Inheritance (11 page)

"I made a few suggestions," Allison said. "The rest Laura did by herself. Who'd ever guess my father and his brother grew up here? It was as dark as a bat's cave, with the walls covered with cork so they'd never run out of bulletin board. I j| love it now; don't you think she has an artist's eye?" U

"She has something special," said Thad appraisingly, "She's kept you friendly for three years, and you usually get bored with people long before that."

Inheritance

As Allison's color rose, Laura said coolly, "Maybe we like each other. And Allison is much more than friendly; she's generous. You didn't admire my dress, Thad."

He stepped back and gazed at her. "By Carolina Herrera, from Martha at Trump Tower, worn, to great applause, by Miss Allison Salinger at last year's Thanksgiving Ball."

*Thad never forgets a dress," Allison commented drily.

"And Laura Faiichild looks fabulous in midnight blue satin." He kissed Laura's hand. "It's your color, you should wear nothing else. Though"—he was still holding her hand—^"as I recall, you also look terrific in red. And emerald. And of course white. And—^"

"He never misses a chance to hold a lady's hand, either,** Allison said.

Laura pulled away, trying to think of a simple, sophisticated quip. As hard as she worked at it, she still wasn't as quick as Allison and her friends, who always seemed to have a sharp comment on the tips of their tongues. "Is everyone here?" she asked, looking around the room. "I should tell Rosa what time we'll want dinner." Why isn't he here? He said he'd be here. He said he'd like very much to be here.

"Everyone but Paul," Allison said. "But he's frequently late; he's known for it. And Rosa knows nobody expects dinner before nine. I'm going to take Thad away and introduce him to your college friends; do you mind?"

"No, of course not," Laura said automatically, wondering why someone would be late so often he would be known for it. "I should be circulating, too; I'm not acting like a hostess.**

It was the first time she had ever been a hostess. It was the first time she'd worn midnight blue satin, the first time she'd decorated an apartment, the first time she was waiting for a man who had looked at her with admiring eyes.

For a long time everything had been new, beginning with the moment three years before when she entered Owen's Beacon Hill house, walking beside his wheelchair as the chauffeur pushed it into the foyer. Owen held up a restraining hand and the chauffeur stopped halfway to the elevator that was tucked into the wall beside the branching stairway. "I thought I might never see this place again," Owen murmured, almost to himself. He looked up at Laura and a joyous smile lit his face. "But here I am, and I've brought you with me.'*

Judith Michael

He reached his hand toward her and she held it in hers. "How I love this house," he mused. "There was a time when I thought I hated it, when I even planned to sell it." He shook his head, his gaze moving past the marble statue in the center of the foyer to the French drum tables with huge arrangements of gladioli and roses. "So much laughter here, so long ago . . . And now I can share it. Have you noticed how we appreciate all the more what we have when we can give its pleasures to someone new? There's a selfishness in appreciating what we almost lost; there's a different kind of happiness in sharing it. I hope you are very happy here, Laura, and I bid you welcome."

"I will be," Laura said. "Happy, I mean." She bit her lip. Why couldn't she speak elegantly, as he did? 'Thank you," she burst out. He might think she was clumsy, but at least he'd know she was grateful.

Owen smiled and folded his hands in his lap. "Let Rosa take you around; she'll help you figure out the maze Iris and I created. Make yourself at home while I take a nap; then come to my room when I ring for you. My dear," he added as the chauffeur turned the wheelchair, "I am so very pleased to have you here." And then the elevator doors opened and closed behind him.

Rosa appeared in a doorway on the other side of the foyer. "Come on, my young miss, we'll have a fast tour and liien you can unpack. I'll take care of Clay when he gets here, after he finishes at Felix and Leni's." Rosa had never asked how it happened that Laura Fairchild, a summer kitchen assistant who had appeared from nowhere to apply for a job in mid-June was, in mid-September, moving into the Beacon Hill house as Owen Salinger's companion, and bringing her brother with her. Owen always did as he pleased, and his family had long since stopped telling him he was arbitrary, whimsical, foolish, or, far worse, vulnerable to clever people who could take advantage of him. Rosa knew they all thought it, but, because they were smart, they kept their mouths shut.

