Riva, hearing his dry tone, wondered if he resented his former wife’s interest in Dante’s restaurant or if he suspected it was in Dante himself. The last idea drew her brows together in a frown.
Edison shifted restively. “I expect I had better find my wife. It’s about time we left, too.”
He waited a moment, as if he half expected an invitation to join the party from Bonne Vie. When none was forthcoming, he walked away with stiff strides.
Noel went on as if no one had spoken. “If you don’t care to go with the others, I’ll be glad to ride back home with you after we drop them off.”
“No,” Riva said quickly, too quickly, “I always enjoy going out to the lake.” To be alone in the limousine with Noel for that long, dark ride was not a prospect she cared to face just now.
His face tightened, but he only said, “Romoli suggested that we go on ahead since he’ll be bringing Constance in his car. Shall we?”
At his brief gesture that indicated that she should precede him, Riva moved toward the entrance door leading from the courtyard back into the building. It was necessary to make her farewells and to speak to those who called out to her in her progress through the crowded rooms. Finally they were out the front door and moving down the walk toward the wrought-iron gates.
The limousine was parked at the curb along with two or three others like it and a long line of other luxury cars, among them Dante’s Alfa Romeo since he had met them at the mint. Riva and Noel walked toward the limousine. As they drew closer, however, they could see that the long car was dark and deserted.
“Where is everyone?” she said in surprise.
“George is probably in the nearest bar. I doubt he expected us to leave so soon. Hold on.”
Noel swung away from her and walked back to the gates, where he spoke to the man on guard there. He returned in a moment. “Someone will call to let him know we’re ready.”
“That doesn’t explain where the others are,” Riva pointed out.
Noel shrugged. “They’ll be along. Margaret had to wait for Boots. I believe he had gone to the restroom.”
“We might as well go back inside,” Riva said. Standing around on the sidewalk in the dark was awkward, especially with Noel. He was being polite, but there was an edge to his voice that made her nervous.
“We can wait in the car.”
“It’s locked.” She tried the handle to prove it.
He pushed his hand into the pants pocket of his tailored evening suit. “I have an extra key.”
“How convenient.” The words were sharp.
He refused to rise to the provocation. “Just a habit, being prepared for any possibility.”
There was nothing to be done except to climb into the long vehicle when he opened the door and held it for her. She settled onto the rear seat and he slid in beside her. He closed the door after them and the interior lights went off, leaving them in darkness.
Neither spoke for long moments. They watched a couple leave the mint and walk arm in arm along the sidewalk toward their parked car. Somewhere a police siren sounded, growing louder then fading away.
The topic Riva chose to fill the silence was dictated by her own curiosity, though she selected her words with care. “I believe someone said you sat in with the jazz group tonight. I didn’t know you were a musician.”
“I’m not,” he answered shortly.
“Groups as good as that one don’t let just anyone play with them in public.”
“The man on the trumpet is a friend from Paris, though he was born in New Orleans. Jazz is big over there, has been since the twenties, and he had a gig at one of the clubs in the Pigalle district a couple of years back. I used to go to see him and his boys, and they let me play around with the drums. We expatriate Louisianians got into the habit of after-hours jam sessions.”
“Consoling yourselves with music from home?” she suggested, disturbed by the image his words evoked.
“You might say that.”
There was no encouragement in his reply to enlarge on the subject. Riva fell silent.
“Don’t you think,” Noel said, turning toward her, “that having an affair with Edison Gallant so soon after my father’s death is a little tasteless?”
His attack was disconcerting. “I’m not—” she began, at a loss, then stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. “There is no affair.”
“Oh, yes, you were in his arms because you were dancing.”
“What were you doing, spying on me?” Counterattack, she had discovered, was often the best way to answer unreasonable charges.
“The scene was rather public, not that that seemed to bother you. Funny, I thought that was the one thing we had in common, respect for my father’s memory.”
The words were hurtful. Her voice was stifled as she said, “So it is.”
He turned toward her, bracing his arm on the seat back as he hovered over her. “Then what in God’s name is going on with you and Gallant? Why won’t you tell me?”
“It’s my business, mine alone!”
“Your affair, you mean,” he said in bitter contempt. “If you’re so hard up for affection, why go to strangers? We’ve always kept it in the family before, haven’t we?”
“Noel!” she cried, her eyes widening in disbelief.
Before the word had left her mouth he caught her shoulders to draw her to him. His lips, firm, slanting, came down on hers. The touch burned, flaring in moist heat along the curves of her mouth, spreading over the surface of her skin in ripples of sensual delight. Her muscles trembled with the effort of resistance and the equally urgent need to abandon it. Some instinct of self-preservation held her back; still, she could not prevent her hand from straying to his shoulder. She smoothed her palm upward, tangling her fingers in the thick and silky waves of hair at the base of his neck.
He traced the line of her parted lips with his tongue, touched the pearl glaze of her teeth, and tasted the sweet and fragile inner surface of her mouth. She met his tongue with her own, twining, drinking the flavor of champagne and his own sweetness.
