Bright Young Things Part 20

"I think I need to lie down," Cordelia said after a while. "Could you walk me up to my room?"

"Yes," Astrid said immediately.

As they crossed the waxed floor of the ballroom through the mingling guests, she let her gaze rise from her shoes and dart backward, to the place where Charlie stood surrounded by men in dark suits. His eyes were sad and tired, and they followed her as she pa.s.sed through the double doors, his brows drawing tenderly together and his lips parting as though he wanted to call out to her. But she looked away quickly and let Cordelia lean on her as they went up the stairs.

"Can I get you anything?" Astrid asked once they stood on the threshold of Cordelia's room.

"No, nothing. I'm just so very, very tired." Cordelia walked slowly to the bed, unpinning her hair and sinking down into the pillows. "Go take care of Charlie," she said after a moment, without opening her eyes.

Backing out of the room, Astrid nodded, as though this was exactly what she had planned to do, when in fact she was already considering various routes out of the house that might save her from coming face-to-face with Cordelia's brother. Quietly, she pulled the door into its frame, and then with a sigh, turned around. There, down the hall near the stairwell, stood Charlie, his legs wide apart and his back slightly hunched, waiting for her. Neither said anything for a moment, and she lifted her chin and walked straight for the stairs, as though she didn't see him at all.

Just as she was about to pa.s.s, he reached for her arm, and while she did make an effort to brush off his grip, she didn't struggle. "Astrid ...," he said in a low, broken voice.

"I am very sorry for your loss," she replied with prim formality, holding her head so that her profile was to him. "But I cannot feel pity for you just now, so I think it's better not to speak at all."

"Astrid, don't give me any trouble," he pleaded, sinking onto his knees and wrapping his arms around her legs and laying his face against her stomach. "Not now."

From above, she contemplated his head of polished hair, rested like a naughty child's against her middle section and probably ruining her brand-new dress. He was so helpless and harmless like that, and no matter how she tried, she could not maintain the disgust she'd felt for him a few seconds before. Already, it was slipping.

"Oh, Charlie," she said in a weary, hopeless way, thinking of the tragedy that had befallen him, and the betrayal he had committed against her, and the sad story of the girl in the room at the end of the hall. "Come on," she urged, and helped pull him back up to his feet.

Silently they walked together to his room. For a moment she did feel sick again, the way she had the last time she'd stood on that spot, but there was something purifying about seeing his bra.s.s bed neatly made and empty of any strange girls, almost as though there had never been one there. She walked over to it and lay down on her back. He wavered in the doorway a minute, his big body framed by the afternoon light falling from the high windows of the front facade. Then, with a few long strides, he crossed the room, fell down beside her, and began to weep. He buried his head against her breast and wrapped his arm tight around her waist, so that she felt his shaking as he soaked her dress with tears.

"Don't ever leave again," he said, when he was done crying. "Promise me you won't ever leave again."

"Charlie!" she exclaimed. "The last time I saw you-"

"I didn't mean it. That was nothing. That was a real moron thing to do, and I'll never do anything like that again," he replied in a quick burst. "I'm sorry-can't you see I'm sorry?" he went on, almost shouting. "Don't you believe me?"

Astrid rolled her big eyes toward the windows, which framed a green-and-blue slice of the landscape. She didn't know if she believed him or not-it did not suddenly seem like a very interesting question-and her thoughts returned to the night before, and how she and her mother had danced with two sailors on the St. Regis rooftop and afterward gone down in the elevator, shrieking, to hail them a cab. Whose idea that was or how long it had taken, she couldn't remember, although she had a distinct memory of standing on a pier somewhat later, in a sh.e.l.l pink evening gown, and waving up toward someone on the deck of a very high ship.

"Astrid?"

Charlie was staring up at her with pleading eyes. He pushed himself up and took her face in his hands, and began to press his lips against hers. At first she didn't want him to, but then something in her stirred and she began to taste the sweetness of his kisses.

"Charlie," she said, pushing him back. "You don't-you don't think she's prettier than me, do you?"

"Gracie?" For the first time that day, Charlie let out something like a laugh, albeit a brutal one. "She's a dog. You-you-you're the most beautiful girl I know!"

