Francesca flicked her hair behind her shoulders and turned back to the mirror. “All the more reason not to forget, isn't it,” she said lightly.
“Just be careful, darling.”
“Have you ever known me to lose control of any situation involving men?”
“Thank God, no.” Chloe pushed her thumbs beneath the collar of her mink and lifted the fur until it brushed the bottom of her jaw. “If only I'd been more like you when I was twenty.” She gave a wry chuckle. “Who am I fooling? If only I were more like you right now.” Blowing a kiss in the air, she waved good-bye with her handbag and disappeared down the hallway.
Francesca wrinkled her nose in the mirror, then jerked out the comb she had just arranged in her hair and stalked over to her window. As she stared down into the garden, the unwelcome memory of her old encounter with Evan Varian came back to her, and she shivered. Although she knew sex couldn't be that dreadful for most women, her experience with Evan three years ago had made her lose much of her desire for further experimentation, even with men who attracted her. Still, Evan's taunt about her frigidity had hung in the dusty corners of her consciousness, leaping out at the strangest times to plague her. Finally, last summer, she'd gathered her courage and permitted a handsome young Swedish sculptor she'd met in Marrakech to take her to bed.
She frowned as she remembered how awful it had been. She knew there had to be more to sex than having someone heaving away over her body, pawihg at her most private parts with sweat dripping from his armpits all over her. The only feeling the experience had produced inside her had been a terrible anxiety. She hated the vulnerability, the unnerving sense that she had relinquished control. Where was the mystical closeness the poets wrote about? Why wasn't she able to feel close to anybody?
From watching Chloe's relationships with men, Francesca had learned at an early age that sex was a marketable commodity like any other. She knew that sooner or later she would have to permit a man to make love to her again. But she was determined not to do so until she felt completely in control of the situation and the rewards were high enough to justify the anxiety. Exactly what those rewards might be, she didn't quite know. Not money, certainly. Money was simply there, not something one even thought about. Not social position, since that had been very much assured her at birth. But something... the elusive something that was missing from her life.
Still, as a basically optimistic person, she thought her unhappy sexual experiences might have turned out for the best. So many of her acquaintances hopped from bed to bed until they'd lost all sense of dignity. She didn't hop into any beds at all, yet she'd been able to present the illusion of sexual experience—fooling even her own mother—while at the same time, remaining aloof. All in all, it was a powerful combination, which intrigued the most interesting assortment of men.
The ringing of the telephone interrupted her thoughts Stepping over a pile of discarded clothes, she crossed the carpet to pick up the receiver. “Francesca here,” she said, sitting down in one of the Louis XV chairs.
“Francesca. Don't hang up. I have to talk to you.”
“Well, if it isn't Saint Nicholas.” Crossing her legs, she inspected the tips of her fingernails for flaws.
“Darling, I didn't mean to set you off so last week.” Nicholas's tone was placating, and she could see him in her mind, sitting at the desk in his office, his pleasant features grim with determination. Nicky was so sweet and so boring. “I've been miserable without you,” he went on. “Sorry if I pushed.”
“You should be sorry,” she declared. “Really, Nicholas, you acted like such an awful prig. I hate being shouted at, and I don't appreciate being made to feel as if I'm some heartless femme fatale.”
“I'm sorry, darling, but I didn't really shout. Actually, you were the one—” He stopped, apparently thinking better of that particular comment.
Francesca found the flaw she'd been looking for, a nearly invisible chip in the nail varnish on her index finger. Without getting up from the chair, she stretched toward her dressing table for her bottle of cinnamon brown.
“Francesca, darling, I thought you might like to go down to Hampshire with me this weekend.”
“Sorry, Nicky. I'm busy.” The lid on the varnish bottle gave way beneath the tug of her fingers. As she extracted the brush, her eyes flicked to the tabloid newspaper folded open next to the telephone. A glass coaster rested on top, magnifying a circular portion of the print beneath so that her own name leaped out at her, the letters distorted like the reflection in a carnival mirror.
