Рита Браун: The Tell-Tale Horse

Two incredibly expensive facelifts over the decades did give Ilona a youthful appearance. Looks mattered to her perhaps more than to most women. She dieted with pathological precision, exercised religiously, and, to her great credit, hunted with abandon with Jefferson Hunt.

Turning her light blue eyes to Marion, Ilona flashed her own false smile. “Those marvelous earrings set off your thick hair. I still can’t believe you haven’t started to color your tresses, darlin’. Your natural sorrel color drove men wild. It’s harder to have that effect when one fades, so to speak. Not that you could fade, darlin’.”

“Your taste is impeccable, Ilona. Cristal.” Marion sidestepped the backhanded compliment.

“Master.” Ilona beamed at Sister.

“The rest of us get older. You get younger. You must have a painting in your attic.” Sister was alluding to that novel of psychological insight, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“You flatter me.”

“Someone has to.” Marion fired a shot across the bow, enjoying Ilona’s struggle to keep her false bonhomie.

A flicker, then a cold reply came from lips shining with fresh lipstick. “Ramsey does nicely on that account.” She opened her arms to the table as the cork popped. “Enjoy your bubbly, and thank you, Masters Fendley, thank you.”

She slid from their table to the next, making her rounds.

“Guess she didn’t like your ball.” Marion arched an eyebrow.

“Balls.” Sister was fed up with Ilona, who showed up at meets behaving like the fashion police.

“Balls, said the queen. If I had two, I’d be king. If I had four I’d be a pinball machine.” Bill poured the champagne into flutes the waiter brought.

They laughed at the old chestnut, touching glasses.

Joyce leaned toward Marion. “She will never forgive you.”

“Balls.” Marion echoed Sister, causing more laughter.

“Speaking of balls, Ramsey operates on the use-them-or-lose-them principle.” Bill was in good form tonight, his broad smile accenting a strong masculine face.

Gray touched glasses again. “True enough, but if a man has taste and is fortunate enough to win the hand of the right woman, best to use them in one location.”

“My philosophy exactly.” Bill grinned.

“It was a good thing you said that, honey.” Joyce smiled like the Cheshire cat.

“Here’s what sets my teeth on edge.” Marion delighted in the sensation of exquisite champagne sliding down her throat. “My affair—brief, mind you, brief—occurred before Ilona married Ramsey. Twenty-five years ago! Get over it, lady!”

“Then what would she do? Ilona is loyal to her tragedies—intensely loyal, since they’re so small and she’s so spoiled.” Sister, among dear friends, could speak her mind. “But she is also loyal to her friends. She’s remained devoted to Cabel Harper, so loyalty obviously cuts both ways.”

Jeanne, in her thirties, the youngest at the table, looked at her husband, John, and asked, “Is this a generation thing? No one forgets anything?”

“Forget? Hell. They make half the stuff up to be important. A lot of people just love to suffer,” Bill said to his daughter, while John laughed.

“Perhaps the example of the two Marys at the foot of the cross inspired them.” Gray’s mustache twitched upward.

“I say give up the cross. Other people need the wood.” Sister laughed, then stopped abruptly, whispering, “Here comes my Mary. Deliver me!”

“Too late.”

Her Mary was Venita Cabel Harper, still hovering at forty-two although that age had been current for the last ten years.

Given the social catchet of Jefferson Hunt, she’d die before she’d resign but, like Ilona, Cabel had never forgiven Sister for a fling with Clayton Harper, her husband some eight years her senior. Sister and Clayton both considered it harmless, since it couldn’t last, and they knew it.

Because Clayton was married, Sister was cast as the evil vixen, and not just in Cabel’s mind either. Sex was Sister’s Achilles’ heel. Most times she could discipline herself, but every now and then she broke bad.

This being Virginia, discretion only went so far. Sooner or later you were found out. Some busybody, gender irrelevant, was forever scanning the horizon for gossip. But Sister had had ample time to repent her earlier indiscretions.

“Thank you for a lovely evening, Joyce…Bill. Clayton and I will take our leave.” Cabel nodded pleasantly to Sister. “Beautiful gown, Master.” The joke was that Cabel never rode with Clayton, given his fondness for drink. She’d make sure they left together, but she would drive her own car.

“You look splendid as always, Cabel.”

“See you in the hunt field.”

As the frosted-blonde lady returned to her table to pick up her purse and her husband, Sister said sarcastically, “Venita happens to be an unusual, even lovely name. But her grandmother was a Cabell. Have you ever known a Virginian, even if related to that family only by once delivering flour to them, who can resist parading the name front and center?”

Joyce considered this. “Come to think of it, no.”

“Even the Randolphs don’t do that. They allow you to discover their grandeur over time.” Bill, like most state history buffs, appreciated the many advancements both Cabells and Randolphs had bequeathed to the state by their foresight and energy.

The surname Cabell contains two l ’s but Cabel’s mother, choosing it as her daughter’s middle name, dropped one of them. Or so she said. Her enemies said she couldn’t spell.

“You know what I am.” Gray smiled conspiratorially.

“Famous for horsemen, beautiful women, a piercing mind, and a fondness for liquid refreshment.” Joyce diplomatically refrained from saying the Lorillards produced drunks generation after generation.

“True,” Gray agreed.

Marion’s naturally high spirits rose with the champagne. “Well, the Maggiolos are Johnny-come-latelies on the paternal side. They came from Genoa. Mother’s family arrived on the May-flower . Theirs is an interesting match. Dad moved us to Fauquier County in the sixties. Glad he did.”

“We’re lucky to have you. We WASPs can be”—Sister searched for the right word—“too restrained.”

“Is it re strained or con strained?” asked Joyce, WASP herself.

“Constipated,” Bill interjected.

“Ah, still too restrained.” Gray laughed and then shrugged. “I should know. I’m a black WASP.”

It sounded contradictory in that WASP, of course, stands for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but Gray had absorbed the Lorillard culture minus the color. What he had that the others did not were the stories of his great-grandmother’s grandmother and grandfather, stories from another continent handed down along with a very large helping of grit.

“Retreating.” Marion noted that Cabel, her arm through that of the unsteady Clayton, appeared to be led out the door, the time being ten thirty. Actually, Cabel was leading him.

“It’s hard to believe, but once upon a time Clayton was gorgeous,” Sister mused.

“Too much lasagna.” Marion giggled.

“Do you think Cabel knows how to make lasagna?” Sister found this incongruous.

“Why not? She helped Clayton build his business. He had the idea; she had the energy. She can learn to do anything.”

Clayton installed unbelievably expensive sound and telephone systems in cars and trucks. The punch numbers for the radio, like a keyboard, also worked for the phone. A tiny speaker above the rearview mirror allowed the driver to talk while keeping both hands on the wheel.

“Exactly when did you favor Clayton with your person?” Bill put it delicately, knowing Sister wouldn’t be angry with him.