Smoke and Mirrors (3 page)

"Yes, but—"

So in the end—as she might have expected—she wrote the letter. Withstanding Fran's manic enthusiasm was like trying to
remain stationary in a gale-force wind. Erin could do it—but only when the wind wasn't blowing in the direction she wanted to go anyhow. Not that she agreed with Fran's tirades about gender discrimination, but passing her over in favor of a less qualified applicant, male or female, just wasn't fair. The job was a dead end; high time she faced the fact. And it had been rather exciting to see Rosemary Marshall, after all the stories she had heard from her mother. Actually running for the Senate . . . The job, supposing she could get it, had to be more interesting than what she was doing.

The answer took a week to reach her. It sounded as if it had been written by an aide—cool, rather businesslike—but it did not propose a business appointment. Instead, she was invited to lunch the following Saturday. Directions to Rosemary's home near Middleburg were included. Fran was thrilled at this evidence of friendly interest. She had even made the ultimate sacrifice of offering the loan of her car, pointing out that it would be almost impossible to get to Middleburg any other way. Erin had accepted with thanks, and tolerated with relative good humor Fran's frenetic attempts to decide what she should wear; but she wasn't convinced the invitation was a good omen. She had not asked for friendship, she had applied for a job. This might be a way of turning down the application without overt rudeness to the offspring of an old friend.

She would soon know. The road had narrowed and the tight-packed dwellings of suburbia had dwindled to isolated houses. She was in the country now.

From time to time she caught glimpses of the distant mountains. That was what they called them here, mountains; a westerner would have laughed at the idea of using that word to describe the tree-covered, gentle mounds of the Blue Ridge. In the bright morning light they were more green than blue, with a few patches of pale color to break the monotony—soft yellow and muted orange, the beginning of the autumn change. It was late September, and unusually hot for that time of year. At least that was what Washingtonians claimed. They were, as Erin had learned, given to exaggeration.

Gilbert's Corners, where
Routes
50 and 15 i
ntersected,
boasted a stop light and little else. Four miles to Middleburg. Seized by a sudden attack of stage fright, Erin pulled off the road. She didn't have to refresh her memory of the route she had been directed to take; she had memorized it. Instead she twisted sideways and looked into the rearview mirror.

It was too small to give her an overall view of her anxious face. She started at the top and worked down. Frown lines scarring her forehead—smooth them out, relax. Narrowed gray-green eyes—open wide, look interested and optimistic. There was nothing she could do about her nose. It was hopelessly plebeian, snubbed and freckled like a plover's egg. Not that she had ever seen a plover's egg, but that was the conventional literary image. . . . She stretched her mouth and stroked on additional lip gloss. Her hair was her biggest problem; both fine and thick, its reddish-blond waves refused to stay confined in a neat coil. I should have had it cut, she thought, and reached for the pins. A glance at the clock on the dashboard warned her against that move; better to be on time and slightly disheveled than late—and probably just as disheveled. Short of a coat of varnish, there was no way she could confine the floating wisps. In the humid heat, hair spray turned sticky and gluey. Erin's tailored wool suit was uncomfortable as well as somewhat inappropriate, but she had had little choice; her summer-weight clothing was hopelessly out of style, or too casual. The pale-green classic suit had lived up to the saleslady's claim, and Erin was determined to look professional. Fran had hooted at the suit, the white blouse with its soft bow at the throat, and the simple pumps—"You look like little Miss Manners"—but Erin had remained obdurate.

A chorus of whistles and howls from a passing pickup brought the frown back to her face. Chauvinist rednecks . . . Realizing what she had thought, she was surprised at herself. She'd been listening to Fran yelling about men too much. Nor was "redneck" a good choice, the young men were potential voters, and for all she knew, they could be Harvard Ph.D.s.

