She was a luscious New York City redhead with expensive tastes ... and a list of men eager to pay her bills. She used sex for a business, and love tor laughs.
One day, for the spice of variety, she traveled back to the little Southern town where she'd grown up. She had a score to settle there ... with the man who was now engaged to her dearest friend.
Presenting ... Gayle Barker, a gal with a new twist to "The Oldest Profession in the World"
This paperback is a complete and unabridged reprint of the original edition of Women of the Night, and is published by special arrangement with the author.
CHAPTER ONE
It was, of course, taking a big chance. A gamble. But either way was a gamble, and she might as well move boldly. She was about to lose Harlan and knew it; he was becoming bored with her. Six months as his mistress, when he had lavished all sorts of expensive luxuries on her, including the apartment and charge accounts and a maid; six months in which his demands on her had been almost too much. And then a gradual lessening of his interest until now he spent only an occasional night with her. And, being wise in the ways of men with women who had only the claims of passion upon them, Gayle knew that it would be but a short time before he would drop her entirely.
Her lovely mouth hardened a little and she crushed out her cigarette as she read the letter again. The expensively heavy square cream-colored envelope, mixed in with her usual mail that was made up usually of bills and a few circulars, had startled her when she had first discovered it. The postmark of the small Southern city where she had been born and had lived until she was fifteen startled her even more.
With a flick of her long, beautifully kept scarlet nails, she had ripped open the envelope and read the letter with eyes that had widened incredulously.
"Well, I'll be damned!" she said softly.
Sue Leslie, who had been her "best friend" in Claresville, was writing to ask her to be maid of honor at her wedding! Sue, who was the daughter of Claresville's wealthiest and most important citizen, wanted her, Gayle Randolph, to be a part of Claresville's most fashionable wedding!
Of course, Gayle, I know how busy and important you are, Sue had written in her eager, splashing handwriting. Being one of New York's busiest and most successful models. ... Golly, what a glamorous and exciting life you must live! But after all, remember when we were kids, we always promised, each other we'd always be friends? And that no matter where you went (I knew, even then, I'd always be a small town "stick-in-the-mud" just as I always knew a girl as beautiful as you are would be somebody important and maybe travel to all sorts of exciting places) you would be my maid of honor; and I'd be yours! Well, darling, this is it! Clyde is just the grandest, the most wonderful person-you'll simply love him, I know. And oh, darling, I do so want you! Please, please say you'll come-at least two weeks before THE date, so you can "get in" on all the festivities being planned for us! We'll have such fun, darling-I promise not to let you get bored....
Gayle chuckled drily, her mouth a thin, contemptuous twist.
Bored! To go back to Claresville, with the aura of being a famous and successful model in New York! An authentic glamour-gal! To be able to kick in the teeth some of the old biddies who had always foretold that she would come to some bad end because she was the prettiest girl in town and most definitely from the wrong side of the tracks!
She got up suddenly and went to the telephone.
"Mr. Kramer, please," she told the receptionist in Harlan's office. "It's a personal call."
And when Harlan said curtly, "Yes?" Gayle said quietly, "Sorry I had to call you at the office....
"I've warned you not to...."
"I know, but I just wanted you to know that I'm going out of town for two or three weeks."
There was the briefest moment of silence and then he spoke again and this time there was a faint edge of curiosity, almost of interest in his curt voice.
"So?"
"So I thought you just possibly might like to know, in case you cared to drop in or to call me, and I wasn't here," she told him coolly.
"I'll try to make it by five o'clock," he told her shortly.
"Suit yourself. My train leaves at nine-five," she answered just as shortly and dropped the telephone receiver into its cradle.
She stood for a moment, her hand still on the phone, looking down at it, her mouth twisted. The louse had some other dame on the hook, of course; he was about to drop Gayle. If she went out of town for awhile, he might just possibly discover that he preferred her to the newcomer. On the other hand, she admitted to herself, it was just as likely that he might find he was glad to be rid of her. That was the chance she had to take. But it wasn't really much of a chance, after all; for if she didn't go, she would lose him anyway.
So what the hell if she did? There were plenty of other men who liked luscious redheads with an almost masculine capacity for passion; redheads who had used their brains to make themselves alluring and satisfying in every way. Oh, it might be hard to find one who was as well-heeled financially as Harlan. As his mistress she enjoyed many luxuries that other men lacking his inherited wealth couldn't supply so casually; but that was the hell about this life of so-called "easy virtue." You could easily go down in the scale, but it was hard to go up. You could descend from a man like Harlan into the eagerly receptive arms of a man a step farther down the ladder, and from him a step, farther down until you could easily wind up in a house down on the docks somewhere. The thought brought a sick, brackish taste to her mouth and she shuddered away from it. That was the hell of having brains enough to see where you were going; if you took things easy, hit the bottle when the going got tough, never looked beyond the immediate present-well, it was gals like that that wound up on the docks, available to any drunken roustabout with two bucks to spend! But she was being smart; she was working Harlan for every dime she could get her hands on and salting it away; when she could no longer count on being a well and carefully "kept woman" she would have a small nest-egg-and that, too, wasn't anything too pleasant to count on. A small nest-egg was pretty small potatoes compared to the ease and luxury and extravagance she had known as Harlan's mistress; and, before him, the old dodo whose memory made her flesh creep; the old man so rich, so debased that he no longer was capable of enjoying the normal pleasures-but he had been good for a nice little bunch of stocks and bonds tucked carefully away in a safety deposit vault before the evils of age and his manner of living had caught up with him and he had been carted off by his avid-eyed, fortune hungry relatives to the family plot in the cemetery.
Going carefully through her extensive and elaborate wardrobe, selecting the things she would take with her to Claresville, her busy mind worked with its accustomed machine-like precision.
The thought of marriage had not crossed her mind, or been given any serious consideration since the new night clerk at Claresville Hotel had seduced her, a few days after her fifteenth birthday, with the promise of marriage. She had grown up painfully and with ugly sadness then; and she had displayed, even then, the beginning of her presently acute mind, by blackmailing him into financing her departure from Claresville. And she had, of course, never been back.
But perhaps it was the thought-one that made her mouth twist with wry mirth-of being "maid of honor" at a fashionable wedding that brought the thought of marriage to her mind. Folding very carefully an exquisitely sheer and becoming nile-green chiffon negligee, her busy hands paused, and for a moment she stared straight ahead of her, thinking hard.
It was just barely possible, she told herself, that if she were very prim and proper, very much on her good behavior, and careful to make the most of her undeniable looks and allure, that she could put it over. The romantic atmosphere that surrounds a wedding-especially in a town like Claresville-might breed enough glamour for her to snag herself a man on an at least a semi-permanent basis. That old-fashioned stuff about marriage being a life sentence was not for her. But it might be fun, if she could manage to snatch herself a man young, good-looking, virile-she gave herself a slightly modified horse laugh. Who the hefi was she to believe in fairy tales? A young, good-looking man? Hell, if he were ninety and had one foot in the grave, and had enough money she'd leap at the idea of marrying him. The older the better, if he were rich enough, because she'd have to endure him for a much shorter time; and then as a rich and lovely widow-wow!
When, at five-thirty she heard Harlan's key in the lock, she was dressed and waiting for him, looking cool and lovely and very composed in a crisply tailored black suit with a blouse of cream-colored crepe, a jewelled pin in the lapel of the suit her only adornment. Above the suit, her skin was camellia-like, her hair a ruddy cap of red-gold brushed sleekly to her head, and tucked into a big knot at the back.
Harlan stared at her, a little startled. He was more accustomed to her in the frilly, frothy extravagances of lace and chiffon, her hair loose in its soft, deep natural waves, than in this crisply tailored, business-like garb.
His favorite cocktails were ready.
The apartment was shining and tidy, although two weeks ago when her very efficient and cynically wise-eyed maid had quit, Harlan suggested that she might get along very nicely without a maid for awhile, and she had known that it was the first sign of his lessening interest in her and her hands had clenched a little but she had offered no protest.
"Well, so you're really going on a little trip-you look ready to leap into a taxi at the drop of a hat!" he said not too agreeably.
Gayle poured herself a cocktail and sipped it slowly.
"I have to attend to a few little things before train time," she told him casually.
He eyed her sharply.
"Going with anybody I know?" he asked casually, though the look in his eyes was far from casual.
Gayle widened her eyes and laughed a little.
"Oh, for Pete's sake," she laughed in airy dismissal.
Harlan's dark, muddy-looking eyes half-hidden in his long, over-plump face narrowed a little.
"Don't try to tell me you're not walking out on me for some other guy," he growled and swallowed his cocktail at a gulp.
There were storm signals in her smoky, almost silver-gray eyes.
"I'm not trying to tell you a damned thing, except that I am going back to my old home town to be maid of honor at a wedding," she snapped.
Harlan stared at her as though he could not quite believe his ears.
"Maid of honor?" he repeated incredulously, and gave a bark of unpleasant, derisive laughter. "You? A shameless hussy like you-maid of honor?"
She set her teeth hard against the rising tide of her anger.
"Go ahead and laugh, damn you-" she said through her teeth.
"Thanks, I will," said Harlan mockingly. "You've given me a hell of a lot, I admit, for which I am grateful-naturally! But a good hearty laugh is not among the other things, so thanks!"
But despite his obvious and unpleasant amusement, she saw that there was just a faint spark of renewed interest in his eyes. He did not look nearly so bored, and her heart gave a tiny leap. Maybe, after all, the gamble was going to pay off!
"How long will you be gone?" he asked after a moment.
"I-don't quite know," she admitted deliberately and obviously evasive. "I'm-not quite sure that I will be back."
His eyes narrowed again and the dark circles beneath them seemed to deepen their muddy gleam.
"Oh-you think there may be some good pickin's back in the old home town?" he drawled, and glanced about the apartment "I suppose, then, you won't want me to renew the lease on this place."
Her hands tightened a little, and she made her voice steady.
"Oh-it's not a bad little dump-maybe your next girl friend might like it," she suggested drily. He looked at her sharply.
"I-hardly think so," he told her grimly. "No, I'd better just let the lease go-if you're not back by the end of the month. So-keep that in mind, won't you?"
"I'll try to," she told him coolly, and stood up, her eyes cold.
He stood up, too, measuring her with a long, calculating glance.
"You're a damned good-looking gal, Gayle-damned shame you have brains, as well. Brains are bad for a woman in your-shall we call it profession?"
"Yes, why don't we?" she flashed.
"Could be," he agreed and moved his fat shoulders impatiently. "Well-have fun, and don't do anything I wouldn't do. Maid of honor! If that isn't the damnedest thing!"
He went out, his fat shoulders shaking with silent laughter, and Gayle stood for a long, tense moment, drawn to her full height, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, her teeth sunk hard in her lower hp to control her blind fury, and keep back the screaming rage that she wanted to hurl at him as though the words had been stones.
CHAPTER TWO
The man got on the train at Philadelphia, and Gayle quickened with interest. In that conglomerate mass already on the train, and which she had dismissed contemptuously from her attention the moment she had glanced around the club car, this man stood out. Tall, broad of shoulder, lean of flank in the traditional movie star manner, his brown suit was smoothly tailored of expensive material and emphasized his deep golden tan. She told herself, as a hurrying waiter provided him with a highball, that he was no doubt the type of important, wealthy executive who got his sun tan from a lamp, and there was little doubt that he had a very good opinion of his looks and his masculine charm But she had to admit that he would have been much less than human if he hadn't For he was one of the most attractive men she had ever seen and the very sight of him lounging so completely at ease across from her made her pulses jig a little.
When he had sampled his drink, nodded approval at the waiter and relaxed, his eyes encouraged Gayle across the aisle. She flushed a little to be caught staring at him like a wide-eyed school girl and her eyes chilled and she tilted her chin just a little.
For a moment the man sat where he was, his eyes taking her in with a lively and deepening appreciation, before suddenly he stood up and crossed to her, saying eagerly, "Why, Mrs. McGillicuddy! Fancy meeting you here like this! I'm delighted-delighted! How are all the little McGillicuddys? Over the measles, I do hope-or else you wouldn't be traveling alone-or would you?"
The last in a soft murmur that reached no further than her ears as he took the seat beside her and beamed at her as though they had been devoted friends of many years standing.
For a moment Gayle hesitated, but several people around them had glanced curiously at her, when the stranger had greeted her with such evidence of delight, and now she laughed a little and let her eyes twinkle.
"The children are fine, thank you Mr. Murgatroyd-" she said sweetly. "And how are Mrs. Murgatroyd and the twins these days?"
"She packed them up and went home to her mother," mourned the man. "Sad-very sad. But I always believed in giving her what she wanted-whether it was twins or a round-trip ticket home."
"Always the perfect husband!" said Gayle sweetly.
"I try to be," he said modestly, his eyes twinkling. Very dark brown eyes, so dark as to seem in that handsome, sun-tanned face almost black, and his hair was" thick, black and straight. Damn it, he was attractive and her heart was beating like a silly fool. "I'm sure good old Mac must be an equally devoted helpmeet-good old Mac! No doubt he is staying at home with the kids-all five of them-while you take a vacation!"
Gayle bristled a little and lowered her voice.
"Now, honestly," she pouted a little, "do I look like the mother of five children?"
The man brought his head closer so that his lips were so near her hair that the breath of his speaking ruffled the small curls above her ear.
"You look like the mother of all the delights the most demanding man could ever hope to find rolled up in one luscious, alluring female!" he told her very softly.
His eyes emphasized the words, and said things that as yet he dared not say. Gayle drew a deep, sharp breath and tried hard to look haughty and forbidding but it was such a poor effort that the man grinned a little, and once more he spoke so softly that no one even inches away could have heard.
"Don't fight it, lovely-it's too wonderful to fight! You've just about knocked me off my pins-and somehow I love it!"
Gayle made a flying clutch at some small measure of her cool composure, and managed a faint, amused smile.
"Oh, really now-isn't that rushing pretty fast even in this atomic age?" she derided mockingly.
"In this atomic age, my lovely, a fellow rushes fast and grabs what he can-for fear his chance at it won't come again!" he reminded her. "And when a fellow like me, sees a girl like you, and knows that you may be leaving the train at Washington, or Richmond-and that he has very little time to make time with her-he can't afford to let grass grow under his feet."
"No one could ever accuse you of that," she said drily.
"I hope not," he admitted. "I've always been the sort of fellow who knew what he wanted and who went after it with everything he had."
"Sounds a little dangerous...."
"How about some champagne?" he suggested briskly.
"And why not, indeed?"
"In my stateroom," said the man firmly.
"Oh, now, wait a minute...."
He grinned at her disarmingly.
"Want to shock the pants off the old biddies who are watching us with eyes sticking so far out they could be raked off with a stick?" he asked softly. "After all, they might believe the McGilhcuddy-Murgatroyd routine, though I doubt it; but if champagne rears its wicked head, they will probably yell for the cops to throw the wicked two of us off the train."
Gayle laughed. It wasn't very funny, she tried to tell herself; but the warming surge in her blood was not to be denied. At first she tried to argue with herself. But it had been a long time since a man had appealed to her as this man did; she knew what he wanted of her, of course; she'd have been a simple-minded fool not to have known and admitted it. But the hell of it was that she wanted it, too. Wanted it, probably, even more than he did. She had sold herself so coldly and callously that the thrill of giving herself, wildly, impulsively, crazily like this had an allure she could not resist, no matter how her usually cool brain howled in protest.
Watching her, the man's dark eyes were amused, desirous and as though he read the jumble of thoughts in her mind, he grinned suddenly.
"Sold?" he asked very softly.
Gayle looked up at him, laughing and made a little gesture.
"Why not?" she agreed coolly.
The man rose instantly and held out his hand to her and as they walked the length of the club car back to the sleepers, she felt eyes upon her; cold, censorious eyes of the dowdy, frumpy-looking women; eyes of lively interest on her, and envy upon the man beside her, from the several men they passed.
When they came to the closed door at the end of the car, the glass panel in it gave her a reflection of the man behind her. His eyes were upon her hips, and she tried hard not to wiggle them too much-just enough to whet his appetite-as they passed through the cars where long green curtains buttoned to the floor gave an entirely spacious air of privacy to those who were asleep behind them.
When they came to the car that held the man's stateroom, he went ahead of her, swung it open and stood back for her to enter ahead of him. She went in, looking quickly about her. Not a compartment, or a roomette but an entire stateroom. That meant that the tale told by his expensive tailoring was not a he, and she was pleased.
"Just a little place I call home-not gaudy, but neat and cozy," he said as he swung the door shut and she heard the lock click.
She turned swiftly, and her eyes were laughing, as she said sweetly, "I was promised champagne...."
"Who wants champagne at a time like this? Waiters barging in-" his voice was a little thick and even before he had finished, she was in his arms, and her whole body from head to foot was throbbing with an upsurging answer to his exultant, peremptory demand.
After the first hard shock of his arms about her, crushing her almost brutally close, his mouth bruising hers with its hard, demanding kiss, he raised his head and his eyes were blazing with passion, his jaw hard and set.
"What a woman!" he said huskily. "Damn it, kissing you is like touching a live electric wire-you're-you're-incredible."
His hands fumbled with her, and in a matter of seconds she stepped free of him and stood before him, exquisite, rose-ivory, superbly moulded as any statue turned out by an artist in love.
"You see? As simple as all that," she told him lightly, her body trembling with delicious anticipation before its inevitable surrender to his male demand.
Her voice was smothered in laughter as his arms caught her, and her supple, softly moulded body yielded avidly to the demanding muscular strength of his. Her mind swam with delight. She had forgotten, in the years of selling her body to the highest bidder on short term leases, what a glorious, what a perfect thing passion given and fulfilled to the uttermost peak could be. Two people in perfect harmony; one to demand, one to take; one to yield, one to conquer-the perfect, the exquisite rhythm of it was beyond description, beyond anything except almost awed realization.
When it ended at last in a perfect crisis, she lay limp and satiated with bliss, looking up at him as he relaxed beside her, propped up on one elbow, his eyes feasting on her beauty, a gentle finger tracing the curve of her shoulder.
"You're-marvelous," he said huskily at last and his voice was touched with wonder. "You're-incredible."
She smiled at him, a warm lovely, wanton smile.
"I try to please," she told him gently and his arms closed so hard about her that she gasped a little with the tiny pain and arched her back a little so she could raise her head to meet the hard, bruising drive of his kiss.
"I wish-" he began impulsively, frowning a little and then caught back whatever he was going to say.
"Whatever you wish," she told him, her voice low and throbbing with healthy, earthy, unashamed passion, "if I can give it to you-it's yours."
An almost guarded look touched his eyes for a moment and he bent his head and kissed her lips and released her and stood up, reaching for a robe that hung against the door, wrapping it about himself, knotting the belt securely about his lean, hard waist.
"I wish you didn't have to go back to your own compartment and that the train would go on from now until the end of time and we could stay here like this, until we loved each other to death-and what a glorious way to die!" he told her, and now he was smiling a little, taut smile that did not disguise the ardor in his body that trembled as she touched him.
For a moment, her body throbbing with the remembered ecstasy of his passion, she clung to him, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, feeling with a shaken thrill the hard muscles of his body. Her caress was so bold, so intimate she felt him start and quiver, as his hands caught hers and pushed her a little away from him, laughing at her against the passion that blazed in his eyes.
"Naughty, naughty," he was trying hard to be flippant, but she knew that she could have him again if she persisted. But the fear that this time, so soon after his first taking of her surrender, she would not be able to thrill htm so ardently, she desisted.
"Oh, well-I suppose I may as well go home!" she yielded, laughing a little. "After all, tomorrow is another day."
"And there'll be tomorrow night-again," he teased her, and lit a cigarette and seemed to enjoy watching her as she bent a little to the mirror between the windows, to smooth her hair.
She caught her breath at the implied promise, and turned swiftly.
"Tomorrow night?" she asked eagerly.
Once more that slightly guarded look was in his eyes.
"Who knows? It must happen again, that you know as well as I do," he told her almost crisply. "After all, things like this happen to a fellow once in a lifetime, unless he has the good sense to follow up his luck! We'll discuss it at breakfast, shall we?"
He held her close and hard against him for a moment, and then he opened the door, looked out into the corridor and said in the tone of a gay conspirator, "Coast is clear! Scoot, now!"
As she passed him, he gave her a light smack and as she glanced back at him, laughing, he closed the door on her, and she went quickly along the swaying car to her own quarters. And as she locked her door and once more undressed, she stood for a long moment, drawn to her full height, her hands cupping her throbbing breasts as though in gratitude for the delight and ecstasy they had given him! She had forgotten-or had she ever known?-what madness, what exquisite delight passion could give. She had forced herself to yield her body to men whom she had loathed, but whose money provided the luxuries she had to have. And now, she was like a young girl introduced for the first time to the delights of sex; introduced by someone she found appealing and attractive and who stirred her blood to the exquisite response without which sex can be ugly and unpleasant, and, to a woman like Gayle, a disgusting bore. As a way of earning a living, the best she could say for it was that it was well-paid. But with a man like....
She gasped and her eyes widened as she realized that she did not even know his name! For a moment she was appalled; and then she laughed aloud. She had spent a couple of the most gloriously satisfying hours of her life with the man-and she didn't even know his name! At the moment that seemed hilariously funny, and she sat on the side of her berth and laughed in smothered mirth.
She would see him at breakfast and they would laugh at the perfect joke. Neither of them knew the other's name-yet they had shared an experience that she felt sure neither of them would ever forget!
CHAPTER THREE
In the morning she waited decorously in the club car for his arrival until the dining car porter came through with the last call for breakfast. And then, her eyes amused, she went along to the door behind which last night she had known such exquisite delight. He had overslept after last night-and would she twit him with that!
She knocked smartly, her mouth curved in a little teasing smile that vanished abruptly as a porter opened the door and she saw that he was cleaning the stateroom
"The-Mr. Murgatroyd-the man who was here last night...." she began, stammering a little in her shock.
"He got off at Richmond, ma'am," said the porter politely, but in his eyes she saw a cynical wisdom and wondered frantically if there was in the room any indication that a woman had shared this room last night for awhile.
"Oh," she said flatly, and turned away unable to say anything more, to mask her confusion, her anger and her sense of a terrible loss. Yet she felt the porter's too wise eyes upon her as she made her way back to her own quarters.
So that was that, she told herself, sitting very still, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, her teeth sunk hard in her lower hp. And a disgust, a fury of bitterness surged through her that shook and sickened her. She had been taken for a ride like any cheap little two-bits worth of fluff that makes her living "picking up" men in trains and railroad stations. She had taken it big; she had felt that it was something very wonderful and precious that must not be destroyed ... she, the sophisticate, the wise gal, the party gal-she, the cool, calm gal who was going to take men and get their money and give nothing-had abandoned herself to this man like the sappiest little witch ripe for seduction!
Her shame, her fury, her humiliation was so bitter that it made a foul taste in her mouth....
It was four in the afternoon when her train came in to Claresville, and she stepped from it, suave and lovely and looking as though not a hair was out of place, though she felt inwardly rumpled and shamed and soiled; not because she had shared a few hours with a man she would never see again; she had no scruples about that; she had wanted it, so had he. So who was to say that it mustn't be? Her shame was that she had been damned fool enough to expect it to be anything more than just a night's party and because of that she couldn't forget it.
A small whirlwind descended upon her and became a very pretty laughing blonde girl in a powder-blue suit and a suly little hat; a girl who hugged her joyously and then stood off a little and eyed her with delight.
"Oh, Gay, Gay-you darling! You did come! I was so afraid at the last moment that you wouldn't-and honey, you're the most beautiful thing I ever saw in all my life. Isn't she beautiful, Clyde?" the girl whirled to a tall, pleasantly rugged-looking young man who stood grinning a little behind her.
"She surely is," said the man, grinning and folding Gayle's hand in his. "Welcome to our town, Gayle. This imp beside me never bothers about proper introductions. I'm Clyde Owens, who's finally given in and agreed to marry the gal-but she had to work for it, I can tell you!"
Gayle laughed, eying him with shrewd appraisal, liking what she saw, yet scorning Clyde's disarming boyishness. She liked her men grown-up.
"Where's Don?" demanded Sue of Clyde, her hand holding Gayle's tightly. "He's going to be Clyde's best man, honey. He was supposed to come down on the train with you and I asked him to hunt you up and see to it you had a pleasant trip down-and then the hound got held up somehow on business and had to fly down! He got in this morning-a couple of hours before noon."
She turned, scanning the platform, and then she laughed and waved.
"Hi, slow poke," she called, "here's Gayle-now aren't you sorry you did not come down on the train as I wanted you to?"
"I surely am," said a voice that for a moment riveted Gayle in her tracks so that she could not manage to turn her head. But when she did, she looked straight into the darkly brown, almost black eyes of "Mr. Murgatroyd."
"If I'd known anything as lovely as Gayle was on that train, I'd have made it even if the whole business had smashed."
Gayle met his eyes straightly, and the gleam of laughter in them added one final hot coal to the fire of her fury. But she kept her teeth shut hard, until Clyde had taken her baggage checks and he and Sue went off to arrange to have the baggage sent out to the house.
"Hello," said the man tentatively.
"You-stinkin' son of a bitch," said Gayle, very softly, but very clearly, her tone of burning malevolence making the man's eyes widen just a little.
"Oh, come now," drawled the man coolly. "You're not going to put on the outraged virtue act, surely? Don't try to pretend I-er-robbed you of your-er-jewel of chastity! After all-it was fun, wasn't it?"
"You-knew all along that I was coming here? You recognized me?" she asked at last, watching Sue and Clyde the length of the platform away at the baggage desk.
"Of course. Sue, bless her, wanted me to see to it that you had a pleasant trip down. I do hope I gave-er-satisfaction?" he asked gently.
Gayle drew a long, hard breath, her hands clenched tightly.
"I suppose I may as well take the next train back," she said huskily at last. "I'm quite sure you won't permit me to stay now...."
"As long as you behave yourself, of course you can stay."
His tone was quite pleasant, low pitched but his eyes told her he was in deadly earnest.
"That's-big of you," she said through her teeth.
"I think so," he agreed pleasantly. "Of course, you're not fit to breathe the same air with a girl like Sue; but she loves you and wants you here and after all, it is her wedding and nothing must be done to spoil it. Nothing!"
She looked at him sharply and her lovely mouth thinned a little.
"Could be you're pretty fond of her yourself," she flashed.
His eyes met hers steadily.
"She's the only woman I've ever met that I'd marry if I had the chance," he told her evenly. "It just happens that she's crazy about Clyde. And he's the right man for her. So I intend to see that she gets what she wants. Do I make myself clear?"
