If Shelby had taken the time to plan her every move, she probably wouldn’t have done it. She’d have thought of a dozen reasons, two dozen reasons, why she should just forget any thoughts of—the word she sought, then found, was freedom—and simply go on existing, not living.
Go on being Somerton’s sister, Parker’s fiancée, the Ice Maiden. Spend the summer attending prewedding parties, unwrapping silver salad tongs, picking invitations, having fittings of her gown. Organizing the Taite-Westbrook merger—er, wedding—so that it would be the sensation of the year.
Strangled by ivory peau de soie, trapped in a web of Alençon lace. Grandly wed, politely bedded, and then spending the remainder of her life attending parties, hosting parties, volunteering in the hospital gift shop three hours a week, turning a blind eye to Parker’s little sexual peccadilloes with a string of disposable females, drinking just a tad too much wine after dinner... and quietly going insane.
So Shelby didn’t think. She didn’t plan. Well, not much anyway.
Mostly, she acted.
Five days after the charity ball, she pulled Susie into the bedroom, flung open the doors to her walk-in closet—the one with the rotating hanging rods, the one that held enough clothes, shoes, hats and purses to stock a large, upscale consignment shop—and told Susie to pick out some “normal” clothes for her.
Susie Helfrich dutifully took two steps into the closet, then stopped, screwed up her pug nose, looked at her employer. “Huh? Um, that is, pardon me?”
“Normal, Susie,” Shelby repeated, waving her arms a time or two, then pointing at her maid’s denim skirt and pink summer sweater. Her scuffed white Keds. “Normal. Like yours, Susie. The sort of thing people would wear in... well, what people would wear in a small town.”
Susie looked at the clothing hanging on padded hangers and shook her head. “You don’t own anything like that, Miss Taite. You shop in New York and Paris twice a year. Nor— Um—most people shop in malls and outlet stores. Your clothing is really beautiful, but you don’t exactly have anything that I’d wear back home or anything like that.”
Shelby’s shoulders slumped, a princess who longed to be Cinderella before the fairy godmother showed up. “No, I haven’t, have I? Very well, let’s do the best we can with what we’ve got, all right?”
“I have a DKNY shirt I got at T.J.Maxx last year,” Susie offered helpfully, pulling out a pale green Donna Karan suit and looking at it critically. “So I suppose it wouldn’t be impossible that someone could have something like this. And Patty O’Boyle, my friend from back home in East Wapaneken, she finds lots of designer clothes at the outlets in Reading.”
Shelby nodded her approval, even if Susie did seem to be speaking a foreign language. What on earth was a T.J. Maxx? “Well, then, that’s fine. We’ll start with the Donna Karan. I’ll want skirts, a few Armani pantsuits, and matching tops. You pick everything. Enough for, oh, three weeks or so, Susie, plus shoes and other accessories. Do you think you could pack everything up for me? My luggage is in the closet in the hall.”
“You’re going on a trip?” Susie asked as she pushed the button that set the rolling rack into motion, eying the clothes assessingly as they passed by. “That’s nice.”
Shelby was already rummaging through the built-in drawers that lined one wall of the closet, pulling out handfuls of silk underwear. “Yes, very nice, Susie. And our little secret, all right? I—I just feel a need to get away for a few weeks before the wedding preparations begin in earnest. My brother would try to talk me out of it if I told him, so I’m just going to pack and leave. You can give him my note when I’m gone.”
“Are you all right, Miss Taite?” Susie asked as some of the underwear slipped from Shelby’s hands, sliding to the floor. “I mean, it’s none of my business, but you seem, well, upset. Did you and Mr. Westbrook have some sort of argument or something?”
“Ha! Parker? He’d never argue, Susie,” Shelby told her, bending down to gather up her unmentionables. “Oh, he might frown, and ask me if I’d slept well because I seemed a bit cranky. But argue with me? No, Susie, I can’t see it.”
“Wow,” the young girl said, shaking her head so that her tawny ponytail slapped against her shoulders. “My mom and dad used to have some real humdingers. But they always made up afterwards, went out to dinner, then locked themselves in their bedroom until late the next morning. I remember being able to hear them giggling through the walls. Mom explained to me that husbands and wives do argue, that it’s natural, and that it didn’t mean that they didn’t love each other.”
She leaned against the wall of the closet, blinking back sudden tears. “They loved each other very much, Miss Taite. Dad’s only half a person without her.”
Shelby looked at the young woman for a long moment, unable to speak. Her parents had never argued. They’d had a few discussions, but those discussions had been more like low, hissing contests of wills, and usually ended with her father going to his club and her mother going to her lover of the month. Dying in the same plane crash was about the only thing they’d done together since Shelby had been conceived.
“I envy you your memories, Susie,” she said at last, walking past her to dump the underwear on her bed. “I’ll start sorting out my toiletries, all right? And remember, this is all our little secret.”
In the end, Shelby had added another full suitcase of clothing to that Susie had packed, just to be certain she had enough. Traveling with less than five suitcases seemed impossible to Shelby, who at least congratulated herself that she’d forgone the elaborate, custom-made steamer trunk she usually used for trips lasting more than a few days.
She went down to dinner on time, nervously picking her way through three courses as Somerton and Jeremy got into a small spat over Somerton’s preference for very rare steak.
“It’s barbaric,” Jeremy told them all, shuddering. “I expect you to come home at any time, Somerton, panting, your tail wagging, some limp-necked game hanging from your jaws. Vegetarianism, it’s the only healthy way to live.”
“Nonsense, Jeremy,” Somerton countered testily, his nostrils flaring. “I am a carnivore. You are a carnivore. You just won’t admit it. And I must say, Jeremy, that I resent your comparing me to an animal. I think you should apologize, frankly.”
Jeremy’s thin, aesthetic face flushed, and a tear came to his eye. “Apologize? Perhaps next week, Somerton, after you’ve dropped dead, your arteries clogged. Have you thought about that, Somerton?” He drew himself up, sniffled. “Have you thought about what would happen to me if anything should happen to you? I should think you’d have a little more consideration, Somerton. Really I do.”
“You’d survive,” Somerton snapped right back at him. “You certainly wouldn’t starve. After all, all you’d have to do is go outside and graze.”
Jeremy gasped, lifted his linen napkin to his lips.
“Now, children,” Uncle Alfred cut in, winking at Shelby. “Somerton, apologize if you please. You’re a naughty, naughty boy, upsetting the little woman, who only has your best interests at heart. Jeremy?” he then asked, leaning his elbows on the table as he held a glass of wine in both hands, “you’re doing something new with your hair, aren’t you, son? Adorable, really.”
With Somerton still stiff-backed and silently sputtering, and with the easily diverted Jeremy now preening and posturing, Shelby was thankful to be left alone to push candied yams around on her plate and mentally word the note she’d write after dinner.
* * *
At nine the next morning, while the rest of the household either slept or breakfasted in their rooms, Jim Helfrich loaded Shelby’s luggage into the back of the limousine and then drove her to the downtown bus station.
Nobody would ever think to look for her at a bus station. And if anyone asked, and they probably would, Jim could only tell them about the bus station, not her destination.
Hers may have been an impromptu plan, but Shelby believed it had its moments of brilliance. She’d be arriving at the bus station in Allentown before noon, and well on her way to blissful oblivion in East Wapaneken.
She settled back against the plush leather seats of the Mercedes limousine, considering herself to be halfway to freedom.