Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (48 page)

 
          
And it's my fault. Mine!
Winter felt her
own grief as if it were still raw and fresh. "Yes," she said briefly,
lowering her head.

 
          
"It
may be more of a tragedy than you realize," Paul Frederick said soberly.
Winter's head snapped up, and she locked eyes with him challengingly.

 
          
"No,"
she said evenly, "I don't think so." The warning in her voice was
plain.

 
          
"Paul!"
Emily's voice broke into the clash of wills. "If this is business of
yours, can't it at least wait until after dinner?"

 
          
Paul
Frederick looked sheepish, and smiled apologetically at Winter. "I'm
sorry; I was rude. Have you eaten? The Green Man is table
d'hote
in the evening unless you just want a snack, but the food here is very
good."

 
          
"Thanks,"
Winter said. "I just flew in, and the food on the plane was pretty
ghastly."

 
          
Paul
gestured, and the waitress who'd brought Winter's coffee came over to the
table.

 
          
As
they waited for the food, Emily determinedly kept the talk general. Winter
learned that Emily considered herself too impatient to teach, though Simon said
she would come to it someday.

 
          
"He
said if
he
could become a teacher,
then there was hope for anyone!" Emily said, with such an infectious
merriment at her private joke that Winter could not help but smile, too. For a
moment her own problems seemed very far away.

 
          
Emily
seemed profoundly incurious about Winter's business in
San Francisco
, but it seemed to Winter that Emily did not
share all her husband's interests, and wisely kept herself separate from them.
The food, when it came, was a poached whitefish with exotic mushrooms in wine
sauce—as unexpected in this atmosphere as was the marriage of neat,
disciplined Emily Barnes to the exotic, anachronistic Frodo.

 
          
When
they had finished dinner and the coffee had been brought, Emily rose to her
feet.

 
          
"I
am going to go powder my nose for about ten minutes," she said
determinedly. She strode toward the back of the cafe with the same queen-like
carriage with which Winter had seen her cross the concert stage.

 
          
"What's
that all about?" Winter said.

 
          
"Oh,
Em
isn't really interested in what she calls 'my
other life.' She comes to the big Festivals, but music is the most important
thing in her life, and we both respect that," Frodo said.

 
          
Winter
felt a pang of wistfulness, wondering if Grey would be— would have been—as
intelligent and caring a husband as Frodo obviously was. She had made no time
in her life for anyone with whom she could form that level of closeness, and
knowing her reasons didn't make the loneliness any less.

 
          
"And
what is 'your other life?" she asked deliberately.

 
          
Frodo
met her eyes. "I was a member of Cassie's working group. Her coven,"
he said quietly.

 
          
It
took a moment for all the ramifications of that simple statement to sink in,
and when they did, Winter found herself blushing with shame. If Frodo talked
about the circumstances surrounding Cassie's death Winter did not know if she
could bear it. She'd lived her life as if everyone had been put into the world
to play a part subordinate to hers, and was only now coming to realize how
selfish that had been.

 
          
"So
you probably know Rhiannon," she said evenly.

 
          
"Yeah."
Frodo grimaced. "I guess I really got on her case about the way she
treated you—just jumping in with what must have sounded like a bunch of
messages from the spirit world delivered by a gypsy con artist, when you'd
barely found out Cassie was dead."

 
          
"Oh,
no!" Winter protested automatically. "I suppose I could at least have
listened to her," she added after a moment.

 
          
She
regarded Frodo warily. The aloofness she had always cultivated as a defense
against the world made her rebel against the very idea of this stranger knowing
anything about her personal life—let alone about the monster that had stalked and
killed Cassie.

 
          
"It's
hard to know what to do sometimes," Frodo said diplomatically.

 
          
Winter
set her jaw, choking back the words of self-justification before they were
uttered. To have to live with what Truth
Jourdemayne
called the Unseen World was bad enough, but to talk with someone she hardly
knew about things that her mind still rejected even as her mouth formed the
words . . .

 
          
But
to her relief, Frodo seemed to be willing to let her lead the conversation,
and there was only one thing Winter really wanted to talk about.

 
          
"I
need the letter Cassie left for me," she said. "Unless you know what
it said?"

 
          
Frodo
shook his head. "No. But Rhiannon can meet us here in about fifteen
minutes and bring it with her. If that's okay with you?"

 
          
"Yes,"
Winter said, not trusting herself to say more.
It's going to have to be, isn't it?

 
          
Frodo
got up to make the phone call.

 
          
Emily
had returned to the table, and the three of them had finished with dessert, by
the time Rhiannon actually arrived. Winter had no idea what Frodo had said to
her in the phone call, but Rhiannon looked almost painfully subdued. She wore a
light raincoat beaded with moisture over a pink cotton Shaker sweater, tan
corduroy slacks, and oxblood loafers. Her frizzy riot of copper-red hair was
stifled in a severe braid that could not quite control the rain-sequined halo
of frizz. She carried a manila envelope under one arm inside her coat.

