The Proud and the Prejudiced (19 page)

When Tony’s eyes met mine, neither of us could
control our tears or resist pulling each other into a tight hug as Robert stood
back, blending into the background.

“God, I’ve missed you, Lexie,” Tony said
against my ear.

“Why wouldn’t you answer my letters?”

“I couldn’t. Annette said…oh, forget what
Annette said.”

“Whatever she said, it wasn’t true.”

“I know. I know now.”

“But now it’s too late.” I pulled away from him
and stepped back for Robert to join us. “Robert, this is my brother Tony. Tony,
this is Robert. My husband.”

“Senator.”

 “Your grace.” They shook hands. “I hope you’re
good to her. She is the most important thing in the world to me.”

Knowing we had not spoken in eight years,
Robert was clearly confused by this. “You needn’t worry. She is to me as well.”

After he and his two assistants were shown to
their rooms, they were to join us in the parlor in the east wing. Tony arrived
early and found me alone, and I began to think our warm reunion had been an act
on his part for the benefit of the others.

“You have done well for yourself,” he said
tersely as I handed him a glass of cognac. “Duchess. I suppose not everything
Annette told me was a lie.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“This marriage! To a Duke! He’s old enough to
be your father.”

“Age is not important.”

“Especially with enough funds to offset it.” I
could not believe his harsh words and was too shocked to reply. He grabbed my
wrist tightly and pulled me closer and snarled in my face. “Is that why you did
it? Was it for his money? Or was it to rub my face in it?”

I gathered all my reserves not to burst into
tears. “I didn’t think you cared.”

Then we heard footsteps, and he released my
wrist just as his assistants joined us. I turned around and took a large sip of
my cognac in hopes of making my hands stop shaking.

Tony’s assistants chose not to dine with us,
although I was certain that Tony had helped them in that decision. I felt
strange at dinner, being married to one man when I was in love with the one a
few feet away from him. The feeling was pain, and I reacted to it by inflicting
pain on the origin of mine.

“Why haven’t you gotten married, brother dear?”

He looked at his plate but paused in his
eating. “I have only been in love once, but I lost her.”

“Oh, really?” I asked in the most innocent
voice I could. “Please tell us what happened to her,” then added with my teeth
clenched, “brother dear.”

He looked at me with cold eyes. “I think she
died.”

“Really? And how do you think she died?”

“I killed her.”

Robert choked a little on his dinner and drank
down the rest of his wine.

“I use the term figuratively, of course,” Tony
told him. “Actually, I killed the part of her I loved, and she went on to marry
someone else. But it’s just as well.” He looked at me. “I am not sure she ever
loved me. She never told me she did.”

He was right. I never had told him, but I had
felt it. My eyes were stinging, but I held back the tears. “I’m sure she loved
you,” I said, my voice no longer tinged by anger. “Do you still love her?”

“I will always love her.”

“If she weren’t married, would you let her go
again?”

“It’s complicated. We were too much alike, had
too much in common. We could never be together.”

Perhaps Robert felt left out. After a moment of
Tony and me returning our attention to our plates, Robert said, “When I first
fell in love with your sister, she made me leave for a year to be sure I really
loved her because someone had abandoned her and broken her heart.”

“Oh, really?” Tony sounded almost happy,
pleased with himself for causing my pain.

I spoke up. “But it was a good idea, because
now we are very happy and we are both very much in love.” It wasn’t really a
lie. I just wasn’t in love with my husband.

The rest of the dinner and a nightcap passed politely
and awkwardly, and I think we were all glad to end the evening early.

Later in our room as we got ready for bed,
Robert said, “Darling, I thought you were rather cruel to your brother the way
you talked to him about his former lover.”

I was sitting at the vanity brushing out my
hair. “They never became lovers.” Then I added quickly, “Tony told me all about
it a long time ago.”

I looked into the mirror and reflected on my
past. “At first, they did not get along well at all. But then both of them lost
someone very close to them. That was the summer that our brother and his father
died. They held onto each other at first to relieve their grief and sorrow, but
then their feelings grew into something so much more. They were so in love, and
he had even proposed to her. Then a lie came between them. Tony believed the
lie and abandoned her.”

“How sad.”

