Chapter 3

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Sharon. I hope I’m not intruding up here. The tower drew me, and your father said I might explore.”

Her expression reminded me of the dark look worn by the man in the second photograph, with no smile, no brightening of the dark eyes that stared at me. She was examining me carefully, rudely, detail by detail from head to toe, and I stood quite still, meeting her searching look.

Then she said coldly, “You’ll be just fine for his collection.” Her meaning was clearly insulting.

I tried to ignore her manner, studying the picture again, searching for something to say.

“You haven’t replied to my question,” she went on. “What do you think of those photos?”

“I only know the man on the right,” I told her quietly. “I’ve never seen the other one.” Or had I, briefly, that last night in Kyoto?

“He tried to smash my camera on the day that was taken.” Her lips twisted wryly. “I grabbed it and ran—so I saved the picture.”

“What was it that made him so angry?”

Her eyes flashed with the indignation of memory, and she moved her head so that black hair, cut in the thick, swirling bob that Sassoon had stamped upon the country, flew out, and then fell back, with every strand in place.

“He was angry with my mother—and so with me for defending her. It’s a wonder he didn’t kill her one of those times before they were divorced. You have something to look forward to if you haven’t seen him angry yet. My father can be a very destructive man.”

She was throwing out one challenge after another. Antagonism toward me seethed in her voice, in her contemptuous look. Yet I wanted to make some tentative gesture toward her that might lessen this hostility. I glanced down at the open portfolio of photographs on the desk.

“You’re very good,” I said. “Do you do this professionally?”

“I don’t do anything professionally.” But her tone softened just a little and she seemed to relent. “The library asked me about exhibiting some of my work, and I’ve been wondering whether to let them.”

“It’s a wonderful idea. Have you picked out the pictures you might use?”

“I couldn’t make up my mind.”

“May I look at them?”

For an instant, I thought she might refuse, but she shrugged instead and flung herself into a rattan chair, legs outstretched, toes upturned in dirty sneakers. I was uncomfortably aware of my silk tunic and trousers and Saint Laurent perfume. I had a feeling that she disapproved thoroughly of everything about me.

Trying to move as quietly as though I were in the company of a wild animal cub, I went behind the desk and sat down. One by one, I turned over the large glossy prints, now and then setting one aside, aware of her watchfulness that was still guarded and suspicious.

The photographs were good. Very good. “You’ve a special gift for seeing,” I said. “The lighting is exactly right and your subjects come to life. But a photographer has to see quickly and choose the perfect instant—which you’ve done. These pictures are never static.”

“I hate studio portraits,” she admitted.

“They’d be easier to do than this. It takes tremendous skill to catch someone in motion at the one precise moment.” I was speaking the truth, but if I’d thought to win her with it, I’d failed.

“What the hell do you know about it?” she challenged.

“Very little. I know more about painting. Mostly from visiting museums when my parents parked me somewhere while they traveled.”

I could sense her thinking about that, but I said nothing more, turning the pictures again. One photograph stopped me. It was of a young woman standing against a strange, many-trunked tree, looking up at a boy of five or six stretched upon a massive branch above her head. I had met an older version of the boy—Keith Nichols.

Gretchen came out of her chair to see which picture had caught my attention. “That’s Pamela Nichols, Jarrett’s wife. Was. She’s dead.”

I looked more closely at the slim figure in Bermudas, her dark hair thick about her shoulders, her small, rather humorous face tilted to look up at her son.

“She doesn’t look unstable,” I said. “Myra Ritter told me there was some concern about possible suicide.”

With a quick, violent movement that startled me, Gretchen reached for the print and ripped it in two, tossing the pieces on the floor. Then she closed the portfolio with a slap.

“That’s enough! I’ll pick the ones I might show myself. If I show any.”

For an instant I considered trying to talk to her about the really good prints I had pulled out, but I knew this wasn’t the time. I rose and came around the desk, moving slowly toward the stairs.

“This is a charming room,” I said. “Was it your grandmother’s?”

