Season of Storm (39 page)

No more canoeing trips over to Oyster Island, I fear,
Smith thought when she read that, remembering with a pang of yearning Wilf's cabin and the afternoon she had spent watching him carve a ritual mask.
 

Meanwhile, amid great jubilation among her collaborators and friends, Smith wrote 'Like a River in Flood'—upbeat and sweet, with just the right hint of nostalgia.

***

"I've been wanting to meet you for ages,'' said Vanessa Conrad with a smile. "Thank you for inviting us. It's a lovely party."

"We've had a staff Christmas party every year," Smith's father had said. "This year I don't have any staff anymore. But I'd like to have a few people here at the house. And I'd like you to be hostess again."

Her father had never thrown that many big parties—one or two a year—but Smith had begun to attend them at fourteen and had become his hostess at sixteen.

"I'd like it very much if you'd invite some of your new friends along," St. John had said. Smith laughed at a private vision of Cimarron mixing with her father's establishment cronies.

"I think I'd better throw my own party," she said.

"Now look," returned her father. "All my friends have known you since you were a child. They're all very interested in your new career. They'd like to meet these people, Shulamith. They probably aren't quite as shockable as you imagine. And I'd like to meet them, too."

"Your funeral, Daddy," Smith had shrugged.

But it wasn't a funeral at all. Smith looked around the room where Cimarron, smashing in red velvet with holly in her hair, was holding court for several of her father's vintage business friends; and to Lew, holding his own in a political discussion; and Mel, fascinating several wives with talk of the music industry. Several other of her friends were there, too, including, of course, Valerie and Rolly, but the gathering did not include the wild profane young men of Horse. They were playing a Christmas concert in Toronto, a fact for which Shulamith had been grateful, however much her father might think she underestimated his friends.

"I'm glad you could come," Smith said now.

It was the first time she had ever met Jake and Vanessa Conrad, though of course she had watched Jake on television. Vanessa was another redhead, although her hair was a deep russet shade quite unlike Shulamith's mane of foxfire. She was tall and elegant, with smooth hair and an enormous emerald-and-diamond ring.

And on the waistband of her long black silk dress— the most elegant thing Smith had seen in years—there was a small, curved U-shape picked out in rhinestones.

Smith bent closer. Diamonds.

"A horseshoe!" she exclaimed. "A diamond horseshoe! I bought a dress awhile ago with a horseshoe on the cuff. In gold thread. Where did you get yours?"

"I designed it," smiled Vanessa Conrad. "The dress you bought must be one of mine—the horseshoe is my trademark."

"Your trademark?" Smith opened her eyes wide. "You have your own company then?"

"Number Twenty-four Fashions," Vanessa told her with a smile. "I went into evening wear for the first time with the summer line. I hope you like the dress?"

"Oh, I do," Smith eyes softened as she smiled at the other woman. "I wore it at my wedding."

Maybe it was stupid to bring it up, but everybody knew she had had a runaway marriage, and there was lots of speculation about why she and her husband were living apart. She hadn't discussed it, even with Valerie. It felt good to talk about her wedding like this, as though it had been a normal occurrence, like other women's weddings.

"Well, I'm honoured!" said Vanessa Conrad sincerely. "Darling?" She mouthed the word across the room, and Jake Conrad detached himself from the group around her father and came over.

It was obvious that
this
marriage was working. Although Jake and Vanessa had been separated much of the time at this party, Smith had seen them connect across the room time and time again with a smile or a glance. Their obvious love for each other brought a lump to her throat.
 

"Jake, Mrs. Winterhawk wore one of my designs at her wedding. Isn't that something?"

The name ripped through her like a bullet. "Oh, please!" she smiled and recovered. "Call me Shulamith—or Smith, everybody does. Anyway, I—I kept my own name. I don't use Winterhawk."

"I'm sorry, Shulamith," Vanessa smiled. "I didn't...but tell me which dress it was!"

She was desperately grateful to be given something to do. "It was a very pale cream colour—a jacket and dress, full sleeves, bias cut..." She put her hands up to indicate the neckline.

"I know the one." Vanessa came to her rescue again. "You remember that one, don't you, Jake? The summer line. You really liked it when I showed you the prototype."

Jake grinned helplessly at her. It was obvious he did not remember. "Have a heart!" he said. "If it was a summer prototype I must have seen it almost a year ago."

"Philistine!" murmured his wife in a loving tone. She turned back to Smith. "You're certainly not wearing one of my off-the-rack numbers tonight. That is really beautiful."

Smith in fact looked stunning. In the cloth-of-gold tunic she wore, with her hair rolled into a wide chignon at the back of her neck, she was beautiful and almost as smoothly elegant as Vanessa Conrad.

One of those small silences fell over the room just then, a universal momentary pause, into which the single shocking profanity uttered in a smoky feminine voice dropped with perfect timing.

Every eye was involuntarily drawn toward the diverting picture of Cimarron King, who, totally oblivious, was discoursing good-humouredly on the trials of life on the road.

The pause held for a tiny moment, and then everyone stepped delicately back into their own conversations.

Across the room Smith met her father's eye and twinkled her "I told you so" at him. Her father was not in the least discomposed. He grinned back and deliberately winked at her.

But Smith was not looking at him any longer. She was looking past his head, to the large dark figure that had just entered the room behind him and stood surveying the crowd. It was a moment before his eyes found her, but when he did Johnny Winterhawk smiled at her as though his presence in her father's home was the most natural thing in the world.

