By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "You're right," she said. "It says so right on it. And the ticket's numbered: number thirty-six."

  "Sounds like that invitation came right from the top. There's status in a low number like that, girl," Neil said, impressed. "Who sent it, and why?"

  "It ... it came from Alan Seton. I guess he felt sorry for me after the interview." She had not offered a copy of the interview to her father, and he had not admitted to having read it.

  Nor did he now. "I wonder what number the governor got? And the presidents of all the sponsoring corporations? Hey. Number thirty-six."

  "Honestly, Dad," she said, grimacing. "It's not the Presidential Inaugural Ball or anything."

  "Hey, it's a ball. A ball's a ball. I say, good for you. Your mother would have been proud. Mind if I wheel around to the servants' entrance and watch?"

  "Very funny. Besides, who says I'm going? I don't own a ball gown."

  "I'll round up some mice and birds to make you one, Cinderella," he said wryly. "Quinta, it's not as though we're poor."

  "But it would be a waste of money. I don't know how to dance ballroom .... the ball's in two days .... I wouldn't know anyone .... I was never as taken with these Society events as you. Am I supposed to bring a pad and pencil? I suppose this is a pity thing, like inviting an orphan over for Thanksgiving ...."

  She whimpered on for a while, arguing more or less with herself as she loaded the dishwasher. Her father had long since assumed she was going to the ball and had turned his attention back to the new Bahamas brochure. Quinta was just about to go upstairs, when Neil cried out.

  "God almighty, it's true! I knew it was true!"

  "What? What? What is it?" she said.

  "Stones! We had a fortune in stones aboard the Virginia when she went up on the reef."

  "Dad, even in 1934, granite wasn't all that valuable—"

  "Not granite. Gems! I've known it for a fact all these years. Even then, at the time, I knew something was up. There was too much whispering, too much excitement. I heard Colin say it was a 'bleeding fortune.' It was in the cargo hold. Colin kept going back there. The rest of us didn't have a clue. Stubby … Billy … me. We didn't know anything. But Colin Durant and Laura Powers did! The question for me always has been, what did they do with them?"

  "Dad, Dad," Quinta said sharply, stunned by her father's burst of incoherence. "Get hold of yourself. What's wrong with you?"

  "Listen to this," he said excitedly. He read from the brochure: "'Locally, San Salvador is known as Watlings Island, named for a fierce buccaneer who operated from there in the eighteenth century ... blah, blah—wait, here it is: 'But if you prefer more modern treasures, sail over to nearby Pineapple Cay, where a fortune in diamonds and rubies is said to have been buried by some down-and-out bootleggers in the early thirties.'"

  Neil laughed crazily. '"Down-and-out bootleggers' is a little harsh—Colin and my mother will resent that when they read this—but other than that, the shoe fits. It fits!"

  Quinta had come over and sat perched on the edge of the loveseat, opposite her father's wheelchair. Her father was much too excited. It set her aback. "You've never said anything about a buried treasure before."

  "Well, of course not," he answered, irritated. "How the hell did I know that it got buried—if it got buried? I was eight years old!"

  "Wow. Buried treasure. Wait! What about that cruise ship they were on the summer you were hurt? Was it supposed to put in at any Bahamian port? Although, even if it did, they wouldn't have had time to go searching for a treasure they'd buried fifty years ago. And gallivanting all over the islands at their age? It's silly. They would have done something like that when they were younger." Quinta had it all worked out.

  Neil said, "Hold on, I just remembered: they took that belated honeymoon when your grandmother was about forty, and they wouldn't tell me where they were off to. It was a secret—has been, all these years. I always figured it was to Nantucket. But they were gone for nearly ten days. Who's to say where they really were?"

  "Do you remember if they packed shovels?" Quinta asked, falling in with the fantasy.

  Her lighthearted tone brought her father up short. "You're right. It's a dumb theory. If they had ended up with the jewels, then or later, they'd be living a lot higher on the hog than they are now."

  "They're not poor! Waterfront in Florida—"

  "A one-bedroom condo? Big deal. Nah, they never had any fortune in jewels."

