“Charlie!” Astrid tried to yell his name, though the sound again more closely resembled a whisper. She glanced down and noticed that her toe was bleeding.
This time he‧d heard. His head jerked back, and when he turned his face toward her, his lower jaw dropped in panting chagrin. He lurched upward, his wide-set brown eyes reckless, his chin at a defiant angle. Astrid‧s eyes flickered from him to the girl he had been on top of; it was Gracie Northrup, lying in a rather compromised position, her stupid polka-dotted blouse undone to reveal the elaborate contraption of her brassiere. The girl‧s skin was blotchy, and her face, somewhat buried among pillows, held a dumb expression.
“Oh, Charlie, I‧m going to be sick,” Astrid heard herself say. Her unpainted lips, which had been smiling mere minutes ago in anticipation of seeing him, were now pickled and tight.
“Astrid,” Charlie said, stepping awkwardly off the bed, his belt loop swinging.
“Don‧t.” She inched backward, but he kept coming toward her. “Don‧t!” she shrieked. “Don‧t, don‧t, don‧t, don‧t, don‧t!”
As she ran back down the stairs, she held her arms out for balance and let her robe flap behind her. She could not think about her toe, or the red trail it left. When she emerged from the house, the sky was not yet totally dark, but all the brilliance had gone out of the sunset. As soon as she reached the Marmon, she tried to start it up, but by then she was shaking too much and the engine kept stalling out.
“Ah!” she cried, pounding her hand against the steering wheel in frustration.
“Miss Donal, what are you doing?”
She paused, looked up, and saw Danny, who had hurried over from the guardhouse. Briefly her sense of revulsion eased. Realizing what she had to do made her feel a little cool, almost calm.
“Why, Danny,” she said. Then she smiled.
“What are you doing?” he asked again, but this time in a less urgent tone.
“Danny, I need your help.” She glanced down shyly, at her rosy thighs on the calfskin seat, visible where her robe was parted. “I don‧t drive very well, you see, and I need to get into the city right away.”
“To Manhattan?” Nervousness had crept into Danny‧s tone.
“Yes. Won‧t you drive me?” She could see that he wasn‧t supposed to—that he was on duty and would be punished for leaving—but she needed to be moving fast, away from this place, so she smiled wider and said, “Danny, this car is really too much trouble for my family just now. Drive me into the city, and then take if off our hands, won‧t you?”
He closed his eyes, as though calculating the consequences. By the time he‧d opened them, he was already walking around to the driver‧s side. She scooted over to the passenger‧s seat and folded her legs up girlishly between them.
“Thank you very much, Danny,” she said, as they turned onto the main road.
But he was too nervous to meet her gaze. “Where to?” he asked flatly.
Astrid let her eyelids close and twisted her neck so that the wind would hit her face straight on and dry her hair. What does it matter? she wanted to say to him. “To the St. Regis,” she said instead.
At the St. Regis, at just that moment, Letty stepped into the spotlight, the clunks of her calfskin heels echoing against the stage. She managed a smile, but she could not stop her growing sense of unease. The room was not what she had expected—it was not nearly as large or adorned. There were serious wood beams overhead, and the walls were paneled in masculine dark mahogany. Instead of a great crowd, she made out only twenty or so faces, pointed at her in expectation, several of them chomping cigars. They were all men, every single person in the room, many of them with the added girth of good living beneath their very expensive-looking suits. Amory was seated toward the side, with a few other men his own age.
Trying to keep calm, she twisted and faced the band. They did not fit her expectations, either, for there were only four of them. She had imagined a full orchestra to back her, but she tried to remind herself that the show must always go on, that she was only just starting out, and that perhaps this would allow her voice to shine more anyway.
“Do you know ‘I‧m Gonna Make You Breakfast in the Morning’?” she asked, screwing up her courage.
