Time After Time (54 page)

Liz said lightly, "We
don't know that she's going to be queen. The monarchy's in trouble
over there."

Jack's head came up. His
blue eyes locked on her in anger. He stood there, simmering in
place, while she watched him with the same impatience with which
she waited for her teapot to come to a boil.

Come on,
she thought.
Get it over
with. You 'ye been looking for an excuse; this is it.

"Do you," he asked in a
barely controlled voice, "have any idea what a faux pas you've
committed?"

Liz laughed out loud.
"Faux pas? Excuse me? Does that mean like, I goofed? Would you mind
translating that for me? Because as we know, I was born in a cave
and raised in a barn."

"I
knew
it," he said, slamming his hand
back down on the desk. "It always comes back to this, doesn't it —
this
obsession
of
yours with class."

Liz jumped up, aching to
do battle with him. She stood with feet apart, hands on her hips:
the position of challenge.

"Class!" she said.
"Class?
Listen, pal, I
know class when I see it, and so far during this project I ain't
seen it! All I've seen are a bunch of cloying, fawning, oozing,
name-dropping princess-wannabes who'd do anything——anything! — to
be photographed next to some poor skinny blonde whose life, sad as
it is, is no longer her own!"

She took a breath; she
wasn't done.
"
One
woman — beautifully dressed; I
hear you once dated her — stood right there,
demanding
a ticket to the dinner.
When I told her, over and over, that I couldn't sell her one, she
actually stamped her foot! Class? I don't
think
so!"

She thought she'd beaten
him down, but he came back strong. "Never mind who they are, and
never mind what they do! This isn't about them — it's about you,
Liz! What were you thinking of? You're supposed to be a
professional! You're running a charity event, not a con
game!"

"Okay, things did get a
little out of hand," she said, reddening. "But I warned all the
real people, my people, that Diana wouldn't be there. They're not
going to feel gypped. And as for the others — frankly? I don't
care
if they bought the tickets under
false pretenses."

"You
should
care, Liz!" he said hotly.
"You should grow up, goddammit! Because, frankly, that blue-collar
routine of yours has become a real bore."

She felt as if he'd
slapped her. "Fine! Since we're being frank, this is what
I
think: I
think your anger has as much to do with Princess
Diana as it has to do with the Queen of Sheba!"

His look got more
dangerous. "Meaning?"

"Meaning the
real
faux pas here, the
one you'll never forgive me for, is the fact that I didn't fall to
my knees on the day we met and declare my infertility."

The blue eyes got wide.
"What are you — insane? That has
nothing
to with this. I've got kids
coming out of my ears
,"
he added irrelevantly.

"
Don't
deny it! I saw that look on
your face when I told you I couldn't have children. You looked
absolutely betrayed. Anyone would've thought I was a man dressed in
women's clothing or something."

"And I'm
telling you you're wrong
.
In the first place, you've hardly
said a damned thing about it, except that you 'can't.' What does
that mean, you 'can't'? In this age of high tech, with all of
science at your beck and call—"

"
Don't
lecture me about technology!
My doctor said—"

"Is he a specialist? Did
you get a second opinion? A third? A ninth?"

"All right, all right, all
right!" she shouted. "If it's not about that, what
is
it about? Why have
you been avoiding me since that conversation?"

"You said you wanted some
space!" he said instantly.

"That's
not what this is about. Let's face it: you got
carried away in the heat of sex, and later you regretted
it!"

"What?"

"I was right in the first
place! Deep down, you're afraid of commitment!"

"My God! I
practically
proposed—"

"But you didn't
quite,
did you? You left
yourself a little breathing room!"

"I left
you
a little breathing
room, goddammit!"

"Baloney! If you really
loved me—"

And that's when she
remembered that he hadn't yet said he loved her. Three simple
words:
I. Love. You.
How much effort did it take?

Too much. She could see it
in his eyes, the hesitation. In a blinding revelation, Liz knew the
reason: to Jack Eastman, the words meant something so sacred, so
inviolable, that he had to be one hundred percent certain before
saying them. But Liz knew, and every married person knew, that
hundred percent certainty wasn't possible. You had to take a
chance.

And so her words hung in
the churchlike silence like an unanswered chant:
If you loved me...

His smile was bleak as he
said, "We need to take a step back. We've gone too far, too fast.
You were right."

Right or wrong, Liz had no
choice now but to do exactly that: to step back from him
emotionally. She'd been a breath away from telling him that she
loved him.

Instead, she smiled a
smile as bleak as his own and said, "The spiral steps are very
steep. Be careful on your way down, Jack."

During the weeks that
followed, Liz had no time either to mourn her shattered heart or to
mend it: she simply put the pieces aside, like the broken fragments
of the botanical plate, the stoneware jug, and the potpourri jar
that were lying on a shelf in her basement, waiting.

There were other
advantages to having an impossible schedule. Meetings with Jack —
meetings with everyone — were kept to a minimum. There simply was
no time. Between coordinating the music, decorations, and caterers;
the press releases, program sponsors, and door prizes; the
security, the volunteers, the vendors, the press — between juggling
all of it and a thousand small details besides, Liz was able to put
every sleepless night to good use.

Though she would never
have admitted it, one detail nagged at her more than any other:
what to wear to the benefit. In the last several weeks, she'd seen
too many well-dressed women to continue thinking she could get by
in her old little black dress. So at the last minute she ran out
and blew three hundred dollars on a new little black dress. It
wasn't up to Meredith's standards, maybe, but it would certainly
do.

