Chapter 7
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.