Before she could answer him, Sue and Clyde were back within sound of their voices, and Sue was bubbling with happiness, linking her arm with Gayle's, chattering like an excited child as she drew Gayle towards the waiting car, the men following exchanging amused man-to-man glances about the charming silliness of the whole race of women.
The car was an expensive convertible, which Sue explained joyously was a wedding present from her parents, but which she insisted that Clyde drive, so she could sit curled up in the front seat beside him, keeping up her excited chatter to Don and Gayle, behind them, as the car rolled through the downtown streets and out to the Hill section.
Gayle, lending part of her attention to Sue's chatter, took in the town as they drove through it. There had been many changes. Claresville had grown, expanded; there were more business places; handsome, modern new stores and shops. But as they began to climb the hill towards Claresville's most fashionable residence section she saw that there were few changes here. Nor could there be. Claresville's history went proudly back to the days of Oglethorpe's colonization of the state more than two hundred years ago. Some of the fine old homes were nearly as old, having been built in the days of slave labor and opulent plantation living. Stately homes surrounded by acres of beautifully kept grounds, so that there was no room for the building of modern ranch type homes, or jerry-built bungalows.
Once, when she had lived down on Mcintosh Street, shabby, down-at-heels, Claresville's equivalent to a slum, the Hill had seemed to Gayle just a step this side of heaven itself. When, capriciously, Sue had singled her out for her "best friend" during grade school days, and their friendship had lasted throughout high school, Gayle had been privileged to visit in the Leslie home, she had met some of the other Hill residents and been treated with cool, pleasant friendliness that had made it plain that only Sue's almost fierce sponsorship permitted her presence here. Her mouth tightened a little at the memories that came flooding back as the car swept up the winding curve that circled the Hill, and came at last to the tall, sandstone pillars with their wrought-iron gates eternally open since the grass had grown up about their lower bars and now they could never be closed. Along a winding drive bordered by azaleas and tall old oaks, a semicircular drive bordered a velvety lawn that was more like a stage prop than actual grass, and then the house. Two storied, with a double staircase arising from the drive to the front door with its beautiful old fan-light.
As the car stopped, a white-coated houseman and two maids in crisp plum-colored chambray uniforms beneath spotless white aprons, tiny caps on their heads, came down the steps, and Sue jumped out of the car and turned eagerly to Gayle.
"Does it look familiar? Had you forgotten what Sundown looked like?" she asked eagerly as Don handed Gayle from the car with an almost ceremonious air that lit a spark for a moment in Gayle's storm-cloud eyes.
"I could never forget Sundown," said Gayle lightly, and Don gave her a swift, almost suspicious glance as though he found more to the tone of her voice than to her words.
The white-coated houseman bowed them up the stairs to the front door, and took out Gayle's hand luggage. Gayle's mouth quirked with a tiny smile as she saw the houseman take her Pullman case, one of the maids her smallest case, the other follow with a hat box. She supposed, she told herself drily as she was swept into the house on a little gust of laughing welcome, that if she had had an extra package the size of a bar of soap, it would have required still another maid to bring it into the house.
"Mom and Pop are on the terrace, I know-that's where they always are at this time of the afternoon," said Sue and led the way across the long, wide living room, through French doors that opened on a flagstoned terrace.
At one end of it, bulwarked by a beautifully appointed tea table, sat Mrs. Leslie; exactly as Gayle remembered her, not changed in so much as one frankly graying hair; smartly dressed in what Gayle thought an almost offensively simply gray cotton frock with a jewelled pin at the square cut neck. Mr. Leslie, a few pounds heavier, a Utile more ruddy, a man whose appearance proclaimed both his delight in good living and his feeling that, being a Leslie of Claresville, he was so very important that he could afford to allow people to pretend to forget it. There were several other people, but Gayle paid them little heed, so tense was she for the greeting of the Leslies.
If Mrs. Leslie resented her daughter's insistence on having Gayle in her wedding party, she did not display it by so much as a glance. She greeted Gayle with pleasant, friendly hospitality, and Mr. Leslie assured her of his delight at seeing her again; and the other guests were politely interested and amiable.
"Do have a drink before you go to your room, won't you, Gayle?" suggested Mrs. Leslie hospitably. "You must be very tired after that long train ride-what would you like? Tea or something stronger?"
"Tea, thank you," said Gayle in her most lady-like voice, with her prettiest, gentlest smile.
She felt Don's eyes on her, amused, satirical and her color rose as she took the tea and accepted a wafer-thin sandwich and tried not to look at Don. Damn him, did he think she'd ask for a highball, even if she did want one? Did he think she was going to make a fool of herself and get herself thrown ignominiously out of this charmed circle even before she'd had time to take her hat off?
There was light talk, and laughter and at last Sue jumped to her feet and came over to Gayle.
"Honey, I know you're tired out, so come along and let me show you your room," she said eagerly. "And there are scads of things we want to talk about-excuse us, people!"
As she passed Clyde, her hand touched his shoulder for just a moment and Clyde's eyes were worshipping and for a moment Sue's eyes were radiant. And then she and Gayle were going up the stairs together and along a wide hall, with a faded Aubusson carpet that Gayle remembered well; and to a white-painted door which Sue opened.
"You're here, honey, right next door to me," said Sue gaily. "And if you haven't everything you want, all you have to do is ring-"
"That's taking in quite a bit of territory, isn't it?" Gayle drawled mockingly.
Sue laughed. "Oh, you know what I mean," she dismissed it. "Gayle, isn't he wonderful? Isn't he a lamb?"
Gayle, removing her hat, touching delicate fingers to straighten her hair, looked into the mirror of the dressing table to meet Sue's eyes and laughed.
"I take it you mean Clyde!"
"Well, of course!" laughed Sue youthfully. "Oh, sure, my sane common sense tells me he's just a guy, like a thousand other guys-only he's my guy and I'm pretty darned crazy about him!"
"He seems to think quite highly of you, if one can judge by appearances, so all I can say is 'bless you, my chillen,' " said Gayle lightly.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was a moment of silence, and Gayle knew that Sue was struggling with a thought that she hesitated to express in words, and then at last she looked up at Gayle, and her face was quite pink but there was a dogged determination in her eyes.
"Gayle, do you think that a man and woman should be intimate before they're married?" she blurted.
Gayle stiffened a little and anger followed the startled surprise in her eyes.
"Why ask me? Do you think I'm an expert in sexual matters because of vast experience?" she flashed hotly.
Sue looked so honestly taken aback, so appalled by Gayle's words that she gasped, and for a moment she seemed about ten years old.
"Oh, golly, no! Golly, Gayle!" she gasped in swift dismay. "How could you possibly think I meant that? Golly, Gayle-I only meant-well, you've been in New York, working as a model; and you were always a darned sight smarter than I can ever hope to be; and there isn't anybody here that I'd ask such a question; or whose advice I'd take if I did scrape up courage enough to ask it. And I thought you and I were always 'best friends' and-well, I'm sort of-uneasy-"
Gayle's mouth was a thin, contemptuous line.
"Bride's jitters? Don't let it scare you, Sue. Every bride has them-"
Sue looked terribly relieved.
"Do they? I thought maybe it was something wrong about me!" she confessed almost humbly. "I just simply adore being made love to by Clyde; I get all excited and breathless and suddenly-just being kissed and-and caressed isn't-enough. And-well, when that happens, Clyde just sort of pushes me away from him and-well, takes a little walk or something. And-well, when he does that I'm terribly disappointed; so disappointed I can hardly breathe. But-I'm-relieved, too!"
Gayle stared at her in simple astonishment. Was it possible any girl could be so innocent in this day and time? Innocent, hell! She was just a plain damned little fool! Nobody could be that much of a dope-surely Sue couldn't have reached her present age-let's see, how old was she, twenty-two?-without some brush with sexual experience.
Gayle studied her sharply, shrewdly, convinced that it was just an act that Sue was trying out on her to use later, perhaps on Clyde after the wedding ceremony in case she decided that yielding to him his marital rights was too much bother and a messy unpleasant business altogether. Some women, Gayle had heard, felt like that about sex.
Sue asked anxiously, "Do you think, Gayle, that maybe there is something wrong with me? That I'm-well-frigid?"
Gayle grinned and then turned away before Sue could see that cynical grin.
She hesitated a long moment before she answered, her mind working busily. There was a wonderful opportunity here for her to get in some good licks, and maybe do herself some good. But it was tricky business, like walking on eggs and she had to be very darned careful not to louse up the whole works.
"Do you, Gayle-think I'm frigid, I mean?" asked Sue anxiously at last when Gayle still stood with her back turned, her eyes on the dying sunset that spilled prodigal gold over the lawn and the old trees.
"I don't know, Sue," said Gayle at last and she turned, her voice very sweet and gentle, a look of affectionate concern in her smoky eyes. "I just don't know enough about such things to be able to judge. But I do know that for a woman who is frigid, marriage is just plain hell. And I'd hate terribly to see you get mixed up in anything like that!"
Sue looked ready to cry.
"But I love Clyde kissing me-" she stammered.
"Only once Clyde is your husband, pet, he's not going to be satisfied with kissing you-or had you stopped to think of that?" asked Gayle drily.
Sue's face was scarlet and her eyes would not quite meet Gayle's.
"I'm-afraid to-" she stammered.
"Afraid to try sleeping with Clyde?" Gayle put it into brutal words, disgusted with the other girl's shying away from plain words.
"Afraid to-think about it," confessed Sue miserably. "Sometimes, I want it so terribly that it-just tears me to pieces. And then I-dread it so that it makes me actually nauseated and I don't feel I could endure it. Oh, Gayle, what am I going to do?"
The last came in a little wail and Sue hid her face in her hands.
Gayle looked down at her for a long moment, her eyes derisive, her mouth an ugly twisted line.
Of all the damned stupid little fools!
It could happen, this sort of thing, only in a town like Claresville, where "sex" was a word rigidly ignored by the "nice women" of Sue's class. Something that men enjoyed, the crass, earthly brutes, but that "nice" women only endured with a lady-like reluctance. Even though the "nice" women enjoyed it as much as the men, custom demanded that they pretend a delicate attitude of being attacked every time a husband demanded his marital rights!
Gayle knew enough about the Claresville standards by which Sue had been brought up to believe that Sue was being completely honest with her. That Sue was not, as Gayle first believed, putting on an act.
Sue had been carefully sheltered from birth from the faintest chill wind of reality. She was wrapped up in cotton-wool and surrounded by the best of her father's wealth and social standing could provide, which was plenty! Protected from anything "ugly"-and what a hell of a lot of the rough-and-tumble of life, as Gayle had seen it, the Leslies would consider ugly and unfit for their darling child to see or recognize.
Gayle told herself, as she studied Sue's heaving shoulders, her bent golden head, that of course Mrs. Leslie had given her cherished child a carefully expurgated, nauseatingly prettied-up version of the facts of life-in which, Gayle was drily certain, the birds and bees played a predominant part! Perhaps Mrs. Leslie went so far as to admit that all babies weren't delivered by that kindly, badly overworked long-legged bird, the stork. But Gayle felt certain Mrs. Leslie had at least hinted that Sue had been found beside a rosebush, or something equally asinine!
Sue lifted a face that was touched by tears, but even lovelier thereby. Her blue eyes were dark and drowned and frightened.
"Am I-am I-a bad woman, Gayle?" she asked childishly, humbly.
Gayle's winged eyebrows went up a little.
"Why ask me? I'm a stranger in town," she said drily.
"I mean-am I bad because sometimes I want to-to-sleep with Clyde?" stammered Sue in dark confusion and embarrassment.
"If you plan to marry the guy, I think you should figure that occasionally, being a fairly normal guy from what I've seen of him, he would expect it of you!" said Gayle drily.
Sue considered that for a moment, her eyes falling away from Gayle's, and her color deepening until it was an almost ugly red.
"I-well, I want to-part of the time," she confessed in a little rush of words as though anxious to get it all said before she lost her courage and shame swallowed up her need for comfort. "And then sometimes when I think of-" she shuddered and her color faded until she was quite pale.
Gayle stared at her for a long moment and then she sighed and shook her lovely head.
"Sometimes I wonder and wonder about things," she admitted. "But I never expected to run into things like this-oh, I've heard of bride's jitters before the wedding day-and-brides being rushed to the hospital after the good old wedding night for emergency appendectomies-" she broke off, hiding a small pleased grin at the sheer terror in Sue's eyes.
"Oh-Gayle-no! It-it can't be-as bad as that-or nobody would get married, ever!" she stammered, alarmed and shaking.
Gayle hesitated for a long moment and suddenly there was a gleam of almost wicked mirth in her eyes, before she vanquished it and dropped down on the chaise lounge beside Sue, her manner one of sweet, comforting girlish confidence.
"Of course," she said gently, her voice deep and rich and sweet, "I don't know much about this sort of thing. I've never been a bride, so I don't know anything about bride's jitters. But-if I were in your place-you want to stay married to this Clyde fellow, don't you?"
"Oh, yes!" Sue was radiant at the thought. "You should see the darling house his parents have given us-a ranch type out on Lake Aim and with a swimming pool-oh, just a little one, of course!-and four acres of land; and the gardens are being planted and the shrubbery-and Clyde and I want children-" there was a touch of panic in her eyes at the thought.
"Then-I can see only one thing for you to do," said Gayle gently.
Sue looked at her almost fearfully.
"Try it out with him before the wedding," said Gayle softly.
Sue gasped and her eyes flew wide and she shrank from Gayle in shocked amazement
"Oh--Gayle!" she breathed as though she could not, dared not believe her ears. "Why, that-that would be-"
"A nice way to find out whether or not you and the guy are-well, soul-mates, shall we say?" Gayle's lovely mouth was thin-lipped. "Being soul-mates is just dandy-but believe me, Baby, being body-mates is a hell of a sight more important in a happy marriage! Unless you enjoy sleeping with your husband, you're not going to have much fun out of marriage! Because you'd be surprised-or would you, I wonder?-how much a new husband can expect of his bride!"
Sue was shrinking, appalled.
"Though I have to admit that there's not too much sleeping done, in the first few weeks anyway," Gayle admitted drily.
Sue was looking at her in horrified amazement
"Oh, but Gayle-" she stammered a little and steadied her voice with an effort "That-why, that's-awful! Clyde's-he's-oh, he's not like that at all!"
Gayle grinned at her sardonically.
"Want to bet?" she asked grimly. "Why not hunt up one of his old girl friends-perhaps in a house here in town-and ask her?"
Sue blinked and swallowed.
"You mean-you mean-Clyde's-been going to a-a-house?"
Gayle straightened and there was a glint of amazement and anger in her eyes.
"Look here, Sue, is this an act you're putting on?" she demanded in sharp suspicion. "Because it's a little more than even I can take-and I've known you since you were in diapers, practically and I know how shielded you've been, you poor little devil, but now don't tell me you think a man like Clyde reaches his present years without having had relations with women? Male virgins, pet, are few and far between above the age of fifteen!"
Sue thought about that for a moment and then she shivered.
"That's-that's horrible," she stammered at last.
"You damned little fool-it's wonderful! No sane woman could face the prospect of being married to a man who was going to learn all about sex from her! Take it from me-you wouldn't like it, pet-you wouldn't like it a damned bit!" Gayle said grimly.
Sue studied her for a moment, shrinking a Utile.
"You-you've grown-hard, Gayle," she stammered faintly.
Gayle stood up in a single lithe, graceful motion and stood at her fuU height, looking down at Sue, her eyes cold.
"I have been out in the world, standing toe to toe with realities and earning my own living, while you've been living here like alike a queen bee that doesn't even know when winter comes!" she snapped almost violently.
Sue put out an eager, shy hand and touched Gayle's in a little coaxing gesture of conciliation.
"Don't be cross with me, Gayle honey," she pleaded and Gayle told herself she sounded about five years old and not very bright. "It's just that-well, nobody ever talked like that to me before-"
"It's long past time when somebody did, then, my pet!" said Gayle shortly. "You're heading straight for a mess with this new husband of yours if somebody doesn't give you a few tips."
"Oh, I know, Gayle, I know," protested Sue earnestly. "And I'm terribly grateful-just terribly grateful"
Gayle nodded and turned away.
"If I'm going to clean up for dinner, I'd better get unpacked," she said over her shoulder.
"Oh, Mattie will do that for you, darling," said Sue eagerly and touched the bell. "I'll run along and-Gayle--thanks for everything."
"Think nothing of it, pal," said Gayle drily.
And when the door had closed behind Sue, Gayle stood straight and stared at the door for a long moment, and then she chuckled and brushed the tips of her fingers delicately together with a little satisfied air, her eyes gleaming with bitter mirth. She had set a train of events in motion and where they would lead was anybody's guess. But she wasn't the "shameless hussy" Harlan had called her if she couldn't manage to turn some of those events to her own benefit!
CHAPTER FIVE
Gayle deliberately timed her arrival in the long drawing room so that she was not quite the last one down but so very nearly that her entrance brought a little murmur of interest as the others turned. Cocktails were being served and Don, grinning warmly at her, his eyes taking her in from head to foot in the deceptively simple, beautifully draped jade-green satin, came to meet her, a cocktail in both hands.
"You're looking very pleased with yourself," he drawled as he handed her a cocktail. "But at that I can't blame you. There must have been a mirror in your room to show you how much you had to be pleased with."
Gayle accepted the cocktail and gave him a cool, merely polite smile.
"Making with the pretty words will get you nothing but the back of my hand!" she said through her teeth.
Don grinned wickedly and his eyes dwelt for a moment on the warm, sweet curve between her exquisite breasts with an almost possessive look.
"Oh, I don't know," he said gently. "Making with the pretty words has gotten me quite a lot in my time. And much appreciated it was, too."
She turned almost sharply away from him, as Sue and Clyde came over and the conversation became general. But Gayle was pleasantly aware of Clyde's deepening interest as she exerted herself to be gay and vivacious and amusing. Sue beamed with pride as though she herself had not only produced Gayle, but had created her.
After dinner, the older guests, the Leslies' friends, settled down to bridge and the younger ones descended to the playroom in the basement, for such amusement as might appeal to them.
Gayle settled herself in a deep colored leather chair, and watched the group. There were half a dozen young men and girls all born in the lap of inherited wealth and luxury; the sheltered ones, the safe ones. She eyed the girls and there was the bitter taste of hatred in her mouth for these girls who had never had to do a single thing to guarantee their security except to be born. What the hell could they know of being cold and hungry and frightened, alone and defenseless?
Clyde came over and sat beside her, and Gayle dropped her white eyelids above her eyes lest she should betray more than she was willing for him to see of the bitterness in her heart at this glimpse of a world so foreign to her that it might have been on another planet.
"You must lead a very exciting and interesting life in New York," was his, by no means brilliant, opening.
Gayle kept her eyelids downcast and for a moment did not answer him until she had been able to fight down her bitter, raucous mirth.
"Oh, yes," she said drily. "It's wildly exciting."
"Oh, well, I suppose it's work, too," admitted Clyde, laughing a little, disarmingly, his eyes warm and admiring. "But I imagine a good many women would think that to earn one's living by wearing beautiful and expensive clothes and parading up and down swanky salons would be a lot of fun."
"I suppose so." Her answer was colorless, and then she let a bit of warmth into her voice and made a graceful little gesture that took in the room, the house, the favored people. "But very few women in my position who earn their living would not be willing to change places with women like these-who have nothing to worry about but a new frock, or a new servant or-whatever women like these have to worry about. For my part I can't see anything they could possibly worry about."
"Oh, I suppose they get bored and restless-"
"No doubt!" her voice was dry. "But the assurance of a home, of some man to look after you-and love you-most of them have that and it takes a woman like me to know that-that's about all that really matters in this cockeyed and screwy world."
"So the career girl yearns to be a housewife!" teased Clyde, but his interest had deepened a little.
"I don't know a career girl who wouldn't jump at the chance," she told him flatly.
Clyde's eyebrows went up a little.
"Meaning you would?"
"Don't you dare try me!"
"I would think there would be a great many men you know in New York who would have long before this-"
"A great many men I know in New York aren't looking for wives; many of them already have wives; most of the others are being very sure they don't acquire them."
She looked up at him for a moment and Clyde's eyes widened a little at the look in hers.
"Look, Clyde," she said very softly. "I'm probably Sue's oldest friend; I want very much to be your friend, too. So do you mind if I offer-well, a bit of advice?"
Clyde looked a trifle wary though his reply was prompt and polite.
"Of course not."
"Then-don't let Sue boss you around-"
"Sue wouldn't-she's not that sort-"
"Oh, Clyde, don't be a fool!" It was said with a warm lktle smile but there was a tinge of anger in her voice. "All women are that sort-if a man gives them a chance to be. Don't ever let her get the upper hand-if you want your marriage to last."
Clyde said stiffly, "Thanks. I know you mean well, but-"
Her smile enveloped in a caressing warmth.
"But hell is paved with good intentions, isn't it? I'm sorry," she apologized winningly. "It's just that I am so very fond of Sue-"
"So am I!"
"And I know that Sue wants a husband strong enough to-make her do what's best for her, whether it is what she wants, at the moment, to do or not. The poor, sweet, silly child is-scared to death of marriage-"
Clyde's eyes flashed and his jaw hardened a little.
"That's-a damned fool thing to say. Sue is in love with me-" he pointed out stiffly.
"Sure-and Sue's a virgin-and virgins brought up as Sue have been are taught ah sorts of-silly things about-the ugliness of sex-so you have your work cut out for you-"
"Thanks," said Clyde stiffly and his jaw was still hard. "I think, if you don't mind, I'd as soon not hear any more on the subject. I think you can safely trust Sue and me to handle our marriage-"
Gayle leaned towards him a little, quite conscious that the gesture pulled the low cut of her gown so that the upper curves of her warm, deliciously fragrant breasts were revealed to eyes that could not quite tear themselves away from such a lovely revelation.
"Now you're angry with me," Gayle mourned and laid her hand impulsively on his arm, and her whole manner was so sweet and warm that Clyde's anger melted before a little rising tide that he was shocked to discover was desire. "Please don't be, Clyde. I don't mean to be officious or meddlesome; it's just that Sue and I have been good friends since we were children and I just couldn't bear it if you were not completely happy and-fulfilled-in your marriage-"
"Please try not to worry about that," said Clyde, and now he was a little red and had torn his eyes away from her lovely breasts with an effort. "We'll manage, I'm sure."
And then Don was saying above them, "Hi, make way for the best man, you bum! That's my girl you're flirting with!"
Clyde stood up and Gayle had to lower her eyes and set her teeth for a moment because he was so obviously relieved at escaping from her.
"So you won't take a friendly warning, eh?" said Don softly as he dropped down on the arm of Gayle's chair, where Clyde had been sitting and turned a gleaming eye upon her as Clyde joined Sue. "I warned you to lay off the bridegroom-remember?"
Gayle was silent for a moment and then she looked up at Don and there was something in her eyes that made Don's eyes widen a little.
"I made a discovery while Sue and I were being very girlish and confiding in my room before dinner," she offered sweetly.
"Of that I have no doubt," said Don cautiously. "Would a man be risking his cherished all if he dared to ask what sort of discovery?"
"Oh, you don't have to ask-I was going to tell you anyway, because it's very important and I think you should know it-for your own good as well as Sue's," she assured him sweetly.
Don's wariness increased and he studied her sharply.
"When somebody tells me they are going to tell me something for my own good, I prepare to duck," he admitted.
"Smart of you-so you'd better start ducking," drawled Gayle. "I discovered that Sue isn't a bit sure she's la love with Clyde."
Don's jaw set and his eyes glinted with anger.
"Just what do you hope to gain by springing an infamous he like that?" he asked curtly.
Gayle's raised eyes were wide and limpid with an innocence that sharpened Don's suspicion, as she well knew it would.
"Why, nothing at all-how could I gain anything by it?" she told him gently. "Not your friendship, because I know there is no chance I could ever win that; perhaps it is Sue's happiness I'm concerned with-"
"And perhaps the sun will rise out of the west in the morning, but I beg leave to doubt it," said Don grimly.
"Oh, well, if you don't want to know that Sue is fatuously in love with you-" Gayle dismissed the subject airily and would have risen except that Don clamped a hand hard on her shoulder and held her in her chair, while Gayle regarded him coolly, making no effort to free herself.
"That's-an incredible he," said Don at last huskily. "If you want to think so-"
"I tell you, it's a he. She's known Clyde since they were in diapers-I've known her less than a month-" he said through his teeth.
"And that's supposed to mean something?" she drawled.
"Of course-"
"That Clyde is merely a habit, perhaps, and that they have 'gone around' together, as people say down here, and everybody has expected them to marry until finally they have accepted the suggestion," said Gayle softly, her eyes holding his tightly, her heart leaping with wicked glee as the torment in his eyes became more apparent. "Then Sue meets you-and tumbles headlong into love with you-but is trapped because she doesn't want to hurt poor, dear Clyde-"
Don's hand was still on her shoulder and his fingers gripped so hard that she winced a little and drew away from him.
"Did-Sue say that-" his voice was husky and unsteady.
Gayle shook her head, a warm little smile touching her mouth.
"Of course not-at least not in so many words," she said gently. "She wouldn't-she's such a faithful, loyal little-darling." She was about to say "fool" but caught herself in time.
Don's brows were drawn together in a taut frown and his jaw was set and hard. For a moment he was still, thinking hard.
"The poor darling!" cooed Gayle very softly so that the words could reach no further than his ears. "She's frightened silly at the thought of being married to Clyde-she doesn't want to sleep with him, you see."
She could have chuckled with wicked glee as she saw the blow of that thought rock Don a little. How many times, loving Sue, wanting her with all a mature man's passion, he must have writhed at the mental picture of her charms engulfed in Clyde's young, virile masculine passion!
"And of course," said Gayle in that soft, sweet tone, "a girl who is really in love with a man wants to sleep with him-wants it as much as he does, though she has been brought up to feel it isn't 'quite nice' to have such desires!"
"Damnyou!" said Don, his voice no more than a gust of sound, thick with anger.
Gayle lifted her creamily perfect shoulders in a little shrug that did interesting things to the alluring, pointed breasts so thinly sheathed in jade-green satin that they seemed proudly thrusting their way forward towards a just appreciation of their tempting beauty.
"Oh, well, of course, if you want to sit by and see her go though that-just because you and Clyde are friends-if you don't want her enough to fight for her-knowing that she wants you-" she got up and walked away, knowing that she had plunged her stiletto deep in him and that she could safely leave the matter until another time.
And she'd make sure there was another time!
Throughout the evening, she was vastly, if secretly, amused to watch Don as he went about the business of having a good time and doing his duty as a guest, yet managing to keep his eyes on Sue. Managing not to be very far from her at any time.
