by Alice Orr
Even more significant was the possibility that she hadn’t really wanted to cut the umbilical cord to her family’s world after all, only to stretch it for a while. Either way, Bennett understood how her misadventures might come to her mother’s mind when she saw a dashing ne’er-do-well like Royce on her daughter’s arm. Bennett might have offered the reassurance that she was so far from her Mexico escapades she could hardly remember what it must have felt like to be that crazy young girl instead of the predictable twenty- eight-year-old she had become. She didn’t offer such reassurance because it would have meant hearing it out loud herself, and the sound of those words were likely to make her more restless than ever.
Meanwhile Royce had slipped away into the crowd. Dilys passed her small, delicate fingers over the smooth helmet of her perfectly silvering hair. If her hairdresser had anything to do with that very natural looking blend of ash and age, Dilys would never tell. Artifice of any kind was not a thing she was likely to admit.
“I saw Quinton earlier. He is looking particularly hand- some this evening,” she said.
“Now you are making idle conversation on behalf of your friend.”
“Your friend, too, Bennett. You should never forget that. He may want to marry you, but he also cares about you. In our circle, the two don’t always go together.”
“What about love, Mother? Does that enter in, as well?”
“You really do want everything, don’t you?” Dilys smiled and showed some of the few wrinkles she sported even in her late fifties.
“You and Daddy have everything, friendship and love.”
“That is true.” The color rose just perceptibly in Dilys’s petal-pale cheeks. Little other than the subject of her beloved husband could do that.
“I want that for myself, too.”
“Are you so certain you can’t have it with Quint?”
“I barely know him, or that’s how I feel anyway.”
She and Quint had a long history of years together. Still, as far as she was concerned, they remained totally separate entities. There might be understanding and even affection between them, but nothing closer than that. Even so, Quinton Leslie did appear to be one of the nicest men she had ever known. If she wasn’t in love with him, she probably should be. Her glance swept across the room in search of his serious gray gaze.
There he was, near the opposite corner, dutifully holding up his end of what was most likely an excruciating conversation with one of the dowager types who frequented events like this one. She probably had a grandniece or some other young protégé in tow and was checking Quint out for husband potential. The grandniece would be a lot better for him than I am, Bennett couldn’t help thinking. Especially if she knows for sure whether she wants him or not. Especially if she doesn’t think of him as a stranger in the emotional sense who was, nonetheless, one more of the entirely too predictable elements in her life. Bennett looked away just as she thought Quint might be about to catch her eye.
“I’m going to find Forth,” she said.
She hoped to avoid an explanation to her mother about thinking of Quint as a distant familiarity. The subject was simply too discouraging though, to her credit, Dilys wasn’t asking Bennett to explain anything right now. She was also looking for an excuse to escape from Quint’s sight line. She really didn’t want to talk to him tonight if she could help it. He would ask to take her home. Then there would be awkward moments outside her gate while she didn’t invite him in. She preferred to avoid that if she could.
“Tell him to come and speak with me,” Dilys said.
“What?”
“Your brother. You said you were going to find your brother.” She gave a small, impatient sigh. Absentmindedness was not something with which Dilys had much personal experience. “I would like to speak with him when you find him. We’re having a few people in for late supper at the house. I would like him to be there.”
“I’ll tell him, Mother,” Bennett said.
She could already guess Forth’s response. He would definitely not be about to spend a glorious Manhattan evening having supper with his parents and their crowd. A spring night promised too much chance of excitement for him to waste time on such sedate company. Sedate was not Forth’s cup of tea. He was every bit as wild and reckless as Bennett had been in her younger days. Of course, Dilys had never sent the bloodhounds after Forth. A mild reprimand was the worst he ever got from his mother, and his father and stopped trying to reform him long ago. Bennett understood the difference between what was expected of her and what was expected of her brother. He was the son and heir. He could chart his own course and get away with it, no matter how irresponsible his choices might be. Everyone assumed he would don the St. Simon mantle when it was passed on to him. In the meantime, he was free to do what he pleased.
Tonight, as on so many other nights, what he pleased would be to ignore his mother’s invitation. Ordinarily Bennett would end up doing the filial duty at her parents’ gathering in Froth’s absence. She wasn’t sure she could handle it tonight. First of all, Quint would be there, so she wouldn’t be able to avoid the awkward moments after all. Secondly, that event would be even more properly usual than this one, a carbon copy of all those she had attended before it. Bennett suddenly felt as if she might actually suffocate. She took a deep breath and set out across the crowded floor, moving perhaps a bit too fast for the Stuyvesant Club.
Maybe she should go out on the town with Forth tonight. He was always inviting her. He didn’t expect her to say yes. She never did, but maybe tonight would be different. She was sicker than ever of being a good girl and doing what everybody expected. She was especially sick of representing the St. Simon offspring and making precisely the perfect impression when she did. She shone so brightly on those occasions that hardly anyone noticed Forth’s perpetual absence. She didn’t often bother with thoughts of how unfair that might be. This evening, however, she felt inclined toward one of those nights on the town that her brother took as his rightful due. She could club-hop with the best of them. At least, she’d been able to back in the old days. Why not set her reformed image on its ear for a few hours?
