A ruling passion : a novel (53 page)

Carlton jerked the wheel and brought the car to a stop at the side of the road. He pulled her to him, fingers digging into her arms, his mouth against hers. "Don't play games with me; I've got too much on my mind. I told you I'd go ahead with it; we'll do it and when it's over I'll tell Val I'm leaving. She won't mind; there isn't much between us anymore—she said that herself—and she's getting impatient; I know she'd rather be free and find someone else. I don't want any more crap from you about not seeing me anymore; is that clear? You'll see me all the time; we're doing this together and we'll be together."

Sybille nodded. "Forever," she breadied, and locked her moudi to his.

They did not speak for the rest of the drive to the airport. When they pulled up, Carlton said, "I'll have a cup of coffee with you before you leave."

"No." She opened her door and slid out. "My pilofs been here for an hour; I want to leave right away." She gazed about her. "Where's your plane, Carl? I don't see it."

"At the end of the field, near the hangar."

She strained to see it in the fading light. "At the very end? Oh, there it is. We've had some good trips in it, haven't we? Especially up here, when we had the house to ourselves."

He took her overnight bag from the car. "I'll call you tonight."

She kissed him, her lips clinging, reluaant to pull away. "I'll wait for that. And I'll see you soon."

"Next Thursday"

He watched her walk to the Base Operations office, to meet her pilot, and then he drove away, back to his house, back to Valerie, back to Lily who was waiting to reassure him about Graceville, back to the worries that began again as soon as Sybille was out of sight.

He could still feel her mouth locked to his. Forever. He and Sybille. Guilty of fi-aud. We're doin^ this together. We'll he together. Forever.

He avoided Lily, whose troubled gaze followed him as he paced the great room, from the fireplace at one end to the open kitchen at the other. He spent the evening in his office; when he called Sybille, the sound of her voice drove him into a frenzy of desire and revulsion and he cut the call short. He stayed there all night, angry at himself for his indecision, angry at Sybille for putting him through this agony, angry at Valerie for not caring about him enough to insist he tell her the truth so he could share the mess he'd made and let her find a way out for both of them.

At dawn, he glanced at the calendar on his desk. Monday. The day they were to close on the purchase of the land.

"No we won't," he muttered in the chilly room. He swept the papers off his desk; memos, mortgage documents, stock and bond transactions, financial projections, and stuffed them into a cardboard folder. I'll be damned if I'll let myself be sucked into this. Sucked into her. Val said we'd share it. I trust Val.

As he said that, he knew he did not trust Sybille and never had. He only wanted her. But this time he was through. "I'm going back," he

said, his determination stiffening as he heard the sound of his words. "She won't close on that land; I won't let her."

"I'm going back," he said to Valerie, lEinding her lying wakeful in bed. "Right away. I have things to do; I can't put them off any longer."

She sat up. "We'U ail go."

"No. You stay; I don't want you to—"

"We'll all go." She flung aside the bedclothes and went to the closet, pulling out pants and a shirt and sweater.

Carlton's eyes passed over her slender nude body as if she were not there. "I don't want you to go. I don't want to ruin your vacation."

"It isn't a vacation; you couldn't ruin it, because it was a farce from the beginning; and I have no desire to stay here." She was pulling on her clothes. "Wake the others, Carl. We can be ready in an hour."

"I can't wait that long."

She looked at her watch. "In an hour it will be eight o'clock. We'll be home by ten-thirty. That should be time for a full day's work. Carl, we're going with you."

"Look, I promised Betsy and Alex nine days—"

"I don't give a damn about Betsy and Alex. I still give a damn about you, and I'm going with you."

Carlton's breath came out in a long sigh. She was taking care of everything. Thank God. He wanted her with him. He hated going home to an empty house. He hated worrying about problems alone. And he didn't want to be with Sybille; he wanted to be with Val. She was clean and straight and that was what he needed. I love her, he thought, and felt a cold sinking within him when he thought of the harm he had done her. I have so much to make up to her for; if 11 take all the years we have ahead of us to tell her how sorry I am, and to get back what was hers. It'll take all those years just to make her believe how much I love her.