Her voice changed. It was a voice that could show lively color and resonance, or could be as light and wispy as air. Now she sounded wistful.

“Yes, it was Gran’s. I haven’t changed a stick of it since the days when she used to come here.” She went around the desk and dropped into the chair I had left, suddenly forlorn. “I miss my grandmother. She was the only one around here who knew how to be kind. She would tell me what to do—if only she could!”

To my dismay, tears spilled over as I watched, and rolled down her cheeks. She wept openly, like a child, and I wanted to comfort her, but dared not make a move, certain of rejection if I did. Instead, I turned my back and went to look out one of the windows, my eyes following the driveway that wound between ficus trees toward the front gate. What did Ross really know about his daughter? I wondered. Had he any idea that she was as lonely as this, that she still longed for her dead grandmother? How little parents really knew about their children.

I spoke softly. “Your father was disappointed when you didn’t meet him at the airport today.”

She raised her head and stared at me with tear-blinded eyes. “I hate airports!”

I agreed. “Airports are for saying goodbye. I hate them too.”

For just an instant there was a hint of understanding between us. Then her rejection of me surged back.

“Why did you have to come here? You’ll be sorry! He makes everyone sorry!”

I edged toward the stairs. There was nothing more I could say to her now. Just as I reached the top step, however, a man came rushing up, brushed past me and threw himself across the room, to kneel and envelop Gretchen impetuously in his arms.

“My darling! How I’ve hurt you! Will you ever forgive me?” It was all theatrical and more than a little startling, but Gretchen’s face lighted and she leaned into his arms for comfort.

“It was my fault, Vasily,” she told him, her wet cheek against his. “What could you do with a wildcat coming at you? You’re the one who must forgive me.”

Embarrassed by this outpouring, I turned away. I had found that retreat was the only solution when raw emotion reached out to engulf me. That was what throbbed in this room—raw, ungovernable emotion. Fury, despair, anguish, love, were all a part of it, and it was more than I wanted to face. I’d started down the stairs when Vasily Karl left his young wife and came to grasp my hand and draw me back to the room, speaking with his precise, foreign-born English.

“No—don’t go, please. You are Sharon, yes? This is all very unfortunate, but we are glad to have you here. I was a devotee of your mother’s. I saw her many times in London, Paris, Rome. My heart goes out to you in your loss.”

I kept my head down, shrinking from being pulled into this vortex. “Thank you. I must go downstairs now and find Ross.”

He continued to hold my hand, restraining me, so that I really had to look at him for the first time—and I received a shock. Somewhere, perhaps a long time ago, I had seen this man, and recognition seemed to carry with it a sense of unpleasantness, even of fear.

He was not someone to be easily forgotten. Probably in his mid-thirties, he was rather thin, with blond, waving hair and a face that just missed being too good-looking. It was his eyes, most of all, that gave me a sense of remembering. They were very dark in contrast to his light hair, and with a slightly Oriental tilt. A short white scar lifted the edge of his right eyebrow, giving him a permanent expression of cynical surprise.

“You are very lovely,” he said. “Mr. Logan is to be congratulated.”

I ignored this. “I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I? Surely we’ve met somewhere?”

The hand that held mine gently, yet with such strength, was long, with slender, sensitive fingers, and it tightened slightly on mine. He bent his head to kiss my hand in a gesture that was natural to him, and then looked at me with an amused, almost sleepy expression.

“Had I ever met you, Mrs. Logan, I would remember,” he said.

I withdrew my hand firmly, further embarrassed, and this time he let me go. Without looking back as I went down the circling stairs, I knew that he watched my flight, and that perhaps he was not altogether amused. I had seen him somewhere before, and not under happy circumstances. That much I knew, though memory eluded me. The answer would probably return when I wasn’t searching for it. Now all I wanted was to put the tower room behind me.

Outbursts of theatrical emotion were not unfamilar in my life. Both my father and mother had lived at a top vibrancy of feeling, and in self-defense I had learned to insulate myself. I was glad that most of the time Ross was the cool businessman, who would never let himself go in an emotional tantrum. I had seen him angry, but even then it was a sternly controlled anger that got him whatever he wanted. Certainly I had never seen the dark, destructive side that Gretchen had caught in her photo. At least I didn’t want to think I had.

