Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [192]
“Come back to me, Francie,” he murmured. “Let’s start all over again. I love you, I’ve always loved you.”
She wanted with all her heart to say yes. She stepped back and looked at him. “Tell me one thing, Buck. If I had asked you to make that decision seven years ago, if I had asked you to give it all up, your wife, your children, your career, and your glittering future, to marry me, what would you have said?”
He hesitated, his eyes fixed on hers. “I can’t lie to you,” he said quietly. “I just don’t know.”
She nodded sadly; it was the answer she had expected.
She picked up her coat and put it over her shoulders. “Please don’t try to see Lysandra,” she said quietly. “It wouldn’t be fair to her. Or to me. Or even,” she managed a half-smile, “to yourself.”
“Francie”—he grabbed her shoulder urgently—“please don’t go. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
“Everything will be all right, Buck,” she said, “we’ll just go on doing whatever we’ve been doing all these years.” And then she pulled herself from his grasp and stepped quickly into the elevator. The little golden mesh gates closed, shutting him out of her life again. Their eyes met longingly through the grille as the elevator slowly descended and he disappeared from view.
Harry had given the servants the night off; he wanted to be alone with Maryanne. The fire was lit in the oak-paneled library and a decanter of fine French brandy waited with two wafer-thin crystal glasses on the lamplit table behind the dark-green leather Chesterfield sofa. When the doorbell rang he answered it himself and Maryanne looked at him surprised.
“Where’s your butler?” she asked, stepping over the threshold into the hall.
“The poor fellow had to go visit a friend in the hospital,” Harry lied, “so I gave him the night off.” He took her fur-lined cape and flung it carelessly across a Jacobean carved oak chair, and Maryanne looked at him suspiciously.
“And your wonderful footmen, Harry? Or at least a maid?”
“Well, of course, in these terrible times, ‘with the memory of the Depression still so close in all our minds,’” he said, quoting her, “I thought it better not to keep footmen any longer. I simply hire them by the night whenever I need them. And the maids come daily. They worked hard cleaning up after last night’s dinner party. I told them I would answer the door and let my guest in myself so they could leave early.”
Maryanne’s eyes narrowed. “And since when have you become so generous?” He was wearing a fashionable velvet smoking jacket and that satisfied smile and she didn’t trust him an inch. She followed him into the library, taking in at a glance the cosy fire, the soft lights, and the two waiting glasses.
“Sit here, Maryanne, by me,” Harry said, patting the sofa.
Ignoring him, she walked to the big wing chair by the fire and sat down. “Brandy?” he asked, fussing with the decanter and the pretty glasses.
Maryanne hesitated, she rarely drank but now she needed something to steady her nerves. Harry was up to something and she didn’t know what. “Thank you,” she said in her calmest voice.
He handed her the glass and took his and went to stand in front of the fire, looking at her. “It’s good to see you again, Maryanne,” he said. “We so rarely see each other alone.”
She glanced up at him, her hackles rising, there was just something in his tone that sent a shiver up her spine.
“To be quite correct, Harry,” she said quickly, “we never see each other alone. And quite honestly I don’t know why I’m here alone with you now.” She glanced at her small diamond wristwatch and said briskly, “Perhaps you can explain quickly, Buck will be expecting me back.”
He smiled and took a sip of the perfect brandy,