So that's that, Mavis thought as she slipped out with the second wave. Really, it was drearily like a presidential primary campaign. One misstep and you were out, never mind how good you were. Destiny had stuck her foot out in front of Alan Seton, and he had tripped and fallen on his aristocratic nose. The great-grandson of a British peer. Well, well.
A hulking bulldozer of a reporter was elbowing his way furiously through the crowd, and his upper arm shoved into Mavis's left breast.
"Watch where you're going, you fool!" she snapped, enraged.
His eyes widened. "Lady, lady—take it easy. I'm sorry," he exclaimed, and kept moving, with a fellow reporter bringing up the rear. "I'm not, really," he said in a stage whisper to his buddy. "She had great tits."
Mavis Moran didn't believe in blushing, but that was exactly what she was doing now. Not because of the uncouth remark; but because in one of those well-formed breasts she had discovered, a week earlier, a lump. Not a big lump; no need to panic; it was most likely only a cyst. She'd had them before. But it was still ... a lump. She would wait until after her period and then if it hadn't gone away, she'd see about ... the lump. Part of her wanted to race immediately to her gynecologist. The other part of her despised her fearfulness.
Her fear at that moment was not of death or of pain, because she was only thirty-two, and she was stoic. No, her dread was much more irrational than that: she feared mutilation. The thought that some future bulldozer might bump into a prosthesis instead of her warm, real flesh filled Mavis Moran, an heiress who could probably pay for a new wing on Sloan-Kettering, with horror. And fury. It seemed impossible to her that despite her intelligence and wealth, there were situations which she could not control. Mavis was scrupulous about diet and nutrition, exercised religiously, kept abreast of trends in life extension. So why the lump?
Heredity, she supposed. That was where the cyst, if it was a cyst, came from, and where her Irish fatalism came from. She had a sudden, vivid memory of her grandmother, Tess Moran, a woman who was a great beauty in her day, a woman of indomitable will and daunting intelligence—and a woman felled with a limp that Mavis knew was from a gunshot wound. Was her grandmother bothered by the fact that she could not carry herself with the same poise as other great beauties of her era? Not that anyone could see.
Mavis was thrown back to a beautiful summer evening at Beau Rêve, her grandmother's estate. She was six or seven, playing on a big granite boulder on the edge of the lawn that legend had it was hurled from the sea in the great storm of 1815. Mavis slipped and fell, scraping her leg and hitting her knee hard enough that she limped, crying, to her grandmother, who was seated on the veranda with Doctor Whitman, her oldest friend, having tea. Doctor Whitman looked Mavis over and pronounced her well enough to have ice cream for dessert. The two grownups exchanged sudden, sad smiles, Mavis remembered, and her grandmother said, "It's been nearly ten years, and still I miss her, Henry. Beau Rêve seems so empty without her."
Mavis knew that they were speaking of her Great-Aunt Maggie, but she herself did not know Great-Aunt Maggie, and, furthermore, she was worried about her knee after falling down the boulder.
"Will I walk funny, like Grandmother does?" she asked the physician in self-absorbed innocence.
Doctor Henry Whitman had frowned at her and said, "If you are very, very good, you will someday follow in your grandmother's footsteps."
Which didn't really answer the question for Mavis. It wasn't until after she had her scrape bandaged and the ice cream for dessert that she knew she would walk and run the way she always had. As for following in her grandmother's footsteps—that, she doubted. No one could. Tess Moran was bigger than life, a self-made woman who rose above circumstances. Mavis had inherited wealth and had more luck in marrying well. Her grandmother had had neither advantage. Tess Moran was a hard act to follow.
Mavis and the rest of the Armory audience had exited into a stream of pedestrian traffic that flowed endlessly up and down Thames Street nowadays. The afternoon sea breeze had died away, leaving yet another balmy summer evening, perfect for yet another dinner party aboard yet another yacht. Tonight Mavis's host would be the vice-president of AER Industries, a major sponsor of the syndicate that Mavis's husband had been supporting. The list of corporations throwing their money behind the various American syndicates was growing daily. The races had become far too prohibitively expensive for something like Alan Seton's one-man band. The America's Cup Races had gone commercial, and major individual contributors like Mavis and her husband were sharing center stage with cans of coffee and bottles of shampoo.
