Taltos (18 page)

Rowan was OK, that was certain. All afternoon long and into the evening, Mona had watched her gain strength.

Rowan had shown no signs of lapsing back into the silence
that had imprisoned her for three weeks. On the contrary, she had taken easy command of the house, coming down alone late last night, after Michael had gone to sleep, to comfort Beatrice and persuade her to go up to bed in Aaron’s old room. Beatrice had been leery of subjecting herself to “Aaron’s things,” only to confess finally that curling up in his bed, here in the guest bedroom, was exactly what she wanted to do.

“She’ll smell the scent of Aaron all around her,” Rowan had said to Ryan, almost absently, “and she’ll feel safe.”

That wasn’t a normal comment, Mona had thought, but surely that was the trick of seeking your mate’s bed after a death, and people had talked about mat cure for grief being very good. Ryan had been so concerned about Bea, so concerned for everyone. But in Rowan’s presence he had had the air of a general, all seriousness and capability, in the presence of the Chief of Staff.

Rowan had taken Ryan into the library, and for two hours, the door open for anyone who cared to stand in it or listen at it, they’d discussed everything from the plans for Mayfair Medical to various details about the house. Rowan wanted to see Michael’s medical records. Yes, he seemed as sound now as he had been the day she met him. But she needed the records, and Michael, not wanting to argue, had referred her to Ryan.

“But what about your own recovery? They want you to go for tests, you know,” Ryan had been saying as Mona came in for a final good-night.

Yuri had left his message at Amelia Street just before midnight, and Mona had experienced enough hate, love, grief, passion, regret, longing, and excruciating suspense to finally wear her out.

“I don’t have time to take these tests,” Rowan had been saying. “There are much more important things. For instance, what was found in Houston when you opened the room where Lasher had been keeping me?”

At that point Rowan had stopped because she’d seen Mona.

She’d risen to her feet as if she were greeting some important
adult. Her eyes were brilliant now, and not so much cold anymore as serious, a real important distinction.

“I don’t mean to disturb you,” Mona had said. “I don’t want to go home to Amelia,” she’d said sleepily. “I was wondering if I could stay here—”

“I wish you would stay,” said Rowan without hesitation. “I’ve kept you waiting for hours.”

“Yes and no,” said Mona, who would rather have been here than home.

“It’s unforgivable,” said Rowan. “Can we talk in the morning?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mona had said, with an exhausted shrug. She’s talking to me like I’m a grown woman, thought Mona, which is more than anybody else around here ever does.

“You
are
a woman, Mona Mayfair,” Rowan had said, with a sudden, deeply personal smile. She’d immediately sat down again and resumed her conversation with Ryan.

“There should have been papers there, in my room in Houston, reams of scribbled writing. This was his writing, genealogies he had made before his memory deteriorated….”

Boy, Mona had thought, stepping away about as slowly as she could—she’s talking to Ryan of all people about Lasher, and Ryan still can’t say that name, and now Ryan has to deal with hard evidence of what he still won’t accept. Papers, genealogies, things written by the monster who killed his wife, Gifford.

But what Mona had realized in a flash was that she wasn’t necessarily going to be shut out of all this. Rowan had just spoken to her again as if she were important. Everything was changed. And if Mona asked Rowan tomorrow or the day after what those papers were—Lasher’s scribblings—Rowan might even tell her.

Incredible to have seen Rowan’s smile, to have seen the mask of cold power broken, to have seen the gray eyes crinkle and glisten for an instant, to have heard the deep chocolate voice take on that extra little warmth that a smile can give it—amazing.

Mona had finally hurried out of sight. Quit while you’re ahead. You’re too sleepy to be eavesdropping, anyway.

The last thing she’d heard was Ryan saying in a strained voice that everything from Houston had been examined and cataloged.

Mona could still remember when all of those things had reached Mayfair and Mayfair. She could still remember that scent of him that came from the boxes. She could still—occasionally—catch that scent in the living room, but it was almost gone now.

She had flopped on the living room couch, too tired to think about it all just now.

All the others had left by that time. Lily was sleeping upstairs near Beatrice. Michael’s Aunt Vivian had moved back to her own apartment on St. Charles Avenue.

