Hooper, Kay - [Hagen 09] (6 page)

Jennifer closed her mouth again and said rather weakly,
"Well, I've hardly been with him long enough to know."

Francesca threw up her hands in a purely Latin gesture
of disgust. "I lose all patience with these
modern
men!
There is not a real man to be found. Not since your father. Not one
knows how to make love to a woman, how to fill her senses with the
very essence of himself!"

"Mother ..." Torn between laughter and
astonishment, Jennifer was also coping with the innate shock of
an adult daughter confronted by a whole new Insight into her
parents' relationship.

"And you!" Francesca's eyes were snapping. "I
cannot believe I have raised you to be so tame, so –
timid. In-ter-es-ting! Is that a feeling of passion, of love? No! Is
that a feeling of desperation? No!"

"But, Mother, I – "

"You must feel this for your man! He must fill your
senses, your heart, and your soul. He must be everything for
you, or he is not for you."

"I'm sorry I started this," Jennifer said
rather blankly.

Her mother ignored the statement. She reached out
suddenly, her nimble fingers plucking the elastic band from
Jennifer's ponytail so that her hair fell loosely around her face.
"Why do you wear your lovely hair this way? Such a forbidding
style! And those horrible trousers – "

"Jeans. Mother, I'm working."

"This man must see the woman you are, my baby. Go
and put on a skirt: he must see your legs."

Jennifer suppressed a wild desire to blurt.
He's seen
them, and thinks they're great.
"I'm not going to chase
after a man to show him my legs. Mother."

But her mother had already nudged her out of the chair
and was leading her firmly toward her bedroom. "You must see
him, of course, as soon as possible. You must know If he is the one.
Discover if there is a wife, for if there is we must remove her at
once. Unless he is not the one. She may keep him if that is the
case."

"Generous of us," Jennifer murmured. She would
have continued to protest her mother's determination, but she had
seen that steely persistence too often in her life not to know the
uselessness of holding back floodwaters with a paper dam. So she
obediently changed into a prettier blouse – pale blue with a
deep V neckline – and a silky print skirt. She flatly refused
to wear hose, compelled by a sudden memory of fingers on garters, and
her mother accepted that cheerfully.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed, hair brushed, and filled
with a rueful sense of great-oaks-from-little-acorns-grow, Jennifer
found herself being almost literally pushed out the front door. She
had to leave anyway, since it was time for her confrontation with
Garrett Kelly, but she paused a moment to direct a stern command
at her mother.

"Don't send out wedding invitations, dammit!"

Unperturbed, Francesca smiled widely and said, "Of
course not, my baby. We must first discover if he is the right man
for you."

Jennifer sighed. "I'll probably be back in an hour
or so."

"That is not enough time," her mother said
critically.

Wanting to reply to that, but finding no words to do
justice to her thoughts. Jennifer shook her head and went out to her
small car. She headed toward Belle Retour, trying to work up a good
head of steam for Kelly's sake, but having a difficult time.

Her mother. If there was another woman in the world like
Francesca, Jennifer thought, it would be a miracle. Her words
might not have been pearls of wisdom, but they were eccentric enough
to be marked indelibly on the memory of anyone who heard them.
Generally leaning toward the traditional view that marriage, between
the right people, of course, was forever, she was still perfectly
capable of seeing her beloved daughter as the mistress of a wealthy
man. She was firmly convinced that no woman was complete without
the adoring attention of a man, whether in or out of wedlock.

Jennifer could have argued that point, having come of
age in a world considerably different from that of her mother's
generation, and being very American in her attitudes. She had made no
attempt to air her own views because of her love for Francesca –
and the rueful knowledge that her mother would never accept them,
perhaps not even understand.

Jennifer pushed the last of those thoughts out of her
mind as she turned the car into the oak-shadowed lane leading to
Belle Retour. Angry. She was supposed to be angry. She filled her
mind with thoughts of what Kelly had done to her father, to her
mother and herself. And she got angry.