Now I searched for the floating stairway that had brought me up from the foyer, and when I found it I followed its descent past red walls and white pillars, until I reached the marble floor below. The double doors beneath the stairs were open, and I could see a fire burning across a vast room. Ross stood beside a scrolled black marble mantelpiece, glass in hand, waiting for me, and I was struck again by his distinguished good looks.

In relief at the sight of his calm presence, and aware of soft and soothing colors, I crossed the gray-green carpet to a chair of rose brocade drawn beside the fire. Candles had been lighted in delicate girandoles that reflected their gleam from the walls, and here and there a lamp shed further subdued light on the elaborate and exquisite room. Pale draperies of rose damask were pulled across windows closed against the chill of evening. From one large wall a large classic mirror framed in thin gilt gave back the scene, increasing the room’s depth and width still more, and adding a further glow of rose and gold.

With a sense of luxury, I sank into the chair, accepting the glass Ross brought me, and let all thoughts of what had happened in the tower room flow away from me.

“I wish we could have the house to ourselves,” Ross said. “Perhaps that time will come. At least we can have our own rooms. Tomorrow you must look through the house and see if you find something that suits you better. I’ve been using my present bedroom for years whenever I came here for visits. But now I’m going to stay and work on my book, so we might as well settle in.”

“The book on netsuke?”

“Of course. I’ve been working on it off and on for some time, and Gretchen’s been doing the color photographs for it. Tomorrow I’ll show you my collection, and perhaps you can help me with it.”

There was unexpected fervor in his words, as though this was something he cared about with a passion that I’d not seen in him before. I had an odd sense of revelation—but of what? It was as though some basic emotion had surfaced in Ross that was new to me, and I wondered why it made me slightly uneasy. But he was waiting for my response, and I gave it hurriedly.

“I’d love to help, if I can. And of course I’m eager to see your collection.”

He was pleased with me, and that very fact warmed and reassured me. I sipped my drink, sitting quietly before the fire, and for the first time in a long while I began to feel entirely at peace. As though, at last, I had come home. Ysobel would have been astonished, and perhaps Ian too. They had always seen me as an adjunct to themselves. Someone not quite grown up as yet. Someone for whom marriage lay in the distant future—if ever. Ysobel had sometimes been openly doubtful about my appeal for men. Too cool and chaste, she’d said, teasing me, and had never suspected the small, angry flame that had leapt inside me at her words.

Now I was mistress of this stunningly beautiful home, and I could have anything I wished, do anything I wanted. Though it might take a little time to convince myself of that. Most of all, I had a husband who loved and needed me, and I would never again doubt my own appeal for a man.

“You’re looking pensive,” Ross said. “What are you thinking about?”

I had no words to tell him. I had never learned how to express what I was feeling, and I was afraid of being laughed at for the turbulent emotions that could boil up inside me. So now I withdrew into being matter-of-fact.

“There’s so much to consider. So much that is new. So much to learn.” It was time now to tell him. “I’ve met Gretchen and Vasily,” I said.

The sense of peace was shattered in an instant. Ross came to my chair with a quick movement that set his drink tilting to the rim of the glass.

“He’s had the gall to come back? I hope Gretchen has told him where to get off. If she hasn’t I’ll see him myself and do it for her!”

“When I left them they were in each other’s arms and she was telling him that it was all her fault. It sounded as though she may have instigated their quarrel.”

“Nonsense—a little thing like that! There’s something vicious about that fellow. He actually struck her! Of course he only married her for her money, and the sooner she wakes up, the better.”

I wondered if I should tell him of my sense of recognition when I’d met Vasily Karl, but with nothing definite to recall, it was too nebulous to talk about. Besides, my sympathy was really with Gretchen and I had to make some mild protest against his words.

“Perhaps Gretchen needs someone of her own in her life.” After all, I knew what that yearning could be like.

“There are plenty of men in America. She could have her pick.”

