by Joan Wolf
“Where is Meg?” Gwen asked, as Tony put a plate in front of her. “Didn’t she go to church with you?”
There was a beat of silence, then Harry said, “She did, but she didn’t want any breakfast.”
Gwen took her elbows off the table so Tony could give her some silverware. “Is that girl still starving herself? Really, Harry, you must do something about her. It’s embarrassing to have a sister who looks like a skeleton.”
“She is seeing a therapist,” he replied woodenly as he removed the pan of eggs from the stove.
Tracy finished buttering the toast, piled it onto a plate, and brought it to the table, where Tony had finished setting out the plates and silverware. At the counter, Harry was scraping the eggs into a blue-and-white bowl.
“She needs to go into hospital,” Gwen said. “One of those private treatment places where they brainwash you and force you to eat.”
Harry said pleasantly, “I am Meg’s legal guardian, Gwen, and I believe I am the best judge of what she needs and doesn’t need.”
“If you’re not sending her to a private treatment program because you think you can’t afford it, then maybe you better sell Daddy that land he wants,” Gwen said.
“I can afford whatever Meg needs,” Harry replied. He was eating hungrily.
“You’re going to have to sell the land anyway,” Tony said. “You’ll need the money to rebuild the stable.”
Harry helped himself to a slice of toast. “I have no intention of selling my land. The insurance will pay to rebuild the stable.”
Tony looked skeptical. “Isn’t the stable a listed historic building? Along with the house and the riding school?”
“Yes.” Harry regarded his brother with a level stare. “Doesn’t that mean you have to restore it to the full level of its original condition.”
A muscle jumped in Harry’s jaw. “Yes.”
Tony went on relentlessly. “Which means you would have had to have it insured at well over market value in order to cover the cost of rebuilding.”
“Yes.” Harry continued to hold his younger brother’s eyes.
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Did you have it insured over market value?”
“I have the house insured for four times its market value,” Harry replied. He broke eye contact with Tony and ate another forkful of eggs. “All of the outbuildings, including the stable, are insured at market value. It would have been prohibitively expensive to do otherwise.”
A brief silence greeted this information.
Then Tony said, “In that case, the insurance money isn’t going to be enough to rebuild the stable, not if you have to duplicate the original work.”
Harry had finished his eggs, and he took a bite of toast. “I’ll get a waiver from the local English Heritage officer.”
“Not bloody likely,” Tony replied.
Tracy had also been eating hungrily, but she looked up, and inquired, “What is an English Heritage officer?”
Tony answered. “An English Heritage officer is the vigilant guardian of any property that the state has declared to be a fixed and timeless piece of art. Tangentially, he has absolutely no interest in the needs of the family who happens to own said property.” He turned to Harry. “Do you know it took the Alanbys five years to get approval for an addition to their kitchen?”
Harry shrugged.
“Bloody hell, Harry,” Tony exploded. “Can’t you see the writing on the wall? Take Mauley’s offer, and you will have the money to rebuild the stable and make any repairs to the house that you desire. You will have the money to send Meg to the best sanitarium in the world. Christ, you’ll have the money to buy yourself a new car! Why are you being so stubborn?”
Harry wiped his mouth with a napkin, and said evenly, “I inherited that land from my father, and I am going to guard it and improve it and pass it down to my son. And that is all I have to say on this matter—now or ever.”
He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Would you like to ride Dylan, Gwen, and see how his training is coming along?”
“That’s what I came to do,” she replied, gesturing to her breeches and boots.
“I’ll go change then. It won’t take me long.”
After the door closed behind Harry there was a short silence in the kitchen. Then Tony said, “Christ, but Harry can be a bloody mule.”
Tracy began to gather the empty dishes.
Gwen made no motion to help. “Daddy says that Ambrose Percy will choose another location for his hotel if Daddy can’t get the land soon.”
Tracy carried the dishes to the sink, then returned to the table to collect the coffee cups. “Why doesn’t your father just buy some other land?” she asked Gwen.