She waited until another truck had passed—did everyone in rural Virginia drive rusty-blue pickups?—before pulling back onto the road. Soon she was in the outskirts of Middleburg. Handsome dignified houses, set back from the road, low stone or white
-
painted fences preserving their privacy. Then the town itself—elegant shops, eighteenth-century houses and inns. She made a left turn and was soon in the country again; white fences outlined rolling pastureland where horses grazed on grass yellowed by the summer heat. Occasionally the chimneys and rooflines of mansions could be seen over the trees that enclosed them in smug aloofness. Fran had given her a crash course on the notables of the Middleburg area: actors and football players, publishers and presidents. John F. Kennedy had spent only a single weekend at his retreat at Wexford before the fatal trip to Dallas; the estate had passed through several hands before Reagan stayed there during the presidential campaign of 1980. The regions most glamorous resident had been Elizabeth Taylor, when she shared the heart, hand, and home of Senator John Warner. Taylor had gone on to greener pastures, but another of Hollywood's not-so-youthful glamour queens had recently moved in to replace her on the local scene, if not in the hearts of her fans and those who had found her outspoken comments on the political world enormously refreshing.

Erin drove slowly, watching for the turn. She found it, though not without difficulty; there was no sign except for a small country-road marker. The new road was well maintained and fairly straight, but it was barely wide enough for two cars. She met only one vehicle—sure enough, another pickup.

The first sign of habitation appeared as a break in the tangled vegetation to the left, marked by a pair of stone pillars. It couldn't be the Marshall place; according to the directions she had received, it was on the right-hand side, and there was still another mile to go. The people who lived out this way certainly cherished their privacy. The clustering greenery lining the road appeared to be impenetrable.

As soon as she had received the invitation, Erin had begun cramming on the subject of politics in general and Rosemary White Marshall in particular. Even Fran had been impressed at her industry, though her compliment might have been phrased more politely: "The one thing you do know is how to study."

The Marshalls didn't have as much money as some of the other residents of the area, but their social and political lineage was impeccable. There had been a Marshall in state or national politics
for almost two hundred years, and Rosemary's husband Edward had held the House seat to which she succeeded upon his death— the so-called "widow's game," which until recently had been a woman's easiest entry into politics. The Marshalls were aristocrats of Ole Virginny, but Ed Marshall had married beneath him; Rosemary's father had been a postal clerk from Arlington, her grandfather, a laborer. These biographical details were stressed in her campaign literature; the monied, old-boy network might be useful in raising funds and collecting favors, but the average voter was more impressed by a picture of Granddad in overalls, brandishing a hammer.

Erin glanced at the odometer. Almost there. Another break in the underbrush, this time on the right. This must be it. As she had been promised, the gate was open. It was no impressive construction of wrought iron between massive gateposts, but a simple wooden farm gate. Beyond was the driveway, graveled but not paved, with ominous ruts and potholes breaking its surface. The house was a good quarter mile from the gate. Erin stopped and stared.

She had expected a stately mansion, along the lines of Twelve Oaks or Tara—a white-pillared monument to the Old South set in green velvet lawns, or a graceful gem of Federal architecture like Monticello. The house was big enough, and white enough, but there wasn't a pillar to be seen, and the wings and additions that shot out from it, apparently at random, robbed it of any claim to architectural purity. To the south and east of the grounds the land rose in an enclosing semicircle of heavily wooded hills. The land to the north was open field, sloping down to a little river—a run, as they called them here. No blooded horses cropped the pasture; the fields had gone wild, Queen Anne's lace and burdock and the blue of wild gentian mingling with knee-high grass.

Erin took her foot off the brake and proceeded at a cautious crawl. The driveway really was a disgrace. The closer she got to the house, the more evidences she saw of—not neglect exactly, but certainly not the impeccable maintenance one would have expected to find in an estate with the imposing name of Fairweather. The house needed a coat of paint. The lawn had been cut but not raked; a series of flower gardens to the left of the driveway, running
to the edge of the pines, were weedy and carelessly tended. The bright profusion of blooms seemed to consist mainly of zinnias, petunias, and marigolds—the cheapest, most easily maintained of
all annuals.

