by Kathy
Yet she and her ex had something in common. Neither could accept reality, they saw the world not as it was but as they wanted it to be. Probably Riley had had no choice but to fire Candy, she would have been oblivious to anything less direct. All the same, and in spite of the alleged insults to herself, Meg couldn't help feeling sorry for her.
Wrapped in her thoughts, she acknowledged the greetings of passersby with no more than a smile or a nod, though several halted with the obvious desire to talk with her. Now they'll start calling me a snob, she thought. Rod and Candy were not the exceptions, but the rule. Most people went around with blinders on, seeing only what they wanted to see.
How Cliff would gloat when he heard about Candy! His idle prediction had come to pass even sooner than he might have expected. He was in for a disappointment if he thought she would participate in his scheme to persuade Candy to bear witness—false or true, she suspected Cliff didn't care—against her former boss; unfortunately there was no way she could prevent him from coming on to Candy himself. Maybe if she told him Candy's ex was jealous . . . Meg smiled wryly. Cliff had nothing to fear from a flabby slob like Rod Applegate. Come to that, neither did Riley. Either one of them could handle Applegate with one hand tied behind him.
She turned into the driveway, thinking longingly of the hammock in the rose garden. Later, perhaps. First she ought to see how Gran was doing, ask if there were any errands she could do for her. And check the mail. There might be a letter from Nick.
The shining surface of the Chippendale lowboy in the hall was bare even of dust. The mail had been sorted and delivered, then. It was one of Frances's duties, and one she never shirked, probably, Meg thought, because she was so incurably nosy. Nobody had actually caught Frances steaming a letter open, but Cliff swore he had seen her holding envelopes against a lamp and squinting to read the message inside.
Meg's room had been cleaned and her mail was on the desk, together with several slips of paper bearing telephone messages. The letters were all notes of condolence, from local friends of the family; one had been sent by a former classmate, whose name Meg recognized with pleasure. So Jan was back in Seldon. She'd have to call, arrange a meeting. Unlike Candy, Jan had been a friend.
There had been two calls from her boss, demanding that she call him immediately if not sooner. Meg crumpled them up and threw them in the direction of the wastebasket. At the very bottom of the pile was a slip of paper in Frances's difficult handwriting, informing her that a Mr. Baggart had called and left his number.
Meg would have identified Frances's characteristic misinterpretation of the name sooner if the number had been the one she expected. There was no area code, so it had to be a local number. Curious, beginning to hope, she dialed, and discovered she was speaking to the receptionist at the Inn at Patterson's Mill, eight miles from Seldon.
An hour later Nick opened the door of his room. "What took you so long?" he asked. Meg went into his arms.
Nick decreed they would dine at the Inn. "There's no other decent restaurant near here, and I can think of better ways of spending our time than driving all over the neighborhood."
"It's okay with me. There's so much I want to talk over with you—"
"Talking wasn't what I had in mind." Nick shaped his mobile, actor's face into an exaggerated leer. Meg laughed, but as she took his arm she felt a faint discomfort. It wasn't the first time they had met at a hotel, and this pleasant room, with its good antique reproductions, was nothing like the usual cheap motel, but still. . . .
After they had been shown to a table in the dining room and Nick had studied the wine list, she said, "I wish you didn't have to go back tomorrow."
Nick raised his glass in a smiling toast. "Darling, I shouldn't have taken this much time off. I canceled half a dozen appointments."
"I know. I do appreciate it—"
"I missed you." He glanced approvingly around the softly lit room, with its massed greenery and handsome furniture. "Quite a pleasant little place. How much longer are we going to go on meeting like this?"
"That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about."
"We'd better order." Nick caught the eye of a tactfully hovering waiter. When they had finished and the waiter had retired, he said gently, "Now we won't be interrupted. Don't be afraid of telling me, Meg. I suspect I know what you're going to say."
