Too Much Too Soon (8 page)

“Yes,” she whispered. It was very dark in here and the usual smell of urine was overcome by his after-shave, his cigarette, a very faint odor of masculine sweat, the whiskey on his warm breath. She blessed the woman who had given her the Lifesavers that had taken the horrible sourness from her mouth.

“Sure?” He was whispering, too.

Nodding, she leaned forward, touching her lips to his—later she would wonder at her audacity, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

His arms tightened around her and she pressed against the solid warmth she had conjured up so often in her dreams. His mouth was softer than she had imagined, and she touched it with her tongue. When her dates had French-kissed her, she had fought the lingual intrusion, but now she was initiating it, and Curt’s tongue roused exquisite sensations throughout her body. Her nipples had always been sensitive, and the tissue seemed to expand to cover her breasts. His quivering arms were lifting her high above the dark, mist-drenched city, and if she let go she would plummet to earth, so she clung to him with all her strength, arching her pelvis against that coiled strength in his trousers.

The kiss ended and he pressed his cheek against hers. “I’d made up my mind not to do that,” he said, his breath filling her ear.

“I kissed you . . . .”

“You’re too damn trusting and tender. You don’t know the first thing about me, who I am, where I came from, where I intend going.”

“I love you.”

He moved his head back to look at her. In the dim light that seeped into the entry tunnel, she could see that his eyes had a puffiness under them, as if he’d just awoken, and his mouth, dark with her lipstick, was soft, sensual, vulnerable.

“You shouldn’t say that.”

Her metabolism altered and she felt heavy, despairing, gauche. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she mumbled.

“Look, Honora, by now you’ve realized I’m an ambitious bastard, driven to succeed and red-hot for the big money, haven’t you?”

“There’s a lot more to you than that.”

“Yes, I’m a helluva fine engineer. That’s where the ambition fits. I have it in me to plan and build miracles never before seen on this earth.” His voice rumbled with seriousness.

“Is that the attraction to Imogene?”

“You’re asking if I use her? So I come across as that much of an SOB, do I?”

“No, but . . .”

“Honora, I like her. She’s a good time, a kick.”

“And Mr. Burdetts could help you.”

“Sure. I’d get my pick of projects if I married her.”

Married her.
The words reverberated inside Honora’s head, and she tried to pull away.

His palms remained stationed firmly above and below the small of her back. “I told you I haven’t been in charge of projects at Talbott’s. And I won’t be until I’m forty. Honora, even though it hurts you, I am not Sir Galahad.”

“Why did you pick me up at Stroud’s?”

“Seeing you there threw me for a loop,” he said. “You were so out of place with those other tough-looking broads. There’s a fairy-tale quality about you, and I had this overwhelming urge to
be
Sir Galahad, to gallop up on my white horse to rescue you.”

“You truly felt like that?”

“Why not? A guy could drown in your eyes.” He kissed her eyelids, then her lips.

When the phone rang at ten in the morning, Honora was dreamily rinsing breakfast dishes: she straightened with an instantaneous flash of hope that it was Curt. Last night when he had climbed the stairs with her, he had made no mention of another date. Twisting off the faucet, she reached for the dishcloth to dry her hands.

Crystal had already darted from the bathroom, blond ringlets streaming on her luminous, bare shoulders, the towel she was wrapping sarong style around her shapely torso transforming her into the ultimate movie-style seductive South Sea Islander. “I’ll get it!” she cried. Lowering her voice, which she knew tended toward the higher soprano register, she cooed, “Hello?”

“Crystal? Gideon here,” said the familiar gravelly notes. “I’d like you and your family to come for dinner tonight.”

Crystal’s eyes were a vivid, shining blue. This was Gideon’s first important overture since the engraved Open House invitation. How she had chafed through those Saturday afternoons with the old fogies, waiting, hoping against hope that some young man other than Curt would show up! Crystal’s strong sense of family loyalty precluded making a play for a man her sister liked, and besides she didn’t go for Curt’s caustic sense of humor—however, had he
been the sole property of Imogene she wouldn’t have let that stop her. The phone call, a move toward a Sylvander-Talbott entente, would substantially advance her toward the kind of life she had in mind.

Already dreaming up an excuse for Bobby Dupre, who thought he was taking her to see
The Bells of St. Mary’s
with Bing Crosby tonight, she said, “How nice of you, Gideon. It sounds lovely.” Der Bingle wasn’t one of her favorites anyway.