If this were an average evening, Mavis might first stop by the crew house for cocktails and an update on waterfront scuttlebutt. She would be filled in and fawned on, with the hope that she'd follow through on her deceased husband's commitment to the syndicate. But today she was feeling tense and dissatisfied for more than one reason; it was best to avoid the crew house altogether in her present foul mood. Still in disguise, she chose to saunter instead through Bannister's Wharf. Besides being the site of boutiques, bistros, and an immensely popular cookie store, the Wharf was the location of the Black Pearl, the Candy Store, and the Raw Bar, watering holes where hundreds of yachties, groupies, and tourists gravitated each day to mill inside and out, sipping sundowners.
The evening was hopelessly fine, which meant that the Wharf was hopelessly mobbed. Mavis wandered incognito through the crowds on the pier, taking in the still-bustling harbor that lay before her. Launches and water taxis were zipping back and forth, coolly dodging sailboats from eight to eighty feet that were tacking up or running down the channel. Family powerboats chugged along while corporate yachts trundled slowly and windsurfers darted like dragonflies in and out of all of them.
Idly, Mavis tried to estimate the total worth of the yachts gathered there, but the same image kept drifting in and out of her thoughts—Alan Seton, with his lopsided, rueful smile, withdrawing from the America's Cup competition. All in all, it had been a graceful exit, although there wasn't any doubt in Mavis's mind that he'd be back to race another year. She should be happy that he was out of the running; it made it that much more likely that her own syndicate would be chosen to defend. Good news, yes ….
With a sigh, Mavis decided, after all, to go back to Beau Rêve—when a voice, very loud and very drunk, hailed her.
"Miss Ma-vis ... yooo-hooo ... oh Miss May-y-vis." Mavis swung around, annoyed by the assault on her anonymity. She was surprised to see a certain America's Cup skipper, retired from the competition less than an hour earlier, more or less hanging out of one of the low, double-hung windows of the Black Pearl Restaurant. His elbows were propped on the sill, which undoubtedly was the only thing keeping him from tumbling head first into the milling crowd on the wharf, and a large tumbler was hanging empty from one hand. Whether he'd drunk its contents or spilled them on the ground was anybody's guess, although Mavis thought she could guess. He crooked his index finger, motioning her toward the window.
How had he got drunk so fast? She walked unwillingly to the low window. He was going to make a fool of himself.
"Guess what?" he said, looking up at her with slightly unfocused but remarkably long-lashed eyes.
"You've withdrawn," she answered calmly.
"Huh! Well, okay .... Guess what else?"
She lifted the empty glass from his hand and balanced it on the sill. "You've drunk a record amount of rum in record time." The air between them was redolent with it.
"Well ... well, I'll be damned. Fellas, you hear that?" he demanded, swinging his head around to the table inside where the Shadow crewmen sat, well on the way to the same sweet oblivion as their leader. Their ex-leader. "This woman is definitely ... psychic," he said in an awed voice. Then he turned back to Mavis with a look of suspicion. "Saa-a-y, wait a minute. Who told?" He turned back to the crew. "Which one of you blammermouths told?" he demanded loudly.
Mavis tugged at his sleeve, afraid that he might do something really silly. He'd been under an absurd strain for the past few days. "Alan. I was at the press conference myself. As for the rum you've knocked back—call it a lucky guess," she said, and despite the bewildering anger she had been feeling for him, she smiled.
"I knew it," he said instantly. "They're a great bunch of guys. They'd never tell. You'd have to cut their tongues out first."
He gave her the sweet smile of a neophyte drunk. And yet she'd seen him put away his fair share at a beer bash the Canadian syndicate had given for all the other crews and still stay stone sober. So it had to be the strain.
"I've enjoyed our little chat," she said ironically, "but I have to be getting home. I need to change for dinner." She felt self-conscious; the crowd, recognizing the handsome drunk in the window, was edging nearer. Alan was crazy, she thought, to appear in public now.
"Dinner! That's what we're having!" he said, thunderstruck by the coincidence. "Come inside. Eat with us."
"Another time, perhaps. I really must be going."
"Now wait. Now wait," he said, encircling her upper arm with a surprisingly callused hand. The roughness of his touch carried with it unmistakable authority, and she paused and stared coolly at the deeply browned fingers on the lighter, golden tan of her arm.
"Mavis, don't be that way," he argued, fuzzily aware that he was being cut. "Will you at least have a drink before you go? We, hmm, have a lot to talk about."