The drummer nodded without smiling and tapped the snare drum. The noise did nothing to dispel her unease, but she turned and began to count time with her open palm against the side of her hip. A few smiles grew under mustaches in the audience. She arched an eyebrow and began to rock her shoulders. She lifted her hands, and swayed.
Once she began to sing, she knew that everything was going to be all right. She had the confidence of her voice, and she felt herself lifted by the rhythm of the music. As the song ended, she threw her arms even higher and closed her eyes. She listened to the applause—it wasn‧t really as enthusiastic as she‧d hoped, but it was nice nonetheless, and she knew she‧d win them over with the next one.
“Thank you,” she purred.
She was just deciding which tune to follow with when the drummer, and then the rest of the band, began to play again. It was slower and more sultry than the previous number. Spinning around, she glanced at each of the men, hoping they might give a clue what she should do, but none of them would meet her gaze. She stood there, her feet wide apart, her back to the audience, her heart thumping. To her surprise, someone behind her whistled.
Slowly, she turned back around. There was a smattering of applause. A few more whistles followed, and then the man sitting beside Amory, whose dark hair was just as slick and whose eyes were glazed, called out, “Show us what you‧ve got under that dress, baby!”
Her chest seized with indignation. Clearly, Amory‧s friend had had too much to drink, and now he was acting like a boor. She waited for Amory to defend her. But when he didn‧t, it began to dawn on her that the friend was not the only boor in the room, and not the only man who wanted her to take her clothes off. They were all clapping and whistling.
Letty‧s eyelids sank shut as she realized what those thirty-five dollars were really for. What a fool she was. Meanwhile, the band played on, the beat growing louder and more ominous behind her.
“Show us!” the man next to Amory yelled again.
She took a breath and wondered what a real professional would do. The show must go on, Mother always said—that‧s what professionals did. Since she was small, she‧d wanted nothing but to be on stage, and now she was, with an audience of show-business men who, after all, might remember her kindly if only she could bring herself to give them what they were calling out for.
Obediently, she put her thumb under the strap of her dress and tugged it down from her shoulder. She was shaking now, but not to the music—in fact, she could not bring herself to do anything remotely like a dance. Her lips had begun to tremble, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that most of the audience was standing up, staring at her like wolves. Ever since she was a young girl, she had been trained to do as she was told, and so the idea of rushing from the stage—however much she wanted to be far, far from those awful leers—seemed wrong. But she knew if she stayed another moment, she would begin to bawl. She let go of the strap and ran.
By some grace of God her tears held until she was offstage, but then they came in a hot, salty torrent. She threw herself down in the chair, draping her body forward over the vanity table, shaking and gasping for air. She cried for the way those men had looked at her, and she cried for the beautiful illusion she had lost. She would have gone on crying—but her solitude was short-lived.
“What‧s wrong with you?” Amory screamed as he came rushing through the door. His face was redder now, and his eyes had become narrow and mean. “Edmund Laurel, the actor, is getting married tomorrow. This is his bachelor party. This is his last chance to see another woman‧s natural form before he is tied down forever. Now you‧ve ruined it.”
“I thought …,” she sobbed. “I thought—”
“That I was going to pay you thirty-five dollars t
o sing?” he spat.
Amory raised his hand and brought it down hard against her face. The line of her left cheekbone, the delicate curve of her eye socket, throbbed. There would be no more tears; the impact of Amory‧s palm had knocked them out of her. A cold, hard shock stilled her, and she braced for more.
But he had stepped away. She could hear the seething of his breath, but she did not dare look up at him.
“Leave,” he ordered with barely contained fury. “Leave now, and don‧t think you‧re going to get a single penny for that pathetic tease of a show. You‧ll never make it in this business!”
Keeping her head down and her eyes averted, she grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and crept back through that unremarkable hall. If any of the bellhops or guests noticed her flight through the lobby, she was not aware of them. She felt her smallness as she hurried down the darkened avenue, and would have counted it a wonder if anyone had been able to see her at all.