“I’m expecting your father, too, Crystal.”

“Of course, Gideon. Daddy’ll be delighted.”

“My car’ll be there at seven.” He hung up.

Crystal stared down at the buzzing instrument in her hand. “You’ll never guess who that was.”

“Wouldn’t I just!” Joscelyn, at the kitchen table, raised her head from a special geometry project for summer school. “Gideon has a loud voice.”

“Gideon?” A soapy cup slithered dangerously in Honora’s grasp.

“He’s invited all of us to dinner.”

“To dinner? Why?”

“Stop tying everything in the world to your date last night,” said Crystal with mock severity.

“Oh, who can work with all of this going on?” Joscelyn demanded.

Crystal ignored the remark. “Finally he’s acting like a real uncle. I’ll bet he’ll see to it
that we’re launched. Of course he couldn’t before now, because of Aunt Matilda, but now he’s coming out of deep mourning—”

“I never noticed him dissolved in the depths,” Joscelyn interjected.

“—and he’ll be able to give parties for us to meet the right people. Honora, it’s a bit late for you, but he could give me a debut. Imogene told me that Mrs. Burdetts hired somebody called Mrs. Ekberg when she had hers. They had three hundred people, including the Hearsts and the Knowlands. Governor Warren showed up with Honeybear, and she was asked back to ‘the most
divinely
wild parties where everyone got absolutely smashed on French bubbly.’” Crystal mimicked Imogene’s exaggerated intonations.

During this effusion, Joscelyn’s face had become pinched and sullen. If Gideon were entertaining for Honora and Crystal, he’d do the same for her. Parties terrified Joscelyn—not that she had been invited to many, either here or in England. Her old crepe de chine party dress made her look even more spidery, and out of sickish anxiety she invariably spilled something down it. If she could have one of Crystal’s attributes she would not choose the obvious, beauty, but Crystal’s ability to glide through every function.

“Didn’t I hear Gideon include Daddy in the invitation?” Joscelyn asked.

“So you finally rinsed the wax out of your ears,” Crystal retorted.

“Crystal, Joss,” Honora soothed.

“Daddy won’t go,” Joscelyn said flatly.

“Of course he will,” Crystal said. “Gideon especially asked for him.”

“Either you’re more cretinous than I thought. Or blind. Haven’t you noticed that he always has an excuse for the Open House? I’ll bet anything he won’t go tonight.”

Crystal tightened the knot in her sarong towel. To her it was crucial that the entire Sylvander clan ingratiate itself with Gideon: she wanted the best of everything for all of them. “He’ll be there,” she snapped. Her sharp slam of the difficult bathroom door succeeded in shutting it.

“Oh, Joss,” Honora sighed. “Why must you go out of your way to upset her?”

“You’ve been washing that same cup for hours.” Joscelyn’s eye twitched. It cut like broken glass whenever Honora sided with Crystal. “Are you pretending it’s Curt Ivory’s feet?”

Reddening, Honora set the cup on the drainboard.

*   *   *

Joscelyn nearly won her bet.

Langley indeed attempted to squirm out of this dinner. “I have an engagement with a very important chap,” he said. “Somebody interested in starting a publishing house. With a snap of his fingers he could appoint me editor in chief.” (Langley retained an endearing perennial hopefulness that every stranger who proclaimed himself rich in some way would pilot the good ship Sylvander into safe harbor.)

Crystal retorted that he couldn’t let them down and shed a few becoming tears. But it was Honora, mindful of what Curt had told her the previous evening, who quietly pointed out that Gideon, after all his employer, might be offended if he didn’t show up. Langley, muttering something about delaying his arrangements with the possible patron, left the apartment at four, returning a few minutes after six with a sheepish little smile and a strong aroma of whiskey and peppermint breath mints.

It turned out that Curt was the only other guest.

Mrs. Wartobe stood at the heavy Gothic sideboard, ladling rich cream of vegetable soup. Then came a plump leg of lamb that Gideon carved, his broad red hands expertly wielding the long, flashing knife and two-pronged fork, jovially going around the table to inquire of each of them which slice they preferred. Creamed potatoes, pearl onions, fresh peas glazed with butter, golden hot yeast biscuits completed the main course. At the Open Houses Juan never offered the girls sherry. Tonight he tilted the wine basket for Crystal and would have filled Honora’s goblet, too, but the vinous odors of burgundy brought a sour taste to her mouth, and she said hastily, “None for me, thank you.”

