The Horsemaster's Daughter (85 page)

She pretended not to see the wink, but something in her face, some flash of yearning and confusion, told him she was remembering their kiss, too. Butler had begun moving along the table, sampling the hors d’oeuvres and sweets. Now and then he would murmur something to Abigail but he seemed more focused on the food—smoked gravlax salmon and pickled herring, crab cakes and great tureens of chowders and bisques.

Jamie positioned himself on the opposite side of the table and moved along concurrently with Abigail.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in a low voice.

“Looking after you.”

“I don’t need a keeper.” Realizing the conversation was attracting undue attention, she edged away from the crowd around the table.

He followed her to an isolated round table draped in white cloth. “I could have sworn you did a few moments ago on the stairs.”

“A minor mishap, nothing more.”

“What if I hadn’t been there to catch you?”

“I would have plunged myself into ignominy. It would not have been pretty. But it wouldn’t have been the first time, either.”

“I know.” He thought of the gawky creature at the wedding, and in some perverse way, he missed her. He missed her loud, brazen laugh, her artless enthusiasm for matters no proper lady would even know about. He missed her wry, caustic humor, her insatiable curiosity and her playful sense of the absurd. He missed—though no torture would ever drag this admission from him—dancing with her on the rooftop at two o’clock in the morning, and he missed teaching her how to kiss.

That Abigail had gone away somewhere, disappeared like a shadow burned away by the sun. In her place was a glittering creature who had found a treasure trove of self-assurance, making idle conversation with heads of state and railroad barons, flirting with men who had given the old Abigail no more notice than a carved newel post. And although she occasionally checked with her father, she grew bolder and more confident each time he nodded his head in approval.

“You know, Rowan mentioned that Jupiter and Saturn move into Taurus tonight,” Jamie remarked. “Surely you’re aware of that.”

“Of course I am. The professor’s free to use my telescope anytime he likes.”

“You’re missing the event.”

Her gaze took in both her father and her fiancé, still loading his plate with delicacies from the buffet. “It cannot be helped.”

“I see. We mustn’t let a rare astral event get in the way of social obligations.”

“Why are you being so beastly? Isn’t this what you wanted for me?”

“Is it what you wanted?”

“Of course.”

“Aren’t you even the least bit curious about what you’re missing at the observatory?”

“If I went to see it, I’d be missing this.” She encompassed the beautiful hall with a sweep of her arm. “I never did thank you properly, Jamie.”

“For what?”

“You know what. For changing my life.”

He laughed. “You did that on your own.”

“On my own, I hadn’t the first idea how to get on in society.”

“How can you keep the entire quadratic equation in your head yet not know how to discuss the weather with the war secretary’s wife?”

“It’s a puzzle, I confess. But I give you credit where credit is due. You are my Pygmalion.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time a woman called him a pig, but he hardly expected it from Abigail.

She laughed at his expression. “Clearly you’re not familiar with the myth. Pygmalion was a sculptor who was disenchanted with all women. He wanted to create the ideal female, because he couldn’t find one in real life. So he sculpted her out of ivory. But of course, the rest of the myth doesn’t really fit us.”

“Why not?” He rather liked the idea of fashioning a woman to his specifications.

“Well, Pygmalion became obsessed with his creation. He fell in love with it, adorning his sculpture with jewels and fine Tyrian cloth, and ultimately, he begged the goddess Aphrodite to bring the statue to life. His kiss breathed life into her, and he married her and—well, there are several interpretations of the myth’s conclusion. In one version, they had a fine son and lived happily ever after. But in another, there were problems.”

“What sort of problems?”

“Once she took on a life of her own, he could no longer control her, and ultimately she did him in.”

“Is that what I have to look forward to?” he inquired, capturing her hand and pondering its power to ruin him. “Dying at your hands?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“At least it’s for a patriotic cause.”

“Very funny.”

Balancing a plate of food in each hand, Boyd Butler joined them at the round table. “There you are, my dear. I swear, I’ve heard more compliments about you than I have about the piranha exhibit.”

She favored him with a smile of delight, worshiping him with her eyes. “That’s a relief. I should not like to be eclipsed by a flesh-eating fish.”

