Fortune is a Woman (45 page)

Harry laughed as he stood up to leave. "What are all these rumors I hear about you being a potential Republican candidate?" he asked casually, turning at the door to meet Buck's eyes. "Sounds like a great idea. With Maryanne Brattle at your side, how can you fail? Choate, Princeton, Harvard Law—the perfect wife and the perfect family man. I'll be the first to congratulate you." He smiled his smile and said, "Sorry we couldn't do business together today. Maybe some other time, eh, Buck? In fact, how about inviting me out for a weekend sometime soon? I'd love to meet Maryanne and the kids." He waved airily as he left, leaving the door ajar. Buck sighed. Harry Harrison never changed.

***

Maryanne Wingate used her Washington house for political socializing only; New York was where she chose to
live.
Her friends were there, her children went to school there and it was where she retreated when the "provincialism" of Washington got on her nerves—which was four days out of each week.

The Wingates' apartment on fashionable Park Avenue covered three floors, though Maryanne had had part of one floor removed to create a grand baronial hall with a stairway that swept downward in two perfect curves from a central gallery. She'd had the walls lined with French limestone and hung with ancestral portraits and massive silver sconces and she liked to keep a fire glowing in the twenty-foot stone chimney from the first cool day of autumn to the first warm day of spring. Her well-bred King Charles spaniels were usually to be found sprawling in front of it. She would laughingly tell visitors she was just a country girl at heart, and that if she had to pay the price of helping Buck in his career by being in the city, then she would just make her apartment look like her beloved girlhood home. She was only sorry she couldn't bring her horses too.

The three dogs lifted their noses in the air, waving lazy tails as Buck walked by, but they didn't run to greet him as they did with Maryanne; they were her dogs and no one else's and they knew it.

Maryanne refused to keep a butler, saying it was either "too old hat or too new-rich." A uniformed parlor maid took Buck's coat and told him that madame was expected back soon.

Behind the grand hall was a regal drawing room and the library, with its collection of rare books and ancient maps, and beyond that the kitchen. The first floor contained his and Maryanne's rooms, each with its dressing room and bathroom, her own personal sitting room and his study.

Buck took the left-hand sweep of stairs two at a time and then ran easily up the next flight to the nursery floor. Six-year-old Grace Juliet Margaret Brattle Wingate, known as Miffy, glanced up with a discontented smile as he came in. "Oh, hello, Daddy," she said.

There was a grumbling undercurrent to her tone that Buck knew only too well and he grinned wryly. "Hello, Miffy. Is that the best you can do to greet your poor old father?" He walked toward her, his arms outstretched, and she smiled reluctantly as she walked into them and he hugged her. "Really, Daddy, you're so exuberant," she chided, copying her mother's words, and he laughed.

"And you sound like your mother. So? What's the matter with my girl?"

She looked at him guardedly and he thought how pretty she was. She had her mother's straight dark blond hair, pinned at the side with a gold barrette, and Maryanne's rather large mouth and her dark-lashed green eyes; she was tall for her age, coltishly long-legged and she could turn on the charm in a minute if she wanted something. But he guessed she didn't at the moment because there was a distinct whine in her voice as she complained her mother had said she must get dressed and come downstairs and say hello to their dinner guests that evening.

"I don't want to," she said fractiously, "they're all so goddamn boring."

"I'm glad to see they teach you the finest English language at Miss Beale's very expensive little school," Buck said sarcastically.

"I don't want to," she repeated obstinately.

Buck frowned. He knew Maryanne wanted to show off her pretty daughter to their visitors; she would have had liked Jamie there, too, but five-year-old Jamieson Alexander Buckland Wingate had succumbed to an attack of the mumps and had been banished to their country house in New Jersey with his nurse. They were entertaining several influential politicians and businessmen, and after dinner they were expected to declare their allegiance to Buck personally as well as to the Republican Party in the big, somber library.

Buck had worked hard for the party, campaigning tirelessly in the last presidential election, and Maryanne had worked even harder, entertaining lavishly, always the perfect political wife, mindful of their public position. There were no stains on Maryanne's character; all the Brattles' lives were open books. They had been in and out of the Senate for generations and now they had put all their powers behind Buck's career. At forty he was poised to make the transition from senator to presidential candidate.

