By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  Now, having stripped herself of her torn black gown, she sat cocooned in a cloud-soft robe of palest pink cashmere on the tufted window seat, with only one conscious thought: she could not, she must not, sleep through the dawn. So intense was her focus that she did not hear the running steps along the Persian-carpeted hall outside her room.

  "Cindy! For God's sake! Why didn't you answer me? Are you all right?"

  Sweeping her damp, straw-straight hair from her face, Cindy turned slowly and vaguely to the breathless, angry figure in the doorway. He was soaked completely through, and his khakis and Shadow-emblazoned windbreaker clung in wet hollows to him, making him seem to loom even taller.

  "Alan? Why are you here?" Cindy looked genuinely puzzled.

  "What happened? Cindy, what happened?" His voice was anxious, but he made no move to come into the room that had been hers exclusively, at her insistence, after the first month.

  "Happened? Nothing," she answered briefly.

  "Then why the hell is the front of the Mercedes covered with blood?"

  "Blood? Oh, that. I hit a dog."

  "A dog? How fast were you going? The grill is bent."

  "It was ... a big dog." She bowed her head to her knees, her arms still wrapped tightly around her shins.

  "How is it?" he asked quietly.

  "It's dead."

  "Did you do anything? Call anyone?"

  "There was nothing to do, Alan. It's dead. No lights were on in any of the nearby houses. It can wait until morning," she said wearily into the soft folds of cashmere. "I'm very tired." She heard him take two or three steps across the marble floor and her head jerked up. "No, Alan."

  He stood still. His face was haggard with fatigue, and wet dark curls tumbled over his forehead nearly down to his eyebrows. The bloodlines of his English ancestry were apparent in the Roman nose and in the square jaw, but most of all in his bearing. There was something indomitable about the way he carried his extra inch over six feet. Surrounded as he was by all the stained-glass windows, it flashed through Cindy's mind that a knight who had shed himself of a suit of armor after heavy battle might look as Alan Seton did now: soaked through, exhausted, but with an unmistakable sense of destiny.

  "You need a haircut," she said.

  "Cindy—"

  "And a shave. Alan ... you shouldn't be here," she said. "Nothing's changed."

  "Cindy, it must have been bad. Don't tell me it wasn't. You look terrible. I can't leave you like this. You're shivering, wet—"

  "Not wet!" she interrupted with sudden ferocity. "Damp. You're wet, clear through! I had enough sense to come in out of the rain. What's your excuse?" It frightened her, the seething anger in her voice. She had to maintain control, now if ever.

  "You knew we had to keep working—"

  "Of course. Of course." It was a dismissal, but she couldn't help adding, "And did you finish work on your precious new mast?"

  "No," he admitted. "There's no way we can be ready to sail tomorrow. I've asked for a day's postponement. The Race Committee was very good about it."

  "So you could have gone to the Ball tonight, after all," she said instantly.

  With that Alan parked his hands on his hips and gave her a look of wonder, blurred by a half-smile of sorrow. "You just don't get it, do you? Why I'm in Newport."

  "I know perfectly well why you're here: to throw two years of your life and most of your fortune after an eight-pound silver cup with a hole in the bottom. What I don't know is why I'm here. I'm getting out, Alan. Out of this godforsaken marriage." Her voice had risen high, like a cresting wave, and was about to break. One more word and she would burst into tears. Slowly she swung away from him and resumed staring at her favorite window panels. And to think she once had thought she loved him.

  "Cindy," Alan said softly, and he was beside her, lifting bits of blond hair between his strong, blunt fingers, rubbing the strands over one another, trying to reconnect the frayed ends of their torn relationship. "Poor Cindy."

  She pulled her head away, but softly, gently; the strands he was holding tugged at her scalp, sending little shock waves of pleasure-current over her head and shoulders. "No, Alan," she said, but there was confusion in her voice. This was how she'd become enthralled to him in the first place: because Alan Seton had a magician's touch. After their first night together he had known exactly what she wanted, how much she wanted, where she wanted it. She hadn't even been a challenge for him.