After a long moment of silently staring at my
reflection, I stood up and put on my robe. “You’re right. I should go apologize
to him.” I left the room before he could say anything.

I walked through the long corridors to the
guest wing and knocked on Tony’s door, but before he answered, I walked in and
closed it behind me. He dropped the book he had been reading and got out of
bed. I took a step closer, but he put up his hand.

“Please stop.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I…I had to see you again. When I found out you
were getting married it was a stab in the heart. I have never stopped loving
you, Lexie. I even deluded myself that we could be together anyway. I didn’t
know if you’d be willing to move to Sweden, but I couldn’t do that to you. I
thought maybe now that you are married, I could move on, accept that you and I
could only be brother and sister. It hasn’t worked. I need you to go.”

I gasped. “Oh, God. You still don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“I cannot believe she still hasn’t told you. I
was adopted by the Haywards.”

The significance seemed lost on him. “Oh,
really. I didn’t know that.”

I said it again. “Tony, I was adopted.”

He started to shake his head, but then, as
understanding dawned, his face changed, displaying a rapid sequence of
emotions. “You mean you and I aren’t…Oh, dear God. Jesus fucking shit. Why
didn’t you tell me before?”

I turned away to conceal my tears, but I
couldn’t stop them from coming out in my voice. “I did, hundreds of times. Why
wouldn’t you read my letters?”

“Jesus Christ.” He started walking towards me.

“No, stop. I can’t. I’m married now. I can’t
betray him.”

But he hadn’t stopped and now grasped my arms
and pulled me to force me to face him. “You came to me. You left your husband’s
bed in the middle of the night to come to my room. Why are you here?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. We were both so
angry at dinner, I didn’t want to go to sleep with that between us.”

“Is that the truth, Lexie? Then let me kiss you
one time. Just once and I’ll let you go back to your husband.”

He brushed my hair from my face and held the
back of my head. And then we kissed. His breath within me made me tingle all
over and sent a surge of excitement through my body, and I knew I couldn’t stop
with one kiss.

But that first kiss took us all the way to the
bed, where we kissed and discovered each other’s bodies as we never had before.
He kissed and touched all over my body, and then, at last, he and I became one.
One solitary being merged by love. Making love had never felt like this with
Robert. I guess for it to be like this, you have to love your lover. I wanted
him to stay inside me forever, to sleep inside me. I had to be content to sleep
with his body wrapped around me.

The next morning, I told Robert we had stayed
up all night talking, working out our problems.

As Tony was leaving, we were left alone to say
goodbye, but he did not want to leave it at that. “Lexie, come with me. I’ll go
now, but you can meet me in London and we’ll go back to the States together.”

“What are you saying?”

“Come be with me. You cannot tell me, after
last night, that you love him. We belong together.”

“You want me to leave my husband?”

“Divorce him and marry me.”

“It’s not that simple. I…I am a duchess now,
and this could destroy your political career.”

He pulled me close to him. “I don’t give a damn
about being reelected. I just want you.” Then he kissed me until I was
breathless. “I’ll be in London all week. I fly out on Friday. Be on that plane
with me.”

When Tony left, I stared after him. What was I
going to do? I felt like the baron who was married to someone but loved
another. What could I do? I had to stay with Robert. He was my husband, and I
had vowed to stay with him until death. But I felt such guilt for being
dishonest by pretending to love him when I loved Tony. How could I go on
pretending not to love Tony? I knew we could never have a platonic
relationship, but I couldn’t bear to have him out of my life again. Isn’t
divorce better than adultery? What was I going to do?

*****

Giselle stepped into the writers’ room a week
later as if nothing had happened.

“Hi, everyone. Mr. Peacock said I should tell you
all I am back so…here I am.” She smiled, as lovely as ever.

Alice gawked at her in silence as the others
welcomed her back with a startling lack of curiosity. When Giselle walked out,
Alice jump up and ran after her.

“Giselle. Giselle!”

Giselle stopped and turned around. “Hi, Alice.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

She donned Sienna’s complacent smile. “It’s not
important. I’m here now.”

“You’re just going to waltz in here as if nothing
has happened with no explanation?”

“There’s nothing to explain. I’m sorry I caused
you all so much extra work.”

“Forget that! Well, no, don’t forget that because
that wasn’t good either, but I was worried sick about you!”

