Wild Heart (31 page)

"We'll tell her to leave."

As usual, he was faster. She was still fumbling with chemise ribbons when he tumbled her onto her back and threw a bare leg over her knees. "But she'll see us."

He had made a knot in the ties. Growling, using his teeth, he tore a rip in the thin cotton, peeled her out of it, and hurled it to the floor like an old dust rag. She gaped at him, astounded, excitement beginning to hum in her veins. "She won't see you," he assured her, grinning like a wolf. "She'll just see me." His long, hard body covered her, and she forgot about the maid and everything else in the world except Michael.

I'm possessed,
she thought, giving herself to him.
I
surrender.
The words fit, but no sneaking shame accompa
^:
nied them, no secret resentment.
I'm helpless,
she thought, and reveled in it. Everything they did, everything they wanted, every act of love that crossed their minds was absolutely right. She belonged to him completely, but she had never felt so free.

His mouth was a hot, hungry caress on her body, driving her higher with every sensuous, slow-burning kiss. She could feel herself unraveling, stretching and unwinding beneath him, coming undone. He could make her bones melt. One minute she could hardly lift her weak woman's hand to touch him, and the next she felt like an Amazon, muscular and athletic, his perfect match. His mate.

At the moment he came into her she said, "Don't leave me."

"Sydney," he whispered, but he was lost, she could see it in his eyes, too deep in passion to heed her.

"Michael, don't leave me."

He took her mouth in a rough, ravishing kiss that blurred the edges of her mind and gradually extinguished every conscious thought. Nothing but sensation now, the deep heated beat of desire. It pulsed through her, she could feel it pulse through him, burning them together, binding them even closer. Sweat made their bodies slick. They rolled, and in their eagerness they lost their intimate joining. The world rushed back—they were in a bed, in a room, in a city—and when they came together again the world vanished. Her name—he breathed it in her ear like a sigh, again and again, until the syllables blended and merged and all she heard was
I
love you.
Everything came together, body and soul, all together. She flew with him up and over the rushing edge, into a pleasure so intense she lost him, lost herself. Oblivion. She found him again, and held on for her life.

When it was over, she tried to explain it to him. "With you, Michael—I don't know—I feel free. Anything I want, I know it's all right." She struggled for words, unwilling to talk aboufSpencer with him—that would be a betrayal. But in private, she couldn't help remembering that sometimes, with Spencer, she had had the feeling that they were . . . getting away with something. Not that it was dirty or shameful—well, a little, though. Yes, a little. Sex was something they ought to have been
above.
But they weren't, and so they had had to hide their enjoyment of it. Which made the enjoyment less.

"You're good for me," she tried again, lying on her side, holding his hand between her damp breasts and kissing it. "Nothing embarrasses you. And so, since you don't have any inhibitions, you sweep away mine."

He was absorbed in the smooth skim of his hand from the swell of her hip to the crevice of her waist, to the curve of her rib cage, back and forth, back and forth. "What are inhibitions?"

She laughed gaily. "Never mind," she said after thinking it over. "They're something you'll never have to know about."

The curtain at the window billowed in the breeze. She snuggled closer, and he pulled the sheet up to cover her. A delicious lassitude crept over her. "Shall we sleep?" She closed her eyes, smiling, knowing he was still watching her. She loved to fall asleep with him. So
sweet.
Such a tender intimacy. "Love you," she whispered, and drifted away.

Love you,
Michael echoed in his heart. He wanted to kiss that small, pinkish place on her cheek, where she had rubbed too hard against his stubbly jaw. Or he had rubbed her. His fingertip hovered over it, but didn't touch; he didn't want to wake her.

How beautiful she always looked in sleep, after they made love. Her red hair was a mess, scattered across the pillow like a flag, her face still pink and damp. She slipped so easily into sleep, smiling at him one minute, breathing deeply the next, her lips parted as if for one last kiss.

He slipped out of bed. His clothes were all over; he gathered them up quietly and carried them into the other room to dress. Sydney's pocketbook had fallen into a corner of the sofa. He was glad when he found the room key on top; he didn't want to snoop through her belongings.

