An Embarrassment of Riches (59 page)

‘And I am overcome by your magnanimity in allowing Alexander to bequeath Tarna to Stasha, and not Felix.'

The music continued to play. A footman approached, carrying a tray of champagne-filled glasses.

Ariadne waved him imperiously away.

Maura drew in a deep, steadying breath. Ariadne was baiting her deliberately. Alexander would never have done such a thing. The remark was too ridiculous to even deserve a response. Dignity lay in ignoring it. In not speaking another word.

Ariadne clicked her fan open again. Alexander had seen her; was looking thunderously towards her. She saw him lower his head to speak to his dance partner; saw a flower-decked head nod in assent. In another second; he would have left the floor and would be making his way towards them.

‘If you don't believe me, speak to Lyall Kingston,' she said, rising to her feet, a smirk on her face. ‘Or Alexander.'

She slid away before Alexander could apprehend her and ask what the devil she thought she was doing.

Maura remained perfectly still. There had been utter confidence in Ariadne Brevoort's voice; naked delight at the prospect of inflicting hurt.

‘What the devil did Ariadne want?' Alexander asked, staring down at her grimly.

‘Nothing.' There was no way she could begin questioning him about Stasha and Felix now. Not in a crowded ballroom. It would have to wait until they were alone together. ‘I suspect she merely wanted to make the point that she was not intimidated by my presence.'

Alexander clenched his jaw. Every damned ball they attended, all through the season, was going to be exactly the same.

‘It's nearly time for the quadrilles,' he said, wishing he had entered a monastery at sixteen; wishing he didn't need sex in order to function rationally; wishing he had never ever left home, putting himself in a position where to return without an abject apology

on her part would be to lose both pride and dignity.

It was dawn as they left the Roosevelt mansion. During the short carriage ride up Fifth Avenue Isabel fell asleep and Maura was sorely tempted to raise the subject of Stasha and Felix. She didn't do so. A tortuously whispered conversation would be barely adequate for the subject she wanted to discuss.

When they arrived home Alexander gently woke Isabel and bade them both goodnight. He didn't step down from the carriage. She was burning with the need to ask him if he was continuing on to the Fifth Avenue Hotel or to the Brevoort mansion, but she said only: ‘Good night, Alexander.'

He gave her a tired grin. ‘It's dawn, my love. You should be wishing me good morning.'

It was the first time he had called her his love since the morning they had parted after Natalie had been born.

She was filled with an overwhelming temptation to hurl herself into his arms; to tell him that the Citizens' Association didn't matter; that if only he would enter the house with her she would even come to terms with his affair with Ariadne. She remembered Ariadne's extraordinary remark and fought down the temptation. Tomorrow. She would speak with him tomorrow.

The next morning, without even telling Isabel where she was going, she left in the landau for the Fifth Avenue Hotel. In all the months that Alexander had been resident there, it was the first time she had visited it.

‘Yes, Mrs Karolyis. I will see if Mr Karolyis is awake, Mrs Karolyis,' the gentleman on reception said, highly flustered.

Alexander was awake.

‘You're to go straight up, Mrs Karolyis.'

A little black bell-boy showed her the way.

Without surprise she noted that Alexander had taken over an entire floor of the hotel for his personal use. She wondered if other wives before her had visited estranged husbands at the Fifth Avenue, or if she was the only one ever to do so. She wondered if she would, at last, see Stasha. She wondered what on earth she was going to say when Alexander opened the door to her.

She needn't have worried. The instant their eyes met she knew that he had guessed the reason for her visit.

‘The bitch,' he said vehemently. ‘The mean-minded little bitch. She told you last night at the ball, didn't she? I should have guessed why she was talking to you, what it was she was saying …'

‘I didn't believe her. I still don't believe her. You couldn't possibly have done such a thing, Alexander. Not without talking to me about it first …'

Grim-faced, he led her into a luxurious sitting-room, its long row of windows all overlooking the avenue. He was wearing only a knee-length, silk dressing-gown, tie-belted at the waist. He had obviously just bathed. His glossy black hair was slicked back wetly and drops of water still clung to the short, springy hairs on his strongly muscled legs. As he turned once again towards her she felt the blood begin to drum in her ears.