When she went up to bed at last, Gayle was quite content with her evening's activities. She had stirred Clyde's sluggish emotions to an awareness of herself as a very desirable and alluring woman, not too far out of his reach; she had stirred Don to temptation to fight for Sue; and she had suggested to Sue that she submit her body to Clyde before marriage, to be sure she wanted to marry him. Shrewdly, Gayle told herself that the inevitable result of such yielding would be the disgust any virgin feels after her first, and, probably since Clyde was young and virile, rather brutal acquaintance with sex. After the wedding night, when the bride knows she is well and truly married, and there is no escape, she gradually adjusts herself and begins to let her normal, heretofore smothered, appreciation of sex rise up and take over, and meets her husband's demands with alacrity and healthy cooperation; but if Sue allowed Clyde to have his way with her, she would be so disgusted, she would feel so degraded, that she might do almost anything to stop the marriage.
Just what she herself could gain from that Gayle was none too sure. But she might, if she were colossally lucky and adroit, be able to wangle Clyde for herself; Clyde would be a very dull and boring, and a no doubt inexpert lover. But as a husband, a good provider of the sort of security for which Gayle yearned with her whole being, Clyde would be pretty fine. Of course, she'd much rather be married to Don-even now her body thrilled a little and her hands cupped her throbbing breasts appeasingly at the memory of his inspired love-making-but she had about as much chance of marrying Don as she had of marrying a movie star! And she mustn't allow herself any crazy cockeyed dreams. Clyde she might get; Don she never could. So she would concentrate on Clyde! And that was a pleasant, amusing and intriguing thought that curled her wantonly lovely mouth with a self-satisfied smile.
CHAPTER SIX
She was very much on her good behavior the next few days. With the wedding set for the twenty-ninth of the month, she had to move very carefully if she were going to stop it. And she was determined to stop it! Determined to take Sue's place beside Clyde, and let Sue shift for herself, which, she reminded herself grimly, Sue would be able to do with all ease for Sue was the kitten who would always land on its four paws!
Mrs. Leslie was courteous but slightly cool, like gently iced wine. Gayle knew that Sue must have put up a stiff battle in order to have as her maid of honor a girl from her childhood days, instead of one of the socially correct and acceptable girls from her present life. And so, being very careful never to raise her voice in the slightest; to wear her most conservative gowns, even while she ground her teeth helplessly at the daring cut of gowns worn by Sue and her friends; taking pains to be very sweet and flattering to the older men, very casual with the younger ones; and most of all to be respectful and gentle with the older women, Gayle prided herself as the days slid by that she was making good progress. Mrs. Leslie's manner warmed a little to her, and Mr. Leslie was almost fatherly in his manner.
About Don, Gayle wasn't so sure. Now and then he looked at her as though a little puzzled. As though not quite sure about her. There could be no doubt in his mind, of course, that she was a hussy, an easy woman. He had demonstrated that soon after meeting her. But when she continued to be sweetly lady-like, completely circumspect, she thought he relaxed just a little and she laughed softly and hugged herself when she was alone in her room.
Late one afternoon when Gayle was resting in her room after a strenuous afternoon of tennis and drinks at the small, but very cherished Country Club Leslie and his friends had built, Sue knocked and thrust her head into the room.
"Are you asleep, honey?"
Gayle's mouth twisted a little.
"Of course not, child. Granny's old and her bones are creaking but she hasn't yet come to the point where she has to have an afternoon nap," she said drily. "Come in and park the body."
Sue laughed and dropped down on a chaise lounge and Kt a cigarette. Gayle, sprawled in a deep, comfortable wing chair, her feet on a matching stool, eyed her speculatively.
"How are the bride's jitters?" she asked at last when Sue showed no disposition to begin whatever it was that she had come in to say.
Sue blushed painfully and could not quite meet Gayle's eyes.
"Getting no better fast, I'm afraid," she confessed wryly.
"Time's a-wastin', Honey-lamb," drawled Gayle. "Eight days from tomorrow and it will be too late for you to pick up your pretty little skirts and fly away to a nunnery!"
Sue seemed to shrink a little from the thought and her color deepened, and her hand shook a little as she knocked the ash from her cigarette.
"Don't I know it!" she breathed and shivered a little. And then as if the subject were one too painful to be pursued, she asked hurriedly, "Don't you flunk Don is grand?"
Gayle dropped her eyelids lest a small gleam of excited triumph that might emphasize the leap of her heart should reveal itself to Sue.
"Very virile and masculine and everything," she derided almost gently. "Now if you were facing the 'ordeal' of a wedding night with Don, my girl, you'd have something to jitter about!"
Sue gasped a little and her eyes flew wide.
"That's-a horrid thing to say!" she breathed shakily.
Gayle grinned drily.
"Don is a fellow who has taken his fun where he found it, for a long, long time and I have an idea he would be none too gentle-especially with a virgin like you, pet!" she pointed out acidly.
Sue asked breathlessly, "Do you think Don would want a girl if she wasn't a virgin?"
Gayle raised herself a little in her chair as though to study Sue at closer range, as though to be sure that Sue was in earnest.
She bit back an oath just in time. An oath that would have shocked Sue to the toes, and after a moment when she could trust her voice, she said thinly, "I think Don would want-and take-any woman between six and ninety that he could get!"
Sue caught her breath, shocked and repelled.
"Gayle! That's a horrible thing to say about him!" she protested, outraged.
Gayle studied her for a long moment, her brows raised a little. And then she leaned forward and selected a cigarette and lit it carefully, while her busy mind worked swiftly.
"You-kind of like Don, don't you, pet?" she asked softly, carefully.
Sue's eyes brightened and her color was pretty.
"Oh, I think he's just simply marvelous!" she cried eagerly.
"Then why not marry him instead of Clyde-if you can?" suggested Gayle, and was secretly furious at herself from the sharp jab of jealousy that bit through her at the thought.
Sue blinked as though she had received a blow and her color faded as her eyes widened until they were enormous and dark.
"Why, Gayle!" she gasped, outraged. "He's Clyde's best friend!"
Gayle once more smothered the impatient oath, and tensed a little, so that she could speak with an air of coolness.
"So what? If you're in love with Don-"
"But-oh, Gayle, I'm not!" There was panic in her voice that gave the he to the words.
Gayle shrugged and once more turned her eyes away lest something in them betray her secret exultation. This was too easy! This was taking candy away from a baby-and substituting an almost lethal sleeping pill!
"Don's mad about you," she offered gently.
That took Sue's breath and she seemed to shrink just a little, her face quite pale, her eyes almost luminous.
"Oh, no, Gayle-he can't be-" she stammered, in a tone that tacitly begged Gayle's reassurance on that point.
Gayle smiled slightly, lifted her shoulders in a small shrug and spread her pretty hands palm upward in a little gesture of dismissal.
"Oh, well, have it your way," she drawled sweetly. "After ah, I could be wrong-I suppose he could be, too-"
Sue stammered breathlessly, "Gayle-do you mean oh, but you couldn't mean-that he--he said-"
"That he was in love with you?" Gayle obligingly put it into words for her. "How else could I have known it? Mind-reading, unfortunately, isn't one of my accomplishments."
Sue considered that for a moment, the color coming and going in her pretty face, and Gayle found one more mark against Sue in the long and rapidly mounting score; that Sue's complexion should be so perfect was another reason for disliking her!
"I-can't believe it," she whispered at last, her voice small and shaken, but deep within it a hint that she would like tremendously to be convinced.
"Then you're not as smart a gal as I thought, pet," said Gayle drily. "I knew it ten minutes after I got in town. Anybody not blind or a fool would know it, just by seeing the way he looks at you, and hearing his voice when he speaks to you and watching him when he touches you. Take it from me, pet, the guy's raving mad about you-no less!"
Sue's hands were twisted tightly together so that the knuckles were small white mounds, and her mouth was thin and twisted a little. She looked like a child trying hard not to cry and as she blinked, there was a moisture in her eyes that matched the tremulous tone in her voice when she spoke.
"But-oh, Gayle, I've known Clyde ah my life-I've always expected to marry him-oh, since we were children-I couldn't-I couldn't walk out on him now!"
Gayle felt like shrieking with delight because the poison was working, just as she had planned it should.
"Then you can't be very much in love with him if you were contented to wait this long to marry him," she pointed out quietly. "If you were terribly in love with him, you'd want all the intimacies of marriage that frighten you now when you only think about them. How do you feel about sharing your charms with Don?"
Sue caught her breath and was starry-eyed, her face flooded with color and before she could check herself, she stammered, "I'd-love it!"
And then, realizing what she had said, she gave a little stricken moan of embarrassment and put her face in her hands and shuddered.
"Oh, Gayle, what an awful thing for me to say! You must be terribly shocked!"
Again Gayle with difficulty smothered the impatient and shocking oath that tried so hard to get itself spoken in her voice.
"There's only one thing you could do that would really shock me, pet," she drawled acidly. "That would be to marry Clyde, when you feel like this about Don. It would be a terrible thing for you to do."
Sue's hands dropped and now there were tears on her cheeks.
"But, don't you see, Gayle? I've known Clyde-"
"Sure, sure, sure-all your life, and you're used to him, like a pair of comfortable old shoes! But damn it, girl, who wants to wear a pair of comfortable old shoes all her life? There are times when you want to step out in something new and fancy and smart-even if it is-a trifle uncomfortable!" snapped Gayle.
"But-how can I be sure that what I feel for Don is being in love? Not-not just-well, a physical attraction?" stammered Sue miserably.
Gayle's mouth was thin and curved in a little almost contemptuous smile.
"There's only one sure way that I know of," she drawled.
She studied her, shrinking a little. "What-what-" she stammered. "The same way I advised you to cure your bride's jitters," Gayle pointed out.
Sue shrank from her in horror and panic.
"You-you mean I should-should-have an affair with Don?" she stammered, outraged.
"Oh, for-" Gayle bit back the word just in time, and after a moment was able to go on more smoothly, "Look, Sue, I don't know why you seem to consider me nothing less than a fount of wisdom; I'm not even sure it's very flattering. Sounds a hell of a lot like you thought I made my living by playing around here and there-"
Sue was horrified and protesting.
"Why, Gayle honey!" she gasped. "What an awful thing to say! Golly, I never thought anything of the kind-would I have asked you here to be my maid of honor if I'd thought anything so awful?"
Gayle studied her grimly, intently.
"Wouldn't you?" she asked, not without a trace of suspicion.
"Oh, Gayle, darling, of course not!" She cried eagerly. "It's just that-well, you're sophisticated and a New York career girl-"
"I could as easily as anything take that as an insult," Gayle warned her curtly.
But Sue rushed eagerly on as though she had not spoken.
"And all the girls I know here are so dumb-like me! And there isn't anybody else I can talk to, or ask for advice-can you imagine me going to Mother and asking 'Do you like the things Daddy does to you when you are in bed together?'" She burst into a little treble of laughter. "Oh, Gayle, can you imagine what she would say?"
"Probably shriek for the man with the butterfly net to carry you away to the nut house to cut out paper dolls," Gayle grinned, amused at the picture.
"And if I tried to tell her I wasn't sure I wanted to sleep with Clyde, she'd be horribly embarrassed, and say, 'Oh, darling, no nice woman enjoys sex-but because men do, women have to endure it! It's-not at all nice; ifs very undignified, and messy and even-painful. But it's a part of marriage-the bad part and there isn't anything we can do about it.' "
Gayle studied Sue with sudden shrewdness, and there was a gleam of mirth in her eyes.
"That sounds like a quote," she observed, amused.
Sue flushed and grinned like an impish child.
"It is, of course," she admitted frankly. "Isn't it funny how mothers always think their daughters are just a little too pure to understand the facts of life?'"
"Mothers are funny people, I suppose," admitted Gayle politely, trying not to remember her own who had been a good-natured slatternly creature who had welcomed men with a generosity that had finally led to her leaving town hard on the heels of an irate husband armed with a gun. Neither the mother nor the father had returned to Claresville and Gayle had come up the hard way under the stern and unyielding hand of a grandmother who was disgusted both with her daughter and her daughter's child, who showed signs of growing too beautiful for her own good.
Sue was thoughtfully silent for a moment and when she spoke again, there was a speculative gleam in her blue eyes that were usually so candid and child-like.
"Don's a darling," she said lightly. "And scandalously rich-but he's a pretty wary bird. I imagine women have been setting traps for him since he was in long pants."
"Probably before," agreed Gayle grimly, remembering and hating herself for remembering the ecstasy and de-light she had known in Don's arms.
"Do you honestly think he-well, likes me?" asked Sue shyly, lowering her eyelids prettily.
"No," said Gayle flatly and Sue's eyes widened a little. "I don't think he likes you worth a damn; but I think he's so crazy about you that he would give his right arm to have you. Whether on a permanent basis or not, would be, of course, up to your reaction to his love-making."
Sue blushed prettily and would not meet Gayle's eyes.
"I-don't seem to be a bit frightened at that-" she admitted as though puzzled that this should be so.
"Then you're a greater fool," Gayle commented acidly.
But Sue seemed not to hear her as she stood up.
"Being a woman is sort of complicated, isn't it?" she confessed and before Gayle could manage an answer to that, Sue gave her a brilliant smile and left the room.
Gayle sat still for a long moment, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She wasn't quite sure just how far she could go; how far she dared go; without bringing the whole shaky house of cards down upon her head. But she flattered herself that she had made a good beginning. She had stirred things up, anyway; she had all three of them running in circles. But whether any of the circles would surround her, to her own benefit, was at the moment anybody's guess.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The following morning when she came down to breakfast she found Clyde and Sue, dressed in riding clothes, just ready to leave for a morning ride.
"Oh, Gayle, come on with us," Sue begged eagerly.
Clyde, eying Gayle appreciatively in the smartly tailored gray slacks and white shirt, echoed her eager invitation but Gayle laughed and shook her head.
"Thanks, kiddies, but all the riding I've ever done is in taxicabs-horses scare me to death-unless they're on a race track with a jockey perched in the saddle, and my two bucks riding on their noses!" She excused herself, and saw Clyde and Sue take off a little later, looking handsome and arrogantly sure of themselves and their privileged spot in the scheme of things.
She finished breakfast, being very polite and gracious to Mrs. Leslie, who was so absorbed in the multitudinous tasks of what was going to be the season's smartest wedding, that she was scarcely aware of Gayle's presence.
Gayle was glad to escape from the house, and out into the brilliant morning sunshine. But she was at a loose end and while she tried to deny it, she was bored. All this lush and extravagant life was very well, if you were born to it or had a place in it. But being just a house guest, with nothing to interest you wasn't such fun.
She walked down the garden path and noted that all the flowers were blooming their silly heads off. She preferred her flowers behind glass in florists' shops; and orchids were still her favorite corsages. So the riotous perfection of Canterbury dells, and foxgloves and the like struck her as much ado about nothing.
Two gardeners were busily at work and she barely repressed a little sniff of disdain for what she privately felt was misplaced energy. At the foot of the garden there was a low white board fence, and set in the middle of it a low green gate, with, above it, the almost inevitable trellis supporting some fat, self-important, self-satisfied looking pale pink roses.
She went through the garden gate and followed a neat winding path through carefully tended woods, and came out into a small clearing where she was startled to discover a small white house, with a marigold yellow door, and marigold yellow shutters. There were window boxes filled with red and white geraniums and the whole thing looked as if it had been lifted bodily from a Walt Disney cartoon. She wouldn't have been a bit surprised, as she paused and stared at it, if Snow White and at least three of the dwarfs had suddenly appeared in the doorway.
But she was even more startled when the door opened to reveal Don Randolph, leaning negligently against the frame, the yellow background showing up vividly his camel's hair sports coat and the beige slacks.
"Hi," Don greeted her with every evidence of pleasure. "Won't you come in? Or does that sound too much like 'said the spider to the fly?' "
She stared at him in surprise.
"You mean you live here?" she demanded.
"Only until after the wedding," said Don, grinning a little. "Not a bad little dump, is it?"
"But I thought you lived at the hotel in town-"
"Nope," said Don cheerfully. "This is the guest cottage; of course only privileged guests-"
"And, naturally, you are the most privileged of all privileged guests," Gayle almost snapped at him.
"Jealous?" there was a twinkle in Don's eyes. "Admit it, now, a city gal like you would be scared to death staying alone down here. Or would you be alone?"
"I have my doubts as to whether you are!"
Don chuckled.
"At the moment, I am-come in and look if you don't believe me," he invited and stepped back and made a very polite little gesture of invitation.
Gayle hesitated and Don laughed.
"Scared?" he asked, insultingly mocking.
"Of you? The man hasn't been born yet that scares me worth a damn," she told him hotly and walked past him into the little house.
There were only two rooms. A large living room, luxuriously furnished in red, with extravagantly flowered cushions, and beyond a well-furnished bedroom, and a bath.
"They do you very well, don't they?" she said when she had inspected the place that was complete to the tiniest detail.
"It's not too rugged," he admitted lightly. "Do I dare offer you a drink this early in the morning?"
"Not unless it's coffee," she told him almost primly.
"Coffee it is," he assured her and plugged in a tall, handsome percolator that sat on a big tray in the wide window. Beside the percolator there was a toaster, a thermos jar of cream, a silver bowl of sugar.
"Do you know," said Don pleasantly while they waited for the coffee to perk, "I'm very pleased with you."
"That makes me so happy I could turn handsprings," she told him drily, her eyes wary.
"I'm sure it does." His tone was almost as dry. "When you first arrived, and stuck out your pretty little predatory paws towards Clyde, I felt pretty sure I was going to have to pin your ears back."
"And now?" She mastered her resentment to make it sound mocking and slightly, cynically amused.
"Oh, now I'm convinced that you're convinced Clyde is too devoted and loyal to Sue to even realize that there is another woman in the world," he told her lightly, but his eyes were almost stern.
She looked down for a moment at the glowing tip of her cigarette before she leaned forward a little to knock the ash from it into a large copper tray.-
"It's not Clyde's loyalty to Sue I'm worried about," she said at last, very carefully. "It's-whether Sue will go through with the marriage."
Don frowned, and his fingers tightened a little on his cigarette.
"Just what the devil do you mean by that?" he asked sharply. "If you've been indulging in any shenanigans-"
"I've been listening to Sue's girlish confidences," she cut in sharply. "And she has confided to me that she-is terribly frightened of 'the ordeal of her wedding night with Clyde-' "
Don's face tightened a little and he looked down at his cigarette as though afraid his eyes might reveal more than he was at the moment willing for her to see. At last when he had regained control of whatever emotions had shaken him at her words, he said grimly, "I understand all decent women have such-fears."
"Even when they are madly in love with a man? Don't be a fool-or take me for one!" she derided him sharply.
He looked up at her sharply, his eyebrows drawn together in a dark frown.
"What's your theory, then-from your vast experience-" His tone was so contemptuous that it stung like a whiplash.
"Damn you!" she said through her teeth, smarting as though the contempt had been actually a blow. "My theory is that Sue wants you so damnably that she can barely endure the touch of Clyde-"
"That's a lie!" His jaw was ridged with muscle that etched a white line about his thin-lipped mouth and his eyes were tormented.
Gayle shrugged slightly and rose to disconnect the bubbling percolator and resumed her seat, lighting a fresh cigarette.
"Me, I know from nothing," she told him icily. "I'm just an innocent bystander. For some damned reason, everybody seems to expect me to have the wisdom of-of-one of those old gals who were mistresses of kings about the time women of their age were expected to retire to the chimney corner and drink soup through a straw. I just sit around and get myself loaded up with confidences I didn't ask for, don't want, and have no use for."
Don was watching her narrowly, and her heart leaped a little at the look in his eyes.
"Sue told you-" he began eagerly and caught himself up and set his teeth against the rest of whatever he had been about to ask.
"Sue told me she loathed the idea of sleeping with Clyde, but thought sleeping with you might be an awful lot of fun-not good, clean, fun maybe-but exciting as hell. And, of course, I was happy to assure her that I felt it would be!" Gayle flicked an amused, derisive glance at him as she poured the coffee. "I was tempted to assure her that I knew it from an unforgettable experience! But I thought better of the impulse-after all, she's so damned pure-a virgin, if you can believe it-and at her age!"
Don said softly, almost without realizing that he spoke aloud, a note of something very like reverence in his voice, "I believe it."
Gayle restrained the angry impulse to dash the hot coffee in his good-looking face and managed merely to hand it to him, and resumed her chair, sipping the hot, invigorating coffee and scarcely tasting it.
"She's-wonderful, isn't she?" said Don huskily, after a long moment.
"And-available," said Gayle viciously.
But Don seemed not to hear her.
After a long moment, he put down the coffee cup impatiently and walked to a window and stood there, his hands jammed into his pockets, his back turned to her.
"If only I could be sure that I could make her happy-as happy as Clyde can and will! He's a hell of a swell guy, and they've known each other ah their lives-"
"And if they'd been really in love with each other, they wouldn't have waited this long to do something about it," Gayle flashed at him.
He turned at that and eyed her sharply, frowning a little.
"Do you honestly think that? That their marriage is a sort of-well, that it grew more out of habit than love?" he asked, obviously so anxious to be convinced that Gayle managed by a real effort not to laugh in his face.
"If you had known her as long as Clyde, would you have waited this long to marry her?" she asked derisively. "Hell, no!"
"Well, then!" She spread her hands in a little gesture of dismissal.
Don came suddenly and sat down beside her, so close that she caught her breath a little at his nearness, and put down her coffee cup lest the sudden trembling of her hands betray her into spilling the contents.
"You're swell, Gayle," he told her huskily, and his eyes were blazing. "You've made everything so clear-so reasonable-it would be a very poor friendship if I stood by and let her marry Clyde, when she doesn't love him, wouldn't it?"
"It wouldn't be the sporting thing to do at all," Gayle assured him grimly, and set her teeth hard above the wave of anger and jealousy that swept her. And even as she felt the bitter pang of jealousy, her cool common sense called her worse than a fool for this was the point towards which she had been aiming from the very first; to break up Sue's marriage; and perhaps to get Clyde for herself.
Don grinned at her suddenly, warmly, and bent lightly and kissed her, to her surprise as well as to his own.
For a moment he sat very still, staring at her, his brows drawn together a little, the surprise of his sudden desire still registering in his eyes. And Gayle, hating herself, yet unable to resist, swayed a little towards him, and felt his arms catch her close and hold her tight, for a long, exultant moment, while her lovely body arched itself against him.
She let him have his way with her; trying with everything that was in her to deny him the complete satisfaction of her surrender. Trying to deny herself, too-until at last as the demands of his urgency grew stronger and stronger, she gave a little sob of passion, and abandoned herself to him richly and gloriously, so that they were both lifted to the ultimate peak of ecstatic fulfillment....
He looked down at her after a moment and grinned wickedly.
"And you were trying to fight me!"
Bitter anger at the ease with which he had taken her, disgust for her own supine surrender, -edged her voice.
"Damn you!" she said through her teeth.
He got up and walked away from her as she sat up and with shaking hands rearranged her clothing and touched her hair in the old immemorial gesture of a woman discomfited who instinctively touches her hair into order before she even draws a veil over her still throbbing body.
"We've got something, Gayle," said Don almost grimly. "I admit I don't know quite the hell what it is. But every time I touch you-I'm on fire for you. And don't try to deny that it's the same way with you."
She reached a shaking hand for a cigarette and her eyes were bleak and the taste of the cigarette was acrid in her mouth.
"Who the hell's trying to deny it?" she said through her teeth.
He turned and eyed her sharply.
"It's never been like this before-for you?" he asked in a tone of such honest surprise and curiosity that obscurely she took it as a deliberate insult.
"Never!" Her voice itself was an oath of fury and helplessness.
He nodded and turned away and the very fact that he was troubled and uneasy puzzled her, even as it made her crazy heart leap a little.
"It's the damnedest thing!" he burst out at last as though angry, troubled, trying to sort out his thoughts and bring them into focus. "I'm not in the smallest degree in love with you!"
"That goes double for me--in spades!" she lashed out at him from her anger and hurt.
"But-the very touch of you does the damnedest things to me-" he went on as though she had not spoken. "I'm in love with Sue-the very thought of having her as I've just had you sets me crazy-"
"Well, you wouldn't really enjoy it, take it from me," she flashed at him, through her teeth. "Because she's not only a virgin-she's cold as ice. Frigid as hell!"
Don turned to glance at her and though his eyes were angry, there was a smile touching his mouth.
"Oh-I won't let that worry me too much," he drawled. "I'm not exactly Clyde, you know!"
"That I do know-and how I know it!" she told him hotly. "I don't doubt that you can warm her up. I just wonder if you'd find it-worthwhile!"
"I think it would be-very rewarding," he told her drily.
For a moment they glared at each other, bitter enemies, all the wild ecstasy, the forbidden magic, the delight they had just had in each other swallowed up in this bitter enmity that was all an inalienable part of the eternal warfare between the sexes.
When she could trust herself to stand, she drew a long hard breath and put her shoulders back and tilted her lovely chin defiantly.
"Remind me to spit in your eye the next time you try to lay a finger on me, will you?" she said through her teeth, rejoicing in the vulgarity, the coarseness of the ugly threat as she stalked out of the house. Don's laugh followed her, and she had to set her teeth in fury to keep from screaming back at him in wild profanity.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As she came up the path to the drive, she saw Sue disappear into the house, as the stable boy led the horses back towards the barn. Clyde was crossing the drive towards his waiting car and as he saw her, he stopped and waited, politely, she thought a little warily.
"You missed a swell ride," he told her lightly.
She was still too shaken, too blindly angry with Don to be able to achieve even a semblance of composure, and Clyde, frowning a little, said, startled, "You look upset-has anything happened?"
She managed a slightly tremulous smile and blinked against the threatening tears.
"N-n-nothing anybody could do anything about," she stammered and turned away and moved a few steps, out of sight of the house along the tall shielding border of shoulder-high azaleas that bordered the drive.
Inevitably, as she had known he would, Clyde followed her. And as she realized her maneuver had been successful, she went on a little until the tall shrubbery concealed them completely from anybody who might be looking out of a window at the house.
"Look here, if there's anything wrong-" said Clyde, and frowned a little. "Did you come upon a snake? Most of them are harmless around here."
"Not-not this kind of snake," she managed a faint smile that was completely unconvincing as she had meant for it to be.
Puzzled, uneasy Clyde asked swiftly, "What do you mean by that? There are no prowlers in these woods-at least if there are, we'll do something about it."
She turned swiftly and gave him a little smile and said quickly, "Please don't worry about me. I'm quite all right. It's just that-I'm not used to being in the country and-well, things-seem sort of strange. But I'm quite all right, truly I am."
Clyde gave her a little relieved smile.
"That's good. It means a lot to Sue having you here, but I know you miss all your exciting friends and the sights of New York."
