Deceptions (11 page)

'Sabrina, he'll settle down now that his father's dead and he has the title and the estate.'

'His father died a year ago,' she said. 'And he's still the same.'

Other friends called. *He adores you, Sabrina. His playing around is just working off excess energy. He'll get over it. How many men adore their wives? You don't know how lucky you are.'

I'm tired of his excess energy, she thought. I'm tired of living on a roller coaster with nothing solid beneath it. I want a home, children, a place to belong. But all she said was, 'There are things I want to do with my life, and there's no room for them on Denton's social calendar.'

Stephanie called. *Do you want me to come to London?'

'Not now,' Sabrina said. 'It's scaiy but manageable. I'll let you know. And Mother said she might come. Isn't that amazing?'

Laura had come, stayed awhile and retximed to Washington. In November Sabrina and Denton had agreed on a settlement, and she had moved back to the house on Cadogan Square that she had restored and decorated with such excitement when they were married. Now it was hers. And then, from November to April, one whole London season, she had not seen or heard from anyone in E>enton's circle - her circle, she once thought. She spent long hours working in Nicholas Blackford's shop and long nights alone in her exquisite, empty house. London had become cold and foreign; she had no one to talk to. Except Stephanie. But talking to Stephanie had become a luxury because she was worried about money; for upkeep on the house, for the shop she was planning to open, for living from day to day until the shop began to support her.

Yes, Mother, she thought, I have considered going back to Denton. To the protection of his family, to his circle. These days I never know what lies ahead. At least with Denton I always knew what he had planned. I even knew, most of the time, whom he was sleeping with.

'When you were here last winter,' she said aloud, 'before the property settlement, I felt like I was twelve years old, wanting to go shopping with you and Stephanie.'

'You didn't tell me that.'

'I know. If I'd talked about it I might have curled up on your lap and asked to be comforted. Wouldn't that have been awkward?'

'My lady, excuse me/ said the carpenter. 'Are the plans correct, that this wall is not to reach the ceiling?'

'Yes,' Sabrina answered, looking at the blueprint he held.

'But you'll hear sounds from the showroom even if you close your office door.'

'1 hope the sounds are customers and I hope very much to hear them.'

*Ah. Of course. 1 hope so, too, my lady.'

'Why would it have been awkward?' Laura asked.

'Because you never let me sit on your lap when I was a child. Why start now, when I'm grown up and can take care of myself?'

There was a long silence. Sabrina glanced at the Unes in her mother's face and wished she had not spoken. Why recall the past when they were learning to be friends in the present? Laura was as proud and beauti&l as ever, and Sabrina was happy with her ~ a beautiful woman with her beautiful mother. It was another step in growing up.

She broke the silence. 'What do you think I should do with the new wall? Shelves or paintings?'

'Oh - perhaps both? Paintings mounted here and shelves in the comer? And maybe an easel or two in front, for other paintings.'

'Easels. A marvelous idea. On a small rug. If the budget allows.'

'Sabrina, why didn't you demand more money from Denton? By the time you finish here, you won't have much left.'

'Enough for about six months if I'm careful. I couldn't ask him for more. He told me so often I belonged to him that I wanted to snap my fingers and walk away. Dramatic but not very practical. So I took just what I thought would get me started. You mustn't worry, Mother. I've given free decorating advice to Denton's friends and relatives for years, they know what I can do. How can I be anything but a smashing success?'

If they come, she thought. She hadn't told Laura she'd been ignored for six months; she was ashamed of it, as if somehow

it was her fault. And she didn't want Laura worrying over her. I'll make them come, she vowed.

'Of course you'll be a success/ Laura agreed. She ran her hand over the paneled wall. 'Do you know, this was always my dream? A shop of my own, instead of picking things up on the fly.*

'But you can have one now. You're in Washington for good.'

'Oh, it's too late. I can't start from scratch; I haven't got your energy. I must have lost it somewhere between embassies. I'll just help now and then with Ambassadors. I was touched that you chose that name.'

