The Jewels of Tessa Kent (54 page)

“Well, you
were
. I didn’t know until a few seconds before you did. Yesterday was the first time I had morning sickness. I didn’t have any today. Oh, God, do you think I’ll have it again tomorrow?”

“Probably not,” Tessa said with more conviction than she felt, but she didn’t want to eliminate the power of suggestion. “There was all that eating going on, all those food smells, added to the stress of knowing we were leaving the next day. It could easily have been a onetime thing. Doctor Roberto said you were about three months pregnant and that’s almost always when morning sickness stops. After all, you were fine this morning.”

“It could just have been a fluke,” Maggie said dismissively, looking concerned. “The worst of it, besides being out of commission, is I can’t reach Barney to tell him. He took that gorgeous Ducati he’s in love with and went off with her for the weekend. Damn!”

Tessa waited a few well-timed seconds before she murmured, without any inflection at all, “Ducati.” Oh, God, let Maggie not be involved with a man who didn’t adore her.

“His new motorcycle. Very special, I gather. Barney owns a custom bike-building shop. Don’t even ask, but he does well, very well.”

“Barney,” Tessa all but hummed in a way that kept any element of question out of her voice. Tensely she waited for Maggie to reply.

“You remember Barney! For heaven’s sake, Tessa, you can’t have forgotten Barney?” Maggie asked with as much indignation as she could summon lying down.

“The only Barney I remember actually seeing with my own eyes wasn’t quite five years old.” Barney, she thought, with a leap of her heart, remembering the little
sunburnt boy who had taken care of Maggie from the moment he met her, Barney, protective Tarzan to Maggie’s timid Jane.

“But we’ve talked and talked about him! Don’t you remember how he’d never leave me alone? Always pestering me?”

“Barney Webster? … Your old faithful Sancho Panza?” She started to breath again in relief.

“Tessa, really! There’s
never
been another Barney in my life.”

“He certainly never gave up, did he? Making you
gravida
seems an ultimate form of pestering, if you ask me.”

Maggie giggled, sleepily. “Neither one of us ever gave up, not really.”

“Will he be happy?”

“Beyond happy … way, way beyond happy,” Maggie said faintly, as she closed her eyes and fell silent.

Tessa watched her intently until she was satisfied from the changed sound of Maggie’s breathing that she was fast asleep. Now that Maggie wouldn’t be disturbed, Tessa began the slow, stealthy labor of tugging, inch by inch, two deep, heavy armchairs until they came together near the bed. She positioned them so that they faced each other and formed a short, downy couch on which she planned to curl up for the night. She found a pillow and an extra blanket in a closet and snuggled down, her knees bent, in what seemed to be a fairly comfortable position, but sleep eluded her. She couldn’t make herself close her eyes and waste this opportunity to look directly at her daughter as much as she liked.

Even in sleep Maggie had a theatrical quality, Tessa thought. Even without the play of her eyes she was vibrant, vivid; her parted lips looked as if she were waiting for a kiss. A curtain could rise and show her sleeping and an audience would immediately be caught by her, would wait patiently to see what was going to happen
to this vital, young creature with her eloquent coloring and laughter-promising features.

What would it have been like, Tessa asked herself, as she contemplated Maggie’s face, if she’d never met Luke, if he’d never come to Edinburgh Castle and instantly transformed her entire life just by existing? After her parents died, Maggie naturally would have come to live with her, that serious, roly-poly, staunch little five-year-old, and all Maggie’s problems and hurts would have been brought to her for comfort. Her career and Maggie’s life would have been intertwined. When she came home from the studio, Maggie would have been there, working earnestly on her home work, waiting to read her a composition or asking to be drilled on a spelling test. If Maggie had fallen, she would have been the one who gently washed her knee and applied iodine and a Band-Aid. She would have planned Maggie’s birthday parties and gone shopping with her for party dresses and her first pair of high heels; she would have sent Maggie to summer camp and seen her off, protesting that she didn’t want to go, and two months later, welcomed home a surprisingly taller girl, tanned and laden with prizes, a girl who missed her friends from camp and temporarily hated everything about her home life.

