He paused. “A beautiful girl who turns out crazily to be the aunt of another beautiful girl he wants to marry.”
Kay did not move. Her eyes could not look away from that odd, rugged face which had so much strength in it. So he knows, she told herself. And panic stirred with the thought: If he knows, then there’ll be others here who know—about Ivor and me.
As if reading her thoughts, he said: “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell the Chilterns. But I’ve got to find out why you’ve come back. What do you want?”
“What difference does it make to you?”
The smile drained from his face, leaving it hard, his lips tight and pale. “You can’t want that—that swine for yourself again. You saw through him, didn’t you? You’re about the only woman that ever has. But you can’t want him to marry Elaine either.”
He pulled her toward him roughly. “That’s what I want to know. Have you come here to stop the wedding?”
It was fantastic that Ivor Drake’s boatman should be talking to her this way. But reason seemed utterly remote then. There was only her undefined dread, her acute awareness of the warm, tingling fingers on her arm and the magnetic proximity of this young man with the soft, ruthless voice and the ugly face that wasn’t ugly any more.
She blurted: “I—I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I haven’t decided.”
“But you’ve got to decide. Elaine’s your niece; she’s part of you. You can’t let her be another Rosemary.”
“What—what do you know about Rosemary?”
“I know exactly what Ivor did to her when you were here, before he married her. And I know he killed her after you walked out on him and she was fool enough to marry him.” He gave a husky laugh. “They tried to pretend it was an accident; that she fell out of that hotel window by mistake. You know that’s a lie. You know she jumped; that she deliberately killed herself because she couldn’t live through the hell of being married to Ivor Drake any longer.”
His square figure seemed to absorb every inch of her vision, blotting out the tamarisks and the sunlit sheet of the bay. How could he know that? How could anyone but she, who had read that little green leather diary, know the dreadful truth about Rosemary?
“Do you want that to happen to Elaine? You’ve got to tell me. Because, if you don’t stop that wedding, I’m going to. I’m going to stop it even if I have to kill someone.”
The warm boards of the dock seemed to shift under Kay’s feet. Then suddenly Don Baird’s hands dropped from her arms and he swung away from her and walked off.
It was only then that she saw Terry and the girl in the Hawaiian swimming suit. They were standing on the edge of the dock, and from their expressions it was obvious they had heard. With her mass of red-gold hair and extraordinarily changing blue eyes, Simon Morley was recklessly, exotically attractive. She was staring straight at the boatman, one scarlet-nailed finger running jerkily around a heavy silver slave bracelet on her wrist. Terry was staring too, the wet shorts clinging tightly around his thighs.
For a long, vibrant moment Don Baird stared back at them.
Then very distinctly he said: “You needn’t look so darned shocked. I know exactly how both of you feel about Ivor Drake. If I don’t give him what’s coming to him, it’ll simply be because one of you gets in first.”
Chapter Two
THAT MOMENT, as the four of them stood there staring at each other, was unbearably tense. Then, just when Kay felt the silence must explode like a bomb, a quiet voice behind them said: “Kay, dear. This is so very, very nice.”
She turned to see the serene figure of Maud Chiltern standing on the tamarisk-fringed threshold of the dock. Her sister moved toward her and brushed her cheek with cool lips.
“You can’t imagine how delighted we are, Kay. And you’re looking lovelier than ever.” Her level gray eyes, which, with their steeply curved brows, always gave her an expression of gentle curiosity, moved to the others. “Good morning, Simon. We’re expecting you to lunch. Don, you’ll take Miss Winyard’s bags up to the house, won’t you? Terry, dear, you really should try to remember not to go swimming in your shorts. Now you’ve ruined another nice new pair. Go up and change for lunch.”
In that one moment Maud Chiltern had dispelled the thundercloud of emotion and reduced them all to a plane of charming, thoughtless children who had to be taken care of. Maud invariably had that effect, even on Kay, whom, fifteen years younger, she had always treated more as a daughter than a sister.