When he opened the door, the maid was two steps away with her hand up, ready to knock. They both jumped. He smiled politely and moved forward, so she had to move back. Closing the door quietly behind him, he said, "My wife is sleeping. Could you come later?"

"Yes, sir, of course."

"Thank you."

She did that bobbing thing maids did, and he stayed where he was until she went down the hall and around the corner. Then he went the other way, toward the elevator.

He knew the number; Sam had taught it to him. He sat down at the little table that the telephone sat on and picked up the earpiece. There was a hollow crackling sound; after a few seconds a woman's voice came through it and said, "May I help you?"

"Yes. I would like to call someone."

"Speak up, please."

"I would—" He had forgotten to talk into the mouthpiece. He leaned closer. "I want to call someone."

"Number, please."

"Four-nine-oh-one."

"Hold, please, I'll ring."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Clicking and crackling. Ringing.

"Hello?"

He gripped the earpiece tighter, pressed it closer to his ear until it hurt. The voice had come over too faintly. Whose was it? Philip's?

"Hello? Anybody there?"

"Philip!" He almost shouted, he felt so relieved.

"Hang on." A muffled squeaking, then a sharp sound, like a door closing. Then Philip's voice again, tense and clipped. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing—"

"Where are you?"

"The same place. I—"

"Where is my sister?"

"Here. She's fine. She doesn't know I'm calling you."

"Why are you calling?"

He's furious,
Michael realized. Sydney hadn't told him that. "I'm calling to ask you how things are. How things are at the house."

"Oh, really? Well, I'll tell you. My father doesn't know if he's still got a job at the university, my aunt won't come out of her room, and my brother cries all the time. Anything else you'd like to know?"

Michael curled his shoulders inward, feeling as if he'd been punched.

"Well?"

"Yes," he finally managed to say. "There's something else."

He heard Philip sigh before he said in a voice that wasn't so angry, "What?"

"Tell me what would happen if we got caught. To Sydney, I mean, not me."

"Why don't you ask her?"

"I have asked. She said, 'Nothing.' "

"She's lying."

He pressed the heel of his hand against his eye socket. The elevator doors opened; somebody got off, but he didn't look up to see who. "You tell me," he said into the telephone.

"Well, two things. One's for certain, the other's probable. First, she'd be ruined."

"Ruined.
How—"

"Banished. From everything. She travels in high circles and she plays by the rules. Or at least she used to. If her society friends found out where she's been and who she's been with, it wouldn't matter if you two have been reading the Old Testament to each other for the last five days. She would be finished. Understand? With the possible exception of Camille Darrow, she wouldn't have a friend in the world."

Michael tried to say something, but he couldn't.

"You still there?"

"The second thing."

"The second thing. She could be arrested. Aiding and abetting a fugitive is a crime. I don't know what a good lawyer could do for her—maybe she'd get off. Are you hearing this?"

"Yes."

"And you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes."

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Finally Michael said, "Don't worry."

"What does that mean?"

"She'll be all right. It's over now."

"What are you going to do?"

"I have to hang up."

"Wait. What are you going to do?"

"Thank you for telling me this."

"Listen, Michael. Don't do anything fast. Let me—"

He hung up. He had to do everything fast now; there was no time to lose.

The living room was empty, the bedroom silent. She was still sleeping. Leaning over the desk, he scratched out a note, writing it so fast the words were barely readable. He left it there, and then, even though everything in him said to
go now,
he moved quietly across the room, stopping at the open door to the bedroom.

He wanted to go closer, but he was afraid she would wake up. Would she think he was a coward to sneak away like this? Would she hate him for it? He couldn't help it. He was doing the right thing, finally. Regret was like a sour taste on his tongue when he thought of how long he'd kept her in danger, how stupid and blind and unthinking he'd been. But maybe he could fix it. If he went right now, maybe no harm would come to her.

She moved—he froze. She muttered something, but it was thick, garbled; she wasn't awake. He'd heard her talk in her sleep before; once she'd said clearly, "But that's not how it is," and another time, "Oh, you." She was smiling now, a small, patient smile, tolerant-looking. If only he knew what she was dreaming. If only he'd heard those last words.