"Thank you, no."
"Or wait! Better yet, I'll come out," he answered, swinging one leg over the low window sill.
"Don't you dare," she said, aghast.
He paused mid-swing. "Mavis, I was a … I guess the word is, pig, when you offered your help last year. Right?"
"Definitely that," said Mavis, not about to throw him a bone of polite disclaimer.
He grimaced melodramatically, and she thought, there's black Irish in him, and it suits him very well. Even drunk he was blazingly handsome.
"I called you some awful things," he said humbly. "Right?"
"I don't really remember." She remembered every word. After he'd accused her of preying on human flesh and dealing in white slavery, he'd launched into a tirade about the corporate piranha mentality and demanded to know if she, Mavis, branded the rumps of all her cattle or whether she'd be satisfied with a complete set of his dental X-rays. She had merely smiled and said, "Either way." After that he'd stormed out of the Sans Souci and Mavis was left to pay the bill. That was their last real, if you could call it that, conversation.
"Mavis, I ... these last few days ..." He sighed deeply, still holding her arm. "A crystal ball ..." he began, and again he trailed off. Then the rambling intoxication lifted, just for a moment, and his eyes held hers with a look of complete, consuming regret.
The look shot through Mavis like a bolt of fire, short-circuiting her defense systems, leaving her standing and staring, astonished at the intensity of her response. His hand burned into her arm; for a wild second she thought they were fusing together, there on the wharf. Then: the flash of a camera, acting like an icy gin and tonic in her face. The press had found them. He, one leg on the window sill of the Black Pearl, wearing a look of inebriated anguish; she, resplendent in baggy khakis and a polyester shirt.
"Damn you," Mavis said under her breath, and she yanked her arm from Alan's grip. Shaking with fury and confused emotion, she murmured, "You maudlin fool! Who do you think you are?" And she turned and plunged into the crowd, brushing aside the photographers as though they were hollyhocks in a country garden.
Four hours and one dinner party later, Mavis was still smoldering. More than a year earlier, the media had had a field day with the story of their tête-à-tête at the San Souci. One tabloid had run the headline: "Skipper balks, then walks, while heiress talks." Bill, still convalescing from his heart attack, thought it was screamingly funny. Mavis did not. And now here she was, grist for the media mill again, only this time with photos. Wonderful.
****
In the best bedroom of Beau Rêve, her grandmother's favorite room, Mavis got ready for bed. She removed her earrings—tonight, simple emerald studs—and stared at herself dispassionately in the mirror. With her usual ruthless precision she reminded herself that she had walked, not been dragged, to Bannister's Wharf, a known mecca for photographers. She had made herself fair game, just as Alan Seton had. Clearly her subconscious had a mind of its own. It was one of the unresolved oddities in her life, that she despised the gossip columns and yet read every word of every rag every day. In that, she was nothing at all like Grandmother Tess.
Mavis folded her arms across the hand-rubbed veneer of her dressing table and rested her head on the back of one wrist. She was horribly tired. And depressed.
"Is there anything else, Miss Moran?"
Lifting her head, Mavis answered dully, "Nothing, Lisa, thank you. Don't forget to flip on the alarm when you leave."
"You don't think he'd come back for more, do you? Because if you want me to, I'll stay. I mean there might be ... well, he must know where you live now .... Anything could ..."
"Lisa, I'm fine. Don't be theatrical. Besides, you know everything's in the safe deposit box." The insurance company, appalled at the cavalier way Mavis stored her jewels, had insisted on it.
"But does the robber know that? Beau Rêve is so by itself."
"Lisa."
Mavis heard the girl sigh, then hesitate for a long moment. "If you're really, really sure, then. Good night."
"Yes."
Mavis was alone at last. The night was very warm, very still. Crickets chirped in country harmony, drowning out the soft laps of the next-door ocean. She shed her dinner dress, unable to will herself out of her lethargy. The muggy night added to her sense of oppression. Under the thin batik of her dressing gown, she was obsessively aware of her left breast, convinced she felt a vague burning. Did breast cancer hurt? Was a burning sensation one of the seven warning signs? What were the other six, in any case? Her mother had been plagued by benign cysts; that, more than anything, allowed Mavis to circle idly around the questions without panicking at not having answers.
