Suddenly I heard the sound of tires whooshing through puddles, a door slammed outside, then the front door opened. I heard Curtis bid Tony good evening. Then I heard him giving Tony all his messages and recounting all that had happened while he was gone. Tony wandered into the living room, as he always did, and smiled when he saw me.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here when you and Logan returned," he said, coming to me. "Was it a very trying time?"
"Yes," I said sharply. "For more reasons than one. There was surprise as well as sadness, mystery, and confusion."
"Where's Logan?" he asked, as if looking for an ally at this moment.
"He was called back to Winnerow over a labor crisis at the factory. Perhaps we should go into your office and talk, Tony," I said quickly. He stared at me a moment, his blue eyes narrowing now with suspicion and some understanding.
"I was just heading there," he said. He gestured for me to lead the way and I did so, snapping on the light and going right to his desk. I sat down quickly in the leather chair in front of it and waited for him to go around his desk. He dropped some papers on it and then sat down. "So you met with J. Arthur Steine," he said, as if that conclusion explained it all.
"Yes. And new I want to hear it from you, Tony. Why did you buy the circus and then give it to Luke for only one dollar?"
He shrugged and sat back, lacing the tips of his fingers together to form a cathedral and then pressing his palms together. He brought his fingers to his lips before speaking. It looked as if he were offering up some prayer.
"I was searching for ways to get you to come back to us at Farthy," he began. "I couldn't believe you were going to continue to give all this up for a teaching position in that small town, where the people didn't even appreciate you."
"I wasn't there for the people, I was there for the children," I corrected him.
He nodded. "I know. Anyway, I was at a loss for ways to win your love and your loyalty, and it occurred to me that if I did something for Luke, you might appreciate the things I could do for everyone you . . . you cared for . . and you would come back."
"But you never even told me what you had done," I said, practically jumping on his words. "Explain what kind of logic there was in that? And you're usually a very logical man, Tony."
"I realize that," he admitted. "But right after I bought the circus and gave it to Luke, I got cold feet. I thought you would think I was trying to buy your love and loyalty, and in the end I would do more damage by telling you this. So I just forgot about it. It was no big expense for me. It didn't matter, and then.. then the telegram came and the rest you know. So," he said, eager to leave the topic, "how's the little one? I'm sure that----"
"I want to know all of it, Tony. I want to hear the whole story from your lips and I want to know why you did it," I repeated, my eyes fixed coldly on him. I knew that when I wanted to, I could affect his sharp, penetrating gaze. I hadn't only inherited some of his looks; I had inherited the steel in his backbone. We were facing each other down, Tatterton to Tatterton. For what seemed to be an eternity, he sat there, his blue eyes calm and unreadable.
"What do you mean?" he finally said. "I told you why I did it."
"You didn't tell me the truth, Tony." I wondered if in his own mind, he thought that he had. For so long now the inhabitants of Farthii ggale Manor had been living with illusions. Perhaps it was no longer possible for him to remember what was true and what wasn't. Sometimes, I thought, you could dream so hard, you no longer know whether it was a fantasy or a real memory.
"What is not true?" he asked.
"The reason you bought the circus and gave it to Luke."
"What I told you is the truth," he insisted. "I did it for you."
"I don't mean that, Tony. In some distorted way I think you did think you were doing what you did in order to win me back here. But I want to hear the whole story. What was Luke's reaction when you gave him the circus?"
"What would his reaction be? He was grateful," Tony said, shrugging. "At first he thought you had everything to do with it. I had to explain that you knew nothing of it, and I had to require that he not ask or tell you about it. He was confused, but he accepted that. And then, as I said, I forgot all about it. So . . ."
"What else did you ask of him?" I demanded. It was as if I had shot-him through the heart with my sharp words. His face whitened.
"How do you know I asked anything else of him? Did J. Arthur Steine tell you something else?"
"No, Tony. Mr. Steine is your man right down to the soles of his shoes. But after I heard what you had done and how much you were involved in Luke's affairs, I couldn't stop wondering about it. When Logan and I returned, I had hoped to find out from you why you had done what you had done, but you weren't here. I couldn't sleep last night thinking about it, so I came down here to your office and searched for the answers myself."
"You did what?" Alarm claimed his face. I saw his eyes dart to the file cabinet and back to me.
"Yes, Tony, I looked through your files and I found the agreement you drew up between yourself and Luke, and what I want to know, what I demand to know, is why you did such a terrible thing?" I said. My body was trembling now with my effort to remain strong and determined I felt my heart thumping and felt tears welling in my eyes.
Stunned for a moment, Tony couldn't speak. He stared at me and then sat back in his chair. He looked down, unable to face me, to meet my piercing gaze, my eyes of blue ice.
"It was a terrible thing to do," he confessed, speaking slowly, like a man lost in his own desires. "I lived with it all this time, promising myself that I would end it soon, and then, when that telegram came, and I realized it was too late, that I could never right the wrong . . ." He looked up. "I didn't have to go away on business. I simply ran away for a couple of days. I wanted to avoid you when you first came back from the funeral and from speaking to J. Arthur Steine. I hoped that somehow you wouldn't be wondering about all this, but of course, that was a silly hope. For you always seek to know everything, every bit of truth even if that truth will bring you to misery.
