Vixen (36 page)

“I can’t tell if that’s a good or a bad reaction,” Marcus said, shifting from foot to foot.

“Good,” she managed to croak. “Definitely good.”

He removed the bracelet from the box and gently took her wrist in his hands. The simple touch of his fingers made her weak. “If you’ll allow me the honor.”

While Marcus clasped the bracelet around her wrist, Clara studied his face. What had she done to deserve this? To deserve him? The universe was giving her a second chance, and this time nothing would make her mess it up. She flung her arms around him. “Marcus, it’s too thoughtful, and beautiful, and really way too much.”

“Clara, my Clara. It reminded me of you when I saw it,” he said, kissing her forehead. “A little delicate beneath all that beauty.”

She kissed him then, raking her hands through his silky hair. He lifted her off the floor and swung her around. She laughed and planted kisses on his cheeks and ears and neck until, as the room spun dizzily around them, she noticed a dark figure in the entrance to the hallway.

Clara cried out, and Marcus came to an abrupt halt.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She clumsily slid down to the floor, her heels hitting the parquet with an echoing clack. Her face must have said everything. Marcus followed her horrified gaze toward the
one and only Harris Brown, standing there in a smart-looking tailcoat. Watching.

Harris strolled down the center of the hallway toward them, seeming to fill the space, seeming somehow larger than himself.

A sudden rage expanded in Clara like a balloon, inflating until she felt she would burst. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here? You weren’t invited!”

“I’m in politics, remember?” Harris said, sporting the cocky grin she used to love and now was repulsed by. “I’m always invited.”

Marcus stepped forward. “I suggest that you find your way to the nearest exit right this second, or else—”

“Or else
what
?” Harris laughed.

“I’m warning you, Harris,” Clara said, trying to steady her voice, “leave now before things get messy.” She would not let him back into her life. This was her city now, her home, her party, her boyfriend—

“But you
love
messy, don’t you? Some things never change, baby doll.” Harris stepped closer, sizing Marcus up. “Oh, Clara, you poor thing. Don’t tell me your life here has driven you into the arms of this little pretty boy. He barely looks old enough to tie his—”

Marcus lunged at Harris and slammed him up against the wall.

But if Harris knew anything, it was how to fight dirty.

He jabbed his knee into Marcus’s gut, flipped him around, and punched him square in the eye.

“Stop it! Stop!” Clara screamed, trying to tear them apart. But it was no use.

Harris, clutching Marcus by the neck, held him stiffly against the wall. “I broke my engagement because of you, Clara. You know I love you—I always have. I came here to take you back to New York, to start a life together—”

She wouldn’t hear any more.

She sprinted blindly back down the hall, needing to get away from it all, from both of them. How many nights had she lain awake wishing Harris would say that to her, those exact words?

She stared down at the bracelet on her wrist. She didn’t deserve it.

There was a loud crash.

Clara stopped, and the world around her came sharply into focus: the main foyer, a large silver tray rattling at her feet, pâté-covered croquettes scattered everywhere, and a hundred pairs of gawking eyes. “I’m sorry,” she muttered to the waiter she’d plowed into, dropping to her knees to pick up the platter. “I’m so sorry—”

“Just who I’m looking for!”

The guests parted, and Lorraine staggered into sight. Clara barely recognized her: Raine’s cheeks were smudged with black mascara, her mouth a smear of red, her
cream-colored dress wrinkled and dirty. Clara was thankful that someone worse off had wandered in at the right moment to take the attention away from her—until she realized Lorraine was addressing her. “If it isn’t Clara Knowles, the Queen of Hearts herself, gracing us with her menday—mendaysh—mendacious presence!”

“Lorraine, are you all right?” Clara asked, but she could smell the booze from where she was standing.

The guests and reporters circled around them as if they were about to watch a boxing match. Clara had to defuse the bomb that was Lorraine. “Raine, why don’t we find a nice quiet place to—”

“No! I want everyone to hear what I am about to say.” Raine’s words were slurred and sloppy, and she wavered on her feet. “I want everyone to know what a fraud you are.”