Tears had begun to collect at the corners of Astrid's eyes, but she tried not to look like the last of her fury was dissolving as quickly as in fact it was. "Swear it," she commanded.

A pause followed, during which Charlie remained motionless, blinking at her, his large palm resting against her hip. Then he stood up, hovering over her in shirtsleeves-he must have left his jacket down in the ballroom-looking very broad and very serious and, despite the solemnity of the occasion and all the many things he had done wrong, very handsome.

Then he sank to one knee and picked up her small, gloved hand. "Astrid Donal, will you marry me?"

Her bottom lip fell, and her black lashes batted back and forth in confusion. "Marry "Marry you?" you?"

"Yes. I don't have a ring or anything yet, but I'll get you a big one, whatever kind you want. Only, don't ever leave. I want you to be mine. Forever. Okay?" He bent, so that his head was resting over her hand. "Just say you will."

She drew her fingers along the back of his thick neck. Suddenly she knew she couldn't go back to living in hotels or traveling around Europe where divorcees with high standards of living could get by cheaply. The thing to do, she knew, was to draw her answer out, let him get nervous, punish him a little for what he'd done. But already she was picturing the big ring he was going to get her, and her lips had spread into a soft smile, so there was no point in saying anything but yes. He did did love her, despite his actions to the contrary. love her, despite his actions to the contrary.

"Yes," she said.

"Yes?" He stood and picked her up, holding her close at the chest and swinging her feet off the ground. She was just seventeen, and he was twenty, and she was going to spend the rest of her life with him.

Perhaps there was still bitterness in the remote chambers of Astrid's heart. But she had never felt so safe as she did held up in those big arms, and anyway, despite the sadness of the day, the air was warm and alive, and her body was light and comfortable. If she had wanted to, she could have gone on making trouble. But she didn't want to. She was relieved that she could stay here, in this house, and be Charlie's, and never have to worry about anything ever again.

28

"IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT, DANNY," CORDELIA SAID FROM the driver's seat of the Marmon coupe he had somehow or other secured for her, in a voice that made her sound entirely sure and controlled, even though her heart was like a b.u.t.terfly trapped in a jar. Danny was standing by the guardhouse, his hat tipped down over his face, as though he wanted to hide from the world. Instead of responding, he glanced back up the hill crested by the roof of Dogwood, where the wake was still being held despite the encroaching velvety darkness.

"What've you talked me into?" he muttered.

She ignored him. "Whatever you do, don't tell them you've seen me, all right?"

He nodded and said, "Take care of yourself, Miss Grey."

When she had gone a little ways up the road, she turned the headlights on and picked up speed. She had learned to drive when she was twelve-her uncle had not been precious about it-but she'd never been behind the wheel in clothes like these. Her long hair was slick against her skull and tied back in a hard bun, and her body was covered in a dress of champagne-colored silk, cut in the preferred style of young women who frequented nightclubs: A long, fitted torso was suspended by thin straps, but the skirt flowed out below the hips, with enough frothy volume that no one would notice a flask or two hidden in a garter belt.

Now that she was driving faster, the breeze chilled her bare shoulders. She was thankful for this, for it numbed some of the sadness and self-loathing. She had always had a fine sense of geography, and had picked up the lay of the land in White Cove just from driving around with Charlie and Thom. But it was different to be in control of the car herself, navigating the narrow roads, and that calmed her.

The sign for Avalon, the Duluth Hale residence, came up sooner than she had antic.i.p.ated. Already she could smell the sound over on the other side of the property and hear the voices rising up from the party Thom's mother had thrown, despite-or maybe because of-the tragedy at Dogwood. This thought caused a bitter twist in her stomach, but she put on a smile as she left the car on the lawn and went through the gated opening in the high stone wall.

"Do you have an invitation, little lady?"

She held the gaze of the guard. "I'm a guest of Thom Hale's."

He looked over his shoulder at a second guard. "Escort her up, and ask Thom if she's okay."

As they walked across a manicured stretch of green, she contemplated the house, all lit up for the occasion. The white shingled structure was perhaps not as castle-like as the Greys' place, but its wings and satellite buildings spread out like great, encompa.s.sing arms.