He was afraid even to whisper.
I
love you,
he told her, just mouthing it.
Good-bye.
He went back to the living room, making no noise on the thick, muffling carpet. At the desk, he scrawled a P.S. to his note, and moved it closer to the edge, so she couldn't miss it.

"Michael?"

His heart stopped.

Racing to the hall door, he opened it carefully and slipped through. Her soft, sleepy voice came again. He closed the door on it, and walked out of her life in a hurry.

Sydney found his note half a minute later.

"SYDNEY," he wrote in block letters, the rest in his big, childish scrawl. "I know where the police station is, Sam showed me a long time ago. I am going there to give up. I'll say I have been hiding in Lincoln Park. It isn't a lie because I did hide there for a while. You are in danger and must go home right now. We should not have done this, even though it was the best time in my life. I love you. I wish I had time to say it all. Things I should have said before. I don't know what will happen now, but I have to go. Michael.

"P.S. Don't be angry. This really is the best thing to do."

Chapter 16

The police almost arrested Charles West for harboring a fugitive.

Sydney was horrified when she heard the news from John Osgood, the criminal attorney her father had hired to defend Michael. She scolded Philip severely when he laughed, but the irony was too much for him, and he'd never liked Charles anyway. Still, Sydney knew that if God was kind and by some miracle this nightmare of Michael's went away, one day she, too, would look back and find Charles's predicament very, very funny.

The problem for Charles was that when Michael walked into the Clark Street police station to give himself up, he didn't look like a man who had been hiding in a public park for eight days. Where had his clean clothes come from? Who gave him a razor? Why wasn't he hungry? He wouldn't answer. That someone in the Winter family might have been "harboring" him never seriously figured in the police's suspicions—and needless to say, that Sydney herself had been hiding with him in the honeymoon suite of the Palmer House Hotel never entered a single detective's head. Unluckily for Charles, Michael's circle of acquaintance was small; when the police thought about who might have helped him during the week he was on the run, West's name was on top of the list.

But not for long. They couldn't find any proof, not a shred of evidence, and Charles's vehement denials were very convincing. So the matter was dropped. Since they were probably never going to find out where Michael had been hiding, the police simply decided it wasn't important and stopped thinking about it.

The Winter family breathed a sigh of relief.

But that was the only good news. "There's no bail," Philip reported, bursting into Sam's room on Monday afternoon. Sydney and Sam were sitting on the floor, putting finishing touches on Sam's "nature album," a messy collection of leaves, twigs, grasses, and stones that kept eluding their best efforts to paste them into the book. Since her return, Sam had hardly left Sydney's side. He thought it was "dumb" of her to go visit a friend in Joliet at the very time Michael was in trouble. But, true to his sweet nature, he'd forgiven her for it.

"No bail!"

"They're moving him to the county jail until the trial. Osgood says he can get the trial date expedited, but Judge Tallman won't allow bond. He claims Michael's a bad risk."

"But he gave himself up!"

Philip squatted down beside them on the rug, and Sydney made an effort to calm down, aware of Sam's anxious eyes searching her face. "The judge is a FOZ," Philip explained, and her spirits sank even lower.

"A what?"

She ruffled Sam's hair. "A FOZ is a Friend of the Zoo—somebody who gives money to support it." She looked at Philip. "Shouldn't he disqualify himself, then?"

"Osgood says that's not enough to constitute bias. And if he moves for it and the judge refuses, we'll make an enemy of him."

Sydney swore softly, without thinking, and Sam's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Sorry," she muttered.

To Philip she said, "How was it? How did he look? Did you talk to him?" Michael's arraignment was this morning. She'd been advised by everybody not to attend on the grounds that it would only upset her. There was nothing she could do; newspaper reporters would hound and har-rass her; she or Michael might do or say something to give themselves away. None of that swayed her, and she would have gone anyway except for one thing: Aunt Estelle was having a nervous breakdown.

"If you go to this court proceeding, Sydney," she had declared, white-lipped with rage and in complete earnest, "I swear I will never, ever speak to you again." She meant it. Sydney's own anger had tempted her to accept the ultimatum and make a break with her once and for all. But she hadn't. She'd given in.

