The LeBaron Secret (53 page)

Joanna says nothing, but stands and moves toward the window.

“So you're the one who broke a promise, not I,” Sari says.

“And yet this morning you were threatening to tell our secret to everyone.”

Sari laughs softly. “Well, I was ready to haul out my last piece of heavy ammunition,” she says. “But I didn't have to. You got the message and ran up the white flag. You surrendered, and switched your vote.”

Now it is Joanna who is laughing. “Sari, Sari,” she says. “Do you really think that's why I voted the way I did?”

“Of course. I scared the bejesus out of you.”

“Sari, why would I have been frightened of a thing like that?”

“The scandal. Your reputation. The word, I believe, is incest.”

“Oh, Sari darling. You really are so foolish. You could never have proved any of these—allegations of yours. Surely you know that.”

“I could have given it to the papers—let them print it. Let them ruin your good name.”

“Darling, darling Sari. I'm astonished at your naïveté. Do you think any newspaper in the country would print an unproven and unprovable allegation such as the one you're making? If they did, I could sue them, and sue you for defamation of character, and I'd win! I could take this whole company away from you. Really, what you say is too laugh-making. No, darling, your silly, hysterical little threat had nothing to do with the way I voted, I assure you.”

“If it wasn't that, what was it?”

“Sari, you see I know you so well. I know how you manipulate people, and I've learned how to manipulate you. The fact is, I never wanted to get involved in anything with Harry Tillinghast. I dislike the man, and I certainly don't need his money. On the other hand, I've wanted to see Eric run this company for a long time. I figured that if I pulled a surprise move, and pretended to back down out of sympathy and concern for you, you'd be thrown completely off your guard. You'd have to do something to save face. The only thing that you could do would be to resign. Well, you didn't quite do that, but now Eric is where he should have been all along.”

Sari pounds her fists on the arms of her chair. Joanna is trying to upstage her again. “I don't believe you!” she says. “You did it because you were scared spitless I'd spill the beans. Spill out your whole nasty little secret!”

Joanna shrugs. “Think what you will,” she says. “It doesn't matter. I got what I wanted.” And then, as though she is reading Sari's thoughts, she says, “I know you, and I know that the one thing you cannot stand is to be upstaged. Particularly by me.”

“That's another lie! I have absolutely no use for you!”

“Switzerland,” Joanna says quietly. “The three of us together there. My beloved brother, and my best friend, and me. Now look at us.”

“Best friend and oldest enemy!”

“When I was having the baby, and was having so much difficulty with her, and when I almost died. You were both there. I began hemorrhaging, and you both gave blood. Your blood was in me, the blood that saved my life. It made me feel so incredibly close—”

“You're laboring under another misapprehension,” Sari says. “Peter and I did not give you blood. We offered, of course, but our blood was the wrong type. The blood came from the Swiss Red Cross.”

“Peter told me he gave blood.”

“Well, if he did he lied to you.”

“Peter would never have lied to me!”

“Well, I suppose you could go back and look up records if you don't believe me, but I assure you neither of us gave blood.”

There is a worried look in Joanna's eyes now. “Anyway,” she says, “I felt so incredibly close to you both that winter. And now look at us—at each other's throats.”

“And so you supposed we were going to go through life together—a happy little threesome, strolling off into the sunset! Well, the trouble was that when we struck that bargain, you didn't level with me. You wouldn't tell me who the baby's father was. Years later, when I found out, I saw how you'd weighted the deal in your favor. It was supposed to be that if I'd raise your baby, I'd get Peter LeBaron as my reward. You didn't tell me that the real reason you wanted to keep the baby was that you wanted to use the baby to keep Peter for yourself. To keep him guilty and ashamed and beholden to you forever—dependent on you to keep his secret, the secret of the terrible thing he'd done to you!”