‘If Ariadne told you that I had bequeathed Tarna to Stasha, then she told you the truth. It isn't anything I intended keeping secret from you, although Ariadne wasn't to know that. I was going to tell you immediately I got back from Tarna, there just hasn't been the right opportunity …'

‘How could you?' She could hardly force the words past her lips. ‘You know what Tarna means to me. You know what I would like it to mean to our children. You could have bequeathed anything else to Stasha, you could have left him your entire financial fortune, and I wouldn't have cared. But not Tarna. Tarna is your most cherished possession. By bequeathing it to Stasha you are saying quite categorically, in a way that can never be denied, that Stasha comes first with you. That Stasha holds a place in your heart Felix and Natalie are never going to hold.'

‘It's not true!' His voice was raw with pain. ‘I bequeathed Tarna to Stasha because I felt I owed it to Genevre to do so. You're right when you say that it's my most cherished possession and that is why, for Stasha, it
has
to be Tarna. I owe it to Ginnie to make this gesture. Surely you can see why? Surely you can understand?'

‘No.' She was blinded by tears. Drowning in a sea of pain. He didn't love her and he didn't truly love Felix or Natalie. He was still in love with Genevre. He would always be in love with Genevre.

She turned, walking unsteadily towards the door. He tried to stop her, but she pushed him away from her.

‘No,' she said again thickly. ‘There's nothing more to say, Alexander. You've asked me to understand and I do understand. I understand too, too well.'

No force on earth could have restrained her. She left the room. She left the hotel. She walked past her waiting carriage and through a crowded Madison Square, past the Astor mansions, past the Knickerbocker Club. For the first time in her life she felt utterly and completely defeated. Alexander wasn't ever going to return to her. He wasn't ever going to treat Stasha and Felix equally or be unconcerned as to her Irishness or be a caring, responsible landlord.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought of all that could have been. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, she longed for her mother.

‘I wish you were still alive, Ma,' she whispered fiercely beneath her breath. ‘I wish you were here so that I could talk to you!'

She was nearing the site of St Patrick's Cathedral. As if she had arranged to meet him there, she saw Kieron standing on the corner of East 50th Street.

Time wavered and halted. She felt completely disorientated. It was as if she were in Killaree again or Ballacharmish.

‘Kieron!' she called out, relief and thankfulness flooding through her.
‘Kieron!'

He turned his head swiftly in her direction, his gold-flecked eyes widening in stunned surprise. Then he saw the pallor of her face and he began to run towards her.

She didn't hesitate. She hurtled headlong into his arms, burrowing her face in the comforting, familiar tweed of his battered jacket.

‘Don't cry,
élainn
,' he said huskily, stroking her hair. ‘Don't cry, sweetheart.'

Unsteadily she brushed her tears away from her face.

He looked down at her in undisguised love, still keeping his arms around her.

‘What is it,
élainn?
Is it himself that's been distressing you?'

Despite her misery a smile touched the corner of her mouth. Kieron never called Alexander by his Christian name. It was as if he simply couldn't bring himself to utter it.

‘Yes. No.' She put her hands against the reassuring broadness of his chest and pushed herself away from him a little in order to look up into his face. ‘I can't talk about it, Kieron. It wouldn't be right.'

‘Then if you can't talk about it to me, who will you talk to about it?' he asked with a lightness that he was far from feeling. ‘Isabel? Mr Frederick Lansdowne?'

She brushed away the last of her tears, her smile deepening at his idiocy. ‘Don't be silly, Kieron. Of course I shan't talk about my marriage to Mr Lansdowne.'

‘Then it is your marriage that's causing you distress?'

This time there was no lightness in his voice. As his eyes held hers steadily, fiercely concerned, her own smile faded.

‘Yes,' she said unwillingly. She turned her head away from him, unable to continue.

Reluctantly his arms released their hold of her. Instead he took hold of her hand, beginning to walk her down the street leading towards the river.

