Casteel 02 Dark Angel

by V. C. Andrews

  "You'll be pleased," he assured me, smiling his secret smile.

  The flags came out, all the red, white, and blue party decorations. Japanese lanterns were strung from tree to tree, from lamppost to lamppost, additional servants were hired as waiters, and Tony, who could not stand rock 'n' roll music, hired several Hawaiian musicians to play in the background.

  Twenty or more guests were at the poolside when I came down from my room, wearing a bright blue swimsuit that made me feel a bit embarrassed because it had such high-cut legs. Over this I wore a short white eyelet jacket. Some guests were already in the pool, others sunbathing, and all were laughing, talking, having a wonderful time. A few swimmers had even dared to brave the ocean's rough waves. I went first to Jillian to kiss her cheek, and she smiled at me in a vague, disoriented way. "What are we celebrating, Heaven?" she asked, staring at old friends as if they were strangers.

  On another part of the spacious pool terrace, I spied Tony standing and talking to a rather plump little woman, with an even plumper husband. They were more than familiar to me, and my heart began a nervous pounding. Oh, no, no! He couldn't have brought about this kind of reconciliation without warning me in advance.

  And yet he had.

  Here at Farthinggale Manor, where I could reach out and touch them, if I wanted, were Rita and Lester Rawlings from Chevy Chase. And if they were here . . then Keith and Our Jane had to be here as well. My heart flip-flopped. Eagerly I looked around for the two youngest Casteels. I soon spied Our Jane and Keith standing apart from other children, and then, as I watched with utter fascination, Our Jane threw off her beach coat, kicked off her rubber sandals, and ran toward the pool, with Keith close at her heels. They knew how to swim very well, and how to dive, and how to make friends out of strangers.

  "Heaven!" called Tony from across the terrace. "Come, we have special guests that I think you already know." I approached Lester Rawlings and his wife Rita with caution, visions of that horrible Christmas Day in the Willies flashing in and out of my mind. Memories of that terrible night after Our Jane and Keith were gone putting tears in my eyes. And I had fresher guilts and memories to make me feel nervous, for I had betrayed my promise that time in Chevy Chase when I gave my word not to speak to Our Jane or Keith, or let them see me. And then there was the way my two youngest had denied me, that pain was still there, aching.

  Rita Rawlings immediately opened her arms and drew me into her motherly embrace. "Oh, my dear, my dear, I am so sorry the way things turned out the last time. Lester and I were so afraid that seeing you again would set our darlings back, so they'd have nightmares and crying spells again. And even without seeing you that Sunday, they did subtly change, so they no longer seemed as happy and contented to be with us. If only you had told us how your circumstances had changed. That day when you so unexpectedly showed up, we thought you had come to take our children back to the hills and that awful shack. But Mr. Tatterton here has made it all very clear. She paused to clasp her plump, beringed fingers together and catch her breath. "Lester and I just didn't understand what happened to our two happy children after that rainy Sunday afternoon. They changed as if by magic. That very night their nightmares came back. They woke up screaming, calling for Hev-lee, come back, come back! We didn't mean it, we didn't! It took weeks and weeks before they would tell us what had happened--that they had denied knowing you--and had ordered you out or they would call the police. Dear Heaven, it was cruel of them, but they were terrified of having to return to that pain, poverty, and hunger that they remembered only too well."

  All about me people were having a wonderful time, diving in and out of the pool. Servants carried trays of food and drink from here to there . . . and then I found my eyes meeting with those of the loveliest teenage girl I'd ever seen. Our Jane stood about ten feet away, her turquoise eyes fastened on me in the most pitiful, pleading way. She was thirteen now, her small, hard, burgeoning breasts just beginning to thrust forth her suit top. Her red gold, fiery hair flamed about her small oval face, even as her darkly fringed eyes pleaded with me for forgiveness. Close to her side was Keith, just a year older. He had shot up inches taller, and his amber hair was deep and rich. But he was staring too, and trembling. They were obviously afraid of me now, not in the same way as when I'd approached them in their own home. Now they seemed afraid that I'd hate them for denying me.

  I didn't know what to say. I just held out my arms and smiled, and felt my heart pounding like crazy, then watched them hesitate, glance at each other before both came running to hurl themselves into my embrace.

