Fortune is a Woman (54 page)

Francie looked at her startled, she shook her head and smiled. "Oh no, he wasn't nasty at all. He's—an old friend, that's all."

"An old friend? Then how come I don't know him?" Lysandra cocked her head enquiringly to one side, just the way Francie did when she asked a question, and she laughed.

"Because you are only seven years old and 'old' friends are much older than that." A sudden little thrill of excitement flashed through her veins as she thought of Buck and she threw her arms impulsively around Lysandra and hugged her. Then she picked up her basket of flowers and carried them into the kitchen and began putting them into vases just as though nothing had happened, but all the time inside she was shaking at the thought of seeing him again.

***

Harry awoke, still angry with Maryanne. As he sat down to his usual substantial breakfast he asked himself who she thought she was to act so superior last night, when if it were not for him she would be just another wife of a political has-been. And she had been damned cagey when he'd asked her about the extra investment for the oil drilling in New Mexico, sighing and rolling up her eyes and asking exactly
when
the wells were going to spout the black liquid gold that was supposed to recoup their investment?

He mulled matters over in his mind as he dug into his favorite deviled kidneys and fried eggs and decided that the balance of their relationship was all wrong. Maryanne acted like the superior one, like she was in charge and he was an employee, like she was the Brattle goddess and he was just the dust beneath her chariot wheels. It was time dear Maryanne was taught a lesson.

He called her after breakfast. It was eleven-thirty and she yawned and said irritably, "Why are you calling, Harry? I only saw you a few hours ago at your dreadful party. Who
were
those movie people? I had a hard time explaining to Buck exactly
why
we were there."

He didn't bother to explain that the reason she and Buck were there was to boost his credibility when he went to Zev Abrams and the others and asked them to invest in his oil drilling operation. "Of course, Buck is already in," he would tell them confidently, and he knew now they would believe him; after all hadn't they just had dinner with him at his house?

"You and I need to talk, Maryanne," he said smoothly.

She leaned back against her pillows, groaning. "My God, what now, Harry? I'm a busy woman."

"But never too busy to see me."

She held the phone away from her ear, staring at it with surprise, as though she were looking at his face. She thought worriedly that Harry was becoming very insistent, pushy even.

"Can't you tell me over the phone?" she asked plaintively.

"No. I must see you. Tonight at eight o'clock. At my place," he said briskly.

"I can't do that. What would I tell Buck?"

"Tell him you're dining with an old school friend. In my experience with women and excuses, that one always works."

"Indeed," she said icily.

"Eight o'clock," he said and put down the phone.

Maryanne replaced the receiver and lay back against the pillows, wondering what she was going to do. Harry was becoming a problem and problems had to be dealt with, though she didn't quite know how. She sighed deeply; right now there was nothing she could do. Harry had her exactly where he wanted her and he knew it.

CHAPTER 40

Maryanne breathed a sigh of relief when Buck told her he would be busy that evening, at least it saved her the embarrassment of finding an excuse to slip out for half an hour to see Harry. "Don't worry about me, darling," she said, still smarting at the idea of Harry demanding, no,
ordering
her to go see him. "I'll have room service send something up." She yawned delicately. "I'm tired, anyway."

Buck glanced at her, surprised she hadn't asked where he was going, but communications between him and Maryanne were reduced to businesslike basics these days. He watched her powdering her pretty nose, peering at herself in the mirror of the little gold-and-platinum striped Cartier compact with her initials in rubies that he had given her for Christmas years ago. He had married a cold, ambitious, self-seeking woman who would have happily traded her entire family to become First Lady. He shrugged, he didn't care anymore. A touch of warmth crept into his chilled heart as he thought of Lysandra, his newly discovered daughter, and Francie whom he would see again in just a few minutes.

Maryanne lazed in her peach satin robe on the flowered chintz sofa, watching as he shrugged on his overcoat and walked to the door. "Bye, darling," she called, blowing him a kiss. The expression in her eyes changed to anger as he flung a cold good-bye over his shoulder and closed the door.

