Lotus Blossom (24 page)

“
I
should hit you,” Lotus told him as she kissed his chin, then stepped back from him, irritated with herself that she had exposed so much of her feelings to him. Damn him that she should be so jealous of him!

“What are you thinking?” he asked her as he fitted the snow white carnation touched with cream

into his lapel. Then he watched her affix the creamy lavender jade earrings into her ears.

“The dashing Dash never looked more dashing,” she simpered, her hands still on her left ear as she looked into the mirror, freezing still when she saw his face harden and close as he leaned near her. As he drew back she turned, putting the one earring down on the dresser, her hand reaching out to his. “Wait. I hurt you. How?”

Dash looked down at her hand, for a moment, seeming to studying her wedding ring and diamond carefully. Then he looked up at her. “I suppose it bothers me that you would adopt the sobriquet of the tabloids for me.”

Lotus felt her mouth drop as he seemed to move further away. “Dash. I never knew they called you that.”

His eyes narrowed, seeming to go over her face in laser study, “That doesn’t seem possible,” he murmured.

She could feel her nails digging into him. “You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, no. I believe you. I just find it incredible. Not that I’m complaining. It gives me a rash to think of you ever reading some of the bull those rags put out.”

“Bad?”

“Bad! Trash is the word.” Dash spat the word. He bit his lip. “I’m not whitewashing myself, wife. Many women were in my life and that suited me, but now I wish I could erase every moment that wasn’t with you.”

“Most men love that type of experience,” she said sweetly.

Dash felt his mouth quiver with anger and

amusement. She was getting to read him very well! “I liked it myself ... at the time, but now I hate the least taint of gossip because you’re my wife.” He bit off the last word. He sounded like a preacher! “We should be going.” As she turned back to the mirror and put on the last earring and the thin jade bracelet, he studied her again. “You are so lovely. Your eyes are like almond-shaped emeralds. Your shoulders are like the flower of your name, creamy lotus.” He sucked in a breath when she walked away from him and pirouetted,the dress flaring at the bottom and showing the green leather pumps and her trim ankles, her outstretched arms like cream satin against the silky dress. “Mrs. Colby, you are very precious.’    Lotus paused in her turn and looked at him.

‘Thank you. Because you’re looking at me, I feel very beautiful.”

Dash groaned, closed his eyes for a moment, then crooked his arm. “We are late.”

Lotus clung to him as they went down the two flights of stairs.

“I never asked you if you preferred taking the elevator, dressed as you are.” Dash glanced at her ruefully as they paused on the first landing.

“No. I need the motion of walking to calm myself.”

“Darling. Be assured that there will be no one there who will even come close to your beauty.” “You might be prejudiced.”

“Yes.” He told her as he hesitated outside the drawing room. “But I also know a beautiful woman when I see one. You’re one.” He squeezed her hand, then led her into the drawing room.

“About time,” Dash’s sister, Jennifer, sighed. “We were about to go without you, John Dasher.”

“I wish you had,” Dash said, ambling over to the small bar after leading Lotus to a chair next to his mother.

“Really, dear, you know you’ll have a good time. So many of your . . . cronies will be there,” Lissa Colby told her son, sipping daintily at her Riesling.

Dash’s hand froze in the act of pouring iced orange juice for Lotus. “What cronies, Lissa?” he hissed.

Silence filled the room like an expanding balloon, pushing the oxygen from the air.

Ann, Dash’s sister, swallowed, the sound bouncing off the wainscoted walls. “If ... if you think, John Dasher, that anyone invited Prue to our dinner party at the Neptune, then . . .” She paused, sipped her wine, her eyes sliding toward her sister.

“We didn’t, though I saw nothing wrong with it. I have known Prue since we were children . . .” Jennifer began, two coin-sized spots of color on her cheeks.

“My ex-wife is not a welcome addendum to any party where I am in attendance.” Dash fired the words like bullets into the room, his teeth cracking together.

His three brothers-in-law, James Wells, Richard Aylman, and Warren Deitz, looked into their drinks. His sisters, Ann and Jennifer, looked affronted. Laura inhaled, going over to Lotus and standing next to her. His father coughed and took another glass of wine. Alan looked belligerent. Lissa looked benign.