The living room had been empty, the breeze floating in through the windows to the side porch. A guard had been walking back and forth out there, so Mona had figured, I don’t have to close those windows, and facedown on the couch she had crashed, thinking Yuri, then Michael, and pushing her face into the velvet and going sound asleep.

They said when you grew older you couldn’t sleep that way. Well, Mona was ready for it. That sort of blotto sleep always made her feel cheated, as if she’d checked out on the universe for a span of time that she herself could not control.

But at four o’clock she’d awakened, unsure of why.

The floor-length windows had been open still, and the guard was out there smoking a cigarette.

Sleepily she’d listened to the sounds of the night, the birds crying in the dark trees, the distant roar of a train along the waterfront, the sound of water splashing as in a fountain or a pool.

She must have listened for half an hour before the sound of the water began to prey on her. There was no fountain. Someone was swimming in the pool.

Half expecting to see some delicious ghost—poor Stella, for instance, or God only knew what other apparition—Mona had slipped out in her bare feet and crossed the lawn.
The guard was nowhere in sight now, but that didn’t mean much on a property of this size.

Someone had been swimming steadily back and forth across the pool.

Through the gardenia bushes, Mona had seen that it was Rowan, naked, and moving with incredible speed through lap after lap. Rowan took her breaths regularly, head to the side, the way professional swimmers do it, or the way that athletic doctors do it, who want to work the body and condition it, and maybe even heal it and bring it back into prime form.

No time to disturb her, Mona had thought, still sleepy, longing for the couch again, in fact, so sluggish she might have fallen down on the cool grass. Something about the scene had disturbed her, however; maybe that Rowan was nude, or that she swam so rapidly and so steadily; or maybe just that the guard was around and might be a peeping Tom in the bushes right now, which Mona didn’t like.

Whatever, Rowan had known all about the guards on the property. She’d spent an hour with Ryan on that subject alone.

Mona had gone back to sleep.

Now, as she woke, it was Rowan she thought of, even before invoking the face of Yuri, or feeling routinely and religiously guilty about Michael, or at once reminding herself, rather like giving her own arm a cruel pinch, that Gifford and her mother were both dead.

She stared at the sunlight bathing the floor and the gold damask chair nearest the window. Maybe that was what this was all about. The lights had gone dim for Mona when Alicia and Gifford died, there was no doubt of it. And now, just because this woman was interested in her, this mysterious woman who meant so much to her for countless reasons, the lights were bright again.

Aaron’s death was terrible, but she could handle it. In fact, what she felt more than anything else was the same selfish excitement she’d known yesterday at Rowan’s first expression of interest, at her first confidential and respectful glance.

Probably wants to ask me if I want to go to boarding
school, Mona thought. High heels lying there. She couldn’t put those on again. But it was nice to walk on the bare boards at First Street. They were always polished now, with the new staff. Yancy, the houseman, buffed them for hours. Even old Eugenia had been working more and grumbling less.

Mona rose, straightened out the silk dress which was perhaps ruined now, she wasn’t really sure. She walked over to the garden window and let the sun flood over her, warm and fresh, the air full of humidity and sweetness from the garden—all the things she usually took for granted, but which at First Street seemed doubly wonderful, and worth a moment’s meditation before rushing headlong into the day.

Protein, complex carbos, vitamin C. She was famished. Last night there had been the usual groaning sideboard, with all the family coming to put their arms around Beatrice, but Mona had forgotten to eat.

“No wonder you woke up in the night, you idiot.” When she failed to eat, she invariably had a headache. Now she thought again, suddenly, of Rowan swimming alone, and the thought disturbed her again—the nudity, the strange disregard for the hour and the presence of the guards. Hell, you idiot, she’s from California. They do stuff like that out there night and day.

She stretched, spread her legs apart, touched her toes with her hands, and then leaned backwards, shaking her hair from side to side till it felt loose and cool again, and then she walked out of the room and back the long corridor, through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Eggs, orange juice, Michael’s concoction. Maybe there was a goodly supply.

The smell of fresh coffee surprised her. Immediately she took a black china mug from the cupboard and lifted the pot. Very black, espresso, Michael’s kind of coffee, the kind he’d loved in San Francisco. But she realized this wasn’t what she wanted at all. She craved something cool and good. Orange juice. Michael always had bottles of it, mixed and ready, in the refrigerator. She filled another cup with
orange juice, and carefully capped the jug to keep all the vitamins from dying in the air.

