Choices of another sort were being made that morning in a bedroom in Southold.
"I don't know, Stephen," the woman said, staring at the painting propped up against her lacquered wall. "It doesn't look so awfully wonderful to me."
Behind his back, Stephen Lowell's hands clenched into fists.
Ignorant cow. He was offering her one of Andrew's best paintings and she was pursing her painted lips as if she knew what in hell she was about.
"Cynthia, darling girl, trust me." He took her plump white hands in his and kissed her palms. "Bernard will be beside himself if you present him with an original Lowell."
Cynthia's upturned nose crinkled in dismay. "But it's so dirty, Stephen. Look at all that dust."
He bit back a sharp reply and somehow managed to retain his winning smile. Next time he would remember that morning sun revealed flaws in paintings as well as in women. "A good cleaning will take care of that. For a moderate fee, Connor Templeton in Manhattan can restore this to its original splendor."
"I'd rather fancied buying a stickpin for Bernard," she pouted. "Then I should have enough money left to buy matching earbobs for myself."
He looked at his naked greedy mistress and pitied her fool of a husband. Spare him from such undying love. A fat bank account would do more to warm him in his old age than the charms of any woman, no matter how willing.
Reaching into the pocket of his coat, which was draped across the foot of the bed, he withdrew a small flat box and handed it to her with a flourish. "I trust this will suffice for now."
Cynthia squealed with delight as she opened the jewelry case and saw the diamond necklace glittering on a bed of black velvet. "Put it on," she commanded, turning away from him and lifting her hair off her neck. "I must see how wonderful it looks."
He did as she requested, then ducking his head, began a series of love bites across her shoulder blades and down the curve of her back toward her delightfully rounded buttocks.
"Naughty boy," she said with a girlish giggle. "I should be getting home soon."
"You will." Grasping her hips he turned her around and nipped at the tops of her thighs. "I haven't shown you how much I care, Cynthia." His tongue danced across her moist, throbbing nub and she cried out and moved closer. He cupped her with his hand. The silky red curls were soft against his skin yet her flesh burned with a heat of its own. Breathing deeply of her musky odor, he buried his face against her and caught her honey on his tongue.
"Oh, Stephen... my God, what you do to me...."
Her legs trembled and he pulled her down on the Persian carpet by the fireplace and rolled on top of her. Her green eyes were dilated and wild; her breathing, shallow. Spreading her thighs for him eagerly, she arched to receive him and he pulled back then plunged his shaft deep inside her warmth until she cried out that she could take no more... she would die from pleasure... he was the best... the most wonderful...
And that was when he leaned up on his elbows and withdrew until just the tip of his manhood teased her tender flesh.
"The painting," he said, noting with satisfaction the flush on her shoulders and breasts, the way her mouth seemed swollen with desire. "You should buy the painting, Cynthia."
Her hands clutched his buttocks, her long fingernails digging into his flesh. "Stephen, please," she whimpered, trying desperately to draw him back.
He entered her then withdrew once again. "The perfect gift, Cynthia," he coaxed, running a finger wet with her juices across her rosy lips. "Trust me."
"Yes," she cried, drawing his finger into her mouth and sucking hard. "Yes, yes, yes."
Stephen Lowell plunged back into her tight and willing body as she found a quick and violent release.
His own would take much longer, he feared, and had precious little to do with sex.
Power was what he wanted and sex was just one of the many ways he'd discovered to attain it. Cynthia, avaricious and insatiable, was but a means to reach her husband.
Bernard Worthington, respected businessman, ran a tidy trade in stolen artwork. He was discreet, however, and Stephen had learned one never approached him through the front door. No, with Worthington one had to have finesse and how better to finesse one's way into his good graces than through his beloved wife? The moment Worthington saw the painting he would understand what was being offered—and for what price.
Time was of the essence. With Alexandra working in the attic storeroom, the number of paintings already missing from the home collection would soon become apparent. And, worse luck, he overheard Dayla and McKenna talking about his uncle taking up a paint brush again. The last thing he needed was a flood of new paintings to drive down the value of the old. Fortunately, the medications he'd procured from the discreet doctor in Sag Harbor should quell his uncle's artistic yearnings.
