repaired, and sitting more or less alone at the east end of the visitors' lot. Even the inside of the hospital seemed to Alan a little empty, as if half the patients had declared a holiday from being sick and had gone off to First Beach for a picnic and a dip in the surf. The nurses greeted Alan in a friendly, small-town way; it was hard for him to believe that people could be truly, seriously ill in such pleasant surroundings.
And yet, as he stood in the hall outside of Neil Powers' room, waiting for an opportune time to announce himself, the awful, inescapable truth of hospitals was driven home to him. The voice of a young woman, whom he couldn't see, was unnaturally bright; the man's was patient but hopeless.
"Dad, don't you think it's kind of cool?" Apparently the girl was showing something to her father, trying to gin up enthusiasm. "You can do anything with one of these chairs. Think how you can get around, even before you're on your feet again."
By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs Page 8