"Some of the things you once said to me about the way I treated Jillian were true--I did permit myself to live in illusions, and I was trying to do the same with you. I should have realized there was too much Tatterton in you, early Tatterton, for you not to see it."
"Why did you do it?" I pursued. "Why did you insist Luke not have anything to do with e?"
He looked away for a moment, obviously gathering the courage to say what he had to say to me.
"You don't know what it was like when you left after Troy's death. You don't know how nuch I missed you. I never told you how much you meant to me, how important it was for me to have you here, to be able to see you and talk to you . . . That night I took you to the theater was one of the happiest nights of my life. . . I. . I had already lost Jillian, in a sense, and it looked like I had lost you, too.
"Suddenly there was some hope you might come back, hope that I could arrange things in such a way that you would spend a great amount of your time here, and then . . . when I heard you had invited Luke to your wedding . . ."
"How did you hear that, Tony? You weren't attending the wedding in Winnerow. You weren't involved in the expense. I paid for that myself," I said, my pride as strong and as straight as a flag in the wind.
"Logan told me," he said.
"Logan?" I sat back. "Logan?" He nodded. "But you barely knew Logan then. I don't understand."
"I called him as soon as I heard you were getting engaged and we spoke. I spoke to him a few times. I begged him not to tell you I was calling him and asking him questions about you. I didn't want you to think I was trying to interfere. He understood. I thought he was an intelligent, sensitive young man."
"And you asked him about my relationship with Luke?"
"Yes."
"So you learned I had invited him to my wedding," I said, eager for him to go on.
"Precisely. I was afraid," he said quickly. "Afraid you wo
uld make up with Luke and the two of you would grow so close to each other, that you would want to remain in his world and I would be cut out of your life."
"And then you bought the circus and gave it to him right before my wedding so he couldn't attend. You did that!" I exclaimed, realizing the significance of what he had done. "You actually planned it that way! Kept him from my wedding and then kept him from me!"
"Yes."
"You sit there so calmly and tell me you went ahead and used your great wealth to try to buy my love, not only buy my love for you, but buy my love away from Luke."
"Yes," he said again. "I confess to it all, but you must understand my motives. You must--"
"I must not!"
I stood up. All my rage and fury burst from me like a long-dammed mountain stream, and I yelled, really yelled at him. "All my life I have been passed from one set of arms to another, bought and sold, it seems, no better than a slave before the Civil War. My love has been treated as though it were a commodity, a product, one of your precious Tatterton Toys, something to possess and hoard and manipulate and throw away, and you want me to understand?"
"Heaven--"
"Why must I understand your feelings? When do any of you men understand mine? When do you think of me, and not of yourselves? You and Luke . . . you were two of a kind. It's the same thing to buy or to sell a person's love . . . either one is just as terrible a thing to do.
"Yes, Luke was just as horrible and as guilty for agreeing to your contract, but he wanted his precious circus so much, he was willing to sell any love he might have possessed for me. He wasn't my real father and he knew it.
"But you," I said pointing my finger at him. "To make such an offer, to appeal to his greed, to his passions . . you're like . you're like the Devil." "No, Heaven. Please." He started to reach out toward me, looking like a desperate man.
"Yes," I said, backing away. "You are like the Devil. You played upon his lusts, his passion for that circus, and like the Devil, you made him sell a part of his soul."
"But only because of my love for you!" he protested.
"I don't want that kind of love. That's not love, true and pure; that's parasitical love, love that feeds off others. You've lived a life of lies, Tony. And you're still living it and it's made you a very selfish man."
"That's not so," he insisted. "Everything I have now, everything I've done, is all for you."
"Is it? What was the one thing you knew that I wanted in my life? What was the one thing that made my life complete, that gave me hope and happiness? The one thing that you kept from me?"
He stared at me in confusion.
"I don't understand. What did I deny you? What did you ever ask for that I turned down?"
"You let me live under one cloud after another, just so you could play the sun and give me rays of hope and happiness whenever it pleased you. You were afraid that if I wasn't sad, that if I didn't live under a dark and gloomy sky, you could never be something bright and alive to me.
"So you let me think that Luke didn't care for me, when in fact you had trapped him within his own prison of greed."
"But . ." He started forward, hoping to embrace me. I continued to back away from his desk.
"And you let me believe that Troy was dead," I said. The words fell like thunder, echoing in the room. He whitened so, he looked like he had been turned into a statue of salt. I didn't want to give away the secret that Troy and I had held between us. It had been all that was left that was precious and special. But I suddenly realized that if Tony were honest and if he really wanted me to return to Farthy, he would have told me about Troy not being dead and brought me back to help him regain a normal life.
But he didn't want me to return to Troy; he wanted me to return to him and to him only.
"You know?" he whispered.
"Yes. I found him out just before he left."