Cynthia's moan barely registered upon his mind as his thoughts leaped forward.
The shots he'd fired at Alexandra Glenn last night were part of his grand scheme. A few attempts on her life and everyone would be talking about the poacher. He laughed as he thought about the daisies he'd filched one morning right under Cook's watchful eye. They were so caught up in their fear of the gypsies camping in town that real danger passed them right by. Marisa's daughter would help him get more of Lowell's paintings out of that attic and into the right hands and then he would kill her and his bastard uncle, as well.
And, if he had planned things right, no one would look beyond the gypsy encampment for the murderer.
A perfect scheme.
As flawless as the woman moaning beneath him.
Rearing back he plunged into her as deeply as he could and laughed when he climaxed inside her.
Perfect, he thought. All of it, perfect.
#
Promptly at one o'clock, Alexandra presented herself at Andrew's suite. Dayla, in her usual white dress, greeted Alexandra at the door with a warm smile and led her into the studio where Andrew awaited. Alexandra had a terrible time maintaining her composure as vivid images of the beautiful dark-haired woman entwined in the arms of Matthew McKenna danced before her eyes.
It was all too confusing and she was glad when Dayla opened the door to Andrew's studio and said, "He is ready. I shall return in an hour," then disappeared.
"Don't just stand there," came Andrew's voice from where he sat in the center of the room. "We're wasting valuable daylight."
Her boots made a terrible clacking noise on the shiny wood floor of the studio and she steeled herself against the artist's critical inspection.
"That dress does not flatter," he said in his blunt fashion. "Throw it out."
Her temper flared despite her best intentions. "I have few enough gowns as it is, Mr. Lowell, and I shan't throw them away as your whim dictates." A smile began to crack through her apprehension. "You are an artist," she said boldly. "Paint me another dress."
She heard an answering smile in his voice although his stern countenance did not soften. "And while I'm about it, shall I paint you a quieter pair of boots then, girl?"
"I wondered if you would notice."
"How could I not?" he countered, adjusting his easel with trembling hands. "The sound could wake the dead." He motioned toward the window. "Sit over there and I shall do the best I can."
Alexandra positioned herself at the window, striking one of the poses she had learned from artists in Provence. To an artist, light was a blessing from God and she understood just how it must strike her features to display her to best advantage.
"Excellent," said Andrew. "You have modeled before, have you not?"
"Yes, I have." Sadness tugged at her heart that he could not remember their last conversation.
"Turn a little... yes... that's it... damnation!" A fine camel's hair brush rolled under his chair and he made an involuntary move toward it then stopped, his lean face wracked with misery as she realized he had not the agility to retrieve it.
His mask had slipped and she saw the vulnerable man behind it and her fear vanished. Without a word she handed the brush to him then resumed her pose at the window. A long silence filled the room as he looked at her with those remarkable lion's eyes.
"Thank you," he said gruffly.
"You're welcome," she said.
He began to paint.
#
"I will give him an hour," said Dayla as Matthew walked with her through the garden of wild daisies and lilies of the valley. "No more."
Matthew, who was carrying a glass of whiskey, took her arm to guide her around a rabbit hole. "I am surprised you would leave them alone for that long."
Dayla turned her dark eyes upon him. "She is a good woman," she said softly. "Do you think so?"
The memory of Alexandra crying in his arms the night before was still strong within him. "I don't know."
"Her eyes," said Dayla. "It is all in her eyes... sadness... aloneness. Do you not see it?"
Oh, he saw it. He saw all of that and so much more when he looked at Alexandra Glenn that it terrified him. Doors he'd believed forever locked behind him were suddenly forced open and a part of him longed to slam them shut and keep the darkness inside his heart.
"There is still Stephen," he managed after a moment. "He is somehow involved in this."
Dayla shot him a sidelong glance. "They are not lovers."
"How in hell would you know that?"
"I watch," she said, "and I listen. The man-woman magic is not there for them."
So Alexandra had been telling the truth, after all. He took another sip of whiskey to hide the smile on his face.
"She is for you."
He nearly choked on his whiskey. "You've lost your mind."
"No," she said, stopping near the azalea bushes and taking his hand, "but you are losing your heart."
