Legacy (6 page)

I studied my blue eyes, trying to imagine for a moment or two that I was Dr. McKay. How would I find this woman's face that looked at me so steadily? Would I see it as empty, or sincere? Would I discern an intelligence behind that gaze? Probably, I thought, Dr. McKay would not even notice. He would be thinking of some piece of scientific equipment or about a new way to improve the processing at his lumber mill, and not about a woman's eyes. Besides, his own were even bluer than mine. Idly, I wondered if there might be some way to darken the lashes. Hadn't I read somewhere that the Egyptians . . .

Suddenly the bedroom door behind me flew open with a crash, and I could see Father's outline in the mirror. His face was a crimson mask of anger and I was suddenly very frightened - I had never seen him so furious.

'Cover yourself, young lady!'

He had changed into his evening clothes - crisp black trousers and the formal starched shirt front - but he had not yet put on his necktie. I could see the veins and muscles at the sides of his neck bulging outward with tension as he glared at me, or, rather, at my reflection in the mirror.

I trembled with fright, but I got up as steadily as I could, and without looking around I got my yellow dressing gown from my wardrobe cabinet and put it on. Drawing the silken cord tightly around my waist, I turned to face him. I wanted to berate him for bursting in upon me like this, but I was afraid to trust my voice just then. I simply looked at him, still holding my hairbrush and thinking vaguely that I ought to set it back down on the dressing table.

'By God, haven't you anything to say for yourself?'

That startled me and changed my fear to indignation. 'I told you I would come down when I was ready. But if there is something so important to you that it makes you forget all notions of a lady's privacy, I suggest you say it now and be done with it!'

'Oh, it's a lady's privacy, is it? A lady!' His voice was mocking and cruel as he came towards me. 'You call yourself a lady? Tell me, what were you doing this afternoon?'

I said nothing. Surely he could not know where I had been. It was a trap, a trick to get me to tell him what he did not know.

His big hands grasped my shoulders and he shook me so that the room spun around and I stumbled. 'You go riding with Steven Graybar and you call yourself a lady? Answer me!'

A horrible emptiness and dread seized me, as I now realized that he indeed did know. But how? And the answer came instantly: Jared had told him. Of course! What a fool I had been! Jared had seen Steven Graybar ride up to the stables, and he would even have seen the two of us talking in the exercise grounds. Possibly he might also have seen Steven ride back from Legacy with me until we had come within sight of the stables. And, of course, he would have had his instructions from Father to report immediately on anything like that. And now, because I had kept him waiting so long, Father had grown even more incensed, and I would have to face the consequences!

'Wait a moment,' I said, and as I spoke I found myself gaining confidence. 'There is absolutely nothing for you to worry about. I could not avoid Steven Graybar this afternoon; he sought me out at the stables. I rode away from him, into the woods, and it was there I received the marks on my face, from a tree. Steven did not catch up with me until I was well on my way back to the stables, and even then I spoke to him but slightly. And that is the truth!'

Thank God at least part of it was the truth, for I was never able to lie with conviction. I looked Father in the eye, determined to make him believe me.

I could see that my words had at least some impact, for he released his grip on my shoulders, though his expression did not soften. 'By God, if you've been lying to me, young lady-'

'I haven't, Father! Why must you be so ... '

'Haven't I ordered you to keep away from that . . .'

'I did keep away! He rode right up to me!'

'And you spoke with him! By God, if you think I'm going to have my daughter consorting with a damned whoremonger . . .'

Without thinking, furious, I swung my open palm at his face and slapped him as hard as I could, so hard that my hand turned numb with the pain. He stared at me, shocked, surprised, and then enraged, and I grew frightened again, horrified at what I had just done. With my hand throbbing, I looked at him transfixed with fear, instinctively raising my arms to protect myself.

He tore the hairbrush out of my hands and pushed me roughly across the room so that I nearly fell across the dressing table. 'By God, I'm going to take you across my knee, young lady! I'm going to teach you who your father is! You're going to learn some obedience here and now!'

And as I struggled, terrified, burning with indignation, he pushed me down across the foot of the bed and brought the back of the hairbrush down hard across my buttocks, so that I cried out at the shock of the stinging, brutal hurt. The thin silk of my dressing robe was scarcely any protection, and the pain was shocking. A great surge of hot anger rose up within me.

I twisted away from him, rolling onto the rug, and from there got to my feet. With one swift motion I swept a container of face powder from the top of my dressing-table, whirled, and flung it at him with all my strength.

The container hit Father in the cheek and burst open in a white, blinding, choking cloud.

Father gasped, breathing in the powder, and then tried to speak. But he had no voice, no words. There was only stunned numbness as he stood before me, trying to get his breath. He picked up my towel and wiped the powder from his face.

When he finally spoke, I realized he was going to pretend that nothing had happened, that he had not mistreated his daughter so badly.

'There,' he said, 'that should even things up a bit. And you'd better learn to keep a leash on that tongue of yours, or there'll be worse things ahead for you until you learn what it means to respect your father.'

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I nodded, still frozen with hate.

'And if that Graybar animal ever comes close enough to you to talk again, if he so much as touches you, he's a dead man. Dead! Do you understand me?'

