Poinciana

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “You’ve had a good sleep,” he said. “You’re warm and soft and relaxed—the way you should be. Darling, I want to show something.”

  He scooped me up easily in his arms and carried me through the open door into his room. When he laid me on the bed, I could look up at Ysobel’s picture over the mantel and I stared at it fixedly.

  “Aren’t you pleased?” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t want her hidden away in a museum. Besides, she must see how happy we are, my darling. Don’t move now. Close your eyes and wait a moment.”

  I knew what was going to happen as he reached for the switch on the stereo set. The recording began near the end of a phrase, and I heard the huskiness of her voice—“… memories of blue champagne …”

  “No!” I cried and sat up on the bed. “Don’t play that! Don’t ever play it again!”

  “Of course I’ll play it.” His voice was low, gentle, but it brushed aside my objections. “It’s the one perfect tune for our lovemaking. Her voice, her song. And let her watch—let her!”

  I pushed against him, rolling to the far side of the bed. “No! I won’t let you do this! I won’t let you make love to her through me.”

  He pulled me back to him and all gentleness was gone. “Is that what you think? That I’d make love to her through you? Don’t you know how much I hated her, detested her? But I want her here now—here in this room so she can see that I’ve beaten her. That I’ve married her daughter.”

  The singing voice went on beside us, disembodied and terribly wrong, when there was nothing of flesh and blood behind it. What he was telling me was even worse than the sickness I’d suspected. Ysobel was the only woman who had ever refused him, denied him, sent him away, so now he must try to punish her through me, by making love to me.

  “Let’s get you out of all these clothes,” he whispered against my cheek.

  Only humiliation could result in a physical struggle against him. There was a better way.

  “What a fool you are!” I said softly. “What fools we’ve both been. Can’t you see that Ysobel has won? We are her discards—both of us!”

  He let me go and sat up beside me with a curious blankness in his eyes. I slid off the bed and stood up.

  “Get out of my room!” he said, his tone ominously low. “Get out of my sight!” The threat in his voice was terrifying.

  I rushed into the hall, and it didn’t matter where I ran. I only needed, as he said, to get out of his sight. I had made him a nothing, and that was the one thing Ross Logan could never endure to be.

  It was all over—everything I’d trusted in so mistakenly, everything I’d hoped for so stupidly and innocently in this marriage. There were tears on my cheeks and sobs were catching my breath as I ran down the nearest stairs, stumbling, clinging to the rail to keep from falling, hoping that I would meet no one until I could find a place to hide. Because I was afraid of myself—of falling apart in some disastrous breakdown of the sort I’d been close to after that fire in Belfast. I no longer had any inner place of concealment to run to—and no confidence in my ability to face what lay outside.

  Because I was hurtling blindly, I ran directly into Jarrett Nichols as he came out of the offices into my path. By this time I was weeping wildly in reaction, and he shook me hard, shook me back into my senses, so that I gulped for air and went limp in his hands.

  “Come in here,” he said, and drew me into his office, thrust me into a chair. Myra had gone for the day, and he closed the door to the outer office and came back to sit on a corner of the desk beside me. “Would you like a drink? Do you want to talk?”

  I shook my head and wept into my hands. How could I ever tell anyone, when what had happened was so painful, so shameful? Only Gretchen would have understood, yet in her way she loved her father, and I could never talk to her, never talk to anyone.

  I’d been wrong about the office being empty, however. In my distress, I hadn’t seen the quiet figure in a corner of the room. When I heard movement, I took my hands from my face in surprise. Allegra Logan left her chair and came to touch me gently on the shoulder. She was wearing slacks and a sweater again—her costume when she went roving from the cottage.

  “What has my son done this time?” she asked. Her eyes were bright in her lined face, and they were perfectly sane and aware.

  I only shook my head.

  “Jarrett, get her a glass of something. It will help her to relax. She’s obviously had a shock. My son has always been a vulnerable man, and that makes him dangerous.”