Now, as Don Baird strode ahead with the suitcases, Maud led Kay tranquilly up the shady path to the house.
“Gilbert’s looking forward to seeing you, dear. He had to go in to the hospital with his nurse for a weekly checkup, but he’ll be back after lunch. Poor Gilbert, Dr. Thorne doesn’t hold out much hope for his ever walking again. And you know how active he’s always been. But he’s so brave and Ivor’s been wonderful, bringing over a sort of distant relation of his from the States, who’s a trained nurse, to take care of him, seeing everything’s done to make him comfortable.”
As they reached the wide flagged terrace with its bright tubs of camellias and sago palms, memories of Ivor came rushing back to Kay. It seemed incredible that the placid, straightforward Maud of all people should be presiding here in this of all houses, talking about Ivor as if he were a tenderhearted philanthropist.
“You’ll want to go to your room, dear.”
They passed through the luxurious, all-too-familiar living room, up steep cedar wood stairs, and down a corridor to a sunlit raftered room where Don had already stacked Kay’s bags at the foot of a four-poster bed.
Maud kissed her again impulsively. “I won’t stay and gossip because I want you to hurry. Lunch is almost ready.”
It was strange, rather frightening how returning to this house affected Kay. Before she arrived she had been so determined on her plan, so eager to talk to Maud and shatter as quickly as possible the treacherous fools’ paradise in which the Chilterns were living. But as lunch slipped by in Ivor’s flowery patio, and as later the afternoon unrolled lazily on the little coral beach hidden beyond the dock, she felt her strength of purpose ebbing away. The milk-soft breeze caressing her skin, the delicious sensation of warm coral sand against her naked back, the gay, sun-tanned bodies of the others, lounging and laughing around her. Wasn’t it better to be a fool and keep this paradise?
It was almost dinnertime before the spell weakened. The children had melted away, Elaine into the house, Terry and Simon to go aquaplaning from the speedboat. Kay was left alone with Maud for the first time, lying back on cool-green porch chairs, gazing across the lawn with its vivid clumps of hibiscus toward the coral island which lay about two hundred yards offshore.
Nestling on it in the green, weathered cedars, Kay could see the white peaked roof of the playhouse Ivor had built there as an extra-private retreat. The sight of it and the quivering memories it evoked somehow snapped the lotus charm. Almost before she realized it, she said: “Maud, I’ve got to talk to you about Elaine. Are you really happy about the wedding?”
Maud, who was occupied with a piece of embroidery, glanced up, her gray eyes watching Kay intently. “You mean because Ivor’s been married before, because he’s so much older?”
“That. And—and he hasn’t a particularly wholesome reputation.”
Maud selected a strand of shell-pink wool and threaded it through the needle eye. “I don’t think you’d blame him for anything he’s done, dear, if you knew him.”
If she knew him!
“Apparently you don’t blame him. In fact, you must approve of him intensely to park the entire family on his charity!”
She hated herself for saying that the instant the words were out of her mouth. Never before had she deliberately tried to hurt her sister.
A faint flush had come into Maud’s cheeks. “It’s unkind and not true to call it charity. For many years Gilbert has been handling the Drake estate, first for Ivor’s father and now for Iv
or. It’s a big job and gradually he gave up all his other work for it. He’s done a great deal for Ivor and this is Ivor’s way of repaying.” The needle drew the thread surely through the canvas. “After Gilbert’s paralysis, with doctors’ bills and everything, we have very little left and yet the doctors said Gilbert had to have plenty of sunshine and fresh air.” Maud looked up, her gray eyes suddenly challenging. “If Ivor hadn’t sent us here, Gilbert might not be alive now. That means more to me than any gossip about what Ivor may or may not have done. It also means more than any stupid pride about accepting favors.”