She got furious.

In fact, in her zeal to play the role assigned her,
Jennifer quite unconsciously abandoned the restraints placed on her
since childhood in a variety of expensive private schools. Those
schools had Imposed their very definite ideas of what a lady should
be, and Jennifer had accepted them partly because the discipline
needed for control had Interested her. She had also cultivated a calm
surface because the memories of childhood temper tantrums had
convinced her she needed that control.

Now, in a fury, she stopped her car before the house and
stormed up to the front door, ignoring the bell because the brass
knocker made a more satisfying noise. When the door swung open, she
pushed past the surprised butler who had sneaked candy to her as
a child, demanding loudly, "Where is he?"

"Miss Jennifer, you shouldn't – "

"I want to see him, Mathews! Where is he?"

"In the parlor, Miss Jennifer, but – "

She didn't wait to be announced. Before Mathews could
stop her, she went directly to the closed parlor doors and shoved
them open, glaring around the room.

It wasn't a room worthy of a glare, since it was
beautiful and spacious; but that didn't placate Jennifer because
her own mother had decorated it. She saw men standing and sitting,
their heads turned toward the door and their eyes startled. There
were six or eight men present, some dressed more casually than
others. Various ages, from the early thirties to the mid-sixties. All
held drinks in their hands, and she knew most of them if only by
name.

Dane was standing by the fireplace with two other men,
dressed in a three-piece white suit that made him look peculiarly
devilish. His brows were raised in an expression of polite surprise,
but his eyes were laughing.

Jennifer's glare didn't pause on him, but swept the room
and settled on another man. "I want to talk to you!" she
snapped.

Garrett Kelly was a fair man in his fifties, with the
profile of a hawk and oddly colorless eyes. He had either been born a
gentleman or else cultivated that facade; Jennifer had long ago made
up her mind it was the latter. He enjoyed parties and the company of
other men with a like taste in gambling, and as far as anyone in
these parts could tell, his past was obscure.

"I have guests. Miss Chantry," he said now in
his even, toneless, "company" voice.

"Oh, I don't mind them hearing what I have to say,"
Jennifer told him with biting politeness. "But you might."

After a moment, Kelly glanced around at his guests and
murmured, "Excuse me, gentlemen." They nodded and made
courteous murmurs, wearing the stiff expressions of people who
were intensely curious and trying to hide it.

Jennifer turned and strode back out into the hall,
waiting impatiently while Kelly came out and closed the doors behind
them. "My study," he murmured.

"
Your
study," she said bitterly.

"It is mine, like it or not," he told her,
leading the way to a secondary hallway on the other side of the house
from the parlor. He opened the door of the study and gestured for her
to enter, his well-kept hands making a mockery of the courtesy.

She swept past him, head high, having no idea of what,
exactly, she was going to say to him, and too furious to care. And
before he could even get the door closed behind them, she swung
around, making no effort to lower her voice.

"Just what the hell do you mean by accusing my
mother of
anything?"
she demanded violently.

* * *

In a quieter section of the house, the area reserved for
storage and servants, Skye moved silently. It had been a simple
matter to find a side window with a rusty latch, and no one had
observed his stealthy progress. Jennifer's sketch had been clear
enough, and this area of the house had showed the exact location of
rooms and small suites set aside for staff.

And the security staff. There were currently two
full-time security men on the grounds, a fact Skye knew whether
Jennifer was aware of it or not. Her family had worried little about
security for the house itself except during social occasions. Kelly,
a more paranoid and cynical man than his predecessor, kept his two
plain-clothes guards in or close around the house at all times, and
hired part-time help during his frequent parties.

Skye had noted the fact that one of the guards seemed
assigned to patrol the upper floors; the second guard, Brady Seton,
appeared to roam with more freedom, and it was his room Skye was in
search of. He moved with no sound, his rubber-soled shoes as
soundless on polished wooden floors as they were on carpet; for a big
man, he moved like a cat.