  "Stubby was the guy, let me see, who got seasick? And great-Uncle Billy, he was the cheerful one who played the concertina?" Quinta's mother had passed on the little she had learned about the shipwreck to her daughters, but no one, including Nancy herself, had dared to ask for more. This was the first time in her life that Quinta had ever broached the subject directly to her father. "And grandfather was the mate? Because Grandpa Sam couldn't go, right?"

  Neil looked away. "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Well, never mind. The gems are only a legend, after all," he said gruffly.

  He had slid the lid off a mental box that she'd never been allowed to peek into before, and now he slammed it shut again.

  Neil smacked the brochure idly against the palm of his other hand. "Still, this is the first time I've seen an allusion to it in print. It might be worth following up with a letter. Just for curiosity's sake."

  "Good idea, Dad," she said, a little uncertainly. "You should do that."

  Diamonds and rubies. What an enchanting notion. In a way it was in character for her father to seize on an idea as melodramatic as buried treasure. Diamonds and rubies. Her imagination began drifting amiably. Dancing at a ball wearing diamonds and rubies. The glitter of candles over diamonds and rubies. What kind of gown went with diamonds and rubies?

  "Um, Dad," she said at last. "Can I borrow a hundred dollars?"

  Chapter 13

  Men have no idea about ball gowns. They think of them as dressy dresses, when every woman knows that a proper ball gown is not clothing at all, but an extension of her soul. Why else does a wealthy woman have her own couturier? The designer is a high priest at her altar, striving to interpret the ineffable. If her soul is blond, he will wrap her in blue. If her soul is old-money, he will set off her pearls with simple satin. One way or another, the couturier will make a wealthy woman's special beauty shine forth.

  Of course, other souls have to be happy with ready-to-wear, and Quinta Powers was one of them. For one thing, there was not enough time to have a gown designed and made for the Pegasus ball, even if her father did take out a second mortgage. For another, she did not wish to rely on someone to tell her what her best feature was, or what color suited her, or which fabric was in vogue. So she set out, blithely enough, with a hundred dollars in cash and but one caveat in mind: the gown must be long, even if it were made of bed-sheeting.

  Which, for one hundred dollars, she soon found, was about all she could hope for. Anything she saw under that price looked frilly and silly—a prom gown, not a ball gown. She had a vague idea that a ball gown was different, that a ball gown was adult. After hovering timidly in front of a Bellevue Avenue shop window filled with dazzling, jeweled ensembles, Quinta found the courage to step inside.

  "Yes, ma'am. May I help you?"

  "Ah, no. I'm just browsing," replied Quinta. How dumb. You browsed at J. C. Penney's, when there was nothing to watch on TV. Here you tried on, and then you bought.

  Still, Quinta went gamely through the motions, sliding each beaded and bejeweled dress carefully along the recessed rack, afraid almost to touch them, let alone ask to try them on. Her worst fears were realized when a bright-blue sequin came off one dress and stuck to the palm of her hand. Horrified and feeling like a shoplifter, she dropped it inside the neckline and kept looking. She thought it might be gauche to check a price tag, but she did it anyway, unable to bear not knowing. Her eyes widened, but not too much. Eight hundred dollars. It was a stunning dress, silver and black, wildly dramatic. When you thought about the labor involved ... each little b
ead … even in India, that had to add up.

  A dizzying thought occurred to her. If she tried it on? If she liked it? If she charged it? She lifted the hanger carefully off the rack. It took three seconds, the exact same length of time it took for her brain to begin functioning normally again. Not for you, Cinderella. Put it back.

  She did, with a sigh, and was about to leave when the salesgirl—so slim, so chic, so pitying—said, "There are a few things on sale in that armoire, if you'd like to look at them."

  More to oblige the salesgirl than any uncontrollable urge of her own, Quinta went through the rack of ensembles, almost not looking at the items, just checking shamelessly through the price tags: $400, $360, $500, $400, $200—two hundred! Was it possible? Sure it was: the bottom half of the ensemble was missing. The part that remained was a lovely white top with a neckline of bugle beads fanning into a flower-motif over the bodice. Not very many beads, but some. Enough to gain entry to a ball. As for the fact that she would be naked from the waist down—well, she could sew a silky polyester floor-length skirt in a couple of hours.

