Рита Браун - The Hounds And The Fury

“Not if he shows up in April.” Walter grunted when his Welsh terrier launched into his lap.

“Means early morning four-thirty or five o’clock wake-ups. We try to knock out the walks, the individual puppy walk, too, before ten in the morning. Once we cruise out of spring into summer, you know how fast that heat comes up. Stifling.”

“Sticky hot.” He thought for a moment. “The bait Jason dangled in front of me, so you know, is he will contribute ten thousand dollars annually to the Club.”

She interrupted, something she rarely did. “Oh, if that’s not a bribe!”

“Sister, with all due respect, Jason possesses considerable resources.”

“Okay, Walter, you’re managing me, but I get it.”

He laughed. “I am. Bluntly put: Better to have Jason in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”

She exhaled through her nostrils. “You’re right, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to start creating whippers-in of people who write big checks. I just won’t.”

“Well, let’s see how it plays.”

After hanging up, Sister relayed Walter’s half of the conversation to her curious friend.

“Who knows? He might turn out all right.” Betty clearly supported Walter in this. “Since you, Shaker, Sybil, and myself might be working with Dr. Woods, let’s list his good qualities.”

A brief silence was followed by Sister saying, “Brilliant intellectually. Driven. Rich, although some of that wealth has to be inherited. We’ve never met his people, you know. He rarely mentions them except that they live in Newport Beach, California. Let’s see. Well, he’s handsome.”

“Succumbs to flattery, especially from women,” Betty added.

The two women looked at each other and laughed. “What man doesn’t?”

“I’m on empty.”

“By the time you know whether he really can make a whipper-in, you’ll have figured out how to handle him,” Betty said.

“Or he’ll have figured out how to handle me.”

“That’s easy.” Betty tossed her sponge in the bucket. “Do what you say.”

CHAPTER 8

The glow of candlelight and the free flow of champagne improved everyone’s complexions.

Betty and Bobby Franklin’s modest, pretty clapboard house sat on forty acres. Bobby had wanted to name this patch of land Mortgage Manor, but Betty prevailed, and the name remained Tricorn Farm, for once a hatter had lived here who made tricorns in the eighteenth century.

The hunt membership plus flotsam and jetsam from town and country jammed into the traditionally decorated house. A time traveler from colonial Williamsburg would have felt at home. Jennifer and Sari, after dutifully greeting guests, sped away to a party where the median age was twenty. At the Franklins’ the median age had to be forty, which for two girls in their freshman year at Colby College might as well have been one hundred and ten.

While the Franklins’ daughter and Sari might have had no need of candlelight’s soft glow, it added to Sister Jane’s natural radiance. The soft glow didn’t hurt Tedi and Edward Bancroft, either.

It most certainly didn’t hurt Frederika Thomas, whose creamy cleavage pulsated in the light from the fireplaces, the candles flickering in the two-hundred-fifty-year-old chandeliers. Freddie’s bosom, much admired, rose and fell at a pace she controlled. The more they heaved, the more she sought to impress upon the gentleman (it was usually a gentleman) with whom she spoke that she was deeply impressed with his conversation. Perhaps, given the height of the heave, she might even be sexually interested. When Freddie discovered the power of her mammary glands, she made certain to wear low-cut dresses or blouses. A snug cashmere turtleneck could be worn to good effect as well. Freddie had mastered this technique by eighteen. At thirty-four she had perfected it.

Speaking with Sister, a respectable 38C, which suited her six-foot frame, Freddie kept her glories at a moderate pace with the chat. Freddie admired Sister but had never thought of seducing her. Good thing, because Sister would have laughed herself silly.

“Poor Marty.” Freddie’s doe eyes widened further. “You just know she’s dying to come. This is the party. Anyone not invited to the Franklins’ winds up at the country club, I suppose. Well, at least Marty will be able to wear her major jewels. Crawford’s no cheapskate.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sister saw Iffy in her motorized metal wheelchair festooned with party lights and sparklers, which Iffy intended to set off at midnight. “Marty needs a scooter like Iffy’s. I’m surprised those rubies and diamonds don’t bend her double.”

“I’d kill for those rubies and diamonds.”

“You’d have to.”

Freddie, possessed of a good sense of humor, laughed at Sister’s good-natured jibe. “Good as he is that way, Crawford’s a brute to keep her from her friends.”

“Once a man takes a position publicly, he rarely backs down or seeks a compromise. It’s a particular failing of the gender, I’m afraid, and Crawford is more pigheaded than most.”

“You don’t think women can be stubborn?”

“I do.” Sister’s silver hair gleamed in the light. “But with great effort, especially from friends, most women can be brought around to seek a compromise. Maybe I’m making too much of it. I’m upset with Crawford, obviously, and I adore Marty. I miss her already. She was the most P.C. person in the hunt, and even though I often thought she was to the left of Pluto she made me think.”

Jason Woods, intent in conversation with Walter, turned his head. Both Freddie and Sister noticed his classic profile simultaneously.

“Divine.”

“I’d have to agree.” Sister smiled. “But surely you’ve met him.”

“In passing. There’s never been enough time to talk, and I was usually stuck with my tick of an ex-boyfriend.”

“Jason seems to have a refreshingly low opinion of monogamy,” Sister remarked.

“These days so do I.” Freddie laughed.

If a male stranger had beheld these two women together, he would have first fixed his gaze on Freddie. At thirty-four, lithe and voluptuous, she’d send the blood south. Eventually his eyes would shift to Sister. Standing there, completely unself-conscious, the older woman burst with raw animal energy. Maybe his blood wouldn’t head south, although it would have when she was younger, but even a man half her age would be drawn to her. The energy would pull him—and it pulled women, too, in a different manner.

Some creatures possess this magnetism. Secretariat had it. Archie, Sister’s late anchor hound, had it. You just had to look at him, the way you had to look at Sister.

Freddie wanted to be like Sister, but she was too concerned with her effect on others. Beautiful as she was, this made her vulnerable. She needed praise to feel feminine, to feel good. Sister woke up in the morning feeling good. If people liked her, fine. If they didn’t, well, there were six billion people on earth. There ought to be someone out there they liked.

“I heard your parting with Mick was stormy.”

Freddie pursed her lips. “I vented to all my girlfriends, and now I’m ashamed of myself. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

The wind rattled the windowpanes. A downdraft sent spark showers flying up in the fireplace and glowing on the firescreens.

Jason made his way to the two women.

“Ladies.”

“Jason, you’ve met Freddie Thomas before, I believe.”

“That has been my pleasure, but”—he inclined his head toward the lovely woman—“she was always guarded by a two-toed sloth.”

Freddie and Sister burst out laughing.

“You haven’t been out hunting,” Jason remarked.