  Now he slid his hand through her hair, rubbing the cool, damp thickness into the back of her neck with warm, firm fingertips. "Alan, don't," she said, closing her eyes. "You know it won't work." But it was working, and quickly too.

  She must break off the contact; then the spell would be broken too.

  "I'll make it up to you when this is over, Cindy; I will," he said on a sigh. He slid his hand from the back of her neck, along the line of her shoulder, and down, inside her soft robe, over the front of her breast.

  The convulsive events of the last few hours had whipped Cindy's senses to fever pitch, and her moan—almost a sob—said that the fever was about to break. "Oh, God, Alan—stop it."

  "Stop? And yet you say I don't pay enough attention to you," he said. His voice was low, seductive, and completely unnerving.

  She stood up, breaking the allure of his voice, of his touch. "Not tonight," she said firmly.

  His blue-gray eyes held her in a look of curious appraisal. "It's been more than a month, Cindy."

  "That long? It doesn't seem like it." And why should it? She'd been making love nearly every day during that month. "Time flies when you're having fun, I guess," she added, aware of the irony in her remark.

  Did he know? He had certainly suspected, she knew that much. Again he looked at her, hard, and this time it was clear that he knew there was someone else.

  He snorted. "You know what? Your loss," he said briefly. He turned and walked out of the room without looking back.

  For a moment Cindy was too taken aback to respond. He'd never walked out on her before. She knew why, of course: guilt, because he had been spending so much time ignoring his marriage to chase the Cup. But that was then.

  "Goodbye, Alan," Cindy murmured to the empty room. "Goodbye and good luck."

  Four years of her life down the drain. A tear, the first of the night, rolled down her high fine cheekbone, but Cindy wiped it away; it was hardly the time for regrets. No, she told herself, she would not miss Alan. And certainly not anyone else connected with the Shadow campaign.

  But how sad never again to see the beautiful, colorful characters in the stained-glass panels. For the last time she gazed at her favorite. For the last time she tried to fathom the mystery of the woman in the flowing blue gown, her arms outstretched toward the next panel. Who was the tall young man with shoulder-length hair in the adjacent panel? In his simple robe, he made it impossible to tell. Why did he have one hand on his breast and the other raised, palm forward, toward the woman? Was the maiden fleeing from the serpentine creatures and gargoyles in the panel on the other side of her? Reaching out for the man's blessing or guidance? Since the room once had been a chapel, he was probably a holy man. But Cindy had always chosen to believe that he was Lancelot, warning Guinevere not to follow him. But Guinevere loved him desperately and would do anything to be with him. Anything.

  The clock on the bed stand told her that it was three a.m.—time to pack. Cindy locked her door, and from under the massive four-poster she pulled a soft dark blue duffle bag. She'd spent part of the last few weeks in an intense and comprehensive shopping spree, and the fruits of her effort lay neatly folded, still with price tags attached, in two drawers of the armoire: a whimsical but undeniably chic selection of travel wear.

  Unfortunately the circumstances had forced Cindy to shop exclusively among the ready-to-wear lines. Once they got to Europe she would have plenty of opportunity to replenish her wardrobe from among her favorite couturiers. For now she tried to stay brutally practical, stuffing her bag wi
th American designers: a plain little skirt and trench jacket from Bill Blass; a front-button white linen dress by Calvin Klein; a lace-trimmed blouse and earth-toned ruffled skirt by Ralph Lauren—initially they would be heading west, after all. Cindy winced as she jammed a couple of Oscar de la Renta silks into the duffle; probably they would never be wearable again, but tissue-paper packing was out of the question.

  Should she take the pearl and crystal beaded bed jacket? So pretty, but no. She tossed it reluctantly back into the drawer. The jogging suit was more of a problem—bulky, but she squished it ruthlessly into a corner. She'd always meant to try jogging, though not at six in the morning, when Alan ran.

  Accessories. She had dreaded this moment, having bought wildly and with little regard for the space shoes and handbags took up. After several false starts Cindy settled on a small ring-lizard clutch in a carefully neutral shade; a shoulder bag of snake and calfskin; another in dove grey lambskin. The cobalt-blue high heels—Paris—went in and out of the bag several times, remaining, with much sorrow, out. All the other shoes stayed. Finally, she dressed herself in jeans and a pale green pullover of cotton weave. She couldn't get more unobtrusive than that.

