Silverbridge (14 page)

My God,
she thought.
How can I feel this way when I scarcely know the man?

The legs of Gwen’s chair scraped against the floor, and Tracy heard her get to her feet. “I’m going to use the loo before I go down to the stables.”

Tony’s voice resumed its normal volume. “We’re going upstairs, Tracy. Do you want to come?”

What Tracy wanted was to scratch out Gwen Mauley’s eyes. She said with a sufficient degree of calm, “I’ll come when I finish the dishes.”

“Suit yourself,” Tony said. The kitchen door closed, and Tracy turned off the water and put the last dish in the dishwasher.

She had eavesdropped to find out if Tony would give away anything that might connect him to the stable fire. He hadn’t, but what she had heard had been just as worrying. She had been upset by the conversation, and she was upset with herself for being upset.

What is it to me if Harry marries that evil woman?
she thought angrily.

At that moment the kitchen d
oor opened, and Meg walked in. “
Tracy, I didn’t know you were here,” she said in surprise.

“I was just tidying up after breakfast,” Tracy returned.

Meg had changed out of her church clothes and into her usual jeans and sweater. She wandered over to the sofa where the two spaniels were stretched out and sat down between them. “Poor Millie,” she said, petting
one of the silky heads and gazing into a pair of quiet brown eyes. “Did Harry desert you?”

Marshal, jealous of the attention his sister was getting, nudged her.

Tracy returned her apron to the cupboard. “He went upstairs to change into riding clothes. Gwen Mauley is here and wants to ride her horse. I expect he’ll collect the dogs before he goes down to the stable.”

A scowl descended over Meg’s fine-boned face. “I don’t like Gwen Mauley. She’s after Harry.”

“Surely it would be a suitable match for him,” Tracy said. “Gwen likes horses, and she has money. What could be better?”

“She’s a bitch. And she doesn’t like me. I would hate it if she became my sister-in-law. She’d be even worse than Dana Matthews.”

“You don’t seem to like any of your brother’s girlfriends,” Tracy said.

“He was engaged once to Hilary Mortimer, and I liked her okay. But they had some kind of a falling-out and called it off.” The sun was shining on Meg’s silvery hair, which should have been beautiful but instead looked dull and lifeless. “He’d better get married soon, though. He’s going to be thirty this year.” She gave Tracy a wide-eyed look. “That’s
old.
”

To Tracy, at twenty-seven, thirty didn’t seem old at all. It seemed, in fact, a perfect age. She casually leaned against the counter, and said, “There is quite an age difference between you and your brothers.”

Meg bent her head to pet Millie again. “There’s twelve years between
me and Harry and nine years be
tween me and Tony.” Her voice sounded oddly gruff. “I
was a surprise to my parents—and not a pleasant surprise either. My mother thought that she was finished with children, and then there I was.” Meg ran Millie’s silken ear through her fingers. “Not that I got in her way very much. When I was little she fobbed me off on a nanny, and when I was eight, I went away to school.”

Tracy thought of her own cherished childhood and was appalled at the picture that Meg had painted.
No wonder the poor kid is anorexic,
she thought, and said, “I have never understood why the English send their children off to boarding school at such a young age. It seems so irresponsible to entrust the most formative years of your child’s life to someone else.”

Meg shrugged. “Everyone does it.”

“We don’t do it in America, thank goodness. At least, a few people do, I suppose, but never at the age of eight!”

“There was this mean girl in my dorm,” Meg confided as she continued to stroke Millie’s long ears. “She used to tell me scary stories and make me cry.”

Tracy put down the sponge she had been holding. “It sounds ghastly.”

“Oh, it toughened me up,” Meg returned with a forced smile. “We Olivers come from tough stock, you know.”

Tracy looked at the fragile wrists that protruded from Meg’s sweater and went to sit next to the girl. The displaced Millie gave her an outraged look. Tracy put an arm around Meg and hugged her. “You’re not tough at all, you’re a sweetheart,” she said warmly. “I wish I had a little sister like you.”

Meg turned to look at her. “Do you really?”

“Absolutely.”

A little color had flushed into the skin over Meg’s sharp cheekbones. “I wish you were my sister, too.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Tracy said. “Let’s get Gail to pick us up and we can all three of us go out to lunch.”

“But you just ate breakfast,” Meg said in surprise.

Tra
cy smiled. “
True. We’ll give it another hour before we leave.”

Meg looked at Tracy’s long, elegant legs, which were encased in sheer panty hose ending in navy high-heeled shoes. “How do you stay so thin if you eat so much?”

Tracy thought a moment before she replied, “Do you really think I’m thin, Meg?”

