Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

"Be smart and do all that you can to keep Fanny out of your life," Tom had warned in his last letter. "I'd come if I could, really I would, but I'm snowed under trying to pass my own exams, and I still have to help out Pa. Forgive me, and know that I am with you in thoughts."

After the graduation party, we drove back to Farthinggale Manor. Parked before the front door was a white Jaguar that Tony had ordered customdesigned for me. "It's for that day when you drive back to Winnerrow. If your clothes and jewelry don't impress them, this car certainly should."

It was a fabulous car, all my graduation gifts were fabulous. But oddly, now that I was no longer a student, I had so much time on my hands I didn't know what to do with myself. I had reached my goal. I could become, if I so wished, another Miss Marianne Deale. Now I wasn't sure that was what I wanted. A restlessness grew within me that summer, a terrible itchiness that kept me awake at night, and made me more than a little irritable. "Take a drive off on your own," suggested Tony. "That's what I used to do when I was your age and unable to find peace within myself."

However, even a trip up the coast to Maine, where I stayed ten days in a fishing village, didn't put my itchy feet at rest. There was something I had to do. Something important I had to do.

This time, as I returned from my vacation and drove once again under the ornate gates of

Farthinggale Manor, I came again as a stranger, with new eyes, to that long, curving road that led to that huge house of enchantment.

It was just the same. Just as impressive, frightening, and beautiful. And I could have been sixteen again for all the changes I saw. For some intuition was whispering loudly that Troy might be here. Tony had said he couldn't stay away forever.

My heartbeats quickened; my soul seemed to wake up and stretch before it took a deep breath and reached again for the love it had found in this house. I could almost see Troy, feel Troy, sense Troy somewhere near. For long moments I just sat and inhaled the special, flower-scented air of Farthinggale Manor, before I stepped out and approached the high stone portico.

Curtis responded to my impatient jabbing at the doorbell, smiling warmly when he saw who it was. "It's so good to see you again, Miss Heaven," he said in his low, cultivated voice. "Mr. Tatterton is strolling on the beach, but your grandmother is in her suite."

Jillian was shut away in her rooms in that glorious mansion that had again retreated into silence almost as deep and thick as a grave.

She sat as I'd seen her sit many times before when she was less than happy with herself, crosslegged on her ivory sofa, wearing another of those loose-fitting ivory floats that was trimmed this time with peach lace.

The sound of the door opening and closing as I entered made soft clicking noises that seemed to wake her from some deep meditation. The spread of solitaire cards on the coffee table before her was precise, even, the cards in her hands held loosely, forgotten. Her unfocused blue eyes turned to gaze at me almost sightlessly. As Jillian stared at me, almost with fright, I tried to smile. If my appearance had shocked her, hers shocked me even more.

Her complexion now was cracked porcelain, unhealthily white. And as she stared at me, I was appalled at the disorientation in her eyes, at the way she wrung her pale hands, at the way her hair hung about her face, unclean and uncared for.

Only as I turned away so she wouldn't see my distress did I see sitting in a distant corner, quietly making lace, a woman in a nurse's white uniform. She looked up to smile my way. "My name is Martha Goodman," she informed me. "I am very happy to meet you, Miss Casteel. Mr. Tatterton told me that you were due back any day."

"Where is Mr. Tatterton?" I asked, directing my question to her.

"Why, he's off prowling on the seashore," she answered in a very thin, small voice, as if she didn't want Jillian's attention drawn to her presence in the room. She stood up to point the direction, and I turned to leave.

Jillian jumped to her bare feet and began to twirl around and around, making the wide skirt of her garment flare out. "Leigh," she called in a lilting, childish voice, "say hello to Cleave for me when you see him next! Tell him sometimes I am almost sorry I left him for Tony. Tony doesn't love me. Nobody has ever loved me, not ever enough. Not even you. You love Cleave better, you always have . . . but I don't care. I really don't care. You are so very much like him, nothing at all like me except in appearance. Leigh, why do you stare at me like that? Why is it you always have to take everything so damned seriously!"

My breasts rose and fell in heavy gasps. I backed out of the room; her insane laughter followed, shivering the air.

When finally I reached the door, I couldn't resist taking one more glance at her; I saw her framed before her arching bay windows, the sunlight pouring through her hair, silhouetting her slender form through the transparent film of her long, loose dress. She was old, and paradoxically she was young; she was beautiful and she was grotesque; but more than anything, she was insane, and she was pitiful.

And I walked away knowing I intended never to see her again.

On the rocky shore of the beach I strolled where Troy had never wanted to walk at my side, so afraid he'd been of the sea and its portent. There were rocks and huge boulders feet higher than I was, and walking here wasn't easy. At that time I, too, had been terrified of the sea with its relentlessly pounding surf, its towering high waves that crashed on the shore and made of human time but a pinch of sand.

Bits of gravel slipped into my shoes, and soon I took them off and ran to catch up with Tony. I planned to stay only an hour or so. For I had a destination in mind now.

Rounding a curve in the beach, I came upon him suddenly. He was standing on a high pile of boulders, staring out over the sea, and it was with some difficulty that I climbed to stand beside him. I told him what I planned to do.

"So you will return to Winnerrow," he said dully, without turning his head. "I have always known you would go back to those godforsaken mountains that you should hate so much you should never want to see again."

"They are part of me," I replied, brushing dirt from my feet and legs. "I always intended to go back and teach there, in the same school where Miss Deale used to teach Tom and me. There aren't many teachers who want that poverty area, so they'll take me, and I'll have my chance to carry on the tradition started by Miss Deale. My grandpa Toby is expecting me to stay with him while I teach. And if you still want to see me, I'll spend some time here with you. But I don't want to see Jillian again, ever again."

"Heaven," Tony began, and then he stopped and just stared at me with so much pain in his eyes. I tried to deny the twinge of pity I felt when I noticed the hollows under his eyes, and the dark shadows. He was thinner, less than elegantly dressed. His trousers, which had been so sharply creased before, had no creases at all. It was obvious the best years of Townsend Anthony Tatterton were behind him now.

He sighed before he asked, "You didn't read about it in the newspapers?"

"Read about what?"

He sighed deep and long, still staring out to sea. "As you know, Troy has been flitting about the world. Last week, he came home. He seem

ed to know you were gone."