  "Oh, Hev-lee, Hev-lee," cried Our Jane. "Please don't hate us for what we did! We're sorry we drove you away. We were sorry the minute we saw your face look so sad and disappointed." She pressed her face against my chest and really began to cry. "It wasn't you we didn't want. It was going back to the cabin, and the hunger and the cold. We thought you would take us back to all that. And we'd no longer have Mommy and Daddy, who love us so much."

  "I understand," I crooned, kissing her again and again before I turned to hug Keith close, and that's when I really began to bawl. At last, at last, I had my two little ones in my arms again. And they were looking at me with love and adoration, just as they used to do.

  The voices of Rita and Lester Rawlings drifted to me from where they were sitting beneath one of our green-and-white-striped umbrellas, both sipping cool drinks and telling Tony about the wonderfully compassionate letter that had come to them one day about two weeks ago. "It was a letter from your brother Troy, Mr. Tatterton. He wanted to mend some bridges, and when we finished reading his letter, we were both in tears. He didn't tell us we had done a terrible thing, he just thanked us for taking such good care of Heaven's younger brother and sister, for she loved them very much. And we had to contact you, just had to, for it was wrong of us to have tried to separate brothers and sisters, we know that now."

  "Call me Tony," he said charmingly, "since we are almost family now."

  "This letter from your brother made everything so clear, just what Heaven's circumstances were."

  Troy had done this for me! Troy was still thinking of me, and doing what he could to give me happiness, and I had to have his letter, just had to have it, even if it were but a photocopy. "Of course, of course," agreed Rita Rawlings. "It was so beautifully written I was going to keep it forever, but my dear, you can have the original, and keep the copy."

  In the ten days that the Rawlingses stayed with us that summer, Jane (who didn't want to be called Our Jane anymore) and Keith and I found each other again. They asked questions about Tom and Fanny, and about Pa. They didn't seem to have the resentments against Pa that I did. "And Mommy and Daddy said we could visit you once or twice a year! Oh, Hevlee, it's going to be so wonderful. Maybe one day we can even see Tom, Fanny, Pa and Grandpa again. But we don't want to leave Mommy and Daddy, not ever."

  All that was easily arranged. Farthinggale Manor made its impression, as did Tony--and if Jillian gave them a few weird thoughts they were much too polite to express them. "We'll keep in touch," promised Rita Rawlings, as Lester shook Tony's hand like they were the best of friends. "Christmas would be a nice time to get together for we do want our children to enjoy the pleasures of a large family."

  Yes, it was all right for my brother and sister to know me now. I no longer lived in a shack stuck high on a mountain hillside. I was no longer a starving, bedraggled, object of their pity, though they didn't mention Tom, or Fanny, or Pa. Or Grandpa, as Jane and Keith had.

  When Rita Rawlings kept her word and mailed me the letter that Troy had written, making such a strong and passionate appeal on my behalf, tears poured from my eyes. He loved me. He still loved, me! He still thought about me. Oh, Troy, Troy, come home, come home! Just live somewhere close by and let me see you now and then--that will be enough, enough.

  I dated, off and on, some young man that passed Tony's inspection. I never found anyone as unique as Troy, nor anyone as loyal and devoted as Logan. I
had to presume Logan had met someone else. Just as I would have to . . . someday. And when I gave Logan long and considered thought, I knew I wanted to see him again, and when I did, I'd have to make all the overtures to patch up our relationship.

  Tom wrote often, telling me that the money I was sending had finally worn down his resistance, and he was attending college courses and still helping our Pa during the day. "We're reaching our goals, Heavenly, despite everything, we're going to make it!"

  Twenty-two Dreams Come True

  . IN THE YEAR THAT I TURNED TWENTYTWO, ON A beautiful day in late June when all the flowers were in bloom, I received my degree. Both Tony and Jillian were there to represent me, and though I searched the audience hoping to see Troy, he was not there. All along I'd hoped and prayed that he'd be in the audience, applauding. But I did see Jane and Keith sitting with their parents not far from Jillian and Tony . . but Tom wasn't there, nor was Fanny, and I had mailed them both invitations.

  "Be smart and do all that you can to keep Fanny out of your life," Tom had warned in his last letter. "I'd come if I could, really I would, but I'm snowed under trying to pass my own exams, and I still have to help out Pa. Forgive me, and know that I am with you in thoughts."