Francesca Day, the beautiful daughter of international socialite Chloe Day and granddaughter of the legendary couturière Nita Serritella, is breaking hearts again. The tempestuous Francesca's latest victim is her frequent companion of late, handsome Nicholas Gwynwyck, thirty-three-year-old heir to the Gwynwyck brewery fortune. Friends say Gwynwyck was ready to announce a wedding date when Francesca suddenly began appearing in the company of twenty-three-year-old screen newcomer, David Graves....
“Next weekend, then?”
She swiveled her hips in the chair, turning away from the sight of the tabloid to repair her fingernail. “I don't think so, Nicky. Let's not make this difficult.”
“Francesca.” For a moment Nicholas's voice seemed to break. “You—you told me you loved me. I believed you....”
A frown puckered her forehead. She felt guilty, even though it was hardly her fault he had misinterpreted her words. Suspending the nail varnish brush in midair, she tucked her chin closer to the receiver. “I do love you, Nicky. As a friend. My goodness, you're sweet and dear....” And boring. “Who wouldn't love you? We've had such wonderful times together. Remember Gloria Hammersmith's party when Toby jumped into that awful fountain—”
She heard a muffled exclamation from the other end of the telephone. “Francesca, how could you do it?”
She blew on her nail. “Do what?”
“Go out with David Graves. You and I are practically engaged.”
“David Graves is none of your business,” she retorted. “We're not engaged, and I'll talk to you again when you're ready to converse in a more civilized fashion.”
“Francesca—”
The receiver hit the cradle with a bang. Nicholas Gwynwyck had no right to cross-examine her! Blowing on her fingernail, she walked over to her closet. She and Nicky had had fun together, but she didn't love him and she certainly had no intention of living the rest of her life married to a brewer, even a wealthy one.
As soon as her fingernail was dry, she renewed her search for something to wear to Cissy Kavendish's party that evening. She still hadn't found what she wanted when she was distracted by a tapping at the door, and a middle-aged woman with ginger-colored hair and elastic stockings rolled at the ankles entered the bedroom. As the woman began putting away the pile of neatly folded lingerie she had brought with her, she said, “I'll be leavin’ for a few hours if it's all right with you, Miss Francesca.”
Francesca held up a honey-colored chiffon Yves Saint Laurent evening dress with brown and white ostrich feathers encircling the hem. The dress actually belonged to Chloe, but when Francesca first saw it she had fallen in love with it, so she'd had the skirt shortened and the bust taken in before transferring it to her own closet. “What do you think of the chiffon for tomorrow night, Hedda?” she asked. “Too plain?”
Hedda put away the last of Francesca's lingerie and slid the drawer shut. “Everything looks grand on you, miss.”
Francesca turned slowly in front of the mirror and then wrinkled her nose. The Saint Laurent was too conservative, not her style after all. Dropping the gown to the floor, she stepped over the pile of discarded clothes and began digging in her closet again. Her velvet knickers would be perfect, but she needed a blouse to wear with them.
“Would you be wantin’ anything else, Miss Francesca?”
“No, nothing,” Francesca answered absently.
“I'll be back by tea, then,” the housekeeper announ
ced as she headed toward the door.
Francesca turned to ask her about supper and noticed for the first time that the housekeeper was stooped forward farther than normal. “Is your back bothering you again? I thought you told me it was better?”
“It was for a bit,” the housekeeper replied, resting her hand heavily on the doorknob, “but it's been aching so these last few days I can hardly bend over. That's why Ï need to leave for a few hours—to go to the clinic.”
Francesca thought how terrible it would be to live like poor Hedda, with stockings rolled at the ankles and a back that ached whenever you moved. “Let me get my keys,” she offered impulsively. “I'll drive you to Chloe's physician on Harley Street and have him send me the bill.”
“No need, miss. I can go to the clinic.”
But Francesca wouldn't hear of it. She hated seeing people suffer and couldn't bear the thought of poor Hedda not having the best medical care. Instructing the housekeeper to wait in the car, she traded in her silk blouse for a cashmere sweater, added a gold and ivory bangle to her wrist, made a telephone call, spritzed herself with the peach and apricot scent of Femme, and left her room—giving no thought at all to the litter of clothes and accessories she had left behind for Hedda to bend over and pick up when she returned.