All at once Lotus had the distinct impression all eyes were on her. She didn’t look up when Dash strode across the room and handed her the orange juice. She sipped some first. Then she looked up at her thunderous husband, taken aback when she saw his hands clenched, but a flash of hurt in his eyes. “Darling. It’s just right. I love it when
you
take care of me ...” She batted her eyes at him. “And you always take care of me.” She stared up at him until she saw his eyes flicker with warmth, the muscle at the side of his mouth cease its jerking.

“My favorite job.” Dash leaned down and kissed her, long and hard. “There was a bit of orange juice at the corner of your mouth.”

“How sweet.” Lotus looked over at her mother-in-law and sighed. “Isn’t he just the dearest person?”

“She’ll do,” Lissa murmured, her mouth quivering.

Alan’s guffaw burst into the room like the popping of a cork.

Lissa’s smile widened. “Yes, Dash is unusual.” “Very,” Lotus gushed.

“Isn’t it time we were going?” Jennifer snapped. “Right.” Zachary Colby came over to the couch where Lotus was sitting and bent toward her. “You must play poker with me sometime, child. You have the instincts of a tigress protecting her young. I like that very much.” He turned to his wife and grinned. “Come, my dear, I am sure you will be able to sharpen your sword on fresher game at the Neptune.”

“Devil,” his wife said mildly, rising from her chair. She looked at Lotus, real amusement on her face. “Dash made the right choice this time.” Lotus didn’t move as the others walked toward the door. When Dash came to take her arm and

lift her from the couch, she looked up at him. “I’m revising my first opinion of your mother.” His smile was lopsided as he looked down at her. “Darling, I was so afraid they would hurt you. I damn well almost carried you out of here and took you to the airport.”

Lotus saw the relief in his eyes. “We have a long way to go, John Dasher, before we know each other, but I’ll be damned before I let anyone put barriers between us. We might do it ourselves, but I won’t let anyone else.”

Dash lifted her ring finger to his mouth and kissed it. “Dad’s right. You
are
a tigress. Meow.” “Shame on you, Dash Colby. Tigresses roar.” She swept out of the room in front of him, chin high, hearing his shout of laughter.

CHAPTER NINE

The Neptune was a revelation to Lotus. She had been in private clubs many times before but she had never seen anything like the awesome pride that the Neptune’s staff carried around with them like a banner.

“If you’re thinking that they must be the oldest retainers in Christendom, you’re right,” Alan whispered as they were being directed to a series of round tables that had been set into a large corner of the oaked-paneled room, the floors covered in ankle-deep Oriental carpeting.

“Shh, they may ask us to leave,” Lotus whispered back as Dash seated her between his brother and himself.

“He was asked to leave the premises at one time,” Laura said, leaning forward from her place on the other side of Dash.

Lotus looked at Alan. “Not really?”

“True. I put cut-up rubber bands in one of the old duffer’s pipes when I was about ten. His grandson ratted on me,” Alan chortled. “Old Tyler screeched for a month about his ruined meerschaum.”

“And then Al tried to get even by attempting to keelhaul the grandson on his sailboat,” Dash finished, laughing.

“That’s so dangerous,” Lotus said.

“It could have been if it hadn’t been a five-foot dinghy sailboat that he sailed on the pond in the park,” Dash said.

“I almost did it,” Alan said dreamily, spearing a shrimp from his cocktail.

“I think you might be a touch worse than my brothers, but very like my cousin, Will,” Lotus told him. “I’m very comfortable with you.” She touched his cheek with her index finger. When he looked away and reddened, she glanced at Dash and grimaced. “I’ve made him uncomfortable.”

“You’ve made a conquest, I think,” Dash said. “Stop doing that, Mrs. Colby. I have no intention of battling my brother,”

Lotus’s laugh spilled out of her, turning her father-in-law’s head.

He sat at the middle table with his wife and older daughters and their husbands. He lifted his glass in a toasting gesture to her.

“See? Even my father isn’t immune to your lovely laugh, my dove,” Dash said in her ear.

They had lobster for dinner, broiled with pernod and lemon.

“I do like romaine salad,” Lotus told him, enjoying the Caesar dressing of eggs and pungent-grated cheese with oil and vinegar and herbs.

“The dessert will be chocolate mousse.” Laura leaned forward and said, “I hope you like it.”

“I’m a chocoholic,” Lotus confessed.

“Oh, sweet heaven, so am I,” Laura breathed. “I usually eat my husband’s and mine.”

“Well, don’t ask for mine,” Alan told his sister cruelly.

“Monster,” she said mildly.

