The doors closed behind her as the butler departed, and she took a turn about the room, studying it for clues. There were none. Impersonal as a museum in its grandeur, this haughty room resisted her curiosity.
She had a moment of trepidation when she heard a man’s firm step sound across the marble floor outside. Then she lifted her head to present a picture of elegant composure as the double doors swung open, and a man, a tall aristocratic man, stood framed in the entrance.
Roxanne’s heart missed a beat and her mind flew back across the years to Baltimore.
Once again she was standing face-to-face with Gavin Coulter.
He was older, but age became him. The silver wings in his graying dark hair only made him the more distinguished. His full sensual lips curved at the sight of Roxanne, and his cold dark eyes were bright with— lust? As he had in Baltimore, he both repelled and attracted her. She felt herself frozen into immobility before him, as if he were the hunter and she the prey.
For there was no doubting the authority in the way he stood, in the way he moved toward her. As the head of a mighty shipping empire, he had not only authority—he had vast wealth.
Now, as he stood facing her, there was a triumphant light in his dark eyes.
“Roxanne,” he said with a little bow.
Still daunted, she managed to retain her outward composure. Gracefully, a woman of the world now, no longer a lady’s maid, she extended a gloved hand. “Gavin.” Her voice was light, disdainful. He would see how little interest she had in him now! She sank into the soft rose brocade chair he offered her. “How nice to see you again.”
He smiled into her eyes; she returned his gaze coolly. “May I offer you something to drink? As I remember, you drank only tea or coffee.”
“Many things have changed, Gavin,” she said, still in that cool light voice, though her heart was thumping at this encounter. “I will have champagne.”
He smiled again. “Shall I drink it out of your slipper?”
She shrugged a slender indifferent shoulder. “If you like . . . many have before you.”
He chuckled. “So I’m to be punished, I see. Still . . . how wonderful to find you in San Francisco. I thought I had lost you, Roxanne.”
Oh, you have lost me, Gavin, you have. . . . She remained silent, watching as a soft-footed servant brought champagne, poured it sparkling into delicate longstemmed glasses, and departed. Gavin raised his glass, touched hers with a little tinkle. “To us—restored to one another.”
Roxanne lifted her glass mockingly. “To us,” she said. “Destined to remain apart.”
He ignored her mockery. “I had agents looking for you, after you left Baltimore.”
“And they found me quite easily in Augusta, I suppose. I was married then.”
He nodded. “I received regular reports on your progress. I knew you had gone to the Klondike.”
She was astonished and looked it. Gavin had searched for her that long?
“My man lost you after you left Nome. It was a long time before we learned you had gone to Singapore; when my man arrived there, you had disappeared.”
No, only my heart had vanished. I left it somewhere on the storm-lashed Indian Ocean. . . .
“He reported he had lost your trail completely. Until he found your name on the steamship bookings en-route to San Francisco.”
This had been no chance encounter, then. Gavin had stalked her and found her—just as Rhodes had stalked her and found her. Ah, the Coulters were good at that. Her lip curled.
“Where did you go, Roxanne? Or should I rephrase that and ask ‘with whom?’ ”
She thought of Rhodes and her eyes grew moist. “Nowhere of consequence,” she said shortly.
“Ah, I am glad to hear it,” he said pleasantly. “So there are no echoes of old loves now that I have found you again.”
No echoes! How wrong he was! She studied Gavin’s face, remembering how calmly he had told her that he had married another woman.
“And now that you’ve found me?” The silkiness of her tone belied the deep anger in her heart.
“Ah, now that I’ve found you, Roxanne, I’ll never let you go.” He said it easily, but there was a hint of steel lurking below the light caressing tone. The eyes she looked into were cold too, accustomed to command. Obviously, here was a man used to having his own way. In Baltimore Gavin had been menacing; in San Francisco he was formidable. She realized that the man who stood before her would brook no opposition. He meant to have her.
And this was Josie’s tycoon! Her laugh rang out, a brittle sound. Gavin’s eyes took on a harder gleam. She decided to take the offensive. “And you, Gavin, are you still married?” she taunted. “I seem to recall you were a bridegroom on our last encounter.”
He had the grace to wince. “Roxanne,” he murmured, “must you remind me of how badly I behaved toward you? How many times have I cursed myself for it since. . . . No, I am a widower now. My wife died last June.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” she said politely. “But there is always Clarissa. Surely she would console you.”
He frowned. “Clarissa married shortly after you left. She has three children now and resides on the Eastern Shore.”
“Well, if Clarissa is no longer available, there are others. Most of the debutantes in San Francisco must be straining at the leash to land so eligible a bachelor as yourself.” She set down her glass and rose.
Gavin rose too. “Stop needling me,” he said in an irritable voice. “Now that I’ve found you again, I want to make it all up to you. I want to give you everything, Roxanne.”
“Do you, Gavin?” On a sudden reckless impulse, she walked toward him, her smile infinitely sweet and enticing. To his startled look, she wrapped her slender arms around his neck, fitted her elegant body to his and kissed him.
When she pushed him away, he looked shaken. “God, how I’ve missed you, Roxanne,” he choked.