“The terrible thing he'd done,” Joanna says. “Our nasty little secret, you called it. But, you see, I never thought of it that way. I loved Peter, Sari. I was in love with him. Call it unnatural love if you want, but I was in love with him. I tried, later, to replace him. Tried it with Rod Kiley. It didn't work. Nothing could ever replace Peter for me. Nothing ever has. And he loved me. Of course, he knew he was the baby's father, because he knew that there had never been anyone else for me but him, and that if there had been I'd have told him. Just as if there'd been anyone else for him but me, he'd have told me. We were that close.”

Sari stares at this woman who is suddenly a stranger. “I think I'd like a drink,” she says at last. “I had the hotel stock a full bar for our meeting in that cabinet over there. Will you fix me something, Jo? Do you remember how I like to make a martini?”

“Certainly.” She moves toward the cabinet. “A full bar. This has certainly been the fanciest Baronet stockholders' meeting I've ever attended …”

She returns with their drinks and hands Sari her glass. “Well, here's to the old days,” she says. “Chug-a-lug.”

Sari says nothing, and takes a swallow from her glass. “So,” she says, “there was never anyone else for him but you.”

“No one. There was never anyone but me. He never touched—touched in love—another woman. If he had, he would have told me.”

“I see. Of course, I managed to produce three children by your brother. How do you suppose that happened? By immaculate conception?”

“I said ‘touched in love.' You told me once that yours was a sexless marriage. You asked me if I thought he had a mistress. I knew what the answer was, but of course I couldn't tell you then. The answer was that he was always in love with me. Don't forget, darling, that you were brought into this family as a convenience—to help Peter and me out of a rather embarrassing little pickle. If you thought there was a question of Peter loving you, ever—well, there's a fool born every minute, darling. The only one he ever touched in
love
was me.”

“Then how—how do you explain Athalie and the twins?”

“Very simple. He wanted a male heir. Perpetuating the family was always very important to Peter, and to me.”

“And when you and Peter discovered you'd accidentally started a little family of your own, I was invited in to bail you out.”

“Well, that's a rather coarse way of putting it, darling. But yes.” Carrying her drink, Joanna moves to the window again, looking out on the street, the Pacific Union Club across the way, and the cathedral beyond.

“I think what you and Peter did together destroyed his capacity for love,” Sari says. “He never recovered from the shock of what had happened.”

“Oh, Sari, Sari,” Joanna says, laughing softly. “You understand so little. Peter and I did what we did only once. Ours was really a platonic love—love on a higher plane.”

“Only once? Peter told me that you and he had had—intimate relations—a number of times. He said it would happen when you both got drunk. He blamed MacDonald for leaving you alone so much.”

She laughs again. “You mean the butler did it? Peter told you that? Well, maybe it happened—twice. I really don't remember, it was all so long ago. It was what we called ‘touching in love,' and that was when he promised me he would never touch another woman in love again. Ours was a pure love, you see.”

“Pure love! After Athalie was born, why did you try to prevent the twins from being born by working on Melissa—telling her that if I had another baby it would be a monster, worse than Athalie?”

“I was concerned for your health, darling. My best friend's health.”

“Bull-do. You were concerned that I was finally taking Peter away from you. That was all you were concerned with! You were simply jealous—jealous because I was having another child by him.”

“Well, perhaps I was—a little. After all, I'm only human. The main thing I wanted was for Peter to be completely happy.”

“Human! I think you're the monster, Jo! Or crazy—if you actually believe all these things you're telling me.”

“No, Sari. You see, you still don't understand. You don't understand how close Peter and I were. We were like one soul.”

“
One soul!
What if I told you that during that spring and summer while you were getting ready for your debutante season, Peter and I were having quite a passionate love affair?”

“I wouldn't believe you. It isn't true.”

“Well, it is. While you were off at the Burlingame Country Club dancing your little feet off, and shopping with your mother for bags and hats and gloves and beaded ball gowns and silver satin dancing slippers, Peter LeBaron and I were having a love affair!”

