by Joan Wolf
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”
His profile was calm, but for a moment a smile flickered in the curve of his mouth. “Honey,” he said, “that was something else.”
“Was it?” She really wanted to know. “There was only Philip, you see, and it was never like that with him.”
“What happened with you and Philip?” he asked. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were half-closed and he looked as if he were going to fall asleep. Isabel was beginning to realize that he got most of his information when he looked this way.
“Is that how you operate in the Senate?” she demanded. “Do you lean back, close your eyes, put your feet up, and ask, with that oh-so-disarming drawl, *Tell me, General, are you sure there isn’t any fat in your budget?’ “
One blue eye opened. He didn’t say anything. Isabel reached over and smoothed his hair off his forehead.
“Philip was teaching an evening art course I took at the Met,” she began. She had never told anyone, not even Bob, about Philip. But she told Leo. When she had finished, he was silent for a long time. She had been lying on her back, staring at the ceiling as she talked, but now she turned her head to look at him curiously.
“I’m just lying here thinking about the things I’d like to do to that fellow,” he said.
“It was my own fault,” said Isabel. “I was colossally stupid, really. And do you know something? His art isn’t really that good. His last exhibition got distinctly mediocre reviews.”
“Do I detect a note of satisfaction, Miss MacCarthy?”
She went back to staring at the ceiling. “It’s unworthy of me, I know, but there it is.” She smiled. “My exhibition opened shortly after his. The reviews were much better.”
A deep, soft chuckle sounded beside her. “I reckon you took care of him yourself, honey.”
“I reckon I did.” Her face sobered. “So, you see, I kept a bit of a distance between myself and men after that. I didn’t need a repeat of Philip.”
“No.”
“Unlike you, I haven’t had any experience in this sort of a situation.”
“I’m not exactly Don Juan,” he complained softly.
No, she thought. You’re only the most beautiful man in the world, that’s all. “Oh,” she said. “You were perfectly innocent before I came along?”
“Isabel.” He sounded amused. “I am thirty-four years old. On the other hand, I like to be able to go to Communion on Sunday. I try—let’s put it that way.”
“Oh.” She turned to look at him. “Did you go to Communion this morning?”
He looked back at her. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”
“Not in the right frame of mind?” Her voice was softer than he had ever heard it.
“No.” He turned on his side and reached out. “I was thinking about you.” He gathered her into his arms and the curve of his body. “Go to sleep,” he said. “It’s late.”
He was so warm, so big, so comforting. Isabel yawned. “Good night,” she said, and in three minutes they both were asleep.
* * * *
He wasn’t there when she awoke the following morning. She looked at her clock and saw that it was after eight.
Good God. She pushed her hair back off her face and sat up. She was supposed to have started painting an hour ago.
The door opened and Leo walked in.
“Ah,” he said, “good. You’re awake.”
“I overslept, forgot to set my alarm. Why didn’t you wake me?”
He was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt. His hair looked as if it had been wet and was now beginning to dry. A few feathery gold strands had fallen across his forehead. He looked big and wide awake and energetic.
Isabel yawned. “Were you swimming?”
“Yep. I woke up at six, and since you were snoozin’ so comfortably, I decided to go over to the pool.” He came across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I have a little time before I have to be in the office.”
“Good,” said Isabel. “You can sit for me for a while.”
“Actually, honey”—his voice was deep, slow, caressing—”I was thinking of doing a few other things for you.”
She looked up into his face. “I’m still half-asleep,” she protested weakly.
He put his hands on her breasts. “I’ll wake you up,” he said. And he did.
Chapter Ten
Isabel had never painted as well as she painted that week.
“It will be finished in another two days, I’d say,” she told Leo on Thursday.
“So soon?”
She looked at him, brush suspended in air. “You’re the man who expected to be painted in four days. Remember?”
He smiled a little ruefully. “Yes, I remember.”
She put her brush down and regarded her work thoughtfully.
“May I see it?” he asked.
To her knowledge, he had not looked once at the portrait since she had begun it.
“Of course.” She stepped aside and he stood next to her, directly in front of the easel. He looked and Isabel looked with him.
It was, quite simply, the best thing she had ever done. It was Leo—or at any rate it was Leo as she saw him.
He was silent for so long that she became nervous. “What do you think?” she asked a little apprehensively.
His eyes remained on the picture. “I wasn’t sure how good you were,” he said. “I was a little afraid.” He still did not look at her. “That’s why I avoided looking at it, I reckon.”
“I see.”
He turned now and looked down at her. His face was very grave. He picked up her right hand and stood looking at it for a long minute. “Amazing,” he said.
Suddenly she felt blindingly happy. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s very good.” He turned back to the picture for a minute. “Very very good.”
“I’m glad, Leo. I’m so glad you like it.”
He bent abruptly and kissed her, quick and hard. “I’ll get on the phone to Mama. We have a party to give.”
“You don’t have to ...”
“Not have to, want to,” he replied firmly. He glanced at his watch. “I have to change, honey. I have an appointment with someone from the Pentagon.”
“Go ahead.” She smiled at him. “I’m going to do just a little more work here.”