Suddenly she realized she wasn’t alone.

Rowan was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her. Rowan was smoking a cigarette which she tapped now above a fine china saucer with flowers along the edge. She wore a black silk suit and pearl earrings, and there was a little string of pearls around her neck, too. It was one of those suits with a long curvaceous jacket, double-breasted and fully buttoned, with no blouse or shirt beneath it, only bare flesh to a discreet cleft.

“I didn’t see you,” Mona confessed.

Rowan nodded. “Do you know who bought these clothes for me?” The voice was as chocolaty and smooth as it had been last night, after all the soreness had gone away.

“Probably the same person who bought this dress for me,” said Mona. “Beatrice. My closets are bulging with stuff from Beatrice. And it’s all silk.”

“So are my closets,” said Rowan, and there came again that bright smile.

Rowan’s hair was brushed back from her face, but otherwise natural, curling loosely just above her collar; her eyelashes looked very dark and distinct, and she wore a pale violet-pink lipstick that carefully outlined a rather beautifully shaped mouth.

“You’re really OK, aren’t you?” asked Mona.

“Sit down here, will you?” said Rowan. She gestured to the chair at the other end of the table.

Mona obeyed.

An expensive fragrance emanated from Rowan, rather like citrus and rain.

The black silk suit was really terrific; in the days before the wedding, Rowan had never been seen in anything so deliberately sensual. Bea had a way of sneaking into people’s closets and checking their sizes, not just by label but with a tape measure, and then dressing them up the way that she, Beatrice, thought they ought to look.

Well, with Rowan she’d done well.

And I’ve destroyed this blue dress, thought Mona. Just
not ready for this kind of thing. Or those high heels she’d kicked off on the living room floor.

Rowan lowered her head as she crushed out her cigarette. A deep forward curl of ash-blond hair fell into the hollow of her cheek. Her face looked lean and awesomely dramatic. It was as if sickness and sorrow had given her the very gauntness for which starlets and models starve themselves to death.

For this sort of beauty, Mona was no contender. It was red hair and curves with her, and always would be. If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t like Mona.

Rowan gave a soft laugh.

“How long have you been doing it?” asked Mona, taking a deep gulp of her coffee. It had just reached the right temperature. Delicious. In two minutes it would be too cold to drink. “Reading my mind, I mean. It’s not consistent, is it?”

Rowan was caught off guard, but seemed faintly amused. “No, it’s not consistent at all. I’d say it happens in flashes when you’re sort of preoccupied, kind of slipping into your own reflections. It’s like you suddenly strike a match.”

“Yeah, I like that. I know what you’re saying.” Mona took a deep swallow of the orange juice, thinking how good it was, and how cold. For a moment her head hurt from the cold. She tried not to stare worshipfully at Rowan. This was like having a crush on a teacher, something that Mona had never known.

“When you look at me,” said Rowan, “I can’t read anything. Maybe it’s your green eyes blinding me. Don’t forget about them when you’re making your tally. Perfect skin, red hair to die for, long and outrageously thick, and enormous green eyes. Then there’s the mouth, and the body. No, I think your view of yourself is slightly blurred right now. Perhaps it’s only that you’re more interested in other things—the legacy, what happened to Aaron, when will Yuri come back?”

Clever words came to Mona’s mind and faded away instantly. She had never in her life lingered before a mirror more than necessary. She had not looked in one this morning at all.

“Look, I don’t have much time,” Rowan said. She
clasped her hands on the table. “I need to talk to you straight.”

“Yes, do it,” said Mona. “Please.”

“I understand completely about your being the heiress. There is no malice between you and me. You’re the finest conceivable choice. I knew this myself in my own instinctive fashion as soon as I came to grasp what had been done. But Ryan cleared up the matter completely. The tests and the profile are complete. You are the gifted daughter. You have the intelligence, the stability, the toughness. You have the perfect health. Oh, the extra chromosomes are there, all right, but they’ve been there in Mayfair women and men for centuries. There’s no reason to expect that anything like what happened on Christmas will ever happen again.”