On the night before the
fund-raiser, Liz laid out the dress and was pinning an envelope
filled with checks onto it when the doorbell rang.

It was Victoria, with a
long, white, coat-size box in her arms.
"Wait
till you see," she said,
brushing past Liz into her living room.

"Tori, for cryin' out
loud," Liz moaned. "It's almost midnight, and I've still got things
to do."

Victoria ignored her
whimpering. "I was poking through Sarah's Vintage Clothing on
Thames Street again. Just look
what came
in this morning," she said, laying the box on the sofa. "Someone
was cleaning out an estate. It's in wonderful condition, and I
bought it instantly. Tell me if this isn't fate."

Victoria removed the lid
to the box as if there were hummingbirds inside. Then, smiling
radiantly, she folded back the white tissue and lifted up a gown of
creamy satin, wrapped in tiers of fine lace, with a plunging,
structured bodice that fell away into off-the-shoulder, short puffy
sleeves.

She held the dress against
herself. "I love the tiny seed pearls on the lace. Isn't it just
perfect for tomorrow?"

Despite herself, Liz was
enchanted. "Oh, Tori, yes. It
is
the Gilded Age. But I thought you were going as
New Age."

"I am," Victoria said. She
held out the gown to Liz. "This is for you."

"Oh, no, Tori," Liz said,
shocked by her friend's generosity. "I can't. Really."

"You can. You must.
Because—there's more."

Liz's eyes were shining.
"More? A whalebone corset, maybe, so that I can squeeze into the
thing?"

"It won't be much of a
squeeze," Tori allowed, pinning the gown against Liz. "You've lost
weight these last weeks. Look at the pants you're wearing. They
hang on you."

"Do they?" Liz asked
absently. "No, really, I can't," she decided all over again. "I've
already bought a nice black dress."

"It's a
costume
party. Take the
dress back."

"I've cut off the
tags."

"Idiot!
Never
cut off the tags
until ten minutes before you go. Now try this on."

****

Netta adjusted the heavy
folds of the lengthy black servant's dress that —somehow — the fey
creature Victoria had talked her into wearing. At the time, it
seemed like a good idea. What were they thinking? It was too
blessed hot for worsted. She patted her glistening brow with a
linen handkerchief and tucked the folded square back into the
pocket of her starched apron, then pushed a straying hairpin into
her neatly arranged bun.

She'd drawn the line at
the little granny glasses, and a good thing, too: she was blind as
a bat without her prescription lenses. If tortoiseshell frames
weren't Victorian enough for Victoria, well, that couldn't be
helped.

Netta opened the door to
the tiny closet of her third-floor quarters and surveyed herself in
the full-length mirror. The dress put ten extra pounds on her — one
more sacrifice to satisfy Victoria's whim. Ah, well. The
creature
had
worked hard all week, flitting like Tinker Bell from Meredith
to Liz and back again.

"Everything has to be
perfect," Victoria had said more than once. "Perfect."

Well, why wouldn't it be,
with Meredith running the dinner and Liz running the costume party
after? Both women were perfectionists, each in her own way. True,
Meredith Kinney liked to delegate; but then, she had a staff that
she could trust to do everything. Since she was donating the entire
expense of the dinner, no one minded in the least that she was
hardly around.

Liz, on the other hand,
watched every penny and did a lot of her own legwork. Not more than
two hours ago, the woman was pulling potted palms around in
Caroline's wagon, lifting them in and out as she rearranged the
entrance to the big tent. Liz had noticed what everyone else had
not: that the palms blocked the view of the palmist, if you entered
the tent from the left.

Two different women, two
different ways of doing business. Well, Anne's Place could only
benefit, and that was a fact.

Netta stood for a moment
in front of the small fan on her bureau, then impulsively hiked up
her dress and yanked off the long, very full muslin underskirt that
was part of her costume. Who the dickens would know if she was
wearing an underskirt or not? She took a little cotton half-slip
out of her drawer and slipped it on instead. Enough was
enough.

On the second-floor
landing she bumped into Jack, who waved a length of black tie in
her face.

"Suddenly I can't tie a
knot," he said in irritation. "Do it for me, would you,
Netta?"

She obliged him, looping
the tie under the collar of his white shirt and shaping it into a
formal bow.

"God, I'll be glad when
this evening's over," Jack muttered as he stood before her. "I want
my life back."

"I hope you're planning to
wear the waistcoat under the dinner jacket," Netta said in a grim
reminder. "Victoria went through lots of trouble to find one for
you."

"Oh, come on, Netta. The
thing is old and moth-eaten."

"Too bad. You put it on.
There — all done." She stepped back to survey her handiwork. Jack
Eastman: her darling; her utterly beloved Jack. If she had gotten
married and had a son, she'd want him to be Jack Eastman, never
mind that Jack had gone to Harvard and she couldn't possibly have
paid for it.

He gave her a mocking
look. "Well? Will I pass muster?"

"You look very handsome,
Master Jack," she said, as proud of him as if she had borne him.
"Like a proper Victorian gentleman."

"And you, Miss Simmons,
look exactly like the kind of woman I might try to fool around with
if I were," said Jack with a half-lift of his eyebrows.

The remark was too close
to the reality; Netta brushed it aside with a "Don't be
fresh."