"It was his wish that you not know, not mine," Tony pleaded quickly. That moment Anthony Townsend Tatterton looked as cheap and as small as a petty thief to me, a petty thief who had tried to lie his way out of his guilt, and when one lie didn't work, he tried another and finally even betrayed those closest to him, all to save himself.
"But you knew that he said those things because he was despondent, because he believed we could never be anything to each other. You could have done more. If you would have told me and I could have seen him . . . by the time I did discover him, it was too late.
"And so he's gone," I said softly, "and a love that was truly unselfish has been lost."
I looked up at him, the tears now streaming down my face.
"For all I know, you drove Jillian into her madness," I said. "And you helped drive Troy into oblivion. Now," I concluded, standing straight, "you've driven me away."
"Heaven?' he screamed as I turned and rushed out of his office. I didn't look back. I ran up the stairs to my suite and began to pack.
In the morning I would take Drake and leave Farthy. This time I would leave forever.
I looked in on Drake and found that he had brought his blanket up and nearly over his head as if to shut out the world around him It was the way I felt, too, but I knew that hide as you would, you couldn't escape from the truth. Truth had its way of finding the cracks and the openings in whatever walls of makebelieve you set up around yourself, even if you were rich. I felt as though everything around me here was made up of crepe paper and cellophane. It was pretty and bright and colorful, but one strong wind could blow it all away and leave you standing naked, shivering under bruised and angry clouds.
I brought his blanket down around his neck, brushed away some strands of hair from his eyes, and kissed him softly on the cheek. Tomorrow I would take him to Winnerow. As suddenly as he had been brought into this richly elegant and luxurious world, he would be taken from it. I knew it would confuse him, but I also now knew that this was no place for him to grow up. My bloodline might have started here at Farthy, but my heartline was tied to Winnerow, tied to that simpler world where I could look out of the windows of the Hasbrouck House and see the Willies.
It was better that Drake grow up in that sunlight, surrounded by those sounds, than here in the long, empty halls of Farthinggale, surrounded by the moaning ghosts who haunted the Tattertons.
I did some packing for both of us until I grew too tired and then prepared myself for bed. Even though I was both physically and emotionally exhausted, I lay there staring into the darkness, my eyes wide open. I wondered about Logan and about the life we would make for ourselves in Winnerow now. I hoped I could make him understand why I wanted no more to do with Farthinggale Manor and little to do with Tony. Of course, I wouldn't tell him about Troy, but he would know what Tony had done to keep Luke away from me, and I hoped he would be just as upset about it as I was. Mostly, I hoped he would hold me near to him, and in time we could recapture that wonderfully exciting feeling we once shared for each other when we were high school students.
I couldn't help thinking about Troy as well. I wondered where he was and how much he would know of my life, how much he would know of what had happened and would happen. Would he be watching nearby as he had watched my wedding reception? Or had he truly cut himself off from everything concerning me and Farthy?
Every passing day now he became more and more of an illusion, the personification of truly ideal love, the unattainable perfect love, the love dreams are made of, the love you destroy simply by touching it, just as you destroy a beautiful, perfect soap bubble the moment the tips of your fingers graze its thin, fragile surface. Like the soap bubble, such love was something to watch or to hope for, but something never to hold.
I knew that now. I knew that the love I had for Logan was a love whose roots were in reality and I must cultivate that love, nourish it, and help it grow into a sturdy oak, unshakable by any wind and storm life would bring it. With Logan I would build a life, a family, a future. I had lost so much, but I still had much for which I could be grateful, much I could cherish.
"Leigh," he said, "are you awake?"
It was Tony. Even from this distance I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
"What is it you want, Tony?" I asked, making my voice as cold and as hard as I could. He responded with a slight little laugh at first, and then he found the light switch on the wall and snapped it on. The room exploded with brightness. I covered my eyes and when I took my hands from them, I saw him approaching, wearing only a shirt and slacks, his shirt unbuttoned to his navel. In his arms he carried one of Jillian's sheer nightgowns.
"I brought this for you," he said. His eyes were glassy; his hair was disheveled, looking like he had been running his fingers through it. "I love how it looks on you. Won't you wear it for me again? Please."
"I never wore that for you, Tony. You're drunk. Please, leave my room."
"But you did wear it for me. And look," he said, bringing his hand out from under the tightgown, "I've brought you some of Jillian's perfume. I know how much you like it. You're always trying to get her to give you some. Let me dab some on you," he said, sitting on my bed. I pulled myself farther back against the headboard, but he reached over, pressing the bottle to his fingers and then stroking the side of my neck with them. The heavy scent of jasmine filled my nostrils. I started to pull away when he brought his fingers down to the valley between my breasts.
"No, Tony, stop. I don't want to wear any of Jillian's perfume now. I said stop. You're drunk. Get out of here," I demanded. He looked at me and smiled as if he couldn't hear my words. Then, remembering the nightgown in his arms, he stood up and spread it out on the bed beside me, stroking it with affection as he did so.
Casteel 03 Fallen Hearts Page 24