“Margaret has family,” Aunt Grace said. “But it is true, she has no money. If you’ve come digging for gold, I suggest you locate a more prosperous young lady.”
“She’s only sixteen,” Nick said. “If I were digging for gold, I’d find someone a bit older. I’m not a fool, Miss Winslow.”
“No,” Aunt Grace said. “I can see that.”
“Then may I have your permission to take Margaret for a walk this morning?” he asked. “We’ll stay on your grounds, if you would feel more comfortable that way.”
“I would indeed,” Aunt Grace replied. “Very well. Have your walk. Perhaps once the two of you look at each other without moonlight this foolish infatuation will end.”
“Thank you,” Nick said. He rose from his chair, paused for a moment, then nodded farewell to Grace. Meg slipped out of the room behind him. They walked out of the house quietly, and with dignity, and it wasn’t until they had reached a safe distance on the beach that they whooped and hollered and hugged each other with abandon.
“Kiss me,” Nick said, and Meg did, not caring if Aunt Grace and her legion of servants were all watching with binoculars from the back windows. “I didn’t think I could survive that,” he said. “All that time with you in the room, and not being able to touch you, to hold you.”
“I wanted to sit by your side,” Meg said. “But I knew how angry that would make her.”
“She was angry enough,” Nick said. “And she’ll be angry again soon.” He stood for a moment, then he pressed Meg to him, and they kissed again. But then he backed off.
Meg looked at him. “What’s the matter?” she asked. She knew she had no experience kissing, and undoubtedly Nick could write a book on the subject, he was so good-looking, but everything had felt right to her.
Nick smiled, and it was his smile again. “Nothing’s the matter,” he replied. “Well, everything is, but except for that, nothing. It’s just I want you so much, and the one honest thing I said to your aunt was that I respected your purity.”
“The hell with my purity,” Meg said, dazzled by her own daring.
“No,” Nick said. “Besides, there’s a lot I have to say to you, and we don’t have much time. Walk with me, the way I told your aunt we would.”
“Kiss me first,” Meg demanded, and she was pleased with how quickly Nick acceded.
“I love you, Daisy,” Nick said. “I thought you were beautiful last night in that ridiculous dress, but now that I see you in daylight …” He paused long enough to kiss her one more time. “Do you still love me?”
“Do you doubt it?” Meg asked.
Nick shook his head. “I just can’t get over it,” he said. “How perfect you are.”
“Me?” Meg said. “I’m not perfect. I mumble and I stoop and I’m not nearly as grateful as I should be. And I really don’t have any money. Just a little trust fund.”
“That’s more than I have,” Nick said. “It’s more than we’ll need. Maybe I wouldn’t have fallen in love if you did have money. Did you ever think of that?”
“I haven’t had a chance to think of anything,” Meg replied. “Except how much I wanted you to be real.”
“I’m real,” Nick said. “But Daisy, listen to me. I just told your aunt a packful of lies. And she’s bound to find out, starting with a phone call to Mrs. Sinclair. I am persona non grata there right now. As a matter of fact, I was kicked out first thing this morning. Before breakfast. If your aunt’s called already, and she probably has, she must know that.”
“Where are you staying?” Meg asked.
“I found a room at an inn for a day or two,” Nick said. “When I get a chance, I’ll find a boardinghouse to stay in for the rest of the summer. I’m not leaving you, Daisy. I have enough money, if I’m careful with it, to make it through until graduation. Free room and board was a blessing, but it wasn’t a requirement. I just have to be careful, that’s all.”
“I wish I could give you some money,” Meg said. “It’s my fault, after all, that the Sinclairs kicked you out. I can give you the check Uncle Marcus sent me for my birthday. Would that help?”
“Oh Daisy,” Nick said, and he kissed her again. Meg wasn’t sure whether that meant yes or no, but she knew she didn’t care. “Forget your money,” he said. “Whatever you do, you must never give me any of your money. We’re doomed if you do.”
Meg nodded. “But if you won’t take my money or my purity, what do I have to give you?” she asked.