He quickly decided it would do his spoiled little daughter no harm if she were to put on the pretty, and no-doubt expensive, dress her mother had bought her and act nicely to their guests.

"What'll you give me if I do?" Miffy demanded sulkily.

"What will I give you? I'll give you the moon, the stars—"

"Really, Daddy, I'd rather have a brand-new sailboat."

He sighed. "There's no romance in your soul," he said as he departed, thinking again she was just like her mother.

He peeked into Maryanne's room on his way down the hall. They'd had separate rooms ever since their first child was born, because she'd decided she preferred it that way. "After all, we can still visit, can't we?" she'd said with a winning smile, the very same smile he saw in his daughter's face when she wanted something. The lamps were lit and Maryanne's maid was bustling about, putting away the clothes she had just cast off and flung to the floor en route to her bath. A waft of scented steam came from the pink Italian marble bathroom. He strode to the door and called out, "Can I come in?"

"Oh, must you, Buck? Shouldn't you be getting changed for dinner? They'll be here in forty minutes."

He walked in and looked at her, lying back in the vast tub of perfumed water. Maryanne would never use anything as vulgar as bubblebath no matter how expensive; she used scented oils specially prepared for her by French perfume experts in Grasse and they had concocted a subtle innocuous scent of lilac and wild roses that was her trademark.

"What is it, Buck?" she demanded crossly. "I'm late and there's a lot still to be done." Stepping from the tub, she stretched out a dripping arm and said, "Hand me the towel, will you?"

He passed it silently to her, thinking that Maryanne naked had been the biggest disappointment of his life. She was one of those women who looked stunning in clothes, but out of them she was small-breasted and sinewy. Socially she was always charming, always well-dressed and he had never once heard her raise her voice. She was a good if rather distant mother to his children. He still occasionally made love to her, but he was not in the least bit in love with her. Oh, he had been in the beginning; he had admired her striking looks and her forceful personality that some called bossy, and he'd liked the effortlessly confident way she rode a horse and the way she strode into any room as though she owned it. Maryanne had generations of aristocratic breeding behind her and it showed.

As he watched her patting dry her long, smooth legs, he guessed that it had just been a mutual admiration society —one that he had mistaken for love. In the seven years they had been married their relationship had never drifted into casual affairs on either of their parts the way so many other couples they knew had; instead they had channeled their energies into politics. Maryanne did not want sex with a stranger, or even her husband; all she wanted was to see him advance in his career and maybe ultimately to enter the White House.

"You'd better get dressed," she told him, gliding into a white silk robe. "I thought I would keep the food simple tonight—you know these politicians, all they ever want is steak, steak, steak. They alone could keep Chicago in business. And I decided on the Château Leyoville Las Cases, they know a good claret when they taste it. The 1870 port has been decanted and—oh my goodness, just look at the time. Buck, will you please go and bathe...."

He said, "I saw Harry Harrison today."

She glanced quickly up at him. "Trouble?"

"He's been nothing but since his father died—and probably before. He wanted to get at his trust fund and I had to say no."

"Quite right," she said briskly. "From what I read about him, he'd spend it all on rather squalid women anyway."

Buck sighed as he left her in front of the mirror trying on a diamond necklace and debating whether she should wear her pearls instead. As he walked back along the hall he wondered whether it was all worth it.

He was ready and waiting on the dot of seven-thirty, the fire was blazing, the dogs were snoozing picturesquely in front of it, and Maryanne looked suitably regal in the long-sleeved red silk with a heart-shaped neckline that showed off the magnificent Brattle diamonds. "I thought I'd better remind them who they're dealing with," she whispered, smiling as she adjusted his black tie. "My, we make a handsome couple," she added with satisfaction.

A dozen influential men and their wives had been invited for dinner, and the leader of the House of Representatives and his wife were the last to arrive. "I bring greetings from the White House," he told Maryanne, kissing her soft cheek. "President Coolidge says his grandfather knew your grandfather."