Meg nodded emphatically. “Of course, You have a beautiful figure.”

“Thank you.” She hesitated, then went resolutely on, “You do realize, don’t you, that you are much thinner than I am?”

“No,” Meg said. “I’m fat. Mummy used to call me a dumpling.”

What a dreadful woman her mother must have been,
Tracy thought. She held out her bare right arm, and said, “Here, put your arm next to mine.” After a moment, Meg slowly complied. “Now roll up your sweater sleeve.” Meg shot her a suspicious look, but then she pushed up her beige wool sleeve, revealing an arm that was nothing more than a covering of flesh and blood vessels over bone.

“Look at our two arms, Meg,” Tracy urged. “Yours is much thinner than mine.”

“No it’s not,” Meg replied. “Look at all this fat.” And
she pulled at the loose skin that had wrinkled in the crook of her arm.

“T
hat’s not fat,” Tracy replied. “
That’s a sign that you have shrunk your body more than your skin can contract. Your skin is like an oversize sweater, with folds.”

Meg jerked her sleeve down and averted her face. “I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that I’m anorexic. Well what if I am! I can’t help it.”

Tracy regarded Meg’s sharp profile. “Perhaps you could help it a little,” she said gently. “Do you think you could come out to lunch with Gail and me and eat something? It doesn’t have to be very much, but something.”

Meg’s back was rigid, and Tracy thought she was going to say no. Then, “I suppose I could do that,” she mumbled.

Relief surged through Tracy. “Wonderful. You know, if you
were
my little sister, I’d be very worried about you.”

Meg was staring at her lace-up boots. “Harry worries about me. He doesn’t know what to do, though.”

Tracy reached out and gently smoothed Meg’s hair back from her forehead. “Harry can’t do anything, Meg. It’s you who must save yourself.”

Meg’s head bent even lower, and in a gruff little voice she said, “I don’t know if I want to.”

Tracy’s heart ached. “Then try to
pretend
that you want to. Okay? Will you do that for me?”

“Oh—all right.” Meg lifted her head and said with feigned exasperation, “Anything is better than you nagging at me.”

Tracy grinned. “I’m a great nagger. Just ask my mother.” She patted Meg’s knee then stood up.

“Uh-oh,” Meg said.

Tracy looked at her. “What?”

Meg’s eyes were dancing. “The back of your navy blue dress is covered with dog hairs.”

Tracy turned around to look. “Yuck. It looks like I have more of their hair than they do.” She gave an ineffective brush or two at the dress. “Oh well, a visit to the dry cleaner will fix it.” She smiled. “Come along, Meg, and we’ll go and call Gail.”

14

T
racy was recognized in the restaurant and had to sign about a dozen autographs before she could eat. She did this with as much enthusiasm as a child who had been commanded to be polite by his parents while visiting a hated relative.

“Isn’t that annoying, having people bother you like that?” Meg asked when the last autograph seeker had walked away.

“It’s a pain in the ass,” Tracy returned grimly.

Gail sighed.

Tracy glared. “I signed the stupid autographs, didn’t I?”

“You were wonderful,” Gail said expressionlessly.

Tracy turned to Meg. “Can you tell me why a person would want to have someone else’s signature on a menu? Or a napkin? Or a piece of toilet paper? I can understand wanting an author’s name on a book, or an artist’s signature on a painting, but what the hell good is my signature on a napkin?”

Meg looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, but people seem to like it.”

“Well, I don’t,” Tracy said resentfully.

Meg was staring at her. “Don’t you
like
being an actress, Tracy?”

“I like being an actress very much. It’s why I accepted this role, because it’s a challenge. What I don’t like is being a movie star.”

“Goodness,” Meg said, wide-eyed.

“This is a running battle between Tracy and the rest of the world,” Gail said. “She doesn’t think her fans should have any part of her outside her movies, and they want to devour her whole.”

“You could do what Harry does when obnoxious people try to cozy up to him because he’s an earl,” Meg said.

“What does Harry do?” Tracy asked curiously.

“He looks at them as though they were some kind of disgusting bug,” Meg said. “Like this,” and she made a face.

Tracy and Gail roared with laughter.

Meg laughed, too. “Well, he does it better than that.”

A waiter stopped at their table, and said, “Are you ready to order, Miss Collins?”

“Yes,” Tracy said. Both she and Gail ordered the pasta salad and Meg, af
ter a noticeable hesitation, or
dered the same thing. When the food came, Tracy tried hard not to watch Meg eat. Instead she and Gail kept up a series of reminiscences about past movies, most of them amusing. Meg seemed to enjoy listening and by the time the waiter came back to remove their plates,
Tracy was relieved to see that she had eaten some of her salad.

