By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (3 page)

"Please hold still, for heaven's sake!"
Cindy turned to look, but the man, perceiving that he was being
noticed, had turned away and was swallowed up by the greenery. "No,
I don't think so," she said, distracted. "This isn't working. I
can't see what I'm doing."

"Very well; I'll have it looked to." Mrs.
Hutley plopped a manicured hand on top of her head. "Oh, and do
stay away from the dance tent; someone told me it reeks of
marijuana. Champagne, you know, can be just as much fun."

She left Cindy alone and looking for someone
to latch onto. She had arrived much later than she had planned, and
it just wasn't fair. Instead of dining at the Viscountess
Marchemont's pre-ball dinner, Cindy had wasted the evening waiting
for Alan. Not that she was hungry, but ... she
should
be
hungry, she realized vaguely.

The hors d'oeuvres were outside. As was
usual in such affairs, all uncouth functions—provocative dancing,
eating, smoking, serious drinking—were relegated to the huge
pastel-striped tents pitched over the groomed, rolling lawn. The
ground floor of the gabled mansion itself was given over to more
genteel occupations; if one were fond of a Strauss waltz, or
graceful conversation, or merely posing, one would certainly remain
inside.

But if one were too sober for the dance tent
and too drunk for the Great Hall, there was always the veranda. The
veranda was an illogical afterthought to the Hutley house, added
during the height of the palazzo competition during Newport's
Gilded Age. In contrast to the rambling fieldstone and clapboard of
the house itself, the veranda was a massive marble affair, rigidly
symmetric in the manner of Versailles. It gave the huge Victorian
"cottage" an oddly schizophrenic look: whimsical and playful from
the front; severe and formal from the ocean side.

Those who gathered on the veranda under the
rainbow of silk Chinese lanterns were more interested in observing
than in being observed. Cindy stood there with her plate of
untouched shrimp and tiny teriyaki sticks, desperately scanning the
guests below her for someone she knew who was unescorted.
Damn
you, Alan,
she thought.
If you were here this wouldn't be
necessary.
The champagne had rushed straight to the motor
control center of her brain, knocking out coordination and filling
her with a lightheaded recklessness. In her exalted state she
thought she could see the wind blowing the champagne bubbles over
the rim of her glass and down, like a comet's tail, into the
darkness of the lawn below.

She leaned both arms on the balustrade and
peered down over it. The coolness of the marble sent delicious
rippling sensations through the thin fabric of her dress as she
pressed into the unyielding stone. Champagne always affected her
that way: it made her feel intensely erotic.

"Careful, Cindy. You wouldn't want to pitch
head over teakettle into the bushes below." The voice was cool,
ironic, and not particularly cautionary.

Cindy swung her head around, instantly
hostile at the tone. "Mavis. Hello." Her glance was quick,
nonchalant, and photographic, the kind of look only women can give
other women. She took in, almost without looking, the sleek gown
that clung to her slender waist and rounded hips. Her breasts were
rounded too. It was annoying. And of course, to complement the deep
tan and the white gown, Mavis wore emeralds. No other jewel
interested her. This time it was a choker of immense cabochon
stones set in a thick wide band of gold, and a matching
bracelet.

Cindy supposed that rubies would not have
flattered Mavis Moran's deep auburn hair. But sapphires might, or
diamonds, and God knew Mavis could afford them. But mixing her
stones would have made Mavis just another fabulously wealthy woman
in a town overflowing with them. How much more
chic,
Cindy
thought with reluctant admiration, to be associated with one stone
only. Besides, emeralds matched Mavis's eyes. She really did look
radiant tonight. And then it dawned on Cindy: for the first time
since her husband's death, Mavis was not wearing black.

"I see that you're out of mourning," Cindy
said.

"And I see that you are not. Alone
again?"

"Alan will be along later," Cindy lied.

"I doubt that. I swung through the shipyard
on my way here; the crew was in the process of setting up lights
around the masts. What a pity that
Shadow
was dismasted
today. Their night won't be nearly as much fun as ours." She stood
directly below a Chinese lantern whose bulb flickered loosely in
its socket, from light to dark to light again. Mavis reached up and
with gingerly little nips tightened it.