"Carl, I'm ready," Valerie said. She touched his arm. "We'll work it out, whatever trouble you're in, and then we'll do something about us."

Her voice was soothing, as if she knew everything and had already forgiven him, and Carlton felt a wave of relief. He didn't have to worr\' about Val; she'd stick with him; she'd help him; she'd be fine. "You get the others," he said. "I'll close up the house."

A litde over an hour later, they were at the airport, shivering in the bitter morning air while Carlton opened the door of his plane and

Stowed their luggage. "Lily, Betsy, Alex," he said, barking orders, and they took three of the seats behind the two in front, fastening their seat belts. Lily seemed in a daze; she had not said a word on the drive from the house to the airport. Betsy had complained bitterly—she'd turned down four parties to come to the Adirondacks—until Alex told her to be quiet; Carl wouldn't leave in a hurry unless he had a good reason.

Carlton gave a cursory glance at his preflight checklist, then put it aside. He didn't have time for the whole thing, and they'd been here only a few days, not long enough for anything to change. In the pilot's seat he started the engines and checked his instruments while Valerie locked the door and climbed into the seat beside him.

''Everybody strapped in?" he asked happily. He was feeling better: he was on his way, he was taking action, he was in charge of his Ufe again. "Okay, then, we're off. Home in a couple of hours."

And the small plane lifted off, into the gray January sky.

^ V

Chapter 19

^j^-^ veryone said she should marry again, someone

^^ ^^..^ wealthy, right away. They came to visit her in her

V f j mother's Park Avenue apartment, where she had

^^y^ gone when she left the hospital, to begin the long

recovery from the crash. And her friends sat with her, discussing her ftiture. "You have to marry," they repeated. "All your money gone... how else will you manage? What would you do?"

"Clean stables," Valerie said with biting humor. "Fve been on the other side so long, it's probably time I learned."

"Be serious, Val," they said. "Think about the fiiture."

"I will," she said gravely, as if she were not already thinking about it every hour, every day, and dreaming about it at night. Her bruises were fading, her feet were healing, but her thoughts were still in turmoil. She could not mourn Carl without being ftirious and bewildered. "It makes no sense," she said to Dee Wyly, who visited almost every day. "If he was in trouble, why didn't he tell me?"

"He didn't gamble," Dee said thoughtftilly. "Not much, anyway; he didn't like it, did he?"

"He said he didn't. I can't even be sure of that anymore." Valerie

nibbled on one of the chocolates Dee had brought. The two of them had been close friends for a long time, and Dee was one of the few women Valerie could talk to comfortably. Blond, warmly attractive and without affectation, Dee was the only one who had wondered aloud if it was a good idea for Valerie to marry Carlton. She had not mentioned that to Valerie since the crash, but both of them remembered it.

"He could have been fleeced by someone," she said, looking past Valerie at a photograph of Carlton on a side table. "He was like a little boy sometimes, don't you think? Every now and then I thought he looked downright lost." She studied the photograph. "Don't you think somebody could have taken advantage of him?"

"He was a grown man and a successful investment counselor," Valerie replied dryly. "How naive can we pretend he was? Anyway, why wouldn't he tell me? We could have seen it through together." She paused. "Of course, there's the other woman. He might have wanted to disappear with her."

"I don't believe there was anybody. I never saw him with anyone, or heard anything. Those things get around, you know."

"All he had to do was ask me for a divorce," Valerie went on. "But he never said a word, not even that he was thinking about it." She spread her hands. "He cared for me—I'm pretty sure—so how could he have wiped me out?"

"He did care for you; I could tell." Slowly, Dee shook her head. "Poor Valerie, you can't even get good and mad at him; you're mourning him at the same time. He died so young, and you did have good times together... What a mess. I wish there was something I could do."

"You're doing it," Valerie said with a smile. "You're wonderful. Dee; you've listened to me try to figure this out for a month."

"Probably a few more months to go," Dee said cheerfully. She stood. "I have to go; I'm taking Emily shopping. I wish you could come along; Emily likes to shop with both of us. 'My two elegant mothers,' she calls us."