“Your love,” he said. “Your trust. Although you may withdraw that as well.”
“I trust you,” Meg said, and she was surprised by the voice she said it with. It wasn’t her usual scared-little-girl voice. There was a woman’s trust behind those words, a woman’s strength as well.
“How much truth can you take?” Nick asked her. “Don’t lie to me, Daisy. There’s a lot, and it’s ugly, and I’ll tell you only as much as you want to know.”
“I want to know everything,” Meg replied, and again, it wasn’t a schoolgirl speaking. “I love you, Nicky, and you’re a part of me. There’s nothing you can tell me I can’t understand.”
Nick shook his head. “I want to believe you,” he said.
“If I can trust you, you can trust me,” Meg declared. She squeezed his hand with hers and hoped that some of her faith in him came through.
“You have to forget everything I said to your aunt,” Nick declared. “All those pretty lies.”
“You didn’t lie about your feelings,” Meg said. “What else matters?”
“A lot else,” Nick replied. “Especially to your aunt. Let’s see. Out of all that romantic gobbledygook, the only truth was that my mother’s dead. Oh, and that my stepfather and I don’t get along. But you already knew that.”
“There must have been some truth,” Meg said. “You couldn’t have made it all up.”
“I did, pretty much,” Nick said. “It’s the story I tell everybody at Princeton. No one there ever bothered to check it out, but your aunt will, and she’ll find out a lot of ugly things about me, and she’ll make a big point of telling you. I want you to hear it from me first. Maybe it’ll hurt you less that way.”
“I love you, Nicholas George Sebastian,” Meg said. “Now tell me all your ugly truths.”
Nick laughed, and it was that harsh, humorless laugh that Meg dreaded. “For starters, that wasn’t the name I was born with,” he declared. “I had it changed legally before I started Princeton.”
“What was your name then?” Meg asked. She marveled that none of this concerned her. The only thing she wanted was to alleviate Nick’s pain.
“George Nicholas Keefer,” Nick said. “Nobody ever called me George, though. I was always Nick.”
“Why did you change it?” Meg asked. “Not that you look like a George Keefer.”
“Tell me you love me,” Nick said. “I need to hear it again.”
“I love you, Nicky,” Meg said. “No matter what your name is. No matter who you really are. I love you.”
“I changed my name because I hated George Keefer,” Nick said. “I hated who he was, what he’d been through. I figured a new name, a new life, new chances. I was right about that too. Nick Sebastian gets treated differently than George Keefer.”
“Is that all?” Meg asked. “Is that your full confession?”
Nick looked out toward the ocean. It was a foggy, gray morning and visibility was poor. Meg wondered what he was staring at, why he could no longer face her.
“Family means everything to your aunt,” he said.
“My aunt’s a fool,” Meg replied. She wanted to laugh with the knowledge.
“I wish she were,” Nick declared. “Things would be so much easier if she were. But family is important. Take it from someone who doesn’t have any.”
“I don’t have any either,” Meg said.
Nick shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he replied. “It’s my fault. I’m doing this badly. It’s just I’m going to tell you thin
gs I’ve never told anybody before, and it frightens me. But you have to be honest. If what I say disgusts you, if it makes you love me the less, or not at all, then be honest about it. I can live with pain. I have experience.”
Meg wanted to reassure him, but she knew that wasn’t what he needed. “Tell me,” she said instead. “I can’t know how I’ll feel until you do.”
Nick continued to look away from her. “I’m illegitimate,” he said. “My birth certificate says ‘father unknown.’”
Meg tried to understand what that meant, not just to the world, but to Nick. She wanted to ask if it was true, was his father unknown, but she didn’t dare.
“I think that’s the worst of it,” Nick said. “To me it is, anyway. Are you still there, Daisy?”
“Oh yes,” Meg replied. “I’m still here.”