She looked around for Forth, but he wasn’t in this room. She’d have found him easily if he had been. Even in the most sophisticated company, Forth stood out as more so. Bennett smiled at the thought. She loved her charming brother as much as her mother did, and though Bennett wasn’t as blind to his shortcomings as their mother tended to be, she forgave him just about everything. He was too winsome to stay angry with for long. Besides, she was beginning to wonder if he might have the right attitude. Look where turning dependable had gotten her? Feeling stuck and miserable, that’s where!
Forth wasn’t in the wide corridor outside the reception hall, either. Divans and padded footstools filled the corners and lined the walls. Couples and groups sat talking, but Forth was not among them. It was going on midnight. He could have left already, but Bennett doubted that. The best clubs were hours away from coming to true life, especially for a fellow like Forth, who always showed up fashionably late. He would most likely stay around here as long as the bar was still open. After that, he might chat with Bennett for a while. She would mention that he should put in an obligatory appearance at the family homestead, and he would inevitably slip away at that point, like mist among the tapestries. She would often not even see him go. That’s how talented an escape artist her big brother had become. She was reminded of her own years of sneaking out windows and bribing the servants not to tell. She wondered if she had any of those instincts left in her these days.
She finally found Forth in the library, a cavernous room of high ceilings and tall bookcases with leather couches redolent of generations of pipe smoke. Only in very recent years bad this room, and others like it in this staid establishment, been opened up to use for events like this one. Some of the more senior members would never get over grumbling about that. Traditions tended to be as old and sacrosanct here as the label of brandy that was
the house favorite.
Forth was ensconced on a couch near a bay of windows looking out onto Central Park. The shimmer of gold around the streetlights was visible through the windowpanes like a halo just beyond his blond head. Bennett smiled at the image. Much as she adored her brother, she knew that he was anything but an angel. The way he bent his head toward his companion, as if fascinated by her every word, was evidence of that. Sonia Jade was hardly likely to be fascinating. Her range of interest ran the gamut of society gossip and back again. She could, or at least would, talk about nothing else. That was not exactly Forth’s cup of tea, either, but Sonia was very beautiful. As Bennett had often observed, from the male point of view, physical beauty in a woman can make up for a lack of just about everything else.
“Bennett,” Forth exclaimed as he looked up to see her walking toward them. She thought she spied a plea for rescue in his eyes. Maybe Sonia’s physical charms weren’t enough to hold him captive after all.
“Bennett, darling.”
Sonia didn’t make much effort to sound sincere. She was probably about as pleased by the interruption as she would be to find every other woman in the room wearing an exact copy of her very stylish party dress. She and Bennett exchanged brief hugs. They knew each other mostly from a few years back, when that season’s bout of restlessness left Bennett desperate enough to try out Sonia’s circle for a while. Unfortunately, or probably fortunately, Bennett wasn’t as mindless as Sonia and Royce and the like. She could have fit into their world, but she didn’t want to. She’d needed an adventure, not a stultifying dose of vapidity. That was simply a junior version of the Stuyvesant Club.
“Sonia and I were just now talking about wandering by Lucille’s,” Forth said. “I have a marvelous idea, Bennett. Why don’t you join us?”
Bennett recognized the name of the popular late-night supper spot of the moment. Ordinarily she would have responded with something about Lucille’s not being her kind of place. “I might just do that,” she said instead. The way she was feeling tonight, vapidity could be better than nothing.
“Don’t tell me you’re finally going to satisfy your curiosity about my nocturnal habits,” Forth said with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
“Maybe it’s time I rediscovered some nocturnal habits of my own.” Maybe it’s time I got back to being more like you, brother dear, she thought. Loose, irresponsible, free as the breeze.
“Come on in. The water’s very interesting,” Forth quipped in his usual offhand, amused manner that sometimes made Bennett suspect he was laughing at her and what he considered to be her pose as a reformed character.
“I just might do that.”
Too bad Bennett wasn’t actually as sure of this possibility as she sounded. Too bad Bennett wasn’t sure about much of anything at the moment. Suddenly she was almost over- whelmed by the urge to get away, from the Stuyvesant crowd, from Forth. Maybe most of all from herself.
“You two enjoy yourselves,” she said as she turned to leave.
“Are you coming along to Lucille’s later?”
“I am giving it some serious thought,” Bennett called over her shoulder only half truthfully. Lucille’s didn’t really feel like the solution to her personal brand of restlessness. To her, the society club scene was only another kind of sameness dressed up in glamour and sophistication. What she needed was some real excitement. She simply wasn’t certain what that might be.
