“You’re marrying me all right, Tallulah,” he said in an icy voice. “You have no choice in the matter, I thought that was understood. I’d hate to have to threaten you...”
“You already are.” She glared up at him, but her voice wavered.
“We’ve been through all this. Look on it as a simple business agreement I get the wife and hostess I need, a blue-blooded Abbott to assure my place in society. In return, your father’s estate is secure, and he doesn’t have to worry about prosecution for war profiteering.”
“You were the war profiteer, not my father,” she shot back, remembering Jack’s words.
“Hell, Tallulah, we both were. There’s a lot of money to be made during wars, and we were smart enough to make it Who do you think pays for those pretty dresses you hate wearing, for your new car, for this lavish wedding? Not even the Abbotts could survive the depression with their fortunes intact, though your father put up a good front But he needed me. And in return, I get you.”
“And what do I get out of the deal?” she demanded bitterly.
“I don’t think anyone really cares,” Neddie said softly. “You’ll have an extravagant life-style and the respect due my wife, but those things never mattered to you, did they?”
“No,” she said. “They never did.”
“And then there’s your little sister. You wouldn’t want to see her shamed, now would you? If your father was disgraced, her life would be ruined, and she wouldn’t even have the cushion of money to help her. But we don’t have to worry about that, now, do we? You’re going to marry me, and you know it No more disrespectful behavior, no more inappropriate clothing. And no more Jack McGowan.” The fingers on her arms tightened still further, and she couldn’t control her little cry of pain. “I don’t want him sniffing around you. I might have to do something about it, and you wouldn’t want to get me angry, now would you, Tallulah?”
I’m not Tallulah, she wanted to cry, but she didn’t. “You’re hurting me.”
“I don’t care.”
. “You’ll leave bruises. Do you want the wedding guests to know that you hurt me? And that you enjoy it?”
He considered it for a moment savoring the notion, and Susan’s blood went cold. In a moment of blinding clarity she thought she knew how Tallulah had died, and it wasn’t in a train wreck It had been at tire brutal hands of Edward Marsden.
He released her then, and she fell back against the wall, strangely weak. “Go change, Tallulah,” he said in his mellifluous voice. “Fix your hair, put on some makeup. Take your time. I expect you to be a credit to me, and I’m prepared to wait.”
She stared at him. He was a big man, though not much taller than Tallulah’s impressive height He had cold, piggy eyes and a cruel smile, and she realized with a start that he wasn’t that old. Probably not even thirty, and yet old in the harsh ways of the world.
She pushed away from the wall, and he stepped back, smugly sure he had her beaten. “You’ll have a long wait,” she said.
“I’m patient,” he said. “And I always win.”
She believed him. She remembered the ancient Ned Marsden with his cowed second wife and his milky eyes, still radiating power even in his late seventies. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him.
She turned to leave him, and his voice followed her. “I’m counting on you, Tallulah. You wouldn’t want to see me lose my temper.”
. He was right about that much. He could lose his temper all he wanted, once she was out of reach. She said nothing, feeling his cold eyes on her back as she mounted the stairs, only to have Lou’s father almost barrel into her in his anxiety to get down.
“What have you done?” he demanded in a furious whisper. “You haven’t made him angry, have you?”
She looked at the man who raised her mother. He was a frightened, selfish little man, ready to sacrifice his own daughter to keep himself safe.
She didn’t bother to disguise the contempt in her face. “I’m sure you’ll fix everything.” She moved past him, her back straight.
His voice followed her. “For God’s sake, change those awful clothes! You’ll ruin everything.”
She was shaking by the time she got back in her bedroom, shaking so hard she collapsed on the tufted slipper chair. Outside the sun was shining, inside she was still desperately cold. She wrapped her arms around her body, rocking back and forth. There had to be some way out of this mess. Without sacrificing her sister. Mother. Whatever.
God, she felt like something out of Chinatown. The thought should have amused her, but right now her sense of humor seemed to have vanished. She felt trapped, smothered, with no way out Even Jack McGowan, for all his dire warnings, hadn’t offered any possibility of escape.
There had to be a way out. There was a reason she was here, or at least was dreaming she was here, and it couldn’t be to repeat history. That much was absolutely certain.
She looked at her reflection in the hinged mirror over the kidney-shaped dressing table. Tallulah Abbott was pale, her dark brown eyes haunted, her full, unpainted mouth faintly tremulous. She bit her lip, favoring the stranger in the minor with her steeliest expression, and was pleased to see that Lou Abbott could look surprisingly stern despite her lush beauty.
She could see the faint bloodstain Jack had told her about, and she touched it Putting on that shirt had felt like sliding into a warm embrace, and now she knew why. Tallulah had obviously cherished that shin, and it might simply be because it was loose and comfortable, unlike the rest of her fussy and tailored clothes.
But Susan didn’t think so. Lou treasured it because it had belonged to Jack McGowan. He’d taken the shirt off his back and wrapped her in it, long ago, and somewhere in this stranger’s body she could still remember how wonderful it felt.