Before Clara could respond, Gloria ran up to her former best friend, a panicked look on her face. “You were not invited to this party!” she spat, glaring at Lorraine. “You need to leave this instant.”

“It’s her!” Lorraine pointed her finger at Clara as if they were in the middle of the Salem witch trials. “
She
shouldn’t have been invited to this party.
She
was the one who told Bastian everything.
She
was the one who ratted you out—who told him about the Green Mill. It wasn’t me, Gloria! I swear. Just ask him—”

“She’s lying!” Clara insisted. She turned to Gloria. “I
swear to you, Gloria, I never said anything to Bastian. You are a liar, Lorraine.”

“Oh yeah?” Lorraine said, her face twisting. “Then what is Mr. High-and-Mighty Harris Brown doing here? Explain that to everyone! Then we’ll see who’s the filthy liar!”

Lorraine pointed somewhere behind Clara. But Clara didn’t need to look to know who was there. A wave of whispers rippled through the crowd, and the reporters scribbled furious notes.

Lorraine ambled around the circle, angrily pushing people out of her way. “When I saw you with Harris Brown at the Green Mill, Clara, I thought,
How does a stupid rube of a country girl from Pennsylvania, a girl who stinks of manure and doesn’t know a garter from a garter snake, know a big politico in New York like that?
”

“You’re drunk, Lorraine,” Gloria said. “Please, will some of the able-bodied men here carry out this piece of trash?” She looked around for Bastian, but he was nowhere in sight.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Lorraine said, dodging the one man who went to comply. “I called a few of my contacts at Barnard—did I tell you I’m going to Barnard? It’s in New York City. Near Harlem, which my father is not happy about.”

“We know where Barnard is,” said Marcus.

“My friend Shelly, who can spot a cad from a mile away, knew what a notorious playboy Harris Brown is.”

Clara’s mouth felt as if it were stuffed with cotton. “Stop,” she said weakly. She wished somebody, anybody would stop
this girl. She looked from Gloria’s face to Marcus’s, to Mrs. Carmody’s, to the faces of random guests she didn’t even know. No one was saying anything. Everyone was staring at Clara, eyes wide, waiting for her to respond. “Please, stop her—”

“And guess what I found out? Surprise! Clara Knowles is not who she says she is!” Lorraine lost her balance and fell backward to the floor with a loud thud.

Everyone gasped, and then there were fresh bursts of bright light as the photographers started snapping away.

Lorraine was splayed out with her skirt bunched up around her thighs, her pink floral underwear showing. Almost as quickly as she fell, she rolled to her knees, straightened up, and pointed at Clara with one unsteady finger. “You are a little tart, Clara Knowles. A smutty little vixen. What do you have to say about
that
?” Lorraine placed her hand demurely on her chest and burped. “Excuse me.”

Clara froze. Lorraine was clearly a mess, but she wasn’t wrong, either. She had found out about Harris. She’d exposed her “Country Clara” lie. What else did she know? Clara’s knees were trembling now, and she found herself making her way to Marcus. “Make her stop,” she said, tugging at his sleeve, trying not to break down completely. “Please.”

Marcus strode into the circle. “You aren’t welcome here, Lorraine. Leave at once—”

Raine did a jazzy dance step in the middle of the foyer.
No one even laughed—people were appalled by her behavior, and the crazier she acted, the more nervous Clara got.

“Oh, Marcus,” Lorraine said, “my silly little Marcus. We’re just getting to the best part of the story—the part that you will
especially
want to hear.” There was an authority in her voice that made Marcus step back.

Clara’s head was filling up with air now, as if it were about to float away from her body. “Lorraine, I’m begging you—”

“Everyone thinks
I’m
a bad girl, showing up in places with too much makeup and too-short hair and a little too potted in booze.” She stared directly at Clara. “But ladies and gentlemen, sweet, innocent Clara Knowles was having an affair with Harris Brown. Bam! Zip! Pow! Even though he was
engaged to be married
to that French heiress. And you want to know how their sordid affair came to an end?” Lorraine raised her arm and pointed at the ceiling. “She had his
baby
! Clara Knowles had Harris Brown’s
bastard child
!”