More questions. With Alan out of the running, which of the Americans would be chosen to defend the Cup? Dennis Conner, with his machine-like efficiency, or Tom Blackaller, Conner's flamboyant rival? If it were a popularity contest, John Kolius, sailing the two-time defender Courageous, would surely be given the nod. Even without Alan, it should still be an interestingly bitter campaign. Then there were the Australians, who had all the other foreign challengers running scared. Still more interesting.
Then why had it suddenly become anticlimactic to be a part of it all? The most interesting racing in a hundred and thirty-two years, and Mavis Moran was—bored.
She raised her head, her sea-green eyes suddenly wide with realization. Oh no. Not because of him! A blue-eyed, black-haired egotist with no follow-through? No. A penitent, self-righteous drunk with absolutely no regard for proper form? Dear God, no, she begged. Let her want someone else. She could have virtually anyone she desired; she didn't want to want Alan Seton. Not even for sex, which is the only conceivable reason a woman could be attracted to him. Other than that, he was totally impossible.
She forced herself to think of other things as she brushed her teeth and cleansed her face of the little makeup she wore. She toweled her cheeks until they glowed a dull red, trying to remove all traces of the day, of the man, of her thoughts of him. She pounded her pillows with equal ferocity; they became too fluffy. She threw one on the floor. Too flat. She lay on her stomach; her back began to hurt. She lay on her back; her breasts began to throb.
Oh damn! she whispered over and over. An hour later the sheet was on the carpet, the blanket was over the footboard, and Mavis was on her way to a migraine.
"Yoo-o-o hoo-o. Miss Ma-ayy-vis!"
And now I'm hallucinating, she thought.
"Mavis!" came the hoarse cry. "Wake up!"
With a sense that she was about to do battle against unequal forces, Mavis threw the batik wrap around her too-warm, naked body and slipped through the French doors onto the stone balcony.
Part of her was outraged, and she tried to hold that note as she peered down from the balcony into the silver-mooned night below. The backdrop of bright light let her see Alan quite clearly, still in his press conference clothes, but minus his shoes and socks.
"If you've come to recite Shakespeare, I prefer Yeats," she said cooly.
"I only know the Bard," he answered, and he began, indeed, reciting.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate—
"Uh, wait, let me rephrase," he corrected. "Lovely, yes—but I dunno about temperate."
Snorting, Mavis said, "No gentleman, but clearly a scholar," and turned to leave.
With a startling shift in tone he quoted in a light, teasing voice: "O! When she's angry she is keen and shrewd."
For a man in his cups he was too quick by half, she thought, a smile of appreciation hovering on her lips. Seton and Shakespeare were a natural combination. Over her shoulder she called out, "Good night, skipper."
"Mavis, open the damn door," he commanded impatiently.
"Or you'll blow the house down? Try." It was absurd to goad him, of course. But satisfying.
"All right, then; I'll let myself in!" He said it in a shout, injecting a dramatic note into the proceedings.
The stone wall supporting the balcony was overrun with thick ivy. Mavis heard a rustling in the ivy, then, "Ow! Ow!" and a thud. She leaned over the balcony.
"No shoes," Alan said sheepishly, looking up at her from his seat on the grass.
With Queen-of-England restraint, Mavis smiled formally and waved her farewell. She wouldn't have to call the police after all.
She was locking the French doors from inside when she saw the top four feet of a ladder pass over the balustrade.
"Really, this is too much." She'd been riding an emotional Ferris wheel long enough that night; it wasn't fun anymore. Annoyance erupted into steadily burning anger as she re-crossed the terrace in two strides and grabbed the ladder ends.
"Alas, no boiling oil," she said with real regret. "You'll forgive this more practical approach." And she shoved the ladder from the balustrade with all of her considerable strength.
"Whoa!" In a flash Seton grabbed her wrist in one hand, the balustrade with the other, slamming the ladder back into position between them. "Are you crazy?"
Suddenly it wasn't a game any longer, but an elemental, almost primitive contest of force. Mavis had the advantage of position; he, of physical strength. Towering above him, imperious in her fury, she said, "I'll have you charged, Seton."
"Over my dead body," Alan answered in a calmer voice. "Which it very nearly was," he added, and she could imagine the slow smile gathering momentum behind the afterthought.
It infuriated her still more, this male inability to take her threat seriously. He was so near. His scent—rum, tobacco, the sweat from camera lights and a long day's tension—mocked her own washed and perfumed womanliness. Dared her. Again she tried to shove the ladder into oblivion; again he held fast to her. Both were breathing heavily now.
