Sweet Revenge (37 page)

He let the closet door slam, then jammed his hands into his pockets. For a moment there was only rage and impotence. Never a violent man, he knew then what it was to anticipate murder with relish. Subduing his emotion, he walked to the phone and dialed the front desk.

“How long ago did Lara O’Conner check out?” He waited, fantasizing violence and retribution. “Forty minutes? Thank you.”

She could run, he thought as he replaced the receiver. But she’d never run fast enough.

*  *  *

As Philip vowed his own revenge, Adrianne buckled her seat belt. Her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. They weren’t red-rimmed. She hadn’t allowed herself tears. But there was regret in them. He would be angry, she thought. Then he would go on—as she would, as she had to. Emotions, the kind he could pull out of her, had no place in her life. Until The Sun and the Moon was in her hands, there was no room for anything but revenge.

It had snowed in London. The streets were gray with slush. Along the curbside it was piled high, blackened like coal and every bit as ugly. But on the rooftops it lay as pristine as in an untouched meadow and glittered even in the sluggish sun. A stiff wind tore at the coats and hats of pedestrians who hurried along, hunched over, hanging on to whatever threatened to whip away. It was the kind of cold that penetrated bone and begged for spiced ale. Hours before, Philip had been under the streaming Mexican sun.

“Here’s the tea, dear.” Moving quickly from the long habit of trying to catch up, Mary Chamberlain came in to her own cozy parlor. Turning from the window, Philip took the loaded tray from her. All of his boyhood favorites were on it. As dark as his mood was he had to smile. Mary had always tried to spoil him when she’d had the means, and when she hadn’t.

“You’ve made enough for an army.”

“You should offer your guest something when he comes.” She took a seat by the tea table, then lifted the pot to pour. It was a fine Meissen tea set, with pale pink roses and gold leaf. She always felt very grand using it. “Before he does, I thought we could have a cup together and a little chat.”

She added a dollop of cream to his tea and remembered he hadn’t used sugar since he’d been twelve. The fact that he was past thirty still amazed her. She hardly felt more than that herself. Like any mother, she considered her son too thin and set two white frosted cakes on a plate for him.

“There now.” Pleased, she stirred a healthy dose of sugar
in her own cup. There was nothing quite like hot sweet tea on a winter afternoon. “Isn’t this cozy?”

“Hmmm?”

“Drink your tea, dear. It’s always a shock to the system to travel from one climate to another.” And whatever was really troubling him would come out sooner or later.

He obeyed automatically, studying her over the rim. She’d put on weight in the last few years. Flattering weight, Philip thought. She’d always been too thin when he’d been a child. Her face was comfortably round, and if her skin lacked the dewiness of a girl’s, it had the glow of a mature woman’s. A few lines, certainly, but they came as much from laughing as from age. Mary had always been one for laughing. Her eyes were a clear, blameless blue.

He’d inherited his looks not from her, but from the man who had swung in, then out of her life. As a child it had bothered him a great deal, so much so that he’d watched every man, from the postman to the prince regent, looking for a resemblance. To this day he wasn’t sure what he’d intended to do if he’d found one.

“You’ve changed your hair.”

Mary fluffed it. The gesture was flirtatious and totally innate. “Yes. What do you think?”

“That you’re beautiful.”

She laughed, full and rich and delighted. “I’ve a new hairdresser. His name’s Mr. Mark. Mr. Mark, can you imagine?” She rolled her eyes and licked a dab of frosting from her finger. “He flirts so nicely, you just have to give him an extra tip. All the girls are wild about him, but I think he might be of another persuasion.”

“Episcopalian?”

Humor danced in her eyes. Her Phil had always been a devil. “Yes. Now …” Settling back with her tea, she smiled. “Tell me all about your vacation. I hope you didn’t drink the water. You hear such foul things about it. Did you have a good time?”

He thought of crawling through ducts, hiding in closets, and of making love, leisurely love with Adrianne. “It had its moments.”

“Nothing quite like a winter vacation in the tropics. I
still remember when you flew me down to Jamaica in the middle of February. I felt decadent.”

That had been a side benefit of the de Marco heist, “And kept the natives restless.”