But Astrid did notice Letty, however briefly, as she made her way through the lobby to the subdued, elegant bar, and she wondered why the petite girl with the beaded dress was crying.
“Where‧s Luke?” she asked, as she took the stool next to her mother. There was a low sepia light in the room, and bouquets of peacock feathers placed strategically here and there, to give some patrons privacy and enable the sightlines of others. Virginia Donal de Gruyter Marsh‧s slender legs were crossed under her apricot chiffon, and in the dimness it was difficult to make out the wear on her face. She looked up from her cocktail without a hint of surprise in her eyes, and then scanned her daughter from head to toe.
“Whatever are you wearing?” she replied dryly.
Before coming into the hotel, Astrid had opened the glove compartment and found the black scarf that Billie wore around her neck when she was behind the wheel, as well as her brown driving moccasins; the robe was now tied with the scarf, and her wounded toe was hidden by the moccasins. Her hair had dried, but it was still carelessly pushed straight back from her forehead.
“Darling, don‧t be ridiculous, it‧s the latest fad.”
Her mother smiled wanly at the joke. “He went back to White Cove,” she said slowly. “Seems he was rather nervous about losing his job and didn‧t want to be involved in a big messy divorce story, after all.”
“Oh.” Astrid caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was surprised by how like a child she looked without any makeup on. “Are you getting a divorce?”
“I don‧t know.” The older woman picked up her cocktail and downed the rest of it. Eyes glazed, she went on in a quiet voice, “But I think I‧m going to be staying here awhile. How did you get here anyway? What made you change your mind?”
“I was worried about you,” Astrid lied. “I realized I was being selfish, and that you shouldn‧t have to be alone just now,” she continued, elaborating her yarn.
At that, her mother smiled again, in the same sad way, and reached for her daughter‧s hand. Blue veins emerged just below her knuckles. “I‧m so glad you‧re here,” she said, with a touch of melodrama.
“Would you like something, mademoiselle?” the bartender asked, placing a napkin in front of the younger lady.
“Yes,” the former Mrs. Donal said. “One for her and one for me. Only …” She turned on her stool to look at Astrid. “Go change into a dress, will you, darling? I have the old suite we used to stay in, and the maid put all my clothes in the closet. Choose any one you like. We‧ll make a night of it.”
I don‧t care what we do, Astrid wanted to say. But that would have brought attention to the darkness lurking inside her, and anyway, she wanted right then to feel very pretty, and to have men look at her and ask her to dance. Most important, she wanted not to hear the name Charlie or to do anything that might conjure that disgusting image of him in bed, bearing down on Gracie Northrup. So she went upstairs, put on a lavender dress with one shoulder and a skirt that swung out in flounces midcalf, and darkened her lips and eyelids. When she came back down, a handsome British fellow who was probably twice her age was chatting with her mother, but Astrid sat down between them, and winked and flirted until the gentleman‧s attention was fully devoted to her. She didn‧t like herself for the way she spent her evening, but soon enough the room was spinning, and after that she couldn‧t remember very much.
24
IF IN THE LATE AFTERNOON CORDELIA HAD ASSUMED that her wide-brimmed black hat would make her less noticeable, she knew by sundown that this had been a ridiculous assumption. The shadows were long on the country road by then, and she could see, in her exaggerated silhouette, how the wide brim obscured her face while bringing attention to the rest of her. Especially now that it served no practical purpose. The guardhouse was curiously deserted, and anyway by then she had stopped worrying about being spotted. Every time she heard even the most distant noise that might possibly have been created by a car, her hopes bloomed, and every time it proved nothing, she sank further into a state of confused agitation.
For a while she told herself that Thom was not on the road because he was making arrangements for a very special evening. She was still wearing the same blue-and-white-striped shift she‧d worn to the croquet party that morning, because she didn‧t want to appear to be going anywhere particular. Until half an hour ago, she hadn‧t even made up her mind whether she would meet him or not. She did not consider the possibility that he might have changed his mind.
