Princess Daisy (39 page)

Topsy had gone to a famous horsy finishing school on the last remnants of her family’s money, and there she had met many New York and Long Island girls from rich, social families. She had followed their careers in fashion magazines and society columns with biting envy. She had married for money and all it had brought her was three pregnancies and fleeting acquaintances in three, to her, provincial cities. The only way to really be a part of the fashionable world was to be considered fashionable in New York City—other places didn’t exist on Topsy’s narrow horizon.

However, she had a clear-eyed idea of just how difficult it was for strangers to be launched in New York life, particularly a stranger who could claim only a few schoolgirl friendships, long faded, and whose husband was hardly an asset to a dinner party. She resolved to make her assault on New York from her home territory, from Virginia where her family was known and respected. She decided that an estate in the heart of the thousand square miles that make up Northern Virginia’s Hunt Country was the answer; it would take the curse off new money. When Ham was informed by Topsy that it was time for them to buy a place in Middleburg, a town of 833 people, lop-sidedly, if conveniently, divided into two groups, millionaires and servants, there was more than restlessness in her
words. He heard the unmistakable indication that only a considerable, a
very
considerable establishment in Middleburg, would guarantee that Ham Short’s marriage would continue to run in the comfortable, well-ordered and convenient way he had learned to take for granted.

At twenty-five, Topsy’s early promise had ripened into decided beauty. Seven years of marriage, with only the birth of children to disturb her concentration on herself, had polished her chestnut-haired, hazel-eyed prettiness until it gleamed. The large breasts, wide hips, and tiny waist that had first caught Ham Short’s eyes were as appealing as ever. Even if he rarely bothered to appreciate them now, he certainly didn’t want any domestic problems. He was not a sensual man, a quick fuck every week or two was all he asked, but he insisted on peace and quiet at home while he worked on more millions. Middleburg or Miami, it made no difference to him, as long as Topsy would stop complaining about their lack of social life.

Fortunately Ham Short continued to increase his millions in the next two years, because the restoration of Fairfax Plantation consumed money as greedily as if it had been a whale swallowing plankton.

Fairfax, a late Colonial mansion, had been built in the 1750s by master craftsmen brought over from England by the first Oliver Fairfax who, like other wealthy Virginians of the time, had a fine taste for architecture and enough knowledge to realize that only in England could he find the workmanship he demanded. Unfortunately, the last Oliver Fairfax had long outlived his family’s fortune and when the Shorts bought Fairfax Plantation, it was close to a ruin. But nothing, short of fire, could disguise the glorious wood carving throughout the house, which the legendary William Buckland had fashioned out of clear, mellow white pine and perfectly seasoned walnut and poplar, all of which came from the plantation’s own forests, as did the bricks which were baked from clay dug from the broad fields. Buckland’s Palladian woodwork, equal to that of any great home in England, had been set off by a collection of Chinese Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Sheraton furniture, covered in reproductions of the richest fabrics of the late Colonial period. The marvels of the interior—Topsy Short’s decorator specialized in Instant Museum Quality—were quite overshadowed by the gardens which no amount of neglect could affect, depending as they did on a severely classic plan of slow growing
boxwood hedges which had taken a full two hundred and twenty years to reach their current majestic proportions. Topsy Short had to be content with letting her horses graze in the great fields behind the house although she would have preferred to be able to see them from the front rooms of the mansion—as did many of her neighbors.

“Lordy,” she would say enviously. “That old Liz Whitney Tippett’s horses can just about poke their noses into her drawing room.”

“Well, dig up the boxwood,” Ham suggested absently.

“What? My landscape architect would kill me. They’re historic. There’s nothing like them, not even in Upperville or Warrenton or Leesburg. He told me that even Bunny Mellon doesn’t have older boxwood,” she said, invoking the name of the largely invisible queen of the Hunt Country.

“Then don’t dig up the goddamned boxwood.”

