Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

"You may have something there," he said with sadness in his voice, shrugging and leaning back, looking around as if for an ashtray, and finding none he put his sparkling cigarette case back in his pocket. (I'd never seen him pull out a cigarette before.) "I've thought the same thing myself--but what was I to do with a child who cherished grief and never let it go? After I married Jillian, Troy attached himself to Leigh, so when she ran from this house he cried every night, blaming himself as the cause for her leaving. For three months after she went he was confined to bed. I used to go to him when he cried out in the night and I'd tell him one day she'd come back, and he fastened on that like a leech. I suspect he began daydreaming about the time when she did come home again, and she'd be just nine years older, not so old he couldn't love her as he wanted to love her . . . and so all these years, until your father called, Troy has been biding his time, waiting for your mother to return, and be the woman he couldn't seem to find anywhere. And you showed up, not Leigh."

Thunderstruck, I felt my head swim. Now I was the one to wince and blanch! "Are you trying to tell me I am just a substitute for my own mother?" I cried out in rising hysteria. "Troy loves me for what I am! I know he does! A little boy of three, four and five can't possibly fall in love and stay in love over a period of seventeen years! That's too ridiculous to even suggest!"

"I guess you're right." His eyes narrowed before he sighed, and again he reached inside his jacket for that same cigarette case. Again he absentmindedly looked around for an ashtray. "It just occurred to me that Troy put Leigh on a pedestal and compared all other women to her, and it seems only you can measureup.

Heat flushed my face. My hands rose to my throat. "You're talking nonsense. Troy loved my mother, yes, he's told me that. But not as a man loves a woman. He loved as a lonely, needing little boy who had to have someone for his very own. And I'm glad to be that someone. I'll make Troy a good wife." And as much as I'd tried to keep the pleading from my voice, I was pleading. "He needs someone like me who has not lived inside a cultured pearl, who has everything and still can't enjoy. I have been deprived, starved, beaten, burned, humiliated, and shamed, and still I find life rewarding, and under no circumstances would I give up my life. teach him the same thing."

"Yessss," he said slowly, "I suspect you would be good for him, and have been good for him. Until you went away and left him, I've never seen him look better, or more contented. I thank you for that. However, you can't marry him, Heaven. I can't allow it."

There it was, what I'd feared!

"You said you liked me!" I cried, again stunned. "What have you found out? If you are thinking of the Casteel part of me, you must remember I also have VanVoreen genes!"

His eyes filled with pity, and it seemed he aged a little as he sat and stared at me with so much regret. "How lovely you are in your tragic wrath, how very beautiful and appealing. I can understand why Troy loves you and wants you. The two of you have so much in common, although you don't know the connection. I don't want to tell you the connection. Just tell me you will go to him, and as gently as possible, with sensitivity for his feelings, break your engagement. Of course you can't keep on living here, so accessible, but see to your financial welfare. You'll never want for anything, I promise."

"You want me to break my engagement to Troy?" I repeated with incredulity. "You and your great concern for his welfare! Don't you know the last thing in the world he needs is for me to disappoint him? He feels he's found the one woman in the world who can understand him! The only one who will stay and love him until the day he dies!"

He stood up, looking around, refusing to meet my eyes. "I am trying to do what I think is best." His calm underlined the passion I had displayed. "Troy is the only heir I have. The Tatterton Toy Company will pass into his hands when I die, or into the control of his son. It has been this way for three hundred and fifty years, from father to son, or brother to brother . . that's the way it has to be. Troy has to marry and produce a son--for I have a wife too old to bear children."

"There is nothing physically wrong with me! I can have children! Troy and I have already discussed that and have decided on two."

His look of abstraction became more profound. He stood, leaning heavily on his desk. "I was hoping to save myself some embarrassment. I prayed you would withdraw politely. I see now that it isn't possible. But I'm going to try one more time. Just believe it when I say you cannot marry Troy. Why don't you just leave it like that?"

"How can I? Give me one good reason why I can't marry him? I'm eighteen, I'm of legal age. No one can stop me from marrying him."

He sat down again, heavily sat down. He shoved his chair from his desk, crossed his legs, and moved his foot back and forth. And for the life of me I couldn't understand how I could still admire his polished shoes and the kind of dark socks he wore. His voice sounded different when he spoke again. "It's your age that has brought this all about. You see, I thought you were younger than you are. I didn't know your true age until one day while you were gone Troy casually mentioned it. Not once did any suspicions cross my mind until then. I'd look at you and you'd be all Leigh, but for your hair. Your mannerisms are very like hers when you are happy and when you feel at ease in your surroundings, but there are other times when you remind me of someone else." He stared again at my hair, which during the summer had taken on streaks of brighter brown, with reddish highlights. "Have you ever worn your hair short?" he asked, quite out of context.

"What has that got to do with anything?" I almost shouted.

"I suspect the weight of your hair pulls out the natural curl, and that's why your hair 'frizzes' as you say, when it rains."

"What has that got to do with anything?" I again shouted. "I'm sorry my hair isn't platinum like my mother's hair and like Jillian's! But Troy likes my hair. He's told me so many times. He loves me, Tony, and it took him so long to tell me that. He had given up on life until I came along, he told me that, too. I've convinced him that his precognition of his own death doesn't have to happen."

For the second time he rose, like a cat undulating and stretching until he leaned to crease his trousers between thumb and index fingers. "I confess I'm not partial to dramatic confessions such as this. I would prefer all dramas to be confined to the stage or to movie screens. I am an even-tempered person, and I have to admire someone like you who can ignite and explode so easily. Perhaps you don't know this, but Troy has the same kind of temper, only he is a slow burn, and when he explodes it turns inward on himself. That's why I'm trying to be careful. If I never speak another true word the rest of my life, I say again I love my brother more than I love myself. He is like my son, and because of him I honestly confess I've never truly wanted my own son, who would disinherit Troy. You see, or I guess you've already seen, Troy is the genius behind Tatterton Toys. He is the one who creates, designs, and invents, while I fly about the world as a glorified sales rep. I am a figurehead ruler. If given ten years I couldn't come up with one original idea to create a new toy or board-game, yet Troy originates without effort; he suggests themes for games, indoor and out, like he invents those eternal sandwiches he loves."

I could only stare at him. Why was he telling me all of this now? Why now?

"It's Troy who deserves to be president, not any son I might have. So please, ease out of his life with little to-do. I'll stay to see him through. You can go to your boyfriend Logan what's-his-name, and I'll put in your bank account two . . . million . . . dollars. Think about it. Two million. People kill for that much money."

He smiled at me charmingly, winningly, pleadingly. "Do it for Troy. Do it for yourself and the career you want. Do it for me. Do it for your mother. Your beautiful, dead mother."

I hated what he was doing to me! "What has she got to do with this?" I screamed, terribly angry that he would have the bad taste to bring her up at a time like this.

"Everything . . ." and his voice was growing louder, angrier, as if my passion were consuming the air and putting fire under his feet.

Twenty My Mother, My Father

.

"WHATEVER IT IS, I WANT TO KNOW!" I CRIED, TWISTING in my chair and leaning forward. Tony's tone of voice turned hard. "This isn't

easy for me, girl, not easy at all. I am trying to do you

a favor, and in so doing I am not serving myself well

at all. Now keep your silence until I've finished . . .

and then you may hate me just as I deserve." Those cold blue eyes glued my tongue. I sat