“It’s a lie, the part about him being unknown,” Nick said. “Not my lie, though. My mother knew who my father was. He was her boss. She was a secretary, and it was her first job, she was younger than I am, and I don’t know, he seduced her. Maybe he raped her. I wouldn’t put it past him. Anyway, however the courtship took place, she ended up pregnant, and naturally he didn’t want to have anything to do with her after that. Your aunt talks so much about family, about social position. My father had plenty of both, and he wasn’t about to see them jeopardized by the arrival of a little bastard. So he paid my mother off. But part of the bargain was she had to put ‘father unknown’ on the birth certificate. He wasn’t taking any chances.”
“Oh Nicky,” Meg said. She reached out for him, but he refused her offer of comfort.
“My mother had me, and she kept me for as long as the money held out,” Nick continued. “Then she put me in a home for a while, and then she took me out, and relatives took care of me. I bounced around a lot when I was little. None of it was fun. I loved my mother, though, just because she was my mother. Whenever I’d see her, I thought that meant she was taking me to live with her. I really wanted a home. I know you understand that.”
Meg nodded.
“Then my mother got married and things got really bad,” Nick said, and he laughed that awful laugh of his. “He was a cruel son of a bitch, cruel to me and to my mother. He drank and he liked to hit us. He must have liked to, he did it often enough. But my mother stayed with him, and they had a couple of kids, and that didn’t make things any better. Not for me, at any rate. I think he hit my mother a little less once he had a son of his own, but I may be being too charitable. I’m sorry, Daisy. I wish I could be someone perfect. I wish I were appropriate.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Meg said. “No, that isn’t true. You are perfect. You are appropriate. If you had a perfect, appropriate past, you might not love me.”
“I’d always love you,” Nick said. “I always will.”
“Good,” Meg said. “Because I’ll always love you as well. You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to,” Nick said. “But I do have to. There isn’t that much anyway. My mother got cancer and died. I was almost sixteen. I doubt those cousins I told your aunt about came to the funeral, but I can’t be sure since I didn’t go. I wanted to, but my stepfather had a warrant out for my arrest, and I didn’t dare show up. He claimed I’d stolen some money, which I hadn’t. I meant to, but my mother died before I expected her to, and I never had the chance. That was a very rough time, when she died.”
“Did Mr. Wilson take you in right away?” Meg asked. Mr. Wilson was a comforting concept.
“There wasn’t any Mr. Wilson,” Nick said. “He was a lie too. I wish there’d been. I wish for him, and I wish for a father who died on D-day. But they’re both fantasies. I had a year and a half left to go in high school, and I survived. I lived in flophouses and worked any kind of menial job I could get until I graduated.”
“But how did you get the money for Princeton?” Meg asked. “How do you have enough money to spend the summer here?”
Nick’s smile was filled with pain. “I thought I’d told you the worst,” he declared. “And now I find I haven’t.”
“Tell me,” Meg said. “I’ve gone this far with you. I can manage the rest.”
“I went to my father,” Nick replied. “And I demanded the money. I figured it was the least he owed me. He figured otherwise. Oh Daisy …”
Whatever other confessions Nick was about to make were interrupted by the sight of Clark racing toward them. Meg sighed, but stood her ground against this latest obstacle.
CHAPTER FIVE
“What is it now?” Meg asked as Clark ran over to them. She tried to keep the fury she felt from showing, not yet knowing what sort of effect it would have on Nick.
“Keep away from him, Meg,” Clark said. “He’s a fraud and a liar and he’s probably dangerous.”
At first Nick ignored Clark’s presence, his mind, Meg assumed, on what he’d been telling her and his fears of her response. But at the word “dangerous,” he turned to face Clark.
“You don’t belong here,” Nick said. “Go home.”
“Are you going to let him talk to me that way?” Clark demanded. “Meg, he’s the outsider. He’s the one who doesn’t belong. I’m telling you, he’s dangerous. I can feel it. What are you doing with him, anyway?”
Meg thought of a hundred answers to that question, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to voice any of them. “We were talking,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Oh,” Nick said. “So that’s what we were doing.”
“What does he mean by that?” Clark asked. “What were you talking about?”
“It’s none of your business,” Meg said. “Clark, go on home. I don’t need you, honestly I don’t.”