He smoothed his hand over her hair and down the tapering line of her back, drawing her nearer. He inhaled her perfume, that heady blending of roses and gardenias and jasmine and other more exotic scents that was so much a part of her, holding it inside him as if he would hold her essence.
He went still. His muscles hardened, and a tremor ran through him. He thrust her away from him, releasing her and propelling himself away until he came up against the far door with his shoulder. One hand was pressed down on the seat, the other clenched in a fist on his thigh. He stared out the window, his face shadowed and unreadable in the dim light of the street lamps and the exterior lighting of the restaurant across the road.
“What is it?” she asked in a ragged whisper.
He breathed deeply, once, twice. When he answered, his voice was remote, stringently contained. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No. Why did you?”
“It won’t happen again.”
She sank back, leaning her head against the seat and closing her eyes. There was a stinging sensation under her lashes, and she blinked it away. “I don’t belong to the Staulets or anyone else. I belong to me.”
“Yes, I know.”
She opened her eyes, staring at his dark profile with a haunted sensation inside her. There was in the compression of his voice a raw note that was a reminder of a host of memories she had thought safely locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind. She did not want them released, could not bear it.
A high-pitched laugh pierced the night. Margaret was leaving the mint, clinging to her husband’s arm. If the way she walked and the inane smile on her face were any indications, she had had too much to drink.
Riva sighed in relief at the sight. The man beside her let out his breath also in a soft sound that was an echo of her own.
TEN
ERIN BLEW INTO THE HOUSE LIKE A CLEAN BREEZE. She let the
back door slam behind her, taking the stairs two at a time as she called out for her mother. She found Margaret with Riva where they were having breakfast on the upper gallery overlooking the pool at the rear of the house. She swooped down on them, giving them both an exuberant hug.
“Please, sweetie,” Margaret said, lifting a hand to her temple, “my head.”
Erin dropped into a chair and flung the thick, curling mane of her hair back behind her shoulders. She twitched aside the napkin covering the basket of croissants and took one, biting into it. “What’s the matter? Sinus headache?”
“The champagne served at the benefit last night was undoubtedly cheap. It’s given me the most terrible—”
“You’re hung over!” Erin said in gleeful amazement.
“I am not!” Margaret gave the girl an outraged stare before closing her eyes in pain.
“You certainly look the worse for wear to me.” Erin took another bite of her croissant, her eyes bright.
“Your mother isn’t used to nightlife,” Riva said.
Margaret opened her eyes to glare at her sister. “You needn’t make it sound like I’m a countrified stay-at-home.”
Riva’s smile held sympathy as well as amusement. “I thought you might prefer it to sounding like a lush.”
“I told you—”
“Oh, Mama, lighten up. Nobody thinks you got bombed on purpose!”
Margaret seemed to swell. “I did not get bombed. That’s a fine way to talk to your mother, I must say! I don’t suppose I have far to look to discover where you learned such disrespect. If I had known this was how it would be, I would never have allowed you to come down here to this wicked place for college. I don’t know what was wrong with going to Tech. At least you would have been closer to home.”
It was a familiar diatribe. Erin rolled her eyes heavenward but made no reply. Riva stepped into the breach. “Speaking of which, Erin love, why aren’t you in class?”
Erin sent her a quick grin. “I skipped. It isn’t every day my folks come to visit. I see you’re playing hooky, too.”
Riva smiled in agreement. She usually stayed away from work when Margaret visited. Her sister expected it. Besides, the thought of Constance and Margaret being forced to entertain each other in her absence had seemed a situation too problematical to risk. As it turned out, she need not have worried. Constance usually kept to her room until noon, then liked to stay up late, while Margaret rose early and retired to her room for a nap after lunch as a stirring prelude to an early night. The two women had hardly seen each other except to nod in passing.
“You got my message before you left, about the photographer?” Riva said to the younger woman. She had given Doug Gorsline’s number to Erin’s roommate when she called, since Erin had been out.
“Lord, yes. Isn’t that weird, him going to so much trouble to get in touch? I gave him a call. He’ll be over this afternoon.”
It was said so blithely that it took Riva’s breath for an instant. “You—you mean he’s coming here?”
“Sure. Is there some reason he shouldn’t?” Erin looked from Riva to Margaret, who sat with her hand shading her half-closed eyes, paying scant attention. “I mean, I know I probably should have asked, but my friends never seemed to bother you before, Aunt Riva.”
Recovering, Riva waved a hand. “No, no problem.”
“That’s good, because I don’t know this guy from Adam’s off uncle, and I didn’t want it to seem like a date.”
“Very wise. Is…anyone else coming?”
“Who? Oh, you mean Josh?” Erin grinned. “You think you’re going to have some kind of triangle on your hands?”
“The thought occurred to me.”
Erin shook her head as she reached for the blackberry jam and a second croissant. “Josh has to man the phone at his dad’s headquarters. Actually, I was supposed to stuff envelopes after class, but Josh agreed being with everyone here was more important.”
Margaret sniffed. “Kind of him.”
“Yes, wasn’t it. But it’s just as well he isn’t here. There’s something I wanted to talk about to you both without him.”