“Okay.” He went to the library door and then stopped and turned. “By the way, we’re going to the Messengers tonight, remember?”
They had stayed home for the last three nights. “I remember,” she said softly.
“All right. See you later, then.”
“See you later.”
She was absorbed in her work when he left the house twenty minutes later.
Ron Messenger was a Washington fixture. He had served as Secretary of the Treasury in a former administration and had also been his country’s ambassador to the Netherlands a few years back. His wife was Dutch and one of the most influential of Washington’s hostesses. They lived on an estate in McLean, Virginia, and an invitation to dine there was one of the most highly sought of social Washington’s honors. Isabel had learned all this from Bev Breckinridge, who lived in the house next to Leo’s and whose husband was a senator from one of the Midwestern states. The Breckinridges had not yet been invited to dine with the Messengers, Bev had told Isabel with some chagrin over tea the preceding day.
“Leo seems to get around,” Isabel commented as she sipped her hot tea in Bev’s period sitting room.
“Leo goes everywhere,” Bev said. “He dines with Democrats and Republicans. He’s been given an open-arms welcome by the native Washingtonians, and they usually scorn the political newcomers. Good God, he’s been admitted to clubs that people who have been here for years haven’t been able to breach.”
“Remembeh, honey,” Isabel said with a fair imitation of Leo’s drawl, “he is a Sinclayeh of Charleston, not some newcomeh from New Yawk.�
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Bev chuckled. “True. And in many ways Washington is still a Southern city.”
“And,” continued Isabel in her own voice, “he tells me that as a Southern Democrat his voice is assiduously wooed by both parties.”
“True again. But there are a lot of Southern Democrats in town and none of them is besieged like Leo. The thing is, everyone likes him so much.”
Isabel had looked at her teacup. “He’s a very likable man.”
“He’s a doll,” Bev said warmly. “And I don’t just mean his looks. He listens to you, really listens. He’s not thinking about the person next to you or about what he’s going to say when you’ve finished talking. He pays attention and hears what you say. Add that to the way he looks and you’ve got a potent combination.”
“I guess so,” Isabel had murmured, and changed the topic to other matters. But she thought of that conversation as she sat next to Leo on the drive out to McLean Thursday evening.
“I called Mama this afternoon,” he volunteered after a little. “She’s going to fly up on Wednesday. We’ve fixed the party for Friday. I had Miss Osborne call out invitations this afternoon.
“Oh,” said Isabel. “What kind of a party did you have in mind?”
“A dinner party, with you as guest of honor. We’ll hang the portrait in the drawing room for the evening. Mama says we can squeeze twenty people into the dining room.
“Oh,” said Isabel again.
“I thought of having a big reception, packing the house or using the Metropolitan Club, but I think a simple dinner will do the job better. The trick is to get the people who influence the fashions, and I think I’ve done that. Miss Osborne had a very successful afternoon.”
“Who’s coming?” Isabel asked curiously. He reeled off a list of names that made her blink. “Well, there must be something I can do to help,” she said after a minute.
“Not a thing,” he responded cheerfully. “I had Miss Osborne book the caterers. Mama will take care of the rest.”
“I see.” Isabel leaned her head back against her headrest and briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them, the car had turned off the road and onto a broad driveway that wound through dense trees and opened into a wide gravel parking area in front of an imposing English manor house. A butler admitted them and steered them to a seating chart containing tiny envelopes with the names of all the guests. Isabel looked at hers and discovered she was to be taken into dinner by one of Washington’s most revered columnists. She looked up at Leo.
“Who did you get?” she asked.
His face was perfectly peaceful. “Lady Pamela Ashley,” he said. He took her arm and escorted her across the spacious foyer and up a few stairs into the broad drawing room where Mr. and Mrs. Messenger greeted their guests.
Isabel drank her usual glass of ginger ale and talked first to the Italian ambassador and then to one of the men she had danced with last Saturday. She smiled and listened and answered, and all the time her senses were trained on a blond head that rose several inches above the rest of the heads in the room. He was talking with an influential congressman when a stunning-looking black-haired girl came up to him and put a light hand on his sleeve. His head turned; he saw her and he smiled. Isabel knew she was looking at Lady Pamela Ashley.
Dinner had been called for eight and it was seven-fifty when Leo brought Lady Pamela over to meet Isabel. He performed the introduction and Isabel held out her hand.
“How do you do, Lady Pamela.” She spoke pleasantly, civilly, and tried not to stare at the lovely face of the British ambassador’s daughter.
Pamela Ashley had hair as dark as Isabel’s, but where Isabel’s was heavy and straight, the Englishwoman’s was feather-light and framed her face in a soft midnight dark cap of curls. Her eyes were not the arresting blue of Leo’s; they were violet, almost purple, and were framed by spectacularly long black lashes. She had the flawless skin of the English, very white and smooth. She looked to be in her middle twenties.
Lady Pamela gave Isabel a cool smile and said, in her well-bred British voice, “So you are the artist who has been doing Leo’s portrait.” She made the word “artist” sound as if it were a glorified servant.
“Yes,” said Isabel, and looked at Lady Pamela with dark and icy detachment.