How could Kay argue against that patient gratitude? How could she make Maud see that Ivor’s favors were never favors; that he thrived on playing lord and master to people who couldn’t exist without him; that it would be an almost physical thrill for him to have Elaine’s family under his thumb where he could charm them, humiliate them, treat them like gilded guinea pigs for his twisted mental surgery?
“But it’s—it’s so bad for Terry, Maud. You’re getting him used to the luxurious way of living. Don’t you see how hard it’s going to be when he has to start looking for a job at twenty dollars a week?”
Maud glanced up, looking across the bay at a black speck on the blue water which was Terry and Simon in the speedboat. “Terry won’t have to look for a job yet, Kay. After the wedding, Ivor has promised Gilbert a little income for the two of us; and it’ll see Terry through his last year at college.”
“Maud!” Kay stared incredulously. “You can’t— you can’t have accepted all that! It can’t be you. It’s Gilbert. It’s just the sort of thing he’d do. You say he gave up all his other legal work for Ivor. What you really mean is that he didn’t have any other clients. He’s always been shiftless, a failure, without any pride. Now—now he’s selling your daughter for his own security!”
“You mustn’t say that.” Her sister’s eyes were very bright now. “You never approved of Gilbert. I know that. But he loves Elaine as deeply and sincerely as she’s always loved him. He’d rather die than let her marry any man if he wasn’t sure he’d make her a good husband.”
“And you think Ivor would make a good husband?”
“He has been very kind to us. Oh, I know he may drink a little too much…”
“Drink! If it was only drink! Do you think he made Rosemary Powell a good husband?”
“Rosemary?” Maud’s voice was very soft. “Ivor’s told me all about Rosemary. Poor, neurotic girl! Just because she was mentally unstable even when he married her, you can’t blame Ivor for what happened.”
“Ivor told you Rosemary was mentally unstable? He dared to say that? Rosemary was as sane and young and lovely as Elaine when she married him. It was he who turned her into that broken, neurotic creature who threw herself out of a window rather than go on. He did that to her, and he did it deliberately because it’s in his blood to destroy. He’d have done it to me too if I hadn’t escaped in time.”
“To you? Kay, what is this—what on earth do you mean?”
“I’m talking about Ivor and me.” Kay no longer cared what she said, did not really hear her own urgent voice. “I met him here three years ago. You never knew that, did you? I thought he was the most glamorous man in the world. He made wild love to me. I even promised to be his wife, and he gave me that emerald he gave Elaine. Oh, I was crazy, blind. And I almost realized it at the time, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even admit that he was bolstering himself up with drink, morning, noon, and night, that he was getting me to drink too. I didn’t even think what he meant when he hinted that there were more exciting things than drink. I—I was so blind I didn’t even sense danger that day when I stumbled and fell on the rocks and—and I saw his eyes, staring bright like a snake’s, as the blood trickled down my bare arm…”
She tossed back her hair. “It was only through Rosemary that I saw the truth. Rosemary had been there all the time. I just thought she was a little Bermudian girl who dropped in because she lived close by. Then one day she came to me, accused me of stealing Ivor, told me she was engaged to him. And all that time Ivor had been making love to me in front of her, deliberately, because he enjoyed seeing her go through hell! That’s how I found out about Ivor. Oh, after the spell was broken, I tried to tell Rosemary, tried to warn her what he was really like, but she was young and madly infatuated and—and she didn’t find out until it was too late.”
As if through a haze she was conscious of Maud’s set face.
“Kay, that’s a lie. A wicked, shameful lie. I…”
“It’s a lie, is it? Then perhaps you’d like to hear the truth from Rosemary herself. Upstairs I have her diary. She sent it to me just before she killed herself. She sent it to me pitifully because I was the person who had warned her, the only person she could bear to have read the tragic, cruel truth. I’ll get it for you. Then…”
Suddenly Maud leaned forward, putting a hand on her arm. From the end of the terrace had come a slow, trundling sound. “Gilbert!” she whispered fiercely. “You mustn’t say any more now. I won’t have Gilbert worried.”