It wasn't like the other times she'd bitten her tongue and yielded to her aunt's stronger will, though. This time she had made a free choice, based on prudence and logic. She wouldn't go to Michael's arraignment because it would hurt the family—Sam, she was thinking of—by exposing them to sensational publicity. Her aunt's threat didn't even figure in the decision. Thank God, the days of slavishly obeying Aunt Estelle because she was inflexible and intimidating were finally over.

Philip leafed through Sam's nature album, avoiding her eyes. "He looked all right. I didn't speak to him. The judge asked him how he pled, and he said, 'Not guilty.' That's all he said. The whole thing was over in five minutes."

She would find out later, she decided, how Michael had really looked, when Sam wasn't around. Until then, Philip's evasiveness made her uneasy.

"Osgood cabled some lawyer colleague of his in London," Philip went on, looking up. "To try to find out what's going on in Scotland."

"Good."

"He thinks finding Michael's family is vital. He also wants to play up the earl business to the press more. He says it's one of the few things in Michael's favor."

"But it doesn't have anything to do with the case. Does it?"

"No, but he says it's the sort of thing that could sway a jury anyway. A man who comes from Scottish royalty, whose father's an earl—how could he be dangerous? You wouldn't argue it in words, you'd just let the jury figure it out for themselves."

“I see." But if Michael's, family couldn't be found, they wouldn't even be able to do that. "Does Mr. Osgood know about Michael and—" She stopped, glancing at Sam, and changed the question to, "Does he know where Michael was last week?"

"Not unless Michael told him. Which isn't likely."

Sam leaned against her thigh, his blond-lashed blue eyes mournful. "I want to go see him, Syd. Can't I visit him?" She shook her head. "But why? He's my friend, too."

"T know, sweetie."

"And I made a picture for him. Look."

"Oh, it's nice. Look, Philip."

"It's all of us, see? This is the lake and this is Michael, this is me, here's you, and this is Flip."

"We're playing ball," Sydney said tentatively.

"No, that's Hector. Come on, Syd, I want to give it to him. You're going to visit him, so why can't I come with you?"

"What?" Philip turned on her. "You're going to visit Michael?"

"I have to. There won't be any photographers," she added, already feeling defensive.

"Does Aunt Estelle know?"

"Not yet."

"Why can't I?" Sam persisted. "Why can't I come with you when you go?"

"Because children don't belong in jails, that's why."

"But—"

"Sorry, but the subject's closed." She gave him a hug to forestall more argument. "I'll take him your drawing. You can write him a letter, too, if you like. And I'll tell him how much you miss him."

"When were you planning on dropping this little bomb on Aunt E?" Philip asked.

She closed her eyes, already dreading that encounter. Putting it off would only make it worse, though. "Now," she answered tiredly after a glance at her watch. "She'll be in her garden."

"Yeah," agreed Sam, "talk to her when she's in the garden. That's when she's in the best mood."

* * * * *

"Oh, hello, Papa." She was surprised to see him outside in the middle of the afternoon, not cooped up in his study. "Is everything all right?"

"Hm? Oh, sure. Just telling your aunt about her phone call." He sat down on the ledge of the terrace and took off his pince-nez, patting his pockets for a handkerchief. After an unsuccessful search, he pulled his shirt out of the front of his trousers and used it to polish his lenses.

"Her phone call?"

"Hm? Yes, from that rose fellow."

That rose fellow. "Mr. Wilkerson?"

"Wilkerson. Says he's abdicating."

Wilkerson was the president of the Rose Society; Aunt Estelle was the vice president. "He's abdicating?"

"Resigning, quitting, forget the word he used. Ill health. Wants Estie to take over." He looked at Sydney, focused on her. "She won't even take the call. She's wanted that man's job for as long as I can remember, and now she won't even come to the phone." He shook his head, sticking his glasses back on his nose. Behind them, his sad eyes looked bewildered.

"Oh, God." Sydney sighed, dropping down on the ledge beside him. "This is all my fault."

He didn't contradict her. To her amazement, though, he put his arm around her shoulders. "Well, you couldn't help it."

"Oh, Papa, I couldn't," she said in a rush, touched by his unexpected sympathy. "I just couldn't let him go. And if he'd gone off by himself, they'd have caught him. I
had
to go with him."