She glanced at her watch, there was no time to waste, she must dress and get over to Harry's and back again before Buck returned. It occurred to her that she did not know how long Buck was going to be or where he was going, but there was no time to brood on that now. She dressed quickly in a black wool-crepe dress, black suede pumps, and an emerald green cashmere cape lined with mink. She had decided fur linings were a good idea since it wouldn't be good to look too ostentatiously rich publicly right now, with Buck being presented as "a man of the people." She picked up the little black clutch purse, stuffed the key, her ruby-initialed Cartier compact, her lipstick, her lizard-skin address book, and a white linen handkerchief into it, and then hurried to the elevator. The front lobby was crowded and she glanced quickly around, then swung unnoticed through the revolving doors.

***

Annie was in the Dales Lounge greeting her guests as usual before going to the dining room to check that everything was in order. But tonight her guests only had half her attention. She had let Buck into her penthouse apartment and left him there and now she was watching for Francie. Finally she saw her hurrying through the crowded lobby at a few minutes after eight. From a distance Annie watched her take out her key, and step inside the little private elevator. As the gilded metal gates swung closed Annie heaved a worried sigh. She hoped she had done the right thing.

Francie closed her eyes as the elevator wooshed silently upward to the twentieth floor. The gates swung open, she opened her eyes, and Buck was standing there, looking at her.

"Francie," he said, his eyes full of love.

"Buck." She stepped from the elevator and held out her hand politely, searching his face. "You look the same, just a little older."

"Seven years
older," he reminded her. He couldn't have described what she was wearing but it was blue and it brought out the color of her eyes, and at a time when every woman had bobbed her hair she still wore hers long, swept back with jeweled combs into a sumptuous heavy golden swathe at the neck.

"You didn't cut it," he said, remembering her promise and she shook her head.

"I would have hated it if you had," he said. "I always think of you like this."

Their eyes locked and the same old feeling swept over her. If she had ever doubted that she would love Buck Wingate till the day she died, now she knew for sure. But he was another woman's husband, an important man. A "man of the people," the press were calling him now.

"I shouldn't have come," she said nervously. "There's nothing for us to say, Buck."

"Yes, there is." He caught her hand in his and held it against his cheek, then he kissed her fingers gently. "I feel as though time has been frozen, that we are back where we were. That life is just a simple matter of you love me and I love you."

She pulled her hand away. "But that's not true, is it? Time hasn't been frozen and life is never that simple. I've made a life for myself now. I have my work, my charities, and my daughter. I don't need any more secrets and lies. I just want peace of mind."

She walked to the long white sofa by the window and sat down before her knees collapsed from under her. Her heart was pounding and all she really wanted to do was to hurl herself into his arms, but she couldn't. She had Lysandra to think of. She clasped her hands loosely around her knees, leaning forward, watching him.

"Maryanne went to see you, didn't she?" he asked.

She shrugged. "And if she did? She was right."

"Why didn't you at least call me, speak to me...?"

He looked desperate and she wanted to take his hand and tell him it was all right, nothing had changed. "I was pregnant. You were married, you had your children to consider. And your career. I had to make the decision."

"Your
decision, Francie. Not mine. There were two of us involved. Surely I had a right to half the votes?"

His eyes pleaded with her and she sighed. "I'm not here to talk about you and me, Buck; I'm here because of Lysandra. She doesn't know you are her father and I don't want her to know. I told her her father left us before she was born and she accepts that. She's still only seven, but she asks questions and I tell her what you were like, that you would have loved her. I can't expect her to understand now, but maybe when she is older, when she is a woman herself, then she might."

Buck thought of his two children, so immersed in their own lives he rarely saw them, and of this new daughter whom he was forbidden to see and he threw his arms wide and cried, "What is it I'm doing wrong? My life is nothing, I have nothing—"

"Oh, Buck, don't say that. Please don't say that." She looked at him, shocked.

"It's true," he said bitterly. "When I met you in Paris, I told you my life was a facade, a sham. Nothing has changed."

"You have your work," she said. "A brilliant future, everybody says so...."