"Then you're better informed than I am. I haven't made a decision. But"—her finger traced idle, meaningless designs on the white tablecloth—"but a week ago I would have said there was no decision to be made."
"You don't have to work for a living," Nick reminded her. "Especially now."
"Except for my need to accomplish something on my own, something that isn't . . ."
She didn't finish the sentence. After waiting a moment, Nick finished it for her, "... that isn't based on the accomplishments of your grandfather. Meg, Meg—" He captured the hand she had lifted in protest, and held it tightly. "You have to stop basing decisions on childish hurt and old resentment."
"What a neatly turned phrase. Did you compose it on the way here, or while you were kissing me?"
Nick laughed. "I adore you when you're waspish and feisty. As a matter of fact, I composed it last week, when you made that scene about the snow crystal. I didn't think you were ready to hear it then; but you can't go on brooding about the past. You are about to inherit a family business for which you are ideally suited. No, don't interrupt, let me finish. I've heard you talk about jewelry; you are very well informed, you have a trained eye and a genuine feel for the subject. You're a talented designer—"
"I don't know anything about jewelry design."
"Because you deliberately avoided studying the subject. Your success in advertising is due to your design capabilities and your business sense. Turn those talents to your own business, run the store and build it into another empire, as your grandfather did. Wouldn't that be accomplishment enough?"
"That's what Dan was going to do," Meg said.
"What, darling?"
"Build another empire." She smiled reminiscently. "Can you believe it? At sixty-five, seventy years old, he was going to do it again. He hated what the business had become—a big soulless organization that cared more about making money than creating beautiful things."
"And he wanted you to carry out his dream."
"Dan wouldn't have put it that way," Meg said dryly. "But— yes, that was the idea. He was furious when I told him that I wouldn't follow the course of studies he had planned for me. He actually cut me off, you know. Threw me out into the blizzard with my refusal clutched to my bosom like an illegitimate baby. I had to drop out of school and work as a clerk for six months."
"But he forgave you."
"Oh, yes." Meg laughed. "It wasn't that bad. Gran sent me money, secretly—she thought. Dan knew all about it, of course; he had a private detective keeping an eye on me the whole time. Finally he cracked; I guess the detective must have told him about my cold-water flat in a high-crime area, and my gay roommate. I came home one day to find Dan in the living room, drinking beer with Johnny and arguing about modern art."
"He must have been quite a guy."
"They both were," Meg said perversely. "I adored Johnny."
"So he let you go your own way," Nick said, sticking doggedly to the subject.
"Actually, I think he admired me for not giving in. He was pretty stubborn himself; perhaps that's why he realized threats weren't going to change me. He never really gave up, though. He just changed tactics."
"Like leaving you the store."
"And Gran," Meg murmured. "She's the strongest weapon in Dan's postmortem arsenal. Of course she has Uncle George, and he's been wonderful, but she's not. . . . How did you know about the store? I don't remember telling you."
Nick released her hand; the waiter was approaching the table. "It was in the paper."
"The New York papers?" Meg nodded a thank-you to the waiter as he put her plate in front of her.
"Don't look so horrified. It was just an article in the business section. I take it the tabloids haven't been after you yet?"
"Don't say 'yet.' " Meg shuddered. "Uncle George must have dealt with the press. Actually, I could almost pity the reporter who tried to force his way past Frances."
"It's bound to happen, Meg. If not now, then later, after your grandmother. ..."
"That won't be for years. She's only . . . she's not old." Meg's appetite was gone; she studied the beautifully arranged plate of shrimp and vegetables without enthusiasm. "Anyway, I wouldn't be news, even then. We're not one of the big names, like Tiffany's or Van Cleef & Arpels or Harry Winston. Dan kept a low profile; partly for insurance reasons—Lloyds refused to insure him unless he agreed never to be photographed—and partly because he hated the whole social-business scene."
"That's the only reason you've been spared so far." Nick paused to take a bite of his steak. "This isn't bad. How's the shrimp?"