"You love him."

"I do."

"And he loves you?"

"Yes."

"Nothing more to be said, then." He looked up at the sky, his craggy face wrinkling in a hundred lines and creases. The breeze lifted his sparse white hair straight up, like a fuzzy halo. She kissed his cheek. He glanced at her, pinkening a little, smiling sweetly. "You look more like your mother every day."

"Do I?" What a lovely compliment; she had thought her mother was beautiful.

"Nobody ever knew what she saw in me, you know. Least of all her parents. She wasn't a bit stubborn, but that one time she didn't listen to anybody. She went ahead and married me, and it was the right thing to do. We made each other happy."

"I know you did." She took his bony hand between hers. Her father was a dear, kind, gentle man, and yet she never had conversations like this with him. She wanted it to go on and on. "Do you still miss her?"

"Every day."

"Me, too."

He nodded, falling silent. She was afraid he was slipping away from her, sliding into one of his daydreams, but a moment later he shook himself and focused on her again. "Blame myself for this business with Michael. Partly, anyway."

"Oh, Papa, why?"

"Abandoned him. Couldn't use him anymore, West and I, so we dropped him. Wrong of us. Wrong of me. Boy needed guidance, and I forgot all about him. Handed him over to you and Philip and Sam, never gave him another thought."

"If it's anybody's fault . . ." She shook her head decisively "It's
not
anybody's fault. You're not to blame, Papa, and neither are we, and neither is Michael."

"Hmra."

"It just happened."

"Well, you may be right. Thing is, I can see exactly why he did it. If you put yourself in his place, it makes perfect sense."

"I know. I think of that all the time." They shared a soft laugh that comforted her. "I'm going to see him, Papa. I've made up my mind. Aunt Estelle . . ." She trailed off;

no need to finish that thought. He patted her hand and stood up. Sydney sighed—their tete-a-tete was over.

He pulled his pipe from his vest pocket and stuck it between his teeth. "Shouldn't go alone." He started searching in his other pockets for his tobacco pouch.

"Philip will go with me if I ask him to."

"Good, good. I'll come, too."

"You—you'll what?"

"Not as grim if we all go. He'll be glad to see us, won't he?"

"Y-es, he'll love it. Oh, Papa, thank you."

"Estie won't like it. You going to tell her?"

She nodded, nonplussed.

"Good. Leave me out of it. Don't even mention my name." He winked at her and headed for his study, still slapping his pockets.

* * * * *

Aunt Estelle was killing aphids. A seasonal occupation, it gave her an enormous amount of satisfaction. She enjoyed mixing her tubs of water, soap, and quassia chips, and spraying the resulting goo on the tiny white pests that would otherwise have sucked the life out of her precious roses.

"What actually is an aphid?" Sydney opened brilliantly, standing, hands behind her back, a respectful six feet from her aunt while she aimed a hose at a rosebush with one hand and pumped a plunger in a bucket up and down with the other. "I mean, it never moves. Is it a plant or an animal? Or an insect? Or ... an organism, a sort of ... amoebalike thing," she floundered, vaguely recalling the word from a long-ago biology class.

To all of these queries Aunt Estelle said nothing, merely went on with her spraying and pumping as if she were alone. She had on her garden getup, which consisted of her oldest dress and a full-length apron, cloth gloves to the elbows, and a wide, low-crowned straw hat.

"Papa says Mr. Wilkerson is retiring," Sydney tried next. "Nothing seriously wrong with him, I hope—but won't that be nice, if you succeed him. You'd do a wonderful job. Better than he did, I'm sure. And you'd be the first woman. That would . . . really . . ." She bowed her head, coloring. "That would really be something," she finished softly. To herself.

"What do you want?"

The harsh words startled her; she jerked her head up. Aunt Estelle still had her back to her, spraying and pumping, spraying and pumping. The rigid set of her shoulders, the angry line of her neck, everything about her told Sydney she had come on a fool's errand. She had to try, though. Wanted to try. Maybe it was those sweet, surprising moments with her father that made her feel bold with Aunt Estelle for once, even daring. Or maybe it was just time she grew up.