Gwen gave her the kind of look a very rude person might give a moron. “Because there is no other land that’s equal to Silverbridge. That amount of suitable land, in a convenient location, is almost impossible to come by these days.”
Tony chimed in. “And even after the sale, Harry would still have over twelve thousand acres! It’s absurd for him to act as if he’s being asked to sell the family heritage.”
“I thought I understood that Mr. Mauley wants all the farmland.” For some reason, Tracy felt impelled to defend Harry. “If your brother gives up his farms, then he will have no income.”
Tony’s eyes were bright with anger. “He won’t need the bloody farm income! He’ll have the money from Mauley, which he can invest.” He looked from Tracy to Gwen. “Do you know that Harry has virtually no investments? There are some safe, low-return stocks that have been in the family for ages, but to all intents and purposes, today’s economic race has left him behind. Fortunes have been made all over Britain, but, except for a few cases, not by the aristocracy. It’s unbelievable, but Harry still believes in land over stocks.”
Tracy had carried the cups to the sink and now she began to run the water. Tony said quickly, “You don’t need to do that, Tracy.”
“I’ll just rinse them and put them in the dishwasher,” she said. “I hate the thought of dirty dishes.”
“American women are so housewifely,” Gwen said. She did not mean her statement as a compliment.
“American women do everything well,” Tracy returned condescendingly.
She wanted to remain in the room in order to overhear Tony and Gwen talk, so she reined in her strong desire to annihilate Gwen and held a plate under the faucet.
Gwen dropped her voice, and asked Tony, “Is he over the Dana Matthews scandal yet?”
“I think so.” Tony had lowered his voice as well. “I’ll never understand how he came to be involved with her in the first place. She was a cokehead. Of course, Harry didn’t know that when he first started going out with her. Everyone else in town knew, but not Harry. Then she became so dependent on him that, when he did find out, he felt he couldn’t desert her. It was the screaming-and-throwing tantrum she threw in Harrods that finished him off. It was in all the papers—you must have seen it.”
“Of course I did.”
“So, unfortunately, our chance to annex Dana and her fortune went down the tubes.”
“Our?” Gwen drawled. “Were you looking to share in Dana’s largesse?”
Tony said something that Tracy couldn’t hear, and Gwen laughed. Then Tony said, “How about you, darling? Are you ready to move in now that Harry seems to have recovered from the Dana fiasco?”
“It might be fun to be a countess,” Gwen said lightly.
Tracy felt such a surge of jealousy feat she had to put down the cup she was holding because her hand was shaking.
My God, she thought. How can I feel this way when I scarcely know the man?
The legs of Gwen’s chair scraped against the floor, and Tracy heard her get to her feet. “I’m going to use the loo before I go down to the stables.”
Tony’s voice resumed its normal volume. “We’re going upstairs, Tracy. Do you want to come?”
What Tracy wanted was to scratch out Gwen Mauley’s eyes.
She said with a sufficient degree of calm, “I’ll come when I finish the dishes.”
“Suit yourself,” Tony said. The kitchen door closed, and Tracy turned off the water and put the last dish in the dishwasher.
She had eavesdropped to find out if Tony would give away anything that might connect him to the stable fire. He hadn’t, but what she had heard had been just as worrying. She had been upset by the conversation, and she was upset with herself for being upset.
What is it to me if Harry marries that evil woman? she thought angrily.
At that moment the kitchen door opened, and Meg walked in. “Tracy, I didn’t know you were here,” she said in surprise.
“I was just tidying up after breakfast,” Tracy returned.
Meg had changed out of her church clothes and into her usual jeans and sweater. She wandered over to the sofa where the two spaniels were stretched out and sat down between them. “Poor Millie,” she said, petting one of the silky heads and gazing into a pair of quiet brown eyes. “Did Harry desert you?”
Marshal, jealous of the attention his sister was getting, nudged her.
Tracy returned her apron to the cupboard. “He went upstairs to change into riding clothes. Gwen Mauley is here and wants to ride her horse. I expect he’ll collect the dogs before he goes down to the stable.”