He shrugged, and she got up and walked toward him. He held out his arms and she stepped into them and he held her close, his head resting against hers. Their bodies fitted together with the easy familiarity of lovers, she could feel his heart beating, feel his breath on her hair, the strength of his arms around her. It was as though the gates of paradise had reopened and allowed her in, just for a few moments.

"Come back to me, Francie," he murmured. "Let's start all over again. I love you, I've always loved you."

She wanted with all her heart to say yes. She stepped back and looked at him. "Tell me one thing, Buck. If I had asked you to make that decision seven years ago, if I had asked you to give it all up, your wife, your children, your career, and your glittering future, to marry me, what would you have said?"

He hesitated, his eyes fixed on hers. "I can't lie to you," he said quietly. "I just don't know."

She nodded sadly; it was the answer she had expected.

She picked up her coat and put it over her shoulders. "Please don't try to see Lysandra," she said quietly. "It wouldn't be fair to her. Or to me. Or even," she managed a half-smile, "to yourself."

"Francie"—he grabbed her shoulder urgently—"please don't go. I don't know what I'll do without you."

"Everything will be all right, Buck," she said, "we'll just go on doing whatever we've been doing all these years." And then she pulled herself from his grasp and stepped quickly into the elevator. The little golden mesh gates closed, shutting him out of her life again. Their eyes met longingly through the grille as the elevator slowly descended and he disappeared from view.

***

Harry had given the servants the night off; he wanted to be alone with Maryanne. The fire was lit in the oak-paneled library and a decanter of fine French brandy waited with two wafer-thin crystal glasses on the lamplit table behind the dark-green leather Chesterfield sofa. When the doorbell rang he answered it himself and Maryanne looked at him surprised.

"Where's your butler?" she asked, stepping over the threshold into the hall.

"The poor fellow had to go visit a friend in the hospital," Harry lied, "so I gave him the night off." He took her fur-lined cape and flung it carelessly across a Jacobean carved oak chair, and Maryanne looked at him suspiciously.

"And your wonderful footmen, Harry? Or at least a maid?"

"Well, of course, in these terrible times, 'with the memory of the Depression still so close in all our minds,' " he said, quoting her, "I thought it better not to keep footmen any longer. I simply hire them by the night whenever I need them. And the maids come daily. They worked hard cleaning up after last night's dinner party. I told them I would answer the door and let my guest in myself so they could leave early."

Maryanne's eyes narrowed. "And since when have you become so generous?" He was wearing a fashionable velvet smoking jacket and that satisfied smile and she didn't trust him an inch. She followed him into the library, taking in at a glance the cosy fire, the soft lights, and the two waiting glasses.

"Sit here, Maryanne, by me," Harry said, patting the sofa.

Ignoring him, she walked to the big wing chair by the fire and sat down. "Brandy?" he asked, fussing with the decanter and the pretty glasses.

Maryanne hesitated, she rarely drank but now she needed something to steady her nerves. Harry was up to something and she didn't know what. "Thank you," she said in her calmest voice.

He handed her the glass and took his and went to stand in front of the fire, looking at her. "It's good to see you again, Maryanne," he said. "We so rarely see each other alone."

She glanced up at him, her hackles rising, there was just something in his tone that sent a shiver up her spine.

"To be quite correct, Harry," she said quickly, "we
never
see each other alone. And quite honestly I don't know why I'm here alone with you now." She glanced at her small diamond wristwatch and said briskly, "Perhaps you can explain quickly, Buck will be expecting me back."

He smiled and took a sip of the perfect brandy, savoring it slowly. "Relax," he said jovially, "you and I know there's no real hurry. After all, Buck's hardly going to miss you, is he?"

"Exactly what do you mean by that?" She put down her glass, watching him warily.

"Maryanne, we are such good friends, there are no secrets between us, are there? I must say I can't understand Buck, neglecting a beautiful woman like you. But then he's always been dedicated to his career—apart from the little 'episode' with my dear sister of course. We both remember that vividly, don't we, Maryanne? And naturally I have been most grateful for your help."