Curt raised an amused eyebrow.

Limp with desire, she forced herself not to look at him except when he spoke. Fortunately he and Gideon talked a lot, discussing a cost projection for a refinery project in Oxnard that
they were bidding on. (The strong lines of affection between the two showed during this debate.) She found it near impossible to reconcile this forceful Curt and the man who had last night held her with shaking arms and covered her face with small, nibbling kisses.

Gideon was saying, “Sylvander, you know about the refinery. You’re writing up the proposal.”

“I suppose I am.” Langley’s words slurred together.

Honora emerged from her bemusement to turn to her father, who sat next to her. His nose was red at its narrow tip, the blue eyes bloodshot. He had been at the Crowned Head for two hours, and at Gideon’s table he had emptied glass after glass of the burgundy, then the dessert Château d’Yquem that came with the peach pie; she didn’t need her newfound knowledge of alcohol to know he was well in his cups.

Gideon noticed, too. “Mrs. Wartobe, we’re ready for the coffee,” he said.

After coffee was poured, the two servants retired with trayloads of dishes through the green baize door.

Gideon sat straighter in his chair, a portentous expression on his heavy features. He cleared his throat. “I wanted you girls here because what I have to say concerns the three of you as well as your father.” His gaze lingered on Crystal. “I’ve grown quite fond of you, and I hope the feeling is mutual.”

The three sisters replied quite honestly that
it was.

“This house is very large, seven family bedrooms upstairs. What I have in mind is for you Sylvanders to move in with me.”

The ensuing silence was punctuated by Curt’s cracking of a walnut. Honora, in her confusion, looked directly at him. He evinced no surprise.

“You mean
live
here?” Crystal asked. During her months in San Francisco her voice had undergone a metamorphosis to the looser American dipthongs, but now she spoke with her precise English intonation.

“More than that. This would be your home, but also I’d take care of your clothes, bills, tuitions, allowances, items like that.”

Langley had lurched to his feet, a vein beating at his temple. “We might be associated in business, Talbott,” he cried, “but I’ll thank you to remember that my daughters are my concern!”

Gideon glared up at his tall, swaying brother-in-law. Gratitude for his generosities might embarrass him, still, he wasn’t accustomed to having his good deeds flung back at him. “What’s gotten into you?”

Langley’s clenched fist slammed on the table. The small silver baskets of the epergne bobbled and an almond fell. ‘’Having been married to poor Matilda gives you no entrée to my family concerns!”

“You should lay off the bottle, Sylvander,” Gideon said sternly. “You’ve had far too much.”

“What else could I do? You Americans!”

“Daddy,” Honora murmured. “Please?”

Langley ignored her. “Money, money, money, that’s all you talk about, even at the dinner table.”

Gideon’s shoulders hunched like a bull’s. The light from the enormous chandelier picked out the sweat beading on his forehead. “I have no intention of letting Crystal follow her sister’s footsteps.
She
will not be a waitress.”

Honora wished that the inlaid parquet would part beneath her straight-backed Gothic chair to hurtle her into the basement. She shot a look of anguished reproach at Curt. He, a study in ironic control, gazed back. So this was his method of playing Sir Galahad! Honora twined her napkin in her lap, her hands shaking.
Oh God
, she thought.
How I’ve let poor Daddy down.

“A waitress?” Joscelyn, beyond Langley, twisted in her chair to get a better view of her idolized sister. “Gideon you have it all wrong.”

“Absolutely most ridiculous lie I ever heard.” Langley turned to Honora, his full mouth oddly petulant. “Honora, kindly tell this man that you work at a highly respected brokerage house.”

“I . . . Daddy, I, well, I was ashamed, so I, well . . . I invented the receptionist job.”

“A Sylvander a waitress?” His mouth opened as if he had been shot in the chest by his tender favorite.

Honora looked down at her cup, afraid
yesterday’s devastating tears would return.

“Honora works at Stroud’s,” Curt put in smoothly. “As I told Mr. Talbott, the place is no dive. The flower of the financial district eat at Stroud’s. Working there’s hardly a reason to put on sackcloth and ashes. Honora told me you need the money. But you yourself agree she’s college material. She ought to be at Berkeley—”