She smiled at him sweetly.
"It's not that," she told him earnestly. "I love it here. It's just that-well, I'm such an outsider-"
"You mustn't feel that way," Clyde was warmly protective now and her heart leaped a little. "We are all crazy about you."
Are you, Clyde?" her eyes were soft and shining. "Are you, Clyde?"
He caught the warm significance in her voice, and looked a little flustered.
"Well, of course," he said hastily-too hastily by far. "You're Sue's best friend and we hope you'll visit us often. We'll set aside a guest room just for you."
She gave a little pleased laugh.
"Well, then," she told him gaily. "I won't feel like an outsider any more. After ah Claresville is my home town, too-though all the people I used to know have grown up and married and gone away."
They were walking back to his car now, and Clyde was being very masterful and very much the conquering male. (Strutting like a damned barnyard rooster that has just had his way with a squawking hen, Gayle told herself acidly.)
She watched him drive away before she turned and went into the house. And her busy mind was eagerly at work, and some of the blind fury she had felt at Don's treatment of her had melted into a calm and somewhat grim determination to twist whatever might come towards her own benefit....
Someone was entertaining the bridal party that night, and Gayle debated for a long time about what she would wear. Heretofore she had been almost prim in her dressing, as in her manner; excessively refined and "the lady" towards the idea that she could win her way into Mrs. Leslie's good graces. But tonight her jaw hardened and she selected a dress that she had hesitated to pack when she had been planning this trip.
Outwardly it looked like the simplest, most demure of gowns, made up of layers of chiffon that began a soft silvery gray above something almost purple that shaded into lavender. But beneath all the layers of smoky-gray and twilight blue and lavender, there was a slim sheath-like slip of pale pink satin that gleamed through the chiffon in a manner to make the beholder wonder whether it was rose-ivory satin-or rose-ivory flesh!
Dressed, she revolved slowly before the mirror. Her flame-colored hair was rolled into a French twist, smooth and sophisticated. Her bare arms and shoulders and upper curves of exquisite pointed breasts that thrust themselves at the soft chiffon as though protesting their veiling, were milky-white and satin-smooth, and the look in her eyes, more steel-colored now than blue-gray, was cynical.
"This ought to give those other hell-cats a run for their money," she told herself with almost grim satisfaction as she turned away from the mirror and went downstairs where Clyde and Sue and Don were waiting for her.
As she came down the stairs into the great circular black and white tile floored hall, they all turned and looked at her, startled into speechlessness.
Sue's blue eyes narrowed ever so little, and Clyde's widened and it was Don who gave a long, low appreciative wolf whistle as he came to meet her.
"Well, well, well-who's going to be the most envied man at the ball? Who else, but the best man?" he told her with gay ceremony, as he bowed and offered his arm.
She ignored him and looked, anxiously conciliatory, at Sue.
"Do I look all right?" she asked eagerly.
"You look like a million dollars-plus tax!" said Sue and her voice was ever so faintly taut. "Why didn't you warn me you were out to put me in the shade? I think I resent it a little; after all, isn't the bride supposed to be the belle of the ball? Maybe I should change this girlish confection for something a little more devastating."
"Oh, no, Sue-it's a lovely dress and you look sweet!" Gayle assured her earnestly, her eyes sweeping the powder blue organdy with its dainty embroidered touches along the ruffle that marked the off-shoulder decolletege.
Even Clyde caught the faint, almost imperceptible note of something very near derision in Gayle's voice, and moved a step closer to Sue, almost protectively.
"If you think this dress is too-too 'hussy,' " said Gayle anxiously, "I'll go change it. But I've worn everything else I brought with me-there have been so many lovely parties-" Her voice trailed off and she watched Sue with a pretty anxiety that made both the men frown a little, puzzled. They were conscious that there was something like a battle going on between the two women, yet not quite sure just what it was.
"Don't be an idiot," Sue almost snapped. "It's a marvelous gown. You'll probably get your eyes scratched out by some of the other femmes at the party-because nobody has ever owned anything like that down here. We couldn't afford it."
Gayle said innocently, "Oh, I couldn't either, except that I modelled it for a fashion show and they let me have it for practically nothing." (Harlan Kramer had hit the roof so hard he had practically had to be scraped off of it when he got the bill for the dress! It had marked the first of their serious quarrels and, looking back on it afterwards, she had realized that it was the beginning of their break-up.)
She turned sharply away, her tall silver heels clicking a little as she led the way to the door, saying curtly over her shoulder, "Well, let's get going. After all, this is a dinner party for twenty-four and the hostess would have us boiled in oil if we were late."
As Gayle looked innocently up at Don, smiling tentatively, she caught the look in his eyes and stiffened just a little.
"You just won't learn, will you?" he said in a savage whisper. "I warned you what I'd do to you if you didn't keep your paws off Clyde."
"Don't be a fool-"
"And don't you-think I didn't see the way he looked at you when you came down the stairs?"
"You looked at me, too!"
"So I did-so I did-and I may look at you again-it's more than barely possible. But let us not forget, my pet, that I'm not about to be married to the sweetest girl in the world-"
"Spare me the corn," she said through her teeth. "I loathe corn."
There was no further chance for private speech for they were at the car now, and Clyde was putting Sue tenderly into it as though she had been something infinitely precious and fragile as spun glass that the slightest rough touch might bruise beyond mending.
Don helped Gayle into the back of the car, his hand tightening on her elbow when she would have pulled free of him, when she would have evaded his touch. He launched into a gay four-way conversation as they drove away and it was on the wave of conversation and laughter that they arrived at the party.
From the moment of her arrival, Gayle was the center of attention-covert and inimical on the part of the women, eager and hopeful from the men. But she handled herself well, and seemed completely unaware of the excitement she had created by making the most of her beauty. And as she glanced about the table she told herself grimly that she was not half as naked as some of the other women; plunging necklines, off-the-shoulder decolletage, gowns cut so sheath-like that one could almost see the wearer change her mind-the only thing, she told herself pridefully, was that she had something worthy of being revealed, far more so than any of the other women present.
After dinner there was dancing in the long drawing room, with a five-piece band of grinning, rhythm-minded young men who set feet tapping from the moment they began tuning up their weird and wonderful assortment of instruments.
Gayle had many partners, seldom traversing more than the length of the room without changing partners; but it was almost midnight before Clyde came dutifully for the one dance custom demanded that he ask of her. Across the room, she saw Don dancing with Sue, and she smiled warmly up at Clyde, slid her hand through his arm with an almost intimate gesture and said eagerly, "Oh, let's not dance this one-it's so hot in here. And the moon is lovely tonight."
She didn't wait for his protest; perhaps his manhood would have forbade his making one. But she preferred not to take a chance on that and they walked out of the door, along the hall and out on the wide, old-fashioned gallery that rose two stories, with the almost inevitable small balcony above the front door that seemed to be a feature of the authentic, or pseudo "ante-bellum" style of architecture.
She paused at the top of the wide, shallow steps that led down to the driveway, with the carefully clipped yew tree border that marked the beginning of the garden. She lifted her lovely head, and closed her eyes and inhaled with every evidence of delight the cool, dew-wet fragrance of the garden.
"Oh, isn't it a glorious night?" she cooed sweetly. "And to think we are stupid enough to stay inside a close, stuffy, crowded room when we could just as easily be out here?"
Impulsively she led the way down the shallow steps and to the rose-framed entrance to the garden and along it, Clyde following her because he wanted to or because he couldn't think of an excuse not to go along with her, since it was ostensibly their dance.
Well down the path, beside an old sun dial, out of sound and sight of the house, she turned swiftly to Clyde and let the moonlight illumine her lovely face. And her voice shook just a little as she burst into what sounded very much like impulsive speech that she could no longer control.
"Clyde dear, there is something I have to tell you-I don't want to, but-well, you simply have to know it-I mean-well, this morning when you asked me what was wrong-I didn't want to tell you-but after all-well, a woman alone in the world as I am, without family or influential friends has to rely on herself for-protection from men like Don."
Clyde's eyebrows went up and his voice was cool, distant.
"Don's my best friend, Gayle-I don't think I can listen to any-scandal you want to tell me about him-"
"Oh, but it isn't scandal-or if it is, it isn't aimed at Don, but at me-" She caught her breath and turned away, as though a sob had clutched at her throat.
"Scandal aimed at you? Then what's Don got to do with it?" he asked after a moment.
She hesitated, for this was the chance she had been looking for and she dared not spoil it for it would not come again. After a moment she turned back to him and her eyes glistened with tears, but in the moonlight, her smile was shy and tremulous.
"Oh, well-it's-well, it's not very-pretty," she admitted huskily. "And of course, men always stick up for each other-even when one is a rather notorious-wolf!" She brought the word out with an obvious effort.
A little relieved, Clyde laughed.
"Oh, for Pete's sake-are you trying to tell me Don's been making passes...."
She drew back a step and her head went up and even in the moonlight he could see that she resented his tone.
"I'm sorry-" she told him stiffly. "I should have kept quiet...."
"Oh, but, Gayle, child, you're taking this much too seriously," Clyde began, and his tone was almost fatherly, so that she yearned to fling out her hands and drag her sharp, ruby-tipped nails down the sides of his face, marking him for all the world to see. "Don's a human, normal guy-and you're a very lovely and alluring creature...."
"And because I won't let him-have me, he is going to tell you and Sue and the others that I'm a-tramp," she brought it out almost viciously.
Clyde was obviously rocked to the heels.
"Oh, come now, Gayle-you're exaggerating...." he protested.
Tight-lipped, her eyes blazing, she looked straight at him.
"Am I? Wait until he tries to tell you that I'm a-common slut...." She pushed the words past her rigid lips with such an obvious effort that Clyde was unpleasantly startled, and all mirth vanished.
"He knows he'd never be allowed to get away with even hinting such a thing about you, Gayle-not to me, anyway!" said Clyde swiftly.
She drew a little shaken breath and her eyes were shining and she was smiling eagerly, almost shyly.
"Oh-C-Clyde darling!" she stammered, and put out her shaking hands to him in a little fumbling gesture. "Oh-thank you for that!"
Clyde caught the shaking hands in his own as he would have comforted a child, though his blood was stirred as no child had ever stirred it before.
"Thanks for nothing, Gayle honey," he said quickly. "Don't you suppose I'm man of the world enough to be able to recognize a decent, sweet, fine woman when I meet her?"
For a moment she was speechless, just looking up into his face there in the moonlight. And it was only by almost superhuman self-control that she was able to keep herself from a smothered laughter and from saying, "Oh, you poor damned fool! Man of the world-what world?"
"I'm afraid I'm g-g-going to c-c-cry-isn't that s-s-silly?" she stammered, and stumbled into his arms and hid her face against his shoulder as his arms closed protectively about her.
"Well, for Pete's sake, honey, why should you cry?" demanded Clyde, a little alarmed and very much startled at the suggestion. "After all, nobody would believe Don even if he tried to say such a thing-and of course he won't...."
She raised her head a little, still clinging to him, and her face was only a bare inch or so from his and the fragrance of the delicately provocative perfume she used rose about him in a little dizzying, exquisite flood.
"He-he-said he would...." she stammered.
Clyde frowned, still not quite believing her.
"Because-because I wouldn't-let him-let him...." she broke off as though to finish was shame more than she could endure, and once more hid her face against his shoulder, pressing her warm body against him with a practiced sureness that its warmth and exciting curves would have the usual effect on his masculine desire.
"Look here, Gayle, are you trying to tell me-seriously-that Don has been making those kinds of passes at you?" he demanded, and there was anger in his voice and for a moment she was frightened lest the anger should be directed at her, born of his defense for his friend.
"I-knew a man like you-decent and honest and-and wonderful couldn't believe that...." she stammered forlornly.
"Well, after all, Gayle, you're very lovely and very desirable and Don is a bachelor-a very good catch, matrimonially speaking...." Clyde tried to lend a light touch to a situation he was finding distinctly discomforting because through his body his blood was running hot and sweet at this contact with so much womanly softness and warmth.
"Oh, men like Don never want to marry women like me...." she said bitterly, and added quickly, "not women who are-out in the world, fighting for their existence-he thinks we are only good to ... fool around with. When he wants to marry it will be somebody like Sue...."
Clyde grabbed at the chance for a lighter tone.
"Oh, didn't you know?" he said almost gaily. "There aren't any more women like Sue-she's unique...."
Gayle had to set her teeth hard against the bitter anger that rose within her, and the effort at stifling that anger put a tremble in her voice.
"Oh. Sue's one of the lucky ones-showered with luck-because you love her!" she told him swiftly. "And Don does, too, of course ... I'm sorry-I shouldn't have said that...."
Clyde grinned down at her, and wished that she would withdraw herself from his arms, and wished instantly that she would not, and found himself in a pleasantly excited frame of mind that made him vaguely uneasy.
"But of course you should-it's all right-of course-Don's in love with her-half the men she knows are-but I'm the guy she's going to marry!" he boasted contentedly.
She set her teeth hard for a moment and he felt her body tense against him before she drew a long hard breath and stepped back a little, letting go of him reluctantly, and for just a moment one of her hands slid up and touched his cheek with a little caressing gesture.
"You're-s-s-sweet, darling-so very sweet!" she said unsteadily. "Don knows I love you...." She caught the words back and all but held her breath, turning her face from him so that he could not see her expression lest it betray her.
"I'm-s-s-sorry," she said breathlessly over her shoulder. "I-didn't mean to s-s-say that-but of course you knew, anyway. I think everybody does...." Her voice died in a little soft gasp that was a sob.
Clyde felt, as any normal man under the circumstances would have felt, big and strong and at least eight feet tall and very protective. But instantly he crushed down the feeling and assured himself that she was overwrought.
"Oh, see here, Gayle...." he began-but before he could finish there were flying footsteps on the garden path, and a man raced towards them, veered sharply when he saw them, with a little gasp and plunged into the shrubbery bordering the garden and was gone.
It happened so swiftly that neither Gayle nor Clyde could do anything but stand still and stare after the man. And a moment later they became conscious of a woman screaming at the house, and raised, confused, excited voices. And Clyde turned without a word to Gayle, and ran back towards the house.
Gayle stood where he had left her for a long moment, fighting down the rage and frustration she felt at the interruption to a scene that had been progressing exactly the way she wanted it to. She almost had had Clyde on the ropes; he had been stirred and stimulated and had reached the point of wanting her; so that she could, in a few deft strokes, have set his passion crying out for her until it would only be appeased by his surrender. And then the running man, who had plunged almost upon them before he had seen them and hurled himself through the shrubbery, ruined everything.
She heard the excited voices from the house, and waited until she was quite sure that she could walk into the house and be outwardly calm, cool and collected.
As she came up the steps and crossed the gallery to the hall, little knots of excited women stood about, and the men were being very busy running about the lawn and gardens, with flashlights, and calling to each other.
"What's up?" asked Gayle coolly.
"Oh, Gayle, were you in the garden? There was a burglar in the house-Mary-Ellen walked in on him and he knocked her down!" panted someone eagerly.
"A burglar?"
"Yes-isn't it terrible? Madly exciting, of course," panted the girl, saucer-eyed with excitement. "Don Randolph's called the sheriff and organized a hunt, and everything-but poor Mary-Ellen fainted or was knocked unconscious, we don't know which! This is a party none of us will soon forget!"
"Too bad nobody got killed-then you would have really had an exciting evening," said Gayle drily, and the girl stared at her, shocked and insulted.
"What a terrible thing to say!" she gasped, outraged, and her eyes chilled. "After all, this isn't New York, you know."
"How right you are!" said Gayle and turned away.
Clyde stood protectively beside Sue, his arm about her and, as Gayle met his eyes, he flushed a little and looked away, remembering the moment in the garden when he had held her close and been tinglingly aware of every lovely curve and contour of her seductive, alluring body. She gave him a slow, provocative, intimate smile and knew with a leap of her heart that he was quite conscious of it even though he was not looking directly at her. More, she knew that Sue was watching her, with a lovely mouth thinned to a sullen line, her eyes bright with suspicion.
CHAPTER NINE
It was perhaps an hour before the sheriff arrived and things had quieted down enough for him to make at least a motion towards an investigation. Gayle, looking on, amused and cynical, told herself that the burglar could have reached the next county and have stopped for a hamburger on the way before the sheriff swung into action.
Mary-Ellen, a perennial wallflower joying in this unaccustomed moment in the spotlight, being the center of attention, was brought in, pale and wan and with an elaborate bandage over her forehead. She was helped to a sofa, where she collapsed dramatically and put both shaking hands to her head, moaning. If she had been raped, Gayle told herself with disgust, Mary-Ellen would not have made more of a to-do-probably less, Gayle corrected herself, taking in Mary-Ellen's pudgy figure, her round, rather stupid face and her straw-colored hair.
"Now, Miss Mary-Ellen," said the comfortably fat and slow sheriff who had known all of these people for years. "You just kind of pull yourself together and try to tell me what you can about what happened."
Mary-Ellen gave a small, stricken moan and smiled at him weakly.
"Oh, it was awful, Sheriff-just awful!" she moaned. "I went up to the powder room to-to-" She broke off and turned scarlet and stammered wildly, "to wash my hands."
Her china blue gaze flicked modestly around the group and dropped.
"And there he was!" Mary-Ellen rushed on shakily. "He was going through the purses and bags that lay on the table beside our wraps-and when I came in, he turned-and-and said something that-that sounded like an animal growling-oh, it was terrible...."
She dissolved into easy tears and hysteria threatened her, but the sheriff and those about her soothed her anxiously, and at last she raised a tear-wet, reddened face and blinked wet eyelashes and apologized pathetically.
"I'm-so sorry," she stammered pathetically.
"Well, now, Miss Mary-Ellen, I reckon it was a right unpleasant experience and there's no reason why you shouldn't break down," he told her soothingly. "But did you get a good look at him? Could you identify him if you saw him again?"
"Oh, yes," moaned Mary-Ellen and shuddered dramatically. "That-that awful face-oh, I couldn't ever forget it!"
"Well, now, suppose you describe him to us," soothed the sheriff, already a little bored with her dramatics.
"He was-oh, he must have been six feet tall and big!" panted Mary-Ellen.
The sheriff nodded as though he had expected that.
Before she realized what she was doing, Gayle cried out sharply, "He wasn't by any means six feet tall-he was a little runt of a man-not over five-feet-six or seven and scared out of his life!"
Instantly the sheriff and the others turned sharply on her, and the sheriff narrowed his small eyes that were already so well encased with fat that to narrow them was almost equally to closing them.
"Who are you?" he demanded sharply.
"I'm Gayle Barker, from New York...."
"One o' the weddin' party, I reckon," said the sheriff briskly before anyone else could speak. "I didn't know anybody saw this feller except Miss Mary-Ellen here-where was you when you saw him?"
"I was in the garden," said Gayle, almost recklessly. "The man ran right straight towards us. He almost collided with us, he came so close. And I saw him full in the moonlight. And he didn't look anything like the description Mary-Ellen has given of him. He was a very small man."
She turned, before anyone else could speak, and looked, sweetly grave, at Clyde.
"You saw him, too, darl-I mean, Clyde," she corrected herself hastily, with a small, almost apologetic smile that was obviously meant for Clyde alone. "I'm sorry-but we couldn't let the sheriff go off on a wild goose chase after a six foot man when the man he really wants is such a little runt of a man, could we?"
The sheriff looked sharply at Clyde, his bushy brows drawn together.
"You saw this feller, too, Mr. Owens?" he demanded.
Clyde was dark with anger and confusion and insensibly, it seemed Sue had withdrawn a little from him and was looking at him, wide-eyed. Gayle was conscious of Don Randolph in the background, eying her with a dark anger that crisped her nerves a little, but that she met straightly and coolly.
"Well, no, Sheriff, I'm afraid I didn't," said Clyde awkwardly, "You weren't in the garden with this lady?"
"Well, yes, as a matter-of-fact I was," admitted Clyde and looked very much as though he wished he could deny it. "But my back was to the house. I only heard the sound of running footsteps and before I could turn or pay any attention, the man had gone into the shrubbery."
The sheriff eyed him severely for a moment, and then turned back to Gayle, and there was a slight edge in his voice as his eyes raked her, in the exquisitely simple, devilishly becoming frock, the bare expanse of shoulders and upper bosom.
"So you got a good look at him, did you, Miss Barker?" he demanded, while Mary-Ellen all but gnashed her teeth in helpless fury at having the spotlight wrested away from her.
"There is a moon," Gayle pointed out. "A-rather fabulous moon, such as we seldom see in New York. It was very bright, and the man was coming towards me. Yes, I had a good look at him. And he bore no smallest resemblance to the description Mary-Ellen has given you; he was most definitely not a tall man!"
"He was, too-he was!" bleated Mary-Ellen.
The sheriff turned back to her and it was obvious that he much preferred to accept the version of the incident given him by a local girl.
He turned and looked at the men who had gathered from their fruitless search of the garden, and said sternly, "Well, now, maybe you fellers better just get on with your partying and let me and my boys see what we can do about catching this feller. Anybody know what was missing?"
The flurried hostess, terribly embarrassed by this interruption to her carefully planned party, came forward to explain that a small amount of cash had been taken-"The girls' 'mad money,'" she explained with an unsteady attempt at gaiety. Nothing else had been disturbed.
The sheriff departed, and Gayle turned to Sue with a pretty air of impulsive apology.
"Sue, you mustn't think there was anything wrong about Clyde and me being alone in the garden," she said eagerly. "Honestly there' wasn't. Really. I mean-we weren't-flirting or-well, anything."
Sue's eyes were coldly brilliant but her smile was sweet and friendly, even though it was iced around the edges.
"Naturally I know there wasn't," she said coolly. "Clyde has a perfect right to sit out a dance at a party with anybody he chooses-I don't keep a ring in his nose and tie him up, you know."
Clyde beamed at her in huge relief and gratitude.
"It was such a lovely night, and it was so hot and stuffy in here and the moon was gorgeous and-well, I wanted a breath of air...." Gayle went on eagerly, a little flurried and very carefully avoiding Don's outraged bitter eyes.
"Don't try so hard, Gayle-I'm convinced that it was a perfectly harmless stroll, because I have implicit confidence in Clyde!" said Sue with cool sweetness and Clyde looked a little puzzled as though not quite sure he approved of such very perfect faith.
The musicians, who had been enjoying this totally unexpected break in their work, struck up a gay tune and the hostess moved anxiously about, trying to pull her party together.
Clyde took Sue in his arms and they danced, cheek to cheek.
Gayle stood for a moment alone, for the other men who had been all but fighting to dance with her now seemed, absurdly enough, to shy away from her a little. So it was when Don came to her, and with a smile that did not reach to his cold, dark eyes, gave her a little mocking bow.
"Well, shall we have another gander at the moonlight?" he murmured drily, and cupped her elbow in his hand.
"Thanks, I've had about all the brushes with burglars I care for tonight," she told him curtly.
But his hand only tightened on her elbow, and he dropped his head so that his lips were very near her ear when he spoke in what could only be described as a vicious whisper.
"You're going outside with me, where I can talk to you alone, even if I have to drag you by the hair!" he told her and she knew he meant exactly what he said and that he was quite capable of doing exactly that. "You're long overdue for a session back of the woodshed with a slipper in my good right hand, and from looking at you-as every man here has been doing, and drooling at what he saw-you were never more perfectly dressed for it."
Gayle flung up her head and her eyes were blazing. But Don met her eyes straightly, his own cold and dark.
"Want to come pretty and quiet-like the lady you never were from the day you were born-or want me to drag you out? I don't mind a bit-in fact it would be a pleasure!" he told her softly, savagely.
"I suppose you think I'm afraid of you!" she told him icily, as she let him guide her toward the door.
"No, I don't think you have sense enough to be afraid of me-though you damned well should be," Don told her in that low, savage whisper with his lips very near her ear that looked, to others, as though he whispered "sweet nothings."
Outside in the tender moonlight, at the foot of the garden path where she had stood with Clyde, so near to achieving a deep, dark purpose that had lain dormant in her mind for so long, she turned and faced Don, her head up, her lovely, wanton mouth a thin, twisted line, triumph riding high in her eyes.
"So now that you've done the 'cave man act'-so what?" she snapped at him, hating him and herself that her whole being should rise in urgent desire at his touch and his nearness.
"So you couldn't keep away from Clyde-not because you care a damn about him, but because you are a tramp, who can't see another woman happy without trying to louse things up," he said through his teeth.
She gave an insulting little laugh.
"Clyde's been out of diapers-I imagine-for quite a long time," she drawled insolently. "Who appointed you his nursemaid?"
Don studied her for a long moment, his eyes drawn nearly shut, the brows meeting above them.
"You're pretty cocky, aren't you?"
"I manage to get by!"
"Sure, as long as there are damned fools who want your body enough to put up with your foul mind."
"I didn't sleep with Clyde, you know...."
"Only because the opportunity was spoiled by the burglar...."
"Well, yes, I suppose so. I had him just about where I wanted him...."
"You-damned trollop!"
She laughed softly and it was as though she had struck him full in the face. But now he was a little puzzled, for obviously he had felt that he held a threat of betrayal over her that would keep her in line.
"Hard words break no bones!" she drawled, enjoying this moment to the full.
"Well, of course you know," he told her levelly, "what this means."
"Naturally. It means that Clyde is quite aware of me as a woman, and that he is going to wonder if, after all, Sue is quite-well, one never knows what may come of a situation like this!"
"Maybe one doesn't," he snapped harshly. "But you may as well get started packing. Sue will never stand for you in her home when she knows what you are."
"Of course, that's merely your opinion...." she mocked.
"All I have to do is tell Clyde, as man to man, what happened on the train coming down...."
"And of course he'll promptly remember that you came down by plane...."
"Only from Richmond...."
"So you say!"
He was silent for a moment, studying her curiously.
"Look, just what do you hope to get out of all this-aside, of course, from messing things up for Sue?" he demanded sharply. "And spoiling a friendship that means a lot to Sue!"
Gayle considered that thoughtfully, her lovely face touched with a small, mocking smile that disturbed Don because it hinted that she had managed somehow to blunt the weapons he had to use against her.
"Oh-I hadn't thought much about what I'd gain," she drawled. "Of course, I could marry Clyde...."
Don swore luridly.
"Like hell you could!"
"Like hell I could! Don't underestimate your enemy, pal! I can 'take' him as easy as snapping my fingers," she told him swiftly, and added more quietly, "And if you had ten cents worth of brains, you'd be all for it. Because you could grab Sue on the rebound and everything would be just ducky."
Don's eyes blazed.
"I don't want Sue on the rebound...."
She spat out a vulgar, unprintable epithet.
