Wild Heart (7 page)

His stomach made a noise. "I'm hungry," he said.

She smiled with her whole face. "It's dinnertime." They got up and started to walk back toward her house. O'Fallon followed them. "What do they give you to eat?" she asked as they walked.

He made a funny face, like Sam. "Food."

She laughed, and it was the best sound, the happiest sound. "Don't you like it?"

He tried to explain. "It's human food."

Something happened. She kept walking, but inside she went still, and he knew he had said a bad thing. Because people hated what he ate—used to eat. He ate their food now, and it wasn't raw, not warm and bloody and pulsing. They stopped walking and he looked at his feet, wishing he could take back the last words they had said. There was a distance between them now. Even after such a short time of being with her, he didn't want to be alone again.

"Sydney! Dinner!" Sam's voice, coming from the house.

"I have to go," she said. Her face was clear again, as if nothing at all had happened. He started to leave, but she said, "Michael, I'm not sure what my father intends to do. But even if he continues his experiments, it'll be different from now on. Better. Now that they know you can speak, it won't be—"

"You'll tell them?"

"I—Don't you want me to?" Her eyes got wide. "I think it's too late! Are you afraid? They won't hurt you, I promise. It's just—it's all a nuisance for you, I know, but nothing bad will happen. Don't worry." She touched him, put her hand on his wrist for comfort, and he felt comforted. He wondered what a nuisance was.

"Okay," he said, like Sam. "Don't worry," he said back to her, so she would be comforted, too.

"Sydney!"

This time it was the voice of Aunt Estelle, and Michael backed up. They both did. Because in the Winter pack, Aunt Estelle was top wolf.

* * * * *

In the weeks since her return from Europe, Sydney had spoken on the telephone to Camille Darrow, her sister-in-law, but they hadn't seen each other yet. On Saturday, when Philip mentioned he was going into the city and asked Sydney if she cared to go with him to visit Cam, she immediately called her friend and made the arrangements.

They could have taken the train, but Philip told Robby, the family's elderly coachman, to drive them in the phaeton because the horses needed exercise. It was a perfect day for a drive, clear and sunny, not too hot. Sydney reveled in it, chattering with Philip all the way, until she caught her first glimpse of the Darrow house. The towered and buttressed mansion on Prairie Avenue had been like a second home for her. She had played there as a child, flirted there at parties as a debutante. Spencer had proposed to her in the billiard room, and they had danced under a striped tent to Johnny Hand's band at their wedding reception in the sprawling backyard. It was an ugly house in some ways, too big, too extravagant. But she loved it anyway, never gave its excesses a second thought, because she had always been happy there. Now just the sight of it made her want to cry. Because Spencer was gone.

Camille opened the front door herself. Embracing her Sydney did cry—this time because Cam looked so much like her brother. "Oh, I
missed
you," she exclaimed, trying to laugh, hiding the real reason for her tears. "Cam, you look
wonderfull"

"You
look wonderful."

They hugged in the doorway for a long time, swaying, patting each other's shoulders, while Philip looked on with amused tolerance. "Oh, hullo, Philip," Camille said when they finally broke apart. "You here, too?" They all laughed.

The women drifted into the foyer, but stopped when Philip called to them that he was leaving. "Why?" Cam wanted to know. "Come on, Philip, stay for a little while. Can't you come in and visit?" She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head in the familiar bossy manner. Short, blond, and athletic, she was the perfect feminine reverse of Spencer; they even had the same pug nose and stubborn chin, the same gestures, the same gravelly voice.

"Nope, can't. Things to do, people to see."

"What things, what people? Come in and have some tea with us."

"Manly things, important people." He slouched against the doorpost in a negligent pose, hands in his pockets, looking impossibly handsome. "I'll tell Robbie to come back for you, Syd."

"But then how will you get home? Are you coming back here?"

"Nope." He shrugged, grinned. "I'll manage." He gave them a lazy salute and started to turn away.

"Not too late, Philip," Sydney called softly.

He just smiled.

"He's changed," Camille remarked as they walked through the house to the covered veranda in back. "He doesn't even look like himself anymore. Must be the East Coast influence."

"He's not happy, Cam," Sydney confided. "I don't know exactly what he's getting up to these days,,and I don't want to know. But I worry about him."

"Oh, Philip's all right."

"He never brings friends home anymore. He goes to terrible places. I think he even has a bookmaker."

"He's just growing up."

Sydney shook her head. "He needs someone strong right now, somebody to give him guidance. I can't do it, it's got to come from a man." No point in saying that it was never going to come from her father; Camille knew that as well as she did.

"Poor Philip." Camille sighed, sitting down at a glass-topped table on the veranda and signaling the maid to bring their tea. "But I'm sure he'll grow out of this. I'm sure it's just a stage."

"I hope so." Watching her, Sydney wondered if she knew—she
must
know—that Philip had always been in love with her. Even as children, they had joked and daydreamed about marrying one another when they grew up, Spencer and Sydney, Camille and Philip. Philip had never really let go of the dream, though, and it was only one more thing making him reckless and dissatisfied these days.

"So," said Cam, passing a plate of miniature iced sponge cakes, "tell me everything. How was your trip? Are you glad to be home?"

"Ecstatic. But you know about my trip, I put it all in my letters. Tell me how
you've
been."

Camille obligingly plunged into a description of her social schedule since February, the parties and dances, tennis and golf tournaments, sailing regattas, croquet matches and bicycling tours, shopping sprees and charity balls. It was all so familiar; Sydney felt a kind of evening out, a balancing inside herscif as she listened. She belonged to this world, and it was comforting to be back in it. At the same time, something nagged in the back of her mind. A soft-voiced irritant that felt almost like . . . impatience.

