And I turned around and stared. He was out of his chair. A solitary tear was rolling down his cheek. I had never seen him cry before. I knew that single tear betraying his terrible pain had cost him his pride. Perhaps he had a great and pure love for her, after all.
‘I won’t harm you, Daddy. I love you,’ I said softly and walked out of Marlborough Hall. When I reached the car I turned and looked up at the second floor bedroom. Ivana was watching me. In the gloom of the window she looked pale and insubstantial as a ghost. We stared at each other for a few moments. She did not wave and neither did I.
We both knew the truth. She had planned and schemed and lied and stolen and murdered, but there was no need to punish her. Her real tragedy was being stuck in a loveless marriage. Being married to a man so far inferior in intellect to her that he bored her stiff each day from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning.
I had seen it in her eyes many times—the desire for men other than my father—but she controlled it with an iron will. She had chosen the splendor of a public life and the envy of her friends without the true and lasting joy of inner satisfaction, but she deeply resented having to make that choice.
The weak morning sun was shining down on Marlborough Hall. It always looked its best on a sunny day. I turned away and got into my car and drove away without looking back. I would miss my conservatory, but otherwise there was nothing I would wish I had not left behind.
Soon it would be spring. And then summer.
27
Ivana
I stood at the window and looked at my reflection in the window. I was wearing a cream silk and wool dress. Cream suited my dark hair and pale coloring. Beyond my ghostly reflection lay the beautifully manicured gardens. Soon Dr. Kane will be here. My husband wanted to join me in the meeting but I dissuaded him. It was far better that I alone handle this matter.
Anyway, it was a relief to send him away to the stables. Last night I had to do all those things that I had not done for a very long time. I had almost forgotten how dreadfully white, flabby and sweaty he could get when he had to do the deed. Like a sack of wet sand he had puffed and panted on top of me while I pretended to enjoy it. I even took his shriveled, red penis into my mouth.
I stilled the shudder of disgust that ran through me and took a deep breath. There was a price to pay for everything. This house, the envy of all the people I knew, the glow of being recognized and treated as someone important, all of it had to be paid for. He was basking in the glow of our renewed passion this morning. I reinstated my power. So it was worth it.
I put him at the back of my mind. He was not important now. I watched Dr. Kane’s car drive up. Inside me a serpent twisted and spewed its poison into my veins. The effect of its acid was immediate. My hands started to tremble. I clenched them into hard fists.
God, I hated that bitch. How I hated her.
She was supposed to die in that car accident. Anyone else would have just given up and died, but her? Noooo. Like an unwanted, ugly weed she sprouted up again. And now she was setting roots, becoming strong. Worse, she found a man to champion her. I had underestimated the cunningness of my step-daughter. The cheap little whore had done what cheap little whores do. Opened her legs and ensnared him. Now he was hers to bid.
The venom bubbled. It felt as if it was eating me up from inside.
I gritted my teeth.
What an awful miscalculation it had been to send her to him. How I regretted it. It kept me awake all night knowing that it was I who had arranged their meeting. I should have done my homework better. I should never have picked a man who was so physically beautiful, a man even I could have loved. I thought tragedy had felled him, made him an irredeemable shadow of himself, but I was wrong.
I remembered too late what my mother had told me. She said that all men could be described as boxes of goodies hanging on strings from a tree branch. There were three types of boxes. Empty, nearly empty and full. It was very easy to recognize the nearly empty boxes. They rattled a lot. They were always showing off, telling you how much money they had or what amazing lovers they were. The problem was distinguishing between the empty boxes and the full boxes since they both spoke very little.
I thought Dr. Kane was an empty box. But I was wrong. He was the full box my mother had told me about.
I heard the doorbell ring.
If only the little bitch had died in the accident. I closed my eyes and took a long calming breath. I was not beaten. All was not lost. I was resourceful. I could handle Dr. Kane. I could always handle a man. All men are susceptible to me.
She is not as beautiful as you. But the reflection of my face in the glass pane was marred with a frown. The truth was I was not sure how to mold him to my wishes.
He stood apart from other men. I saw it for myself at the dinner when I purposely invited the proudest and most caustic members of our set. And they did what I knew they would—deliberately set out to make him feel small and insignificant. But their veiled insults and disparaging comments were useless. He cared nothing for their good opinion.
Not only did he not recognize them as his betters, he refused to obey the social etiquette set by them. Instead he made his own rules without fear of what society thought of him. Men who will not be bullied by the artificial rules of society are more dangerous than men with knives. For they cannot be controlled.
And such a man was now my enemy. I did not want him as my enemy, but he was my foe, as surely as I was Olivia’s.