‘It isn't disloyalty to speak to a friend,' he said tautly. ‘Especially when that friend loves you.'

She accepted the declaration as unquestioningly as she would have done if it had come from Isabel.

Aware of her reaction, he felt frustration almost choke him. Why couldn't she see what was before her eyes? Why couldn't she see that he loved her as she ought to be loved? And if she did? What then?

The crowds began to thin as they walked further and further away from the avenue. He could smell the tang of the river and hear the hooting of boat horns. She was married. Divorce would be as unacceptable to her as he had always believed it was to him. His jaw tightened. But no longer. Not if it would give him Maura. It wasn't as if her marriage had been a normal marriage. If the Pope was to be told the circumstances then, surely to God, he would annul it?

She said: ‘Alexander's bequeathed Tarna to Stasha.'

He stopped walking and looked down at her. It was a chill day and she was wearing an ankle-length red wool coat with a high, astrakhan collar, a Russian-style astrakhan hat perched at a becoming angle on top of her smoke-dark curls. She looked like a princess and it was hard to imagine her on a working ranch or stud-farm. And then he remembered Ballacharmish.

‘It doesn't matter what he's done,' he said with such fierceness that her eyes flew wide with shock. ‘He'll always be doing things that hurt and half-destroy you. It's in his nature. He can no more help doing it than I can help breathing.'

‘You're wrong, Kieron,' she began, but her voice lacked conviction. Wasn't it what she herself had thought when she had walked out of the hotel and into the avenue, blinded by tears?

His hands slid up her arms and grasped hold of her shoulders.

‘Listen to me, sweetheart. Listen to me carefully. I love you. I love you in a way very different from the way you have always assumed I do. I don't just love you as a brother or as a best friend. I love you in the way that your husband ought to love you. I should have asked you to marry me when we sat together on the paddock-fence at Ballacharmish. Heaven knows, I came close enough to doing it and heaven knows how bitterly I've regretted not doing so.'

‘Kieron … please …'

‘And if I had asked you, you would have said yes, wouldn't you?' he said, his hands tightening their hold of her as he rode rough-shod over her protests. ‘You would have said yes, because you feel exactly the same way about me as I do about you. We were
meant
to be together,
élainn.
We come from the same roots, we understand each other in a way no-one else can ever understand us.'

‘I'm married, Kieron,' she said thickly. ‘You shouldn't be saying these things to me. We shouldn't be having this conversation …'

‘We'll go to the Bishop of New York. We'll explain to him the circumstances of your marriage. We'll ask for him to write to the Vatican and we'll have your marriage annulled. I'll ask Henry if he will loan me enough to buy a ranch out West and we'll begin a whole new life together. We'll take Felix and Natalie with us and …'

‘Alexander would never let me take them. Never.' Her mouth was dry, her heart hammering as if she had been in a race. Insanely, incredibly, she was responding to him as if he were speaking sense. As if the whole thing was possible.

Kieron's eyes burned into hers. ‘He would. You've said yourself that the only child he cares for is Stasha. And if he did still want to see Felix and Natalie he's got enough money to be able to travel West any time that he chooses. We can do it, Maura. We can walk away from this hellhole of a city and start a new life together. A life we should have started together two years ago.'

The urgency and certainty in his voice was such that if he hadn't been grasping tight hold of her shoulders she would have stumbled. So much of what he said was true. They
were
right for each other in nearly every way. She knew exactly what their life would be like, out West. In her mind's eye she could see the ranch and the horses, the white picket fencing.

‘No,' she said, the hurt she knew she was causing him almost crippling her. ‘No. I can't.'

‘You
can
, Maura!'

In the muted autumn light his tumbled tightly curled hair and wide-spaced eyes gave him the look of a Medici princeling. She wondered why she had never been aware of the similarity before, or of the dangerousness of their close friendship.

She shook her head, a stray curl escaping from beneath her hat. As it tumbled softly against her cheek, she said again, unequivocally, ‘No, I can't, Kieron. I can't, because I'm still in love with Alexander.'