There was much noise inside. A band was playing, and there were conversations from every corner. Heads turned toward Cordelia as she glided through a grand ballroom that was obviously in more frequent use than the one at Dogwood. Perhaps that was because Duluth Hale's wife was still around, and she did not run her household like a sleepaway camp for a gang of boys. Some of the faces were familiar to Cordelia; they were people who had been just as happy to drink Darius Grey's liquor whenever he opened his property to them. But she did not dwell on this, and only followed the guard down a sweeping flight of limestone steps onto a grand patio that faced the water.

Avalon had its own pier, from which small vessels came and went, ferrying guests to sh.o.r.e, illuminated in the darkness by tiny electric bulbs strung up their masts. There was a second band playing on the patio, although the mood near the lapping water, under a bridal arch of stars, was more languid and romantic. The dancing was less frenetic here, and couples swayed together in the subdued shadow of the house.

"Mr. Hale!" the guard called out, and then a tall figure, who'd been facing the black water with his hands stuffed in his pants pockets, turned around. His patrician lips parted, and his eyes became soft at the edges, in a show of sorrow that some foolish, feminine part of her believed in. "She says she's yours."

"Yes-she's mine." Thom nodded and the man left.

For a moment the two stood there, a yard of air and all the things they'd never told each other between them. She let her brash mouth spread and lengthen. It was a smile that said, despite everything, I know you I know you.

"Aren't you going to ask me to dance?"

"Would you like to dance?" he replied, in a gradual, concerned way.

The touch of his hand, subtle and familiar at the small of her back, caused a flutter in her chest. She bent her elbow and rested her hand just below his neck, letting him lead her forward onto the floor. People had noticed the couple by then, and they were inclining toward each other to say, "Isn't that Grey's daughter?" and "What's she doing here, after all that's happened?"

Thom's cheek was inches away from hers, and she could feel the smooth warmth of his skin when it occasionally brushed her own. "Are you cold?"

"No, not at all."

"I'm sorry I couldn't call," he went on, lowering his voice to a whisper. "I wanted to know if you were all right. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. I wanted to tell you that no matter what rumors you hear, I had no part in-"

"Oh, Thom!" she interrupted him, and gave a sad, sparkling laugh. "I know all that. You You couldn't be responsible for such an awful thing." And she added, as an afterthought, "I hadn't known him very long, you know." couldn't be responsible for such an awful thing." And she added, as an afterthought, "I hadn't known him very long, you know."

They had turned with the dance, and she became aware of a man, thick in the waist and wearing a pale pink suit, on the steps up to the house. He had a scarred platter of a face and the kind of eyes that are never moved, and she knew somehow that he was Duluth Hale. Then they turned again, and a few seconds later she felt Thom's shoulders go rigid. But his voice, when he spoke next, had his characteristic smoothness.

"I'm so glad you came. I thought you wouldn't want to see me anymore, after everything that happened ..."

"I'm very happy to be someplace like this, where everything is gay." She paused, as though realizing something. She was lying a little more than necessary to confuse him and perhaps catch him fumbling in his story; but really just to exact a small revenge. To lie to him in some miniature, petty version of the gargantuan way he'd lied to her.

"Did you wait very long for me on the road?" he asked.

A pause followed, and when she turned her face to look at him, she could see that he was thinking about something else. "Yes-but that's all right."

She closed her eyes and pretended to be enjoying the music, trying to swallow the fury this deception stirred in her. She would like to slap his pretty face and tell him how stupidly she'd worried over him on the road.

They had come to the edge of the dance floor, and suddenly he stepped off.

"Will you follow me?" he asked. "I'd like to be alone with you."

So-her moment would come sooner than she had imagined. "Yes." She tried to twist her face flirtatiously.

They walked quickly across the grounds, past the house. He picked up her hand, and she matched his pace as he began to run between trees. They had gone far enough to not be seen, and she realized he must be searching for some specific location. Soon they reached the stone wall, and they moved along it until they came to a spot where the wall had been broken and worn down, dipping to a low point about four feet high.