Meg forced herself to try it. Nick went on, "The media will certainly hound you when your grandmother . . . when you become a beautiful young heiress. The tabloids love beautiful young heiresses."
"I hope you're wrong. If you're not—well, I'll deal with it when the time comes. Get a reverse face-lift and gain fifty pounds."
"Start now," Nick ordered, indicating her barely touched food.
"But it's not as simple as you make it sound," she argued. "The store is only half mine, and my partner. . . ."
Her description of Riley made Nick smile. "He sounds like a misogynist Calvin Coolidge. I wouldn't worry about Mr. Riley, love. A good lawyer can get you out of that arrangement. The fellow probably doesn't have any resources of his own, and the threat of a lawsuit for undue influence—"
"I don't think there was undue influence."
Nick's eyebrows arched. "Why would your grandfather leave such valuable property to a man he'd known only a few years?"
Others had asked the same question. She had wondered herself. Why an answer should come to her now, in Nick's skeptical presence, she didn't know, but she responded without hesitation, as if she had always known. "Dan loved his craft—the craft I rejected. Why wouldn't he honor a talented stranger when there was no one else who cared the way he did?"
"But he had no right to saddle you with a partner you dislike and distrust. Don't let sentiment affect your decision, Meg. The partnership isn't the astonishing discovery you mentioned, is it?"
Meg told him about the treasure. Instead of sharing her concern, he was highly amused. "The tricky old devil," he said admiringly. "You're sure there is no record of those jewels?"
"I haven't found one. There are a few more sources I can check, and of course I will. But the fact that they were in my safe strongly suggests—"
"It does," Nick agreed, still smiling. "He was in the Far East during World War Two, I believe—the Burma-China theater?"
She didn't ask how he knew; they had spoken often of Dan, it might have been she who told him. "Yes. And the jewelry is definitely of Indian workmanship. I suppose Dan might have acquired it from a dispossessed rajah, or from a thief who had dispossessed the rajah." She made a sour face. "God, listen to me; I'm joking about it."
"But it has elements of humor—black humor, if you like," Nick pointed out.
"And 'acquired,' as someone has said, is such a kindly word."
"Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone. I hope you aren't going to be pursued by mysterious Indians, darling."
"What am I going to do with the damned things, Nick?"
"It is a bit of a problem, isn't it? Let me think about it, get some off-the-record legal advice. I can present a hypothetical case more convincingly than you could."
"That's true," Meg admitted. "Darren would know it wasn't hypothetical."
"Darren?"
"Dan's lawyer. He's an old friend, I've known him for years."
"Ha. Do I scent a rival?"
"I wish you'd take this seriously, Nick. It's not funny. Any of it."
Nick studied her downcast face for a moment and then turned to summon the waiter. "We'd better continue the discussion in private," he said.
It was almost one a.m. before Meg got home. She had spent only an hour after dinner with Nick; the rest of the time she'd sat in her locked car, in a darkened corner of the parking lot of the Inn, alternately crying and cursing, and trying to stop crying so the traces of tears wouldn't show.
She was the one who had started the quarrel, there was no doubt of that. Everything Nick said infuriated her; the softer his voice, the louder hers became; the more rational his suggestions, the more she resented them. Most maddening of all were his attempts to get her to bed—as if she were as easily distracted as a bitch in heat, she thought angrily. Once he had been convinced she meant it, he had wrapped himself in the cold shell of disapproval that made her feel like a rebellious child facing a stern headmaster.
His suggestions had been practical and intelligent. Too damned practical, in fact. He assumed she would maneuver Riley out of his inheritance as cold-bloodedly as she would swat a wasp. Dan's wishes, her own definitions of right and wrong, were dismissed with a patronizing smile. She had felt as if she were talking with a stranger. Had he always been like this, or had she been too bemused by him to realize that they disagreed about all the things that really mattered? Nick hadn't said in so many words that she was naive and childish to worry about the legality of Dan's ownership of the Indian jewelry, but his raised eyebrows and patient voice had implied as much; the only thing that seemed to concern him was whether or not she could continue the swindle.