A scowl descended over Meg’s fine-boned face. “I don’t like Gwen Mauley. She’s after Harry.”
“Surely it would be a suitable match for him,” Tracy said. “Gwen likes horses, and she has money. What could be better?”
“She’s a bitch. And she doesn’t like me. I would hate it if she became my sister-in-law. She’d be even worse than Dana Matthews.”
“You don’t seem to like any of your brother’s girlfriends,” Tracy said.
“He was engaged once to Hilary Mortimer, and I liked her okay. But they had some kind of a falling-out and called it off.” The sun was shining on Meg’s silvery hair, which should have been beautiful but instead looked dull and lifeless. “He’d better get married soon, though. He’s going to be thirty this year.” She gave Tracy a wide-eyed look. “That’s old.”
To Tracy, at twenty-seven, thirty didn’t seem old at all. It seemed, in fact, a perfect age. She casually leaned against the counter, and said, “There is quite an age difference between you and your brothers.”
Meg bent her head to pet Millie again. “There’s twelve years between me and Harry and nine years between me and Tony.” Her voice sounded oddly gruff. “I was a surprise to my parents—and not a pleasant surprise either. My mother thought that she was finished with children, and then there I was.” Meg ran Millie’s silken ear through her fingers. “Not that I got in her way very much. When I was little she fobbed me off on a nanny, and when I was eight, I went away to school.”
Tracy thought of her own cherished childhood and was appalled at the picture that Meg had painted. No wonder the poor kid is anorexic, she thought, and said, “I have never understood why the English send their children off to boarding school at such a young age. It seems so irresponsible to entrust the most formative years of your child’s life to someone else.”
Meg shrugged. “Everyone does it.”
“We don’t do it in America, thank goodness. At least, a few people do, I suppose, but never at the age of eight!”
“There was this mean girl in my dorm,” Meg confided as she continued to stroke Millie’s long ears. “She used to tell me scary stories and make me cry.”
Tracy put down the sponge she had been holding. “It sounds ghastly.”
“Oh, it toughened me up,” Meg returned with a forced smile. “We Olivers come from tough stock, you know.”
Tracy looked at the fragile wrists that protruded from Meg’s sweater and went to sit next to the girl. The displaced Millie gave her an outraged look. Tracy put an arm around Meg and hugged her. “You’re not tough at all, you’re a sweetheart,” she said warmly. “I wish I had a little sister like you.”
Meg turned to look at her. “Do you really?”
“Absolutely.”
A little color had flushed into the skin over Meg’s sharp cheekbones. “I wish you were my sister, too.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Tracy said. “Let’s get Gail to pick us up and we can all three of us go out to lunch.”
“But you just ate breakfast,” Meg said in surprise.
Tracy smiled. “True. We’ll give it another hour before we leave.”
Meg looked at Tracy’s long, elegant legs, which were encased in sheer panty hose ending in navy high-heeled shoes. “How do you stay so thin if you eat so much?”
Tracy thought a moment before she replied, “Do you really think I’m thin, Meg?”
Meg nodded emphatically. “Of course, You have a beautiful figure.”
“Thank you.” She hesitated, then went resolutely on, “You do realize, don’t you, that you are much thinner than I am?”
“No,” Meg said. “I’m fat. Mummy used to call me a dumpling.”
What a dreadful woman her mother must have been, Tracy thought. She held out her bare right arm, and said, “Here, put your arm next to mine.” After a moment, Meg slowly complied. “Now roll up your sweater sleeve.” Meg shot her a suspicious look, but then she pushed up her beige wool sleeve, revealing an arm that was nothing more than a covering of flesh and blood vessels over bone.
“Look at our two arms, Meg,” Tracy urged. “Yours is much thinner than mine.”
“No it’s not,” Meg replied. “Look at all this fat.” And she pulled at the loose skin that had wrinkled in the crook of her arm.
