Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [76]
“And what about Rachel-Ann?” Dean questioned in a silky voice.
Jackson leaned over and put his perfectly manicured hand on Rachel-Ann’s slender knee, squeezing it. “I was rather hoping she’d move in with me.”
The silence in the room was palpable. Jilly’s recoil was instinctive, but she wondered if she was overreacting to a perfectly normal suggestion.
Not if she were to go by the expressions on everyone else’s faces. It was as though Jackson had dropped a bomb in the middle of the room and everyone was politely pretending it hadn’t happened, even as it was about to detonate.
Coltrane’s face was frightening in its stillness, his eyes were like ice, and his hand had tightened into a fist. He said nothing, though, and the others couldn’t see his terrifyingly quiet reaction. Only Jilly could, and she wondered what caused it. What she was missing.
There was no mistaking Rachel-Ann’s blank expression. She didn’t move, and Jackson’s hand remained on her knee, softly kneading.
Dean was the first to speak, clearing his voice with a sound that was shocking after the deep silence. “Wouldn’t Melba have something to say about that, Father?” he asked softly.
“Melba and I have agreed to an amicable separation. We signed a prenuptial agreement, of course, so it should all be relatively straightforward, and she had no grounds or interest in contesting it. I haven’t given her any.”
Jilly couldn’t pull her eyes away from his hand, squeezing her sister’s knee, a slow, hypnotic caress. “And…?” Dean prompted, his voice faintly hollow, the triumphant glitter still in his eyes.
“I’ve bought a place in the Hills. I’ll need a hostess, and Rachel-Ann needs something to do. I’m sure she won’t mind looking after her old man. Will you, baby?” Knead, squeeze, knead, squeeze. His fingers caressed her knee.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said in a soft, little girl voice. “I mean, no, Daddy. I won’t mind.”
She was trembling. It took Jilly a moment to realize that her sister was practically vibrating in distress. She called him Daddy. Odd, none of the others ever had. Dean called him Father, or Jackson, and Jilly tried to call him nothing at all.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Coltrane said, his voice cool, emotionless. “I think—” Before he could finish his sentence the candelabrum went flying, sailing across the room like it had been thrown by an unseen hand. The other candelabrum toppled from the piano, the coffee table shook, knocking the glasses to the floor as the rest of the lights went off and the house was plunged into darkness.
Rachel-Ann screamed in utter terror, and Jilly leapt forward, trying to reach her, only to collide with Coltrane in the dark. Tripped by Roofus’s sudden leap, the two of them went down, directly into the middle of the glass coffee table in a tangle of limbs. A second later it broke beneath them. Coltrane was on top of her, heavy, overpowering, and they tumbled to the floor so that she lay underneath him, shattered glass beneath her back, digging into her skin. She could hear Roofus barking, Dean and Jackson were shouting, and she closed her eyes in the smothering darkness, feeling faint….
And then Rachel-Ann’s voice came to her, clear and oddly close, as if she were whispering in her ear. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”
“Where are the goddamned lights?” Jackson shouted in fury. She could hear him crash into the furniture, all the while Roofus was barking wildly, unsure whether to protect her or to attack. There was no sound from Dean, who must have gone to find out what was wrong with the electricity, and Rachel-Ann had vanished. Escaped while she still could, Jilly was sure of it, even though there was no way she could have known for certain.
Jilly felt detached, almost floating, as she lay still in the darkness. She could feel the rubble beneath her—smashed glass and broken coffee table, digging