Passion's Promise (16 page)

"Was she rich too?"

"Very. Not as rich as my father, but directly related to the Queen. Fun, isn't it?" Kezia looked away bitterly for a moment.

"I don't know, is it fun? It doesn't sound like it yet."

"Oh, it gets better. My father was very rich and very powerful and very envied and very hated, and occasionally very loved. He did crazy things, he traveled a lot, he ... he did whatever he did. And Mummy was lonely, I think. She was constantly spied on, written about, talked about, followed around. When she went to parties, they reported what she wore. When Daddy was away, and she danced with an old friend at a charity ball, they made a thing of it in the papers. She got to feeling hunted. Americans can be brutal that way." Her voice trailed off for a moment.

"Only Americans, Kezia?"

She shook her head. "No. They're all as bad. But they can be more direct about it here. They're gutsier, or less embarrassed. They show less 'deference,' I don't know . . . maybe she was just too frail. And too lonely. She always looked as though she didn't quite understand 'why.' "

"She left your father?" He was interested now. Very. He was beginning to feel something for the woman who had been Kezia's mother. The frail British noblewoman.

"No. She fell in love with my French tutor."

"Are you kidding?" He looked almost amused.

"Nope."

"And it made a big stink?"

"I guess so. It must have. It killed her."

"That, directly?"

"No . . . who knows? That and a lot of other things. My father found out, and the young man was dismissed. And I guess it got to her after that. She was a traitor, and she sentenced herself to death. She drank more and more, and ate less and less, and finally she got what she wanted out of it. Out."

"You knew? About the tutor, I mean."

"No, not then. Edward, my trustee, told me later. To be sure that the 'sins of the mother would never be visited on the daughter.'"

"Why do you call it a 'betrayal'? Because she cheated on your father?"

"No, that would have been forgivable. The unforgivable was that she betrayed her ancestry, her heritage, her class and her breeding by falling in love—and having an affair—with a 'peasant.'" She tried to laugh, but the sound was too brittle.

"And that's a sin?" Lucas looked confused.

"That, my dear, is the cardinal sin of all! Thou shalt not screw the lower classes. That applies to the women of my set anyway. For the men it's different."

"For them if s okay to screw the 'lower classes'?"

"Of course. Gentlemen have been balling the maid for hundreds of years. It's just that the lady of the house is not supposed to get laid by the chauffeur."

"I see." He tried to look amused but he wasn't

"That's nice. My mother didn't see. And she committed an even worse crime. She fell in love with him.

She even talked about running away with him."

"How in hell did your father find out? Did he have her followed?"

"Of course not. He never suspected. No, Jean-Louis simply told him. He wanted fifty thousand dollars from my father not to make a scandal, not very much, all things considered. My father paid him twenty-five and had him deported."

"Your trustee told you all this?" Lucas looked stormy now.

"Of course. Insurance. It's meant to keep me in line."

"Does it?"

"In a way."

"Why?"

"Because in a perverted way I'm afraid of my destiny. It's sort of 'damned if you do, and damned
if
you don't.' I think that if I lived my life the way I'm supposed to, I'd hate it enough to drink myself to death like my mother. But if I betray my 'heritage,' then maybe I'll end up like her anyway. A betrayer betrayed, in love with a two-bit low-class jerk who blackmailed her husband. Pretty, isn't it?"

"No. It's pathetic. And you really believe that crap about betrayal?"

She nodded. "I have to. I've seen too many stories like that. I've . . . in small ways it has happened to me. When people know who you are they . . . they treat you differently, Lucas. You're no longer a person to them. You're a legend, a challenge, an object they must have. The only ones who understand you are your own kind."

"Are you telling me they understand you?" He looked stunned.

"No. That's the whole trouble. For me, none of it works. I'm a misfit. I can't bear what I'm supposed to be. And I can't have what I want ... I fear it anyway. I ... oh hell, Lucas, I don't know." She looked distraught as she folded a matchbook between her fingers.

"What happened to your father?"

"He had an accident, and not because he was heartsick over my mother. He had a healthy number of women after she died. Even though I'm sure he missed Mummy. But he was very bitter then. It seemed as though he didn't believe in anything anymore. He drank. He drove too fast. He died. Very simple really."