  Jarrett brought me a small glass of brandy and put it in my hand. Then he pulled a chair for Allegra close to mine, and seated her in it.

  “This house still needs me,” Allegra said. “He’s going to spoil Gretchen’s life, and he’s trying to destroy this poor young thing. I’m needed here, but I haven’t the strength any more to do what ought to be done. Besides, he means to send me away—and how am I to fight that?”

  If in the past Jarrett had wavered in what he thought might be best for Allegra Logan, he now made up his mind. “No one is going to send you away. I’ll do my best to prevent that.”

  I managed to sip brandy, letting its warmth flow through me, relaxing a little, watching them both.

  Allegra looked up at Jarrett. “I had one weapon, if only I could have used it. He doesn’t know it exists, or that I lost it somehow when they moved me out of the house. Perhaps I put it away somewhere carefully. Only I can’t remember where. Of course, it’s all in my head, as well, and that’s what he’s afraid of. But having it in my head isn’t strong enough to use against him now.”

  She had caught Jarrett’s attention. “What are you talking about, Mrs. Logan?”

  “Nothing I have any intention of telling you,” she said calmly. “You don’t need this, as I do. You already have the power. You’re the one person he won’t dare to go against if you make up your mind to oppose him. Though I’m not sure you’ll really go that far. You’ve protected him for too long.”

  “I stopped protecting him today,” Jarrett said bitterly. “We had the worst row this afternoon that I’ve ever had with him. And I was the one who walked out. We’ve trained him for too long to believe in his own fantasies.”

  “Of being a great man? Yes. I don’t know how you’ve stayed with him for so long. Or perhaps I do. You’ve put the money in the right places. Without you as his conscience, he’d never have cared.”

  “This afternoon he lost the last of his conscience,” Jarrett said.

  “But he’s no longer on the board, is he? He’s been letting the reins go, turning to other things?”

  “Ostensibly. Outwardly—to give himself protection. But the board chairman is still in his pocket. Ross never lets go of what he wants.” He glanced at me in sudden embarrassment and apology.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I must try to understand.”

  Allegra closed her eyes wearily. Then she opened them and looked at me.

  “What about you, child? If you love him, that’s important too. God knows, I’ve loved the wrong men at times. But you’re not another Brett. We all know what she wanted of marriage. But whatever Ross has done, he will get over it if you give him time.”

  “I won’t get over it,” I told her. “Not after what has happened.” My voice broke again, and suddenly the words came pouring out—words I’d thought I couldn’t speak. “He hung Ysobel’s portrait in his room. That painting of my mother that he commissioned years ago. And he played a song of hers—with her voice singing! He’s still in love with her!”

  But I couldn’t tell them the rest, and I broke off as Jarrett started pacing around the room. Allegra leaned forward to touch my hand with thin, dry fingers.

  “You must be very careful now. He can never bear to be thwarted—my son. He came to see me earlier today. Because of the two netsuke he says I took from his collection and hid in my room. Of course I didn’t, but this is why I gave Coxie the slip and came here to talk to Jarrett. I tried to persuade Ro
ss that I would never have taken them. I never much liked that collection, except for my little mermaid. It’s become too much of an obsession with him—as though this book he wants to write will give him the distinction he’s never really been able to grasp in other ways. But he wouldn’t believe me. He doesn’t want to believe me.”

  Jarrett paused before her chair to take her hands in his. “If I’m to help you, I have to be sure of what I’m doing. I’m going to say something now that it may be hard for you to hear. Do you remember the time when you fired a shot at Ross? That time when he moved you out of the house? Can you remember why?”

  “Certainly I remember! It was just after your wife’s death. I shot at him because I knew he would never be convicted of anything he did, and he would just go on destroying people. Good people. He had to be stopped. I gave him his life, so perhaps it was my duty to take it away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a very good shot. Perhaps at the last moment I didn’t really mean to be. Charlie would have been ashamed of such terrible aim. But it was more than that. There was a special reason why I shot him … only … only …” Her voice faltered to a halt as her strength faded.