"Mavis," he said, and this time his voice was entreating, "Don't you get it? I have nowhere else to go."
"I ... don't believe you." It was barely a whisper, definitely a lie. She did believe him. "Where are all your crew?"
He held her wrist, though she was still. "Scattered. Some of us got out of the van on Ocean Drive; we split in different directions, trying to ditch the press. The guys can hitch rides back to Seacliff. Me, I can't go back there," he added quietly.
She didn't bother asking why. The media; memories of his wife; the end of his dream. Mavis couldn't have returned either, in the same situation. "All right, then. For a cup of coffee. You sure as hell need one."
He released her, his face absolutely expressionless. It threw her. Everything about him threw her. She led the way across the softly lit terrace, suddenly aware that she was wearing nothing but a thin robe. They both reached for the door latch at the same time and she jumped back from the touch of his hand; it allowed him the point for chivalry as he got the door, a point she hated to concede.
Inside her bedroom Alan looked around briefly, said, "Nice," and nodded across the ivory and delft Chinese rug toward the adjoining bathroom. "Would you mind if I grabbed a quick shower? Anything to feel a little less like a beast of the jungle," he added.
"Shoes might help," said Mavis, distracted by her pulse rate.
"Yeah. I lost one in a crevice between two rocks on Cliff Walk. I threw the other one in the ocean."
Mavis lifted her eyebrows slightly. "Nice touch." Then, on her way out of the room, she turned suddenly and said, "Are you part Irish?"
Seton, already stripped of his shirt and on his way out of his shorts, stopped mid-zip and grinned. "Who isn't? Why? Do you sense a kindred soul in me?"
It was Mavis's turn to smile. "Please. It's inconceivable to me that I would ever throw a shoe into the ocean."
"You've never done anything impulsive?"
"Never."
"Put your shoes on then—and maybe clothes," he said promptly, "and I'll take you for a stroll along Cliff Walk. Big tourist stuff around here, and you've probably never even seen it."
"I spent lots of time in Newport as a child, thanks. I've seen it."
"But not by night, I'll bet."
Unconsciously she touched the bruise on her chin, which he seemed to notice for the first time.
Whether he remembered the details from the robbery or whether he took his cue from her pained look, Alan said nothing more, and she left him.
She headed for the kitchen, a true chef's fantasy. There, function reigned supreme; it was not a place for friendly gatherings among friends and family. Acres of stainless steel, restaurant-sized appliances, food processors that really worked—caterers would surely fight for the right to prepare food in it for the inevitable cocktail parties that filled a Newport summer.
If Mavis ever chose to host one, that is. Despite her wealth, she had declined to go the route of Newport's legendary grandes dames. She had long ago convinced herself that she neither needed nor valued the opinion of others. The intricacies of social one-upmanship bored her; in that, she wasn't the first to believe that the real purpose of Society was to make one's friends miserable.
And why was she convinced? Because when she was ten years old, her grandmother had sat her down and administered a no-nonsense dose of reality to her.
"I was a laundry maid; my mother was a cook," Tess Moran had said, "and nothing can change that. Never will you be admitted to the few dozen backbones of American Society. Nothing—not even marriage—will make you into an Astor or a Wilson or a Baker, or even a Vanderbilt."
Mavis remembered still the sudden, puzzling rush of feeling ordinary. It must have shown in her face because her grandmother had hugged her and offered consolation: "Never mind, my darling," she had said. "With my money and your face you'll be able to do anything, go anywhere, and be anyone you want. You can be your own woman; that's all that matters. If you don't want to marry, you certainly won't have to."
So here she was, a fully independent woman, trying to sober up an inebriated ex-rival in the most elitist of sports. If her grandmother could see her now.
Annoyed by the mission thrust on her, Mavis swept past the espresso machine, the electric coffee grinder, and the commercial twin-station drip coffee brewer. She took down the smallest pot on the rack overhead, a four-quart copper saucepan, filled it with tap water, and set it to boil. Rejecting the bone china tea cups, she chose instead two souvenir mugs emblazoned with images of the America's Cup trophy which someone had given her as a joke. They were deep and substantial and probably offensive, given Alan's afternoon, but she did not want to have to return to the kitchen, like the little missus, to get a refill for Alan Seton. One mugful, and out.