"You're a man-a male-a tomcat-you want her any damned way you can get her-and she's yours for the taking-and she'd be a damned sight more of a woman if somebody like you took her-ah the way! You're capable of opening her eyes to what it's all about-Clyde is a spineless, wishy-washy sap who would be gentle with her-and Sue is the kind of woman who needs to be shaken roughly out of some of those cockeyed ideas about sex that've been dinned into her for years."
"You don't know one damned thing about a woman like Sue-she's in another world. Your kind of woman ... "
"There are only two kinds of women," she shot back savagely. "The kind that wants to be loved-all the way; and the kind that's frigid. Which do you think Sue is?"
"Damn you!" grated Don through his teeth.
"Damning me will get you exactly nowhere at ah...."
"Don't be too sure of that-damning you is going to get you right back to New York just as fast as you can pack-back to whatever keeper has been providing for you-or are there a number of them?"
She laughed silkily.
"Oh, I'm not a two dollar street-walker," she drawled. "I'm much higher priced than that. And most of my-boy friends feel it's well worth the price. No one but you-ever got me for free! And that was because I was temporarily out of my mind! That doesn't happen often to me!"
She turned away from him and started back to the house, her head held high. For a moment she thought he called out to her angrily; but she went on and when she reached the gallery and found the party breaking up, she glanced back over her shoulder, and saw Don coming along the path, hands jammed into his pockets, his shoulders hunched a little and in the bright moonlight his face was dark with angry concentration. She smiled sweetly at him and vanished into the house to retrieve her wrap.
CHAPTER TEN
The drive back to the Leslie place was made in almost complete silence. Clyde at the wheel, Sue withdrawn from him as far as the confines of the seat would permit; Don equally aloof and withdrawn from Gayle in the back, but Gayle sat contentedly, a little smile of satisfaction touching her mouth.
When the car stopped, Don got out, made no effort to help Gayle, who would have evaded him if he had, and turned to Clyde, who was helping Sue out of the car.
"Say good night to Sue, Clyde, and come down to my place for a nightcap," suggested Don, trying hard to make his voice sound pleasant and matter-of-fact.
Sue said coolly, "I don't feel very much like saying good night to Clyde. I'm afraid I don't like him very well right now."
She marched into the house, while Clyde was still staring at her, goggle-eyed, and Don's jaw hardened a little.
Gayle said sweetly, "Don't be disturbed, Clyde dear-she's not really angry-she'll be all over it by morning. She's just tired and nervous from all the strain and stress of parties and-bride's jitters."
Clyde looked at her swiftly, hopefully, gratefully.
Don said, with an edge to his voice, "Good night, Gayle...."
Gayle laughed softly, and lifted her billowing skirts to mount the steps, and Don turned to Clyde.
"Come on, fellow," he said heartily, dropping an arm about the younger man's shoulders in a brotherly manner. "What we both need is a nightcap to wash the taste of this night out of our mouths."
Clyde demurred but Don insisted, and Gayle, hidden in the shadows of the door, watched them go down the path towards the guest cottage. For just a moment she hesitated, and then like a silver gray shadow in the darkness of the trees and the hedge, she slipped along behind them. She hovered in the darkness, beyond reach of the light that sprang up in the cottage as Clyde followed Don into the room.
It was risky, she knew, to follow them. But she simply had to know what was going to happen. Don, of course, meant to tell Clyde that she was a tramp and a slut; and unless she had prepared Clyde to doubt everything Don said ... She drew a long breath. Men were not to be trusted for so much as the smallest fraction of a moment, of course. Clyde had seemed impressed by what she had told him; she believed that he would defend her-believed! But if he didn't ...!
She wrapped her skirts about her, lifting them well above her slippered feet, hating the dew-wet grass that she knew was ruining her fragile silver-strapped sandals, and crept across the lawn to the window, open of course to the fragrant warm summer night.
The curtains of daffodil-yellow nylon were stirring a little in the breeze, and she knew that where she stood in the shadows beside the window, she was hidden from the men in the lighted room. She held her breath and strained her ears.
Don was mixing drinks, talking casually, carelessly. Then Clyde, accepting a drink, said flatly, "Well, let's get it over with, Don. What's on your mind?"
Gayle tensed and was very still, her breath suspended.
"Something I think-in fact, I know!-I should have told you when I first got here," Don said grimly.
The curtain stirred a little and Gayle was able to peep through its folds that no longer quite met and see Clyde, lounging in a big chair, his drink in his hand, his eyes intent on Don.
"Something important, I suppose," he said at last.
"I think so!"
"Okay-then spit it out!"
"It's-not a very pleasant thing to have to say...."
"Because it is for my own good and it concerns Gayle, of course."
Gayle, hidden, listening, drew in her breath in a small, soundless gasp, and her hands clenched so tightly that the ruby-tipped nails bit deeply into her pink palms.
The stirring curtain showed her Don, tense, his brows drawn together in a frown, his jaw hard and sullen.
"Because," stated Clyde flatly, "if it is about Gayle, I don't think I care to hear it."
He put down the drink he had barely touched and stood up and the two men were tense, wary-eyed, like sworn enemies.
"You're damned well going to hear it!" Don exploded.
Clyde's smile was thin-lipped and angry and did nothing to alter the bleakness in his eyes.
"I don't think so, old man," he said very quietly. "Gayle is a fine, decent, honest girl earning her own living...."
"Gayle is a complete witch, a slut and a tramp," Don said savagely.
Clyde took a step towards him and swung.
Don stepped back, evading the blow, wide-eyed, incredulous.
"What the hell...." he exploded furiously.
Gayle hugged herself joyously and put both hands over her mouth to keep back her laughter.
Clyde had himself under control now but he was white and his eyes were blazing with barely controlled fury.
"Gayle warned me you'd try this...." he said through his teeth. Don swore.
"But I wouldn't believe that any man could sink so low as to take this kind of a crack at a woman just because she wouldn't give in to him," Clyde finished savagely.
Don pulled himself erect and jammed his clenched fists hard into his pockets as through to keep himself from taking a sock at Clyde.
"Oh, so that's it-she warned you...." he began.
"Because you have been threatening her, trying to force her into giving in to you...."
"You poor, blind, damned fool!" snarled Don furiously. "I've had her-and she's pretty damned good, I might add, but that's her business...."
The thin thread of Clyde's control broke and this time when he lunged, Don was not fast enough to block the blow. Don caught it on the chin and stumbled backward, and caught to a chair-back and came back fighting. For a moment the two men fought savagely, swinging with powerhouse blows, until suddenly Don was able to master the younger, slighter man, and sling him onto the divan, and kneel on him, swearing in a lurid stream that made Gayle's eyes widen a little in appreciation of his skill.
"Shut up," he snarled after a moment when Clyde began to struggle. "And be still before I beat your brains out. You damned fool! Are you too stupid to recognize that kind of woman when you see her?"
"I was too stupid to believe that a guy like you could stoop so low to blacken the name of a woman who had the guts to deny your passion," said Clyde savagely, his breath coming in little angry gusts. "I don't believe you've had her, and I won't believe it until she tells me so herself. And even then I'd believe you forced her to it."
Don stared down at him as though he could not believe his ears. And then the fight went out of him and he rose, and Clyde struggled to a sitting position, still panting a little, and reached for his drink. He swallowed it in deep, reviving gulps and for a long moment the two men sat studying each other, all trace of friendship gone from their angry eyes.
It was Don who spoke at last.
"Well, so that's that," he said grimly. "I suppose there's no more I can do since you seem determined to make an ass of yourself."
"I think it would be swell if you'd just step aside and stop trying to nursemaid me," said Clyde shortly. "I've been a big boy now for quite a long time; I can cross the street without anybody holding my hand; I can even zip myself up when I go to the bathroom. So you can relax...."
"Thanks, it will be a pleasure," snapped Don savagely. "You're on your own, from here on in."
"That's mighty nice of you!"
"But there's just one thing more."
Clyde eyed him with anger and bitterness.
"Yes, Daddy dear?" he sneered sweetly.
"Take care of Sue, or so help me, I'll beat hell out of you...."
"I'd enjoy seeing you try-here and now, if you like...."
"And give you a couple of black eyes to wear to the wedding?"
"If you could!"
"Don't worry-I could, and what a pleasure it would be! But Sue would wonder...."
"You seem pretty damned concerned about Sue!"
Gayle held her breath, her eyes wide as she managed to peer between the curtains. The two men were taking each other's measure, and she hoped they would be at each other's throats again. She wished viciously that they would slash each other to bits ... but Don was speaking grimly and she leaned closer to listen.
"I'm very much concerned about Sue," he stated flatly. "Because she is tops and only the best is good enough for her, and I'm not sure you're that!"
"I suppose you are?" It was an ugly sneer and Clyde's eyes were blazing.
"I'm not so sure that I'm not a hell of a sight better able to take care of her than you are, Buddy-because I can properly appreciate her, having known other women-at least, well enough to recognize a tramp when I see one."
The two men glared at each other for a moment and then Clyde got up, and banged his glass on the table.
"It's only a few days until the wedding, and I suppose I can tolerate having you around for that long," he said through his teeth. "But-if you were to get a telegram calling you back to New York on very important business not later than tomorrow morning, I could just barely endure the joy I'd feel."
Don grinned infuriatingly, tight-lipped.
"Not a chance, Buddy-not a chance! I wouldn't miss the wedding for a million dollars, tax free!" he said flatly. "I want to see to it that Sue is-protected from something she doesn't deserve-"
"Meaning me?"
"Meaning Gayle, you knucklehead! If I can take Gayle with me, I leave in the morning...."
"Oh, no you don't...."
"Then she and I both will stay."
Clyde turned toward the door and paused to say over his shoulder, "Just bear in mind that I'm the one who's marrying Sue, will you?"
Don's smile was tight-lipped and grim.
"I'll remember it just as long as you do," he stated flatly. "And just as long as you behave yourself towards her."
For a moment the two men stared at each other levelly. There was a complete absence of the old, familiar friendship that had been as close to affection as men get for each other. They were from that moment on sworn enemies and if their paths crossed again, it would not be because either of them had willed it so.
"See you at the wedding then," said Clyde grimly and stalked out.
Gayle drew back into the dense shadow of the blossoming shrubbery as Clyde walked past her, unseeing, along the moonlit path to the house. She waited tensely until she had heard the sound of his car starting up and then dying away.
She put both hands over her mouth to control her little happy chuckle of delight at the way things were working out, and then she turned cautiously and looked back between the filmy curtains into the living room. But Don had moved out of her line of vision, and though she ventured farther into the pale light that spilled through the curtains she could not see him.
She shrugged a little and turned away, lifting her skirts a little, holding them close about her as she stepped from the shrubbery shadows into the clearing and started toward the path along which Clyde had vanished. But before she had taken more than two steps, there was a swift movement behind her, and Don's hand closed sharply over her arm and whirled her about.
She gasped and looked up at him. He had slipped from the kitchen entrance of the house, around the corner and pounced on her just before she could make good her flight.
For a moment she fought him furiously, savagely, but she was no match for his strength and Don practically dragged her back into the house and flung her ungently on the divan where a little while before he had knelt on Clyde's chest, holding him down.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"How did you know I was out there?" she stammered, as she massaged her bruised wrist where he had gripped her.
"You should be smart enough to know that when you stick that lovely mug of yours up against a lighted window-pane, only a blind man could fail to see it," he snapped. "I trust you got a good earful?"
She gave a little trill of happy laughter, as she settled herself comfortably, and touched busy fingers to her lovely, slightly disordered hair. Her eyes were brimming with acid amusement, and Don's hands clenched into hard, tight fists because he was so torn with the desire to beat hell out of her.
"Oh, I wouldn't have missed it for worlds!" she carolled gaily.
"I didn't think you would," he told her grimly. "I felt sure you were out there, even before I saw you...."
She grinned wickedly at him, her eyes derisive.
"It didn't work out the way you thought it would, did it?" she mocked.
"No, because you're a damned sight smarter than I gave you credit for being-I grant you that!" he said grimly, his eyes raking her from the top of her lovely, shining head to the tips of her shining silver slippers, damp and smudged with dew and grass stains now.
Her eyes widened a little, and she gave a little happy chuckle.
"Well, gee, t'anks, pal!" she mocked lightly.
She watched him, completely at ease, smiling, obviously very pleased that she had succeeded so well in upsetting his plans.
Don mixed drinks, handed her one, and Gayle accepted it, her eyebrows going up a little in mocking question. "No arsenic?" she asked sweetly. "Unfortunately, no. I happen to be fresh out of arsenic
-just when I could use some to such excellent advantage, too," he told her shortly, and walked the length of the room and back again, running his fingers through his hair.
He stopped at last and with one hand balled in his pocket, the other holding his glass, he looked down at her, studying her almost as though he had never set eyes on her before.
She leaned forward to brush the ash from her cigarette, and still leaning forward, quite conscious of the lovely revelation her low cut gown made of her exquisite breasts, she looked up at him through her lashes.
"Like it?" she drawled.
"It?"
She laughed softly. "Them!"
"Hell, yes-I'm crazy about 'em-and you-and I'm scared as hell I'm in love with you, and if I am I should have my head examined or else I should cut my throat from ear to ear and spare myself a lot of misery!" he told her savagely.
Her eyes widened a little and she leaned back, sipping her drink, watching him.
"Oh, I wouldn't be upset if I were you-not about me," she drawled. "There's not the slightest danger that you are in love with me-you couldn't be-not with what you know about me."
But there was a startled, almost wary look in her eyes and she hated herself because suddenly she was breathing a little faster and his eyes upon her could not miss the sudden uneven rising and falling of her tempting breasts.
"That's what I keep trying to tell myself, damn it," he exploded so suddenly that she blinked and sat a little straighter. "I can't possibly be in love with you-and yet, damn it, I'm on fire when you are around or I even think of you. I am in love with you-and I think I hate you, too...."
"That I can easily believe," she taunted him mockingly, enjoying every moment of this cat-and-mouse game.
"You've spoiled all other women for me-and for that I could wring your lovely neck! Or worse!"
"Oh-there's always Sue, you know-I'm quite sure I haven't spoiled Sue for you-because you are just the kind of damned fool to fall in love with a simple little sap like that who thinks sleeping with a man is a terrible ordeal-a little like being boiled in oil!" She saw his tension at her mention of Sue and went on, softly, significantly, knowing that every word flicked him on the raw and joying in the knowledge. "You'd hate having to force yourself upon a reluctant wife every time you wanted to make love to her-and you can take my word for it, that Sue would be plenty reluctant. Oh, she's been brought up to believe that she should submit to her husband's 'messily unpleasant and horrid demands'-but just submitting-you wouldn't get much fun out of that."
"All Sue needs is-the right man to teach her-the truth...." His voice was low, almost husky. His words made her furious and she clenched her hands tightly and ground her teeth before she could speak.
"And, of course, you alone are the man for that-pleasant little job," she derided tautly.
His jaw was set and hard and he lifted his drink and swallowed thirstily before he risked his voice to answer.
"I-think I might handle the-er-job with a little lesser-shock to her than Clyde will do," he said almost as though the words were forced from him against his will. "But it happens that she is in love with Clyde, and as you heard from your listening post outside the window, Clyde is in love with her-so where does that leave you?"
Before she could control herself Gayle said savagely, "Behind the eight ball, of course, where I've been since the day I was born."
Don nodded.
"Glad you can see it that way," he said grimly. "Because if you think for one cockeyed moment that you could ever marry Clyde...."
Gayle laughed derisively.
"Look, you big oaf! I could snap him up tomorrow if I wanted him," she scoffed. "If that damned burglar hadn't come along, I'd have had him trying to make me right there in the garden. And I would have wept a little, in gentle reproach, and admitted I simply adored him, but we must be fair to poor Sue-and I'd have managed to hint that Sue would be much happier married to you-and before dawn we'd have crossed the state line and been married! It can still happen like that-if I want it to." Don was startled, frowning.
"If you want it to?" he repeated not quite sure that he had understood her.
She looked down into her glass, as though her whole interest was centered on the melting ice cubes in the amber-colored liquid.
"I'm not a bit sure I do," she admitted with a frankness that surprised herself. "Oh, being married to a faithful, plodding steady guy like Clyde would be a certain sort of security, I suppose-but it would be pretty damned dull, too."
Don was tense, strained as he watched her and a little afraid to speak lest he disrupt whatever train of thought it was that she was following. She swirled the ice cubes again, and drew a little sigh.
"Oh, of course, marriage is a nice safeguard for the future, when a gal like me has to start watching her weight, and wearing uplift bras, maybe even 'falsies'." She shuddered at the thought and one hand went up instinctively to caress the round full firmness of her breasts as though to reassure herself that it was not yet in any danger of losing its exquisite firm resilience.
Don watched her alertly, and his eyes were suddenly veiled and wary. But she shrugged and glanced up at him, smiling.
"So I might be tempted to marry Clyde, after all," she said coolly. "After all, a year or so of marriage wouldn't be too bad and alimony for the rest of my life-well, a girl has to look ahead, you know."
Don finished his drink and refilled the glass, his back to her while he finished the task. And then he turned, and leaned against the bar, eying her straightly.
"Sure, a girl has to look ahead," he said carefully. "But if marriage looks to you like a safeguard for the future-why plan such a short-term business with a man who bores you? Why not think about marrying a man who-excites you and thrills you and who could do a hell of a lot more towards providing for your future than Clyde could?"
She was very still for a moment, her eyes meeting his. And then at something she saw in his eyes, her own widened a little and she caught her lower lip between her teeth and steadied herself before she asked coolly, "Sounds nice-but where would I find such a man?"
Don grinned at her, and some of the tautness went out of him.
"Well, not more than a few feet away at the moment," he said almost gently.
For a shocked, incredulous moment, Gayle stared at him, her eyes enormous in a face that was suddenly pale as old ivory. She was dazed and shaken to the depths of her being; but after a wild moment she managed to make a flying clutch at her self-control and her mouth thinned in a little ugly smile.
"Who the hell do you think you're kidding?" she spat at him viciously.
Don went on studying her coolly, almost speculatively, his eyes narrowed a little, and he sipped his drink slowly, almost as though he had forgotten that he held it.
"Myself, mostly," he admitted with a frankness so convincing that it was in itself disarming. "I know, of course, what I'll be letting myself in for by marrying you-just plain, hard-boiled unvarnished hell. But not to marry you, would be even worse hell. Because, damn you, I've never seen a woman who excited me as you do; I never believed it was possible for any woman to mean as much to me as you do."
Gayle was speechless, just watching him, listening, not believing it because she was afraid to believe it, yet wanting to believe it so much that she was trembling and as limp as if she had spent the last two hours in his arms.
Don frowned down at his drink for a moment as though he wondered what was wrong with it, and turned back to the bar and freshened it a little. And when he turned again to face her, his jaw was set and hard and his eyes were cold, yet behind that bleakness there were banked flames that set her blood racing like mad and brought an upsurge of desire that shook her as a dog shakes a rat.
"Of course I know that for a little while after we are married, you may just possibly be-shall I be quaint and call it 'faithful'?" He derided the very word by his tone of voice. "That's because I damned well won't let you out of my sight long enough for you to be anything else. But afterwards, when I have to go back to the office, and when I won't be able to watch you so closely, I'll suffer the torments of the damned, wondering what the hell you're up to. Because I'll know that wherever you are, you're with a man, that my friends will have had you any time and any way they like...."
Her mouth was a little dry but she managed to say unsteadily, "If you feel like that about it, I wonder you're willing to risk marrying me at all."
His grin was almost disarmingly gentle.
"Because, damn it, I'd rather have you under those conditions than not to have you at all-it's as simple as that! Doesn't even make good sense, does it?" He mocked his own emotion but his voice was not as light as he would have liked it to sound.
"Of course not. It makes no kind of sense at all," she snapped crossly, because for some completely crazy reason there was a sudden mist of tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat. Hell, she was going all soft and droolly, like some damned fool about a subject that, in the past, had always aroused her bitter derision.
"Well, I've never heard it claimed that love made much sense, have you?" he asked mildly.
"Love? Phooey!" she cried out hotly. "Love's strictly for the birds-for the sappy dames who read romance magazines and believe in Santa Claus and fairy tales. Me, I wouldn't know one damned thing about it-I'm not even sure I want to!"
"Scared?" Don teased. "Well, I don't blame you. I am, too-but I'm more scared of losing whatever it is we have that makes our being together something pretty damned wonderful."
She drew a long hard breath and suddenly she lifted her glass and swallowed the contents almost. at a gulp and put down the empty glass with a little bang and stood up.
"Me," she told him sharply, "I'm getting the hell out of here...."
"Without even giving me an answer?"
She paused and eyed him uncertainly.
"After all, I made you a proposition...."
"Proposition? That I can understand. I've had those made to me before...."
"I bet!" his tone was dry, grim.
"But a proposal? To commit matrimony? I don't believe it!" she flashed at him.
"We can get into my car and cross the state line in three or four hours and be married," he pointed out.
She stared at him for a long moment and then she put her hands to her forehead and pushed back the flame-gold curls, like a child too puzzled for coherent speech. And to her stunned amazement, to her mounting fury, tears rose to her eyes and spilled over and suddenly she was sobbing almost wildly.
"Poor little devil!" said Don with honest affection and tenderness in his voice as his arms closed about her, and held her tightly.
She clung to him, sobbing, her face hidden against him, feeling his arms close about her; her blood warming to fever heat because of contact with his hard, masculine body; until suddenly Don bent his head and kissed her hard, and she looked up at him, flushed and tearful.
"Well?" asked Don softly. "Shall we hop into the car and drive to the state line...?"
She clung to him, pressing her body hard against him, drawing his head down until his mouth was against her warm, soft lips. Her heart was beating wildly, like a newly caged bird against the cage of satin-smooth soft white flesh.
"Let's don't go anywhere-tonight! It's-wonderful here-and oh, Don I'm so damned crazy about you-take me, Don-take me-I'm mad about you!"
His hands shook and the frail chiffon of her gown made a little whispering gasp as it fell to the floor and her body, an exquisite rose-ivory statue, was his for the taking, exulting in the giving; rejoicing to accept within itself the storm and fury and burning demand of his ardor....
Shortly before dawn, she stirred a little and kissing his cheek that was pressed hard against her as she made an attempt to rise, she said reluctantly, "It's hell, honey-but I've got to get into the house before they miss me-or one of the servants sees me sneaking in like this."
Jealously he drew her close again.
"Now do you understand why I want to marry you?" he demanded.
"I understand why I want to marry you-to think of being together like this any time we want to be-without having to sneak and hide-I want to have you, but I want to wake up with you, too, and have breakfast in bed with you-dinner and supper and lunch, too, I guess!" she confessed impulsively.
Don laughed at that and released her, and lay propped against pillows watching her as she stepped into her clothes.
She laughed at him, as she settled the dress about her voluptuous body and drew up the zipper under the arm.
He got up then and drew her close and hard against him and pressed his cheek against her hair.
"I'll promise you something, Don, if you want me to," she offered almost shyly.
"Such as what, for instance?" he asked, almost warily.
"Such as that-I won't ever two-time you, darling," she said warmly, eagerly, clinging to him passionately. "I'll never let another man touch me, I swear it. Because from this minute on, darling-no other man could possibly mean anything to me-not ever!"
He grinned at her tautly, and put her a little away from him, as though to deny the rising again of the tide that threatened to engulf them both again.
"Thanks, precious-but I won't hold you to that...."
"You must, because it's true-I swear it!" she insisted, He kissed her lightly, walked her to the door, and through it and into the thick darkness of the hour before dawn.
"We'll go into that at our next meeting, sweet," he promised, and gave a small chuckle. "Later-we'll discuss it later!"
"But it's a promise...."
"Sure it is, and I know you mean it-now."
"I mean it for always...."
"Always is a long time, angel face...."
"Not long enough for me to ever get tired of being loved by you-not long enough for me to ever want anybody else as I want you-hell, don't you understand, you-you big goon?" She was a little cross now that he would not accept her simple assurance of her devotion. "I love you...."
He laughed softly, kissed her lightly and turned her around to face the house, glimmering through the darkness.
"Scoot along, honey, and get inside before the servants start stirring up a scandal. I'll see you at lunch. And we'll announce the glad tidings to anybody who happens to be present!"
She caught her breath in sharp delight.
"We will?" she marvelled, afraid to believe that he was really in earnest about wanting to marry her, yet knowing if he himself meant to announce their engagement, publicly, at the Leslie's luncheon table, he would not be able to withdraw from it later.
"Well, sure!" said Don, and even in the darkness she sensed his little grin, and the pressure of his hands on her shoulders tightened a little. "You don't think I'm going to hold back on the public announcement that I've staked out a claim on you, do you? We're going to be married, baby-and right soon, believe me!"
"Oh, Don!" she whispered, awed, incredulous, delighted beyond everything she had ever dreamed or hoped.
"Run along now," said Don, and gave her a gentle push and a light, loving spank as she turned and vanished down the dark path.
With her heart singing within her, Gayle hurried across the path and through the door that had been left open for her and for Sue. Fortunately, Sue had not locked it behind her, and Gayle slid through it, turned the key noiselessly in the lock and held her breath as she unstrapped her slippers, stepped out of them and carrying them in her hand crept soundlessly up the stairs and to her own room. She scarcely dared to breathe normally until the door had eased shut behind her and she was safe in her own room.
She stood for a long moment, breathless, wide-eyed, hugging herself for joy, her body still throbbing exultantly.
Suddenly she laughed a small, secret laugh. She, Gayle Barker, the "shameless hussy" of Harlan's bitter description, was engaged to be married! Just like simple-minded little saps-Sue, for instance. And she was all dewy-eyed and ecstatic at the prospect!
She had not, since her early girlhood ever seriously contemplated marriage. The men of her world then had been men for whom she would have been an unpaid drudge; bearing their squalling brats; washing their dirty overalls; scrubbing and cleaning some foul little dingy tenement flat; going without things so "the kids" could have more food, less ragged clothes. Her viewpoint on marriage had been bitterly realistic in those days. And after she had stepped irrevocably across the border line between virginity and promiscuity she had been too sensible to even think that she could marry any man. But now-she was going to marry Don!
It was a dazzling prospect and suddenly she had a strange and unaccustomed moment of deep humility.
"I'll be a good wife," she promised herself-and Don! "I'll take such good care of you, darling-I wouldn't mind cooking and scrubbing and having kids-for you!"
And then she grinned wryly. Remembering that Don was a rich man and there would be servants to do the cooking and scrubbing and cleaning; and take care of the brats! She could endure the more or less minor discomfort of bearing them, surrounded by all the luxury and comfort that Don's wealth could provide.