“And you must go on missing me, Gavin,” she said with a brief, bitter smile. She picked up her purse, turned on her heel. “For I am walking out of this door and right out of your life—as you walked out of mine when you married for money.”
She was halfway across one of the green Chinese rugs, heading for the door, when he leaped forward to block her way. She would have gone around him, but he reached the doors first and blocked her passage. “Then why did you kiss me like that, Roxanne?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why?”
“Because I enjoy seeing you suffer.” Roxanne chose her words carefully. “I am a worldly woman now, Gavin, and I have some idea of what a man goes through when the woman he wants does not want him.”
“No,” he said angrily. “There was a commitment in that kiss. You can't deny you felt something?”
“I felt nothing. Let me pass.”
“Ah, Roxanne!” He seized her by her peach taffeta shoulders, moving her back a step by his sudden onslaught. “I have waited so long. I had men combing the capitals of the world—Paris, London, Rome.”
“No one can call up the past, Gavin—you no more than I. Anything that might have existed between us is dead.”
“No!” he roared. “Nothing is dead. I have dreamed about you, Roxanne. Dreamed I held you in my arms! Now that I have found you, I will find a way to keep you.”
“Will you Gavin?” Indifferently, she freed herself from his grasp. “Then you will have to have a long reach, for next week I am taking a train to New York, and from there I will sail for Paris. Who knows, I may never return again.”
She rustled past him and had reached the door when his voice stayed her. “You knew that Rhodes was dead?”
A stillness came over her. She remained where she was, suspended in time, motionless. “What did you say, Gavin?”
He sighed. “Lost at sea. I have erected a stone in the family burial plot. In death—if not in life—Rhodes belongs among us.”
A wave of dizziness took her. She felt as if she would faint.
Gavin sprang forward to steady her
. “I felt I must tell you.” His voice was rough, accusing. “In case his shadow stood between us. I can see you did not know.”
“No,” she said faintly. “I did not know.” Blindly she pushed past him and made her way into the street, where she took in great gulps of air to compose herself. After a while, the world came back into focus and she found a cab to take her home.
Shutting herself in her bedroom, she wept. She lay in her bed and remembered him—wonderful, strong, Rhodes. No man like him would ever come her way again. And she had wronged him—he had not cast her aside. Had he not been dead, he would have come to her in Singapore; perhaps he had even been on his way to Singapore when his ship went down. So, she sorrowed through many dark hours, but at least she lifted her head. Rhodes would want her to go on, to make something of her life, to try to be happy. She must try—oh, God, she must try!
The roses arrived the next day—and the next, and the next. All week long they arrived, banks of them, in long florist’s boxes—long-stemmed, blood red, beautiful. Grimly amused, Roxanne arranged them in tall crystal bowls, moved about the house through a forest of flowers. Each box bore the same curt inscription: “Yours, Gavin Coulter.”
Emma, her maid, was most impressed. “You mean it’s him? Mr. Moneybags himself?” she had gasped.
“The same,” Roxanne had assured her. Emma’s wide-eyed admiring gaze told her that she had risen vastly in the girl’s estimation.
With Josie she had one abrasive brush over her recalcitrance, and then Josie swished off home and left her strictly alone. Roxanne felt it was just as well. Miserable as she was, it would be worse to be pressured by Josie.
The news of Rhodes’s death, followed instantly by this unceasing barrage of flowers, hardened her heart toward Gavin still further. What she had said about the train and Paris had not been true, but now she decided to leave San Francisco, to choose one of the lovers Josie had paraded before her, and depart. She hoped sincerely it would break Gavin’s heart. But it was hard making a decision when all she could think of was that Rhodes was dead, that she was never going to see him again. She shrank from people, cancelled all her engagements, and skulked about the house breathing the heavy perfumed scent of roses.
One day there were no flowers, but instead a dark velvet jeweler’s box arrived. Roxanne’s eyes widened as she opened it and a narrow necklace of diamonds spilled out, clear and glittering as tears. She clasped the necklace around her neck, and considered it critically. She would keep it, of course. Gavin deserved no better. She would wear the necklace in Paris . . . beside a new lover.
That same afternoon a note arrived on vellum edged in gold, requesting the pleasure of her company at the theater. It was signed “Gavin Coulter.” A servant waited for her answer. On scented pink notepaper Roxanne penned her answer: she was otherwise engaged for the evening.
The next day Gavin came himself. He arrived in his big motor car, a chauffeur-driven Pierce-Arrow. Roxanne saw him alight at the curb, elegantly tailored and arrogant. She had told Emma she would not receive him, but he must have pushed past the girl, for a moment later the door to her small upstairs salon was thrown open and Gavin came in. He looked angry.
Roxanne came forward to meet him, keeping her face expressionless. “You are difficult to discourage, Gavin,” she said dryly. “Must I find a lover and parade him before you to make you understand?”
His cold eyes flashed with anger. “You have found your lover,” he said, “and I stand here before you.” She laughed, but warily kept her distance from him. There was a tension in him that she did not like. She might not find him as easy to fight off as she had in Baltimore.
“Will you not ask me to sit down?” he demanded in a stern voice.
“By all means,” she said. “Find a chair.”