Ham Short, master of all he surveyed, had more on his mind than hedges. The offer from Supracorp was interesting, highly interesting. If he consented to the marriage of his healthy real-estate company to Supracorp’s even healthier two-billion-dollar operation, the stock he would receive would rise to a point where, instead of working on his thirtieth million, he could start thinking in terms of his sixtieth. Not only that, it would get him out from under the day-to-day operation of what was essentially a one-man show. His children were all girls, he had no one to bring into a family business, and it would give him the time to start living the life of the gentleman Topsy had always tried to pretend he was. But on the other hand, did he want to give up control? Wasn’t it more satisfying to have his own company and be free to run it as he chose? Why become another acquisition of Supracorp, why become another division head under Patrick Shannon? Did he really want to live like a gentleman and take an interest in the Middleburg Hunt and give an honest damn about horses? Perhaps the coming weekend, with the chance to see Shannon as his guest, would provide the answers to some of the questions he asked himself, as he wavered between selling and not selling. He’d asked Topsy to keep the guest list small for exactly that reason.

“Who’s coming this weekend?” Ham asked abruptly.

“The Hemmings and the Stantons from Charlottesville, the Dempseys from Keeneland and Princess Daisy Valensky, to do a sketch of Cindy. That Shannon of yours, of
course, and … some people from New York.” Ham Short knew the first three couples, Horse People all. “What people from New York?” he asked idly.

Eyes wide with a mixture of terrified anticipation and excitement, Topsy answered, “Robin and Vanessa Valarian.”

“The dressmaker? Now what the hell do you want with them?” Ham asked the question casually, not noticing his wife’s flustered air.

“Oh, Ham, I don’t know how I stand it,” Topsy wailed plaintively. “You’re a disgrace. The Valarians are—oh, how can I make
you
understand—they’re the chicest people in New York! They go absolutely
everywhere
and know absolutely
everybody
. I knew Vanessa Valarian a little at school—she was three years ahead of me—I bumped into her last time I went to New York for shopping, and we had a drink together, but I wasn’t sure they’d come when I asked them.”

“Why not, aren’t we good enough for a dressmaker and his wife?” Ham demanded.

“We’re not chic, Ham, we’re just rich, and not as rich as
really
rich people either!” she said with an accusing note in her voice. “No use your snorting like that … you have to be worth over two hundred million to be really rich—I read all the lists—and you know as well as I do that we’re just small potatoes compared to—oh, never mind!” She flounced off the chair in which she’d been sitting and started to finger a Chinese Export bowl her decorator had insisted she buy—a steal at twenty-eight hundred dollars.

“Not chic? Well, who the hell said we had to be chic? Who the hell gives a shit? What the hell does it mean anyway—who elected the Valarians to decide?” Now Ham was injured. He was proud of his money and he didn’t like being reminded of the fact that, rich as he was, he still couldn’t play with the big boys.

“Oh, Ham, honestly! It merely means that they’re in—
in
, damn it, the way we’ll never be! They’re invited to every good party, and they get pages and pages in
Vogue
and
House and Garden
and
Architectural Digest
on their apartment and their table settings—oh, and they fly all over the world to be with people like Cristina Brandolini and Helene Rochas and André Oliver and Fleur Cowles Meyer and Jacqueline Machado-Macedo—people you
wouldn’t
ever
know! Unless the Valarians are there a party doesn’t have cachet!”

“Cachet? Christ, Topsy, you’ve got another bug up your ass, that’s all it is. First we had to have this museum and enough horses for the Charge of the Light Brigade. Now you’ve finally become best buddies with our neighbors and you still need a stamp of approval from a dressmaker? I don’t understand you.”

If Ham Short hadn’t been so offended he might have realized that there was something a little overdone in Topsy’s insistence on the chic of the Valarians … something a little overdone in her display of pique.

“Robin Valarian is one of the most famous dress designers in the country,” Topsy answered loftily, “and, as for Vanessa, she happens to be considered the most elegant woman in New York.”

“I’ve seen his picture enough to know what he does—if you ask me, he looks like a fruit—full-blown.”

“Don’t be disgusting, Ham! They’ve been married almost as long as we have. Men like you always think other men, who don’t happen to be interested in merely making money, have to be gay.”

“Oh, so now it’s ‘gay’—I suppose that’s the only possible word to use?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is,” Topsy retorted, in a voice she decided to make conciliating. This argument was driving her wild with nerves.

