In the distance, from the other side of the house, I could hear the ocean murmuring, rushing up on a beach, but on this side the lake lay calm and blue-gold in warming sunlight. Out on its waters a sailboat moved under power toward one of the bridges, and on the far side rose the buildings of that busy commercial city that was West Palm Beach.
As I knew, Palm Beach itself had been the invention of Henry Flagler, Rockefeller’s partner in Standard Oil. He had seen the possibilities for an exclusive resort, and had run a railroad down to make the island accessible. It had been reclaimed from its wilderness of sand and shell and scrub growth into very much what it was now. Then he had built West Palm Beach across Lake Worth, to house, as he said, those who would serve the wealthy on the island of Palm Beach. West Palm Beach had thrived and spread and continued to marvel at the fantasies of the rich islanders whom it often served.
I turned against the rail of the balcony and looked about at what I could see of the house. It rambled away in all directions without apparent plan—which made it all the more interesting, though, as Ross had said, Allegra must have driven her architects mad in its building. Dominating all else, rose the tower that I’d heard referred to as the belvedere. There were windows and a balcony up there beneath the curiously domed roof that would command a splendid view in all directions. I liked to think of that room as belonging to Allegra, and I was already calling it Allegra’s Tower in my mind.
At the far end of this pleasant arched loggia, with its long chairs intended for sunning, a small door of carved cypress had been set into a rounded bulge of wall—obviously not the door to a bedroom. I went to it and turned the brass knob. Circular walls closed around me as I stepped inside, and I felt along the edge of the door for a light switch. When I touched it a ship’s lantern that hung from the ceiling came on, lighting a narrow flight of stairs curving away at my feet.
I smiled, remembering a secret staircase in a castle I had visited with Ysobel and Ian in Portugal. Clearly Allegra had loved her little surprises. Holding to the rail, I descended the flight and tried the knob of another closed door. Nothing seemed to be locked, and it opened easily. Once again I caught my breath in astonishment, as I’d done when I first entered Poinciana.
The room was enormous, its shadowy length cut into by long beams of sunlight from the tall windows at one end, turning it into a golden room, bathed in yellow light. Truly a golden room, I thought, for unless I was mistaken, the coffered ceiling was done in gold leaf, and so were panels along the end wall. No furniture occupied the center of the great room with its gleaming parquet floor, but there was a recessed dais for an orchestra, and little French chairs of tarnished gilt and frayed satin stood in place all the way around the walls, like guests waiting for the music to begin.
I wished I could have seen Allegra dancing here! What beautiful gowns she must have worn. Perhaps some of them were still hanging in the closets of her unused rooms. She must have been a great beauty in her time, and in that vanished era such parties must have been given regularly here as were never seen today.
Feeling like Cinderella wandering in a deserted palace, I walked across the room, peopling it in my mind with waltzing couples. No—not the waltz! Those were the Scott Fitzgerald days, so they’d have been dancing the fox-trot, and perhaps those who were young and daring would have Charlestoned madly across the parquet floor. More than ever, I wanted to see a picture of Allegra, wanted to know more about what she had been like.
A sound surprised me into turning and I saw that a door nearby had opened and a man stood staring at me. I recognized the uniform and cap of a guard, and after an instant of startled exchange, he touched a finger to his cap.
“Sorry, Mrs. Logan,” he said, and the door closed quietly as he disappeared.
Ross hadn’t mentioned guards, but I supposed they would be necessary at Poinciana, where several valuable collections were housed. For the first time, I had a sense of walls, not only holding out the world, but imprisoning those who lived here as well.
I shook off the fancy impatiently. Certainly I could come and go as I pleased and the walls had nothing to do with me. But now I had better find my way back to the other part of the house. Across the ballroom were wide double doors, arched and gilded, but I would explore where they went another time. I ran up the stairs and through the cypress door to stand at the loggia rail again. Someone shouted below me, and as I watched, a boy of about ten came running into sight, with a small nondescript brown dog at his heels. He slid to a halt on the grass as he saw me, while the dog leaped around him.