“Will you be going back to New York when you have finished?” Pamela inquired.
“Possibly.” said Isabel.
Lady Pamela evidently concluded that she had spent enough time addressing Isabel and turned to Leo, giving Isabel a splendid view of her shoulder. “Leo,” she said, “Daddy was wondering if you would golf with him this weekend.”
“I don’t think so, Pam,” Leo replied amiably. A pair of cobalt-blue eyes rested thoughtfully on Isabel’s face. “I have to get my portrait finished up. My mother will be in town next week and we want the finished product to be ready for her.”
Isabel met his eyes. She gave him back a look so intense that it seemed to scorch into his very brain, and then, suddenly, her face broke into its rare smile. “The finished product, forsooth,” she said. “You make it sound like a breakfast cereal.”
His lids half-closed over his eyes and he gave her back a very faint smile.
“I believe Mrs. Messenger is summoning us to dinner,” said Lady Pamela.
“Miss McCarthy,” said a voice behind Isabel, “I believe I am to have the pleasure of your company this evening.” Isabel turned to greet the silver-haired dean of the Washington press community, and Leo offered Pamela his arm.
The stately dining room was set with one long table resplendent with flowers and silver candelabra and princely place settings of silver, china, and crystal. Isabel looked gravely around and reflected that nothing in her previous life had prepared her for the formal splendor of social Washington.
She looked from the table to the elegant men and women seated around it. She looked at Leo, so assured and natural in this company. Why shouldn’t he be assured and natural? she thought. He had been bred to this kind of a life, bred to wealth and to luxury. He was at home here, as was Lady Pamela Ashley, who had probably cut her teeth on affairs like this.
Isabel was not at home. She felt like a visitor from another planet at these dinners.
It was a feeling that had not disturbed her unduly before tonight. In fact, she had enjoyed herself a great deal. To a girl who had been brought up on stainless steel and meat loaf, all this magnificence was fun.
It was fun to be a visitor. But what would it be like, Isabel wondered, to be a part of this world permanently, to spend one’s time booking caterers and arranging the flowers, to be valued for one’s connections, one’s social utility?
It was not for her, Isabel knew that with utter certitude. It was fun for a while, but it could never be an important part of her life, not as important as her painting.
As if on cue, her dinner partner said, “I understand you graduated from Cooper Union, Miss MacCarthy. My nephew went there a few years ago. I must say I was very impressed by it.”
Isabel looked interested. “Did he? What was his name?”
It turned out that Isabel had known his nephew and they talked art schools as they spooned up jellied consommé with bits of melon on top. Arthur Stevens was known for his sharp brain and stinging political wit, but he seemed genuinely interested in Isabel’s experiences in art school and in getting herself established.
After the consommé, broiled sole with toasted almonds was served and champagne was poured. Arthur Stevens began to talk about the role of the Washington press, and Isabel listened for a while and then began to ask a few telling questions. They were engaged in a concentrated discussion when the fish course was cleared and filet mignon with béarnaise sauce, pommes soufflés, and braised carrots were served. It was time to talk to the man on her other side.
“We’ll finish this conversation later,” Mr. Stevens promised, and Isabel turned to the congressman on her right. Leo, she was gratified to see, was no longer talking to Lady Pamela
.
Isabel discussed the defense budget with the congressman, who was a cousin of Ron Messenger’s and who sat on the House Defense Committee. During the dessert, an ice-cream bombe, they talked about the problems of living in two places. The congressman was a young man with a young family, and Isabel lent a sympathetic ear to his problems.
After dinner the men went into another drawing room for cigars and brandy. Many of the ladies went upstairs to tidy up and the rest of them were ushered down a series of corridors to a music room and sun porch where a small band tuned up. Mrs. Messenger made a point of coming over to speak to Isabel.
“At last we are to see this famous portrait of Leo,” she said pleasantly.
“Yes,” said Isabel.
Mrs. Messenger smiled. “Leo makes so light of it. I think he is just a little embarrassed at having his picture painted.”
Isabel smiled too. “He did it only to please his mother. But I think Mrs. Sinclair was right. There are some people who need to be painted. A photograph just won’t do.” She wrinkled her nose a little ruefully. “Of course, that is a point of view one would expect from an artist.”
“I agree with you,” the other woman said forthrightly. “In fact, I have been thinking of having my husband’s portrait done.”
“You have?” said Isabel a little lamely.
The men entered the room and Mrs. Messenger rose. “I’ll speak to you at some other time, my dear,” she said.
“Of course.” Isabel’s eyes were enormous as she watched Mrs. Messenger cross the room.
The room had filled with people, but there was no sign of Leo. Arthur Stevens came across the floor to talk to Isabel again and people began to dance. It was ten minutes before Leo finally came in, making all the other men in the room look small. He was followed by Ron Messenger. Leo looked around the room, saw Isabel, and began to move in her direction. He was stopped almost immediately by the British ambassador’s daughter.
While Isabel talked to Arthur Stevens, Leo talked to Lady Pamela. He looked to be enjoying the conversation very much. Then he took Pamela out onto the dance floor. Isabel resolutely turned her back on them.