"But I won't ever let another man so much as touch me, darling-I won't, I won't!" she promised unsteadily, and the very thought of another man's passion made her a little sick. And that frightened her a little. She had never minded men making love to her, because she had set her price high; and if a man was willing to pay it-so what? It was better paid and a damned sight easier than standing on her feet behind a store counter, which was about all she could have hoped for if it had not been for her realistic attitude towards her lush beauty.
She went to bed at last, to lay wide-eyed and hug herself, caressing the loveliness of her own body that was, at long last, bringing her a harvest far more rich and wonderful than anything she had ever dared dream she might achieve.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Luncheon the following day was a family affair with only the Leslies, Gayle, Don, and Clyde. The strain and stress of preparing for the season's most brilliant wedding, Mrs. Leslie's determination that it should make history in the social annals of the town was beginning to show on all of them. For one of the few times in his business life, Mr. Leslie did not go to the office until around noon and lunched at home.
Mrs. Leslie, a little uneasy because the servants were hinting at rebellion at all the extra work, apologized wanly for a "scratch meal" that was a combination of breakfast and lunch. But no one seemed to have very much appetite anyway, and Gayle was too excited, too expectant of Don's promised announcement of their engagement to care that the omelet was not as light and puffy as usual or that the green salad had been carelessly tossed or the dressing lacked something of its usual tang.
Somewhere midway in the meal, conversation lagged and Don looked across the table at Gayle and smiled warmly and said, "Well, I think we might as well tell them, don't you?"
Not until that moment had Gayle been able quite to convince herself that he really was going to make the promised announcement. She had been a little uneasy lest at the last moment he might change his mind. But now color poured into her lovely face and her eyes were twin stars.
Startled, Sue glanced swiftly at Don, who sat beside her, and then across the table at Gayle, and Clyde's jaw tightened a little and his eyes hardened.
Mr. and Mrs. Leslie waited politely, without any spectacular show of interest, until Don grinned and said with mock ceremony, "I want you all to be the first to know that I am the luckiest man in the world-because Gayle has at last promised to marry me."
Gayle let out her caught breath in a little gasp, and relaxed a little. There! It was out! Their intentions had been publicly announced. Don couldn't wriggle out of it now-not after announcing it here to these high-hat snobs that, she knew vaguely, frowned on men who reneged on their published announcements of matrimonial intention.
Gayle was watching Sue and saw the small, stricken look that sped over her face and the way her mouth thinned and hardened and her eyes blazed with savage protest. But she controlled herself and lowered her eyes to her plate.
Clyde sat beside Gayle and so she could only guess at the way he was taking it, though the little gasp that he gave could be anger, shock or surprise.
"Well, well," said Mr. Leslie with false heartiness, obviously not at all sure just how the announcement should be taken. "That's quite interesting. I've always heard that one wedding usually breeds half a dozen."
"Thanks," said Don and his tone was a trifle dry. "There seems no point in our waiting, so Gayle and I will drive across the state line and be married this afternoon-and return in time for the wedding day after tomorrow...."
And then, to the amazement of the others at the table, Mrs. Leslie committed the social breach of making a scene. She was on her feet before any of them could do anything but stare at her. She had thrust back her chair so violently that it caught and turned over backward and the white-coated butler thrust a surprised face through the swinging door, his eyes wide at the sight of his usually calm, controlled, slightly supercilious mistress acting like a rather common human being.
"Oh, no you're not!" She was leaning with her hands spread on the table, her body shaking with uncontrolled anger, her voice high and almost strident. "Oh, no you're not! Drive across the state line and be married-before Sue and Clyde are finished with your services? Over my dead body you take one single beam of the spotlight away from them...."
"Why, Mother!" stammered Sue, shocked, yet delighted at her mother's protest.
Mrs. Leslie was in the grip of hysteria, but her strident voice went on wildly. "After I've worked myself almost to death to guarantee that it will be the most beautiful wedding Claresville has ever seen-do you think for one minute I'm going to allow you two to slide off and get married and create a scandal-and have people watching you, talking about you-when they ought to have nothing on their minds except what a beautiful bride Sue is and what a lucky man Clyde is?"
Mr. Leslie was beside her now, anxious, trying to soothe her, but she flung him off and turned furiously to Don.
"Marry her any damned time you want to-after Sue and Clyde leave on their wedding trip, and it would serve you right if you did," she spat at him furiously, and the butler's eyes grew saucer wide at the unaccustomed-if innocuous-profanity on the writhing lips of a woman who had never been known to say so much as "darn" in public before. "But you're not going to spoil Sue's wedding-I won't allow it, do you hear? I won't allow it!"
Gayle was on her feet now, her eyes blazing.
"Why, you damned old harridan!" she blazed, but the next moment Don was beside her, his arm about her, shaking her, not gentle or tender at all.
"Shut up, you!" he hissed in her ear and she caught her breath at the look in his eyes, before he turned to Mrs. Leslie, shaking now in the violent grip of hysteria, mouthing words, tears raining down her face, while Sue and Clyde and Mr. Leslie tried to soothe her.
Eventually they got her out of the room and, still sobbing, up the stairs. Don watched until the little procession had vanished and then he turned to Gayle, his brows drawn together in a little angry frown.
"One more word out of you and I'd have socked you!" he told her softly, but with menace in his voice.
"But what the hell business is it of hers whether we get married or not? You haven't been fooling around with her, too, have you?" Gayle rounded on him in savage suspicion and jealousy.
Don's eyes blazed with a healthy rage.
"Don't be more of a damned tramp than you have to be," he grated furiously. "The poor old gal has been driving herself like mad to see that Sue has the fanciest wedding in history. Sure, it would take a bit of the excitement out of it, I suppose if you and I did the romantic elopement we had planned-"
"You're not going to get out of it!" she told him hotly.
He studied her almost curiously.
"I have no intention of getting out of it, as you so prettily put it," he told her after a moment. "But let me warn you, my girl-either you behave yourself or I may find it convenient to tell them all the whole thing was a joke."
She caught her breath and a cold hand clutched at her heart and panic spread through her. All the new, bright, exquisite dreams-oh, no, she couldn't let them be smashed.
"I'm-a heel, darling," she told him huskily and melted into his arms and clung to him pressing her warm body against him so that he was sharply conscious of her in every throbbing nerve. She knew the exact moment when the rigidity went out of his body and his desire for her arose. She hid her face against his shoulder to hide the little pleased smile that curled her mouth, the gleam of triumph in her eyes.
"It's-just that I love you so much dearest," she told him softly, her lips nibbling at his ear sliding along his cheek until his mouth closed on hers. "I-just can't bear it not-not to be with you always."
"We will be," said Don almost grimly but the hard demanding pressure of his arms told her that his need for her was thoroughly aroused and she could draw herself free of him, knowing his reluctance to let her go.
"I'm so sorry," said a small polite voice from the doorway and Gayle whirled to see Sue standing there, her head held high, her blue eyes cool, her manner icily polite. "I didn't mean to intrude-"
"Didn't you?" began Gayle hotly, but Don's hand closed hard on hers and she set her teeth in her lower hp to control her anger.
"I came to apologize for Mother," said Sue politely, her eyes brushing Gayle and going on to cling to Don's face with a strained intensity that made Gayle bristle a little.
"That's silly," said Don strongly. "It is Gayle and I who owe your mother our apologies." Sue smiled stiffly.
"That's-sweet of you, Don," she said gently. "But it was outrageous of Mother to-to blow up like that. But the poor darling has been driving herself so hard. She's so determined that mine shall be a wedding that no one in Claresville will ever forget. But she had no right to try to prevent your getting married first if you want to."
There was an urgent, almost a yearning question in the last and Gayle almost spoke out, but Don, as though sensing her intention tightened his hand on hers to a savage painful grip and Gayle gasped a little and looked at him in protest.
"She was quite right, Sue," said Don quietly. "Gayle and I did not stop to think that our elopement might take some of the attention from your wedding. Naturally Gayle and I will postpone our marriage until after you have gone off on your honeymoon."
Sue said sweetly, "Thank you, Don, that's very sweet of you."
She looked coolly at Gayle and in that moment there was no longer any faint pretense of friendship between the two girls. Gayle's heart leaped with malicious delight; for she knew that Sue was now deeply in love with Don and that the thought of his marrying Gayle was a bitter pain to her. And because she hated women born to a life of sheltered ease like Sue, and because they were all her enemies, she was passionately glad that she had been able to snatch away a man one of them wanted.
Sue drew a long breath and smiled once more at Don.
"I do hope you'll be very happy," she said quietly, and added, "And now if we're going to reach the Maysons in time for a few games of tennis before the cocktail party, hadn't we better get dressed? I admit it's a bore but the Maysons have been very sweet and Claire Mayson is my godmother."
Without waiting for either of them to answer she turned and went out of the room and up the stairs.
Gayle turned back to Don gloating a little.
"She's madly in love with you-" she began recklessly.
"Shut up!" said Don grimly, his eyes dark and tormented. "And scat upstairs and get dressed. I'll see you in an hour."
He stalked out and Gayle stared after him, a little startled, a little frightened-because she wasn't married to him yet and unless she watched her step very closely she might not be! That was a thought that shook her badly. Because now that she had had the dazzling prospect of such a marriage spread before her, she could not face the thought of spoiling it. Or, of having it spoiled for her! She went soberly up the stairs, warning herself that she must keep her claws sheathed very carefully, at least until after she had married Don. She could relax then, she promised herself. Only with an odd little unaccustomed uneasiness, she wondered if she could. Or even if she would want to. For she was stark, staring mad about Don-for the first, last and only time in her life she had met a man whom she could love with her mind and her heart, as well as with her body. And so for the first time in her life she was frighteningly vulnerable. Only when you really love somebody an awful lot can you be deeply and desperately hurt in all the ways that matter so terribly. It was a discovery that had come to her rather late in life but it therefore loomed even more frighteningly true.
She was on her best behavior all afternoon at the Mayson's party wearing a very demure and lady-like printed chiffon frock, for she had no taste for lunging around in the hot sunlight banging away at a tennis bah. That stuff was strictly for the birdies, she told herself as she held a sort of court in her ivory colored frock printed with jade colored ivy leaves, the sunlight fingering its way through the ancient oak trees that bordered the court as though anxious to touch the shining flame colored glory of her hair.
Don and Sue were paired against Clyde and a girl who was a member of the wedding party so that Gayle had been stumbling over her ever since her arrival in Claresville. But she could only remember the girl was called Ruth. And nothing seemed of less importance to her at the moment than the girl's last name. Secretly she despised, while she bitterly envied all the women present, but she schooled herself carefully to be friendly and gracious and not to show too much interest in the men.
When the set was over, and Sue and Don and Clyde came back to the group beneath the trees, Gayle eyed them with a faintly amused smile. Sue, in shorts and a halter, hot and flushed and sweating a little, looked about nine years old and more than a little grubby. Yet the way Don looked at her-Gayle's lovely mouth hardened a little at the way Don looked at Sue, who collapsed gaily n the grass and accepted gratefully a tall, frosty glass of iced tea.
Clyde came over to where Gayle sat and dropped own on the grass beside her.
"You don't play tennis?" he asked politely.
"It's not my game at all," she drawled and gave him a brilliant provocative smile.
Clyde met her eyes for a moment and then looked way and very softly so that his voice would not reach beyond her ears, he said, "So you are going to marry Don, after all."
Gayle stiffened just a little but her warm, gentle smile did not relax though there was for a moment a wary gleam in her eyes. "After all what?" she asked softly. Clyde made a little gesture with his glass that made the ice cubes tinkle coolly.
"Oh, after all that-making passes at you and-playing wolf," he said grimly. Gayle hesitated a moment and then she smiled a little. "Didn't one of Henry the Eighth's fiancees tell him that the only entrance to her bedroom was through the church door?" she mocked lightly. "Oh, don't look so astonished-it must have been in the movie that I saw it-or a play. Anyway, I think that Don probably figured it was that way-with me. And it is!"
Clyde studied her for a long moment and she quailed a little, inwardly, at his probing, searching gaze. And then he looked away and his voice was low pitched.
"Well, I can understand his wanting you so much that if marriage is the only way-" he said and his tone -edged. "I admit I'm a little astonished to think of Don getting married; he's always seemed like the perennial bachelor to me."
Gayle tried not to look smug.
"Oh, well, some girl was bound to bring him down sooner or later. I guess I just happened to be lucky," she said quietly, and there was a tone in her voice that made Clyde look up at her sharply.
"You're in love with him!" he accused almost sharply.
"With all my heart-if you'll forgive a corny phrase."
She was trying hard to be flippant about it but she could not keep the star shine out of her eyes, nor could she keep her soft gaze from turning to Don, adoring him with her eyes, her heart pounding a little as though his eyes held a caress that stroked her body to urgent, exquisite desire.
For a moment she and Don looked straight into each other's eyes, while Clyde watched them both, and while Clyde's jaw set a little and his eyes became bleak and cold. Don grinned tenderly at Gale, and lifted his glass to her in a silent toast. And Gayle laughed a little from sheer exuberance of spirit and lifted her own glass to return the salute. And when she again had attention to give to Clyde, he had risen and walked across the grass to join another group.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The pre-wedding festivities culminated in the bride's dinner, given by her attendants; and the groom's dinner, tendered by the masculine members of the wedding party.
Mrs. Leslie, who had been quite cool and formal to Gayle since her outburst at lunch the day before, had laid down a rule for the bride's dinner. It was that it should end at exactly midnight, so that Sue could get a full eight hours sleep before the wedding at four o'clock the following afternoon.
"I will not have Sue-and the rest of you walking down the aisle in church tomorrow afternoon looking like an assembly of hags!" she told them firmly, when they had assembled in the private dining room of the Club where the party was being given. "Every single one of you must be home and in bed by midnight, mind you-or I shall lead a mass meeting of mothers here to drag you all home by your pretty ears!"
The girls chorused a bright, laughing assurance of compliance with the order and Mrs. Leslie smiled and went out to her waiting car where several of her old friends were waiting for her, to "sit with her" over a typical feminine meal of salad and tea, while they hashed and rehashed all the wedding details and plans.
Gayle, from her position at the head of the table, with Sue on her right, looked down the length of the elaborately decorated table. The fifteen girls who, with herself as maid of honor, would see Sue well and truly married tomorrow. By this time tomorrow night, Sue would be a married woman, facing the ordeal of her wedding night of which she had admittedly shrank in repulsion. Gayle smothered a small, malicious grin. If the bachelor's dinner tonight followed the usual trend, Clyde would be nursing the biggest of all hangovers and Sue might find the ordeal even more excruciating than even her fears had warned her.
Gayle smiled secretly in enjoyment of the prospect. She looked around the table, at the lovely frocks, the pretty chattering girls; and wondered how many of them were virgins. She couldn't believe many of them were; yet they had been brought up as Sue had been, taught that "sex" was a dirty word, and that "no nice girl enjoyed it."
"I could split my girdle laughing at that," Gayle told herself. "The poor damned fools! What they need is a session or two in some good, high class house where they could be taught the facts of life in a big way. They'd be a damned sight more likely to keep their husbands satisfied and at home!"
She would have no difficulty with Don, she was smugly sure.
She listened politely to the gay little speeches, the innocuously "daring" toasts; to the "naughty stories" told adventurously by one girl after another and listened to the pseudo-shocked screams of laughter-and was bored to tears. She fought against the temptation to tell them a few stories that she felt sure would set the wave in their carefully tended hair. But she managed to restrain the impulse. She had to keep on wearing her mask for a little while longer; but, brother, would it be a relief to open the eyes and ears of these simple-minded saps!
She was passionately relieved when, at long last, the party broke up and she and Sue were stepping into the Leslie limousine to be driven home by the sleepy-eyed, middle-aged chauffeur.
As they climbed the stairs, and paused in front of the door to Gayle's room, Sue looked uncertainly at Gayle.
"It was-I-a nice party, wasn't it?" she hazarded and then managed a smile. "That is, I suppose it was. I'm so nearly out on my feet that all parties look pretty much alike to me now. You and Don are being smart to elope."
"Smart? We'll be damned lucky to make it with your mother blowing her top-" snapped Gayle, and caught herself up just before she could finish, not quite daring to risk the bitterness she knew would express itself in words that would shock Sue to her toes.
"I know," said Sue softly, almost humbly. "Poor Mother. I'm terribly sorry, Gayle-"
"I bet you are," said Gayle through her teeth, and because she could not trust herself to stand there indulging in light chit-chat lest she spit out some of her angry venom, she opened her door, said a casual good night and walked into her room.
She heard Sue's light footsteps crossing the hall to her own room, and without turning on the lights, she crossed to a chair beside the window and dropped into it. She lit a cigarette and looked out into the starlit night.
She wanted a drink. Brother, how she wanted a drink! Something to wash the taste out of her mouth of the sweet, insipid drinks-wine, for Pete's sake!-that had been served at the dinner. Something long and tall and icy cold that would make her insulted stomach sit up and yip with delight.
She looked out over the lawn towards the path that led to the guest cottage. Don might be back from the bachelor's dinner by now, and that was a very tidily equipped bar he had; and at the thought of joining Don for a goodnight drink, her mouth curled a little in delighted anticipation. After all-why not? No one would ever know. She could slip out of the side door, and leave it unlatched so that she could get back in before anyone discovered her absence. And maybe Don would be as glad to see her as she was to see him-she chuckled a little, fondly, at the thought for Don couldn't possibly want to be with her as badly as she wanted to be with him! Men thought they had a monopoly on passion! The poor, dear damned fools! But then maybe it was better that they thought so; a woman would be a fool to let a man know she wanted him even more than he wanted her-or would she? That was a thought she'd consider at length later on, she promised herself, laughing a little as she stood up and out of her frail, filmy frock. She tossed it across the bed, and went to the closet for smartly cut dark blue slacks, and a thin shirt that hugged her enticing breasts lovingly. Moccasins of soft brown leather made it possible for her to slip through the sleeping house and down the stairs without a sound.
The side door was unlocked and she was pleased about that. A servant had been careless, but that was all to the good tonight! She took the key out of the lock and slipped it into her pocket, just on the chance that the careless servant might remember inconveniently and thinking everyone was in, come down to lock the door.
Outside, the night was warm and the stars shone brightly but the moon had already set. The path through the woods was a pahd glimmer but she felt she could have followed it blindfold because it led to Don. Her heart sang in her breast and she refused to face the possibility that Don had not yet returned from the bachelor dinner.
She came to the curve in the path and the gay little guest house stood in its neat setting of carefully trimmed lawn and shrubs. And there were lights; soft amber light that spilled through the casement windows that were open to the fragrant night.
Her heart leaped with delight and she had already forgotten that she wanted a drink. She didn't want a drink half as bad as she wanted Don's arms about her, Don's desire rising to meet and fulfill her own that was hammering in her blood like the savage beat of jungle drums.
But before she came to the door of the little house, she heard voices and came to a full stop, and her silly heart fell flat on its face.
For Don wasn't alone!
She mustn't go barging in until she knew who was with him and maybe when she knew that she would have to go back to the house without seeing him, without the drink that had been the ostensible reason for her coming, but more than that, without the hour or more of passionate love in his arms for which she had really been driven here by the fire in her blood.
She paused on the edge of the walk, and drew a deep breath. And then she crept across the grass on silent, careful feet until she stood near enough to the open window to be able to look inside the lamp-lit living room of the guest cottage.
What she saw made her catch her breath in a sharp gasp of startled rage that, for a moment, robbed her of all power of motion or speech.
Sue stood facing Don still in the filmy powder blue chiffon dress she had worn for the dinner party. Don's back was to Gayle, where she stood at the window, but Sue's face was revealed to her and what she saw in that face was enough to make her grind her teeth with rage, while she strained her ears to hear whatever it was that Sue was saying, to which Don was listening so that his very back was rigid.
"Oh, Don darling." Sue's voice was warm and soft and caught with tears. "I know it's an awful thing to have to admit, when this time tomorrow I'll be-Clyde's wife!"
She caught her breath and a small shiver sped over her and her eyes widened a little, and when she spoke again her voice was low, husky.
"If-you could possibly know how that thought-terrifies me-"
"Clyde worships you, Sue." Don's voice was taut and in it Gayle caught something of Don's savage hunger for Sue and she had to set her teeth hard in her lower Up to keep from screaming out her rage and jealousy. But she held herself taut and still, determined to see just how far Sue would go.
"I know-oh, Don, don't you suppose I've lain awake nights grieving about that-" stammered Sue and a great crystal tear forced its way between her closed eyes and slid down her flushed cheek.
"Grieving?" Don repeated sharply as though he found the word difficult to understand.
"Because-I know I can't-destroy him by letting him know-now!-that I don't love him-"
"Oh, come now, Sue-" Don's protest was half-hearted and completely unconvincing.
"I know I don't love him, Don darling-because if I did-the way a woman should love the man she is going to marry-I'd-I'd be-well, looking forward to my wedding night, wouldn't I?" she stammered miserably. Don said tautly, "It's-customary, I believe."
"I'm-I'm terrified of it, Don-" Sue put up her white, shaking hands on which Clyde's beautifully cut diamond twinkled with malicious fire, and covered her eyes.
Gayle stood rigid, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, watching them, murder in her heart. The witch! The complete witch!
"Oh, but, look, Sue dear," Don tried awkwardly to explain something he felt her mother should have explained to her long ago, "all-well, decent girls like you-feel that way-I mean-well, you've been brought up in an old-fashioned way-and-well, I think they call it bride's jitters, don't they? Though of course I'm afraid I wouldn't know much about it-"
Sue's hands dropped from her white, tear-stained face and twisted together in an agony of effort at self-control and when she spoke, she controlled her voice with such an effort that it sounded a little harsh.
"But-you see, Don, if-if I were-marrying you-I wouldn't have any-jitters-" she stammered, and Gayle saw Don's rigid back suddenly move a little as though he had been violently shaken.
"Sue!" It seemed to be wrung from him in an almost desperate necessity for some protest that was only halfhearted but that he felt he must make.
Sue flung out her shaking hands in a little gesture of helplessness.
"Oh, I know, darling-that's-shocking, isn't it? But-don't you see, darling? I know now-when it's much too late-that I don't love Clyde at all-"
"Of course you do-"
"I know now," Sue rushed on, as though he had not spoken, "that I love you-because I-I want-my wedding night with you and the thought of spending it with Clyde-oh, Don, I'd rather-die!"
And suddenly she was in tears, half hysterical, shaking, and Don took a single stride towards her and caught her close in his arms, soothing her with broken words of endearment and tenderness, holding her very close to him, so that when she lifted her tear-stained face, her mouth was only an inch below his own, and Don's mouth closed upon it and they were rocked by a storm of passion so obvious to the watching, furious Gayle that it was like a gust of savage wind that practically blew her into the room.
"What the hell's going on here?" she blazed as she came through the open door.
Sue gave a little thin scream of dismay and jerked herself guiltily free of Don's arms, and Don whirled to face Gayle, who had never, in the grip of her blind fury and jealousy, looked less beautiful.
"I didn't hear you knock," said Don savagely, through his teeth, as he glared angrily at her.
"Knock?" Gayle stared at him in rage. "I'll knock her damned brains out if she doesn't keep her slimy paws off you!"
Sue gave a little stricken moan of dismay and shame, and covered her face with her hands. And Gayle strode towards her, but before she could come within reach of her, Don's hand shot out and caught her and held her despite her struggles.
"I'll scratch her eyes out, the stinkin' little witch!" she raged, struggling against Don's angry grip that was bruising her arms. "You damned little two-bit slut! Sneaking down here to fool around with Don knowing he's my man-and you with a man of your own-why, you-"
Don's free hand closed over her writhing mouth and his arm went roughly about her, holding her, until Sue, with a little sick look of distaste and horror, turned and ran out of the room.
Don flung Gayle unceremoniously from him so that she veered violently against the wall, and clung to a chair to keep from falling. Without another glance at her, Don followed Sue and Gayle heard his voice calling her name, in swift urgency. But Sue did not pause, and Don stopped at the edge of the walk to watch the pale glimmer of her filmy dress swallowed up in the darkness of the tree-bordered lane.
When he came back at last to the room, Gayle was seated on the divan, making a pretense of being very much at ease though her mouth had a sulky droop and her eyes were wary, uneasy.
Don looked at her for a long moment and the hostility, the utter disgust and loathing in his eyes hit her like a blow against her naked heart.
Gayle dropped the cigarette she had been trying to light and came to her feet in almost a single movement that forgot to be studiedly graceful and was as nearly awkward as she was capable of.
"Don!" she whimpered, stricken. "Don't look at me like that-"
He turned deliberately from her and walked to the bar where he mixed a drink, his back to her.
"I wish I need never look at you again as long as I five," he told her over his shoulder.
She caught her breath as though that had been a blow between the eyes.
"Oh, no, Don-no-you don't mean that-" she panted.
Don turned to her and the look in his eyes made her feel as though he had been beating her with steel-tipped thongs.
"Don't I?" he asked thinly and lifted his drink as though he felt the need of it.
She drew a deep breath and tried to still the panic in her heart. She even threw into her voice all its warm, coaxing, provocative music, and even managed something that she hoped would sound vaguely like a laugh as she held out her hand towards his drink, wiggling her fingers a little, an ugly travesty of a lovely woman quite sure of her vivacious charm.
"What's the matter-don't I get a drink, too?" she pleaded.
Don turned, mixed one and as he handed it to her, said grimly, "Sorry, but I'm all fresh out of arsenic-and just when I feel the need of it as I have never done before!"
Her hand shook a little as she accepted the drink, and she drank thirstily and deeply, trying with every atom of strength and courage she possessed to keep her hand from shaking, to keep that panic within her from showing. But when Don merely went on looking at her with that cold, hostile look as though he had never set eyes on her before and hoped he never would again, she put down the glass and took a step toward him, her hand extended. But when he quietly moved away from her, she stopped and her hand clenched and dropped to her side.
"I'm-sorry I blew my top," she managed awkwardly, the words seeming to stick in her throat. "But-any woman in her right mind would have felt the same way if she walked in and found the man she's going to marry lovin' up a storm with a damned little virgin!"
Don eyed her coldly and drank deeply but said nothing.
"Don't you understand, darling? She is a virgin and they're not much fun-you wouldn't have enjoyed it-" she stammered.
"How would you know? And if you don't mind I'd just as soon not discuss it-"
"But-Don, darling-we are going to be married-" she said uncertainly, and as she saw the satirical look touch his thin-lipped mouth she' cried sharply, "Well, aren't we?"
"When pigs fly, and it snows the Fourth of July in the deep South, and wars are ended all over the world, and taxes are cut fifty per cent, well, there is just a bare possibility that we might if those things happened-but I don't think they are likely to, do you?" he drawled cynically.