Thom put his hands on it, testing its strength. When he turned toward her, his eyes had become uncharacteristically wild. Both his hands sought her waist; he took hold and pulled her closer, putting his mouth to hers. She draped her arms over his shoulders, playing along, mimicking his pa.s.sion. Their lips parted, and he glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the party. "How did you get here?"

That was not a question she had antic.i.p.ated. "In a Marmon coupe," she answered before she could consider the best reply.

"Good," he said. Then he climbed up, so that he was sitting on the wall, and offered her his hand. She grabbed hold and, pressing her foot against a stone, let him pull her upward. In a matter of seconds, they were on the other side. The darkness here was more complete, and she could just make out his features by the golden glow at the edges of his face. He leaned against the wall again, glancing back to see if anyone had noticed. That was all the time she needed to bend down and remove the six-shooter from the garter between her thighs.

There was a noise when she c.o.c.ked the gun, and Thom revolved, slowly, to face her. All that bright-eyed sweetness of the past quarter hour went out of her face, and she allowed herself to look at Thom and see him for what he was: a cold deceiver, who even now, after having made her complicit in the murder of her father, was willing to take advantage of her for his own personal gratification.

"Cord," he whispered.

He had never called her that before, and the memory of her father using the nickname the day he'd taught her how to shoot caused a pain that seized up her throat and spread toward her jaw. "Don't you dare," she said. "Don't-we both know what you did."

"I can imagine what you must think, but you must let me-let me explain," he said, stepping toward her and reaching out in his usual smooth manner.

"Stay where you are!" She moved backward, keeping the gun steady and pointed at his head, but he kept coming, and as the seconds pa.s.sed, a panic overtook her. She lifted the gun over his head and fired.

The noise a gun makes was louder than she had remembered, and it shocked both of them. Her hands stung-she had forgotten how heavy and hot the gun was after it went off. Her eyes grew wide. Thom was contained and watchful, yet he was frightened, too-though he held his body motionless, the veins along his neck were alert. She remembered how terrified she'd been about the possibility of her father and Charlie hurting him, when she thought they'd been holding him at Dogwood. She imagined him like her father: his pristine suit ruined, his fine torso torn up in three different places. For a moment she was sure she was going to be sick. The gun fell out of her hands, landing faintly between them.

She became aware of shouting, from over where the rest of the revelers were. One of her eyebrows quivered, but neither she nor Thom said anything, and before he could try, she had turned and started to run. Really running this time, kicking off her shoes as she went and hurtling forward through the trees as fast as she could. If there were stones or needles underfoot, she did not feel them. She looped outward, making her way back around near the entrance, where the lawn was filled with guests' cars.

There were still two guards at the gate, talking in a hushed, agitated way, but they apparently thought the gunman would be coming from the other direction, because their backs were to her and they were pointing their rifles inward toward the property. Thom had not followed her, and she was able to tiptoe, very quietly, between the vehicles. Once she found the Marmon, she slipped over the closed door, so as not to make a sound, and crouched with her head down by the wheel. As soon as she got the engine going, she stepped on the gas pedal as hard as she could and careened away from Duluth Hale's place without daring to look back.

The guards must have heard, but by then she was gone. She headed inland at a reckless speed, glancing over her shoulder, indifferent to her hair as it came down and blew back across her face. It was late, and she hadn't yet pa.s.sed anyone on the road, but she barreled on wildly, praying that the Hales weren't on her trail.

Around the time a small sign told her she had pa.s.sed out of White Cove and into the town of Nas.h.i.togue, she realized she had told Thom what make of car she was driving. It would be easy for them to spot her, even if she pulled over and crouched in the back, or put a hat on and returned through White Cove at a respectable speed. Surely they were fanning out now, all over the town and probably all over Long Island, looking for her. They had had little trouble killing her father, with all his connections. Why would they hesitate when it came to Cordelia, who was just a girl from Ohio whom n.o.body had heard of two weeks ago?

That thought haunted her a while, and then she careened off the road, crashing through a decrepit split-rail fence. The Marmon made a red streak across an open field, until her erratic driving caused the car to stall out as she was trying to go up a rise. It rocked to a stop. She twisted around, checking for pursuers over her shoulder. The cloud of dust she'd raised was sinking slowly back toward the purple earth, and besides a few cicadas, there was only a vast silence. She sank back in her seat and tried to feel relieved-she had escaped, after all.