Those differences of opinion—to put it only too mildly— were important, but the final blow, the real eye-opener came when she realized Nick assumed that of course she would stay in Seldon, and meet him at the Inn—when he could get away. "After all, darling, it's much more romantic than—"
"I expect that's what my father thought." The words came out of nowhere, unpremeditated and unplanned—and inevitable. The parallel had been there all along, she had simply been too blind to see it, and now recognition of it turned her stomach. "Of course in his case the ambience wasn't so elegant. Just a cheap motel. But it's the same principle, isn't it? Thanks, Nick, for helping me to see that. Live long and prosper."
Remembering her final farewell, Meg laughed with genuine if painful amusement. Nick was so sensitive about his ears. . . . She was so glad she had thought of it.
The tears had dried up, and after a few more minutes she decided it was safe to drive. However, her mind wasn't entirely on what she was doing, and she was pulled over by a state policeman for going through a stop sign without coming to a complete stop. Because she was sober, apologetic and well dressed—and possibly because the officer recognized the car— she got off with a warning, but the incident cost her another fifteen minutes. From then on she drove with pedantic attention to the traffic laws, frustrated by the throb of the powerful engine she was forced to control, and even more frustrated by the knowledge that if she made the decision circumstances were goading her into making, she would be giving up her privacy and her freedom of action. Unless Gran could admit that times and mores had changed and that Meg was capable of running her own life, she would have to account for every move she made. Not only to sweet, unsuspicious Gran, but to Uncle George and Frances, the world's foremost busybody, who was neither sweet nor unsuspicious.
Burgeoning summer foliage hid the house until she took the final curve in the driveway. When she saw it her heart leapt and began to pound furiously. The entire facade was ablaze with lights.
The tires sent the neatly raked gravel flying as Meg brought the car to a shuddering stop. She jumped out and ran for the house. The front door opened before she reached it; her uncle's familiar silhouette loomed against the brightness within like a dark omen.
He came to meet her, and Meg threw herself at him, clutching his coat. "Gran. Is she—"
"No. No." He had to clear his throat before he could go on. "
She's fine. It's you we were. . . ."
"Thank God." Meg's taut muscles sagged. George put a supporting arm around her and led her into the house.
Frances was sprawled in a chair, wringing her hands. Her face was paper-white. Cliff bent over her. I forgot about Cliff, Meg thought, the fury of relief replacing her anxiety. I'd have to account to him, too. "Damn it," she burst out. "So I'm a little late! What's the idea of waiting up for me as if I were a teenager on her first date? You scared me half to death, I thought something had happened to Gran. Why isn't she pacing the floor with the rest of you?"
"She's sound asleep and perfectly fine," George said. "She doesn't know anything about this—nor will she, unless you wake her up screaming and carrying on."
"Oh." He had hardly ever spoken to her so severely, and Meg realized that he, too, was suffering a reaction from anxiety. "About . . . this? Something has happened. What?"
"Nothing." George whisked the handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his forehead. "Literally nothing . . . now. Frances, why don't you go to bed? I told you there was nothing to worry about. It was just someone's idea of a joke."
"Somebody has a pretty sick sense of humor," Frances moaned. "I'm taken bad, Mr. George. I don't know if I'll get over this. My heart. . . ." She clutched her bosom.
"All you need is some rest," George said. "Give her a hand, Cliff."
Cliff heaved the housekeeper to her feet. "Trot along, Frances. A little nip of that brandy you keep in your lingerie drawer will put you right."
It was obvious that both the Wakefields wanted Frances out of the way before they explained, so Meg remained silent until the housekeeper had tottered away and her piteous groans were cut off by the closing door.