  Jarrett was at her side at once. “That’s enough now. Never mind the reason. Let me take you back to your room at the cottage.”

  She rallied a little, however, and reached a hand toward me. “I meant what I said. If you want to leave him, then you must do it quickly, before he can guess what you intend. You must be very careful of his anger.”

  I already knew this and I nodded mutely. I had seen that look in Ross’s eyes, and I’d fled from it instinctively. But while she could still talk, I needed to know whatever she could tell me.

  “You said a little while ago that Ross was vulnerable. What did you mean?”

  “If Charlie had lost every bit of money he made, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d have been perfectly sure that he had the brains and gumption and character to do it all over again. But Ross is a second-generation heir. He didn’t earn it himself out of a business that he’d built and loved. I suppose some heirs do fine, but Ross knows he’ll never be much on his own without money to back him. So all he can think about is getting more and more, without really having any good reason for needing it.”

  “Right now,” Jarrett said, “he’s trying to prove what he can do on his own, and he’s stepping into deep and dangerous waters. The trouble is that a great many more innocent lives hang in the balance than his.”

  Allegra bowed her head in agreement. “He’s frightened to death of losing anything that belongs to him. He couldn’t stand it when he almost won Ysobel Hollis, and then she turned him down for your father, Sharon. That’s what he can never take—ridicule, defeat. Our defeats make most of us tough. Not Ross. Now he is trying to undo all this by strking out in some new direction. He has never understood that he’s vulnerable. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

  She had talked for too long, and she sank wearily back in her chair. I saw that her hands were trembling.

  “We’ll go to the cottage now,” Jarrett said. “Do you think you can ride with me in the golf cart?”

  “Of course. If you’ll boost me into it. I just came to find out where you stand, Jarrett. At least I know that you’ll try to help me—even if you fail.”

  “I will try,” he said. “I’ll talk to Ross. Will you come with us, Sharon? You’re still looking rocky. I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

  The phone rang on Jarrett’s desk and he picked it up.

  “That will be Coxie,” Allegra said, and it was. Jarrett reassured the nurse, and we went into the outer office. Myra Ritter, busy at her desk, looked up at us innocently.

  “I thought you’d gone home,” Jarrett said.

  “I did leave, but then I remembered something I hadn’t finished, so I came back. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “We’re taking Mrs. Logan down to the cottage,” Jarrett told her. “If anyone asks, you haven’t seen her.”

  “Of course I haven’t, Mr. Nichols.” I suspected that she was on our side and would say nothing to Ross if the matter came up.

  Outside, the golf cart that was often used for quick transport around the grounds waited for us at a side door. But before she got in, Allegra looked sadly up at the house. “It’s too quiet and empty these days. Palm Beach used to be so full of parties. Everyone gave parties and there was always some charity ball coming up. We did some good while we had all that expensive fun.”

  “It’s still going on,” Jarrett said. “You can go to three parties a day on the island when the season is on. If you wanted to. This little stretch of land holds more ball gowns and jewels and magnums of champagne than most of the population of America ever sees in a lifetime.”

  If she heard the sting in his words, she paid no attention, and her face, for all its myriad lines, looked dreamy with an illusion of youth.

  “But they were never like the parties I gave. Rajahs and maharanis came to Poinciana in those days. Kings and princes and all kinds of presidents. Of countries and of businesses. If we got bored with what was happening on land, I took them all off on the Allegra and we would sail to the Bahamas, or the Greek isles—or anywhere our fancy chose.”

  She stood transfixed beside the car, her thoughts in the past.

  “Let me help you.” Jarrett spoke gently.

  “Wait.” She turned to me. “You must bring it all back. You must make it come to life again—my beautiful house. With all my chandeliers lighted, and all the crystal and silver shining. Guests will come, you know, the minute you whistle—because you’re a Logan and this is Poinciana.”