“Well, you know where to find me,” Forth called after her when Bennett was at the library door. She gave a little wave without looking back.
Bennett was on her way to the elevators that would carry her downstairs to the coat booth when she saw Quinton coming out of the reception room just down the corridor. He hadn’t noticed her yet, but if she continued on to the elevators or the staircase, he was bound to see her. She really didn’t want that to happen. She was feeling pretty out of sorts at the moment. Being with Quint was sure to intensify that feeling. The stairs to the upper floors were to her left. She took them all the way to the top, as fast as her narrowskirted dress would allow.
Bennett had been in the Stuyvesant Club often enough to know about the other set of stairs and the service elevator at the opposite end of the third floor. She could take either down to street level with little chance of encountering anyone she knew. She headed along the carpeted hallway with that plan in mind. Closed doors lined the corridor on both sides. She had hoped there’d be no one up here at this hour. A single door ahead on the right appeared to be ajar. A patch of soft light spilled out onto the carpet.
Bennett approached the open doorway with caution, moving to the right side wall as she came closer. She thought this might be the billiard room, but she wasn’t sure. Her intention was to slip past without being seen. If she moved swiftly and quietly, she might just make it. She peeked cautiously around the edge of the door frame to find out who might be inside before making her dash. What she saw froze her to the spot where she stood. All thought of escape was forgotten amidst her shock and terror. That moment of forgetfulness would prove to be her undoing.
Chapter Two
The light was not bright in the billiard room, but Bennett had no trouble making out the scene. In fact, she would never forget it as long as she lived. The first thing she noticed, oddly enough, was the way the lamp glow picked out red highlights in the man’s hair as he bent over the bundle on the floor. Bennett was aware, through the haze of her shock, that she had to remember details like this one for reporting later on. She couldn’t tell how tall he was because he was down on one knee in a crouched position, but his shoulders were broad under the black leather jacket that struck her as too hot to be worn on a June evening.
She didn’t want to look at the other, more disturbing, aspect of the scene, but she couldn’t keep herself from doing so. Once she had looked, her gaze was glued to the spot even though she longed to turn away. What, at first glance, had appeared to be a bundle on the floor was more than that. The bare half of the tall window had led Bennett to conclude initially that the bundle itself must be made up of a drapery that had been pulled from its attachments. The man crouched over the bundle had pulled back the folds of heavy material at one end. He remained still as a statue staring down at what he had revealed. Bennett could see, past his shoulder, just enough of what he was staring at to make her gasp out loud. From beneath the folded-back drapery peered a dead-white face.
The man jerked around to stare at Bennett where she stood rooted in the doorway. For a split second, those roots held firm, as if she were in a nightmare where movement becomes maddeningly slowed or even impossible. By the time she snapped herself out of that trance, he had moved like lightning out of his crouch and across the room toward her. She was making her first step to run down the hallway when he grabbed her in a harsh and powerful grip. His fingers clamped around her upper arm so tightly she could almost feel the bruise forming there. He dragged her inside the billiard room and closed the door.
“Don’t make a sound,” he said in a tone that was more a growl than a voice.
Bennett knew she should have screamed the minute she saw him, but she wasn’t the screaming type. She was too accustomed to taking care of things on her own to have a natural instinct to call out for help. He still had hold of her arm. When he reached around her waist from behind and pulled her to him, imprisoning her arms at her sides, she realized he wasn’t carrying a weapon in either hand. She began to struggle, kicking out fiercely. She connected with one of his shins, and he grunted in pain. She took a deep breath to let out a yell that would have come from the very bottom of her lungs had he not let go of one of her arms to clap his hand over her mouth.
“Do you want to end up like her?”
He jolted Bennett around to face the bundle on the floor. The woman lying there was probably in her late twenties and very pale except for the bright red lipstick and dark eyeshadow she was wearing. Those kohl-rimmed eyes held Bennett’s gaze. They were partly open and fixed, as if eternally
fascinated by the old oil painting of a hunt club scene on the wall. Bennett could tell that the young woman was dead.
“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she got killed for it,” he said. “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, too, lady. So, you’d better do what I say. No hassles. No arguments. Do you understand me?”
She could feel his breath on her neck. She could also hear the desperation in his voice. He was out on the edge, and she had already guessed that made him capable of following through on any threat he made, no matter how violent. Bennett definitely didn’t want to end up like the woman on the floor, and if this man had killed once tonight he might be ready to kill again. Bennett had never been so terrified in her life, but she had to keep her head clear. Her life could depend on it.
She nodded her head as much as was possible with his hand clamped over her mouth. That hand was partly covering her nostrils, as well, and she was beginning to have trouble breathing. She could tell by the breadth of his chest behind her and the tension in his arms that he was strong enough to smother her or break her neck in an instant if he chose to. She had to keep him from doing either of those things, especially since she was already gasping for breath.
“If I take my hand off your mouth, are you going to scream?”
