Passion's Promise

I shall bury the wounded like pupas,

I shall count and bury the dead.

Let their souls writhe in a dew,

Incense in my track.

The carriages rock, they are cradles.

And I, stepping from this skin

Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces

Step to you from the black car of Lethe,

Pure as a baby.

From "Getting There"  

by Sylvia Plath,
Ariel

Edward Hascomb Rawlings sat in his office and smiled at the morning paper on his desk. Page five showed a large photograph of a smiling young woman coming down the ramp of a plane. The Honorable Kezia Saint Martin. Another smaller photograph showed her on the arm of a tall, attractive man, leaving the terminal for the seclusion of a waiting limousine. The man, as Edward knew, was Whitney Hayworth HI, the youngest partner of the legal firm of Benton, Thatcher, Powers, and Frye. Edward had known Whit since the boy got out of law school. And that had been ten years ago. But he wasnt interested in Whit. He was interested in the diminutive woman on his arm. Edward knew her almost jet black hair, deep blue eyes, and creamy English complexion so well.

And she looked well now, even in newsprint. She was smiling. She seemed tanned. And she was finally back. Her absences always seemed interminable to Edward. The paper said that she had just come from Marbella, where she had been seen over the weekend, staying at the Spanish summer home of her aunt, the Contessa di San Ricamini, ne'e Hilary Saint Martin. Before that Kezia had summered in the South of France, in "almost total seclusion." Edward laughed at the thought He had seen her column regularly all summer, with reports from London, Paris, Barcelona, Nice, and Rome. She had had a busy summer, in "seclusion."

A paragraph further down the same page mentioned three others who had arrived on the same flight as Kezia. The so suddenly powerful daughter of the Greek shipping magnate, who had left her, his only heir, the bulk of his fortune. And there was mention as well of the Belgian princess, fresh from the Paris collections for a little junket to New York. Kezia had been in good company on the flight and Edward wondered how much money she had taken from them at backgammon. Kezia was a most effective player. It struckhim too that it was once again Kezia who got most of the press coverage. It was that way for her. Always the center of attention, the sparkle, the thunder, the flash of cameras as she walked into restaurants and out of theaters. It had been at its crudest peak when she was in her teens; the photographers and reporters were always hungry, curious, prying, then. For years it had seemed that she was followed everywhere by a fleet of piranhas, but that was when she had first inherited her father's fortune. Now they were used to her, and their attention seemed kinder.

At first Edward had tried hard to shield her from the press. That first year. That first, godawful, intolerable, excruciating year, when she was nine. But the scavengers had only been waiting. And they hadn't waited long. It came as a shock to Kezia when she was thirteen, to be followed by a red-hot young woman reporter into Elizabeth Arden's. Kezia hadn't understood. But the reporter had. She had understood plenty. Edward's face grew hard at the memory. Bitch. How could she do that to a child? She had asked her about Liane, right there in front of everyone. "How did you feel when your mother . . ." The reporter was four years late with her story. And out of a job by noon the next day. Edward was disappointed: he had hoped to have her job by the same night And that was Kezia's first taste of it. Notoriety. Power. A fortune. A name. Parents with histories. And grandparents with histories and power and money. Nine generations of it on her mother's side. Only three worth mentioning on her father's. History. Power. Money. Things you can't conjure up, or lie about, or steal. You have to be born with them running thick
in
your veins. All three. And beauty. And style. And then with some other
magical ingredient dancing in you at lightning speed, then . . . and only then, are you Kezia
Saint Martin. And there was only one.

Edward stirred the coffee in the white-and-gold Limoges cup on his desk, and settled back to look at the view. The East River, dotted with small boats and barges, was a narrow gray ribbon far below on his right. He faced north from where he sat, and gazed peacefully over the congestion of midtown Manhattan, past its skyscrapers, to look down on the sturdy residential fortresses of Park Avenue and Fifth, huddled near the clump of browning green that was Central Park, and in the distance, a blur that was Harlem. It was merely a part of his view, and not a part that interested him a great deaL Edward  was a busy man.

He sipped the coffee, and turned to "Martin Hallam's" column to see who among his acquaintances was allegedly in love with whom, who was giving a dinner party where, who would attend, and who would presumably not show up because of the latest social feud. He knew only too well that there would be an item or two from Marbella. He knew Kezia's style well enough to know that she would mention herself.

She was thorough and prudent. And he was right. "On the list of returning refugees after a summer abroad: Scooter Hollingsworth, Bibi Adams-Jones, Melissa Sentry, Jean-Claude Reims, Kezia Saint Martin, and Julian Bodley. Hail, hail, the gang's all here! Everyone is coming home!"

It was September, and he could still hear Kezia's voice of a September seven years before. . . . "... All right, Edward, IVe done it. I did Vassar, and the Sorbonne, and I just did another summer at Aunt Hil's. I'm twenty-one years old and now I'm going to do what I want for a change. No more guilt trips about what my father would have wanted, or my mother would have preferred and what you feel is 'sensible.' I've done it all, for them and for you. And now I'm going to do it for me. . . ."

She had marched up and down his office with a stormy look on her face, while he worried about the "it" she was referring to.

"And what exactly are you planning to do?" He was dying inside. But she was awfully young and very beautiful.

"I don't know exactly. But I have some ideas."

"Share them with me."

"I plan to, but don't be disagreeable, Edward." She had turned toward him with fiery amethyst lights in her rich blue eyes. She was a striking girl, even more so when she was angry. Then the eyes would become almost purple, the cameo skin would blush faintly under the cheekbones, and the contrast made her dark hair shine like onyx. It almost made you forget how tiny she was. She was barely more than five feet tall, but well proportioned, with a face that in anger drew one like a magnet, riveting her victim's eyes to her own. And the entire package was Edward's responsibility, had been since her parents' deaths.