That was a body blow from which she rocked as though she stood on the deck of a ship caught in the teeth of a hurricane wind. Her eyes widened, and her face was paper white as she stared at him, trying to manage her voice, but unable to speak.
Don studied her curiously, with a sharp intentness that was in itself a blow.
"You really are pretty stupid, after all, aren't you?" he observed at last with a deceptive mildness.
Gayle drew a long, hard breath and her shaking hands were clenched tightly as she stared at him, wide-eyed and dazed.
"You-you aren't going to-marry me?" she stammered at last and her voice was thin and frightened above the wild clamor of her heart that seemed to rock in her breast, shaking her body violently.
Don's eyebrows went up a little, derisively, mockingly.
"You really expected me to?" he seemed acridly amused at the thought.
"But-you s-s-said you-wanted to-" she stammered like an appalled, terrified child.
"And you believed that any man in his right mind would want to marry a tramp?" The word, in that tone of voice, was like a blow.
Stung to the quick, terrified of the yawning abyss his words opened before her stumbling feet, she cried out stridently.
"But you've got to-you told that bunch of stuffed shirts that you were going to marry me-" she cried out wildly.
"That," stated Don flatly, and looked down at the ice cubes in his glass as though he found something oddly amusing in the yellow liquor that no longer quite covered them, "was to keep you from messing up things between Clyde and Sue-"
He looked up from the ice cubes and his eyes seemed to have borrowed some of their chill.
"That's why I say you are even more stupid than I first thought you-to be taken in by such a-thin tale!" he finished with frank satisfaction.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, dazed and bewildered.
Don's eyes slid over her contemptuously, admitting the hire of her lovely body, the tempting upward thrusts of her delicious breasts, but dismissing the lure as something to be paid for, briefly enjoyed and immediately dismissed.
"So you'd better run along now and get packed, because of course you'll be leaving tomorrow immediately after the wedding," he told her almost gently.
"But-but-you can't-I mean-you told them-I'll-damn you, I'll make you marry me!" she cried wildly.
Don laughed at her. A slow, amused, unbearably insulting laugh.
"How?" he asked gently.
She made a little helpless gesture and clenched her hands tightly together.
"You're still a tramp, you know," he pointed out in that almost gentle, contemptuous voice. "And now that Sue knows it, too-well, I hardly think she will be too anxious to have you around. And there isn't time left for you to seduce Clyde before the wedding-and Sue will damned well see to it that you don't have a chance afterwards-so-you see?"
He turned and mixed himself another drink, as though to give her a chance to think of an answer to his devastating summary of the situation. But Gayle was too dazed, too sick with the pain of her smashed hopes of marriage to him, to be able to find anything that she wanted to say. It would do no good at all to plead with him; he would only laugh at her. And she was too sore and bruised and hurt to endure any more of his contemptuous laughter. She could only stand there, leaning hard against the tall chair-back to steady her shaking knees and stare at him with wide, sick eyes out of which all the warmth and the loveliness had long since died.
When he turned to her, holding out a bottle, and raised his eyebrows a little to know if she would like her drink freshened, she could not control the fury that made her hurl her half-full glass straight at his insolent face.
Don ducked a little but not in time to miss the blow, and as the ice and liquor trickled down the front of his shirt front and lapels of his dinner clothes, his eyes blazed with fury. But he controlled himself with an effort and as he wiped away the moisture with a handkerchief, his thin-lipped smile was disgusted.
"That is just what I might have expected of you-once a fishwife, always a fishwife-though I don't know why I should so malign the race of fishwives, probably very respectable women compared to you," he told her savagely. "And now I think you'd better go. Of course, you can't leave until after the wedding-"
"Why the hell can't I?" she spat at him viciously. Don's eyes were faintly touched with alarm. "Oh, but you can't-the maid of honor walking out on a wedding this late would upset the whole shebang-after all the rehearsals and everything. You mustn't spoil Sue's wedding-" he protested.
"Oh, can't I? I'd like to set off an atom bomb right over her head just as the little witch stops in front of the altar-"
"I have no doubt you would," Don told her shortly. "But you're going to stay for the wedding, and pretend to be a lady and the minute it is over, I'll personally see you to the train-"
"Like hell you will! I'm leaving just as fast as I can get my duds together," she flamed at him and whirled towards the door.
"Here, wait a minute-Gayle! Listen to me-" Don's voice, sharp with protest followed her as she ran down the path and into the tree-bordered lane.
And when she had vanished, he turned and came back into the cottage. He carefully closed the door, locked it, and then lifting his drink, he saluted himself in the mirror, and gravely drank a toast to himself, grinning happily as though he had just accomplished something with far greater success than he had dared hope for.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Gayle reached the house, and stood for a long moment in the shelter of the trees that bordered the edge of the terrace where she had left the door unlocked. She had forgotten that she had locked the door from the outside and taken the key with her, to prevent a servant locking her out. But when at last she tried the knob and it did not turn, she swore under her breath and then slid the key into the lock, turned it and went in. She was too angry to be very careful of making any noise as she went up the stairs. She just hoped some son-of-a-witch would be aroused and dare to challenge her as she went up the stairs and down the corridor to her own room.
She felt physically bruised and battered as though she had been swimming upstream against a powerful current and when she opened her door and saw Sue, very much at ease on the chaise lounge, Gayle saw red.
"Hello," said Sue sweetly before Gayle could master her angry surprise to speak. "So he threw you out. Funny, I thought that was exactly what he would do. So I waited for you."
"Well, get the hell out-I'm busy," snapped Gayle savagely, and she went to the closet and yanked her traveling bag out of its built-in nook.
Sue watched her meditatively for a moment and then she said sweetly, "Going some place-I wouldn't wonder?"
"I'm going, of course-I suppose you thought I'd hang around here to keep that damned wedding of yours from collapsing?"
Sue stared at her in child-like amazement, and then laughed silkily.
"For Heaven's sake! Do you honestly think that your leaving could affect my wedding in any degree? Oh, Gayle, what a damned fool you are!" she carolled gaily.
Gayle straightened and stared at her suspiciously.
"Don seemed all hot and bothered about me staying until the final words were said-he seemed to think a maid of honor was important-"
"A maid of honor? Well, perhaps-but for goodness sake, Gayle, you don't call yourself a maid of honor, do you? You couldn't even spell the word 'honor'-"
"And you could, I suppose!" snapped Gayle sourly. She wished that she didn't remember with such painful clarity the tone of Harlan Kramer's voice when he had substituted "shameless hussy" for "maid of honor."
"We-e-ell, maybe not 'honor' too much. Discretion is one of my pet words," drawled Sue, deeply amused as she watched Gayle folding dresses and cobwebby lingerie into the capacious maw of the big wardrobe case. "Though of course women like you-kept women and common street-walkers-probably never heard of the word discretion, I suppose."
Gayle straightened slowly, and her hands were clenched tightly at her side, and her eyes blazed as she took a single slow step towards Sue, menace and fury in her every line and movement.
"What the hell do you mean by that crack?" she asked huskily.
Sue's pretty, airy eyebrows went up a little.
"Oh, now, really, Gayle, don't be childish-it's not your role-don't you suppose I've known, almost from the first, what you really are?"
Gayle stood very still, her hands still tightly clenched, her head tilted just a little, her eyes narrow and blazing.
"Okay. I'll bite-what am I?" she asked at last, hel voice thin with the effort she was making at self-control.
Sue looked her over calmly, judicially from tip to toe and then she made a little gesture with the hand that held her cigarette and answered with casual gaiety.
"Oh, you're still young-reasonably-and very beautiful and-well, I suppose glamorous is the word, though it's a loathesome word," she drawled sweetly. "So I'd say that you were probably the very well-kept mistress of some rich and probably dull old man who is glad to provide for you as long as you please him. But, of course, you can't expect that to be for long; so gradually, you will become the mistress of some man who has less money to spend and so on down the line, until with your lack of brains, I imagine you'll wind up in a two-dollar house, don't you?"
It was said with such gentle reasonableness, such sweet logic that for a moment it took Gayle's breath away and she could only stare at Sue, and hate her with a savage hatred.
Sue waited, amused, obviously enjoying herself, and when Gayle was unable to speak for a moment, Sue went sweetly on.
"Of course I don't blame you for making passes at Don, though it was stupid of you!" she said. "You'd have been much smarter to concentrate on Clyde. Oh, I grant you Clyde isn't too exciting a lover-still, he's not too bad-and he is what's known in my circles as a good provider. So I think I can afford to endure a certain amount of boredom with him, in return for the security he will give me. And after all, there are usually men like Don around, for an occasional bit of excitement, provided one is reasonably discreet-as I assure you I and my friends are-we have to be if we want any fun out of life."
Gayle sat down on the edge of a chair and reached a shaking hand for a cigarette, and until she had it lit and drawing well, she did not speak. But then she slid back in her chair and with the feeling that Sue was some almost terrifying stranger on whom she had never set eyes before, she eyed her.
"So all that I'm a virgin' and 'bride's jitters' business was just a gag," she said at last, her tone low and not entirely steady.
Sue tipped back her pretty head and her laugh was as gay and artless, as musical as that of an amused child.
"Oh, my goodneess, Gayle," she protested absurdly, "don't tell me you were taken in by that act. Good heavens, I thought you were laughing up your sleeve at me. Do you honestly believe that in this day and time, any woman reaches the age of fifteen or sixteen without-shah we be delicate about it and call it 'sexual experience'? Don't you read any modern books? Don't tell me you're still curling up with the latest 'Little Elsie' volume?"
Gayle studied her for a long moment and suddenly the taste of her cigarette was bitter in her mouth, against the hatred and self-disgust that she was feeling; she scrubbed it out, her eyes on it, as though all her attention was centered on the small task.
"Well, I'm damned!" she said at last, very softly.
"No doubt, unless you mend your ways and stir up your brain-" Sue began.
"Never mind my brain-what I'm wondering about is-why the act? With me? I mean what did you gain by-making a sucker out of me?" demanded Gayle at last.
Sue was gaily amused and casual.
"Oh, I was curious about just how dumb you were," she drawled. "I wondered how much you'd swallow-and I almost laughed in your face when you were giving me such good advice-bride's jitters and stuff. Oh, Gayle, what a fool you are!"
Gayle drew a long deep breath and her teeth were clenched hard above the oath that struggled in her throat
"You're telling me!" she managed at last in deep self-disgust.
Sue, as thought she had grown tired of baiting Gayle, stood up and yawned like a sleepy kitten and stretched silkily.
"So now I'll run along to be-alone, for the last time, I hope," she said sweetly. "And of course you'll be leaving early in the morning-there's a train around nine, I think-"
Gayle grinned wickedly.
"Oh, I wouldn't think of leaving before the wedding," she said pleasantly, cheerfully. "I wouldn't spoil the pretty picture your mother has been working on."
There was swift alarm, uneasiness in Sue's eyes.
"Oh, but you needn't bother-" she began hurriedly, anxiously.
"It's no bother," Gayle assured her cheerfully. "I wouldn't miss your wedding for the world-it ought to be-a hell of a lot of fun."
Sue took a swift step towards her, making no effort to conceal the sharp, angry anxiety in her eyes.
"Gayle, if you try to-bitch things up-" she said through her teeth and Gayle crowed inwardly with delight at the realization that she had the upper hand-briefly, perhaps, but undeniably.
She widened her lovely eyes elaborately, surprised hurt.
"Oh, but dah-ling," she protested reproachfully, "how could little old me possibly bitch up anything as carefully planned as the most important social event in Claresville' history? I just want to see you well and truly married that's all."
For a long moment the two women eyed each other Sue, uneasy, worried; Gayle very much "top-dog" at the moment and getting a little of her own back. Sue and Don had really taken her over the bumps; well, now she had very small chance to even the score at least in part. Le Sue spend a sleepless, uneasy night; let the little witch d some worrying. At that moment Gayle hadn't the slightest idea as to how she was going to get even with them al Common sense told her she never could, of course. But a least she'd get in a few digs, though at the moment she wasn't just sure how!
Sue drew a deep breath at last.
"Well," she admitted reluctantly at last, "I don't suppose there is any way I can stop you from being in the wedding party-"
"I don't suppose so either," said Gayle happily.
"But I'll be watching you-"
"That'll be nice."
Sue stared at her for a long moment, and suddenly her lovely face was twisted and malicious with hate and anxiety. Gayle wondered if Clyde or Don had ever seen her like this and was quite sure they hadn't. Nor would they ever believe that Sue could look so much like a cornered, spitting cat, snarling and unlovely.
"I wonder why I was ever fool enough to ask you here in the first place," she spat at last.
Gayle chuckled happily.
"D'you know, I wonder about that too," she admitted cheerfully. "But now that I am here-I'm afraid you're stuck with me, sweetie-pie-until after the wedding anyway."
Sue turned and with her head held high, her eyes blazing stalked out of the room and Gayle subsided in her chair, laughing triumphantly. She'd bet a plugged nickel the little witch would get very little sleep tonight! And while she had no idea what she could do to make things as unpleasant for her as possible tomorrow, she was darned well going to think of something, she promised herself firmly.
She thought briefly of Don and for a moment her mouth twisted in bitter self-derision. Hadn't she been the double-barrelled, copper-riveted brass-bound sap of all time, to imagine herself in love with the bastard? In love! Like any damned fool school girl who didn't know what was the matter with her when a summer moon hung low in the sky and the captain of the football team caressed her clumsily and passionately. Going all dewy-eyed and starry over the thought of marriage! Marriage! A sentence to prison, drudgery, being compelled to sleep with the same man over and over again. She put down, with savage loathing, her own eager heart that tried to tell her sleeping with Don for the rest of her life would be more joy, more exquisite delight than she could ever hope to know!
Her love-all the starry-eyed rapture of the cockeyed dream-had been of such brief duration and so imperfectly founded in fact that it had been easy for it to turn into hatred. She had never hated a living creature in all her life as much as she hated Don Randolph! Unless it was Sue Leslie. Damn them both! Damn them to hell! Living safe and secure and smug in their own little gold-plated, platinum-decked world, and daring to turn up their noses at her, who had been kicked out into the world and forced to shift for herself the best way she could. Despising her, because she had earned her living by the sale of her body, instead of by the labor of her hands and whatever brains she possessed. Damn them!
Hatred and loathing were so bitter in her heart that the taste of it in her mouth made her crush out her cigarette with savage distaste and yearn once more for the drink she needed so badly and which she knew she could not have here in this damned joint where the butler carried the keys to the cellar and the bar was locked except when there were guests in the house. She dared not slip down stairs in search of a drink, since she already had learned enough of the customs of the house to know that she could not find one, anyway.
She sat for a long, long time staring straight before her, her mouth a thin bitter line, her eyes cold and calculating and speculative as she searched through the torturous mazes of her mind for some devastating manner in which she could turn the tables on Sue and Don, and in some small measure avenge the insults they had heaped upon her.
The dawn light was creeping into the room when at last she chuckled and her eyes narrowed a little with a growing plan. And when at last she rose and made ready for bed, she was no longer in any doubt as to what she would do tomorrow-today, now-to spoil Claresville's most beautiful wedding.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Not even Sue herself nor her mother could have ordered built to their most exacting specifications a more perfect day than the one delivered for Sue's wedding. When Gayle awoke it was mid-morning and brilliant sunlight spilled through the wide, open windows, and the air was fragrant with the scent of flowers. Only the best, most expensive and most carefully tended, of course, would be allowed to bloom in the Leslies' heavily formal garden! The birds were singing their silly heads off, too, and Gayle would gladly have traded all the melody, so highly thought of by some fools, for the raucous squawk of just one New York taxi horn.
The door opened to reveal the maid who always brought her breakfast and Gayle watched her derisively as the girl put down the tray and went into the bathroom to draw her bath.
"Livin' in a great big way!" Gayle told herself derisively.
Well, this time tomorrow she would be well on her way back to New York. She thought, with swift nostalgia, of her apartment. She even thought kindly of Harlan. Good stupid, dull old Harlan! He was quite a guy, at that! And she would be so damned sweet to him that he'd shower her with luxuries. She'd never let him get bored with her again. Her eyes narrowed a little at the thought. Women in her position could ill afford the boredom of the men who provided them with their luxurious necessities of life. Harlan wasn't a bad old guy-just dull. But, hell, a man as rich as Harlan, as generous as Harlan-well, being dull wasn't a crime. Don Randolph had been the most exciting, the most thrilling man she had ever known-and the thought of him was a bitterness in her heart that she knew now she would never be quite able to get rid of.
There was a subdued hum of activity all over the house and the maid hurried out as soon as she had performed the most necessary services for Gayle.
Gayle had her bath and came back into the bedroom and settled down to the beautifully iced grapefruit, with a fat, self-satisfied looking scarlet strawberry centered in its middle; the tall yellow pottery pot of coffee with the matching creamer and sugar bowl, and the mound of toast kept hot beneath a silver cover.
"Pretty damned fancy," Gayle derided mockingly. "I don't suppose there's any danger of a dose of arsenic in the coffee-but, oh, brother, wouldn't Sue love to add it-only she hasn't the guts!"
She chuckled a little as she sipped the coffee and smoked the first cigarette of the day and put the finishing touches on her plan to make this a wedding Claresville would not soon forget. In that, at least, she was working hand-in-glove with Mrs. Leslie and the thought was one that amused her vastly.
The wedding was set for four o'clock in the largest and most fashionable church in Claresville. Gayle assured herself drily that the Leslies would not be caught dead in any other kind of church!
She managed to keep out of the way of hurried, harried servants and the family, being the perfect house guest-out of the way when she wasn't needed, on hand when she was expected to be and that thought amused her, too.
She had finished her packing and had left out only the suit in which she would travel back to New York, and the filmy, foamy green and silver gown in which she would be "maid of honor" at the wedding. And a little before four, she stood before the full-length mirror in her room, eyeing her reflection in the mirror, knowing that she looked more beautiful than she had ever looked before in all her life-probably more so than she would ever look again! The pale green frock with its scattered silver-threaded lilies, the wide, mm-brimmed horse-hair hat with its one pink calla lily weighting the brim, the tall-heeled silver sandals had cost far more than she had been able to afford. But on her arrival in town, when Sue had taken her to the shop for its fitting and had asked anxiously if it was "all right" (Gayle had known, with a thinning of her mouth that Sue had meant "can you afford it?" and she would have hocked her immortal soul, provided she had one, which she strongly doubted, rather than say no!) Gayle had assured her blithely that it was exactly what she would have chosen if she had had the choice. The bridesmaids' gowns were made exactly like it only their's were a delicate pale pink, and Gayle had been secretly delighted to discover just how unbecoming the shade was to some of the bridesmaids. Custom said this was the bride's day, and custom seemed to say the attendants should look their worst, to "point up" the bride's loveliness; but Sue had been obviously a little disturbed to realize how exquisitely becoming the green gown was to Gayle.
There was a gentle knock at the door and she turned swiftly to find Mrs. Leslie there, looking white and harried beneath her careful make-up, looking older than she should have looked in the silvery gray gown with its shoulder spray of purple orchids.
"It's a tradition, Gayle," said Mrs. Leslie almost curtly, "that the maid of honor adjust the bride's veil, so if you are ready-"
"Of course, Mrs. Leslie," said Gayle in her sweetest, most lady-like accent and moved gracefully forward.
"You look very nice, Gayle," said Mrs. Leslie politely and Gayle knew the woman loathed her and the necessity of offering such polite comment.
"Thank you, Mrs. Leslie-it's such a lovely frock-dear Sue has such exquisite taste. I couldn't possibly have chosen anything so nice," she said happily.
Mrs. Leslie's mouth thinned a little as she led the way along the corridor to where the door stood open into Sue's room. Sue was a devastatingly lovely vision in the inevitable white satin and priceless lace and her wedding bouquet of white orchids (what else would the only child of a wealthy family use for a wedding bouquet, Gayle asked herself acidly) laid ready for her. She was surrounded by a chattering bevy of girls all in identical pale pink frocks, and there was a mound of pink and lavender gladioli, extravagantly tied with silver ribbons, on the bed.
The town's most fashionable dressmaker stood a little at one side eying Gayle with cold dislike, as Gayle lifted the bridal veil and dropped it over Sue's head, stepping politely aside for the dressmaker to rearrange it according to her own taste.
"You look lovely, darling," cooed Gayle sweetly.
Sue's eyes were darkly blue and wary.
"Thanks," she said briefly. "You look nice, too."
"In this old thing?" Gayle was gay, carefree as her hand touched the green frock in polite disparagement. "It's just a little something I ran up on my old sewing machine out of a bathroom rug and an old lace curtain."
Somebody twittered a little laugh and was instantly grave as though having laughed in the wrong place.
Mrs. Leslie, like the accomplished field marshal she was, said quickly, "The cars are waiting, girls. If you'll run along, I'd like to have a moment or two with my one little chick, before she becomes Clyde's bride."
Gayle shot her a swift look, but the old gal was deadly serious and there was even a mist of tears in her eyes, and Gayle wondered how corny you could get?
The girls fluttered out and Gayle followed them and at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Leslie stood waiting to usher them out to the waiting limousines. Only three girls to a car, he insisted, and made some heavy-handed compliment about "mustn't crush all the fine feathers."
The two bridesmaids who shared a car with Gayle talked brightly and gaily across her, while Gayle looked straight ahead and hummed the wedding march under her breath and grinned a little, a grin that made her two companions a little uneasy though neither of them could have said why.
There was-there would be, of course!-an awning across the sidewalk from the church door to the curb; there was a red carpet reaching from the steps to the curb; there were ropes to hold back the crowd-and Gayle was startled and secretly delighted to see how the large crowd was pressing against the ropes on either side of the red carpet, held in order by several stalwart, harassed-looking policemen.
The girls fluttered out, making an entrance, being self-consciously gay and laughing, tossing their heads in elaborate pretense of ignoring the crowd, putting on an act-the poor saps! Gayle followed them demurely and the first person she saw as she entered the church was Don. For a moment, her cockeyed heart did a nip-up at sight of him, so very good-looking in his well-groomed arrogantly self-assured way. But she slapped it down with a vicious reminder of the scene last night, and met his eyes coolly and sweetly.
Don's good-looking face darkened as he saw her, and he made his way unobtrusively towards her, his jaw set and hard.
"I thought you'd gone," he said in her ear.
She gave him her sweetest smile, carefully iced.
"And spoil the wedding? Oh, Don, how could you think I'd do a thing like that to my dear, sweet little pal, Susie?" she purred gently.
Don studied her, his eyes shrewd and angry.
"I'll have my eye on you every minute," he promised her, his voice low-pitched but savage. "And you lift one finger-just one-and I'll smack you flat."
Gayle put her pretty head on one side and surveyed him mockingly.
"That ought to be fun," she said with poisonous sweetness. "At least it would make this a wedding long to be remembered-or would it?"
"Don't be smart-"
"Oh, I haven't been-not a damned bit! You told me, yourself, that I hadn't been-remember?"
There was a little commotion of noise outside and Sue, bright-eyed and flushed, came up the church steps beside her father, and an usher took charge of Mrs. Leslie, who gave Sue a dewy-eyed, tremulous smile before she trotted off behind the usher to the pew reserved for her down front.
The syrupy strains of "Oh, Promise Me" that had been pealing forth from the giant organ melted away into silence, and Don vanished to follow his allotted task of seeing that the bridegroom reached the altar on time, and all in one piece. But as he departed he gave Gayle a long, level look that, could looks have killed, would have left her dead on the floor, but she only gave him a sweet smile and turned away.
Now the organ had swung into the wedding march and the fluttering maids formed into the carefully rehearsed march, and two by two floated down the aisle. As Gayle swung into step behind them, the aisle seemed a mile long, but at its foot she saw Clyde, looking pale and unhappy, the cynosure of all eyes in the crowded church, at least until the bride came into view.
Pacing slowly, with what she privately considered the necessary "hop-skip-and-jump" made necessary if one meant to keep in step with that damned tune pealing forth from the organ, Gayle had a wild, almost irresistible impulse to break into a very wild cha cha; even more, to lift her filmy skirts above her hips; and do an abandoned "can-can." She could do it, too-she had learned a long time ago in her early life as a burlesque dancer a version of the "can-can" that would have set the crowd in the church on its ear, bug-eyed with excitement. She fought down the temptation, but the effort at fighting it down brought a wicked gleam to her eyes and a little quirk to her lovely mouth that made Don, standing beside Clyde, watch her with frozen anxiety as she came closer and closer.
Behind her, Sue, looking like every man's dream of the Ideal Girl come true, was appropriately modest and dewy-eyed, clinging to her father's arm, even allowing a small quiver to be seen in the armful of white orchids that she carried.
Don relaxed ever so little when the bridal party formed itself before the altar and the minister, quite aware of his importance in the scene before him, looking very distinguished in what were undoubtedly his very best vestments, cleared his throat a little and swung a swift, admonitory eye over the bridal party.
Sue turned, smiling sweetly and handed her white orchids to Gayle, who accepted the bouquet gaily, and grinned a little as she saw the anxiety in Sue's eyes, before she turned back to face the minister and slipped her hand into Clyde's at the minister's low-toned words.
"Dearly beloved," the minister's voice rolled out into the vast church, crowded and now quite silent, "we are gathered here in the sight of God and of man to join together in the holy bonds of matrimony this man and this woman...."
Almost dreamily, with an almost academic interest, Gayle listened to the sonorous phrases, hearing them for one of the few times in her life-and then only in the movies, for "the holy bonds of matrimony" were rarely, if ever discussed in the circles in which she lived.
And then she heard the words for which she was waiting, and tensed.
"Do you, Clyde, take this woman...." began the minister solemnly.
And then Gayle went into action.
She gave a low, heartbroken cry of protest that rang out with an almost obscene force in that place, and flung both bouquets violently from her and hurled herself forward, between the startled and thunderstruck bride-and groom-to-be. She flung herself upon Clyde, clinging to him with wild abandon, crying out loudly, her voice sharp with dawning hysteria, "Oh, no, Clyde-no-no-no-you can't Clyde-you can't marry her, when it's really me you love. Clyde, you can't do this to me-after all that we have been to each other-after you promised me that if I'd let you-if I'd let you-love me, you'd break up with her-no-no-no-" Her voice was swallowed in broken, heart-rending sobbing as she clung to Clyde, pressing herself against him, her arms holding him so tightly that Clyde's efforts to free himself looked as though his arms were holding her, too.
For a stunned, incredulous moment the church was as silent as though not a soul breathed in all its great space. Even the organ, that had been throbbing very softly, with a muted undercurrent of melody, ceased for an instant. In the gallery, crowded with the family servants and their families and friends, there was a gasp, and then below them, a well-bred rustling of shock and horror and dismay as the other guests came to themselves.