"I can't," he said quietly. "That's the one thing I cannot do."
"Too late," said Dayla, giving him a hug. "It is already a long time too late."
#
From the window in Andrew's studio, Alexandra saw the whole exchange. Her breath caught when the woman took McKenna's hand and her heart ached when he drew Dayla close to him in a hug. Alexandra knew that hug; she had felt it just last night. She had known the solid warmth of his chest and the strength of his arms as they wrapped themselves around her. The faint scent of whiskey and soap lingered in her senses.
In the garden below, the two lovers drew apart then went their separate ways. Could Stephen be right, she wondered. Was there a collaboration of some sort going on beneath the roof at Sea View? Were Dayla and Matthew somehow conspiring against the Lowells?
"Straighten up, girl," snapped Andrew. "I can't sketch you if you slouch like a scullery maid."
"No more," she said, breaking the pose. "Dayla is on her way upstairs."
"The hour is over?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "The hour is over."
As Dayla glided into the room, all diaphanous white dress and sweet smile, Alexandra excused herself and fled from the studio. Never again, she swore as she ran across the yard toward the carriage house. Never again would she let Matthew McKenna get the better of her.
Whatever she felt for him, it would stay her secret.
#
"Poor little chit," said Andrew as he and Dayla watched Alexandra disappear into the carriage house. "She saw you and Matthew in the garden."
Dayla's head tilted to the left as it always did when she was interested in something. "We were talking," she said, "nothing more. He speaks of her."
Andrew smiled and patted her cheek. "I know, Dayla. I saw you too. But to her young eyes it was a betrayal."
"It is the same for him," she said, stroking his hair with her gentle, miraculous fingers. "The guilt he carries destroys him a little more each day."
"Would it help if I had Janine pour all the whiskey and vodka and rum in the house into the ocean?"
"He would buy more and hide it better. The solution must come from Matthew or there is no solution at all."
Suddenly exhaustion found Andrew and took him captive. "I am tired," he managed. "Can you—"
"I'll see you back into bed," said his woman. "Lean on me."
He did.
Just as he had done every day of his life since she found him.
#
Stephen returned home in the late afternoon, acting spry and cocky, and Alexandra couldn't help laughing at his outrageous stories about Riverhead's country lawyers and their bumbling ways.
Janine must be wrong, she thought after he left her in the attic and headed toward the main house. Stephen seemed as upright and moral as the day was long. She simply couldn't imagine him cuckolding another man.
An image of Matthew came to mind and she struggled to push it aside. With McKenna anything was possible.
She'd spent her time following the modeling session separating the different art works into groups according to medium. Legend had it Andrew Lowell was as prolific a painter as he was profligate a man, and looking at the hundreds of paintings arranged before her, she shuddered at the implication.
What must it be like for him now, a man who prided himself on delights of the flesh, to be houseridden, struggling to garner enough energy to do a simple sketch?
From the garden below came the roar of male voices; McKenna's furious bass overwhelmed Stephen's angry tenor. She stood near the window, shielded by a yellowed lace curtain, trying to understand their words yet almost afraid of what she might hear.
Andrew's name floated up to her quite clearly as did talk of medicine and paintings. Once she thought she heard Stephen mention her own name but McKenna's bellow drowned out everything else.
Dayla floated out from the main house, a dark vision in white, and soon after Alexandra saw the woman return inside with McKenna in tow.
She turned from the window and it was a long while before she continued with her work.
#
Stephen was ebullient and entertaining at dinner, but there was an almost indefinable edge to his stories that made Alexandra uncomfortable. As for Matthew, he had started the meal with them but soon spent most of his time pacing between the dining room and the library in search of the perfect glass of whiskey.
Only when talk turned to the shots fired the previous night on the beach did the two men actually engage in conversation and then it seemed to Alexandra that gunfire was infinitely preferable to the verbal poison darts they hurled at one another.
"Are you insane, man?" Stephen said over after-dinner coffee. "How could you let Alexandra walk the beach with that damn gypsy camp so close by?"
Matthew glared at Stephen, his blue-green eyes glittering dangerously. "Miss Glenn is a grown woman. It's not up to me to tell her where she can and can't walk."
Alexandra looked down at her dessert pastry recalling the violent way McKenna had railed at her about safety.