Ever since then, the burden of those fierce blue eyes had belonged to him, and her governess, Mrs. Townsend, and her Aunt Hilary, the Contessa di San Ricamini.

Hilary, of course, didn't want to be bothered. She was perfectly willing, in fact nowadays frankly delighted, to have the girl stay with her in London at Christmas, or come to the house in Marbella for the summer. But she did not want to be bothered with what she referred to as "trivia." Kezia's fascination with the Peace Corps had been "trivia," as had her much-publicized romance with the Argentinian ambassador's son three years before. Her depression when the boy had married his cousin had also been

"trivia," as had Kezia's other passing fascinations with people, places, and causes. Maybe Hilary had a point; it all fell by the wayside eventually anyway. But until it did, it was inevitably Edward's problem. At  twenty-one, she had already been a burden on his shoulders for twelve long years. But it was a burden he had cherished.

"Well, Kezia, you've been wearing out the rug in my office, but you still haven't told me what these mysterious plans of yours are. What about that course in journalism at Columbia? Have you lost interest in trying that?"

"As a matter of fact, I have. Edward, I want to go to work."

"Ohr He had shuddered almost visibly. God, let it be for some charity organization. Please. "For whom?"

"I want to work for a newspaper, and study journalism at night." There was a look of fierce defiance in her eyes. She knew what he would say. And why.

"I think you'd be a good deal wiser to take the course at Columbia, get your master's, and then think about working. Do it sensibly."

"And after I get my master's, what sort of newspaper would you suggest, Edward?
Women's Wear
Daily
maybe?" He thought he saw tears of anger and frustration in her eyes. Lord, she was going to be difficult again. She grew more stubborn each year. She was just like her father.

"What sort of paper were you considering, Kezia?
The Village Voice
or the
Berkeley Barb?"

"No.
The New York Times."
At least the girl had style. She had never lacked that.

"I heartily agree, my dear, I think it's a marvelous idea. But if that's what you have in mind, I think you'd be far wiser to attend Columbia, get your master's, and, . . ."

She cut him off, rising from the arm of the chair where she'd perched, and glared at him angrily across his desk.

"And marry some terribly 'nice* boy in the business school. Right?"

"Not unless that's what you want to do." Tedious, tedious, tedious. And dangerous. She was that too.

Like her mother.

"Well, that's not what I want to do." She had stalked out of his office then, and he found out later that she already had the job at the
Times.
She kept it for exactly three and a half weeks.

It all happened precisely as he had feared it would. As one of the fifty wealthiest women in the world, she became the puppy of the paparazzi again. Every day in some newspaper, there was a mention or a photograph or a blurb or a quote or a joke. Other papers sent their society reporters over to catch glimpses of her.
Women's Wear
had a field day. It was a continuation of the nightmare that had shadowed her: the fourteenth-birthday party broken into by photographers. The evening at the opera with Edward, over the Christmas holidays when she was only fifteen, which they had turned into such a horror. A pigsty of suggestion about Edward and Kezia. After that he had not taken her out publicly for years . . . and for years after that, there were the photographs of her that were repressed, and those that were not. The dates she was afraid to have, and then had and regretted, until at seventeen she had feared notoriety more than anything. At eighteen she had hated it. Hated the seclusion it forced on her, the caution she had to exercise, the constant secretiveness and discretion. It was absurd and unhealthy for a girl her age, but there was nothing Edward could do to lighten the burden for her. She had a tradition to live up to, and a difficult one. It was impossible for the daughter of Lady Liane Holmes-Aubrey Saint Martin and Keenan Saint Martin to go ignored. Kezia was "worth a tidy sum," in common parlance, and she was beautiful.

She was young, she was interesting. And she made news. There was no way to avoid that, however much Kezia wanted to pretend she could change that. She couldn't. She never would. At least that was what Edward had thought. But he was surprised at her skill at avoiding photographers when she wanted to (now he even took her to the opera again) and the marvelous way she had of putting down reporters, with a wide dazzling smile and a word or two that made them wonder if she was laughing at them or with them, or about to call the police. She had that about her.

Something threatening, the raw edge of power. But she had something gentle too. It was that that baffled everyone. She was a peculiar combination of her parents.

Kezia had the satiny delicacy of her mother and the sheer strength of her father. The two had always been an unusual couple. A surprising couple. And Kezia was like both of them, although more like her father. Edward saw it constantly. But what frightened him was the resemblance to Liane. Hundreds of years of British tradition, a maternal great-grandfather who was a duke—although her paternal grandfather had only been an earl—but Liane had such breeding, such style, such elegance of spirit Such stature. Edward had fallen head over heels in love with her right from the first And she had never known.

Never. Edward knew that he couldn't . . . couldn't ... but she had done something so much worse.

Madness . . . blackmail . . . nightmare. At least they had averted a public scandal. No one had known.

Except her husband, and Edward . . . and . . . him. Edward had never understood it. What had she seen in the boy? He was so much less a man than Keenan. And so ... so coarse. Crude almost. She had made a poor choice. A very poor choice. Liane had taken Kezia's French tutor as her lover. It was almost grotesque, except that
it
was so costly. In the end, it had cost Liane her life. And it had cost Keenan thousands to keep it quiet.

Keenan had had the young man "removed" from the household, and deported to France. After that it took Liane less than a year to drown herself in cognac and champagne, and, secretly, pills. She had paid a high price for her betrayal. Keenan died ten months later in an accident There had been no doubt it was an accident but such a waste. More waste. Keenan hadn't given a damn about anything after Liane died, and Edward had always suspected that he had just let it happen, just let the Mercedes slide along the barrier, let it careen into the oncoming highway traffic. He had probably been drunk, or maybe only very tired. Not really a suicide, just the end.