Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [158]
There was a grumbling undercurrent to her tone that Buck knew only too well and he grinned wryly. “Hello, Miffy. Is that the best you can do to greet your poor old father?” He walked toward her, his arms outstretched, and she smiled reluctantly as she walked into them and he hugged her. “Really, Daddy, you’re so exuberant,” she chided, copying her mother’s words, and he laughed.
“And you sound like your mother. So? What’s the matter with my girl?”
She looked at him guardedly and he thought how pretty she was. She had her mother’s straight dark blond hair, pinned at the side with a gold barrette, and Maryanne’s rather large mouth and her dark-lashed green eyes; she was tall for her age, coltishly long-legged and she could turn on the charm in a minute if she wanted something. But he guessed she didn’t at the moment because there was a distinct whine in her voice as she complained her mother had said she must get dressed and come downstairs and say hello to their dinner guests that evening.
“I don’t want to,” she said fractiously, “they’re all so goddamn boring.”
“I’m glad to see they teach you the finest English language at Miss Beale’s very expensive little school,” Buck said sarcastically.
“I don’t want to,” she repeated obstinately.
Buck frowned. He knew Maryanne wanted to show off her pretty daughter to their visitors; she would have liked having Jamie there, too, but five-year-old Jamieson Alexander Buckland Wingate had succumbed to an attack of the mumps and had been banished to their country house in New Jersey with his nurse. They were entertaining several influential politicians and businessmen, and after dinner they were expected to declare their allegiance to Buck personally as well as to the Republican Party in the big, somber library.
Buck had worked hard for the party, campaigning tirelessly in the last presidential election, and Maryanne had worked even harder; entertaining lavishly, always the perfect political wife, mindful of their public position. There were no stains on Maryanne’s character; all the Brattles’ lives were open books. They had been in and out of the Senate for generations and now they had put all their powers behind Buck’s career. At forty he was poised to make the transition from senator to presidential candidate.
He quickly decided it would do his spoiled little daughter no harm if she were to put on the pretty, and no-doubt expensive, dress her mother had bought her and act nicely to their guests.
“What’ll you give me if I do?” Miffy demanded sulkily.
“What will I give you? I’ll give you the moon, the stars—”
“Really, Daddy, I’d rather have a brand-new sailboat.”
He sighed. “There’s no romance in your soul,” he said as he departed, thinking again she was just like her mother.
He peeked into Maryanne’s room on his way down the hall. They’d had separate rooms ever since their first child was born, because she’d decided she preferred it that way. “After all, we can still visit, can’t we?” she’d said with a winning smile, the very same smile he saw in his daughter’s face when she wanted something. The lamps were lit and Maryanne’s maid was bustling about, putting away the clothes she had just cast off and flung to the floor en route to her bath. A waft of scented steam came from the pink Italian marble bathroom. He strode to the door and called out, “Can I come in?”
“Oh, must you, Buck? Shouldn’t you be getting changed for dinner? They’ll be here in forty minutes.”
He walked in and looked at her, lying back in the vast tub of perfumed water. Maryanne would never use anything as vulgar as bubblebath no matter how expensive; she used scented oils specially prepared for her by French perfume experts in Grasse and they had concocted a subtle innocuous scent of lilac and wild roses that was her trademark.
“What is it, Buck?” she demanded crossly. “I’m late and there’s a lot still to be done.” Stepping from the tub, she stretched out a dripping arm and said, “Hand me the towel, will you?”
He passed it silently to her, thinking