Although Giselle fought it, eventually her face
cracked and tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Alice. I’m so sorry. I should
have listened to you. I’ve been an idiot.”

“Well, where’s Rich?”

“I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care. I want you
to know how sorry I am that I didn’t trust you. I don’t know what I was
thinking. I wasn’t thinking.”

With beautiful, sweet Giselle crying before her,
Alice couldn’t bring herself to press for more information. Instead, she pulled
her into her arms and hugged her close. “If you ever do want to talk about it,
I am here for you.”

“Yes, I know. You always have been. That’s what I
told him. You are the most forgiving person I know.”

Giselle had already walked away when Alice
realized she wasn’t exactly sure whom she meant by “him.”

CHAPTER 18

Almost three months had passed since I had
walked out on Tony in his London hotel room after making love and arguing, when
I left him to break both our hearts. The next time I saw him, once again he
filled my television screen.

“Eight years ago,” he said from behind the
podium, “my father, Senator Molly Hollingsworth, brought this bill before
Congress. It is my intention this time to see it become law.” And then two
shots rang out.

Many Americans had seen it live, but I didn’t
see it until I woke up the next morning. The caption at the bottom of the
screen did not prepare me, and at the echoing shots, I started screaming.

It took us forever to get to Washington. No
amount of wealth makes the ocean smaller. We arrived the following day, and I
realized it was the twentieth anniversary of the fire. We were met at the
airport by hoards of reporters taking pictures and yelling questions, but I
just kept crying and walking with Robert holding on to me.

We went straight to the hospital. Tony was
unconscious and looked like death in the hospital bed with tubes and monitors
around him. They had operated, but the doctor told us his chances of surviving
were low. “I’m surprised he’s held on this long,” he said.

As I sat next to his bed, I recalled waking up
the morning after my brother’s death to find him sitting there. I remembered
tasting his sweat on my lips and being jealous that he had been loving another
woman. That night when we were dancing in the rain, holding hands, being glad
to be alive. Now I wasn’t. As long as Tony was alive somewhere in the world,
even though I couldn’t have him, it gave me a reason to live, remembering him
telling me how precious life is. Now I knew if he died, that part of me would
die with him.

Then I remembered our bitter parting words when
I refused to go to America.

“When you are in bed with the duke, are you
thinking of me when you fuck him?”

“You should be asking if I think of Robert when
I fuck you!”

They made me cry even harder. Those couldn’t be
the last words I ever said to him.

Tony’s eyes fluttered and opened, and I flew to
his side. “Oh, God. Tony! My Tony.”

“Lexie, don’t cry,” he said, his voice weak and
just above a whisper. “Life is too short and precious to waste grieving.”

I brushed my hands over his hair. “Hold on.
Don’t give up. It will only conquer us if you let it.”

“Did…did they catch him?”

I nodded. “Over that same damn bill.”

“Lexie, will you ever forgive me for leaving
you that day without saying goodbye, never reading your letters?”

“I did a long time ago.”

“Lexie, that night we were together, that was
the most amazing…”

“I know. I will always remember it. There is
something I never told you but I always felt. I love you. I love you more than
life itself, and nothing will stop me from loving you – even death.”

“I love you, Lexie. After I left you, I never
loved anyone again.” Then his eyes closed, and the monitor screeched.

“Tony,” I cried, and then I screamed. “Tony!”

As the hospital staff surrounded us, I kissed
his face and lips, still warm, and my tears fell on his cheeks. He looked so
peaceful, and I thought, he’s only sleeping, but the doctor only shook his head
as the screeching stopped.

I turned around and faced Robert standing near
the corner. His face looked as devastated as I felt. I clung to him in my
agony. “He’s gone, Robert. Tony is gone.” My voice was trembling, and so was I.

“I know,” he said levelly, then he led me into
the corridor.

I looked up at him, and he looked so sad, on
the verge of tears. I remembered seeing that pain in someone else’s eyes.
“Tony, Tony, it will be all right.”

“I’m not Tony, Goddammit! I’m your husband!
Remember me?” He shook me as his own tears began to fall. “It was you! You are
the one Tony spoke of as his only love! It is he who had broken your heart!”

He continued to shake me and scream at me, but
I couldn’t hear any more through my own hysterics.