Marlow
She stood when a servant showed me into her drawing room. She was dressed in a way that accentuated her fine figure and her hair was loose around her shoulders. Her face was perfectly made.
‘Hello Dr. Kane,’ she said with just the right amount of warmth.
‘Lady Swanson,’ I greeted with the slightest emphasis on the word Lady.
She looked at me sharply, but her voice was honey. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
She was relying heavily on the assumption that I was a drunk. Well… first mistake. ‘No thank you,’ I refused. ‘This is not a social call.’
‘You won’t mind if I have one,’ she said and ordered a glass of brandy from her footman.
The door closed quietly behind him.
‘Will you have a seat?’
‘I won’t be staying long enough to bother.’
She straightened. ‘Well, we might as well get it over with.’
‘I’m marrying Olivia and I’ve come to tell you to arrange the biggest most fantastic wedding for her.’
A slow smile hit her face. ‘Your slip is showing. You’re not supposed to be so eager for the money. A less obvious approach would surely stand you in better stead.’
With my eyes fixed on her I took a step forward. I saw instantly that she was flustered. But oh how hard she forced herself to stand her ground. I took another step and I saw her swallow. So I closed the distance some more.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ she blurted out.
I smiled. Slow. She knew me not at all. ‘Why Lady Swanson, your slip is showing. You’re not supposed to look so guilty.’
She flushed. ‘It’s not true. Whatever my stepdaughter thinks she has remembered is simply not true.’
I raised an eyebrow.
She knew better than to carry on that line of defense. ‘Nobody would believe such utter rot,’ she said icily.
I smiled. ‘It would appear you are better than the crowd you run with. Everybody would believe it. It has the ring of truth to it, wouldn’t you say? Besides when has the truth ever stopped a nice piece of gossip?’
‘You think I’m powerless. I could destroy that little prostitute in a minute. I’ve got pictures.’
I was not surprised. I had expected no less, but she had more to lose than me. ‘Yes, I was coming to that. You use your pictures and I’ll use mine.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What have you got?’ she challenged. Her accent was no longer the stiff upper-lip drawl, but hard and nasal. It betrayed her
real roots. She was from the East End of London.
‘What’s most precious to you?’ I asked softly.
Her face contorted into an ugly mask. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she spat.
‘You met me in my hypnotist guise so you think I am civilized like you. I’m not. When you think of me, Lady Swanson, think of a bear. A grizzly bear. Better still think of me as a mama bear.’ I paused and looked hard at her. ‘If I catch you trying to undermine or hurt Olivia in any way at all, even if it is just a glance, I promise you I’ll hurt him. Don’t forget how easy it is to get him in one of those anonymous clubs he goes to all dolled-up as a woman.’
She went still. ‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s a prediction, but if it takes a threat to help you understand how serious I am then take it as such.’
There was a soft knock on the door. The footman came in with a tray and walked up to her. She snatched it off the tray and took a large gulp. The door closed again.
‘What do you want?’ she asked briskly.
‘I want Olivia to have the wedding of her dreams. The whole works. The dress, the veil, the church, the bridesmaids, the flowers. Only you know her well enough to do that for me.’
‘What else?’ she asked tightly.
‘I want to know where Tom your former gardener is?’
‘Tom Hardy? He died sometime ago. Cancer, I believe.’
‘Lucky him,’ I said quietly
Something passed through her eyes. It was gone in a flash but I caught it.
I looked at her in shock. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
‘Knew what?’ she asked defiantly.
I felt rage curling in my stomach. ‘What kind of woman are you? You let him abuse a defenseless child.’
She swallowed. ‘I don’t know what lies she told you, but I had nothing to do with anything that happened between her and Tom.’
‘But you protected your own daughter
‘I’m not responsible for her,’ she shouted.
People like her made me sick. ‘The good news is I’ll be taking Olivia back to America with me. So you’ll hardly have to see her again, but I will bring her back as often as she wants and I want her to have a nice house here in London. I expect you and your husband to take care of that for her.’
She nodded. A gust of envy blew across her face. ‘You’re taking her away?’
‘Yes. I’m going back to the States. I’m returning to the practice of neurology.’
‘I see.’
‘There’s one more thing I want Olivia to have. And it’s got to be a surprise.’
‘What is it?’ she asked warily
So I told her.
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde
Epilogue
Olivia
My wedding was a grand society affair, organized and perfectly executed by Ivana. No, it was not awkward. It was a great triumph. Everybody said so. Anybody looking in could only have envied our family, our beauty, our good fortune, our wealth, our happiness. They would have seen a proud father, a beautiful, polished, charming, utterly devoted stepmother and a bride who looked adoringly up at her bridegroom as if he was God on earth. Only the bride’s adoring gaze for her new bridegroom as if he was God on earth was not an act.