Her hair swirled around her shoulders as she tripped down the stairs, a tortoiseshell cross fox jacket dangling from her fingers, soft leather boots sinking into the carpet. Stepping down into the foyer, she passed a pair of double-ball topiaries set in majolica pots. Little sunlight penetrated the foyer, so the plants never flourished and had to be replaced every six weeks, an extravagance that neither Chloe nor Francesca bothered to question. The door chimes rang.
“Bother,” Francesca muttered, glancing at her watch. If she didn't hurry, she'd never be able to get Hedda to the doctor and still have time to dress for Cissy Kavendish's party. Impatiently, she swung open the front door.
A uniformed police constable stood on the other side consulting a small notebook he was holding in his hand. “I'm looking for Francesca Day,” he said, coloring slightly as he lifted his head and took in her breathtaking appearance.
A picture sprang into her mind of the assortment of unpaid traffic tickets scattered in her desk drawer upstairs, and she gave him her best smile. “You've found her. Am I going to be sorry?”
He regarded her solemnly. “Miss Day, I'm afraid I have some upsetting news.”
For the first time she noticed that he was holding something at his side. A sudden chill of apprehension swept over her as she recognized Chloe's ostrich-skin Chanel handbag.
He swallowed uncomfortably. “It seems there's been a rather serious accident involving your mother....”
Chapter
5
Dallie and Skeet sped along U.S. 49 headed toward Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Dallie had caught a couple of hours’ sleep in the back seat while Skeet drove, but now he was behind the wheel again, glad that he didn't have to tee off until 8:48 in the morning, so he would have time to hit a few balls first. He hated these all-night drives from the final round of one tournament to the qualifying round of the next about as much as he hated anything. If the PGA fat cats had to make a few overnight runs across three state lines and past a few hundred Stuckey's signs, he figured they'd change the rules pretty damned quick.
On the golf course, Dallie didn't care how he dressed—as long as his shirts didn't have animals on them and nothing was pink—but he was particular about his clothes off the course. He preferred faded skin-tight Levi's worn with hand-tooled leather boots run over at the heels and a T-shirt old enough so that he could whip it off if the mood struck him and use it to polish the hood of his Buick Riviera without worrying about scratching the finish. A few of his female fans sent him cowboy hats, but he never wore them, favoring billed caps instead, like the one he was wearing now. He said that the Stetson had been ruined forever being worn by too many potbellied insurance agents in polyester leisure suits. Not that Dallie had anything against polyester —as long as it was American made.
“Here's a story for you,” Skeet said.
Dallie yawned and wondered whether he was going to be able to hit his two-iron worth a damn. He'd been off the day before, but he couldn't figure out why. Since last year's disaster at the Orange Blossom Open, he'd been playing better, but he still hadn't managed to finish higher than fourth place in any big tournament this season.
Skeet held the tabloid closer to the glove compartment light. “You remember I showed you a picture a while back of that little British girl, the one who was goin’ around with that prince fella and those movie stars?”
Maybe he was shifting his weight too fast, Dallie thought. That might be why he was having trouble with his two-iron. Or it could be his backswing.
Skeet went on. “You said she looked like one of those women who wouldn't shake your hand unless you was wearin’ a diamond pinky ring. Remember now?”
Dallie grunted.
“Anyway, seems her mama got hit by a taxicab last week. They got a picture here of her comin’ out of the funeral carryin’ on something terrible. ‘Bereft Francesca Day Mourns Socialite Mom,’ that's what it says. Now where do you think they come up with stuff like that?”
“Like what?”
“Bereft. Word like that.”
Dallie shifted his weight onto one hip and dug into the back pocket of his jeans. “She's rich. If she was poor, they'd just say she was ‘sad.’ You got any more gum?”
“Pack of Juicy Fruit.”
Dallie shook his head. “There's a truck stop coming up in a few miles. Let's stretch our legs.”