Cam was talking about the World's Fair. "Last night Claire and Mark and I went to the Women's Building. Have you seen it yet?" Claire was Cam's sister and Mark was her brother-in-law. "It's my favorite now. You
have
to go, Sydney. There's a model kitchen, and a kindergarten, concerts every day by women composers. A woman designed the building itself, and every day there's a demonstration—"

"I haven't been to the fair at all yet."

"You
what
?”

Sydney laughed at her amazement. "Well, heavens, I've only been back in the country for three weeks."

"I know, but it's the World's Fair! It's absolutely unbelievable, a marvel, a wonder of the world."

"And I've got four more months to see it."

"Oh, but—"

"Cam, it's so good to be home, just spending the days quietly with Philip and Sam. If you knew how many museums and cathedrals and piazzas and art galleries I've been dragged to in the last three months, you wouldn't scold me."

"I suppose." She nodded skeptically. "Well, but when you do go, let's go together. I've been at least six times already, so I know where the best exhibits are. But you'll want to see everything eventually. It's-—honestly, Syd, it's the most marvelous thing I've ever seen in my life, or probably ever will see."

"Philip says that, too. He's dying to take me."

"We'll all go together, then. Oh, it'll be wonderful."

Sydney set her teacup down gently. "Spencer would have loved it, wouldn't he?"

"He would have. I miss him so much."

"I miss him every day."

"They both began to hunt for their handkerchief's. "Mama's still grieving so. She simply can't be consoled. Papa's taken her to the River Forest house for the summer."

Sydney nodded. "You told me."

"I don't think she'll ever get over it. It's been awful for all of us, but worst for her, I think."

Unashamed, they both wept. But Sydney's tears came easily now, naturally. There would always be sadness, but this wasn't that hard, dry, aching pain that had plagued her for so long. She was crying now for Spencer, but also for Cam and for herself, because they had both loved him so much. It was the first time she'd been able to share her grief with anyone. Maybe she was healing.

That thought gave her the courage to say, "Charles West has asked me again to marry him."

Camille waited. Gradually the expectant look on her face faded and apprehension took its place. She had been sure Sydney would add, "But of course I've told him no," as she always had before. "Oh, no," she breathed. "Oh, Syd, you're not going to accept him, are you?"

"I've put him off again. But... I don't know."

"But you don't love him!" Her round face, tanned to a pretty golden from all her summer sports, darkened with emotion, and her big, blond-lashed blue eyes went wide. She looked so much like Spencer then, outraged, all bark and no bite, Sydney had to smile. "Well? Do you?"

"No. Not love, not ex—"

"Then how
could
you?"

She was truly angry, Sydney realized too late. She felt terrible, as if she had betrayed Spencer. Of course Cam would take it this way; she should have known, should never have brought up the subject.

She tried to explain. "There's nothing really wrong with Charles. He says he loves me. He's agreed to live with us, so I wouldn't have to leave Sam. He's nice enough, Cam, really he is. And I'm used to him. And—he says he'll take care of me." That sounded pathetic. "He's so
persistent.
He simply won't leave me alone."

Camille made a ball of her napkin and tossed it beside her plate. "Here's what I think. I think you were happy with Spencer and now you're lonely and miserable. Somehow you've worked it out that having a husband was what made you happy, so now you want another one,
any
husband, so you can be happy again."

"Oh," Sydney said faintly. It rang disturbingly true. "Could I really be that stupid?"

"It's not stupid, it's human. It won't be stupid until you actually do it." She pushed her plate away. "That's all I'll say." She was shutting up now so that if Sydney did marry Charles, nothing would ever have been said, at least in words, that could put their friendship at risk. Very wise.

They got up and drifted over to the low stone balustrade that circled the veranda. Below them a fountain pool glittered in the sun, and the black and orange bodies of goldfish slid through the ripples, slow and supple, flashing beneath the lily pads.

"You haven't told me about the lost man," Camille said, deliberately changing the subject. "All the papers talked about nothing else for weeks last winter. They ran a photograph of him that looked absolutely ferocious."

"I can imagine." Sydney trailed her hand along the rough stone, absently sanding her fingertips.

"Well? What's he like? You've seen him, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes. He's . . . This is in confidence, Cam."

"Of course." She sat down on the balustrade, fascinated already.

"Because I don't know how much he's telling the university, but the last thing my father wants is newspaper reporters coming to the house, taking pictures and writing more lurid stories."

"My lips are sealed."

Sydney sat down, too. "The lost man can talk. He's always been able to talk."

"No!"

"He even has a name—Michael MacNeil. When he was about Sam's age, he was in some sort of shipwreck, we think, somewhere in Canada, and everybody drowned but him. We think he's been on his own ever since."

They had been leaning toward each other. They both sat back at that, to contemplate the enormity of it. "But how? How could a child survive, year after year? He'd freeze to death. If he didn't starve to death first!"

"I know. I know. It's incredible."

"Well, what's he like? Do you talk to him, or is it only your father?"

"No, I talk to him. Sam talks to him, Philip, Charles, all of us now. But he's . .. reticent. I think he speaks most easily to Sam. And to me." She liked to think that, anyway.

"What does he say? Can he remember his past?" "He doesn't talk about it. I think his childhood's a blur."

"Can I meet him? Oh, I'm
dying
to get a look at him." "Well, I'm not sure. I'll ask my father." She said it vaguely, wondering why she was uneasy at the thought of Cam meeting Michael. It wasn't Camille herself; it was the thought of
anyone
outside the tight circle of the family having contact with him. He knew and trusted them now; it would be risky for him, too scary, to introduce him this soon to someone on the outside. Sydney could see through his eyes now, feel his distress, sense his fear of the strange and the unknown, and she wanted to protect him.