A waiter arrived with a tray of crushed ice beneath a flotilla of raw oysters on the half shell.

“Look,” Jamie said. “Oysters. Your favorite.”

Her gaze flicked to Butler. Picking up an oyster, she handed it to her fiancé. Judging by her blush, Jamie knew she was remembering what he’d said about oysters being an aphrodisiac.

Butler sucked down the tidbit and grinned at her, and even Jamie could feel the glow of her happiness. A triumphal moment all around, he thought, grabbing another glass of champagne. But in creating his ivory woman, he’d overlooked one small detail. He had to release her to another man.

Which he was doing—willingly. He didn’t want her. He had never wanted her, not in any romantic fashion. He was well beyond entanglements of the heart. He was far too urbane and sophisticated for that.

But still it galled him to see Butler’s proprietary attitude toward her, to see her regarding him with the moon in her eyes.

“Your turn,” he said, selecting a plump, cold oyster from the tray.

She blinked at him, startled and flushed.

“Go ahead, my dear,” Butler said in amusement.

It was eerie, the way she obeyed him with the same unquestioning submission as she did her father. Jamie could tell she was thinking of her first experience with oysters as she took the delicacy from her fiancé’s hand and swallowed it down. Only Jamie saw her panicked eyes widen as she struggled to hold in her disgust.

“Well done,” Butler said. “Well done indeed.”

He was amazingly like her father in his patronizing manner. She was trading one self-centered, condescending man for another. Couldn’t she see that? Didn’t it bother her? Cutting short his speculation, Jamie excused himself with formal courtesy and went in search of more champagne.

The dedication ceremony began with a lengthy recitation of gratitude to the patrons whose generosity had contributed to the creation of the aquarium and an acknowledgment of the architects, designers and scientists whose brilliance had created it.

Vice President Butler was called to the dais to unveil the centerpiece of the aquarium, concealed behind a velvet drape. It was the largest tank ever built to house creatures of the sea in captivity, and it boasted dozens of species of plants and animals.

The piano played a salutation, the vice president made a brief speech, then surprised everyone by deferring the honor of the ribbon-cutting to his son in recognition of Butler’s recent engagement.

Boyd Butler III and his bride-to-be.

Duty discharged, Jamie thought as he stood back, propped his shoulder against a pillar and watched from a distance. The two looked as proper as the wax bride and groom on the top tier of a wedding cake. Abigail kept darting glances at her father, who radiated pride and approval. Then she stepped behind Lieutenant Butler while he read, in smooth oratorio fashion, the dedication of the great national treasure.

Jamie studied the crowd, which included everyone from visiting foreign dignitaries to steel millionaires to cotton planters. Once she married Butler, this would be Abby’s world, her friends and acquaintances. He didn’t like the way they were watching her, hungry dinner guests waiting to be served. Perhaps that was extreme, the product of his disenchantment with the whole affair. Perhaps these people would cherish Abby’s sensitive, brilliant, amusing and earnest nature.

Perhaps the stars would fall to the earth.

These people didn’t care that Abigail Cabot missed having a mother, that flowers made her sneeze, that she was looking for a comet, that children made her laugh and sad songs made her cry. Jamie told himself it didn’t matter whether or not they cared. But it did. Somewhere in the middle of all this, something had happened to him. He had unknowingly stepped into a sticky web of sentiment, and each time he made a move to extricate himself, he became even more entangled.

Butler reached the end of his speech, cut the ribbon and drew the drapes aside to reveal the most impressive feature of the aquarium—a glass lagoon filled with rare predatory sharks from the South Seas. A Smithsonian official gave a brief overview of the exhibit, and when he finished, live food was released into the tank.

A collective gasp went up from the crowd. Even Jamie watched with a sort of grim fascination. The sharks fell in a frenzy upon their prey, swarming over the lesser creatures with a violent aggression, tearing into the fish, denuding the bones with swift and ruthless efficiency. Women shrank from the sight but they never did stop looking.