And so did she. But it was easy for Rosa; she had no stake in Owen's fortune. Besides, she was fond of Laura. "Don't put your hands all over the ftimiture," she said as they walked through the main salon on the second floor. "Fingerprints, you know."

Inheritance

"I never leave fingerprints,*' Laura said hotly. "I was trained better than that."

"My, my," Rosa said mildly, wondering why the girl suddenly looked frightened. "I wasn't criticizing the way you were raised—^I'm not big on criticizing people—but how would you know that too much polish ruins fine woods and so we try to keep, fingerprints off the furniture?"

"Sorry," Laura muttered.

"No harm done. I should remember how people like to touch something they're seeing for the first time. Go ahead; I won't say a word."

Laura forced herself to smile, afraid to say anything. Be careful; be careful. Even now, even in Boston, be carefuL She found herself holding her breath and walking on tiptoe as they passed through rooms leading to more rooms; down long hallways lined with portraits of staid men and satin-gowned women; past nooks, closets, cupboards, unexpected stairways, and window seats. And then she began to relax beneath the spell of enfolding luxury, and soon she was reaching out and touching the silkiness of polished woods, the nap of gleaming velvets, the tightly woven wool of the French tapestries on the walls.

Something stirred within her and came awake: a longing for luxury and beauty she had kept locked away because the chance of having them was so remote. Her fingertips felt alive; she seemed to merge with everything she touched, as far away as she could be from the linoleum-covered kitchen table where Ben would sit, making marks with his thumbnail, while she cooked dinner and told him about her day at school.

"Mr. Owen bought the house as a wedding present the month he and Mrs. Iris were married," Rosa was saying. "All twenty-two rooms of it. They'd always dreamed of Uving on Beacon Hill and having a family and giving big parties m a balh-oom. And that's what they did. Here it is, the ballroom, closed up now; it has been since she died."

The ballroom, surrounded by dormer windows, took up the top floor. Below, on the fourth floor, was the apartment Felix and Asa had shared, as well as two extra rooms and baths for friends. Owen and Iris had a suite on the third floor with a guest suite across the hall; on the second floor a spacious

Judith Michael

salon stretched the width of the house, with the dining room and library behind it; and on the ground floor were the kitchen and pantry, Rosa's apartment, a receiving room, and the entrance foyer and an elevator leading to the upper floors. In the basement were a laundry room, a pantry lined with Rosa*s jams and preserves, and a paneled room with a billiard table, fireplace, leather furniture, and a fiill bar.

"Mr. Owen always said those were the ten happiest years of his life, when he lived here with Mrs. Iris. He was building his company in those years, going like a house afire, buying hotels and building new ones right and left—there must have been two a year, sometimes three. The company got so big they finally took up half the top floor of the Boston Salinger. You haven't seen it yet; it's on Arlington Street, just off the Public Gardens. And he and Mrs. Iris were at all the parties, their pictures in the paper, their closets full of new clothes. . . . Then they started giving dinners, one a week, very intimate, just twelve people. Nobody else was doing it and pretty soon everybody was hinting for invitations. They had style, Mr. Owen and Mrs. Iris, and if I could have bottled and sold it I could have gotten rich. But style isn't something you can buy; either you have it or you don't."

ril have it, Laura vowed silently. Whatever it is, whatever it looks like, I'll figure out how to get it. And people will admire me and love me and beg to be invited to my parties.

"But then Mrs. Iris died," Rosa said as they took the elevator from the basement billiard room to the fourth floor. "Mr. Owen shut the door on their suite and never went in it again. Ht talked about selling the house but he couldn't bring himself to do it; he said the thought of someone else living in the rooms Mrs. Iris had made drove him crazy. So he stayed. He moved into the guest suite, and a couple of years later the housekeeper and I made the old master suite into guest rooms, even though there aren't any guests in this house and haven't been since Mrs. Iris died. Until you, that is."

"I'm not a guest, I work here," Laura said.

"Well, yes, that's true. It's just that we never had a companion in this house before."

But now you do. I'm here, I'm part of this. I don't have to climb out a window and leave it all behind. I belong.

Inheritance

On the fourth floor Rosa opened the door to the three rooms where Felix and Asa had grown up. "This is yours."