“You don’t know what you need,” Clark replied. “No, Meg, that’s the truth. You’ve never known. Ever since your parents died, you haven’t really known anything about yourself. And now you’re so confused, I don’t know if even I can save you.”
“She doesn’t need you to save her,” Nick said.
Clark looked as though he wanted to hit Nick, but instead he turned to Meg. “I told you he was a fraud,” he said. “Well, he is. I bet he said he was staying with the Sinclairs. He isn’t, not anymore. I called up Robert Sinclair this morning, and he says his parents kicked this guy out because of the scene he caused last night.”
Nick laughed. “They kicked me out because I wasn’t going to serve their function anymore,” he declared. “They invited me for the summer to distract Isabelle, keep her from the grocery bagger. And I went along with it. Free room and board at an Eastgate cottage in exchange for a little flirting, the occasional date. It was a fair deal. But once I saw Daisy, I knew I couldn’t live up to my end of the bargain, and the Sinclairs knew it too. That hardly makes me Public Enemy Number One.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Clark said. “There has to be.”
“Would you really have gone out with Isabelle?” Meg asked.
Nick nodded. “Before,” he said. “Before, I would have done almost anything.”
“You see what I mean,” Clark said. “That’s dangerous talk, Meg. Will you forget about this guy, and go back to your aunt’s house? You can have a great summer. We’ll go sailing and swimming and ride horses and play tennis. There are dances every weekend at the club, and parties, and I’ll see to it you aren’t bored. You’ll forget about this jerk in a minute if you give yourself the chance.”
Meg smiled. “But I am giving myself the chance,” she declared. “Can’t you see, that’s just what I’m doing.”
“But what do you know about him?” Clark asked.
“I know everything,” Meg replied, and whether that was true or not, it felt true, or at least true enough to say to Clark. “Everything that counts.”
“And you know what he knows about you?” Clark continued. “He knows you’re in line to inherit all of Grace Winslow’s money. That’s what he knows. He knows you’re an heiress, Meg, and that’s all he car
es about.”
“What makes you think Aunt Grace is going to leave me anything?” Meg asked. “Or that I’ll even outlive her.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Clark said. “It’s bad luck.”
Meg laughed.
Clark stared at her. “You haven’t told him, have you,” he said. “You know everything about him, but I bet he doesn’t know a blessed thing about you, except for what your prospects are.”
“Told me what?” Nick asked, and for the first time since Clark had arrived, he actually seemed interested in the conversation.
“It’s nothing,” Meg said. “And it’s certainly nothing Clark should know anything about.”
“Of course I know,” Clark replied. “Marcus Winslow told half the world when it happened. Everybody knows, Meg. Everybody except Mr. Wonderful, that is.”
“What does everybody know?” Nick asked. “Daisy, tell me. I don’t ever want to learn anything about you from somebody else.”
“It’s no big deal,” Meg said, and she could no longer remember whether it had been a big deal or not. “After my parents died, I lived with my uncle Marcus for a while, because he had a wife and lots of children, so they thought I’d be better off there, and I hated it. I really hated it, Nicky.”
“Did they hurt you?” Nick asked.
“Oh no,” Meg said. “Not the way you’re thinking. Nothing like that. They tried very hard with me, I know I should be grateful, but I was used to such a different way of life. My parents were wonderful, Nicky. I wish you could have known them.”
“They would have put a stop to this right away,” Clark said. “Any decent-minded parent would.”
“Will you shut up already,” Nick said. “What did this uncle do to you, Daisy?”
“What are you suggesting?” Clark asked. “Some sort of gutter behavior your kind is familiar with?”
Meg sighed. “I was very unhappy,” she said. “I missed my parents. I still do, but then it was worse, and Uncle Marcus had so many children, and they were all so noisy. My parents were quiet people. I’m a quiet person. They tried very hard with me, but they wanted to turn me into a noisy person so I’d fit in, and I couldn’t. I just got quieter, and somehow that made them even noisier. Do you understand?”