“Hello,” I called down. “My name is Sharon Logan. What’s yours?”
He didn’t answer me directly, though his curly red hair hinted at his identity. He simply stared at me for a long, unblinking moment before he spoke.
“So you’re the new one?” he said.
He was like his father, blunt. “And you must be Jarrett Nichols’s son? Do you have a name?”
“Sure. It’s Keith,” he informed me. “Keith Nichols. Gretchen said you were coming.”
And she hadn’t said it flatteringly, I suspected. “Do you live here?” I asked.
“Of course. All the time. My father stays here when he’s not in New York or Washington or someplace. We live over there in Palmetto Cottage. That’s the one closest to the lake.” He waved an arm, but from my balcony the cottage was out of sight around the next wing of the house.
“What a wonderful place to grow up in,” I said.
He nodded, and as his look moved to the right and left of me, I sensed in this boy a certain proprietorship about the house.
“Anything you want to know about Poinciana, you can just ask me,” he said. “I know things they don’t know. Things she told me.”
“You mean Mrs. Logan?”
“Of course.” Gray eyes that were like his father’s seemed suddenly bright with mystery. “Come on, Brewster!” he shouted, and boy and dog went racing toward the lake.
Brewster? Whose whimsy was that? He had spoken of his father and himself living at the cottage, with no word about a mother. And what was all that about some mysterious knowledge concerning the house? Well, the Nichols family was not my affair. There was too much else to occupy me now.
I turned back to my ivory room and began to unpack, while water ran in the marble tub. I hadn’t recovered from jet lag, and a hot soaking would be pleasant. But first I went to the door of the adjoining bedroom and tapped on the panel. There was no answer and I opened it, feeling almost surreptitious.
The room matched my own for size, but there was nothing of feminine elegance here. The big bed was covered by a woven hemp-colored spread, and the window draperies were of the same natural weave—suitable for warm weather. An easy chair of red leather sat near the inevitable fireplace—that could also be needed in Florida—and above the mantel hung a colorful hunting scene, with red coats on horses that were dashing for a fence. An open cabinet revealed a record player and stereo set, making me wonder what Ross’s tastes were in music. There was still so much to learn about my husband, but now, with an oddly guilty sense of spying, I closed the door and went to take my bath.
Later, dressed in a silk tunic and trousers of pale coral, I sat at the rosewood dressing table and brushed my hair, wound its coil at the back of my neck, and tucked in a tortoiseshell comb. Then I opened the fawn leather jewel case that had belonged to Ysobel and took out the jade my father had given me. In the padded ring tray were emerald earrings that were Ross’s gift, but for tonight I chose the jade. The golden chain that suspended the dragon pendant held jade beads at intervals along its strand, and when I put it over my head the green glowed with life against the pale coral of my tunic. When I’d fastened the matching earrings in ears that Ysobel had long ago caused me to have pierced, I was ready.
There was an instant, looking in the mirror, when I had the feeling that all this luxury was playacting. Make-believe. Out there somewhere was a real world where women worked for a living, an
d no one had eight indoor servants, let alone seventeen, or a house with a hundred rooms.
Ah well, I would playact for a while longer. Never in my life had there been enough money to do anything I wished. Ysobel might spend as she pleased, but I had never been permitted more than a small allowance. Everything was bought for me that I might want. So now I might as well enjoy and try to become accustomed. Nevertheless, it still seemed unreal, and sooner or later I would have to come down to earth and find something useful and interesting to do. Goodness only knew what, since apparently I was not expected to run the house or get a job.
Earrings secured, I searched the jewel case for the tissue-wrapped netsuke of frogs that Gentara Sato had given me in Kyoto. Once more I admired the intricate delicacy of the carving, and especially its subtle humor. If a frog mother could wear an expression that spoke for all maternal tolerance, this little frog wore it. Obviously, she was fatuously satisfied to have her heedless child put his foot in her eye.
There were holes for the cord, so perhaps I could have it made into a pendant. I really liked it much better than the ivory figurine Ross had given me, and which was still locked away in a trunk.