"Indeed he did," she agreed. "I believe they were at school together."

She saw to it that the men were served their favorite whiskey, even though she disapproved of it before dinner. The ladies were offered champagne. And then little Miffy made her entrance, curtsying shyly as she was introduced. Unerringly, she picked out one of the most important party contributors and climbed onto his knee, looking up at him with her mother's engaging smile. For a moment Buck wondered whether Maryanne had coached her, but then he told himself he was being mean.

Dinner was Maryanne's idea of a simple meal: soup, fish, beef, chocolate dessert and cheese, perfectly chosen for the company, perfectly cooked and perfectly served, and accompanied by some of the most beautiful wines France had to offer. Immediately afterward, she swept the ladies off the the drawing room, where they chatted about their children and their country houses and their husband's sailboats, while Buck escorted the men to the library, where they sat on deep leather sofas in front of the roaring fire, sipping glasses of fine old port and discussing the future. By eleven that night several of the large tycoons said they would contribute generously to the party now, and in return, Senator Buckland Aldrich Wingate III, would watch out for their interests. And when the time was ripe, they would support him should he choose to run for president. It would take many more years and a lot more effort, but Maryanne had got what she wanted. For now.

CHAPTER 34

Annie drove her little Packard roadster along the leafy lanes of the Sonoma Valley to the de Soto Ranch. Over the years, Francie had bought more and more land encircling her original forty acres until now it stretched farther than the eye could see, four hundred and thirty acres dotted with shady oaks and stands of silver birch. Tended by Mexican cowboys, contented golden Jersey cows grazed in the pastures. On either side of the ranch house itself lay neat rows of vines interspersed with roses that at this time of year were into their second fragrant blooming. Francie planted the roses because pests attacked them before they attacked her precious vines, and she inspected them every morning so that she could take fast action, but Annie suspected she loved the flowers so much she would have planted them, bugs or no bugs. There were new outbuildings too: cottages for Zocco and the housekeeper, as well as workers' quarters and the small winery.

The years since Ollie's death had been ones of quiet seclusion for Francie, but they had been fruitful. Annie could hardly bear to think of the first terrible months after the tragedy; Francie had seemed to shrink into solitude like a small, wounded animal seeking a quiet place in which to find her own death. Waking and sleeping, she had endlessly relived the night of the fire in her mind, until they were afraid she would lose her mind.

She had retreated to the ranch, the place where she always went to lick her wounds, and for two years she never left it. Zocco and his wife took care of her, though she barely spoke to them. She went nowhere and saw no one. Though Annie's own heart had been broken by Ollie's death, she finally could bear it no longer. She'd driven to the ranch in a fury of despair and stormed through the door; Francie had been sitting in the rocking chair by the kitchen stove with Ollie's dogs at her feet and she'd lifted her head indifferently to see who was there.

"Here," Annie had said, snatching a shotgun from the rack on the wall and flinging it onto the table. "Why don't you just get it over with instead of putting us all through the agony of dying slowly? I'm sick of it, Francie Harrison. And I'm sick of seeing your sorrowful face. We loved Ollie more than we'll ever love again, but he's gone, and you are young and able-bodied and now you're rich, probably richer than you even know or care about. There are dozens—no, hundreds, maybe thousands of poor, sick, needy children back there in San Francisco who need people like you. But if you would rather die than help them, then do it now and put us all out of our misery once and for all."

Stamping her foot she burst into tears. "Oh God, what have I said.... how could I be so cruel. I didn't mean it, Francie, truly I didn't.... I don't want you to die—only please, please, come back to the land of the living."

Francie had stood up and walked to the table. Annie's brown eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth with a little gasp as Francie picked up the shotgun Zocco used for killing the rapacious blackbirds. Frozen with terror, she watched Francie break open the barrel and check it. Francie's eyes met hers; she clicked the barrel back in place and then she'd pointed the gun at her; seconds had passed. Then she flung the gun back on the table and said calmly, "That shows how much you know about ranching, Annie Aysgarth—the chamber's empty."