Prudently, she did not remark on this to Meg.

When they exited into the warm afternoon air, none of them felt like returning home.

“Nothing much is open on a Sunday, but we could go and look at the white horses,” Meg suggested.

Tracy’s attention was instantl
y caught. “What white horses? Lipizzaners?”

“No.” Meg laughed. “I mean figures of horses that are carved into a chalk hillside. We have a number of them in Wiltshire, and they’re super.”

“Oh yes, I’ve seen pictures,” Tracy said enthusiastically. “I’d love to see them.”

“Okay,” Meg said. “I’ll be the navigator.”

T
hey had a delightful day, eating dinner out as well. Meg balked a bit at the suggestion of another meal, but when Tracy and Gail professed themselves to be starving, she went along. She only ordered a bowl of soup, however, and did not finish it.

Gail delivered Meg and Tracy back to Silverbridge at eight o’clock. “Oh, before I forget,” Gail said, as Tracy opened the car door. “I spoke to Mel late last night. He’s sending you a script he wants you to consider.”

“Who is Mel?” Meg asked from the back seat.

“My agent,” Tracy replied, and turned to Gail. “Who is the writer?”

“Seth Nagle.” Gail named the screenwriter of one of Tracy’s most successful movies. “And Harrison Ford is interested.”

“He’s old,” the voice from the backseat pronounced.

Tracy laughed. “I’ll look at the script,” she told Gail, “but I’ve talked to Mel about the sameness of my last few roles, and he agreed to try to find me something different. Seth Nagle is more of the same.”

“The movie you’re doing now is different,” Gail pointed out.

“I know,” Tracy said. “And I love it.”

“What time are you called for tomorrow?” Gail asked.

“I have to be in makeup at ten o’clock.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in your dressing room after that.”

“Good.” Tracy slid out of the car, and Meg did likewise. They both gave Gail a wave as she drove off.

Then Tracy turned to Meg. “I think I’ll go down to the stable and walk off my dinner.”

“Okay,” Meg said. “I’m going upstairs. One of my favorite shows is coming on the telly.”

Tracy was pleased not to have company and set briskly off in the direction of the stable path. She had changed after breakfast from her dress into wool slacks and a deep lavender cashmere sweater set, which had been warm enough during the day but felt a little thin in the ch
illy evening air. She did not run
back toward the house, however, but kept walking in the direction of the burned-down stable.

Harry was there, as she had hoped, leaning on a paddock railing and watching the horses as they munched on the hay that he had put out for them. Millie and Marshal were with him. Tracy counted the number of horses in the three paddocks as she approached.

“Hi,” she said as she came up beside him.

“Hello,” he returned, giving her a quick glance before returning his eyes to the horses.

Tracy crossed her arms against the evening breeze. “I see your two strays have been returned.”

“Yes. Martin Chubb, one of my tenant farmers, found them eating in his hay pasture. He brought them back this afternoon.”

Tracy regarded the ten horses, which were spread among the three paddocks according to sex. They all wore their turnout blankets, and their manes and tails had obviously been brushed. They seemed perfectly peaceful as they dipped their muzzles into their own individual hay piles, then lifted their heads to chew and look calmly around.

“Thank goodness it’s a nice evening,” Tracy said. “If they had to be out in the rain, they wouldn’t be half as content.”

“I know.” His voice sounded preoccupied. “There’s a horse show going on near Winchester today, and I managed to arrange for the company that they rented their portable stalls from to bring ten of them here tomorrow.”

“That’s great. You’ll be more comfortable with them indoors.”

All the while that she had been conducting this perfectly rational conversation, something completely irrational had been going on inside Tracy. Harry was standing at least two feet away from her, the sleeve of his jacket hadn’t even brushed her arm, and yet she had never been more physically aware of a man in her entire life. Every nerve in her body was attuned to him: the slight stirring of his hair with the evening breeze, the
flicker of his eyelashes, the tendons in his left hand as he rested it on the fence; all these affected her in a profound and disturbing way.

He asked abruptly, “Did Meg eat anything today?”

“A little. She had some pasta salad at lunch and a half a bowl of soup at dinner.”

“That’s good.” He glanced over Tracy’s shoulder as if he expected someone to be there. “Where is she? I thought she was your shadow.”

“She wanted to watch a TV show.”

“No, she didn’t.” He sounded very weary. “She wanted to go to her room to exercise off all of those calories she consumed today.”

Tracy asked cautiously, “Just how dangerous is her physical condition?”