I screamed back, “Don’t you know he’s dead? I
will never have him again! The only man I ever – “

“The only man you ever loved? That’s it, isn’t
it?” He was enraged and shook me again. “Isn’t it? Answer me!”

I jerked away and took my pain out on him.
“Yes! Yes, it’s true. I never loved you. I only used you to help me forget
Tony. I didn’t know what I was sacrificing! And you know what else? I conceived
his child, but I had an abortion to save your feelings! I will never forgive
myself for killing his baby and for not going with him when I had the chance.”

Then he slapped me across the face. “You may as
well have gone with him because you have lost us both now.” He stormed off as I
held my cheek and fell to the floor, weak and dizzy.

Mother appeared and cradled my head in her
hands. “Lexie, my sweet Lexie.”

“Tad is dead,” I cried. “They killed Tad. My
brother is dead.”

“Dear, Tad has been dead for a long time.”

“No. They came yesterday. Tony’s taking care of
me.”

“No, baby, Tony’s been shot. Tony’s dead.”

Then I pulled away from her and, kneeling on
the hospital floor, began screaming. “Mommy! Mommy! Tad, get Mommy! Tad, go get
Mommy!”

I knew the press must have been having a field
day with this, especially in Britain. “Duchess Freaks at Senator/Brother’s
Deathbed.”

After a few days of denying the deaths of Tad
and Tony, I started making “progress.” Soon I was allowed visitors, although
that was more punishment than privilege.

Mother came. “They say you could be out in a
week or two. Yesterday was Tony’s funeral…”

Of all people, after all these years, Annette
showed up. “I just want you to know that I do not regret anything, and if I had
it to do again, I would.”

“Even knowing all the pain you caused?”

“As long as I caused it for you, and look where
you are now.”

“Annette, why do you hate me so much?”

“I was Mother’s favorite until you came. And
then she started loving you more than she did me. You even got my brother to
love you. He betrayed me because of you.”

“If you had just told him the truth, he could
have had some happiness these last years.”

“I don’t care, if he would have had it with
you.”

Robert came, too. “Hello, darling.” He kissed
me on the forehead and handed me bouquet of flowers.

“Th-they’re beautiful.” I looked into his
smiling face. “Then you’ve forgiven me?”

“Of course, darling. I want you to concentrate
on getting better. Because the sooner you get well, the sooner I can have my
divorce.”

My God, my God, what have I done? Twenty-six,
and I had nothing left to live for. I had destroyed my marriage to a man who
loved me. I had lost all the men I cared about – Daddy, Tad, Tony. I lay in my
starched white bed and wished I were that little girl listening to the
raindrops on the awning of my home and smelling Mommy’s homemade bread. How
complicated life becomes. I used to make up stories to make my life more
interesting, but now I realized truth is stranger than fiction.

But now I am safe, at least for the moment,
tucked away from the world. No worries, no responsibilities, no heart wrenching
decisions. The world didn’t stop just because I wasn’t helping it spin. Now I
could rest and remember the lizard that used to live outside my window. Now,
for the first time in twenty years, I could listen to the rain.

*****

Alice turned the page, but the next one was blank,
only to be followed by information on other books from that publisher.
This
can’t be the end. Where’s the happily ever after?
She checked the binding
to see if any pages had been ripped out.
That’s the end? No deus ex machina?

“Where’s my happily ever after?” She threw the
book against the wall.

“Alice,” Mr. Peacock said from her doorway just as
the book hit the floor, his tone of voice far too grim for first thing in the
morning and only half a cup of coffee. “Are you all right?”

“You can tell Winnie Johnson, that is most decidedly
not
a romance novel!”

Mr. Peacock wrinkled his brow at her in confusion,
but his curiosity did not rise to the level of requiring an explanation. “Jack
Hartz is here. He is asking to see you.”

The blood drained from Alice’s face and left it
tingling. “Oh…OK. Did he say why?”

“Will you see him?”

She nodded and Mr. Peacock stepped back to allow
Jack to come through. Jack closed the door and sat down.

“How’ve you been, Alice?” He spoke like a
mortician.

“You’re kind of freaking me out, Jack. Could we
save the pleasantries for later and get to the point?”

He held up a folded newspaper and slid it across
the desk to her. “He…we wanted you to see this before everyone else.”