The thing I remember most was walking into the church and seeing Marlow in his perfectly matched morning suit. He was watching me, every inch of me. There was no smile, no silently mouthed words of encouragement, no self-conscious gesture of love, just an intense look that said, I’m here, I’ve got your back. You’ll never again be anything but precious.
My step faltered and my hand tightened on my father’s arm. I felt him look down on me. I glanced up at him. His face was the perfect parody of the proud father. He had not taken care of me, but today he was giving me away to someone who would.
I took my gaze back to Marlow. He had not moved. He stood as still as a statue, his hands by his sides and I was reminded of my first impression of him, a slow-talking, gun-slinger on a dusty street at high noon, ready on the draw. Tense, alert and bristling with concentration. I stared at him and suddenly there was no one else in the church except him and me. As I drew in an exhilarating breath, I knew: I was safe forever.
And then I remember the kiss. Oh, the kiss. It was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. After that it became a bit of a happy blur. His hand on the small of my back, rose petals confetti, well-wishers, music, delicious food, cutting an eight-tiered cake, champagne…
There were speeches too. I don’t remember any of them, of course. Only Marlow’s. When he looked into my eyes in front of all the people who had tried to hurt me the most and said, ‘I was not a man. I was a shell until you walked into my office.’
I had to blink back the stinging tears not only because that was exactly how I felt. I, too, had been a shell until I walked into his office. But because of a sense of triumph and vindication: none of you succeeded in destroying me.
Daffy came to kiss my cheek after the reception. ‘You won the lottery. Don’t spend it all at the races,’ she said and laughed.
I stared at her. Et tu, Brute? But the knowledge didn’t hurt. I had won the lottery and I had absolutely no intention of squandering any of it at the races.
My father and Ivana had a surprise present for me—a house in Belgravia. Marlow was in on it, of course. We were driven up to it in a carriage. It was white stucco fronted with a columned entrance and a glossy black door. We went up the stairs. He took out a silk scarf.
‘What?’ I asked with a laugh.
‘Turn around,’ he said.
Still laughing I turned around and he tied the scarf over my eyes.
I stayed turned away from him while I heard him put the key in the door, turn the lock, then felt his strong hands come around me and I was airborne and giggling. He carried me laughing over the threshold and did not put me down straightaway. He did not even take me up the stairs to the bedroom, which I had expected him to do. Instead he walked in what appeared to my blindfolded senses to be a straight line, heading to the back of the house. I held onto his neck and nestled in the curve of his throat.
At that moment I was the happiest woman on earth.
He set me down, and I felt him move to the back of me. Even before he untied the scarf tears were already rolling down my face. I smelt them, you see. I smelt them the way a mother recognizes the scent of her newborn baby. The scarf fell away from my eyes and I gasped. My eyes moved from one child to another, to yet another. Every single one of them had made the journey back to me. All my babies had come to live with me. I turned around with shining eyes.
‘Thank you, my love.’ My voice was a shaky whisper.
He looked down at me with such love that heat flared in my chest.
‘I can’t take any of the credit. I wanted to ask your father’s gardener to recreate your happy place here, but Ivana insisted that we move the entire contents of the conservatory. She’s even sorted out a gardener to take care of it when we are not around.’
‘Yes, dear Ivana,’ I said sarcastically.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said softly, refusing to take the bait. He once told me, as hateful as Ivana was, he could never be anything but grateful to her. She had unwittingly led him into his most fabulous dream.
‘Oh yeah?’ I said, imitating his accent.
‘Yeah,’ he said, all macho and gorgeous.
He slanted his eyes down to me. ‘Well, aren’t you craving to water the plants? Or something?’
I grinned. ‘I’m craving something. See if you can guess.’
He laughed. ‘That’s too fucking easy,’ he said as he went behind me and started unzipping my dress.
‘Be careful with that. I’m saving this dress for my daughter,’ I warned, my pulse humming under my skin.
‘Our daughter,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Our daughter. Our son. Our family.’ I felt his mouth settle on my nape as ligh
t as a butterfly.
I closed my eyes, happy, so unbelievably happy. This is my revenge, Ivana. To see me ecstatically happy. I tilted my head slightly. His eyes were directed down at the zip, his lashes casting a shadow on his cheek, and my breath caught at the beauty of the man. I took a mental photograph. I wanted to remember him like this forever.
‘Now I think about it, don’t worry about the dress. I hear they have a really good dry-cleaners in Belgravia.’
His laughter was muffled against my flesh. It mingled with the sound of my dress falling on the gray slate tiles. If they couldn’t save it, she could jolly well buy her own.
THE END
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Hypnotized Page 16