He rested his arm against the paddock fence and turned to face her. “It’s not necessary for her to go into hospital—at least not yet. In fact, when I spoke to her therapist yesterday, she said that she saw some improvement. Evidently this movie has caught her interest, and one of the problems with anorexics is that they become so inner-directed that they lose interest in everything else. The therapist also told me that she feels Meg has developed a tie to you.”

Tracy looked into his brown eyes, and a shiver ran up and down her spine. She cleared her throat and said, “If there is anything at all I can do to help, please let me know. Anorexia is a terrible disease, and I know it is difficult to treat.”

“Thank you. I would ask you to continue to befriend her, if that wouldn’t be too much of a burden. She trusts
very few people, which is one of the problems that triggered this disorder.”

“Of course I will continue to be her friend. It’s not a burden at all; I like Meg.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

For the first time she noticed that he had a raw, ugly bu
rn
on the back of his hand.

“You should have a bandage on that so it won’t get infected.” And, without thinking, she reached for his hand, as if she w
ould examine the burn
more closely.

The moment she touched him, his hand turned and his fingers captured hers. In a rough voice he said, “That was a dangerous thing to do.”

She yielded as soon as his lips touched hers, her whole body surrendering to him, relinquishing herself to his strength. All thought ceased. Everything was feeling: the taste of his mouth; the heady smell of his shaving lotion; the feel of his body against hers, a feeling that was wildly erotic, yet strangely safe. Tracy experienced all these things so intensely that she was dizzy with sensation and had to cling to him even more tightly to keep from falling.

At long last he lifted his head, but he didn’t let her go. Instead he guided her head to his shoulder and buried his mouth in her hair. “Tracy,” he said in a voice that sounded profoundly shaken.

She stretched her arms around his waist and held him tightly. For a moment out of time, they stood there in silence, locked in each other’s arms.

They flew apart as soon as they heard the sound of the camera clicking. Tracy was horrified to see Jason
Counes standing about twenty feet away, his camera pointed in their direction.

Harry cursed and started toward him. Counes turned and fled. Harry went after him, and they both disappeared into the trees.

Tracy’s heart was pounding.
That horrible, horrible man.
She wanted to kill him, and she was afraid that Harry felt the same way. She said out loud, “For God’s sake, Harry, don’t hurt him.”

She shuddered to think what the newspapers would say if Jason got beaten up.

At last Harry came into view, walking out of the woods. There was a camera in his hands. She went to meet him.

“I got the little weasel’s camera,” he said when she reached him. He was white with fury. “I also told him what I’d do if I caught him trespassing on my land again. I hope he listened, because I meant it.”

“That’s the man who’s been stalking me,” Tracy said.

He nodded, glanced at his watch, and said curtly, “We should be getting back to the house. It will be dark shortly.”

The incident with the camera had transformed him from lover into wary stranger. Tracy didn’t know whether to be angry or sad. Without replying, she accompanied him back up the stable path. It was at the place where the road to the woods branched off that the dogs began to growl.

“What is it?” Harry said with a mixture of puzzlement and incipient alarm.

Tracy looked at the dogs, both of which were crouched into attack positions, hackles raised, their eyes
fixed
on a single spot. The deep growli
ng noise they were making was hair-raising.

“What can they be seeing?” Harry asked, looking where the dogs were looking.

Tracy looked likewise, and on the path she saw a man and a woman locked in a passionate embrace. The man’s hair was a lighter color than Harry’s and the woman’s a darker color than hers. Everything about their pose screamed desperation.

“You don’t see anything?” she asked Harry cautiously.

“No, do you?”
When she didn’t reply, he turned to the dogs. “Easy, Marshal. Easy, Millie. It’s all right. There’s nothing there.”

Marshal gave a single sharp, threatening bark and moved forward. The bark caught Tracy’s attention and she looked away from the couple on the path. Marshal’s black-and-white spaniel body and raised floppy ears looked astonishingly wolflike. Then, between one moment and the next, he relaxed.

Instantly Tracy looked back to the spot where she had seen Charles and Isabel. No one was there.

Harry said, “There must have been an animal in the undergrowth, although they usually don’t react so ferociously to prowling wildlife.”

He didn’t see them.
Tracy looked at Harry in amazement as she realized that his eyes were sealed to the visions. In the same way, Charles’s and Isabel’s eyes evidently were sealed to the time period they had infringed upon.

Tracy was the only one able to see into both worlds.

The time barrier must be like one of those windows that functions as a re
al window on one side and a mir
ror on the other,
she thought.
I am the only one on the window side. Everyone else sees only the mirrored reflection of their own world.