Margaret flung a quick glance of alarm at Riva before she spoke. “Something about Josh?”
“Yeah, sort of. There’s a bunch from school planning a bicycle tour of the Colorado mountains during the break between the summer session and the fall semester, and Josh and I would like to go. We’d only be away a week, since that’s about all Josh can take from the campaign. I thought we could all stay at your cabin, Aunt Riva, and take picnics and side trips, maybe an overnight bike ride or two. It would be so great! Most of the kids have never seen anything like your place up there, and it would save money, too.”
“Well, I—” Riva began.
“Just a minute,” Margaret interrupted, her voice strident. “You are asking me, young lady, to let you take off for a week to Colorado with Edison Gallant’s son?”
“There’ll be two or three other couples. The girls will probably sleep in one room and the guys in the other.”
“Probably? Probably? What does that mean? If you think I’m going to give you my permission to go sleep with that boy or wallow all over each other in Riva’s cabin with these other couples, having orgies and smoking pot and I don’t know whatall, you’ve got another think coming! No, you can’t go to Colorado!”
Erin threw down her croissant and sprang to her feet with tears forming in her eyes. “I knew it! I knew you’d turn it into something dirty. Well, the dirt’s in your own mind, Mom. Josh isn’t like that.”
“They’re all like that.”
“How do you know, tell me that? Aunt Riva isn’t like you, always seeing something filthy everywhere she looks and making me feel dirty about something as good and clean as sex.”
Margaret leaned forward. “And just what do you know about sex, clean or otherwise, pray?”
“Not that much, but keep on and I may give it a try to find out what sets you off about it. Josh Gallant is fun to be with, and I like him. He’d be as good a man as any for starters, even if he is a year younger than I am.”
Margaret lunged forward, as if she would strike Erin, then gave a strangled moan and clutched both her head and her heart at the same time. Erin flushed guiltily but swung toward Riva. “Tell her, Aunt Riva,” she begged. “Make her see there’s nothing wrong about this trip. You know Josh. He wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
Riva got to her feet, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder and clasping it in a soothing gesture. “Erin honey, I’d like to help, but I have to say your mother has a point. I mean, if you really aren’t serious about Josh, don’t you think this trip would be tempting fate?”
“If we wanted to tempt fate, as you put it, we could do it right here in New Orleans!”
“I see that, but—”
Erin’s face twisted. “No, you don’t see at all! You just expect people my age to hop into bed the first chance they get. It’s enough to make a person wonder what you did when you were young or what you do now when you get the chance!”
“Erin!”
Margaret cried out at the same time, “That will be enough, my girl!”
“Yes, it will,” Erin shouted, “more than enough. I’m of age, you know. If I want to go, if I want to sleep with Josh, or half the men in New Orleans for that matter, there’s not a damn thing you can do, either of you, to stop me!”
Whirling away from them, she ran from the upper gallery. They heard her footsteps thudding down the carpeted stairs. Minutes later, her small car roared into life and screeched away down the drive.
Riva sat back down. She picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. The coffee was cold and bitter. She put it down again. Agitation thrummed along her veins until she felt as if she could not bear to stay in her own skin with it. Erin was so much like Beth, so much.
Margaret, still pressing her temple and her chest with her fists, turned her head to stare at Riva. “It’s your fault. Erin never defied me be
fore in her life, never said such things to me. You have ruined her with your liberal ideas, totally spoiled her by giving her everything she so much as hints that she wants. If she goes off with that boy and commits this horrible crime, it will be on your head. That’s all I have to say. It will be on your head.”
Riva looked at her sister, and her gaze was bleak. “There will be nothing new in that, Margaret. It’s where it has always been.”
“Yes. That’s why you’ve got to do something, now, before it’s too late.”
“I’m trying.”
“That isn’t good enough. You know what Edison Gallant wants, he’s made it plain enough. I saw it in his eyes last night when he thought I was you, and when he went over to speak to you. All you have to do is agree.”
“Is that why you went off and left me with him, so I could?”
“You act as if it’s the first time. What can be so terrible about it?”
“If you don’t know, there’s no way I can tell you.” Riva clenched her teeth together to keep from saying more.
Margaret’s face hardened. “It seems little enough to me, especially when your daughter’s future is at stake.”
Riva stared at the other woman. She could not believe Margaret had actually acknowledged that Erin was hers. Though she had made a game of trying to trick her into admitting it, there had also been times when Riva wanted to scream at her sister for her obstinate insistence, even in private, in claiming parentage. There had been days when Riva had whispered the words “my daughter” or “my little girl” just to assure herself that she had ever borne a child, so total had been Margaret’s possession. It was almost frightening, now, to be permitted a claim to her.
She cleared her throat of the obstruction that had risen there. “Edison can’t be relied upon to keep his end of the bargain. More than that, he may say he only wants this one thing, to get me into his bed, but it would be like him to demand more and more.”
“Whatever he wants,” Margaret said, reaching out and catching her wrist with hard fingers. “I still say that you have to give it to him. If you don’t, I don’t know how we’re going to live with ourselves.”
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