He had briefly entered and discounted several rooms in
the bare five minutes since he had come in through a window: the
butler's suite, the suite occupied by a housekeeper and chauffeur –
a married couple – and several apparently unused rooms. He
finally located a small suite with two bedrooms that seemed to be the
correct ones. The first bedroom he checked held a number of articles
belonging to a man, and Skye discounted it when he found a wallet
with credit cards in a drawer: this room belonged to the other
security man.

In Brady Seton's room, Skye searched quickly and
thoroughly out of habit, then drew the counterfeit plate from its
hiding place inside his black leather jacket and, after a moment's
deliberation, placed it on the top shelf of the closet at the very
back against the wall. He cast a professional glance over the
seemingly undisturbed room, then turned to leave.

The main door to the sitting room opened with a soft
click.

In fluid movement, Skye was against the wall beside the
door, a silenced automatic held in his right hand. He listened
intently as footsteps moved through the sitting room, but didn't move
himself until Brady Seton walked into the bedroom.

"Hello."

Seton turned quickly, a hand reaching toward his lapel
as if to draw the gun nestled under his arm. But he froze, the
movement half completed.

"Rotten timing," Skye told him softly.

Seton was an ex-marine, had grown up rough, and knew a
variety of self-defense tactics. He had also learned, somewhere along
the way, at which moment in a dangerous situation it was wisest to
simply give in and think about living another day. This was that
moment.

The man he faced was smiling, but Seton trusted that
smile the way he would have trusted the polished molars of a shark.
His first impression of a big man dressed all in black with a
businesslike – and silenced – automatic had been
perfectly accurate, and had his impression stopped there he might
well have attempted a defensive move. Dangerous men he was accustomed
to facing.

But the eyes stopped him cold. They weren't
particularly menacing eyes, not cold or hard; they weren't the
empty, flat-black eyes of a soulless killer, or the mad eyes of a man
beyond the limits of reason. In fact, they were very alive and
intelligent eyes. But they were . . . reckless. Careless. They were
almost an impudent invitation for Seton to try something.

Try
something.
Go ahead. And we'll both have a little fun.

Brady Seton didn't move a muscle. He had seen eyes like
that before, in the faces of incredibly courageous and lucky men. Men
who had led other soldiers into battle, men who had braved burning
buildings to rescue trapped occupants. Men whom fate seemed to
have touched with a kind of aura, like impenetrable armor.

"Let's have the gun. Carefully."

With extreme and utter caution. Seton handed it over.

Skye stuck the gun inside his belt, then sighed a little
ruefully. "You have botched the plan, friend. What am I going to
do with you now?"

Seton didn't venture a suggestion.

After a moment, Skye said, "Well. No choice, I'm
afraid. Pack a bag – and you're in a hurry, so don't bother to
be neat about it."

Seton packed a bag.

* * *

For the men who remained in the parlor after Garrett
Kelly left, the next quarter of an hour was somewhat uncomfortable.
They were all too curious to completely Ignore what was going on,
especially since they could hear the faint echoes of Jennifer
Chantry's voice even through closed doors and sturdy walls. Their own
conversations dried up after a few murmured attempts, and they
were left contemplating their drinks and each other.

"That one's a shrew," one man finally
observed.

"She's got reason," another said, and grinned
faintly. "You ought to hear her mother."

"Who is she?" asked one of the few In the room
who
had no knowledge of the past events.

"She grew up here at Belle Retour," the first
man told him. "Her family owned this place for two hundred
years, until Garrett won it from her father in a poker game."

"Hell, the stakes better not be that high in
tonight's game."

Very conscious of the verbal battle going on several
rooms away, and the presumed activities in another part of the house,
Dane said, "The word I got was that Garrett's been on a losing
streak. He may have to stake this place trying to recoup his losses."

"I'd rather play for cash," one man said
plaintively.

An older man shook his head disapprovingly at Dane's
comment. "You should never stake everything unless that's what
you're prepared to lose," he said.