“Perhaps he is her pick. She looked very happy in his arms.”

“I won’t have it! I won’t have my daughter exploited. He’ll wind up breaking her heart.”

Though I knew I shouldn’t, I went on. “Why don’t you wait and see? Isn’t her happiness worth it?”

His expression was colder than I’d ever seen, and I wondered with a faint twinge of disloyalty if he was capable of considering Gretchen’s happiness. This was a man who possessed a power that I was only beginning to understand. Presidents listened, financial empires trembled at Ross Logan’s edicts. What he commanded must be done. I had begun to recognize this in small ways as we traveled together, and I saw it in the attentions and services that were paid him, and paid me because I was with him. But could a man who had found his way to such a position learn to accept defeat in anything? Was that what made him strong—refusing ever to be defeated? If so, there might be a painful time ahead for Gretchen and Vasily, and I wondered if his daughter could be equally strong in order to fight him. Her rage was very great. I had already seen that. But had she the iron in her to best him?

Ross sipped his drink and looked at me again, his gaze softening. “I’m sorry, darling. I don’t want anything to spoil our first night together at Poinciana.”

I was a little like Gretchen, I thought with unexpected clarity. When Ross looked at me the way Vasily looked at her, I melted. I wanted so terribly to be loved, cared for, protected, and I didn’t want to live with my guard up all the time.

Shortly before dinner was announced, Jarrett Nichols came into the room, greeted me with distant courtesy, and accepted a scotch and soda from Ross. Again I was conscious of his striking red hair, and of the strength this man too seemed to exude. Though it was a different strength from Ross’s. Not so much a power that commanded outward events, but something inner that could be relied upon by others. This was undoubtedly why Ross depended on him, trusted him implicitly. And because of this I wished he might look at me with less antagonism.

Jarrett, as became clear quickly enough, was here at Ross’s invitation. I gathered that he usually dined with his son in their cottage when he was at Poinciana, but tonight there were more business affairs to discuss.

A butler, whom I hadn’t seen before, came to announce dinner, and we went down an inner hallway to a pair of open doors. On the threshold I stopped to view a room that was a perfect picture in itself.

“Allegra again?” I said.

Ross smiled. “My mother believed that any room worth doing must be seen like a painting on first sight.”

A painting it was, done in glowing pink and silver gray. The walls were of pale gray satin, the Directoire chairs, about an oval table, upholstered in deep pink moiré. Mantelpiece and ceiling were a cloudy gray, and a shining Waterford chandelier hung above the table, glass tapers alight. A centerpiece of luscious pink rhododendron graced a cloth of heirloom lace.

Ross’s hand guided me to my chair opposite his at the long end of the oval. Places were set for only three and Jarrett sat between us.

“This is the family dining room,” Ross told me. “There’s a larger, more formal room for grander affairs. In Allegra’s day it was used frequently, but this was one of her favorite rooms. Brett had these chairs done over, but the rest is just as it was in my mother’s time, and the colors have never been changed.”

I sipped white wine and thought again of Allegra Logan. She must sometimes have been a little bizarre and ostentatious, yet capable of creating this room of delicate beauty. A lady of contrasts and great imagination. Once more I saluted her and hoped humbly that her spirit would bear with me.

“How old would Allegra be now if she had lived?” I asked.

Ross glanced at Jarrett before he answered—a look I didn’t understand. “Ninety-two,” he said. “She was thirty-six when I was born. There were two other children ahead of me who died. A girl and a boy.”

I was aware of Jarrett, staring at his plate in a fixed way, and remembered his previous withdrawal at the mention of Allegra’s name. There was something here that I didn’t understand.

I began to spoon my cream of parsley soup, and it was Jarrett who finally turned the conversation to me by asking how I had liked Japan.

I told him of our visit to Mr. Sato in Kyoto, and about the gift the old man had made me of the mother-and-child frog netsuke.

“Perhaps I can have it made into a pendant,” I said. ‘It’s so beautiful and I would love to wear it.”