  After the graduation party, we drove back to Farthinggale Manor. Parked before the front door was a white Jaguar that Tony had ordered customdesigned for me. "It's for that day when you drive back to Winnerrow. If your clothes and jewelry don't impress them, this car certainly should."

  It was a fabulous car, all my graduation gifts were fabulous. But oddly, now that I was no longer a student, I had so much time on my hands I didn't know what to do with myself. I had reached my goal. I could become, if I so wished, another Miss Marianne Deale. Now I wasn't sure that was what I wanted. A restlessness grew within me that summer, a terrible itchiness that kept me awake at night, and made me more than a little irritable. "Take a drive off on your own," suggested Tony. "That's what I used to do when I was your age and unable to find peace within myself."

  However, even a trip up the coast to Maine, where I stayed ten days in a fishing village, didn't put my itchy feet at rest. There was something I had to do. Something important I had to do.

  This time, as I returned from my vacation and drove once again under the ornate gates of

  Farthinggale Manor, I came again as a stranger, with new eyes, to that long, curving road that led to that huge house of enchantment.

  It was just the same. Just as impressive, frightening, and beautiful. And I could have been sixteen again for all the changes I saw. For some intuition was whispering loudly that Troy might be here. Tony had said he couldn't stay away forever.

  My heartbeats quickened; my soul seemed to wake up and stretch before it took a deep breath and reached again for the love it had found in this house. I could almost see Troy, feel Troy, sense Troy somewhere near. For long moments I just sat and inhaled the special, flower-scented air of Farthinggale Manor, before I stepped out and approached the high stone portico.

  Curtis responded to my impatient jabbing at the doorbell, smiling warmly when he saw who it was. "It's so good to see you again, Miss Heaven," he said in his low, cultivated voice. "Mr. Tatterton is strolling on the beach, but your grandmother is in her suite."

  Jillian was shut away in her rooms in that glorious mansion that had again retreated into silence almost as deep and thick as a grave.

  She sat as I'd seen her sit many times before when she was less than happy with herself, crosslegged on her ivory sofa, wearing another of those loose-fitting ivory floats that was trimmed this time with peach lace.

  The sound of the door opening and closing as I entered made soft clicking noises that seemed to wake her from some deep meditation. The spread of solitaire cards on the coffee table before her was precise, even, the cards in her hands held loosely, forgotten. Her unfocused blue eyes turned to gaze at me almost sightlessly. As Jillian stared at me, almost with fright, I tried to smile. If my appearance had shocked her, hers shocked me even more.

  Her complexion now was cracked porcelain, unhealthily white. And as she stared at me, I was appalled at the disorientation in her eyes, at the way she wrung her pale hands, at the way her hair hung about her face, unclean and uncared for.

  Only as I turned away so she wouldn't see my distress did I see sitting in a distant corner, quietly making lace, a woman in a nurse's white uniform. She looked up to smile my way. "My name is Martha Goodman," she informed me. "I am very happy to meet you, Miss Casteel. Mr. Tatterton told me that you were due back any day."

  "Where is Mr. Tatterton?" I asked, directing my question to her.

  "Why, he's off prowling on the seashore," she answered in a very thin, small voice, as if she didn't want Jillian's attention drawn to her presence in the room. She stood up to point the direction, and I turned to leave.

  Jillian jumped to her bare feet and began to twirl around and around, making the wide skirt of her garment flare out. "Leigh," she called in a lilting, childish voice, "say hello to Cleave for me when you see him next! Tell him sometimes I am almost sorry I left him for Tony. Tony doesn't love me. Nobody has ever loved me, not ever enough. Not even you. You love Cleave better, you always have . . . but I don't care. I really don't care. You are so very much like him, nothing at all like me except in appearance. Leigh, why do you stare at me like that? Why is it you always have to take everything so damned seriously!"

  My breasts rose and fell in heavy gasps. I backed out of the room; her insane laughter followed, shivering the air.

  When finally I reached the door, I couldn't resist taking one more glance at her; I saw her framed before her arching bay windows, the sunlight pouring through her hair, silhouetting her slender form through the transparent film of her long, loose dress. She was old, and paradoxically she was young; she was beautiful and she was grotesque; but more than anything, she was insane, and she was pitiful.

  And I walked away knowing I intended never to see her again.