“That's not true. I deliberately arranged for you and Peter to be alone together—to test him. To see if anything would happen. I even arranged for you to see each other naked—remember? To test him. But nothing happened—he told me so. He passed the tests.”

“I'm afraid he failed them rather miserably, and told you a lot of barefaced lies!”

“Peter never lied.”

“While you and Peter were busy being one soul, Peter and I were making love—in a suite at the Saint Francis. On the beach at Half Moon Bay. Any place we could find!”

“You're lying now, Sari, darling. I know you are. Because I asked him, and he swore to me that there was never anything between you.”

“Well, so much for Peter's word of honor,” Sari says, “because what I'm telling you is true.”

“You're just trying to upset me. But you can't. I knew Peter too well. He could never have deceived me. I'd have seen right through it if he'd tried.”

“I'm not trying to upset you. I'm just trying to get you to face the truth of what Peter LeBaron was.”

“I don't believe you. You see, Sari, that's always been one of your problems. You've never been able to believe that Peter was never in love with anyone but me. Never. You've never been able to face the fact that he was never in love with you. Dear Sari, I'm sorry, but it's time you accepted it now.”

“He may not have been in love with me, but we certainly
touched in love
, as you put it, a number of times—long before the whole idea of marriage even came up. While you and he were busy being one soul.”

“No. It's not true. He would have told me. You see, there were little secret things we did. Champagne—”

“You mean he dipped your breast in his champagne glass?”

Joanna turns sharply away from the window toward Sari with a little cry, and her hand flies up to her mouth. “
How did you know that?
”

“Because he did the same thing to me,” she says. “He said it was our special little secret thing.”

Joanna stares at her, a look of horror on her face. Then she sits down quickly on one of the chintz-covered hotel chairs, her head in her hands. For several minutes, neither woman says anything, and the only sound in the room is the noise of the Powell Street cable car making its way up the hill with a load of screaming tourists hanging on all sides. As she watches Joanna there, huddled in the chair in the harsh late morning sunlight, her attitude of despair and dismay seems so profound that Sari cannot help but pity her. And suddenly the years seem to melt away, and they are girls again, giggling in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.
I
,
Assaria Latham, do solemnly swear that for now, and until the end of time, I am pledged in friendship to Joanna LeBaron
…

Gotten myself gravid
…

That in sickness and in health, each will turn to the other for aid, comfort, and assistance, wheresoever in the world we may happen to be, to be forever truthful with one another
…

She was the most beautiful girl Sari had ever seen.

Perhaps her commitment to Peter and his memory could be forgiven as a form of sickness. Perhaps loyalty to an old oath and an old friend mattered more than shattering her forlorn delusions.

Finally, Sari says, “I'm sorry, Jo. But I've never lied to you. Perhaps it's time we both accepted the fact that we both loved Peter. And that he was unfaithful to us both. And that neither of us owned him.”

“Oh, Sari, Sari,” Joanna says at last with her fists pressed tightly against her eyes. “There's only one thing I can say to you.”

“What's that?” Sari asks her.

“You—you are the cat's pajamas.”

“I think I'm ready for another drink,” Sari says. “I think we should both get quite roaring drunk.”

Seventeen

“Miss Melissa is waiting to see you in the south sitting room, Madam,” Thomas whispers to her as he helps her out of the elevator.

“Aha.”

Thomas wheels her in to where Melissa sits, cross-legged, in one of the Belter chairs, a magazine in her lap. Thomas parks Sari's chair and hastily withdraws.

“Well, Melissa,” Sari says. “May I ask what kind of games you're trying to play?”

Melissa's smile is faint. “Games?” she says.

“Where were you during the meeting? A rather important matter was at stake—the future of our company, that's all.”

“I decided not to go.”

“I see. You decided not to go. Do you know that the rest of us waited nearly an hour for you? Including a court stenographer who's paid God knows what an hour? Your lawyer was very upset, and so was I.”