Skinny Island (26 page)
"You're going to be working for me from now on, Lucian," he said in his velvet tone, eyeing me with wry amusement. "I've bought out the major interest in this gallery."
"So? You'll make an art fortune now?"
"With any luck and your assistance. Would you like to know my reasons for doing it?"
"I don't suppose you have to tell me."
"Any more than you had to tell me about the true nature of your relationship with Abby?"
I felt a chill of apprehension at the flicker in those green eyes. "You mean our pretending that we might be reconciled? I'm not very proud of that."
"It was a shabby trick. And it didn't work, because I wasn't in the least interested in taking anything away from you. I wanted Abby for exactly the use she has been to me. In my bed and at my board. And I intend now to avail myself of just what I need from you."
"I don't see what good I can be to you. Or Abby either now, for that matter."
"I still need Abby, at least as my hostess. We met this morning with her lawyer, and she gave up the idea of a divorce. It came hard, but she did. She saw that she was licked about the money, and, deep down, she knows she's too old and too disagreeable to catch another fat cat. I think she learned a little about reality this morning."
"Poor Abby!" I saw her in his pincers, wriggling. But hadn't she asked for it? Then I had a sudden tremor of outrage at all he took for granted. "Don't forget, Chisholm, she'll be watching you. The first misstepâ"
"There won't be any misstep. With my kind of dough all tracks can be covered."
"There will, then, be tracks?"
"Do you think I'd tell you?"
"What, then, do you want of me?"
"I want you to drop everything and put together a collection of Scythian gold. If you have to rob the Hermitage in Leningrad!"
And looking at that mocking glare I thought of the great cave of a tomb that poor Abby had described, with the body of Peter decked out in gorgeous gems and myself frantically decorating the chamber with golden images, hoping that the eagle-faced guards would let me out before they rolled the giant stone into the entranceway, but reading at last my fate in the terrified eyes of the one who was doomed to share it.