Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [183]
He’d stalked out of Aysgarth’s, up Taylor to Nob Hill. He’d pounded on Francie’s door until the houseboy answered. He had never been in her home before and he stepped into the hall and stared around looking for her. “Where is she?” he demanded. “I must see her.” And when the boy told him she was not there he strode disbelievingly from room to room calling her name.
“Miss Francie’s not here,” the boy repeated, frightened. “She has gone away, not to the ranch…. away somewhere, for a long time….” He waved his arms vaguely while Buck had stared at him helplessly, then he knew it was true. Francie had written him out of her life forever.
Now he turned from the window and stared suspiciously at his wife. “Why did you come here today, Maryanne?”
“Why, to surprise you, darling.” He stepped toward her, his eyes wild with pain and anger and she said nervously, “Is something wrong?”
He stood close to her, his hands clenched at his sides and she saw the effort with which he was controlling himself. His whole body trembled as he said, “You did this, didn’t you, Maryanne? You went to see her.”
She turned her head away, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.
“Yes, you do!”
“You have your children to think of,” she retorted defensively. “And everything you’ve worked for, your future—”
“Is it really my future, Maryanne? Or is it yours?”
He took her chin in his hand, tilting her face up, forcing her to look at him. “I won’t forget,” he said quietly.
She saw the defeat in his eyes and knew she had won and she said solicitously, “It’s all for the best, Buck darling. I was only thinking of you. After all, I am your wife.”
He let go of her. His marriage was an empty shell. Francie had left him. A glittering future stretched ahead, but he no longer cared.
He looked at Maryanne, elegantly beautiful in clinging blue velvet. She was his wife and the mother of his children, she was protecting her own. But the distance that had always existed between him and Maryanne now lay like a coiled, venomous serpent between them.
“Buck …” she cried as he walked past her to his room and closed the door.
Maryanne sank onto the sofa with a little sigh of relief. It was over. She thought of the look of pain in his eyes and told herself it surely couldn’t be that bad. Tomorrow, like one of the children with a badly scraped knee, the pain would be gone and he would feel better. And they would just pick up the pieces and life would go on as if nothing had ever happened.
Lysandra was born with the dawn on a beautiful spring morning in Dolores de Soto Harrison’s lovely old carved bed. Annie was at Francie’s side and the Mandarin was also there to share her joy.
He held the infant wrapped in her pretty white shawl and his black eyes shone with happiness because Francie had a new child to give her love to.
“A beautiful little girl,” Annie exclaimed joyfully. “Oh Francie, this old ranch will be a happy place again.”
“It surely will, Miss Francie,” Hattie said, peering at the child’s tightly shut little face. “She’s like a rosebud in the mornin’ before the sun opens her petals.”
Francie smiled. “I’m afraid I’ll never have a whole bouquet though, Hattie,” she said. Then she looked wistfully at the Mandarin. “I just wish Buck could see her. I wish she had her father’s name.”
He placed the baby carefully back into her arms. He bowed and said, “I am an old man. I cannot take the place of her father, but I will guard her as if she were my own grandchild. I will teach her everything I have learned and share