  Time to go. Cindy pulled open the bottom drawer of a miniature antique carved rosewood chest, lifted the silk lining, and removed the cash she had so assiduously scraped together in the last few weeks. It wasn't much—ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills—but it would be convenient. She had savings bonds, too: twenty thousand dollars' worth (on maturity), an inheritance gift from her grandmother, the only lump of money she'd ever received that wasn't designated to that odious trust fund. But could she cash them if she were dead? On the whole, she thought not; but she took them along anyway.

  She must not take any of her jewelry, of course; that she understood. Nearly all of the heirloom pieces were in a safe deposit box, anyway—and out of sight, in Cindy's case, was definitely out of mind. Still ... she fingered the double strand of gray Tahitian pearls and diamonds that she had so nearly worn tonight and sighed. Such a waste to leave them behind when she so often wore black. She threw the necklace into her duffel bag with the cash and the bonds, zipped up the canvas bag, and hurried to the door, forgetting that she'd locked it. In the split second that it took to dump her bags on the floor and turn the key, she reconsidered about the cobalt shoes, ran back to her closet, scooped them up and jammed them into a side pocket of the duffel. If they hadn't been the exact color of her eyes, she would not have bothered.

  Tiptoeing down the hall in the opposite direction of Alan's rooms, Cindy suddenly froze, gripped by the first real moment of panic she had felt since she'd returned to the house. The note! She'd forgotten the suicide note! She retraced her steps to her room, sat down at the Queen Anne writing desk at which she'd poured out so many passionate letters in the last two months, and scribbled vindictively: "Alan, it was an accident, but what difference does that make? You wouldn't care, either way. My life is a mess. Cindy." She tucked the note into the leather edge of the desk blotter, locked the door as she left, and in minutes was on her way to a rendezvous with the Newport Bridge.

  Now that she had made her escape from Seacliff, and despite the first faint suggestion of a foggy, murky sunrise, Cindy began to sink fast into an exhausting sense of anticlimax. She rummaged in the handbag lying on the seat beside her until she found a large gold pillbox—not without taking the Mercedes nearly off the road. How ironic, she thought, popping two diet pills into her mouth, if after all this she crashed head-on into a telephone pole.

  Like most resort towns, Newport tended to party late and sleep in on the following morning. Ocean Avenue, which meandered along the coast past dozens of huge estates placed at ostentatiously discreet distances from one another, was deserted at this early hour. Cindy was driving the long way around the island because she wanted one last chance to take in the splendor of Ocean Drive. She drove rather slowly past the forty-and fifty-room summer "cottages" built on fortunes made from oil and railroads, from copper mines and diamond mines—and from margarine, paper clips, Worcestershire sauce, and liver pills. Not that she cared a whit where money came from. As long as it was there. She was so much more democratic about those things than her cousins; but then, they hadn't been raised in deprivation in a French convent the way she had.

  She rolled past the historic Ida Lewis Yacht Club, made the little jog up to Spring Street, with its colonial houses tucked side by side, and dropped back down to the waterfront. Even America's Cup Avenue was deserted. The bars and restaurants were closed; boutiques and souvenir stores would not open before ten. Between the shops and condominiums Cindy caught glimpses of the historic harbor, crammed with moored, docked, and anchored boats arranged as precisely as sardines in a can. She had been to cocktails on two or three of the larger yachts and had enjoyed herself. What a pity that Alan wasn't more of a yachtsman and less of a madman; life aboard a hundred-foot pleasure boat might have had its moments.

  A bank of thick gray fog hung over the graceful suspended expanse of the Newport Bridge. As she swung onto the double lane going west, Cindy's heart began to pound. If he wasn't there? For the first time the enormity of her situation hit home. For the first time it occurred to her that, looked at one way, her actions could be considered criminal. She herself hadn't done anything wrong—not deliberately, anyway. She had been careless, perhaps; remiss, yes; an accessory, she supposed. But she was no criminal mastermind.