  She tried on the top, liked it, put it on her Visa card and flew out of the shop: she had material to buy, and a pattern.

  ****

  In Newport during a Cup summer it is not unusual to see couples in formal dress shortcutting across the harbor in rubber inflatables to a pre-ball dinner on some yacht, or (if they have not been invited to a pre-ball dinner) ambling down Americas Cup Avenue in gowns and black ties to dine at the Pearl or Clarke Cooke House, carefully oblivious to the stares of tired day-trippers pushing baby strollers. But this was not a Cup summer in Newport, just a practice one, and waterfront ambience was at an all-time low.

  Mavis Moran drove past the evening throngs on Thames Street and thought, How ordinary. There were no French, no Swedes, no Aussies, no Brits, no Italians. No Kiwis, no Canadians. No competition, no excitement. She was utterly bored. Still, events filled with donors required her attendance; the Pegasus Ball was one of them.

  It took longer to reach Beau Rêve than she'd planned. Still feeling oddly listless, she padded in silk-stockinged feet across thick carpeting to a walk-in closet, then pulled out a beaded gown in pale multicolor from among a dozen spectacular gowns hanging there. When had she worn it last? She couldn't remember, so enough time must have passed. It was a difficult dress to wear jewelry with; she settled for a thin gold watch. Mavis kept very little jewelry in Newport anyway, partly from having learned her lesson three years earlier, and partly because of a recent and unusual rash of robberies in the mansions along Bellevue Avenue. She'd swept her hair almost perfunctorily into a twist; even now soft curls were sneaking out, determined to frame her face.

  She slipped the gown over her head and fastened the side opening, then stared at herself in a full-length mirror. The off-shoulder dress, an intricate design of mauve, pale blue, and gray-green beads, followed the curves of her body like a second skin, emphasizing her height, playing off her skin color, doing everything a good gown was supposed to do, including flattering her reconstructed breast. The camera of her eye said that no one could tell; no one. But she turned away from the mirror anyway, convinced that all would know.

  On her way out to the hall, she paused before an antique silver-framed photograph of her grandmother, dressed in a riding habit, standing next to a superb Arabian mare. The photograph had been taken when she was a guest in a villa outside of Paris; Mavis remembered the stories of legendary parties held there. It was said that Tess Moran never once alluded to her own infirmity, a noticeable limp; nor did she let it stop her from doing anything she'd ever wanted to do. But after her accident no one, neither man nor maid, had ever seen Tess Moran without her clothes on.

  Mavis understood her grandmother perfectly well.

  ****

  The blue flame in Cindy Seton's eyes burned bright tonight: this was the ball she had traveled back from Portugal for. Her body thrummed with pleasure as she reverently undraped the black-and-crimson satin gown from its padded hanger and held it up to herself. How perfectly horrible that she had to dye her hair nearly black. But it couldn't be helped. Cindy Seton was dead. And anyway, the effect wasn't all bad.

  She envisioned the perfect evening that lay ahead. She had waited for it, planned for it, ever since she'd come across the America's Cup update in an issue of Resorts which she'd been thumbing through in a small and rather insignificant yacht club in southeast Spain. It was such an unlikely place for her to be, such an absurd place to find a magazine tracking the social scene in Newport that summer, that she accepted it for what it was: fate.

  ****

  Neil Powers tucked the diary under one arm, locked his wheelchair into the stair-lift, and pressed the up button. He hadn't been on the second floor of his own house in half a year. It was Quinta's apartment now, with its own entrance, though she rarely used it. But he needed to do this. It had been on his mind for the last forty-eight hours. He rolled his chair up to the doorway of his daughter's bedroom. The door was open, of course; Quinta had no need for doors.

  Quinta heard him coming and stuck her head outside the door, surprised. "Dad! Is something wrong?"

  She was all dressed up, this girl-child of his, this youngest and oldest of his brood of females. She was the one who had worked hardest to be the son he never had. She was the tomboy, who once tried to swing a bat that was taller than she was; who learned to clench her teeth and hook a worm for bait; who never, ever cried when she was hurt. And now look at her: an angel all in white, with shimmering spun-gold hair and a free-fall of stars around her shoulders.