Gavin pulled up a small straight chair, leaned forward intently. “Since I found you again, I have not been idle. I have insured that you remain by my side for as long as I desire.”
Astonishment colored her voice. “You have what?”
“Perhaps you will remember an old newspaper article,” he said silkily. “It mentioned two murders in Nome and a third—of one Mary Willis—on a train. It may surprise you to learn that I have found an eyewitness from that train who swears he saw you put a powder in the woman’s drink before she died.”
Ratface! It could be no one else. Somehow Gavin’s investigators had found Ratface, who would do anything for money. Who else could have accused her?
“I see you are startled,” said Gavin in a low, deadly voice. “This witness swears he was beguiled by your beauty and by your youth, and so, when you confessed this murder to him, he kept silent. But now he wishes to cleanse his conscience. And he has made out an affidavit swearing to these things. I have the document locked in my safe. The man himself waits here in San Francisco to testify at,your trial—should there be one.”
“I did not kill Mary Willis!”
“Oh, I never thought you did,” Gavin said. “But will a jury faced with circumstantial evidence and an eyewitness take so charitable a view?”
Roxanne’s heart shuddered within her. A trial! How her past could be brought against her! Would all those enemies she had made along the way turn up, urged on by Gavin, to send her to the gallows?
Flight was the only answer. She would pretend to acquiesce to whatever Gavin desired. This was a port city—she would take a ship, stow away if necessary.
As if he had read her thoughts, Gavin straightened. “I had not meant to do it this way, Roxanne.” His voice reproved her. “But you leave me no alternative.”
She lifted a defiant chin and looked at him steadily from accusing blue eyes. “Gavin,” she said, “have you not harmed me enough? Must you add this?”
“I have men watching you, Roxanne. Trusted men. If you try to leave San Francisco, they will bring you to me. If you do manage to leave anyway, they have instructions to find you and turn you over to the law. Then your only hope will be to appeal to me to pay for the expensive defense you will need. Unless, of course, you choose to hang. But you are young, beautiful, desirable—all your life lies ahead of you. I do not think you will choose the gallows.”
He had pushed her too far. Something cold flickered in her lovely eyes. Pretending to be distraught, she took a turn around the room, stooped to open the drawer of a small table and quickly took out the pistol Josie had given her for protection. Calmly she pointed it at Gavin. “Why should I run? Why should I not shoot you here and now?”
Gavin’s eyes widened. She saw that he had not foreseen this type of opposition. Had he expected her to crumble and grovel before him? she wondered scornfully.
“Come to your senses,” he said harshly. “I have men outside watching the house.”
A bitter half smile played around her mouth. “And why should that matter to me? You tell me that I am already to be tried for murder. Why not another?”
He was breathing harder now; his arrogant face had a hunted look. “I say that you shall be tried for none,” he insisted, “if you will become my mistress.”
“And if I do not choose to?”
“You will,” he said grimly. “You love life. It is in the way you walk, in the way you look at men.”
Ah, that had once been true. But she loved her life not so much now as she once had—when she had thought to live it with Rhodes. . . . She lifted her head. “As you say, I want to live. But I will not be your mistress.”
He breathed a ragged sigh. “If you kill me, Roxanne, the authorities will give you short shrift. No charges have been filed against you as yet for the—the other. But I have the sworn statements, and I will not—”
“If I become your mistress,” she supplied, and cocked the gun.
His face paled. “You need not decide now,” he said smoothly. “I will give you time to make your choice.”
Roxanne gave him a mocking smile and toyed with the pistol. “How much time?”
Gavin looked back at the beautiful
woman who menaced him. Straight and lovely she stood, and the eyes that returned his gaze were very steady. But the muzzle of the gun had dropped; it was no longer pointed directly at his chest.
“Enough. Enough time to consider.” His dignity had returned now that the imminent peril was removed. At the door he turned. “I could have you seized in the street, you know that. Drugged. Delivered to my bed in some out-of-the-way place. I could plunder your body at will.”
Her eyes narrowed. It was true enough, a man in his position. “Then why don’t you do that?” she wondered. And as he returned her gaze, she answered for him. “Perhaps it is because you do not wish to make love to a woman inert and senseless, or to a woman cold and stiff, with hatred burning in her eyes. No, you desire passion from a woman, Gavin. I have always known it. I knew it back in Baltimore. Like a reptile that seeks warmth, you seek to warm your cold heart at the fires of others. You will not kidnap me or drug me, Gavin. What you want is to bend me to your will.”
He gave her an angry look and went out, slamming the door behind him. She knew she had struck home.
After he had gone she rushed to the window. Below in the street stood two quietly dressed men in dark hats. One of them was gazing at the house, but when Gavin waved his hand, the man stepped forward briskly. They spoke for a minute. After Gavin’s car pulled away, the man stepped back and said something to the other. Then, like sentinels, they resumed their positions, standing—facing her front door.
She hurried to the back of the town house, which had the blank walls of the adjoining buildings on either side. Just beyond the back court two more men paced up and down, as if deep in conversation, but quietly keeping the back door under surveillance. She was not to escape, then.
These Golden Pleasures Page 45