"No, very complicated. What you're telling me is that a 'betrayal,' as you call it, of your 'heritage,' your world, leads to suicide, death, accidents, blackmail and heartbreak. But what does following the rules lead to? What happens if you play it straight, Kezia, and never 'betray your class,' as you'd put it? What happens if you just go along with their rules ... I mean you, Kezia. What would it do to you?"

"Kill me slowly." Her voice was very soft but she sounded very certain.

"Is that what's been happening to you?"

"Yes. I think so, in a small way. I still have my escapes, my freedoms. They help. My writing is my salvation."

"Stolen moments. Do you ever take those freedoms openly?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Lucas. How?"

"Any way you have to. Just do what you want to, openly for a change?"

"I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Edward. The press. Whatever I did that was even the least out of line, would be all over the papers.

And I mean something as simple as going out with someone 'different,' " she looked at him pointedly,

"going somewhere 'inappropriate,' saying something unguarded, wearing something indiscreet."

"All right, so you get bad press. And then what? Chicken Little, the sky would not fall in."

"You don't understand, Lucas. It would."

"Because Edward would raise hell? So what?"

"But what if he's right . . . and . . . what . . . what if I end up . . ." She couldn't say it but he could.

"Like your mother?"

She looked up, her eyes swimming in tears, and nodded.

"You wouldn't, babe. You couldn't You're different You're freer, I'm sure. You're probably more worldly, and maybe even more intelligent than she was. And hell, Kezia, what if you did fall in love with the tutor, or the butler, or the chauffeur, or me for that matter? So fucking what?"

She didn't answer the question. She didn't know how. "It's a special world, Lucas," she said finally, "with its own special rules."

"Yeah. Like the joint." He looked suddenly bitter.

"You mean prison?"

He nodded quietly in answer. "I think you may be right A silent invisible prison, with walls built of codes and hypocrisies and lies and restrictions, and cells padded with prejudice and fear, and all of it studded with diamonds."

He looked up at her suddenly and laughed.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing, except that nine-tenths of the world are out there beating each other over the head to get into that elite little world of yours, and from the sound of it they won't dig it when they get there. Not much."

"Maybe they will. Some do."

"But what happens to the ones who don't, Kezia? What happens to the ones who can't live with that bullshit?" He held tightly to her hand as he spoke, and her eyes rose slowly to his.

"Some of them die, Lucas."

"And the others? The ones who don't die?"

"They live with it. They make peace with it. Edward is like that. He accepts the rules because he has to.

It's the only way he knows, but it's ruined his life too."

"He could have changed all that." Luke sounded gruff and Kezia shook her head.

"No, Lucas, he couldn't have. Some people can't"

"Why not? No balls?"

"If you want to call it that. Some people just can't stomach the unknown. They'd rather go down with a familiar ship than drown in unfamiliar seas."

"Or get saved. There's always the chance that they'd find a lifeboat, or wash up on an island paradise. How about that for a surprise?"

But Kezia was thinking of something else. It was minutes before she spoke again, her eyes closed, her head resting on the back of the chair. She sounded very tired, and almost old. She wasn't entirely sure Luke understood. Maybe he couldn't. Maybe no outsider could. "When I was twenty-one, I wanted to have a life of my own. So I tried to get a job at the
Times.
I swore to Edward that I could pull it off, that no one would bother me, that I wouldn't disgrace my name, all that bullshit. I lasted for seventeen workdays, and I almost had a nervous breakdown. I heard every joke, was the butt of every kind of hostility, curiosity, envy and obscenity. They even had paparazzi in the ladies' room when I had to pee. It amused them to hire me and watch the fun. And I tried, Luke, I really tried, but there was no way I could stick with it. They didn't want me. They wanted my fancy name and then to try and bring me down, just for kicks, to see if I was human too. I never came out in the open again. That was the last job anyone knew about, the last glimpse of the real me that the world out there had. From then on it was all underground, with pseudonyms, hiding behind agents, and . . . well, it's all been just the way it was when I met you. And this is the first time I've taken a chance on being found out"

"Why did you?"