Cool, tall, and detached. Cindy was not tall
and she disliked women who were. She found Mavis Moran positively
Amazonian in her bearing; all she lacked were the bow and arrows.
Something in her reminded Cindy of Alan: a kind of confidence that
she found unacceptable. Irritated anew, she said, "I can't
understand why Alan doesn't just have the shipyard do the
work."

Mavis laughed, and this time Cindy detected
condescension.

"
Money," she answered. "Have you
priced out a yard hand lately? If Alan Seton can get the job done
by coaxing his ten willing crew, I'm sure all will be forgiven.
After all, there's an undeniable
cachet
in picking up the
tab for an America's Cup campaign all by oneself. Unfortunately,
little economies like tonight's are sometimes necessary."

"Alan likes to have total control of a
program," Cindy said vaguely in reply, but her thoughts were on the
evening before, when she'd been trying on her gown with different
bits of jewelry before a full-length mirror. Alan had walked into
the bedroom, stopped, and roared, "What?
Another
gown? We'll
be in the poorhouse before the August trials." Cindy had answered,
"Don't be tiresome, Alan. Pearls, or not?" and thought no more
about his remark. Until now.

Cindy took a cigarette from a gold case in
her bugle-beaded handbag and tapped it on the marble balustrade.
"What do you suppose," she asked casually, "is the absolute minimum
it costs to campaign a yacht in an America's Cup competition this
season?" Alan, as a rule, told her nothing. But Mavis would know.
Mavis and her husband had been looking for new ways to spend money;
just before her much older husband died, the two had thrown in with
one of the other American syndicates.

"More millions than I want to admit," Mavis
answered, giving Cindy a curious look.

"Really."

Millions
? When all along Cindy had
been thinking in terms of mere hundreds of thousands? Millions? For
what,
dear God? For a sixty-foot aluminum shell that you
couldn't sit down and take a pee in? Alan was insane. Truly,
certifiably insane. One thing was certain: it was going to be so
much simpler, leaving a penniless lunatic. "Well!" she said,
laughing, trying to cover her shock, "one certainly doesn't get
much bang for one's buck nowadays."

Mavis ignored that. "Why does Alan spurn
help, Cindy? If a Vanderbilt wasn't too proud to form a syndicate,
why should Alan Seton be?"

At her mention of the two famous names,
heads near them swiveled, avid to hear more. It was July, and
Newport was well into the throes of Cup hysteria. Normally decent
people, everyone from busboys to the mayor, were becoming shameless
eavesdroppers and gossips, desperate for the latest scuttlebutt.
Spies, showoffs, and reporters were everywhere.

"I've told you," Cindy answered, oblivious
to the blatantly curious looks, "Alan likes to call the shots." Was
there nothing else to talk about? She'd love, for instance, to have
asked Mavis who created her emerald choker; it was absolutely
fabulous. The child in her wanted to reach out and caress the
smooth, unfaceted surfaces of the stones. "Mavis, I'm dying to
know—"

But Mavis was shushing her to silence.
Throwing two gaping men a withering look—Mavis was taller, after
all, than either of them—she led Cindy by the arm down the steps of
the veranda and onto the lawn. "Let's get away from the crush. We
can't talk here."

Leading Cindy purposefully through the
crowd, Mavis acknowledged greetings with royal detachment,
discouraging familiarity. At Cindy's insistence they paused at a
linen-covered bar to refill her glass. By the time they reached a
quiet little nook downwind of the chattering guests, Cindy was
feeling less panic and more tipsy anticipation.

They stopped at a low stone bench, and Mavis
said, "This is good. Sit here next to me."

Much as she hated to admit it, it gave Cindy
a sense of pleasure to be ordered about that way. She slid shyly
into place next to Mavis, snugly sheltered from the damp ocean
breeze. She had absolutely no idea why Mavis had singled her out
this way but waited with naive pleasure for what was to follow.
Cindy loved surprises.

"Cindy," Mavis began, "has Alan ever spoken
of me?"

She hadn't expected that. "I ... only once.
At the time he seemed upset." Which was an understatement. His
exact words were, "That rich, conniving, devious, ball-busting ….!"
When Cindy had interrupted him to ask what all the screaming was
about, Alan had answered cryptically, "Haven't you heard? Mavis
Moran is shopping for a new falcon for her wrist." And that had
been that.

To Mavis, Cindy said, "He never told me what
it was about," which was the truth.

