Act of Darkness(65)

“It’s all right,” he said gently. “I have everything under control.”

“I don’t think you do,” she said. “I think you ought to go upstairs and lie down.”

“I don’t want to lie down. I have things to do.”

“The most important thing you have to do is be here at lunch in an hour. That’s it.”

“I have some things to do before then.”

“Stephen—”

He was backing away from her, toward what would probably have been the dining room door if there had been a dining room door. It hit her suddenly that they had said everything they had had to say right out in the open. If there was anyone around, they must have been overheard. Every muscle in her body went rigid and her eyes darted from one direction to the other. She saw only strange angular furniture and high-ceilinged emptiness, and she relaxed.

Stephen had backed up all the way to the end of the dining room space, marked off only by a change in pattern of the hardwood floor.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I wouldn’t leave you for Patchen Rawls. She’s insane.”





[2]


Bennis Hannaford was standing in the one blind spot in the entire expanse of the center section of Great Expectations’s first floor when Stephen Whistler Fox called Patchen Rawls insane—and for a moment she was stopped there, breathless, because she wasn’t in the mood to face either the senator or his wife. It had been bad enough facing them in groups, and when she still thought Janet had no idea what had gone on all those years ago. Then she’d merely been embarrassed by her own secret knowledge and by the fear that Stephen might let something slip. He had never been discreet.

The problem, as she saw it, was that she felt guilty about everything she could think of. What was worse, she was right to feel guilty. She had not told Gregor about her once-upon-a-time relationship with Stephen Whistler Fox. She had come to Great Expectations without giving a thought to how Janet would feel if she knew. She had blithely assumed Stephen’s wife would not know. Even after it was obvious that Victoria did, she had stayed on—and, of course, stayed on too long. Last night, she had heard Janet and Victoria talking. It had taken Bennis no time at all to understand they were talking about, her.

“Gregor Demarkian is supposed to know everything,” Victoria had said. “You can’t tell me he doesn’t know his own assistant once had an affair with the man he’s supposed to be working for.”

“He isn’t working for Stephen, Mother. And besides, you don’t know—”

“Oh, yes. I do know. It was while you were in the hospital having Stephanie, too. She’s no better than Patchen Rawls.”

“She might not have known Stephen was married, Mother. He doesn’t go around advertising the fact.”

“She was living in Washington. With this woman who was trying to be a hostess. She must have known—”

“You’re always so sure of what it is people must have known.”

It was Bennis’s guess that Victoria Harte was always too sure of everything. She wouldn’t even cafe much if she found out she was wrong—which, in this case, she was. Bennis’s relationship with Stephen Whistler Fox had been more complicated than Victoria was giving it credit for, and Bennis’s relationship with Gregor Demarkian had been (for the moment) much less open. Even so, Bennis had not wanted to face either of those women then, any more than she wanted to face Stephen and Janet now. If there had been any way to get back upstairs unnoticed, she would have gone.

There was never any way to do anything unnoticed at Great Expectations. Bennis heard a door slam somewhere down at the other end of the house,’ and then Dan Chester’s voice saying, “Victoria, for God’s sake. What do you expect me to do about these things? I’m not Stephen’s keeper.”

“Janet is very upset,” Victoria said.

“I’m not Janet’s keeper, either.”

“You ought to be.”

“Victoria—”

There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and the voices disappeared. Bennis heaved a sigh of relief, then poked her head past the edge of the dining room’s half-wall. She had expected to find no sign of Janet or Stephen at all. It was so quiet over there. Instead, she found them both, looking paralyzed. They were staring in the direction of the foyer, so Bennis decided to stare in that direction, too. God only knew why.

Unfortunately, the blind spot she was standing in was not so blind when looked at from the foyer, or the stairs. Bennis saw Patchen Rawls right away, just as Patchen saw her. What passed between them was a look of mutual dislike so intense, it startled them both.