Tessa gave a great sigh as she thought of all the things she’d missed, of all the potential of their history, lost forever. She would have told Maggie about sex and love, and the many shades of difference between them; she would never have married a man who hadn’t passed Maggie’s inspection and didn’t know that she was Maggie’s mother. As soon as Maggie had been old enough to understand, by six or seven, she would have told her what they truly were to each other and by now the idea that she had once claimed Maggie as a sister would have faded into a dim memory, not a painful lie that had been temporarily suspended, in order to simplify matters for a doctor summoned in the middle of the night. Everything would have been
very different … so difficult to imagine … so many other things could have happened … too complicated … Tessa thought as she finally drifted into sleep.

Many hours later, Maggie woke to find Tessa sleeping alongside the bed. Soundlessly she slid out of bed on her way to the bathroom.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tessa asked, one eye flying open.

“The john. I thought you were sleeping.”

“I was.” Tessa sat up, threw off the blanket, and yawned. “And then I dreamed you were trying to escape, so I woke up.”

“I’ll be back one of these days,” Maggie said, putting one foot down in front of the other in slow motion, with a show of caution.

Tessa scampered to the second bathroom of the suite to splash icy water on her face and run her fingers through her wild hair to try to smooth it down. Every limb ached because of her awkward sleeping position, but she welcomed the evidence that they’d both managed to get some rest. She quickly rejoined Maggie, who’d dutifully returned to bed.

“Any bleeding?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“Nope. Not a sign. And I feel terrific. In fact I’m starving.”

“Oh, Maggie, that’s the best sign of all! What would you like to eat?”

“A gallon of orange juice, bacon and eggs, piles of toast, strawberry jam, tea, oh, my God, what time is it?”

“Two in the afternoon. I’ll open the drapes and order for both of us.”

“If I had morning sickness, I must have slept through it. You can’t get it after lunch, can you?”

“All I’m certain of is that it’s not something you can sleep through,” Tessa said, as the springtime sunlight of Brazil flooded the room, “and I’ve never heard of anything
called afternoon sickness, although I have heard of rare women who have all-day sickness from day one through the delivery.”

“They must be passionate to have a baby, to put up with feeling hideously queasy and throwing up for nine whole months.”

“Umm.”

“That means you’re wondering how passionate I am about it, aren’t you? Do you think I don’t know what that noncommittal sound means?”

“Umm.”

Tessa threw up her hands and indicated that there was no more she was going to ask.

“Oh, Tessa, I’m dying to have a baby! I didn’t know it until I thought I was going to have a miscarriage, but I want a baby with Barney more than I want anything else in the world. I honestly can’t imagine how I got pregnant—it certainly wasn’t on purpose—but, now that it’s happened, I’m blissed out! I never expected to feel this way. It wasn’t in my plans, at all. Of course, now we’ll have to get married, which will make Polly’s day.”

“Polly Guildenstern?”

“You ought to know, you and your private eyes, you know perfectly well who Polly is, you probably have her Social Security number and her psychological profile. Just the other day she hinted at a wedding because she knows all about Barney, and I promised Polly she could give it if we ever had one. Oh. Lord, do you think we
have
to invite Tyler and Madison?”

“There’s no way out of it,” Tessa said, her heart jumping in jubilation at this question. It was the first time Maggie had asked her advice in many years.

“Well, they probably won’t stay long, if they even show up. I’d give a lot to see Madison’s face when she finds out I’m going to be her daughter-in-law. Mrs. Barnaby Alcott Webster. I love it! I’ll order calling cards and leave her one someday, when I’m sure she’s not at home. Oh, here’s breakfast, or is it lunch? Doesn’t it look good?”

Maggie was half-finished with her eggs when her hand flew to her mouth.

“Sick?” Tessa jumped up, alarmed, immediately ready to help Maggie to the bathroom.

“I just remembered! Marta Pereira! I’m supposed to meet her at three.”

“She’ll call up from the lobby. I’ll explain that I’m taking your place. Trust me, I’m good at making up convincing excuses, as well as a demon at checking arrangements. I’ll pretend I’m you and I won’t be satisfied with anything but pure perfection.”