“I thought I behaved like a very proper British matron.” Then she giggled. If there was one thing Mary would never be, it was matronly. “I’m thinking of taking a cruise myself. Perhaps the Bahamas.” She spotted Chauncy, the fat slug of a cat she’d adopted years before. Before he could leap on the tray she poured cream into a saucer for him. “That lovely Mr. Paddington’s invited me.”

“What?” Brought back with a thud, Philip stared at her. Beside them, the cat lapped greedily. “Run that through again?”

“I said I was thinking of going to the Bahamas with Mr. Paddington. Chauncy, you’re such a pig.” Soft-hearted, she dropped half a cake on the saucer. He took it in one pounce.

“Go on a cruise with that oily old lecher? That’s ridiculous.”

Mary debated having another cake herself. “Mr. Paddington’s a very respected member of the community. Don’t be a noodle, Phil.”

“I’ve no intention of seeing my mother ravished on the high seas.”

“Oh, my—what a lovely thought.” Laughing, she leaned over and patted his hand. “In any case, dear, you wouldn’t see. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you? I hope it’s a woman.”

He rose, impatient with tea and cakes, to stalk the room. As always, Mary had loaded a Christmas tree with whatever ornaments struck her fancy. There was no theme to it, no harmony of color. She had everything from plastic reindeer to porcelain angels. Philip pulled off a bit of tinsel to run it through his hands.

“It’s just business.”

“I’ve never seen you walk the floor over business. Could it be that sweet girl I spoke with on the phone? Phoebe Spring’s daughter?” When he snapped the string of tinsel in two, Mary all but rubbed her hands together. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“There’s nothing wonderful about it, so you can stop
smelling orange blossoms.” He came back to slump in the chair. “What are you smiling at?”

“I think you’re in love. Finally. How does it feel?”

He scowled down at his feet, more than a little tempted to kick the cat. “Rotten.”

“Good, good. That’s just how it should feel.”

Unable to do otherwise, he laughed. “You’re always a comfort to me, Mum.”

“When can I meet her?”

“I don’t know. There’s a problem.”

“Of course there is. So there should be. Real love requires problems.”

He doubted if love of any kind had a two-hundred-and-eighty-carat diamond and a pearl beyond price to deal with. “Tell me what you know about Phoebe Spring.”

“Oh. She was glorious. There’s no one today who can compare with her, the glamour, the—presence.” Just remembering made her sigh. She’d had dreams of her own about being an actress, a star. Then there’d been Philip, and she’d settled for selling tickets to films rather than being in them. It never occurred to her to regret. “You know, most cinema stars now look like ordinary people—a bit prettier perhaps, a bit sleeker, but so could anyone with a bit of fuss. Phoebe Spring was never ordinary. Wait, I’ll show you.”

She was up and moving quickly into another room. Philip heard her rummaging, shifting boxes. Something thudded. He only shook his head. His mother was an obsessive collector, a saver. There had always been bits of colored glass, old swatches of material, shelves of salt shakers, a drawer of old movie stubs.

In Chelsea the windowsills had been lined with little plaster animals. Pets hadn’t been allowed, so in her usual way Mary had compensated. He could still remember her laboriously clipping and pasting pictures of everyone from the royal family to the latest film god. They’d replaced the traditional family album for a woman who had had no one but herself and a small boy.

She came back blowing dust from a large red scrapbook. “You know how I kept books on my favorite celebrities.”

“Your star books.”

“Yes.” Unashamed, Mary sat down and opened it. When
Chauncy jumped on it, she tut-tutted and patiently set him back on the floor. “This is Phoebe Spring. Look here, this picture would have been taken at the premiere of her first movie. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.”

He moved over to sit on the arm of her chair. The woman in the picture had her hand on the arm of a man, but you didn’t notice him. Only her. Her dress was some fantasy of sequins and sparkles with her hair dark and full around the shoulders. Even in black and white her luster shone through. Her eyes were all innocent excitement, her body all promise.

“It made her a star,” Mary mused, flipping through the pages. There were other pictures, some studio-posed, others candid. She was never less than beautiful. Through the pictures, some curling at the edges with age, she exuded sex. Taped with them were snippets of gossip Mary had clipped from movie magazines and tabloids. Rumors of Phoebe’s affairs with her leading men, with producers, directors, politicians.