My voice sounded empty. 'Oh, I understand, Father.'

'Don't think for one minute you can make me feel sorry for you. You've had this coming for a long time. Now, stop sniveling and get dressed!'

I stood up. But when the door closed behind him, I threw myself on my bed and sobbed, soundlessly, wordlessly, until I thought I could cry no more. 'Even things up,' he had said.

But we were not 'even', not yet, and I would never forgive him!

By the time I had finished dressing I had composed myself, drawing a temporary curtain over the great wound I now felt inside. I had thought I had known my father, thought that he loved me, but now here was the proof of how he really felt. I was nothing to him - only another piece of property, an animal that was to be beaten brutally whenever I gave him the slightest trouble.

But I was not going to let him stop me. Oh, no! I was not going to give way to hurt, to surrender meekly and obey this man, this stranger I had never really seen before. Now I realized for the first time what a man like my father really must be like inside, the kind of man who drives everyone around him relentlessly, determined to break them to his own selfish will. That was what my father had done here in Grampian, wasn't it? And wasn't that just what he was still trying to do to Brad Graybar, who was likely the one man who had stood up to him, who wouldn't give him what he wanted?

I coldly examined my reflection as I applied just a trace of lipstick to my lips and a bit of powder to my cheeks. Was it my imagination, or were the outlines of my mouth harder, firmer, more determined? And my eyes - did they look as if I had been weeping? I thought not. These were not the eyes of Sam Rawlings's obedient and contrite little daughter. For I knew with an icy certainty that today my father had lost me. I would not play the coy, bashful maiden for his millionaire friends, letting myself be used as live bait, as a pawn in his empire-building!

Before my full-length mirror, I smoothed the grey silk dress that clung to my breasts and tapered in a neat line down to my waist. I had pinned up my hair in a French knot, and I had forgone flowers, either for a corsage or for my hair. I had only a single strand of pearls wrapped tightly around my neck for ornamentation. Yet the effect was exactly as I wanted it - restrained, attractive, but clearly nothing I had taken a great deal of trouble to produce. Father's guests would know that his daughter was certainly not too concerned with the impression she was making tonight.

Yet they would have a surprise or two coming to them, I thought with a sudden resolve that gave me a cool satisfaction. The conversation at the dinner table tonight might be a bit more lively than Father had intended!

It was seven o'clock. Not more than an hour and a half had gone by since I had come into this house, where I had once felt so much at home.

I found Mother waiting for me when I descended the stairs and walked between the huge oak sliding doors into the drawing room. Father had built this room on a grand scale: the ceilings, all ornamented with 'wedding cake' white plasterwork, were twenty feet high, and nearly the entire east wall consisted of narrow French windows, gracefully arched at the top. With the evening sunset coming from between the trees out on our western grounds, the room was filled with light that caused its furnishings, especially the sleek marble and the enamel tiles of the fireplace mantel, to shine with a special brilliance.

Mother must be feeling pleased with what she had done here, I thought to myself as I came into the room. The soft whites and grays of the furniture and the carpet, the touches of red in the occasional cushions and drapes, and in the small Oriental rug before the hearth, gave the feeling of lightness and warmth. So much nicer, I thought, than the heavy, dark parlor of so many of our friends. The room, I supposed, was more or less a tribute to Mother's good taste, a triumph of her Philadelphia upbringing over the rough, new-moneyed Grampian society that her love for my father had led her into just after I had been born. He had come out here to the new territory, had seen its promise, and had persuaded Mother that our family would one day live a grander life than even a well-to-do Philadelphia lawyer could dream of.

And Mother had followed him here, to the Susquehanna Valley, and had watched him make good on that promise.

Perhaps the first years had been difficult, though I certainly remembered them only as happy ones. She had told me that there was little money back then, since Father had put it all into his lumber investments, and she had to do all her own work - the cooking, the baking, the cleaning, and even tending to the poultry we had in those days. But it had been good; she never ceased to remind me of that. She had been busy, and happy, and the work had led to greater things. She never said so, but I suspected that her keeping so busy also helped her get over the disappointment she must have felt when she nearly died after a second pregnancy. The baby, a little boy, had been lost, and the doctors had told Mother that she could bear no more children.

And now she was a grand lady, who could spend summers in Europe and winters in Florida if she chose, but who often as not preferred to stay at home. Tonight, she, too, had dressed with tasteful simplicity, in a dress of very dark green velvet and gauze, with a single white camellia as a corsage.

As I came into the room she looked up, her eyes full of concern.

'You've had another quarrel with your father.'

'Oh, did he tell you?' I sat beside her on the settee closest to the window and folded my hands in my lap. I was determined to keep up my cold resolve and to make this evening one that Father would not soon forget.

But I had not reckoned on Mother's influence. 'You must be feeling terrible, child. He's not been himself lately at all.' She told me of the strain Father was under, with huge investments in new projects that would take time to earn a profit, with loans coming due, and with larger and larger payrolls to meet every week.

I found my bitterness losing a little of its force as I began to understand that Father did not really have things his way all the time. And then Mother said something else that softened me even further.