Ross looked shocked. “Of course you will do nothing of the kind. That is a valuable collector’s item. Tomorrow you can bring it to the netsuke room and we’ll find a proper spot for it.”

For just an instant I wanted to protest that the carving had been given to me, that he had no right to order what I should do with it. But I wanted no quarrel, and he was probably right, so I said nothing, though I was aware of Jarrett’s frank look upon me. A look that might be derisive. My intense awareness of this blunt red-haired man made me uncomfortable. What did it matter if he didn’t like me? I turned away quickly.

For the rest of the meal, Ross talked mostly with Jarrett, and though my attention wandered now and then, I became aware of a certain tension growing between the two men.

“I’m out of all that,” Ross was saying. “I haven’t been on the board of Meridian for more than a year.”

“You’re still the major stockholder and you vote. Your influence isn’t likely to be overlooked. You know very well that new explorations for oil are vital. Ours should be moving ahead a lot faster. You need to urge this on personally.”

“You worry too much,” Ross told him, and gave his attention to the steak that had been perfectly broiled with mushrooms.

Yet even while Ross ate his dinner with obvious relish, I grew aware of a certain choler that had arisen in him. A flush had mottled his face at Jarrett’s words, and I wondered at its cause. Jarrett himself seemed coolly controlled, betraying nothing, and he let that particular topic go and turned to less irksome matters. I wished I might ask questions, learn more about my husband’s empire, but I knew that I lacked the knowledge to ask with intelligence, and that probably both these intimidating power figures would regard any words of mine as frivolous and ignorant. If I wanted to learn, I would have to go about it in more indirect ways.

We finished the meal with a sherbet, and I became increasingly aware that I would not be needed in this house for the planning of meals. Not that living in hotels and schools had prepared me for a kitchen. But sometimes I had the whimsical wish that I might be turned loose with a cookbook and assorted pots and pans, just to see what adventures might await me in that unfamiliar world. At Poinciana it was likely to stay unfamiliar. Of those who worked here, no one but Mrs. Broderick had paid me the slightest attention, and I was quite aware that her acceptance of me had been laced with polite disapproval. I had yet to earn my wings.

After dinner, Jarrett returned to his cottage, and Ross went up to my room to fetch me a shawl. We walked outside, and the sound of traffic seemed far away beyond the coquina rock walls that guarded Poinciana. Nearby sounds were only the rattle of the wind in palm fronds and the rushing of waves onto a beach. What a perfect jewel of a world! An antique if not archaic jewel, really, to be thus removed from everything that was ugly and painful and threatening. All those things that had hurt me so deeply could never touch Poinciana.

I walked with my arm through Ross’s, safe in my imaginary sphere, able to believe for a little while that clocks could be turned back, and that a life like this was still possible.

Lights burned in the windows of several cottages and I waved a hand in their direction. “Who lives down there?”

“Some are empty. They were guest cottages in Allegra’s day. Jarrett and Keith and their housekeeper occupy the largest. A few of the staff who’ve been with us a long while live down there if they have families. Let’s go this way. I want to show you something.”

We walked around the front of the house and toward the boulevard, where Palm Beach traffic went by. Ross led me to a locked gate, which he opened, and we went down several steps to a stone passageway that led under the road. Allegra had seen to everything, including a private way to the beach.

The echoing stone tunnel was damp, but it was free of debris and had obviously been swept. I could feel the rush of the wind through the arched openings as we approached the ocean. Another short flight of steps, another gate, and we were out on the sand. Off to our right were the tennis court and swimming pool. I smiled to myself, remembering what someone had told me about Palm Beach: “Nobody who is anybody swims in the ocean.” But I would.

The beach ran the length of the island—not very wide, and bordered by sea grape on the land side. We went to the water’s edge, where the sand was packed damp and firm, and walked together, my hand in Ross’s. Though the beaches along here were private, no one could be barred from walking the sand, but no one was out tonight. Beyond the sea walls and the road, the great houses, their windows alight, seemed remote and of another world. The world of the rich and the favored that I didn’t really belong to.