 
          
"Hello,"
she said unsmilingly, looking at Winter.

 
          
Oh, just give me the damned letter!
Winter
felt like shouting. Instead, she rose to her feet and held out her hand.
"Hello, Rhiannon. I'm pleased to see you again."

 
          
The
other woman's mouth twisted, preparing a sarcastic retort, then she caught
Frodo's eye and stopped. She took Winter's hand and shook it briefly, and
Winter was sharply glad that her particular psychic kink was
psychokinesis
, not clairvoyance. It was bad enough
suspecting the truth about people's inner feelings without knowing them for
sure.

           
With the determination gained
through years of practice at keeping emotion at bay, Winter smiled and took
charge of the conversation.

 
          
"Thank
you for coming. I didn't have the opportunity before to tell you how sorry I am
for your loss; I know Cassie must have meant a great deal to you." The
words were artificial and contrived, but on some level they were true: If
Winter had been a better person, she knew, she
would
have sympathized with Rhiannon's loss instead of being
obsessed solely with her own.

 
          
Surprisingly,
Rhiannon accepted the inner truth of Winter's words, not their calculated
motivation.

 
          
"She
was your friend first," Rhiannon said gruffly. "I'm sorry I startled
you before. I'm glad you came back."

 
          
"We
so rarely get a second chance in life," Winter said. "Would you care
to sit down?"

 
          
"No,"
Rhiannon said. "I mean, I'm on my way to work. I'm working at
Capwell's
now, Frodo—it's just temporary, but it's better
than nothing," she said in an aside. "Anyway, Cassie's letter is in
the envelope.
So's
my address. If you need any help
from us—anything—we owe it to Cassie."

 
          
Honest if not gracious,
Winter thought.

 
          
Rhiannon
held out the envelope and Winter took it. She stood as Rhiannon crossed the
dining room and went out the door into the rain.

 
          
Winter
sat down again. The waiter had cleared the table while Rhiannon had been
there, and Winter set the envelope on the cleared space in front of her. When
it became obvious that Winter was not going to open it, Frodo cleared his
throat.

 
          
"I
hope you'll give me a call when you've had a chance to read that," he
said. "I'd like to know what I can do to help. Do you have a place to
stay?"

 
          
In
what she now thought of as her other life, Winter had always stayed at the
St.
Mark
Hotel
. She wondered if they'd let her in without a reservation. "I'll
find something."

 
          
"Will
you call me?" Frodo said.

 
          
Probably worried that I'm just going to burn
Cassie's letter.
"Don't worry," she said obliquely. "I've
gone through too much to get this." She forced herself to go on.
"I'll call you." The waiter came back with the check; Winter grabbed
it automatically. "And, please. I hope you'll be my guests for dinner. I
owe you a great deal," she added reluctantly. It was time to get used to
being beholden to people, no matter how much her pride rebelled against it.

 
          
"Well
. . . okay," Frodo said with a warm smile. He stood up. "C'mon,
Em
. And, Winter, come and see us when you can, okay?"

 
          
"Sure."
/
f I
can.
"Good night, Frodo, Emily. It was a pleasure." When
they were gone, Winter put down her American Express card, then signed the slip
and left a generous tip. But it was a long time before she could bring herself
to slip the envelope into her purse and leave.

 
          
The
St. Mark Hotel, that gracious relict of what
San Francisco Chronicle
columnist Herb
Caen
called San Francisco's Silver Age, still stood, in the words of the famous
song, "high on a windswept hill." Despite the lateness of the hour
when Winter finally reached it and the lack of advance warning, the staff was
able to accommodate her. It was true that all that had been free on such short
notice was one of the Mark's luxurious suites, but it hardly seemed to matter,
and soon she was looking out from the parlor window of her suite over the
fog-shrouded Bay. A bottle of wine from Room Service stood on a tray before her,
with her
briefbag
beside it. A corner of the letter
poked out from inside the bag, still unopened.

 
          
You have to do it sometime,
Winter told
herself, trying to ignore the clutching ice in her stomach. She reached
forward, but instead of the letter, she drew the cork out of the wine bottle
and let the scarlet liquid splash into the glass beside it.
You're drinking too much,
she admonished
herself, then gulped at the wine angrily. What could it possibly matter now?
What could anything matter? She wasn't going to live long enough to become an
alcoholic!

 
          
She
sat back and stared morosely out the window as the alcohol worked its way into
her bloodstream. Her conscience nagged at her. Whatever pain Cassie's letter
might give her, it was a pain that she deserved.

 
          
Winter
poured another glass of wine and reached for the envelope. Her hands shook
slightly as she tore off the end, and two things fell out. One was a smaller
envelope, business-sized, with her name written on it in Cassie's scrawling
script; the other, the information Rhiannon had said she'd given her.
Meticulously, Winter read over the name and address and tucked the slip of
paper into the appropriate pocket in her
Filofax
before putting its binder back into her bag.