But the quiet worsened her fear. That was when her heart began to a.s.sume a ragged beat, and a true sense of hysteria settled in.

For where could she go to now? All her life she'd saved pennies and borne indignities with a prideful shrug of her shoulders, buoyed up by the idea that someday she would meet her father, that he would be a great man and that he would take her in. Well, she'd had that, only to ruin it with her own heedlessness. And in her failed attempt to avenge the old man, she had now made herself a fugitive, too. The enormity of her trouble dawned on her, and with that, her breath became short. She had nowhere left to go.

She would never know how long she sat out there in the field, or how it would have ended had something extraordinary not happened: There was a roar just behind her, unlike any sound she'd ever heard, and a great flying object came speeding by, so low and close to her that she felt its extreme heat. For a moment, she thought it might have been a comet, but then she realized that was absurd. After she heard the crash and saw the flames rise up down the field, she knew it was an airplane and that someone was in it.

Though she drove fast, she was more controlled than she had been before. In a few minutes she arrived at the wreck. The nose was in the dirt and the left wing was on fire, but she did not make out the pilot until she had stopped the car and rushed forward on foot. He was hanging half out of the c.o.c.kpit, his flying goggles still on his face. Perhaps he'd hit his head, because he didn't appear to be trying to escape the burning biplane. Placing her body under his and bracing herself, she undid the strap that held him. The weight knocked them both over, and for a moment she feared she was trapped. But in the next moment he said, almost matter-of-factly, "You'd better get us out of here, before the fire spreads to the gasoline tank."

Wincing, he managed to push himself up enough so that she could roll over, and then, wedging herself under his shoulder, she helped lift him upright. They walked like that together to the car. He was young, and he wore a white cotton undershirt tucked into brown pants that his black boots laced over. He was not much taller than she was, and though he was slender, there was a compact strength to every inch of him.

"Are you all right?" she asked, as they hobbled forward.

"Fine." His voice was deep and calm-almost perversely, considering the smoke now blowing over them and the fall from the sky he must have just experienced. "I hope you don't drive like a woman," he said as she helped him into the front seat.

"I beg your pardon?" She was almost too shocked by his lack of grat.i.tude to fully respond to what he'd said.

But he only stared back at her, with wide-set, pale blue eyes that were somehow out of place against his sun-darkened olive skin. His hair was deep brown and cut close to his scalp, and he had full, unsmiling lips. She blinked and slammed the pa.s.senger-side door, and then didn't look at him again until they were headed toward the road and she heard the explosion behind them.

"Oh, G.o.d," she whispered.

The calm drained briefly from his face, and it seemed as though something might actually have hurt him. But he only asked her if she knew where the hospital was.

"No," she answered truthfully, and though she felt she ought to be insulted by his terse manner, she was mostly awed by the coolness he maintained despite the pain that his bruised and broken body was surely causing him. If she'd had that kind of toughness, she thought, she could have taken care of Thom Hale, or better yet, not fallen prey to his advances in the first place. "Do you?"

"Where are we?"

"Nas.h.i.togue." They were racing down a road between two farms now. "I think so, anyway."

"Good." He tried to adjust his leg, which was obviously badly wounded. "Take this road all the way down, and then a left at Willow Lane. That will bring us to the Catholic Hospital in Rye Haven. You can drop me there."

Her body felt almost weightless with adrenaline, and both their breathing was audible as they hurtled through the darkness. It must have been very late, and though she supposed she might have asked him what he was doing up in the air in the middle of the night, she never did. There was only an ever-lightening sky and the thought of getting the stranger to a place where they would declare him okay.

Cordelia brought the Marmon to a shrieking halt in front of a stern, redbrick building with yellow light pooling from the high windows, and came around to help him out. The lobby was deserted, and so for a minute or two they stood alone in the plain white hall. Just as she was about to ask him what he thought they ought to do, a nun in a black habit came walking down the hall, and then several more appeared from other directions.

"Oh, dear," said the first.

"Is it really him?" asked another.