Danielle Steel - The long road home

Gabriella could hear the music playing louder now. There was dancing at the far end of their huge living room, and the dining room and library and living room were full of people. She could hear them talking and laughing, and she waited for a long time, hoping to see Marianne again, but she never returned, and Gabriella knew she had no right to expect it. She had probably forgotten. Gabriella was still sitting there, hoping for a last glimpse of her, when her mother suddenly swept through the hallway downstairs, looking for something, and instantly sensed Gabriella's presence. Without hesitating for a moment, she glanced up at the chandelier, and then beyond it, to the top of the stairs, where Gabriella was sitting in her old pink nightgown. Her breath caught instantly, and she leaped to her bare feet and moved backward, falling over the first step, and landing with a hard thump on her thin bottom. And the look on her mother's face told her instantly what was coming.

Without a sound or a word, Eloise came up the stairs, as though on winged feet, a messenger from the devil. She was wearing a tight black satin gown, which revealed her spectacular figure and shone like her black hair, pulled back in a tight bun. She was wearing long diamond dangling earrings, and an elaborate diamond necklace. But just as Marianne's gown and jewels seemed to soften her, to surround her in an aura of light and gentleness, what her mother wore seemed to accentuate her harshness, and made her look truly scary.

“What are you doing here?” She spat out the words in whispered venom. “I told you not to leave your room.”

“I'm sorry, I just…” There was no excuse for what she had done. Even less for having lured Marianne Marks up to see her… or worse yet, trying on her tiara… If her mother had known that… but fortunately, she didn't.

“Don't lie to me, Gabriella,” her mother said, grabbing her arm so tightly it instantly stopped the circulation, and almost as quickly made it tingle. “Don't say a word!” she said through clenched teeth as she dragged her down the hall, unseen by the people enjoying her hospitality downstairs. Had any of them seen what was happening, they would have been shocked into silence. And as though she knew that, she continued in a poisonous whisper to Gabriella, “Don't make a sound, you little monster… or I'll rip your arm off.” And Gabriella knew with absolute certainty that she would have. She didn't doubt it for a moment. At seven, she had learned many valuable lessons about her mother, and she knew that whatever tortures she promised, she generally delivered. That was one thing about Eloise you could always count on.

Gabriella's feet were literally lifted off the ground, as her mother half carried her to her room, with the rest of her body dangling as she tried to run along beside her mother, so as not to annoy her further. The door was still open, and she threw Gabriella inside, who fell with a sharp thud to the ground, twisting her ankle, but she knew better than to make a sound as she lay on the floor in the darkness.

“Now you stay in there! Do you understand? I don't want to see you out of this room again, is that clear? If you disobey me this time, Gabriella, I promise you, you'll regret it. No one wants to see you out there… no one likes you… no one cares about you sitting at the top of the stairs like some poor pathetic little orphan. You're just a child, you belong in your room, where no one has to see you. Do you hear me?” There was silence from where Gabriella lay, crying silently in the darkness from the pain in her ankle and her arm, but she was too wise and too proud to complain about them to her mother. “Answer me!” The voice sawed into the darkness and Gabriella was afraid her mother would approach her and deliver her message even more succinctly.

“I'm sorry, Mommy!” she whispered.

“Stop whining. Go to bed where you belong!” Eloise said, and slammed the door. She was still scowling over the incident as she hurried back to the stairs, and then as she descended them hurriedly, her face seemed to transform, and the memory of Gabriella and what she had done to her seemed to vanish entirely as she reached the hallway. Three of her guests were standing there, putting on their coats, and she kissed each of them warmly as they left, and then returned to the drawing room to chat and dance with the others. It was as though Gabriella had never existed. And to her, she didn't. Gabriella meant nothing to her.

Marianne Marks said to give Gabriella her love as she made her exit. “I promised to go up and visit her before I left, but she must be asleep by now,” she said with regret as the child's mother frowned and looked startled.

“I should hope so!” she said sternly. “Did you see her tonight?” she asked Marianne, almost vaguely, seeming surprised but not particularly concerned about it.

“I did,” the pretty woman confessed sheepishly, forgetting what Gabriella had said about not being allowed to see the guests, and not giving it much importance. Who could get angry at an angel like Gabriella? But there were far too many things Marianne did not know about the child's mother. “She's so adorable. She was sitting at the top of the stairs when we arrived, in the sweetest little pink nightgown. I ran upstairs to give her a kiss, and we chatted for a few minutes.”

“I'm sorry,” Eloise said, looking mildly annoyed. “She shouldn't have done that.” She said it apologetically, as though Gabriella had done something appalling to offend them, and in Eloise's eyes she had. She had made her presence known, which was an unpardonable sin to her mother, but Marianne Marks couldn't have known that.

“It was my fault. I'm afraid I couldn't resist her, with those huge eyes. She wanted to see my tiara.”

“I hope you didn't let her touch it.” Something in Eloise's eyes told Marianne not to say more, and as they left the Harrison house that night, Marianne said something about it to Robert.

“She's awfully hard on that child, don't you think, Bob? She acted as though she would have stolen my tiara, if I'd let her.”

“She may just be very old-fashioned about children, she was probably afraid Gabriella had annoyed you.”

“How could she annoy me?” Marianne said innocently as they drove home behind their chauffeur. “She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen… so serious, and so pretty. She has the saddest eyes…” And then, wistfully, “I wish we had a little girl like her.”

“I know,” he said, patting her hand, and glancing away from the disappointment in his wife's eyes. He knew what it meant to her that in nine years of marriage they had never been able to have children. But it was something they both had to accept now.

“She's hard on John too,” Marianne volunteered after a few moments of silence, thinking of the children they would never have, and the pretty little girl she had talked to that evening.

“Who?” Robert's mind was on other things by then. He'd had a busy day at the office, and was already thinking ahead to the next one. He had dismissed the Harrisons from his mind, and his wife's comments about their daughter.

“Eloise.” Marianne brought him back to the evening at hand, and he nodded. “John danced with that English girl Prince Orlovsky brought several times, and I thought Eloise looked as though she were about to kill him.”

Robert Marks smiled at his wife's assessment of the situation. “And I suppose you would have been fine if I'd danced with her?” He raised an eyebrow, and his wife laughed at him. “The woman scarcely had any clothes on.” She'd been wearing a flesh-colored satin gown that clung to her like skin, and left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She'd been quite spectacular and John Harrison had clearly found her very entertaining. Who hadn't?