Lotus had looked right and left at all the friends of the Colbys who were dining with them, and though she had been introduced to each one before they dined, she didn’t remember one. name now. “I suppose all of them trace their families back to the witches of Salem.”

“They do,” Alan said. “In fact, some of them were present at the burnings.”

Lotus chuckled, deciding that she liked Alan and Laura very much.

When they left the Neptune Club, the air was still mild but the breeze had strengthened.

“Darling, you won’t be warm enough with just that scarf on you.” Dash frowned.

“That scarf, as you call it, is cashmere and very warm,” Lotus told him.

Unlike most of his family, Dash had driven himself and Lotus in Alan’s car, the Porsche, which gave them a sense of privacy.

The ball was held in an old theater that had been renovated years before by the Landmark Society and was used by them for many of their historical fetes.

They met Alan outside the brick edifice as he was helping his older sisters from a Rolls-Royce. They strolled up the steps and into the huge lobby together.

“My goodness . .  ." Lotus looked upward at the vaulted, mosaic ceiling. “It’s wonderful. No wonder they wanted to preserve it.”

“Grandmother Colby used to tell us that she and her beaux came to the Saxby to see great entertainment,” Alan told her as he walked on one side of her as they ascended the sweep of stairs leading to the second level where the ball would be held.

The music made Lotus’s toes begin to tap as Dash and Alan paused to speak to friends.

“And this is my wife, Lotus. Darling . . .” Lotus was introduced to someone at every step as they moved toward the cathedrallike ballroom.

“Dasher, darling, aren’t you going to introduce me to your charming lotus blossom?”, A well-modulated voice spoke behind Lotus’s back.

“Prue, how are you?” Dash’s voice was cool. “I would be glad to introduce you to my wife, but I don’t know what your name is at the present time.”

“Touche. You always were a scoundrel, Dasher.” The tall blond woman had a strong supple body. Wide cheekbones delineated the shell texture of her skin and the glossy perfection of her makeup. “I’m married to Arnold Case. You must remember him.”

Dash shook his head. “I remember the name Case, but I don’t think I know him.” He looked at Lotus, wondering what she was thinking. His insides sunk at the thought of having her feel uneasy or intimidated. “Darling, this is Prue Case. Prue, this is my wife, Lotus.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Case.”

“Do call me Prue. Dasher and I go way back. I was his first wife, you know,” she told Lotus with great relish.

“How nice for you.” Lotus looked up at the woman and smiled. “I’m his last wife.” She tucked her hand into Dash’s and smiled up at him. “I am dying to dance with you, darling.”

“How do you like my sister-in-law so far, Prue, old girl?” Alan asked, chuckling.

“You were always a dirty-faced terror.” Prue’s icy smile touched Alan.

Alan pointed to his face. “Look. I washed.”

The three of them passed through into the ballroom.

“She didn’t bother you, did she, love?” Dash leaned over her as they were led to a table.

Lotus stared up at him. The expressionless Dash Colby was gone. In his place was a man who was hanging out his emotions for all to see. “I think I might feel a little sorry for her. How could any woman let you go?” she cooed, feeling strong, confident, and as powerful as Atlas because Dash didn’t disguise his relief and delight with her answer.

“That’s easy. Until you, she nor any other woman ever had me. And you have me until you let me go,” Dash told her, seeming to be oblivious of the people who moved about them, not noticing when the maitre d’ indicated their places at a table along the wall.

“Poor baby. You’re stuck, then. I won’t let you go!”

Dash grinned, then lifted his head, smiling at the people at the table, introducing her to the people in their vicinity who were strangers to her, but not letting her seat herself. “I feel like dancing.”

“Me too.” Lotus looked up at him dreamily.
I wonder what our little boy will look like? He’ll be tall and strong with ash blond hair and gray blue eyes. He’ll go to Harvard and crew like his father,
Lotus mused as they moved to the dance floor.
Or perhaps he’ll go to Cornell like her brothers and their father. Or to the school I went to...

“What are you thinking?” Dash watched the play of emotions on her face, happiness, wonderment. It tore him up inside that there would be times in their marriage when she wouldn’t be happy. He vowed then and there that he would fight against that happening! He had been ready to throttle Prue when she made her clever remarks, yet Lotus had remained serene. In fact, she had thrown a few needle-sharp barbs of her own that had both amused him and made him proud. It was frightening sometimes to dwell on the depth of love he had for her, at how empty his life would be if she weren’t in it now.