"Maybe I had to. But as far as anyone knows, I go to all the right parties, am on all the right committees, vacation in all the right places, know all the right people, and everyone thinks I'm lazy as hell. I have a reputation for partying all night and sleeping till three in the afternoon."

"And don't you?" He couldn't suppress a grin.

"No, I do not!" She wasn't amused, she was angry. "I work my bloody ass off, as a matter of fact I take every decent article I can get, and I have a good name in my field. You don't get that by sleeping till three."

"And that doesn't fit with all the 'right' people? Writing isn't 'right' either?"

"Of course not. It's not respectable. Not for me. I'm supposed to be looking for a husband and having my hair done, not snooping around prisons in Mississippi."

"Or ex-cons in Chicago." There was a hint of sadness in his eyes. She had made it all so clear now.

"Theirobjection would not be to whom I write about, ft would be the fact that I'm betraying my heritage."

"That again. Jesus, Kezia, isn't that notion a little out-of-date? A lot of your kind of people work."

"Yes, but not like this. Not for real. And . . . there's more."

"I figured that much." He lit another cigarette and waited, and was surprised when she smiled.

"Aside from everything else, I'm a traitor. Have you ever read the Martin Hallam column? It's syndicated so you might have seen it"

He nodded.

"Well, I write that I started it as a kind of a fun thing, but it worked, and . . ." She shrugged and threw up her hands as he started to laugh.

"You mean you write that crazy goddamn column?"

She nodded, grinning sheepishly.

"And you rat on all your fancy friends like that?"

She nodded again. "They lap it up. They just don't know that I'm the one who writes it. And to tell you the truth, in the last couple of years it's gotten to be a drag."

'Talk about being a traitorl And no one suspects it's you?"

"Nope. No one ever has. They don't even know it's written by a woman. They just accept it. Even my editor doesn't know who writes it. Everything goes through my agent, and of course I'm listed as K. S. Miller on the agency roster."

"Lady, you amaze me." Now he looked stunned.

"Sometimes I even amaze myself." It was a moment of light-hearted laughter after the painful start of the conversation.

"I'll say one thing, you certainly keep yourself busy. The K. S. Miller articles, the Hallam column, and your 'fancy life.' And no one even suspects?" He seemed dubious.

"No. And that part hasn't been easy. That's why I panicked at the idea of interviewing you. I thought you might have seen my photograph somewhere, and would recognize me, as me, not as 'Kate Miller'

obviously. All it would take to blow my whole trip would be one person seeing me at the wrong place at the wrong time, and zap, the whole house of cards would go down. And the truth of it is that the writing part of my life, the serious work, is the only part I respect I won't jeopardize that for anyone, or anything."

"But you did. You interviewed me. Why?"

"I told you. I had to. And I was curious, too. I liked your book. And my agent pressured me. He was right, of course. I can't go on hiding forever if I want a serious literary career. There are times when I'll have to take chances."

"You took a big one."

"Yes, I did."

"Are you sorry?" He wanted an honest answer.

"No. I'm glad." They smiled at each other again, and she sighed.

"Kezia, what if you told the world,
that
world, to go screw, and just openly did what you want for a change? Couldn't you at least be K. S. Miller out front?"

"How? Look at the stink it would make, what they'd say In the papers. Besides, it would muddy the waters. People would be requesting articles not because of K. S. Miller, but because of Kezia Saint Martin. I'd be back where I was eight years ago, as a gofer on the
Times.
And my aunt would have fits, and my trustee would be heartbroken, and I'd feel as though I had betrayed everyone who came before me."

"For chrissake, Kezia. All those people are dead, or as good as."

"The traditions aren't. They live on."

"And all on your shoulders, is that it? You have the sole responsibility of holding up the world? Don't you realize how insane that is? This isn't Victorian England, and Jesus, that's your life you're hiding in the closet. Yours, one shot at it and if s gone. If you respect what you're doing, why not take your chances, drag it out of the closet and live it with pride? Or is it that you're too fucking scared?" His eyes burned holes in hers.