Sabrina put her arm around her mother and they watched the carpenters put up the office wall at the rear of the shop. The showroom was long and narrow, fronted with a square, paned window. The walls had dark oak wainscoting; the ceiling was molded in plaster octagons. Sabrina felt a shiver of delight and astonishment every time she walked in the door - that it was hers, that she was turning her dreams into reality, fitting her life to her own patterns and rhythms. I've never done that, she thought. I went from my parents to Juliette to the university to working for Nicholas and then to Denton. I've never made my own rules. Impulsively she spread her arms wide. 'Isn't it wonderful!' she cried.

Laura smiled, and Sabrina again put her arm around her shoulders. It felt good to both of them. We need more touching, Sabrina thought, as we get older. And more love: giving it and finding it. 'Mother, thank you for coming. You've made it more exciting. And less frightening.'

'Thank you for asking me,' Laura said. 'Giving me a chance, after all these years, to make a shop. I guess if we wait long enough, we get most of the things we want. Sabrina, why don't you move to America? We would all be so glad. There's nothing keeping you in London.'

'Yes, there is. Right now it's my home. And I know it better than any other city. The wealthy people, the markets, the competition. And the old people. Especially the sick ones. The ghoulish truth is that the only way to grab the best antiques and art is to know who's dying so you can have cash

ready when their estates are auctioned. And I have Mends in London.' 'You have a sister and parents in America.' 'Mother, please understand. I love all of you, and I miss you, but this is where I failed with Denton and this is where I have to succeed on my own. I want to find out what I can make of myself. Can't you understand that?'

'Yes,' said Laura. She paused. 'I think I may be envious.* And, for the first time smce Sabrina was fifteen and leaving home for boarding school, she put both arms around her daughter and kissed her. 'I am so proud of you,' she said. 'And I love you.'

Chapter 7

Lady Andrea Vernon had made Alderley House famous for its grand balls and when Sabrina stood in the doorway beside Nicholas and Amelia Blackford, she drank in the light and color and music as if she could never get enough. When a tanned young man with a lean face asked her to dance and they swept down the length of the wine and gold room, she felt young and carefree for the first time in months. Her taffeta gown swirled in an amber cloud as she turned and turned to the music, looking about her at the ballroom. It had been redecorated in the year since she had seen it last, and she admired the restoration of the gilded ceiling. But she stared in disbelief at the hundreds of light fixtures on the walls; they resembled the veined noses of alcoholics. Where in heaven's name had Andrea's designer dug them up? She shook her head, her fingers itching to sweep the walls bare and decorate them with a simple elegance to match the ceiling. 'You don't agree?' the young man asked. 'Oh, forgive me, I was daydreaming. What did you say?' She listened while he spoke, and listened to the man who cut in on him, but her thoughts kept drifting to Andrea Vernon's walls and other walls, other rooms she had thought once she would be called on to decorate.

* I heard someone say you'd opened a shop,' her partner was saying. 'What do you call it?'

'Ambassadors,' she said.

'Good name,' he said casually. 'Doing well?'

'Doing well?' She steadied her voice. 'Of course.'

'Good,' he said, and she knew he had not really listened to her, or he was ignoring the trembling in her voice to avoid asking if she was having problems. No one at a ball wanted to hear that a beautiful young woman had problems.

The truth was, no one anywhere wanted to hear; so no one did. Sabrina kept to herself the fact that her shop had no customers.

All around her were the aristocracy and business elite she had counted on. Once they had been her friends. She had gambled on that friendship. But in eight months, she had been proven wrong again and again. No one had come.

She had sent announcements to everyone she knew. Nicholas had said to watch especially for Olivia Chasson. 'Where she goes, others follow. If you get her favor, you have nothing to worry about.' Each day, eagerly, excitedly, Sabrina unlocked the shop door and waited in her office for Olivia Chasson and her friends to walk into the tapestry-hung room she and Laura had designed after the eighteenth-century salons of the great homes and castles of England. The eagerness and excitement faded; the feeling of adventure disappeared while she waited for the noise the carpenter had said she would hear from the showroom. Oh, for some noise, she prayed day after silent day, even the tiniest noise, like the tiptoe of a cautious duke. But only a few tourists came, wandering in off the street to browse but seldom to buy.