“That’s all very well for today,” Maggie admitted, glad to be vanquished, “but Tessa, tomorrow! The press conference and the gala reception at night. Every single potential important bidder from all over South America! What am I going to do?”

“Guess?” Tessa asked, repressing a smile.

“I’m going to stay here in bed, flat on my back,” Maggie muttered, “and let you handle everything, which you’re perfectly capable of doing, as I’m aware, without anyone’s help. After all, you’re Tessa Kent and, more than the jewels, Tessa Kent is what they’re coming to see, like that day at Elm Country Day.”

“I have three books you can read, and I can get you magazines from the newsstand in the lobby.”

“Maybe later. Aren’t you going to finish your breakfast? Look, you left half of it. Because if not … thanks. You know, if you’d let me get up very, very carefully, just to brush my teeth, I think I could go back to sleep for a while.”

“I’ll get the maids to change the bed while you’re in the bathroom. Just don’t try to get fancy. No baths, whatever you do,” Tessa said warningly. “You’re allowed to give yourself a sponge bath, but, Maggie,” she said, feeling the most delicious sense of matronly power, “you have to promise me to be careful, to do everything very, very slowly. Here’s a fresh nightgown.”

“And a very sexy one too. Thank you. I promise,
cross my heart, to make no sudden moves. After all, Tessa, I’m almost as involved in this baby business as you are. I wonder what the divine Doctor Roberto will think when he sees me in this … he’ll know it couldn’t be mine. Had you noticed that he has the hots for you?”

“Maggie!”

“
Mamãe!
” Maggie retorted, laughing, as she drifted as slowly as a turtle toward the bathroom.

T
aking great care to make no noise, Tessa opened the door of her suite, late on Monday night, only to find Maggie lying in bed, still reading.

“I couldn’t possibly sleep,” Maggie explained, putting down her book, “until you came back and told me how it went.”

“It was a fantastic success, a brilliant, glorious gala!” Tessa exclaimed, excitedly flinging down the cape of silver lamé that swirled in pleated folds around a bare, slender column of silver satin. “Oh, Maggie, I was riding so high I could have personally auctioned off every last piece in the exhibition for twelve times its high estimate, but Marta wouldn’t let me. She’s still down there making appointments for women to come and try on the jewels—they’re keeping the pieces here two extra days because they can’t handle the requests in less time than that.”

“But—”

“No, don’t worry, she called New York and cleared it. We’ll go back as we planned. Oh, I wish you could have been there! Such glorious people, such superb clothes. They really know how to dress up … it was the
way I imagine Hollywood must have been in the fifties. I felt a bit of a country mouse.”

“Poor thing,” Maggie mocked, “you should have borrowed some jewelry, instead of having nothing to wear but your skin, since you can’t count that dress. Did Doctor Macho take you up on your personal invitation?”

“Of course. We tangoed—divinely, of course—and then he bent over and whispered in my ear, ‘Tell Maggie that she’s been a very good girl and Doctor Roberto is pleased with her.’ ”

“You get to tango and I get to stay in bed and be a good girl. What’s wrong with that picture, I ask you?” Maggie complained wickedly. “I supposed he kissed your hand too?”

“Possibly, possibly. It’s only fair, considering the process that landed you in bed. You can’t get
gravida
from the tango, at least not immediately,” Tessa replied, pulling out the pins that kept her hair swept up high and letting it tumble down around her flushed face. “Since I don’t believe Sam knows how to tango, I made the most of it.”

She’d made the most of the entire evening, Tessa thought. She’d never flirted before, not really. Luke and Sam weren’t flirtations but headlong, mutual flights into love, and there had been no one before Luke or after him until Sam. She could have, should have, made a career out of flirting, Tessa thought, if she’d had time, if she hadn’t met Luke, if she’d had a few free years she would have flirted with an army. Now her entire knowledge of her amazing power to flirt would be forever compressed into illuminating a ballroom of willing South American men. Better late than never, she told herself, smiling at Maggie.