The people who a minute ago had been blasé enough to ignore Cimarron King's irrepressible profanities weren't up to this one. There wasn't a soul in the room who wasn't agog to know the true story of what was going on between Smith and Johnny, and no one even pretended to look the other way as Johnny Winterhawk made his way across the room to Shulamith St. John in a silence that, except for the Christmas music playing in the background, was total.

Johnny ignored the stares and the silence and bent and kissed his wife lightly. "Hello, darling," he said. "Sorry I didn't get back in time."

What was that supposed to mean? Involuntarily Smith returned his kiss and played along because she had to: it was beyond her to make a scene here. "Johnny, you know Jake...."

"Of course." The two men shook hands, obviously pleased with one another. They had appeared on a discussion panel together and taken on all comers. "But I don't know if you've met Vanessa."

She performed the introduction as calmly as she could and then relapsed into silence as Johnny and Jake and Vanessa chatted together. A waiter stopped with a tray of drinks, and Johnny took one, and a moment later someone squeezed her hand and said brightly, "Aren't you going to introduce me?" and there was Valerie smiling fascinatedly up at Johnny Winterhawk.

In the end she had to introduce him to most of the people in the room. Almost everyone recognized his face, of course, and they knew all about him and were thrilled to meet him—the fascinating representative of an alien life-style.

It was the sort of thing that must be happening to him a lot lately, and during a lull in conversation she asked with a smile, "How does it feel to be lionized by the enemy?"

"These people aren't the enemy," he grinned back, totally at ease in this house. "They're potential clients."

A hoot of delighted laughter escaped her, and around the room meaningful glances were exchanged, several of the wives deciding there and then that it wouldn't be the first time the rumour mills had been completely mistaken.

One couple in the room were old clients of Johnny's and met him again with delight.

"Do you know," bellowed the man with rough good humour, "that that danged floorboard
still
creaks?"
 

Everyone except Smith laughed, and the man's wife smiled kindly at her.

"Hasn't he told you?" she asked. "There's a floorboard that creaks in every house he's built. You can't get rid of it, no matter what. It's sort of a trademark nowadays, isn't it Mr. Winterhawk?"

"Is
that
what that is!" Smith grinned up at Johnny, then told the couple, "There's a creak in front of his study door. I thought it was a Distant Early Warning System."
 

The man winked at Johnny. "I'm sure you're your own Distant Early Warning, isn't she, John?"

He looked down at her the way a loving husband of a few months would. "That's right," he said, with a grin.

It was an evening in hell. After a while the smile became fixed on Smith's face, till the muscles ached, and she was sure it looked more like a grimace. They were constantly surrounded by guests. There was no chance to speak to him alone, to ask why he was here or demand that he leave.

Nor could she leave herself. She couldn't bear to be in the limelight again, the subject of comment and curiosity. So she stayed till nearly everyone had gone home and the caterers were clearing up. Her father sat by the dying fire with Rolly and Valerie and Matt Hurtubise and his wife, old friends who might not leave for another hour.

Drooping with exhaustion, Smith made her farewells, and Johnny Winterhawk did the same. Then he helped her into her wrap, and they went out together into an unseasonably mild night.

"The charade ends here," Smith said, as her shoes crunched on the drive, and he followed her to her car. She bent to unlock the door and then stood to face Johnny. "What the hell possessed you to come here tonight?" she demanded.

"Your father invited me," he returned quietly.

"He's got his nerve! Men! And you just came? You didn't think to check with me?"

"I thought the invitation came, indirectly, from you."

"Well, it—"

"It didn't. Yes, I could see that, but would you have been happier if I'd turned and walked out again and left you alone with all those curious people?'' he asked.

"Oh, Lord!" she exclaimed weakly. "Can you just imagine?"

"Graphically."

"Why on earth did my father invite you?" she asked, climbing into her car lest he should imagine she was making excuses to keep him near her, talking. "I mean, what excuse did he give you?"

Johnny slipped his hands into the trouser pockets of his black dinner suit, and the wings of his hair fell forward as he looked down at her in the little sports car. His face was carved in shadow. She had never seen a man look handsomer in formal wear.

"Your father is my client," he said at last. "I'm building him a house. Didn't he tell you?"

***

"Are you out of your mind?" Smith shrieked. "What do you think you'r
e doing?"
 

Her father gazed at her placidly. "What do you think gives you the right to object?"

"He's
my
husband!" she shouted. "And it's my life, and will you please keep—"
 

"That's interesting," said her father. "Not so long ago you told me that he wasn't your husband at all."

"Daddy," she said grimly, "what the hell do you want with another house?"

He shook his head. "Not another—I'm selling this one."

"You know perfectly well what I mean!"

St. John ignored that. "He's pretty steep, your husband," he said. "I should have taken your advice a few years ago and got a Winterhawk house before it was such an expensive proposition."

"You should keep out of my business, you mean. He's probably charging you twice his going rate," she said with relish.

He looked at her. "I don't think so."

"Have you signed a contract yet?" she asked. "Or whatever it is you do with architects?"

"Not yet." Her father leaned back and scratched his beard. She had arrived early this morning, and her father was still in pyjamas and robe and unshaven. In sixteen years she hadn't seen him unshaven. Before that, in Paris, she was reminded suddenly, she used to like sitting on the tub talking to him as she watched him shave. "He's hardly had time to see the site."

"All right." Smith picked up her jacket and stood. "You'd better talk to Hugh again, Daddy. Because Johnny is not going to design a house or anything else for you!"

Her father laughed. "He may even design the new Concord head office," he told her amiably.

Thirty-six

"Why not?" Johnny Winterhawk sprawled at his ease across two kitchen chairs, his back against the window and the raging northern storm that howled outside the house. He sank his teeth into the white flesh of the apple in his hand and grinned at her.