The freeze-dried crystals had barely dissolved when Alan ambled in, wrapped in a spa knee-length robe. "I filched this from another bedroom. It had no gentleman's name label sewn in, so I assume it's generic."
She gave him a narrow look. "And your clothes are …?"
"A little ripe at this point; I'll put 'em back on after I've enjoyed my coffee. Which hopefully I can drink somewhere else than in this engine room," he added, blinking in the crisp white light. "May we?" And with a courtly gesture he indicated the large living area which lay adjacent.
Without speaking they took seats opposite one another, each in an L-shaped sofa covered in creamy silk. The sofas jutted out from a spectacular pillared fireplace of rose marble; a low wide table topped in inlaid mahogany squatted between them, keeping them at a safe distance from one another.
Like diplomats of unfriendly nations, they eyed one another warily.
"So," he said. "This would be what, the family room?"
"If I had a family."
He ran a hand across the silk cushion. "Not exactly pet-friendly. Your place, or rented?"
"You don't know?"
"I haven't been getting out much."
"It was my grandmother's."
He smacked his forehead dramatically. "Of course! Tess Moran of the Moran Mills empire. I knew that. So Moran isn't your married name. Why did you choose to keep it?"
"You've just said the reason: the Moran Mills empire. My husband was fine with my decision. And since I wasn't married for long, it was the right decision."
"Huh. How's the textile business doing, by the way? Any mills left, or have you sold them all to developers and shipped the work to China?"
"I still own half the mills."
"Ah. Well—good for you. These are tough times for the industry."
She shrugged, not wishing to be drawn into a discussion of either fabrics or fortunes, and was surprised when he asked, "Do you plan to sell this place, too?"
Despite herself, she said, "Why would I do that?"
Now it was his turn to shrug. "After this summer, Newport will be just another tourist town. Like Provincetown. Or the Vineyard. The unique, international ambience will have gone—and with it, of course, your 'quality' people." There was heavy irony in his voice.
She saw where he was headed, but she refused to believe it. "Because?"
"The Cup will be in Australia," he said flatly. "Perth, Australia. Ever been there? Clean. New. Tall. Bland." He frowned and, averting her gaze, sipped from his mug.
"So you think the Cup will really go this time? After a hundred and thirty-two years of consecutive victories?"
"Of course. And so do you. So does anyone with twenty-twenty vision who's seen Australia II on the water."
"Well, count me out," she said firmly. "It's a fast boat, and well sailed, I admit. The Australians are better than any of the foreign challengers, I admit. So what? The U.S. is ... the U.S.," she added in a sublime flight of optimism. "No one is taking anything for granted, least of all Australia's winged keel—despite its illegality," she said, still appalled that the New York Yacht Club allowed the radical design into the competition.
Again he shrugged. "The keel's legal. Period. Ask the Brits, ask Olin Stephens, ask anyone who can discuss it without getting hysterical at the thought of the U.S. losing its beloved Cup."
"Which apparently you can do easily enough," she snapped.
"I've shed my last tear," he answered tiredly.
"Shadow is fast. Shadow may well be the fastest American boat," Mavis said stubbornly. She threw it down like a challenge.
He neither accepted nor turned away from it. "Shadow looks fast because I'm good on the helm," he said simply.
"Are you." He was so exasperating. She tried hard to keep herself from boiling over. Turn down the flame, she cautioned herself. "If you're so good," she said, "why are you leaving your country in the lurch?" In a low, intense rush she added, "Some might call you a traitor."
He pretended not to hear her last remark. "Well, Mavis, one or two things. First is the question of whether Cindy is actually dead or alive. Perhaps you didn't realize—no, of course you couldn't know," he said with a thin smile, "that someone has come forward with a description of a gentleman friend of Cindy's who seems to fit your description of this Delgado fella. They were once seen on a Cape Cod beach, which is possible but not likely since Cindy hated the sun. There's also the unworn high-heeled shoe that was found on the front seat. The investigation continues, discreetly, into whether my wife is not a suicide at all but the moll of a two-bit gangster."
Without acknowledging Mavis's look of sudden understanding, he plowed ahead. "Then there's the matter of the innocent Newporter she's crippled for life. His paralysis is a fact, whether Cindy is dead or alive; that I know. And so here's a question for you: is a yacht race—even a very old yacht race—between rich men worth two legs of an ordinary citizen?"