As Ham Short’s irritation cooled, Topsy found herself replaying, for the thousandth time, the scene in the Valarians’ library a few weeks ago in New York. Vanessa had poured her a Dubonnet and flattered Topsy with questions.

“Tell me about your life,” she’d asked with unmistakable interest. “What’s it like living in Middleburg most of the year? Divine or drear?”

“If I couldn’t get up to New York every few weeks I don’t think I could stand it,” Topsy had admitted. “I’m Virginia born but I think I have New York soul. It’s simply too quiet … but Ham loves it.”

“And what Ham loves, Ham gets?”

“More or less.”

Vanessa got up and closed the door of the library. “I think it’s a crime that anyone as deliciously pretty as you
is wasted in Horse Country,” she told Topsy, coming to sit next to her on the loveseat. Topsy blushed in embarrassment and surprise. In school Vanessa had been the leader on whom half the girls in Topsy’s class had had a crush—Vanessa, even then, had been sophisticated beyond their teenage dreams.

“Thank you,” she murmured, sipping her Dubonnet.

“It’s the simple truth. Do you know that way back at school I noticed you? I’ll never forget how you looked with all that wonderful red brown hair—it’s only a little darker now—and even those frightful uniforms we had to wear couldn’t hide the fact that you were going to have a perfect figure. I envy you—I’m so damn skinny—I’d give anything for a few curves. Didn’t you ever notice me watching you, young Topsy?”

Topsy could only shake her head in denial.

“Well, you must have had other things on your mind—I used to look at you at meals—just a peek, mind you.” Vanessa laughed and casually took one of Topsy’s hands in hers, gazing at it as calmly as if she were a fortuneteller. Suddenly she bent and kissed Topsy’s palm with a warm, open mouth, laughed, and released the hand as if nothing at all had happened. That had been all, but again and again, from that afternoon until now, Topsy’s mind had returned to the scene, wondering what might have happened next, and then telling herself that nothing, absolutely nothing could possibly have happened next—she was just being silly.

“Ham,” she said, returning to the present, “let’s not fight, please. I’m nervous enough about the weekend without having a fight.”

“Okay, honey—I don’t know what the whole thing’s about anyway, but so long as it makes you happy, that’s fine. And, if you want my opinion, those Valarians will be more than enough impressed by the Hemmings and the Stantons and the Dempseys and Patrick Shannon—and what’s her name, that princess, so will you, for Christ’s sake, just stop wandering around like you’re about to break that bowl? Sure, it’s insured, but I’d hate to try to collect!”

On mid-Saturday morning all of Topsy Short’s house guests assembled at the stables. Topsy supervised the matching of horse to rider and only her lifetime of riding enabled her to fulfill this task with an outward show of
calm. She was in the grip of an emotion she avoided examining, but she felt more ill-at-ease, more electrically anticipatory than she had in years. She was staying behind to keep Vanessa Valarian company since Vanessa had announced, at breakfast, with a laugh that was delighted with itself, that she had always been terrified of horses, even at school. She made the confession sound like an asset.

Patrick Shannon was firmly in the saddle of a large black gelding, but he was too intent to take in much of the busy, cheerful scene around him. This was the first time he’d actually been on a horse in the company of riders other than his instructor. He was absorbed in remembering every detail of every lesson he’d taken, blocking out the distraction of the stomping and blowing of the other horses, the maddening way they persisted in getting in each other’s way. He tried to keep his lively mount to one side of the milling crowd of horses and riders, hoping that the brute wasn’t as nervous as he was, and wondering if it was true that the horse knew how he felt just from his touch on the reins.

Young Cindy Short was mounted on a handsome pony, and Daisy had been allotted a grand chestnut mare who had fetched a healthy forty thousand dollars two years ago at the world famous Keeneland July auction of yearlings. After sharing Cindy’s breakfast and spending the early hours of the day with her in the stable, she and Cindy were fast friends. When she rode, Daisy dressed with severe correctness. She braided her hair tightly and then hid it under the regulation protective hat, covered in black velvet, that is to riders what a hardhat is to construction workers. She wore a snood into which she tucked the ends of her braids so that they wouldn’t catch on branches.