They stopped and drank some coffee, then climbed back into the car. They made it to Hattiesburg in plenty of time for Dallie to tee off, and he easily qualified for the tournament. On their way to the motel later that afternoon, the two of them stopped off at the city post office to check General Delivery. They found a pile of bills waiting for them, along with a few letters—one of which started an argument that lasted all the way to the motel.
“I'm not selling out, and I don't want to hear any more about it,” Dallie snapped as he ripped his cap off and threw it down on the motel-room bed, then jerked his T-shirt over his head.
Skeet was already late for an appointment he'd made with a curly-haired cocktail waitress, but he looked up from the letter he held in his hand and studied Dallie's chest with its broad shoulders and well-defined muscles. “You're just about the stubbornest sumbitch I ever knew in my life,” he declared. “That pretty face of yours along with those overdeveloped chest muscles could make us more money right now than you and your rusted-up five-iron have earned this entire season.”
“I'm not posing for any faggot calendar.”
“O. J. Simpson's agreed to do it,” Skeet pointed out, “along with Joe Namath and that French ski bum. Hell, Dallie, you were the only golfer they even thought to ask.”
“I'm not doing it!” Dallie yelled. “I'm not selling out.”
“You did those magazine ads for Foot-Joy.”
“That's different and you know it.” Dallie stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door, then yelled from the other side. “Foot-Joy makes a damn fine golf shoe!”
The shower went on and Skeet shook his head. Muttering under his breath, he crossed the hallway to his own room. For a long time it had been obvious to a lot of people that Dallie's looks could have given him a one-way ticket to Hollywood, but the fool wouldn't take advantage of it. Talent agents had been placing long-distance calls to him since his first year on the tour, but all Dallie did was tell them they were bloodsuckers and then make generally disparaging remarks about their mothers, which wouldn't have been so bad by itself, except he pretty much did it to their faces. What was so terrible, Skeet wanted to know, about earning some easy money on the side? Until Dallie started winning the big ones, he was never going to pick up the six-figure commercial endorsements that guys like Trevino could get, let alone the sweethear
t deals Nicklaus and Palmer made.
Skeet combed his hair and exchanged one flannel shirt for another. He didn't see what was so damned wrong with posing for a calendar, even if it did mean sharing space with pretty boys like J. W. Namath. Dallie had what the talent agents called sexual magnetism. Hell, even somebody who was half blind could see that. No matter how far down in the pack he was, he always had a full gallery following him, and eighty percent of that gallery seemed to be wearing lipstick. The minute he stepped off the course, those women surrounded him like flies after honey. Holly Grace said women loved Dallie because they knew he didn't own any color-coordinated underwear or Wayne Newton records. What we have with Dallas Beaudine, Holly Grace had insisted more than once, is the Lone Star State's last genuine Ail-American he-man.
Skeet grabbed the room key and chuckled to himself. The last time he'd talked to Holly Grace on the telephone, she'd said that if Dallie didn't win a big tournament pretty soon, Skeet should just go ahead and shoot him to put him out of his misery.
Miranda Gwynwyck's annual party, always held the last week of September, was in full swing, and the hostess surveyed the platters of Mediterranean red prawns, baby artichokes, and lobster in phyllo with satisfaction. Miranda, author of the well-known feminist work Woman as Warrior, loved to entertain well, if for no other reason than to prove to the world that feminism and gracious living weren't mutually exclusive. Her personal politics would not permit her to wear frocks or makeup, but entertaining gave her an opportunity to exercise what she referred to in Woman as Warrior as the “domestica”—the more civilized side of human nature, whether male or female.
Her eyes swept over the distinguished group of guests she had gathered between the stippled walls of her living room, newly redecorated that August as a birthday present from Miranda's brother. Musicians and intellectuals, several members of the peerage, a sprinkling of well-known writers and actors, a few charlatans to lend spice—exactly the kind of stimulating people she loved to bring together. And then she frowned as her gaze fell on the proverbial fly in the ointment of her satisfaction—tiny Francesca Serritella Day, spectacularly dressed as always and, as always, the center of male attention.
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