A light tap sounded at the door. I set down the frog carving and turned about on the dressing table bench to call, “Come in.”
A curly head of dark hair popped around the edge of the door, and a pair of bright green eyes regarded me speculatively. Then a dimple appeared in one cheek, and a small, rather pert woman pranced in. She was probably thirty-eight or forty, but her manner seemed more youthful.
“Pranced” was the word. She moved rather like a pony, and she skittered around the room without the slightest by-your-leave, looking all around before she came opposite my bench, where she stopped to smile at my astonishment.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Myra Ritter.” The accent was slightly Germanic. “And of course you are the new Mrs. Logan. Ysobel Hollis’s daughter. Mm.”
That considering “Mm” was already familiar to me. “I know I don’t look like her,” I said dryly.
Myra’s smile broadened. “I wasn’t going to say that. I thought you might be feeling a bit oppressed and that a friendly face would help. Do I look friendly?”
I recognized that she wasn’t being impertinent, or rudely familiar. She was clearly an original and it was evident that neither Poinciana nor its occupants impressed her to a point of subservient respect.
I had to smile. “Thank you. You’ve given me a name for yourself, but I still don’t have an identity to go with it.”
“Sorry! The room rather stunned me. Though I should be used to the house by now. I’m Mr. Nichols’s assistant. That sounds better than secretary, doesn’t it? I was just leaving and thought I would look in on you first. There’s been quite a stir about your coming, as you can probably guess. I’ve only worked here a few months myself, so I know what it’s like to spend your first days at Poinciana. At least I can get away at night. I don’t think I’d stay if the pay wasn’t so good!”
By any of the “proper” social standards that I had been quietly resisting most of my life, what she was doing was entirely outrageous. But she was being human, and I immediately liked her for it. Also, Myra Ritter, as I would come to know, had the ability to fly to the heart of a problem, discarding the extraneous. There was a shrewdness in her, seasoned by an enormous curiosity that she hadn’t the slightest interest in stifling.
“Thank you for coming,” I said. “Everything is strange and quite wonderful, but I don’t really believe in any of it yet. Won’t you sit down?”
She dropped into a chair and crossed a pretty pair of legs. She was young enough in years, yet older in intuitive wisdom, and she possessed a rather intense vitality.
“Money is always real,” she observed. “A very practical matter when one doesn’t have much of it. Though I find I can adapt to all this quite easily. But then, as I say, I can go home to my little apartment every night.”
“Tell me about yourself,” I said.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I was born in Vienna, but my parents brought me here when I was very young. I’ve been to school in Switzerland. I’ve worked at all sorts of jobs, here and there. Both in America and abroad. There was a marriage that broke up. Not a lot to tell, really.”
We chatted for a moment about schools in Switzerland, though mine were different from hers. I wondered if she might inform me about other members of the household. There was so much I needed to know.
“What is Mr. Nichols like to work for?” I asked.
“Considerate. Most of the time. He works very hard and he suppresses his suffering. Sometimes I think Americans can be as inhibited as the English. And the men of course are worse.”
I had no idea what she meant by the word “suffering.”
She went on without my asking, quite ready to gossip. I suppose I should have stopped her, but I didn’t. “Perhaps you don’t know? His wife died in an auto accident two or three years ago. There was some question about what really happened—whether it was suicide on her part. He’s a very good father to his son but the loss has been hard on both of them.”
I felt both shocked and sorry. “How dreadful,” I said, and wondered why Ross had never mentioned the tragedy. “I’m still ignorant about a great deal,” I went on. “I know some of the things that Mr. Nichols does for my husband, but just what do they encompass?”
She cocked her dark head on one side, grinning impishly. “I might quote one of the Mellons and say that Jarrett Nichols hires presidents of companies. Perhaps that’s not it exactly, but he does keep on eye on all those Logan Foundations, among other things.”
The picture of enormous power was coming clearer, but I turned from it with a conscious effort. “This house is what fascinates me. All the care Allegra Logan must have given to building and furnishing it!”