Appropriately, a huge Florida moon hung over the water, and I smiled to myself, thinking of Ysobel’s Moon Songs in a long-ago album, remembering that I’d thought them sentimental, when she herself was not. Tonight I could dare to be sentimental myself. The scene about us was so beautifully, unbelievably romantic, and I knew when Ross slipped an arm about me as we followed the strip of sand that he was feeling it too. Under his breath he began to hum an old song that Ysobel had helped to popularize—“Blue Champagne.” I might have wished that he had chosen some other tune, but I would not let thoughts of Ysobel trouble me now.

Perhaps anticipation is one of the essential parts of lovemaking. To be close and to know what lies ahead, so that excitement begins to build in a warm awareness of what is to come. How lucky I was to have been chosen by a man like Ross. A man who knew every tender, arousing touch of love, who knew what a woman wanted. Especially a woman who had known so little about love until now.

When he bent his head to kiss me, my mouth responded and I felt the tiny pulse awaken in my lips.

“Let’s go up to the house,” he said, and we turned together and walked quickly across the sand, eager now, hurrying back through the tunnel.

High in Allegra’s Tower, a light burned, but I turned my eyes away from it. I didn’t want to wonder who was up there. I didn’t want to think of Gretchen and Vasily, but only of Ross and me. Tonight there would be no repetition of that strange rejection I’d experienced on our last night in Japan. Tonight we were ready for each other. Perhaps more than we’d ever been before. I remembered that he had told me everything would be better at Poinciana, and I was beginning to understand what he meant.

Up the lovely front staircase we floated, and at the door of my room he let me go. “Come when you’re ready,” he said, and went through the next door.

Even though eager haste befuddled my fingers, I undressed tidily. Living in schools taught one not to drop clothes heedlessly about. When I’d put on a gown of sheerest chiffon, I sat at the dressing table to remove my jade earrings. For just an instant, my eyes rested on the frog netsuke, and a feeling I didn’t want to entertain ran through me. He had no right … But I wouldn’t think of that now. For this whole entrancing night I would think only of Ross and of how much I loved him, how much he loved me.

As I moved barefoot toward the closed door to his room, I heard the sound of instrumental music starting—the same tune he had hummed earlier down on the beach. How lovely, how perfect! How well Ross understood that a woman needed the romantic. I adored that beautiful sentimental tune, and I no longer minded his choice. I knew it would make just the right background for our expression of feeling for each other.

I had reached the door, my hand on the knob, when the singing voice began—and I froze. That was Ysobel in her old recording, and for a moment I couldn’t move. The idea of music was beautiful, but not my mother’s voice singing to us at a time like this. I keep a blue rendezvous … It was all wrong, jarring. Wrong for some instinctive feeling in me that perhaps went back to my childhood. Perhaps a confusion about sex and love—and what one’s mother mustn’t know. A confusion about my own feelings toward Ysobel.

Quickly I opened the door and went into the room. I meant to go straight to the stereo and turn it off, but I never reached the machine. Ross was there, waiting for me.

“Come here,” he said. “Come here, my darling,” and there was something in his voice that I had never heard before. In one terrible, rending realization, I understood. And there was nothing I could do. Short of utter rejection, there was nothing at all I could do.

I heard the note of undisguised sexual feeling that could throb in Ysobel’s tones, and knew that it held and stirred my husband as I had never been able to. Stirred him because she was in his mind.

I went to him slowly, unable to help myself, and he held me in his arms as he had always done, yet with a difference. That I had stiffened in something like horror seemed to matter not at all. For him, I wasn’t there as myself. He held another woman, from another time, and made love to her with a passion I had never felt in him before. A passion tinged with a strange hint of anger, though he had never been rough with me, as he was now. And all the while Ysobel’s velvety voice cradled us in its warmth. A warmth that was totally false. Though this was a bitter thought that I had never accepted fully until this moment, when it helped to make what I had believed was Ross’s love for me equally false. I lay beside him while tears wet my cheeks. He never knew. He had fallen into a deep, satisfying sleep, after pouring out his love for Ysobel through Ysobel’s daughter.