  On the rocky shore of the beach I strolled where Troy had never wanted to walk at my side, so afraid he'd been of the sea and its portent. There were rocks and huge boulders feet higher than I was, and walking here wasn't easy. At that time I, too, had been terrified of the sea with its relentlessly pounding surf, its towering high waves that crashed on the shore and made of human time but a pinch of sand.

  Bits of gravel slipped into my shoes, and soon I took them off and ran to catch up with Tony. I planned to stay only an hour or so. For I had a destination in mind now.

  Rounding a curve in the beach, I came upon him suddenly. He was standing on a high pile of boulders, staring out over the sea, and it was with some difficulty that I climbed to stand beside him. I told him what I planned to do.

  "So you will return to Winnerrow," he said dully, without turning his head. "I have always known you would go back to those godforsaken mountains that you should hate so much you should never want to see again."

  "They are part of me," I replied, brushing dirt from my feet and legs. "I always intended to go back and teach there, in the same school where Miss Deale used to teach Tom and me. There aren't many teachers who want that poverty area, so they'll take me, and I'll have my chance to carry on the tradition started by Miss Deale. My grandpa Toby is expecting me to stay with him while I teach. And if you still want to see me, I'll spend some time here with you. But I don't want to see Jillian again, ever again."

  "Heaven," Tony began, and then he stopped and just stared at me with so much pain in his eyes. I tried to deny the twinge of pity I felt when I noticed the hollows under his eyes, and the dark shadows. He was thinner, less than elegantly dressed. His trousers, which had been so sharply creased before, had no creases at all. It was obvious the best years of Townsend Anthony Tatterton were behind him now.

  He sighed before he asked, "You didn't read about it in the newspapers?"

  "Read about what?"

  He sighed deep and long, still staring out to sea. "As y
ou know, Troy has been flitting about the world. Last week, he came home. He seemed to know you were gone."

  My heart jumped. "He's here? Troy is here?" I was going to see him again! Troy, oh Troy?!

  Tony smiled crookedly. The kind of smile that twisted my heart and made it hurt.

  His shoulders hunched to shorten his neck, and still he stared out to sea, forcing me to glance that way to find what big eyes kept watching. And with some difficulty I saw a wreath of flowers bouncing on the waves far out in the ocean. Golden glints of sunlight on the deep sapphire water made it exceedingly beautiful. The flower wreath was just a tiny, bright speck. Again my heartbeats quickened. The sea, always the sea had chased Troy. A sudden weight formed in my chest.

  Tony sighed with the cool wind that blew always from the ocean. "Troy returned home very depressed. He was happy to hear that you and Jane and Keith had been reunited. But he was approaching his twenty-eighth birthday. Birthdays always depressed him. He believed, sincerely believed, that thirty was his cut-off day. hope it's not a painful illness,' he said a few times, as if that disturbed him more than anything. 'It's not that I'm afraid to die, it's only the road to death that terrifies me, for sometimes it can be so drawn out.' You have two more years, I kept reminding him, if your precognition is true. If it is not, you have fifty, sixty, or seventy. He'd look at me as if I knew nothing. I stayed close by just to see him through, fearing something would happen. We used to sit in his rooms and talk about you, and how strong you were when you cared for your brothers and sisters after your stepmother and your . . . your father went away. He told me that during the past semester he used to visit your college and hide on the campus just so he could see you.

  Again his eyes swiveled to the sea. And by this time the wreath had disappeared, and I was scared, so terribly scared.

  "I'm telling my story knowing you still love him. Please indulge me, Heaven. To take Troy's mind off that dreaded birthday, I planned a party to last over the weekend. I made everyone promise not to leave him alone for one second. There was a girl there that he had dated once or twice. She'd been married and was divorced. The kind of laughing, bright, and breezy girl I thought would lift his spirits, and perhaps help him to stop thinking about you. She had all kinds of tall tales to tell, about the celebrities she'd met, and the clothes she'd bought, and the huge mansion she was going to build on her own South Sea island . . . if only she had the right man to live with her. And she looked at Troy then. He didn't seem to see or hear her. No woman likes to be ignored like that, and that's when her humor ended. She became derisive, ugly acting. Finally Troy could bear no more of her taunts, and he jumped up, and left the house. I saw him head toward the stables. I didn't want him to go there, and if this idiot girl hadn't raced to follow me outside, I would have caught up with him in plenty of time to prevent what he did. But she seized my hand and she teased me about being my brother's keeper.