Laura looked at her uncomprehendingly. "What is?*'

*The apartment. Not beautiful, by a long shot, but Mr. Owen said it*s to be yours."

The walls were covered in dark cork, the furniture was scarred walnut, everything was brown. "FeUx and Asa did the decorating, if you can call it that," Rosa said. "It's the only part of the house Mrs. Iris didn't touch. It was theirs, it was private, and we didn't go in until they'd both moved away." She gazed at it. "My oh my, it is definitely a dark and dreary place."

"Change it," Owen said to Laura the next day after Rosa told him it was a grim place for a young girl. "Tear it apart, paint it, fiimish it, and have the bills sent to me. Felix and Asa aren't interested in it anymore and I approve of progress. Make it yours."

"I think I should wait, if you don't mind," Laura replied. She was sitting beside his bed, a book in her lap, thinking about the word dark. Felix and Asa's dark apartment was harsh; Owen's dark rooms were a sumptuous haven of paisley velvets. Oriental rugs, heavy silk drapes in green and gold, and gleaming brass floor lamps. "It isn't as beautifd as yours," she went on, "but just having three whole rooms to myself is so wonderful—^I have to get used to being alone, without Clay and Ben—^" Her nails dug into her palms. "One of—one of Clay's friends, you know; all hi£ fnends would come over and it would be so crowded and noisy"— just change the subject —^'*and I want to learn about Boston; it's so different from New York, so old and beautiful ..." She took a deep breath. "I'll decorate the rooms later, if that's all right with you."

**They're yours to do with as you please, Laura," Owen said gently. *They're your home." Watching die play of alarm and confusion on her face, he longed to banish her fears, but he would not pry into what was bothering her. She would tell him when she was ready, or not at all. But as so many times before, he was amazed at how strongly he wanted to help her, to make her happy. Something about her brings that out in me, he thought, and he wondered how many other men would feel the same and go out of their way to bring back her smile.

Judith Michael

He closed his eyes as she picked up the book and returned to her reading. He loved the sound of her voice, low and vibrant, slipping occasionally into a roughness that hinted at a harsh background, but then becoming smooth again, with a slight lilt, almost as if she were learning English as a new language. When she read aloud, whether from his favorite books on Cape Cod, or collections of short stories or poetry, her voice found a rhythm that sounded to Owen almost as if she were singing, and he dozed and woke and dozed again to that musical cadence that made him regret that he was past the age of courtship.

Laura knew none of this, though she knew he liked the sound of her voice and rang for her frequently. He had at his bedside an array of buttons with which he could call one of the around-the-clock nurses who had taken over a guest room across the hall, or Rosa or any of the mjiids, or the housekeeping couple in the carriage house. But it was Laura he called most often, and even after she began classes at Boston University, she sat beside his bed when she was not at school, reading to him, talking, even doing her homework when he fell asleep.

Owen had arranged for her to start college. He had instructed his secretary at the Salinger executive offices to call a few key people at the university, and since none of them had to be reminded of his generosity as a benefactor, Laura was accepted as a special student within a week.

From the first she loved it. Everyone else seemed to take college for granted, but to Laura it was always a dream. The robbery at the Cape faded away; so did the police who were still working on it. And so did Ben. She was in a new life. Now and then she reminded herself how fragile it was—it all depended on Owen and she walked a thin line of possible discovery with him and his family—but then another month would go by, filled with the excitement of new ideas, new firiends who accepted her without question, even a small part in the freshman class play, and she would forget there was any danger at all.

And with each month she knew she was becoming less like the Laura she had been. She explored the little side streets and enclosed neighborhoods of Boston, not because she was look-

Inheritance

ing for homes to rob or escape routes or crowded shopping malls for picking pockets, but because she wanted to learn about her new home. She loved the narrow cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill, each like an old English town frozen in time, with gas lamps burning day and night, solid rows of narrow, five-story houses of worn, mellowed brick with high, narrow windows, most of them fronted with wrought-iron balconies just deep enough to hold window boxes of geraniums, and tiny front yards with even tinier flower gardens. It was all snug and private and privileged, and ofren Laura found herself breaking into a small skipping step as she walked along Mount Vernon Street from Owen's huge comer house, because everything was settled and secure—and hers.