"Common courtesy." Stephen shot him a look. "Or is that something you have yet to learn?"
Sit down, Matthew, she thought as he sprang to his feet. Don't let Stephen provoke you this way.
"We can settle this outside," he said, his words clipped and deadly. "Or aren't you man enough to fight, Lowell?"
Involuntarily Alexandra reached out and touched McKenna's sleeve. His head swiveled in her direction and she forced herself to meet his eyes.
"Don't," she said quietly, withdrawing her hand and placing it on her lap. "You've been drinking. You're exaggerating its importance."
"Listen to your new advocate," Stephen said, his voice mocking, "for it will not be long before she knows you for what you are."
Matthew leaned across the huge dining room table and grabbed Stephen by his perfectly tailored lapels. "Shut up," he growled, "before I shove your teeth down your throat."
"Matthew!" Alexandra leaped to her feet and grabbed his arm. "This is insane! Stop this instant."
"I can fight my own battles, Alexandra," said Stephen. "This Neanderthal will tire of his games soon enough."
Matthew dropped Stephen into his seat as if he were a sack of rags. "I tired of you months ago," he said through gritted teeth. "The wonder is that you're still around."
"The wonder, my dear boy, is that you're still around," Stephen countered. "Perhaps it is a sign of the extent of my uncle's infirmity that he tolerates the presence of a drunken murderer in his house."
Alexandra's blood chilled and she began to tremble. Neither man noticed as she stood up and made for the door.
"You'll die by those words," Matthew swore. "By God, I'll see to it myself."
"Such a temper," taunted Stephen. "One can only imagine how easy it was for you to lose control."
Alexandra fled from the room and hurried through the hallway to the front door. Quickly she let herself out and, cursing her slim-fitting skirts, headed around the house toward the stairs that led down to the beach.
Sunset was still some time away; the sky was bathed in shades of orange and red and yellow. The smooth surface of the normally turbulent Atlantic picked up those colors and threw them back at the heavens, multiplied tenfold. At any other time she would long to capture this beauty with her paints but not now. Now she burned with anger and trembled with fear and churned with a thousand emotions in between. Murderer! What on earth had Stephen meant by that? She'd seen McKenna's temper firsthand but never had she imagined that that he could be capable of that ultimate crime.
In her mind's eyes she saw him moving silently from dining room to library, downing whiskey after whiskey yet growing sharper still. The lines of his long, lean torso, the way the lamplight gleamed off his sun-bleached hair, the simplicity of the black trousers and white cambric shirt he wore most often—it was all burned into her memory indelibly as a tattoo.
You don't know anything about him. All you know is what you see. How many times growing up had she waded into a clear and placid lake only to discover the bottom dropping away beneath her feet?
That was how it seemed with Matthew McKenna. In just a few days he had revealed himself as alternately being gruff then kind, rude then considerate, violent yet capable of tenderness that made her heart melt when she looked at him.
Would Andrew Lowell suffer a fool? She thought not. Stephen must be exaggerating for she could not imagine a man as brilliant and demanding as the great artist allowing a murderer domicile under his own roof. Servants knew everything and Janine had made it clear that Matthew McKenna was the salt of the earth and it was Stephen Lowell who was something decidedly less.
It was all so terribly confusing. Alexandra continued to walk along the shore, picking up shells here and there, and then tossing them back into the surf. Sand crabs scattered to avoid her bootheels as she passed and she carefully eluded an unpleasant looking creature she assumed was a Portuguese man-of-war.
As she continued walking the beach narrowed and the houses on the dunes grew further apart. Once she stopped and turned around to find Sea View fading in the distance. Good, she thought. The last thing she wanted was to be embroiled in the internecine war going on back at the house.
It was difficult enough to be so far from home. To become ensnared in an ugly conflict would make it unbearable.
How complicated her life had become since leaving Provence. Even the primal pleasure she had once received from her drawing was tangled up in new expectations, new goals. Her sketches now seemed amateurish and clumsy compared to the examples of Andrew's earlier works. One of his simple pencil sketches contained more power and passion than her finest oil painting.
Back at Sea View Stephen showered her with attention and flattery and yet she found it impossible to summon up even the slightest spark of romantic interest.