"I will as soon as I can trust my feet to get through Bergdorf's." Valerie's face changed. "No, as a matter of fact. I guess I won't."

Their eyes met as they thought of the difference, now, between their finances. "You'll give Emily advice," Dee said easily. "Your taste has nothing to do with your checkbook." She kissed Valerie. "Till tomorrow."

As soon as she was gone, Valerie's logical thinking collapsed into a maelstrom of anger and mourning, fear of the future, and feeling sorry

for herself. I don't deserve diis, she thought, and then panic filled her. How could I think about Bergdorf's? I don't even know if I can afford groceries.

All her other friends, less intimate than Dee, told her in the nicest possible way that she didn't have the training, skills or temperament to earn a living. "Can you even keep a budget?" they asked. She didn't know; she'd never done it. And then, besides those visitors there were investigators probing the plane crash and the loss of her money, plunging her, with every question, back into the confusion and resentment that engulfed her whenever she thought about Carlton.

"I just can't believe he did that to you!" Sybille exclaimed. It was the third time she had come to New York since the plane crash, and the two of them were in Valerie's sitting room in her mother's apartment. "He always seemed so responsible and stable: not at all the kind to—"

"Sybille, we've been through this," Valerie said. She had a piece of needlepoint in her lap, something she had started in the past month. She took pleasure in using her hands in this new way; it soothed her anger and gave her a feeling of accomplishment as an intricate Persian design emerged from the mesh. But for some reason Sybille always made her so nervous she could not make a stitch, and so she put it aside. "I don't want to talk about how responsible Carl was; obviously he wasn't."

"But you should talk about it; otherwise you'll brood. He must have said something, given you some hint about what he was doing, or thinking... you lived with him; you must have seen some clues."

"Not about money," Valerie replied briefly.

Sybille pounced on it. "What about, then? He did leave clues? About something?"

"No," Valerie said after a barely perceptible pause. "Nothing."

"Valerie, tell me about it. You can talk to me; it's good for you to talk, and I want to help you."

Valerie contemplated her. She was wearing a cashmere suit trimmed in fur; a large diamond flashed on one finger, an emerald on another; her gold earrings, instandy recognizable to anyone who shopped, were from Bulgari; her perflime was Scheherezade; and when she arrived she had been wearing her sable coat. Overdressed for an afternoon visit, Valerie thought; she's a walking bank balance. Panic flashed through her again. I have no bank balance. Everything I took for granted... it's gone, if s gone. Sybille is the one who has everything now. I used to feel sorry for her. Laughter rose in her throat, but it was wild and afraid, and she pushed it down.

"Tell me," Sybille urged. "Tell me about Carlton, anything he said or hinted... we might be able to figure out what happened."

Valerie shook her head. Why was Sybille so interested in Carlton? They'd met only two or three times. But I know the answer to that; ifs always been the same: Sybille following me around asking questions, mimicking the things I do. Sheet shooting, riding, hunting, even a farm in Virginia...

She's probably harmless, Valerie thought, but I don't like her prying. I've never liked her prying. Five more minutes, and then she's out of here. "I have to think about these things myself," she said, "before I can talk to anyone else. Tell me about your work. How many shows are you producing now?"

Svbille hesitated. She drained her glass of wine and set it on the table for Valerie to refill. "I've sold four and I'm working on three others: a soap opera and two sitcoms. I sold two game shows last summer. And of course I'm selling The Hour of Grace'; that's going to be the biggest of all, but I have to fight for Lily's attention; she's all wound up with Graceville these days."

"Graceville?"

"You haven't heard of it?

'TSIo, should I have? Has it been in the papers?"

"Not yet. But Carl was at the cathedral."

"Yes, I remember. You talked about it that day at lunch. And I asked if there would be a town around it."

"I hadn't even thought about a town until you mentioned it," Sybille said. "But then I knew it was the right thing to do. And Lily was ecstatic at the idea."

'Tou're building a town, then. Graceville. A real town?"

"Of course. Shops, theaters, houses, town houses, apartments, hotels, a hospital... everything."

"And churches?"

"The cathedral."