Gilbert Chiltern was pushing himself toward them in a wheel chair. At his side moved a tall, gaunt woman in a nurse’s uniform.
Maud’s voice came jerkily. “Kay, I want you to meet Alice Lumsden, Ivor’s cousin. Alice, this is my sister.”
The nurse’s deep, suspicious eyes stared at Kay. She gave a little nod and then turned to Maud.
“At the hospital they said Mr. Chiltern’s range of motion had not increased. But they think he’ll soon be able to get a little exercise swimming. See he doesn’t excite himself too much. The buggy ride was tiring.” Mechanically patting at the cushion behind Gilbert’s back, she rustled starchily away.
She left a cold, hostile atmosphere behind her as if she had thoroughly disliked them all.
Gilbert Chiltern was smiling at Kay with the faintly sarcastic courtliness with which he always treated her. She was amazed at the absence of change in him. Always meticulous about his dress, he was wearing a dark-green silk bathrobe over light-green pajamas. The cushion of the wheel chair, peeping out, was light and dark green too. In spite of the paralyzed legs, which were pathetically thin and wasted, the gay color scheme gave him a jaunty air. With his prematurely snow-white hair, his dark, amused eyes, and his athlete’s shoulders, he looked as handsome and aristocratic as ever. Kay had disapproved of her brother-in-law largely because he had never made a serious job of supporting his family, had never grown out of being one of the most famous and charming athletes of his Harvard day. Now that tragedy had struck him so cruelly, his patrician contempt for the reality of his own suffering seemed to have given him infinitely more stature.
“Welcome to our Eden, Kay. The only thing I hold against Ivor is the face of his poor relation. He might have picked me a more toothsome playmate.”
Kay tried to answer frivolously, but soon the social effort was too much for her. Murmuring something about having to unpack and dress for dinner, she hurried away from the terrace and up to her room.
With fingers that trembled, she tugged open a suitcase and, fumbling through clothes, pulled out the little green leather diary.
Her blood was still racing from her talk with Maud. She turned to the title page, written in Rosemary’s round, childish hand:
ROSEMARY DRAKE
HER DIARY
Underneath was a note scribbled in a sprawling, shaky hand:
Kay, dear, read this. I want you to. Read it and see how right you were. Never show it to anyone, never unless there’s another—Rosemary Drake.
Shakily Kay leafed through the pages, pausing at random.
… Ivor knows I’ll always love him, that my love for him’s like a poison in my blood. He knows I won’t ever get away. That’s what gives him his power. When he brought her here, he knew I was in the flower room, knew I wouldn’t have the courage to come out, that I’d have to stay there and listen…
As she read through the poignant self-revelation
for the hundredth time, Kay’s anger blazed again, conquering everything else.
… I think he knows I’m planning to kill myself. Sometimes I can see by his eyes. Oh, I know him so well now! He knows and he’ll never lift a finger to stop me. Maybe that’s what he was always waiting for, maybe from the very beginning he planned for it to end this way…
Poor Rosemary, poor frightened, tormented Rosemary, who hadn’t had the courage to fight or to run away. Just now, Maud hadn’t believed. Maud had been angry, shocked at Kay. She was still on Ivor’s side, still ready for this to happen to Elaine.
Suddenly Kay snapped the diary shut and spun round, clutching it in her hand. A voice had sounded from the door, a low, brittle voice saying: “Here comes the bride!”
For a moment she thought Elaine must be some vision conjured up by her own mind. It was too cruel, too glibly ironical.
Her niece was standing in the doorway in an exquisite wedding dress of paperweight taffeta, with feathery puffed sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a full, flaring skirt which reached to the floor. A small cap adorned her dark hair and yards of white gossamer tulle floated down from it in a train.
A breath-taking, radiant bride!
“The dress has come. How do you like it?” Elaine’s lovely face had been bright and smiling. Gradually, as she looked at Kay, her expression changed. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Why, Elaine…” Kay faltered.
Return to the Scene Page 2