Yet, Matthew, whose very presence caused her blood to run quick and hot, treated her as if she were the enemy in a very private conflict.
The sun began its descent into the sea. The gathering darkness was streaked with magenta and indigo and a deep rose-pink. A few hundred feet ahead, flickering atop a dune, orange flames from a campfire caught her attention and drew her across the beach toward its fiery glow.
A rush of nostalgia flooded over her as she recognized the distinctive tents of a gypsy caravan and the smell of chicken roasting over the fire. Back in France Esme had taught her many things: how to use herbs and flowers, roots and berries to cure all manner of ills or keep an unwanted babe from being conceived. Even a concept as basic as privacy took on a different aspect when seen through the eyes of one born to the Rom as Esme had been. The gypsies she'd known believed privacy to be a gift one person gave to another and it extended from the boundaries of one's tent to the way one lived one's life.
Watching these gypsies from her hiding spot behind an outgrowth of dune grass was a violation of all her foster mother had taught her. Two dark-haired children played in front of the brightly painted wagon and Alexandra was about to walk over and introduce herself when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She wasn't surprised to see it was Matthew McKenna.
"They don't welcome outsiders, Alexandra," he said, "no matter how beautiful the outsider might be."
"I'm not an outsider," she said, trying to mask the rush of pleasure his compliment—no matter how indirect—gave her. "My mother was a gypsy."
"You don't belong here," he persisted. "Come back to the house."
"You're wrong," she said, moving away from here toward the gypsy camp. "I belong here more than I belong back at Sea View. This, at least, I understand."
The faint sound of violins mingled with the crackling of the camp fire brought quick tears to her eyes.
"Is this all I do for you?" Matthew asked, touching her cheek. "Make you cry?"
"You flatter yourself. It's the music and nothing more."
But that wasn't true, not entirely. The music was but a catalyst calling forth homesickness so deep she found it difficult to draw breath.
"Tell me what you're thinking, Alex. It may help to speak of it."
She thought of the fleet-footed girls who could dance on moonbeams and the men who leaped like unbroken colts. McKenna was of this earth, with both feet planted firmly in the soil. How could she explain to him how it felt to sway with the fire and never get burned?
"The countryside was magic," she said, thinking back to those golden meadows and those golden days safe and secure in the care of Esme and Paul Charbonne. "Each summer the gypsies returned to Provence and Esme would take me with her to live with her family."
McKenna looked shocked. "You lived with gypsies?"
"You needn't seem so surprised," Alexandra said. "I found greater love and acceptance there than I have found any place else." She could still remember the warm and fragrant chunks of fresh bread each morning and the aroma of coffee brewed in a bright red enamel pot. More than anything else, however, she remembered the joy she'd felt in a world that throbbed with the rhythm of life, unfettered by walls and boundaries created by man to keep other men away.
McKenna watched her intently, his expression betraying nothing at all. "I was taught that gypsies were thieves and witches," he said. "Mothers kept their children close to the breast when a caravan came into town."
"Their ways are different, not evil."
He took her hand in his and traced an outline in her palm. "What do you see, gypsy girl?" he murmured softly. "Will you go home one day?"
Alexandra pulled away for his touch burned hotter than the gypsy campfire. "My fortune seems to not be my own."
He extended his right hand toward her. "Tell me mine then."
"I have not the gift."
"You do," he said. "You can see what is happening, can you not?" He stepped forward, looming large and threatening in the half-light of dusk.
She took a step backward but bumped into a tall blade of dune grass. "Perhaps we should go back to the house after all."
"I don't think so." He advanced closer.
"Mr. McKenna—"
"Matthew."
"Mr. McKenna, please don't do this."
He was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek. "I haven't done anything yet, Alexandra, but I am sure you need not be a fortune teller to predict the inevitable."
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment as she tried to gather her wits about her. "You've been drinking. You don't know what you're doing."
"I've been drinking," he admitted, "but I damn well know exactly what I'm doing."
She gasped as he plunged his hands into her black mass of curls and tilted her head back until her eyes met his.
"I'm going to kiss you, Alexandra," he said, moving his mouth closer to hers. "Do you understand that?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I do."