The minister was all but gibbering in his shock and consternation and Don, tight-lipped, his eyes blazing, moved forward to wrench Gayle free of Clyde, who looked as though he would consider an earthquake that would swallow him from sight forever would be an inestimable boon.
"Clyde-no-no-no-oh, darling, don't let them separate us-we love each other-you said you loved me-" Gayle was babbling wildly, even while Don, his face as white as its sunburn would allow, his eyes blazing with wrath, gave her what amounted to a bum's rush up the aisle and through the outraged, scandalized crowd that was on its feet now, craning, staring, murmuring against this outrageous thing that had happened.
Gayle let her sobbing wail die out as Don thrust her violently through the door into an unused Sunday school room and stood over her, shaking her so that her teeth rattled.
"Let me go, damn you," snarled Gayle, whipping herself free of him and putting a table between them.
"You slut!" said Don, when he could trust himself to speak. "You filthy tramp-"
Gayle tipped back her head and a joyous laugh rang out.
"I'll bet it will be a long time before Claresville forgets this wedding," she said happily. "If, of course, there is a wedding."
Don glared at her, and opened the door and stepped outside where he could look down the long church aisle to the altar, where a very much flustered minister was trying hard to find his place in the prayer book, and Sue was holding out her hand to Clyde, with a smile that pronounced her complete faith and confidence in him.
When Don came back into the small Sunday school room and closed the door behind him, he drew out his handkerchief and mopped his damp brow.
"There is a wedding," he stated harshly.
Gayle's eyebrows went up a little in delicate surprise and glee.
"Oh, well, she's been sleeping with him for months," she said airily. "I suppose she's afraid that she may have to marry him-"
"Don't!" said Don huskily, fighting so hard to resist the almost unbearable temptation to take her lovely throat between his hands and twist the throbbing life out of it that he scarcely dared trust himself in the same room with her. "I'm doing my damnedest not to kill you-"
Gayle grinned wickedly at him.
"Oh, you haven't the guts to do that," she derided mockingly. "It would only get you hanged-I wouldn't mind, if I could stick around to see it done, but that's not very practical, is it?"
Don drew a deep breath and unclenched his hands with such an effort that he absently massaged the knuckles of one hand with the palm of the other as though to restore circulation.
"I never dreamed," he said at last, huskily, his voice raw and shaking, "that any living creature could be so-vile!" She laughed at him.
"Didn't you? Then you aren't as experienced as I thought you-don't you remember that ditty-'Hell hath no fury-'-Well, I'm the fury which has no comparison!" She told him gaily.
He took a step towards her, and Gayle watched him with interest and without drawing back a step.
"If you'd like to sock me," she invited pleasantly, "by all means do. Black my eye if you like-because then I can go to the police and swear out a warrant for your arrest, claiming assault and battery, and it might be in all the papers-my picture, maybe-that would be fun."
Don straightened as though that had set him back on his heels a bit. He was, when he had long ago thought she could never surprise him again, a little surprised at her unconcealed venom.
"You'd like that?" he asked uncertainly.
"I'd love it!" she told him quite honestly. "Oh-I don't like being hurt-but in such a good cause-a good, old-fashioned beating at the hands of the best man-why, it ought to make headlines as far away as-well, not New York, of course, but-do they have tabloids in Atlanta? It would be a perfect set-up for a tab story-"
Suddenly the theme of the organ changed and now it was triumphal, and loud, and Don turned swiftly to the door, listening. Then he turned the key in the lock and took a single stride towards her, looming menacingly above her.
"The wedding is over and they are leaving the church," he told her, his voice low pitched, ominous. "And if you open your mouth-"
She grinned at him wickedly.
"Oh, I haven't anything more to say-I've said it-and it will be a long, long time before anybody in Claresville ever forgets it, bub!"
Don studied her for a long moment and she had never seen such disgust, such loathing in a man's eyes. Remembering for the brief flicker of an instant the way his eyes had glowed with desire when he had held her hard against him, remembering the magic enchantment of his passionate caresses, she went a little sick inside. But the next moment she had herself in hand and could give him back bitter look for bitter look. Just as madly and crazily as she had loved him for a little while, now she loathed and hated him with a fury that shook her violently.
She moved to the window, more to escape the fury in his eyes than because of any curiosity about what was going on outside. But as she stood there she saw the bride and groom come down the church steps. Sue's head was high and her eyes were straight ahead. In one arm she carried the sheaf of white orchids and at this distance Gayle could not be sure whether the bouquet had suffered any damage by the violence with which she had thrown it from her when she had flung herself upon Clyde, but she devoutly hoped that it had been smashed. She saw the tender, anxious gentleness with which Clyde put his bride into the limousine and followed her and as the car crept away from the curb, avoiding the avid crowd that had flowed into the street, her hands clenched until her nails bit sharply into her pink palms.
She stood there until the last of the wedding party had been whisked away from the church, and watched while little knots of those left lingered, their heads close together. And a gleam of malicious amusement twinkled in her eyes and her lovely mouth was an ugly leer as she turned to face Don.
"There'll be a lot of dirty dishes left in the sink tonight while women gossip about what happened today," she told him with such wicked satisfaction that Don had to control himself by an heroic effort to keep from smashing his clenched fist straight into that ugly smile. But that, of course, was what she wanted. She would be willing to sacrifice her beauty, at least-.temporarily, and to suffer the pain of a beating-and he knew that if once he struck her he would go on striking her and the thought of what that would mean brought a bitter taste into his mouth. She would welcome any violence on his part because she would be able to go straight to the police and swear out a warrant for his arrest. She would like nothing better. She hoped it would happen. And so he controlled himself as best he could and when at last he could speak, his voice was dry and husky.
"Come on, we can make it now," he said savagely.
She smiled sweetly at him and swept forward with a delicate swish of her filmy frock and as she brushed past him the scent of the perfume she used was heady in his nostrils.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As they came down the church steps, some of the crowd still lingered and as Gayle realized this, her posture weakened and she looked limp and pathetic and lowered her head so that the broad brim of her hat shaded her face. She seemed almost to slink through the small groups that drew away to watch her warily, curiously, as she reached the car and Don had to exercise great self-control to keep from slapping her into it. Instead he was almost ostentatiously gentle as he put her into the car and took his seat beside her.
As the car moved away from the church, Gayle settled herself back in the car and beamed happily at Don.
"That was fun," she said contentedly. "There were enough of them left to be able to spread the word around town that I'm a broken and crushed flower-"
"A stinkweed," snapped Don childishly.
"Oh-let's say a deadly nightshade-they're prettier," she mocked.
He stared at her hard for a moment, his brows drawn blackly together.
"There's a weed that grows around and in hog lots," he told her savagely. "It has a very pretty white flower, but it only grows in filth and slime and if you happen to come into close contact with it, the odor is overpoweringly nasty. I'm sorry I don't know its name-"
She clenched her fists for a moment, but she was determined not to let him get under her hide with his nasty jabs. She was triumphant, and she was going to stay that way. So she widened her eyes at him, and fluttered her lashes.
"My, my, a lesson about flowers-oh, Daddy, tell me about the birds and the bees," she cooed sweetly.
Don folded his arms hard and she chuckled delightedly.
When they reached the house, Don helped her out of the car roughly, and kept his hand gripped about her elbow as he guided her around the house and to the service entrance. Through the kitchen, where dark-faced servants looked at her curiously and with anger, and up the back stairs to the corridor that led to her own room he propelled her so vigorously that she shrugged a little and would not protest. At the door of her room he paused, and said savagely, "Get your clothes changed and make it snappy. You're getting out of here so damned fast people will think a tornado blew up-"
"They already think that, dah-ling," she reminded him sweetly, and pushed open the door of her room. "Like to come in and help me change?"
"Get going!" snarled Don savagely.
She laughed again, mockingly and closed the door.
Changing from the delicate, filmy green gown into her traveling clothes was a small matter and her bags were already packed save for the green frock. Hatted, and with her gloves and bag laid ready she tucked the green frock into her bag, locked it and stood erect.
She heard voices outside her door, voices that were at first low-pitched and then rising a little in urgency and Gayle tensed a little. And then the door burst open and Sue was there, with Clyde and Don looking anxiously over her shoulder.
"Oh-hello," said Gayle and tried to mask the faintest possible trace of uneasiness that bothered her with a cool gaiety that was surprisingly convincing. "Come in, won't you?"
"I think," said Sue huskily, her voice shaking a little, "that you are the vilest, lowest, filthiest thing that ever crawled!"
"Do you, now? I'm practically in tears-on account of I just simply adore you," mocked Gayle insolently.
Clyde came into the room, putting Sue gently aside, and looked down at Gayle, while Don, with a worried look over his shoulder, followed him and closed the door behind him.
"You've got to tell her, Gayle, that there wasn't a word of truth in what you said at the church," he said shortly. "I don't know why you did it-but you and I both know it was all lies."
Gayle was mockingly reproachful.
"Oh, darling, please-" she cooed in sweet protest. "It's better for her to know it-and it won't matter, because she married you anyway-she says you're a very dull lover but I think you're marvelous."
Clyde's face was dark with anger and confusion.
"That's a damned he-" he stuttered furiously.
Gayle's eyebrows went up a little.
"That you're a dull and clumsy lover? I think so, too," she agreed with him warmly, her eyes soft and adoring.
"I meant it's a he that you know anything about what sort of-of-lover I am-" Clyde protested hotly.
"Don't give her the satisfaction of arguing with her, darling," said Sue quietly, her head erect, her face white, her eyes blazing. "I know that you have not been her lover."
Gayle was gaily derisive.
"Really?" she mocked. "How can you possibly be sure?"
For just the barest moment a flicker of uncertainty touched Sue's eyes and Gayle pounced on it like a hungry cat on a fat and unwary mouse.
"You can't be sure," she said swiftly. "You can't ever be sure-every time he crawls into your bed, you'll wonder 'did he do this to Gayle? Was Gayle more satisfying than I am? Is he thinking of Gayle this moment?' And you'll always be wondering-"
"Sue, you mustn't believe a word-" protested Clyde sharply.
"But you see, you don't know whether it's true or not-and you'll never know-and I'm going to like that a hell of a lot! Always knowing that you'll be wondering-and never having any way to know the truth," said Gayle swiftly, her eyes meeting Sue's steadily, and Sue unable to tear her gaze away.
Don said quietly, strongly, "Sue, she's an unmitigated liar and a tramp and a common slut-you can't believe anything she says."
Gayle laughed softly, triumphantly.
"No, but you'll always wonder-because women are like that. And every hour you spend in bed with Clyde will be spoiled by that wondering-and gradually, you'll get fed up with him-but I suppose Don will always be around, waiting for the scraps you want to throw his way."
Sue gasped and Don swore lividly. Gayle smiled sweetly at Clyde.
"Because of course you know," she said gaily, almost casually, "that Don is madly in love with Sue and she thinks he's-well, of course, he is a very accomplished lover. You're going to like the things he's taught her-"
Don grasped her by the arm and jerked her towards the door, just as the door opened and Mrs. Leslie stood there.
"You-bitch!" she said in almost a whisper, her eyes blazing at Gayle, her mouth twisting away from the word that no one had ever heard her use before.
"Oh, save it," snapped Gayle, suddenly wearying of the whole business. "Nothing you can say hasn't already been said and much better. And don't bother to order me out of here, because I'm just about to leave and damned glad I am going."
She wrenched her arm free of Don, and stood erect, facing them all.
"It's been a hell of a lot of fun," she told them venomously. "And the nicest part about it is that none of you will ever forget me. Nor will the town of Claresville, either!"
She swept towards the door, her head erect, while Don, his mouth a thin line, little white parentheses on either side of it to mark the hard set of his jaw, picked up her luggage and followed her, while the others drew aside as though fearful that her slightest touch might contaminate them.
When Don reached her she stood at the head of the front stairs, looking down at the chattering crowd below, and her eyes were satirical.
"I can't quite make up my mind about my exit line," she drawled sweetly. "Whether I should go down the stairs and through the crowd looking pathetic and heartbroken and forsaken-"
Don grasped her arm and drew her forcibly towards the back stairs.
"You'll go out the back way, like the rest of the garbage," he told her violently.
"We-ell, I suppose it would be sort of anti-climax if I let them see me again," she admitted sweetly as she went down the back stairs and out through the kitchen door. "After all, I made my point at the church, didn't I?"
Don did not answer her, as he jerked open the door of the waiting car and thrust her into it, piling her luggage beside her. To the driver, he said curtly, "You understand where you are to take her?"
"Sure, Don," said the man briskly. "Railroad station in Atlanta and see that she takes the next train out for New York."
"That's it," said Don grimly and stepped back as the car swung around the parking apron and headed towards the highway, leaving Don in a cloud of dust.
Gayle looked back as Don turned and strode into the house. And there was a small, lonely, frightened crying deep in her heart. That heart that a woman in her "profession" is not supposed ever to admit that she possesses. For love dies hard, even in the heart of a "brass-bound hussy." She was shamed and humiliated that she had been fool enough to fall in love. She derided herself bitterly for such folly. Tried to deny that it had happened; but as she turned a white, set face ahead to look un-seeingly at the golden path of light the car's lamps cut through the falling dusk, her mouth was thin and bitter and there were tears in her eyes that she could not quite blink away.
She was herself again by the time the car reached Atlanta, and when it was found that she had only a brief wait before the New York train, her escort handed her a ticket and Gayle smiled brilliantly at him.
"Thank you," she cooed sweetly. "And thank you for a very nice ride. I don't think I've met you before, have I? I'm sure I would have remembered."
He was tall and loose-jointed, red-haired, freckled, not more than twenty-five and his blue eyes wore a lively curiosity and an almost unwilling admiration.
"No, I just work for Clyde-I don't travel in his gang," he answered her, friendly and a trifle eager. "I was at the church, though...."
"Oh," said Gayle, and her eyes twinkled wickedly and there was a little smile touching her mouth that gave the man courage to blurt out a question.
"Look, you're away from Claresville now, and-well-was that on the level-what you accused him of...." he broke off, and the dark color almost swallowed up his freckles, but his eyes pleaded with her for an answer.
Gayle hesitated, her eyes mocking, the smile deepening a little.
"What do you think?" she drawled finally. The man grinned eagerly.
"I think Clyde's a pretty smart cookie and I never knew him to let any grass grow under his feet-I mean-well, he likes the gals, so I'd say if he had the opportunity-a good-looking dame like you-"
Gayle laughed a little.
"You're sweet," she drawled teasingly.
"Well-was it true?" in his eager question she sensed the avidity of a born gossip, and suddenly she laughed again.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she derided and walked away from him, swinging her hips a little and glad to be free of the restrictions Claresville imposed on such action for "a well-brought up lady."
The man's eyes followed her, and she heard the long low wolf-whistle that he gave and she tossed him a gay smile over her shoulder as she walked away from him....
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She reached New York in the late afternoon, just as dusk was being dispersed by street lights. She sniffed delightedly of the air that seemed to her completely delightful after almost three weeks of Claresville. She debated for a moment whether she would telephone Harlan at his club and let him know she was back. But he would not have had his dinner yet, he might even be taking his "work-out" with the masseuse and she knew that he would not allow that hour to be disturbed. She felt a growing fondness for the thought of Harlan, and promised herself as she followed a redcap, laden with her bags, to a taxi that she would be so damned sweet to Harlan that he would be mad about her all over again. She had grown careless before she went away; she had let a little of her boredom with him slip into their relations. But all that was over; she would be again the woman he had so loved and cherished at the very beginning of their relationship.
She'd shower and get herself all cleaned up from travel stains and into one of the frilly, frothy "feminine" webs of chiffon and lace that he liked and then she would call him and he would come straight to her. She smiled a little, cynically, at the thought of how she would go about binding him to her with the chains of passionate desire fulfilled and made perfect by a glorious cooperation.
The taxi driver helped her into the small, discreet lobby, accepted the handsome tip with almost a touch of gratitude and departed. The elevator operator looked a little startled when he saw her, and hesitated at sight of her luggage, and said hurriedly, "I'll bring that up in the service elevator, Miss Barker-later."
"I'm in no hurry for it, Arthur-it's good to be back," said Gayle happily, as the elevator bore her smoothly and swiftly aloft.
As she got out at her floor and went along the corridor wards the door of her apartment, Arthur lingered a moment, watching her, but she was not aware of that and a moment later someone signalled the elevator and reluctantly he slid the door noiselessly shut and answered the signal.
Gayle found her keys and fitted one into the lock. Or tried to. But, oddly enough, it would not fit. Puzzled, she took it out, examined it, saw that it was the key to the apartment door and tried once more to slip it into the lock. But still it would not go in.
A feather of uneasiness touched her for a moment but before she had time to do more than make a final effort with the key, the door swung open to her and she walked in, puzzled, stiffening a little as she saw the girl who stood with her hand on the doorknob.
The girl was small and plump and blonde. Very blonde indeed, with a round doll face, and big China blue eyes, and a wealth of soft golden curls framing her face. She wore a wisp of a chiffon and lace negligee, and beneath it, her body was plump and rosy-ivory and except for the chiffon and lace, completely nude.
"What are you doing here?" cried Gayle hotly.
The pretty blonde chuckled.
"I five here," she said coolly. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Gayle caught her breath as at a blow and the blonde's eyes traveled over her, taking in the smart, conservatively cut dark suit, the small, gay hat and then she nodded.
"Of course," she said gently. "You're the new maid. Come on in and show me your references."
She turned and swung across the small foyer, and into the living room, a long, rather narrow room with french doors opening on to a small but expensive terrace.
Gayle stopped at the top of the first of two steps that led down into the living room and looked sharply about, in growing wrath. For the place had been changed entirely. She recognized none of her own possessions.
"What the hell's going on here?" she demanded wrath-fully. "Where are my things?"
The pretty, doll-like blonde paused and turned to face her, her airy eyebrows going up a little. "Your things?" she repeated and then she laughed and dropped into a chair and curled her pretty dimpled knees beneath her. "Oh, then you must be that Barker woman-I thought you were the new maid Daddy was going to send me."
Gayle stared at the pretty, malicious face, the dancing eyes that marked the girl's enjoyment of this moment.
"I'm Gayle Barker," she said thinly after a moment. "And this is my apartment."
The blonde reached for a cigarette, lifted a fat silver table lighter and snapped it, inhaling deeply before she put the lighter down, her eyes brimming with malicious amusement.
"You mean this was your apartment, Honey," she said with venomous sweetness. "It's mine now."
Gayle studied her for a long moment, cold with shock and dismay that she tried hard to hide.
"And who the hell are you?" she managed at last.
"I'm Bonnie-Grace...." began the blonde.
"Bonnie-Grace?" Gayle's tone made an epithet of the name.
The blonde shrugged carelessly.
"Oh, it's a hell of a name, I admit, but Daddy likes it, and women in our business have to do the things Daddy likes-or else we are out of business-although you know that-now-don't you, sweetie?" said Bonnie-Grace with such malicious enjoyment that Gayle yearned to pummel her pretty, plump face with both of her tightly clenched fists.
Gayle drew a long hard breath, her hands clenched. This was the one thing she had not expected. To come back home after only a short absence, not quite three weeks, and find another woman installed in her apartment! It had thrown her for a loop and she had to fight hard to get hold of herself before she could face it.
"Daddy was tickled silly when you decided to take a trip," Bonnie-Grace went on blandly. "I'd been dancing, in a night club and Daddy liked what I had to offer; but he wasn't quite sure just how he'd get you out of here. So when you said you were going away-well, you see...." She spread plump, dimpled hands in a gay little gesture and leaned her golden head back against a chair that had been covered in jade-green damask when Gayle went away but that was now covered in powder blue.
"He-can't do this to me," Gayle breathed huskily at last.
"Oh, hell-is that the best you can think of? Baby, he's done it and what the blazes you're going to do-except find yourself another red-hot Papa, I don't know," Bonnie-Grace derided her mockingly. "You'd better 'blow' now, because Daddy'll be along any minute and he can be pretty nasty when he wants to be. Although maybe you already know that."
"I'm not afraid of the old bastard...."
"Oh, well, it's no skin off my teeth if he takes the toe of his boot to you and heaves you out-if you want the bum's rush, I know he will be glad to give it to you," Bonnie-Grace shrugged in dismissal.
Gayle said through her teeth, "What did you do with my things?"
Bonnie-Grace's eyebrows went up a little.
"You mean that junk you left cluttering up the place? Daddy gave it away-Salvation Army, I suppose or some other charitable institution. The place was like this when I moved in. Nice, ain't it?"
"Why, you little...." Gayle said it through her teeth and took a step towards the triumphantly mocking blonde.
Bonnie-Grace did not so much as move but the laughter went out of her eyes, and she looked mean and cold, instead of soft and young and delectable.
"You move one finger towards me, and you'll wish you'd never been born," said Bonnie-Grace savagely. "I told you I danced in a night club; I can fight as dirty as anybody you ever met. But why don't you use your head, and get out while the getting is good? Remember, pal, little Gayle doesn't live here any more-Bonnie-Grace does, and Bonnie-Grace can take care of herself in the clinches."
Behind Gayle, there had been the whisper of a key in the lock and the door opened. It was Harlan and for a moment he stood, startled, looking from Bonnie-Grace to Gayle, and then his eyes went cold and his face hardened.
"Well, well-so you're back," he said unpleasantly.
"And being very nasty to me, Daddy," Bonnie-Grace whimpered piteously.
If anything had been needed to convince Gayle beyond all possibility of a doubt that she had lost, for all time, her place with Harlan, it was the look of fatuous adoration he gave the simpering Bonnie-Grace, that cooled into active hostility as he looked at Gayle.
"That's something we won't stand for, Precious," he spoke to Bonnie-Grace, but his cold, bleak eyes were on Gayle. "You'd better run back to whoever went on your Vacation' with you, Barker. You're all washed up here."
Gayle stared at him, for a long moment, and then at Bonnie-Grace.
"This whole thing was a put-up job between you two...." she began furiously.
Harlan said grimly, "You went away-I didn't."
"But I told you-it was to a friend's wedding...." she pleaded, and despised herself for such humiliation.
"Whatever it was-and I don't for the least moment believe a wedding had anything to do with it-" Harlan turned back and swung open the door and motioned to her. "Out!" he said as though she had been a disobedient animal.
Gayle looked back at Bonnie-Grace, who was almost purring in her delight of the situation, and then at Harlan.
"I'll go-as soon as I have my things," said Gayle savagely.
"What you left here was bought with my money and I disposed of it as I saw fit," snapped Harlan. "You brought nothing here but a few rags; whatever you took away with you, you can keep. The rest has been disposed of. Now get out."
And there was nothing to do but to go.
Gayle leaned against the elevator cage, shaking to the bottoms of her feet in their expensive handmade shoes. She was dazed and bewildered by the unexpectedness of finding the loathesome little Bonnie-Grace occupying the apartment she had called hers. She had not realized until this moment how much she had counted on returning to Harlan, on having him again devoted to her; of being kept lavishly by his money. And now-panic brushed her with a chill finger as she realized that in her purse there was less than twenty dollars; all that she possessed was in the luggage downstairs. And it was a bitter thought indeed to recall that she had taken with her to Claresville only the simplest and most "lady-like" clothes she had owned!
Arthur, the elevator operator, said gently, "Down, Miss Barker?"
Gayle straightened and set her jaw.
"Where else?" she asked through her teeth and stepped into the car.
Arthur had known-that was why he had not brought her baggage up. Arthur knew that Bonnie-Grace had moved in and Gayle had been thrown out. Arthur, wise-eyed, close-tongued, whose eyes missed nothing that went on but whose discretion and silence could be counted on as long as he was well-tipped-Arthur had known. And that was a thought that laid another bitter straw on the load of humiliation against which she struggled to stand erect as she walked along to the lobby, and Arthur helped her out to a taxi with her luggage.
The taxi-driver waited, and at last she thought of the name of a cheap, side-street hotel, all that she could afford now until she could line up another sucker, who would take up where Harlan had dropped her. She would not be so well-kept; she would not be provided with expensive luxuries; she would have to work very hard to hold the sucker; and she would not be able to hold him as long as she had held Harlan; and then she would pass on to another, still less well-heeled than Harlan or his successor. Gradually-maybe not so gradually, either!-she would go down another step and another step)-and at the end of that ladder, when she was no longer fresh and lovely looking, there would be the two-dollar "houses"....
"This the place, lady?" asked the taxi-driver, eying her cynically as he looked from her to the dingy hotel front.
Gayle fought back the panic, fought back the easy, weakening tears, and followed a bellhop into the hotel, where she registered for a room, and was shown to it, and found it as drab and dingy as she had feared it would be.
For a long moment after she had tipped the bellboy as frugally as she dared, and he had left the room, she stood very still in the middle of it, looking about her, yet not seeing the room at all. Seeing, instead the apartment as it had been when she had gone recklessly, rashly off and left it; the beautifully luxurious, tasteful room with bath she had had at the Leslie's. And then her mouth hardened for she could no more afford such memories than she could afford weakening tears.
With her mouth a thin, grim line she sat down at the desk and took up the telephone book. Carefully she traced down a number, and called it.
A man's voice, cheerful and casual said, "Mart Richards speaking." I
"Oh, hello, Mart," Gayle's voice was warm and sweet and eager. "This is Gayle."
The man's voice took on a faint caution.
"Who?"
"Gayle Barker-don't you dare say you've forgotten me....
"Oh, Barker," he repeated heartily and she sensed that he was being very wary, probably because someone else was in the room and he was pretending that his caller was a man. "How have you been? How are you?"
Gayle threw every bit of allure into her voice that she could muster up and said coaxingly, "I'm lonely! I just got back in town and I thought perhaps you might like to take me to dinner...."
"Golly, Barker, I wish I could," said Mart heartily, with a heartiness that did not ring true. "But I'm all tied up tonight...."
"Oh, well, perhaps another night...."
She heard Mart laugh.
"Hi, whatever happened to Harlan Kramer?" he wanted to know.
For a moment she ground her teeth in helpless rage before she could summon up the alluring, enchanting voice again.
"Oh, poor old Harlan-I got terribly bored with him...."
"That's too bad-he's quite a guy," said Mart. "My wife and I like him very much."
Gayle caught her breath in a soundless gasp and steadied her voice to say with a pretense of bright gaiety, "Oh, but I didn't know you were married...."
Mart's voice dropped low.
"Well, I sure as hell am, Gayle, for almost a month now-so don't call here again, will you? My bride would give me hell if she knew I'd ever met a gal like you," he said and the receiver clicked down.
Gayle sat very still, her mouth hard and set. And then she breathed deeply, blinked hard and once more turned to the telephone book, carefully tracing a number with her finger.
After all, there were a hell of a lot of telephone numbers in the book and among them there was bound to be a sucker. And sooner or later she would find him....