Myra nodded. “Yes—a fabulous lady. I’ve been reading about her in books from Poinciana’s library. She must have been very dramatic and willful when she was young, and always given to getting her own way with all her husbands. There were three of them, as you probably know. The first two she couldn’t stand and threw out. But I gather she was faithful to Charlie Logan all his life. There are several books in the library downstairs with whole chapters on Allegra Logan. Everything she did was news. And she’s the one who started a lot of the philanthropies Mr. Logan keeps up, and which Mr. Nichols helps to administrate. It’s his job to check new causes they might invest in. Tons of requests come in every year. Of course it’s all wonderful for tax saving, and of course makes Meridian Oil look soundly virtuous.”
Clearly, respect for the Logan empires was not uppermost in Myra Ritter’s mind, and I didn’t especially care.
“This is the first time I’ve met Mr. Logan,” she went on, “though of course I’ve talked to him by long-distance on any number of occasions, taking messages for my boss.”
Apparently, she had sat still long enough, and now she jumped up. I was to learn that Myra never made smooth, easy movements. She jumped and darted nervously, and now she skittered toward the door.
“Just wanted to say hello. I’ll run along now. Don’t let Gretchen put you down.” Again there was that intuitive leap to an understanding not altogether welcome, so that I felt unmasked.
She waved her fingers and disappeared through the door, closing it briskly behind her. For a moment I sat staring at its panel, not entirely comfortable at having been seen through so easily. It was as though with Myra Ritter my protective glass casing didn’t exist. She had seen straight into the uneasy truths that hid at my very core. Uncertainty and self-doubt had seemed visible at a glance to this odd little woman.
I turned back to my mirror and used my lipstick brush. So Gretchen was sure to be a problem. I wished I had asked Myra about Vasily Karl, the “Balkan” husband. It would be more useful to know about him than to study Allegra Logan’s life in the library downstairs—much as the idea appealed to me. Had he really given his
wife a black eye? And if he had, what would Ross do—throw him out?
These were questions that would eventually answer themselves. Now that I was dressed, there was still time before cocktails, so I might as well move about the house, learn to find my way through its maze. I stepped into the corridor and met Ross coming from the stairs. He hurried to put his arms around me, then held me away.
“Beautiful, Sharon! That coral silk becomes you. You do have an elegance your mother never had. You make me very proud, you know.”
What my mother had had was love. Love pouring out to her from every audience she faced, love cradling her from her friends, and most of all, Ian’s enveloping love. Mine too. At least I had been eager to give it whenever she had time to accept the giving. But such a thought came close to something I’d never had the courage to face fully, and I moved away from it now, pleased that Ross had compared me with Ysobel and found her wanting. Ross was one man whom Ysobel would never have been able to manage.
He had returned to me fully, and when he kissed me I felt again the marvelous warmth of his protection. All my uncertainties could go into hiding, and I need only drift with Ross’s arms around me and be forever safe. I thrust back the small inner voice that asked if this was all I wanted of life—just to be safe?
“Where are you off to?” he asked.
“I thought I might wander about the house for a little while. Get acquainted with it. I’ve already found the ballroom. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. It’s your home now. I’ll give you a proper guided tour tomorrow, but you can explore in the meantime. I’ll shower and change, and then join you downstairs. Have fun.”
His second light kiss sent me on my way, and I knew this wasn’t the time to ask about Gretchen.
Much of the upstairs floor, as I discovered in my roaming, was shut off and unused. Allegra had obviously done a great deal of entertaining in her day, and there must have been times when every room was full. But now bedroom after bedroom closed its door upon whatever life remained in the house. All were beautifully, tastefully furnished, though a little frayed and worn. Often they had their own sitting rooms, and fine paintings hung on their walls. Allegra must have liked the French moderns, and it was surprising to find a Cézanne sketch or a Renoir watercolor tucked away casually in a sitting room where no one came any more. The art collection downstairs was undoubtedly fabulous.
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