  But her heart kept pounding—slamming, really, up against her chest, ricocheting inside her head. Where was he, damn it, where? She was creeping as slowly as possible toward the center span, expecting to see him parked somewhere on the bridge, waiting for her. If he wasn't there—she would jump, she really would. Cindy knew that the speed was kicking in, making her psychotically impatient. She knew, but she was helpless to fight it. She felt her blood thinning to the consistency of water, rushing through her veins like a gurgling brook. Delly, Delly... don't do this to me, she prayed. In her panic she hadn't even noticed the car following close behind her; it took a quick tapping of the horn to get Cindy to look in her rear-view mirror and, at a hand signal from him, to pull her Mercedes over to the right.

  In one mad dash Cindy and her duffle bag were in the front seat of Delgado's Chevy Suburban, although, like Cinderella, she had in her hurry left behind a slipper—in this case, a cobalt-blue pump, on the floor of her Mercedes.

  "Delly! I thought you'd be parked and waiting!" she said, breathless with rapture.

  "Woman! That was the old plan. Quickly—over the seat and on the floor. Under the blanket."

  "Okay, sure. I'm sorry, Delly; I forgot that," Cindy said, moving as fast as her skin-tight designer jeans would allow. "I was just so nervous." She pulled a charcoal wool blanket over her head. It made her feel suddenly ignominious and ridiculously small.

  "That is perfectly natural, my love," he said over his shoulder. "But you left the note?"

  "Yes, just like you said to."

  "And locked the door?"

  "Yes."

  "And left behind all your things? This bag looks to me very, very full." There was suspicious reserve in his voice.

  "All the clothes are brand new, Delly. No one knows I even bought them. What do you take me for?" she asked, wounded. There was a pause. "Delly, there is one thing..."

  "What thing?" It wasn't alarm; it was low-key menace.

  "I ... ran someone down on the way home last night. He was in the middle of the road, Delly, and it was dark, rainy... oh, Delly. I killed him, and I didn't tell any one," she confessed. Crouched on her knees like a penitent under the darkness of the blanket, Cindy felt the rush of contrition at last. Up until that moment her ability to ignore the thing had been absolute. Once or twice when her mind had wandered back to the appalling accident, it did so with complete detachment, as if it were envisioning a toy Mercedes knocking over a little toy man with a little toy dog in his arms. But now her defenses were collapsing. Suddenly terrified of
the dark, she threw off the blanket. "I can't breathe under here, Delly!"

  "Of course you can breathe! Stay there until we're through the toll booth. Now listen to me. It was an accident, and you killed a man. But there was nothing in the circumstances that you could do. Reporting it would not bring the man back. You must not blame yourself. What's done is done. You must understand that. I cannot speak now. There are cars opposite."

  She continued to crouch reluctantly until she felt the car come to a stop and heard the window roll down and the clunk of the token, after which she ventured, "Now?" in a meek voice from under the blanket.

  There was no response.

  It threw her. Cindy loved Delgado's Old World authoritarianism and believed absolutely in everything he said and did. In the two months that she'd known him, he had replaced virtually all the men in her life: the father she'd never known; the husband she'd known so little; even the executor of her parents' estate, old Mr. Hinsley, whom she feared and disliked. None of them had so completely taken her over as Delgado had; she basked in it, this total possession by another.

  But she thought that Delgado was testing her unnecessarily now. Hadn't she already proved she'd do anything for him? "Damn it, Delly, let me sit up," she whispered. "No one knows who I am."

  No response. They drove another ten minutes, and Cindy, nearly in tears, said, "Delly? Oh, please." They were going over the Jamestown Bridge now. Cindy recognized the whirring, rutted sound of the tires on the metal mesh of the center span.

  Five minutes later Delgado spoke. "Come out now, Cindy dear. And if you promise to be very good, you shall have an ice cream with your lunch."

  '"Very funny." Nearly limp with relief, Cindy scrambled awkwardly into the front seat. "Why are you being so melodramatic about all this?" she asked, poking ineffectually at her tumbled hair. She had to get her hands on a blow-drier, and fast. "It's so unnecessary. I mean, what's the very worst case? That Alan or the police figure out I've faked my suicide and run away? So what? Who would care?"