Mavis grimaced. "No. I don't suppose he
would. The fact is, my husband had always been a Cup fanatic; he'd
contributed to several campaigns before this one. After I married
him I became interested myself. That was during the Ted Turner
years; one could hardly
not
be interested," Mavis added with
a sudden, total grin of sly good humor. Even in the near-blackness,
it was obvious that her teeth were straight and white and added to
her classic Irish beauty. "Of course," Mavis added amiably, "you're
too young to remember the phenomenal impact Turner had on the
public, the media, the sport itself."

"Too young! That was less than ten years
ago. How young do you think I am?"

Mavis's laugh was low and lovely. "Well ...
twenty-two? Twenty-three?"

"I'm twenty-seven!" Cindy said with the
huffiness of a thirteen-year-old accused of being a preteen. (The
truth was, there was a chronic whine in her voice which would
always
label her preteen.)

Mavis smiled. "Darling, don't be indignant
about it; be grateful. Over a year ago," she continued, "sometime
after my husband's heart attack, we—I—approached Alan with the idea
of backing his campaign. All the syndicates were still in flux; we
wanted to go where we felt most effective. We thought—I still do
think—that
Shadow
might be the fastest of the American
twelves. Possibly Alan is even the best skipper," she added
magnanimously. "But Alan refused our help, not very politely, I
might add, and Bill decided to take his money over to the
competition. It was Bill's last campaign."

And mine too,
thought Cindy. The
bubbles in her champagne were flattening, and so were her spirits.
She felt headachy and weary of all the Cup talk, and she wanted,
more than anything, to go home. "Is that what you wanted to tell
me?" she asked Mavis.

"Obviously not," Mavis snapped, and then
smoothed her voice to a confidential purr. "I do understand Alan
wanting to run the show himself. But it's become obvious to
everyone that he's wearing himself—and his crew—into the ground
doing it. It certainly will hurt
Shadow's
performance on the
water."

She rested her hand on Cindy's thin, bare
shoulders, so much more fashionably angular than her own, and said
quietly, "Were you aware that Alan's group are the only Americans
who've been refused credit by the local chandlery? The food supply
houses? The sailmakers? How long do you think Alan can continue
trying to pay for it all himself, and on a cash-and-carry
basis?"

Cindy said nothing at first. Slowly it was
dawning on her that she, Cindy Seton, was being asked to help
force-feed a little of Mavis Moran's considerable fortune into
Alan's campaign. It was natural to assume that Cindy would look
forward to saving some of her husband's hard-earned money and
maybe, even, having the pleasure of his company once in a
while.

Cindy's laugh was quick, shrill, almost
hysterical. This was too ironic for words. "As far as I'm
concerned, they can flush the entire
Shadow
campaign right
down the toilet. I've never been so sick of anything in all my
life. I hate it. I hate the Cup! It's ruining us! It's ruined—"

"Shhh! Someone's coming." Mavis tightened
her grip on Cindy's shoulder; it had the sharp sting of a slap
across the face. Cindy let out one cracked gasp and was still.

"Good evening, ladies. There is nothing, I
think, quite so ... intense, as a tête-à-tête on a moonless night.
Do you not agree?" The speaker stood before them and bowed to a
point midway between the two women, who exchanged startled looks.
The accent was Mediterranean; the body, tall; the demeanor, rather
courtly. What little light there was shone behind him, throwing the
dark features of his face into obscurity.

Mavis spoke first, with chilly exclusion. "I
don't believe I've had the pleasure. Is he a friend of yours,
Cindy?" She might have been acknowledging a small untrained puppy
nearby; Mavis did not suffer interruptions lightly.

The visitor was quick to perceive the cut,
and before Cindy could speak he said, "Permit me to introduce
myself. I am known—occasionally in Newport and invariably abroad—by
the name of Delgado. And this," he added, withdrawing almost as an
afterthought a handgun from his pocket, "is a gun. Now that we have
all become acquainted—for, of course, neither of you requires an
introduction—perhaps you will oblige me by retiring to the footpath
behind you. I have had occasion to stroll along it quite recently,
and I can assure you that it is easily traversed, even in your
charmingly impractical shoes. Although, of course, I should not
want to
be
in your shoes," he added, amused by his own quip.
"Ah, please, Mrs. Seton, no trembling. Can you not take your cue
from your lovely companion?" He jerked the gun toward the path with
a crisp, almost ruthless motion which belied his casual, friendly
manner.