Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

Yet as I sat there summing him up I realized he was no self-sacrificing, quiet man like Paul. This one wouldn't need seducing. He'd do that himself, staccato time. He'd stalk like a black panther until he had what he wanted, and then he'd walk out and leave me and it would be all over. He was not going to give up his chance to inherit millions and the pleasures millions gave for some chance mistress who came his way. Red lights were flashing behind my eyes. . . go easy . . . do it right, for there's danger if you do it wrong.

As I measured him, he was measuring me in just about the same way. Did I remind him too much of his wife so there would be no real difference? Or was my likeness to her an advantage? After all, didn't men always fall over and over again for the same type?

"Beautiful night," he said. "This is my favorite season. Fall is so passionate, even more than spring. Come walk with me, Cathy. This place puts me in a strange, melancholy mood, as if I've got to run fast to catch up with the best thing in my life, which up until now has always eluded me."

"You sound poetic," I said as we left his car and he caught hold of my hand. We began to stroll, with him deftly guiding me--would you believe it-- alongside a railroad track in the country! It seemed so familiar. Yet it couldn't be, could it? Not the same railroad track that had taken us as children to Foxworth Hall fifteen years ago when I was twelve!

"Bart, I don't know about you, but I've got the weirdest feeling that I have walked this path with you before, on some other night before this."

"De vu," he said. "I have that same feeling. As if once you and I were deeply in love, and we walked through those woods over there. We sat on that green bench beside these train tracks. I was compelled to bring you here, even when I didn't know where it was I was driving to."

This forced me to stare up into his face to see if he could be serious. From his bemused and slightly discomforted look, I believe he was surprising himself. "I like to ponder all things considered impossible or implausible," I said. "I want everything impossible to become possible, and everything implausible to reverse and become reality. Then when everything is explainable I want new mysteries to confront me so I always have something inexplicable to think about."

"You are a romantic."

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know. I used to be when I was a boy." "What made you change?"

"You can't stay a boy with romantic notions when you go to law school and you are faced with the harsh realities of murder, rape, robbery, corruption. You have professors pounding dogmatic ideas into your head to drive out the romance. You go into law fresh and young, and you come out tough and hard, and you know every step of the way ahead you've got to fight and fight hard to be any good. Soon enough you learn you are not the best, and the competition is astounding."

He turned to smile with a great deal of winsome charm. "I think, though, you and I have much in common, Catherine Dahl. I too had that need of the mysterious, the need to be confounded, and the need to have someone to worship. So I fell in love with an heiress to millions, but those millions she wanted to inherit got in my way. They put me off and scared me. I knew everyone would think I was marrying her just for her money I think she thought it too, until I convinced her otherwise. I fell for her hard, before I knew who she was. In fact I used to think she was like you."

"How could you think that?" I asked, all tight inside from hearing his revelations.

"Because she was like you, Cathy, for a while. But then she inherited millions, and in great orgies of shopping she'd buy everything her heart desired. Soon there was nothing to wish for at all--but a baby. And she couldn't have a baby. You can't imagine all the time we spent in front of shops that sold infant clothes, toys and furniture. I married her knowing we couldn't have children and I thought I didn't care. Soon I began to care too much. Those infant shops held a

fascination for me too."

The faint path we followed led straight to the green bench stretched between two of the four rickety old green posts that supported a rusty tin roof. There we sat in the cold mountain air, with the moon bright, the stars flickering on and off; bugs were humming, just as my blood was singing.

"This used to be a mail pick-up and drop-off station, Cathy." He lit another cigarette. "They don't run the trains by here anymore. The wealthy people who live nearby finally won their petition against the railroad company and put an end to trains that so inconsiderately blew their whistles at night and disturbed their rest. I was very fond of hearing the train whistles at night. But I was only twenty-seven, a bridegroom living in Fox- worth Hall. I'd lie on my bed near my wife, with a swan overhead--can you believe that? She would sleep with her head on my shoulder or we'd hold hands all through the night. She took pills so she'd sleep soundly. Too soundly, for she never heard the beautiful music coming from overhead. It puzzled me so--and she said, when I told her, it was my imagination. Then one day it stopped, and I guessed she was right, it was only my

imagination. When the music ended I missed it. I longed to hear it again. The music had given that old dry house some enchantment. I used to fall asleep and dream of a lovely young girl who danced overhead. I thought I was dreaming of my wife when she was young. She told me that often, as a way of

punishment, her parents would send her into the attic schoolroom and force her to stay there all day, even in the summers when the temperature up there must have been over a hundred degrees. And they sent her up there in the winters too--she said it was frigidly cold and her fingers would turn blue. She said she spent her time crouched on the floor near the window, crying because she was missing out on some fun thing her parents considered wicked."

"Did you ever go and take a look in the attic?"

"No. I wanted to, but the double doors at the top of the stairs were always locked. And besides, all attics are alike; see one and you've seen them all." He flashed me a wicked smile. "And now that I've revealed so much about myself--tell me about you. Where were you born? Where did you go to school? What made you take up dancing--and why haven't you ever attended one of those balls the Foxworths throw on Christmas night?"

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sp; I sweated, though I was cold. "Why should I tell you everything about myself. Just because you sat there and revealed a little about yourself? You didn't tell me anything of real importance. Where were you born? What made you decide to become an attorney? How did you meet your wife? Was it in the summer, the winter, what year? Did you know she'd been married before, or did she tell you only after you were married?"

"Nosy little thing, aren't you? What difference does it make where I was born. I haven't led an exciting life like you have. I was born in the nothing little town called Greenglenna, South Carolina. The Civil War ended the prosperous days of my ancestors, and we went steadily downhill, as did all the friends of the family But it's an old story, told so many times. Then I married a Foxworth lady and prosperity reigned again in the South. My wife took my ancestorial home and practically had it reconstructed, and refurbished, and spent more than if she had bought a new place. And what was I doing during all of this? A top grad from Harvard running around the world with his wife. I've done very little with my education; I've become a social butterfly. I've had a few court cases and I helped you with your difficulties. And, by the way, you never paid the fee I had in mind."

"I mailed you a check for two hundred dollars!" I objected hotly. "If that wasn't enough, please don't tell me now; I don't have another two hundred to give away."

"Have I mentioned money? Money means little to me now that I have so much of it at my disposal. In your special case I had another kind of fee in mind."

"Oh, come off it, Bart Winslow! You've brought me way out into the country. Now do you want to make love on the grass? Is it your lifelong ambition to make love to a former ballerina? I don't give sex away and I don't pay any bills that way. And what's so attractive about you, a lap dog for a pampered, spoiled, rich woman who can buy anything she wants--including a much younger husband! Why, it's a wonder she didn't put a ring through your nose to lead you around and make you sit up and beg!"

He seized me then hard and ruthlessly, then pressed his lips down on mine with a savagery that hurt! I fought him off with my fists, battering his arms as I tried to twist my head from beneath his, but whichever way my head went, right or left, up or down, he kept his kiss, demanding my lips to separate and yield to his tongue! Then, realizing I couldn't escape the arms of steel he banded about me to mold my form to his, against my will, my arms stole up around his neck. My unruly fingers betrayed me and twined into his thick, dark hair, and that kiss lasted, and lasted, and lasted until both of us were hot and panting--and then he thrust me from him so cruelly I almost fell from the bench.

"Well, little Miss Muffet--what kind of lap dog do you call me now? Or are you Little Red Riding Hood who has just met the wolf?"

"Take me home!"