“Here, this one was at the Oscars when she was nominated for
Tomorrow’s Child.
Pity she didn’t win, but she was escorted by Cary Grant, and that counts for something.”

“I saw that movie. She fell in love with the wrong man, bore his child, then had to fight against him and his wealthy parents for custody.”

“I cried buckets—every time I watched it. She was so valiant and mistreated.” Mary sighed again and turned the page.

There was a picture of Phoebe in some stiff, pale satin, curtsying gracefully to the queen, then one of her dancing with a dark, sharp-featured man in a tuxedo. Philip didn’t have to be told it was Adrianne’s father. The eyes, the bone structure, the coloring, said everything.

“This?”

“That’s her husband. King Abdu something or other. She married only once, you know. Oh, the papers and magazines were full of it. How they met right here in London while she was filming
White Roses.
How they fell in love the minute they clapped eyes on each other. He sent her two dozen white roses every day until her hotel suite was like a greenhouse. He booked a whole restaurant so they could have
dinner alone. Him being a king and all made it ever so romantic.”

From her position as an onlooker, even after more than a quarter century, Mary’s eyes still misted. “People started remembering Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth, and sure enough she ended up leaving the movies and marrying him. Going off to that tiny little country over there.” She indicated it with a wave of her hand.

“Jaquir.”

“Yes, that’s it. Like a fairy tale it was. Here’s a picture of her on her wedding day. Looks like a queen.”

The dress was breathtaking with layers of lace and miles of silk. Even under the tulle, Phoebe’s hair had shone like a beacon. She’d looked radiantly happy, achingly young. In her arms she had carried white roses, dozens of them. And around her neck, glittering, glowing, all but burning through the photograph was The Sun and the Moon.

Both diamond and pearl dropped, one resting tight beneath the other, from a heavy double-braided chain of gold. The settings were like starbursts, ornate, old-fashioned, and glorious.

He may have been retired, but the tips of his fingers itched, and his pulse increased. To hold that, to own that for even a moment, would be like owning the world.

“After they were married there wasn’t much news, and hardly ever pictures. There’s some custom over there against pictures. You heard she was having a baby, then that she’d had a little girl. That would be your Adrianne.”

“Yes.”

“People talked for a while, then you read less and less until she showed up in New York with her daughter a few years later. It seems the marriage wasn’t a happy one, and she ended up leaving him to go back home and pick up her career. There’s an interview here soon after, but she didn’t say much other than she’d missed acting.”

She turned the page and there was another picture. This Phoebe was still beautiful, but the lushness, the glory, was gone. In its place were strain and nerves. Beside her was Adrianne. She couldn’t have been more than eight, and small for her age. She stood straight, staring at the camera, but her
eyes were carefully guarded. She clung to her mothers hand—or Phoebe clung to hers.

“Such a sad thing. Phoebe never made another really good film. Just ones where she took her clothes off and such.” She turned the pages to a different Phoebe, one with lines around the eyes and dresses cut to show off still-smooth breasts. There was a vacant look to her face and a desperation to her smile. Replacing innocence was a hard edge. “She did one of those layouts for a men’s magazine.” Mary wrinkled her nose. She was anything but a prude, but there were limits. “Had an affair with her agent, among others. There were hints, though, that he had an eye for her daughter. Filthy stuff for a man of his age.”

Something curled in the pit of Philip’s stomach. “What was his name?”

“Oh, Lord, I don’t remember, if I ever knew. It might be in here somewhere.”

“Can I take this along with me?”

“Of course. Does it matter, Phil?” She laid a hand on his as he closed the book. “Whoever her parents were, whatever they were, doesn’t change who she is.”

“I know that.” He touched his lips to her cheek. “She needs to.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

“Yes.” He grinned and kissed her again. “I know.”

When the buzzer sounded, Philip checked his watch. “That’ll be Stuart, prompt as always.”

“Shall I heat up the tea?”

“It’s warm enough,” he told her as he walked to the door. “Stuart.”

With his nose and cheeks reddened by the wind, Spencer stepped inside. “Miserably cold. We’ll have snow again after nightfall. Mrs. Chamberlain.” He took her offered hand and patted it. “Good to see you.”