She unfolded
The Intruder
to the front page
emblazoned with the headline “Peter Walsingham Engaged!” over a fuzzy picture
of Peter smiling, his eyes closed as he embraced a woman with her back to the
camera.

“Oh, God.” She checked for her trashcan to be sure
it was near in case she had to throw up.

“There are more inside.”

“I don’t think I want to see anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Alice. He was right. He said you’d be
upset. I didn’t realize it would bother you so much.”

She rubbed her eyes and repeated the mantra to
herself,
I will not cry. I will not cry
. “Oh, he
knew
this would
upset me!” She had to know. “Who is she?”

After several seconds of silence, she began to
think he wouldn’t answer, but he responded with another question. “Who is who?”

“The woman. His fiancée – the woman in the
picture.”

He said nothing until she looked up at his puzzled
eyes. “Alice, it’s you.”

The shock hit her like a bucket of cold water.
“Me?”

“Yes – it’s the two of you at Alsace Aquitaine.”

She yanked the blurry image up to her face then
turned the pages to the story, and there they were. Peter holding her hands as
they gazed into each other’s eye. Her face then lit up with surprise and
excitement. Finally, her grinning from ear to ear with her arms around his
neck.

Alice perused the photos and the short article
describing an intimate dinner for two during which Peter popped the question.

Then she burst out laughing. She threw her head
back and guffawed as Jack sat with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

“So you…you aren’t upset?”

“With a story this ridiculous? I can’t believe
even
The Intruder
could get something this wrong. I bet Peter is livid.”

“So he didn’t ask you to marry him that night?”

“Of course not. Why? Didn’t he tell you it wasn’t
true?”

“He didn’t tell me what was happening in the
photos, but he never said they weren’t true, so I thought…”

“He probably thought it was too ludicrous for him
even to deny!”

“Then what did he tell you that night?”

“That he…oh, it’s not important anymore. Tell him
I am very sorry he has the discomfort of having to refute being engaged to
someone as insignificant as Alice McGillicutty. Does he wish me to issue a
statement?”

“No. In fact, he told his publicist not to respond
at all.”

“That’s probably wise. It’ll die down much faster
if he doesn’t issue a denial, which would just incite more questions and keep
it in the tabloids that much longer. What I don’t understand is why now. This
was three weeks ago. I thought this rag was all about being first with the ‘big
story.’”

“I have no idea why they came out now. I think a
waiter took them.”

She glanced at the photos a moment longer until a
bittersweet ache just below her sternum compelled her to close the paper. “How
is he?”

“Still keeping to himself. Still won’t look at any
scripts I bring him.”

“Did he…” Should she?
Oh, to hell with it
.
“Did he have a message for me or ask about me?”

“When he called me, he thought you would be really
angry about this engagement story. When I said I’d come see you, he said, ‘Find
out how she’s doing. I hope she’s all right.’”

She wrinkled her brow and thought aloud, “How
odd.” With too much she wanted to ask, she instead said nothing more.

“Is Giselle around? Do you think she’d talk to
me?”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out. She
should be in make-up or her dressing room.”

He grinned and started to go. “Thanks, Alice.”

“Do you mind if I keep this?” she asked with a
finger on
The Intruder
. “Not every day I get to pretend I’m engaged to a
movie star.”

A few days later, Alice came out of her office
just as Jack and Giselle returned from lunch, smiling and holding hands and
even kissing goodbye. As Jack left, Alice hopped to catch up with Giselle.

“Looks like you and Jack have picked up without
skipping a beat. I take it you’ve forgiven him.”

“Well, how could I not after Peter explained it
all to me and said everything was his fault and how miserable –”

“Peter?” Alice came to an abrupt halt and put her
hand on Giselle’s arm to stop her as well. “When did you talk to Peter?”

Giselle turned three kinds of red before speaking.
“I…He asked me not to say anything.”

“Who? Peter?”

Giselle wrung her hands together and glanced
around as if she were revealing state secrets. “I’m not supposed to say
anything, but when I was gone that few days? Peter found me and brought me
back.”

“Found you? Where?”

“I had no idea where I was at the time, but I
suppose Rich had driven us to Mexico.”

“Peter found you in Mexico?” Alice could not
suppress the shock resonating in her volume.