So maybe the Marshalls weren't rich. Money was the manure of politics, according to Fran, and a campaign could do nasty things to a candidate's cash flow, especially if he or she was running against a popular, well-funded incumbent. A thirty-second TV spot cost more, and was more important, than a coat of paint.

The drive divided as she neared the house. The left-hand portion, narrower and even more rutted, led toward a clutter of outbuildings. Erin took the right-hand turn, which circled the house and ended in a sunbaked stretch of bare ground. She pulled up beside one of the cars parked there and turned off the engine.

It was no wonder she had received no coherent impression of the house; what she had seen before was only one side of it. This was the front, the formal entrance, but the adjective was screamingly inappropriate for what she beheld: Victorian Gothic at its best, or worst, with the wonderful indifference to coherence that had marked some of the more entertaining examples of the genre. A stately tower, with a shingled cupola; a long porch or veranda, stretching all the way across the front and curving giddily around the corner; windows of all shapes and sizes, some perfectly ordinary rectangles, others arched and framed in gingerbread. It might have looked impressive if the material had been stone, but white clapboard just didn't do the job. The bits and pieces of furniture scattered the length of the veranda were an eclectic blend of rickety wicker and modern plastic. There was even a porch swing, hanging from rusted chains. The cushions on sofas, chairs, and swing matched only in the degree to which the varied fabrics had faded. And most of the cushioned surfaces were occupied, though not by people. The motionless mounds appeared to be cats—of all sizes, colors, and shapes. At least a dozen of them.

Even in the few moments she had sat there, the interior of the car had warmed up considerably. She rolled the window down, but only a cautious two inches. Fran might be thrilled at pointing out a stain on the upholstery as having been made by one of Rosemary Marshall's cats. On the other hand, she might not.

Through the opened window Erin heard a sound she had not been aware of earlier, and her hand stopped on its way to the handle of the door. If it wasn't the furious baying of a gigantic hound, that was certainly what it sounded like. Not one hound— two or more. None of the cats had so much as flicked a whisker; it was probably safe to assume the dogs were chained or caged. Probably . . .

As she hesitated, the front door opened and a man came out onto the porch. (Though surely they called it a veranda in Ole Virginny?) He shouted at the top of his lungs, "Knock it off, will you? I heard you!"

The dogs stopped barking, so Erin deduced the remarks had not been directed at her. She got out of the car and walked toward the house. The newcomer trotted down the stairs and met her with a broad smile and an outstretched hand.

"Didn't anybody warn you about the dogs? It's okay, they're locked up."

Her modest two-inch heels raised her to a height of five-nine, only a little shorter than he. Her eyes were level with the tip of his nose—a particularly fine-cut, narrow nose, she couldn't help noticing. Fran would have noticed his eyebrows—thick, dark, splendidly arched. Any female with functioning eyesight would have noticed his build; his jeans fit like a second skin over lean hips and thighs, and his thin blue cotton shirt clung to shoulders that were almost disproportionately broad. His sleeves had been rolled to the elbows, baring muscular brown forearms, and the hand he extended was crisscrossed by scratches, presumably feline in origin.

"Hey, don't you listen to the weather forecast? Take off your jacket, why don't you, you must be roasting."

The hand, which she had mistakenly believed she was supposed to shake, had actually touched her shoulder before she stepped back, her face stiffening. "No, thank you. I'm quite comfortable."

"Oh, come on. You don't have to impress us, we're a casual lot—"

"So I observe."

He was a very good-looking man, with thick, unruly dark hair and brown eyes fringed by curling lashes. It was obvious that he
was only too well aware of the effect those eyelashes—and his other attributes—made on impressionable females. Instead of being intimidated by her frosty tone, he grinned even more broadly. "Okay, melt if you want. I was just trying—" "I believe Mrs. Marshall is expecting me. My name is Erin
Hartsock."