  Already she had forgotten that I might be leaving Ross.

  “I’m not sure I want all that,” I told her.

  For a moment her eyes looked directly into mine. “No, I suppose you won’t want it. You’ve much better sense. In the end, of course, I didn’t want it either. When Charlie died and Brett gave the parties, I never went. I moved into those lovely, peaceful gray rooms. I had time to read books then, and listen to music. Not music played just for dancing. All right, Jarrett, take me back to the cottage. It’s antiseptic and ugly. But I’m used to it now. I don’t even see what’s around me most of the time, and I can still look out the windows and walk outside.”

  He lifted her into the front seat, and I climbed into the back, facing the other way. Which is why I had a full view of the house as we drove off across the lawn. Ross had come through his mother’s rooms and was standing on her small balcony looking out this way, watching us go, his face expressionless. In bright sunshine I felt chilled and more than a little frightened.

  “He’s watching us,” I warned. “Just standing there on a balcony watching us.”

  “Let him,” Jarrett said.

  But I couldn’t shrug off that chilling emptiness on Ross’s face. I must get away quickly, while there was still time.

  When we reached the cottage, Jarrett took Allegra inside, and I saw that she faltered now as she moved, and that her mind had lost its moments of clarity and taken her far back into the past.

  Jarrett returned to the cart, where I waited. “Are you all right now?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything, except that I must leave.”

  “You’d better be sure, because Ross will be very sure of everything. But you need to be sure because you’ve thought it all through, not because you’re running away scared.”

  I wanted to trust him, to listen, to lean on a strength that I felt was real and to be counted on. But I’d been learning the hard way not to trust, and I must lean on no one but myself.

  “I’m angry now, but I’m frightened too,” I told him. “I have to go away. Perhaps I can move into town for a while. Just to have time to think. Alone.”

  “Don’t act in too much of a hurry. It’s better not to antagonize him, if you can help it. Besides, have you considered that you may be needed here more than you believe? Allegra knew she was needed at Poinciana, but she’s
too old to cope now, and she realizes that. So perhaps it’s your turn. You’ve made a start with Gretchen. She and Allegra both need you here.”

  “Need me! Allegra had forgotten me by the time we reached the cottage. And Gretchen doesn’t like me.”

  “If you think those things, you’re blinder than I believed. Isn’t it possible that you could be good for Ross as well, if you stay and see this through? Have you ever considered that he might be running scared too?”

  My indignation surged. “Allegra, who knows him best of all, thought I should go. She believes he’s dangerous. Besides, just a little while ago in your office you were critical of Ross. You didn’t sound sympathetic toward him then.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m going to walk out. I can be critical of him, and sorry for him at the same time. Allegra spoke the truth. He is vulnerable. More so than you know.”

  I hardly listened. “Allegra knows something,” I mused. “Something in particular that might be used against Ross.”

  “That’s probably all in her imagination. And no matter if it were true, I wouldn’t want to see it used. A great many issues are involved here—complex issues.”

  “But I have to save myself. I can’t stay here and be destroyed.”

  “I think you’re stronger than you’ve let yourself discover. And if you leave, he’ll come after you. You have to realize that. You have to recognize the fact that you’re surrounded by the enormous power of one of the most omnipotent men in the world. In a sense, I’m in the same position you are. But I’ll stay because greater issues are involved. I’ll stay and compromise, in spite of my mixed feelings about Ross Logan.”

  “I don’t know if I can compromise. Or if I should.”

  “You’re a woman. Win him. Win him over Ysobel!”

  I stared angrily at Jarrett—at the blowing red hair, into eyes that watched me coolly, at a mouth that seldom smiled. I resented him utterly. Resented most of all what he had just said to me. Words that were an affront and that I couldn’t accept.

  We’d reached the house and the cart came to a stop.