The words struck Clara like an open hand.

And then she was blinded by light, burned and baptized by a hundred dazzling explosions as a dozen cameras clicked, capturing her pain, her shame, her grief, for all the world to see.

LORRAINE

This was not how it was supposed to happen.
This was not happening
.

And yet it was.

Everything was a confusing jumble in her head: the faces, their jaws dropped open; her dress smeared with fingerprints and dirt; Marcus and Gloria and that lying, two-faced Clara. And there were noises in there somewhere, too—her voice rising with a frenzied shrillness, saying what? She wasn’t sure. Then there was the taste of the alcohol turning sour in her throat.

And now Clara was crying. Fat tears of repentance, rolling down her perfect dewy cheeks, turning her into a pixieish martyr. The Mary Pickford–like darling of the press who could do no wrong. Lorraine remembered what she
had said. Yes, she had revealed everything—everything!—and announced to the world that Clara Knowles was a fake, a liar, a sham.

So why wasn’t Clara running away in shame?

“It’s true,” Clara said. “Everything she says is true.”

That wasn’t what Lorraine was expecting.

“I might as well come clean, here and now. I don’t want to lie anymore.”

What else could possibly be left for Clara to confess?

Lorraine had dug up everything. She’d gotten the low-down from her friend Shelly Monaheim at Barnard. Shelly’s brother had gone to Harvard with Harris, knew him the way Lorraine knew her own hand—and Shelly had delivered
all
the dirt, every sordid detail. Clara’s affair with Harris. The baby.

Clara was ruined, and Gloria would finally understand that it was Clara who had spilled the details about the Green Mill, that it was Clara who had lied to everyone she’d ever met, that it was Clara who had betrayed her. Lorraine was the one who was truly devoted to Gloria, and now her best friend would simply have to take her back.

Wouldn’t she?

But Clara wouldn’t shut up. Why wouldn’t she shut up?

“I was seventeen and I—I was stupid. I was new in the city, and I was swept away by the excitement and the lights—and by a man, yes. Harris Brown. He swept me off my feet, and—” A sob choked her, and Lorraine thought,
About time
.

“No one wants to hear all the sordid details!” Lorraine said, but her mouth didn’t seem to be working right. Anyway, everyone—Gloria, Marcus, even Mrs. Carmody—shushed her.

“And I got pregnant.” Clara paused and looked down, sucked in a deep breath.

A whisper spread through the crowd. Was there a sympathetic edge to that whisper? What was going on here?

“She’s a whore,” Lorraine slurred—she recognized what was happening now, realized she might have had a little too much liquid courage before coming here.

But the crowd ignored her. Clara had everyone’s attention.

Clara’s voice grew steadier. “But I lost the baby.” She looked up and wiped away tears. “I lost it. I lost
her
. I miscarried in the thirteenth week.” She blew her nose and turned to Lorraine. “But thanks, Lorraine, for reminding me of who I used to be. I thought I would be able to escape my painful past by coming here, but I can see now I was wrong.”

Lorraine struggled again to figure out what was going on. The crowd around them was murmuring things—wicked comments about Lorraine—that she couldn’t bear. No, no, no—why was Lorraine being cast as the villain?

Clara turned to Gloria. “And for the record, cousin: I swear on my life, I didn’t say a word about the Green Mill. I owe everything to you, Gloria. And I would never do
anything to jeopardize your
true
love.” Gloria clasped her hands, teary-eyed.

“Oh, come
on
,” Lorraine said, finally fed up. “Do you all believe this act? She’s a liar!”

Clara turned back to Lorraine, tears sparkling in her eyes. She looked sad, not angry. “I only lied about my past. I’m not as coldhearted as you are, Raine.”

Coldhearted?