“That’s not fat,” Tracy replied. “That’s a sign that you have shrunk your body more than your skin can contract. Your skin is like an oversize sweater, with folds.”
Meg jerked her sleeve down and averted her face. “I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that I’m anorexic. Well what if I am! I can’t help it.”
Tracy regarded Meg’s sharp profile. “Perhaps you could help it a little,” she said gently. “Do you think you could come out to lunch with Gail and me and eat something? It doesn’t have to be very much, but something.”
Meg’s back was rigid, and Tracy thought she was going to say no. Then, “I suppose I could do that,” she mumbled.
Relief surged through Tracy. “Wonderful. You know, if you were my little sister, I’d be very worried about you.”
Meg was staring at her lace-up boots. “Harry worries about me. He doesn’t know what to do, though.”
Tracy reached out and gently smoothed Meg’s hair back from her forehead. “Harry can’t do anything, Meg. It’s you who must save yourself.”
Meg’s head bent even lower, and in a gruff little voice she said, “I don’t know if I want to.”
Tracy’s heart ached. “Then try to pretend that you want to. Okay? Will you do that for me?”
“Oh—all right.” Meg lifted her head and said with feigned exasperation, “Anything is better than you nagging at me.”
Tracy grinned. “I’m a great nagger. Just ask my mother.” She patted Meg’s knee then stood up.
“Uh-oh,” Meg said.
Tracy looked at her. “What?”
Meg’s eyes were dancing. “The back of your navy blue dress is covered with dog hairs.”
Tracy turned around to look. “Yuck. It looks like I have more of their hair than they do.” She gave an ineffective brush or two at the dress. “Oh well, a visit to the dry cleaner will fix it.” She smiled. “Come along, Meg, and we’ll go and call Gail.”
14
Tracy was recognized in the restaurant and had to sign about a dozen autographs before she could eat. She did this with as much enthusiasm as a child who had been commanded to be polite by his parents while visiting a hated relative.
“Isn’t that annoying, having people bother you like that?” Meg asked when the last autograph seeker had walked away.
“It’s a pain in the ass,” Tracy returned grimly.
Tracy glared. “I signed the stupid autographs, didn’t I?”
“You were wonderful,” Gail said expressionlessly.
Tracy turned to Meg. “Can you tell me why a person would want to have someone else’s signature on a menu? Or a napkin? Or a piece of toilet paper? I can understand wanting an author’s name on a book, or an artist’s signature on a painting, but what the hell good is my signature on a napkin?”
Meg looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, but people seem to like it.”
“Well, I don’t,” Tracy said resentfully.
Meg was staring at her. “Don’t you like being an actress, Tracy?”
“I like being an actress very much. It’s why I accepted this role, because it’s a challenge. What I don’t like is being a movie star.”
“Goodness,” Meg said, wide-eyed.
“This is a running battle between Tracy and the rest of the world,” Gail said. “She doesn’t think her fans should have any part of her outside her movies, and they want to devour her whole.”
“You could do what Harry does when obnoxious people try to cozy up to him because he’s an earl,” Meg said.
“What does Harry do?” Tracy asked curiously.
“He looks at them as though they were some kind of disgusting bug,” Meg said. “Like this,” and she made a face.
Tracy and Gail roared with laughter.
Meg laughed, too. “Well, he does it better than that.”
A waiter stopped at their table, and said, “Are you ready to order, Miss Collins?”
“Yes,” Tracy said. Both she and Gail ordered the pasta salad and Meg, after a noticeable hesitation, ordered the same thing. When the food came, Tracy tried hard not to watch Meg eat. Instead she and Gail kept up a series of reminiscences about past movies, most of them amusing. Meg seemed to enjoy listening and by the time the waiter came back to remove their plates, Tracy was relieved to see that she had eaten some of her salad.
Prudently, she did not remark on this to Meg.
When they exited into the warm afternoon air, none of them felt like returning home.
“Nothing much is open on a Sunday, but we could go and look at the white horses,” Meg suggested.