  "You look so beautiful, girl," he said, awestruck. "I wish your mother were here." Nancy, Nancy, come look, his soul whispered, so that their daughter could not hear. Come look at our wonderful baby, all grown up. Did you know that she'd turn out so well? I suppose you did.

  "I, ah, wanted you to see something, Quinta. That's why I came up here," he said diffidently.

  He handed her a small, mildewed diary bound in imitation leather, its imitation gilt edges turned to brassy green. The lock was pulled away, which hadn't taken much; it was such a flimsy thing.

  "This was my mother's diary," he explained to his wondering daughter. "She left it behind with a box of books when she and Colin moved to Florida. I doubt she even misses it, and I certainly wasn't going to embarrass her by bringing it up. No one's ever seen it but me. Your grandmother writes about things you should know. She writes about the gems. They existed, and this is proof of it."

  "Oh, Dad, I'm sure they existed," his daughter answered quickly. "You don't have to show me this." But she could not take her eyes from the cover of the diary.

  "It's on the last page," he insisted doggedly.

  She lifted her eyes to his. "Is that what you want me to read? The last page?"

  Instead of a yes or no he said, "When I die, I'll leave this to you. I could never throw it out. You'd have to decide what to read then, anyway."

  A car horn blew twice in the street and Quinta cried, "My cab! I have to go." Flustered, she kissed her father on his cheek and grabbed her little beaded bag.

  "Let the dog out in the yard when you leave," he said gruffly. "And have a nice ball."

  ****

  In Newport it is relatively easy to stage a ball: rent a mansion, set up a tent, hire a band, and you're in business. Flowers are optional; so is a party theme. The Breakers, Marble House, Rosecliff, The Elms, Oceancliff—there were a dozen such temples to extravagance in the area now hustling to pay their own way.

  Quinta sat nervously inside the Cozy Cab as it approached Ocean Court. Would she have to get the door herself? No. That was what valets were for. Did she have her invitation with her? Yes. In her purse. Was her lipstick on straight? She thought so, but there was no time to look. So far so good, but ahead of her, lined up like indoor palms on the yellow Siena marble floor of the entrance hall, stood the receiving line: half a dozen people, only two of whom she recognized.

  She too
k her place in the slow-moving queue of guests and introduced herself to each member of the receiving line, most of them sponsors of the Pegasus campaign: a short fat man from Dexter Paint Company, and a tall thin one from North Sea Weathergear. A friendly young woman from something Industrial Corporation, and a grouchy old man from the Sleptell Hotel Chain. It was a Dow-Jones receiving line, no doubt about it, except for the handsome couple at the end.

  "Hello... Alan," Quinta said, shaking his hand.

  "You were able to come."

  "Yes."

  He turned to the stunningly beautiful redhead, nearly as tall as he was, who stood next to him. "Mavis Moran, this is Quinta Powers, a writer for Cup Quotes."

  Mavis smiled. "Quinta Powers? Aren't you the one who wrote that pretty little tribute to Mr. Seton?" She shook Quinta's hand briefly.

  "I think I might have," replied Quinta inanely, as if she couldn't keep track of the thousands of pretty little tributes she'd written that summer.

  Mavis smiled a second time, a knowing, perfect, green-eyed smile. "It was so sweet."

  With that, Quinta was bumped by the next arrival into a French-style ballroom floored in parquet and paneled in a subdued gray, and edged in gilt and silver. Unlike the great marble monsters that were built after it, Ocean Court was not quite palatial. But in its heyday the owner, a merchant in the China trade, had thrown a good shindig or two, and tonight the tradition lived on. True, most of the assembled guests had shelled out hard cash to be there, and the cold shrimp were not nearly so impressive as the pickled oysters and pâté de fois gras for which the original chef had gained renown, but by the electrified light of the gilded bronze sconces it all looked pretty spectacular.

  Especially to Quinta. She was aware that she was a fraud, a neighborhood urchin who'd scrambled over a high brick wall to see how the other half partied, but that didn't diminish the pleasure she got from watching all the glitter, all the gold. In a way she was grateful to them for putting on such a show. To her they were actors and actresses hired by some mysterious Newport public relations manager to keep up Newport's image. If she squinted, which she did, she could see a hundred years into the past.