"You're so majestic," she interrupted with heat, "and you weren't even there at the time."
"Precisely. I wasn't even there at the time. And that was the whole problem. Cindy tells me—from the grave, from her hiding place, what does it matter?—that I'm not a caring person. And she must be right."
"Of course she's dead, Mavis answered.
He looked up at that. "Is that to make me feel better? So that I don't have to wonder, ever after, is she or isn't she? So that, the question resolved, I can slip behind the helm of the Shadow, win the race, and keep America great? Forget it, Mave. I'm not going back."
"Because the Aussies have you running scared, skipper?" she asked caustically.
"Because I'm not going back." He held the steaming mug between his large hands, his forearms resting on his thighs. He stared into the cup, she thought, as though he wished it were a deep, deep lake.
"Then sell me Shadow." She had no idea who said it, but obviously her lips moved.
He looked up at her, both alert and intrigued. "For your husband's syndicate?"
It was an evasion; she thrust it aside impatiently. "How much would you ask? For the boat, the entire sail inventory, all the gear, everything."
"Life jackets too? Gee, I'd have to think about it." He crossed his legs, Buddha-fashion—the robe slipped a bit; he tucked it demurely in place—and put on a thoughtful look.
Stalling again. "Dammit, Alan. Make up your mind. Either you're in or you're out. Let someone else have a chance. And it's not as though you can go cruising to Europe in Shadow. And I should add that the market for used 12-meter yachts is both limited and suffering from a glut."
"Ah, now you're trying to knock the price down." He drew out a small cigar and a pack of matches which he'd thought to tuck into a pocket of the spa robe, obviously enjoying himself.
"How much, Alan?" Suddenly Mavis knew what it was she wanted to do: head an America's Cup syndicate on her own. She was not naive enough to consider picking up the whole tab herself; only enough, the major part, to give her the final word in everything. It was the obvious way. Alan—if he stayed in, and she thought he might—Alan would then be free to do what he did best, to steer Shadow to victory. She believed in Shadow, even more than she believed in Alan Seton. She pressed him. "How much?"
"Three million bucks," he said serenely.
She fell back into the soft cushions of her sofa, genuinely stunned. "You're nuts."
"Some say that." He puffed contentedly on his cigar, a cheerful study in repose. And yet five minutes ago he had been an equally convincing study in tragedy.
"You're a fake," Mavis said, feeling oddly wounded. "I don't believe a word of what you've said tonight, and I wish," she added wearily, "that you'd just go home." She stood up. "Good night."
He yawned what seemed to be a spontaneous, wide yawn and said sleepily, "You're right, of course. I'm a bum. Good night, Mavis." And he plumped up one of the silk-covered pillows, reclined full-length on the couch, and sighed deeply.
She stood there, amazed at his presumption and, though she never would have admitted it, mesmerized by the movie star lines of his tanned profile against the pale cushion. She stared at him, studied him. But no; he wouldn't do. Mavis prized consistency above all else. She needed to be able to predict behavior, because that allowed her to stay one step ahead of the opposition. Barring that, and if she were matched equally to her opponent, she needed a consistent set of rules to play by. But Alan Seton was a dilettante who ignored the rules. A typical aristocrat: nothing, apparently, was worth the effort. Not even the Cup. The little man at the press conference was right. Alan Seton, grandson of a peer, wasn't patriotic enough to keep going when the going got tough.
He was asleep. She hadn't even decided her next move, and he was asleep. He couldn't possibly be faking it, she thought; no one slept that unself-consciously except the totally exhausted. His mouth was open a little, and he was snoring, not really gently. Pale white squint lines showed through his tan, and lines from his straight nose to his square jaw. His five o'clock shadow was eight hours old, and his black hair had reverted to the shape it liked best—undisciplined curls. His brow was slightly furrowed, as though sleep had caught him unawares and knocked him down in the middle of some weighty pondering.
She declined to wake him, not because she felt sorry for him but because she refused to feel that he made a difference in her life. She would let him sleep it off the way she would let a visiting child nap: because it was best for him. Because she decided that it was best for him.
In her room, in her bed, Mavis discovered that her eyes, too, were lined with lead; she could not keep them open. For her, too, the day had been interminable. The amazing thing was that she was falling asleep despite the fact that Alan Seton was under the same roof. Or was it, she wondered in a rapid slide into sleep, because of it?