Her happy thoughts of his impending arrival carried her for a while, but then a black sedan with the top up came hurtling by, seeming briefly to be heading straight toward her before swerving off in the direction of the city. For a few seconds her chest had lifted, thinking it might be Thom. But then the careless speed with which the sedan whooshed by unsettled her, and after that she couldn‧t help her sense of foreboding.
Thom was never late; it was always he who waited for her. And then she began to wonder if she wasn‧t the only one who had been warned by her family to stay away. She really had no idea what kind of man Duluth Hale was, except that his son didn‧t talk of him much and that Darius Grey didn‧t trust him. After that, her worries morphed—what if she had remembered wrong, and Thom had wanted her to meet on the pier, and when she hadn‧t shown, he‧d walked through to the house? What if Charlie and Darius had him now? Her father had told her he wasn‧t a violent man—but he was an awfully good shot.
Once that thought occurred to her, she found it difficult to shake. She began pacing and eventually found herself back near the main entrance. There was no point in hiding anymore, she thought; something had gone wrong, and one way or another she had to find out what. She walked toward the gate, waiting for some invisible guard to step forth and either chastise her or deliver bad news. None did. She turned back toward the road and the pine forest across the way, cursing under her breath.
That was when she heard the gunshots.
She wheeled around and saw that she was not the only one who‧d heard. Six or seven men darted from different points on the property toward the house. She watched, frightened, her hands clinging to the gate. There was shouting, and though her eyes grew wide and her breath short, no one noticed her there. She pictured Thom, who always appeared with not a single hair out of place, who moved with that subtle confidence that suggested he‧d never known embarrassment or pain. To think that he might now be hurt—or worse—caused a riot inside her. She had just determined that she must return to the house, whatever the consequences, when she heard wheels on the road.
For a few seconds she allowed herself to hope again, but then she saw that it wasn‧t him. The car was a hunter green Packard roadster with the cream convertible top down. She knew that car—she had ridden in it before. The man behind the wheel was Charlie. He pulled in the drive and turned the engine off. For a moment, they both regarded each other.
“I hadn‧t realized you‧d left,” she said after a pause. The shock of seeing him quieted her frightful imagination, however briefly.
/> “I had to drive one of our guests from the afternoon home.” He blinked at her, his face contorted, though from suspicion or guardedness, she couldn‧t be sure. It was late for any of the guests to have still been at Dogwood, but she decided not to mention this. “What are you doing here?”
She took off her hat and let her eyes drift toward the house. “There were shots,” she said. It seemed the only fact that mattered.
The expression in Charlie‧s face changed, and he jerked forward. “What kind of shots?”
“I don‧t know …” The desperate feeling had returned to her. “There was shouting after that, and then everything was quiet.”
“Where‧s Danny?” Charlie said as he stepped out of the car and began glancing around frantically. “He was gone when I left. He‧s not supposed to leave, even for a second.”
“I don‧t know … I haven‧t seen him.”
Charlie‧s big head swung back and forth, his eyes moving between the house and his sister. “Well, come on, help me!”
Following his lead, she stepped forward, and together they pushed back the heavy iron gate.
He had accelerated up the hill before she managed to get the door closed behind her. There were no words between them as he sped toward the house, and seeing how unsettled Charlie was, Cordelia felt her pulse become fast and loud.
“What do you think it was?” she ventured as they came to a halt on the gravel drive in front of the grand steps that led to the house.
By then her brother‧s face had grown pale, and he only gritted his teeth and shook his head. Without meeting her eyes, he got out of the car, and then they were both running inside. The hall was empty, but they could hear men‧s voices coming from the enclosed porch. Charlie set off in that direction, and Cordelia followed closely behind him. Perhaps the shots had only been to scare Thom, she told herself. Perhaps he was all in one piece, and once she showed her father that she was still there, and promised never to speak to a Hale again, they would let him go …