By now her money was gone. She had borrowed from the bank, and soon she would have to mortgage her house. After that... But she refused to think of that.

'Dinner,' said her partner, who had been describing his polo game, 'Shall we have something?'

They filled their plates at the buffet and sat on a couch in an alcove of drapes. They ate in silence. Sabrina wished for Stephanie. She wished for a firiend to break up the long days and evenings and laugh with her and sometimes let her cxy.

She even wished for a few of the invitations she'd turned down when she was Denton's wife.

' But if she married Denton for his money,' a woman's voice said on the other side of the drapery, 'why didn't she take a bigger settlement?'

Sabrina grew very still. When her partner began to speak« she put her finger to her lips.

A second voice answered, high and indignant. 'How do you know what she took? Denton is too much of a gentleman to talk, but I know for a fact she demanded three million pounds and Treveston and the new yacht. Her own solicitor said that was outrageous. But you know how Denton adored her, so of course she got a fortune. He'd have given her everything he owned.'

'Except Treveston,* the first voice said dxyly. It was puzzlingly familiar, but Sabrina could not place it.

'Well, my dear, he couldn't give away a national treasure like Treveston. You do know that she grabbed the London house.'

'My sweet balhoom gossip,' said a man's voice, joining them. 'May I guess the subject of your sharp tongue? G>uld it be the beautiful Lady Sabrina Longworth, or have I stabbed more completely in the dark than you have stabbed her in the back?'

'Peter, that is grossly unfair,' said the indignant voice. 'We were simply discussing the settlement poor Denton had to make.'

'Poor Denton,' the first voice coolly mimicked, 'gave up so little he probably charged it off to "miscellaneous". Sabrina didn't make a dent in his playtime.'

'Then how did she get that shop on Brompton Road?' demanded the indignant voice. 'I walked past it the other day, and she has an armoire in the window that I know for a fact is worth two thousand pounds at the veiy least'

'Rose! You walked past and didn't go in?'

'My sweet Rose wouldn't go in,' the man's voice said, 'unless everyone did. And the pack has decided Sabrina is a pariah, all of you who cozied up to her when she was Denton's wife—'

'Peter, don't be crude. If you looked past her face you'd

know why she married Denton. She didn't even try to disguise it; she deserted him less than a year after his father died and he became viscount. But Americans are always obvious, aren't they?'

Sabrina sat rigidly in the comer of the couch, her eyes lowered, as she tried to think about what she was going to do, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.

She heard a chair scrape and the first voice came from a different location. 'She's never played by your rules and you've never forgiven her. I think I may do something about that.* .

Sabrina tilted her head. She knew who the voice reminded her of: someone who'd told her long ago that she had to play by "their" rules.

Her partner touched her arm. ^Would you like me to take you home?'

She looked up, her eyes very bright. That doesn't seem like a good idea.' Her voice became stronger. 'I think I'd like to dance some more.' And think of how I'll fight them, she thought, now that I know what is happening. Why didn't I figure it out long ago?

His eyes admired her. 'Brave lady. They're a bit vulgar, the Raddisons, especially Rose, but—*

'Well, now, fancy meetingyou here, isn't life curious,' said the cool voice that had been behind the drapery, and Sabrina turned to meet the lazy smile of Princess Alexandra Martova. 'Will your fiiend forgive us?' asked the princess. I'm about to take you under my wing.'

Alexandra Martova was the owner of four floors of chic rubble. She had come to London alone, with nothing in the world but the proceeds from her divorce: a Swiss bank accoimt, a house on the island of Minorca off the Spanish coast, an apartment in Paris, alimony of ten thousand dollars a month and a Great Dane she called Maxim, after an old fiiend. Tall, willowy, with hght blue eyes turning up at the comers and blonde hair falling sleekly to her shoulders, she had a decisive air she had not had when Sabrina met her on Max Stuyvesant's yacht. 'I decided to make my own rules,* she told Sabrina. 'Looks like you did the same.' She had come

to London because she was bored. 'Nobody knows how to give a good party. So I decided to show them how it's done. Honey, I am about to become the most famous hostess in Europe.*