With her natural curiosity, Abigail stood close to the tank, unafraid, her palm pressed to the glass. Yet when she saw the violence of the feeding, she drew back in horror. Clearly, this was not her brand of science. It lacked the mathematical order of the heavenly bodies. Instead, this was a chaotic force of nature that probably made no sense to her. Offer the guests a chance to view a meteor shower or a feeding frenzy, and most would choose the latter. Since time began, people had been spectators at gladiator trials, bear baitings, cockfights. In London, aristocrats tipped the wardens of Bethlehem Hospital to bait the insane inmates. Blood lust was a human trait. Jamie had witnessed it more times than he could count and it was not pretty but very real.

Butler laughed like a schoolboy, leaning down to get a better view of a bloody fish head.

In a mercifully short period of time, the demonstration ended. But then an odd thing happened. The avid curiosity shifted its focus away from the aquarium and over to Butler and Abigail. People pushed forward, intent on making the acquaintance of Washington’s most recent bride-to-be. Some did so out of courtesy, though most out of the need to ingratiate themselves with the fathers of the young couple.

As the spectators pressed close, all speaking at once and offering handshakes of congratulations to the happy couple, Abigail disappeared. Her short stature made it easy for her to drown in the middle of the aggressive crowd. Watching from the fringes of the group, Jamie had a cold premonition that all might not be well for the socially defenseless Abigail. Now that he’d handed her over to Butler, how would he be able to protect her?

Jamie turned away in time to see Helena arriving on the arm of Senator Troy Barnes of New York. He was upright as a cigar-store Indian, obscenely wealthy and hopelessly infatuated with her. Not that Helena cared. These days, she thought only of Michael Rowan. Since Abigail had freed her from her duty to marry well, Helena probably dreamed of a true love match between her and Rowan.

Like her sister, she was still naive enough to believe love was the key to all fulfillment. Like Jamie, Rowan knew some things weren’t meant to be. A Georgetown professor with no fortune, nor even a pedigree, was no match for the daughter of Franklin Cabot. Enticed by a research grant and generous salary, Rowan would be leaving soon to teach at a college in Barnes’s home district.

“What did you think of that?” asked Helena. She’d broken away from Barnes and approached Jamie with two glasses of champagne. “Did you enjoy the feeding frenzy?”

He tossed back the champagne in a gulp. “Which one?”

She sipped hers. “Grim, isn’t it? I half expect to see my sister reduced to a skeleton once the crowd moves off.”

“She’ll be fine. She’s stronger than she looks.”

“Are you trying to convince me, Mr. Calhoun, or yourself? I think you feel guilty.”

“Why would I feel guilty?”

“Because you have a conscience, much as you try to conceal it. I want you to know, if she suffers one single moment of hurt, I’ll make you sorry you ever met the Cabot women.”

He peered at her, looking for sharks’ teeth. “Weren’t you the one who convinced Butler that he was in love with Abigail?”

“Yes, but the romance is your fault, and I shall hold you responsible if anything goes wrong.”

“This is the thanks I get for helping your sister snare the man of her dreams?”

“You’re very sure about that,” Helena said. “About the fact that Lieutenant Butler is the man of her dreams.”

“He is. She told me herself.”

“My sister is a brilliant woman. But sometimes she’s blind to the things that are obvious.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“At first I was certain she loved the lieutenant. Now I have my doubts. If she suffers, you’ll pay the price.”

He chuckled. “You’d have to get in line, Helena. After going against the railroad companies in Congress, I sense that my enemies have multiplied.”

“Of course they have. The railroad interests believed my father’s support was a foregone conclusion. No one expected that you’d become his chief adviser.”

“For a while. So long as this engagement remains intact.” He nodded in the direction of Abigail, who was speaking with her father. “See how she smiles. This is everything her heart desires. We should be enjoying this.”

“But we aren’t. The fact is, we’re both worried about Abigail. Why is that?”

“Because we’ve had too much champagne. What is it about your father, anyway?”

“What about him?”

“He makes King Lear look like jolly old St. Nick.”

“What an awful thing to say.”

“He’s eating her alive. And you, too, though perhaps to a lesser degree. Why do you and Abigail allow it?”

“He is our father.” Her voice broke, and her face pinched with the same need he’d glimpsed in Abigail. “His esteem is everything to Abigail. The sun, the moon and the stars combined.”