Dark Angel

  "I guess you're right." His eyes narrowed before he sighed, and again he reached inside his jacket for that same cigarette case. Again he absentmindedly looked around for an ashtray. "It just occurred to me that Troy put Leigh on a pedestal and compared all other women to her, and it seems only you can measureup.

  Heat flushed my face. My hands rose to my throat. "You're talking nonsense. Troy loved my mother, yes, he's told me that. But not as a man loves a woman. He loved as a lonely, needing little boy who had to have someone for his very own. And I'm glad to be that someone. I'll make Troy a good wife." And as much as I'd tried to keep the pleading from my voice, I was pleading. "He needs someone like me who has not lived inside a cultured pearl, who has everything and still can't enjoy. I have been deprived, starved, beaten, burned, humiliated, and shamed, and still I find life rewarding, and under no circumstances would I give up my life. teach him the same thing."

  "Yessss," he said slowly, "I suspect you would be good for him, and have been good for him. Until you went away and left him, I've never seen him look better, or more contented. I thank you for that. However, you can't marry him, Heaven. I can't allow it."

  There it was, what I'd feared!

  "You said you liked me!" I cried, again stunned. "What have you found out? If you are thinking of the Casteel part of me, you must remember I also have VanVoreen genes!"

  His eyes filled with pity, and it seemed he aged a little as he sat and stared at me with so much regret. "How lovely you are in your tragic wrath, how very beautiful and appealing. I can understand why Troy loves you and wants you. The two of you have so much in common, although you don't know the connection. I don't want to tell you the connection. Just tell me you will go to him, and as gently as possible, with sensitivity for his feelings, break your engagement. Of course you can't keep on living here, so accessible, but see to your financial welfare. You'll never want for anything, I promise."

  "You want me to break my engagement to Troy?" I repeated with incredulity. "You and your great concern for his welfare! Don't you know the last thing in the world he needs is for me to disappoint him? He feels he's found the one woman in the world who can understand him! The only one who will stay and love him until the day he dies!"

  He stood up, looking around, refusing to meet my eyes. "I am trying to do what I think is best." His calm underlined the passion I had displayed. "Troy is the only heir I have. The Tatterton Toy Company will pass into his hands when I die, or into the control of his son. It has been this way for three hundred and fifty years, from father to son, or brother to brother . . that's the way it has to be. Troy has to marry and produce a son--for I have a wife too old to bear children."

  "There is nothing physically wrong with me! I can have children! Troy and I have already discussed that and have decided on two."

  His look of abstraction became more profound. He stood, leaning heavily on his desk. "I was hoping to save myself some embarrassment. I prayed you would withdraw politely. I see now that it isn't possible. But I'm going to try one more time. Just believe it when I say you cannot marry Troy. Why don't you just leave it like that?"

  "How can I? Give me one good reason why I can't marry him? I'm eighteen, I'm of legal age. No one can stop me from marrying him."

  He sat down again, heavily sat down. He shoved his chair from his desk, crossed his legs, and moved his foot back and forth. And for the life of me I couldn't understand how I could still admire his polished shoes and the kind of dark socks he wore. His voice sounded different when he spoke again. "It's your age that has brought this all about. You see, I thought you were younger than you are. I didn't know your true age until one day while you were gone Troy casually mentioned it. Not once did any suspicions cross my mind until then. I'd look at you and you'd be all Leigh, but for your hair. Your mannerisms are very like hers when you are happy and when you feel at ease in your surroundings, but there are other times when you remind me of someone else." He stared again at my hair, which during the summer had taken on streaks of brighter brown, with reddish highlights. "Have you ever worn your hair short?" he asked, quite out of context.

  "What has that got to do with anything?" I almost shouted.

  "I suspect the weight of your hair pulls out the natural curl, and that's why your hair 'frizzes' as you say, when it rains."

  "What has that got to do with anything?" I again shouted. "I'm sorry my hair isn't platinum like my mother's hair and like Jillian's! But Troy likes my hair. He's told me so many times. He loves me, Tony, and it took him so long to tell me that. He had given up on life until I came along, he told me that, too. I've convinced him that his precognition of his own death doesn't have to happen."

  For the second time he rose, like a cat undulating and stretching until he leaned to crease his trousers between thumb and index fingers. "I confess I'm not partial to dramatic confessions such as this. I would prefer all dramas to be confined to the stage or to movie screens. I am an even-tempered person, and I have to admire someone like you who can ignite and explode so easily. Perhaps you don't know this, but Troy has the same kind of temper, only he is a slow burn, and when he explodes it turns inward on himself. That's why I'm trying to be careful. If I never speak another true word the rest of my life, I say again I love my brother more than I love myself. He is like my son, and because of him I honestly confess I've never truly wanted my own son, who would disinherit Troy. You see, or I guess you've already seen, Troy is the genius behind Tatterton Toys. He is the one who creates, designs, and invents, while I fly about the world as a glorified sales rep. I am a figurehead ruler. If given ten years I couldn't come up with one original idea to create a new toy or board-game, yet Troy originates without effort; he suggests themes for games, indoor and out, like he invents those eternal sandwiches he loves."

  I could only stare at him. Why was he telling me all of this now? Why now?

  "It's Troy who deserves to be president, not any son I might have. So please, ease out of his life with little to-do. I'll stay to see him through. You can go to your boyfriend Logan what's-his-name, and I'll put in your bank account two . . . million . . . dollars. Think about it. Two million. People kill for that much money."

  He smiled at me charmingly, winningly, pleadingly. "Do it for Troy. Do it for yourself and the career you want. Do it for me. Do it for your mother. Your beautiful, dead mother."

  I hated what he was doing to me! "What has she got to do with this?" I screamed, terribly angry that he would have the bad taste to bring her up at a time like this.

  "Everything . . ." and his voice was growing louder, angrier, as if my passion were consuming the air and putting fire under his feet.

  Twenty My Mother, My Father

  .

  "WHATEVER IT IS, I WANT TO KNOW!" I CRIED, TWISTING in my chair and leaning forward. Tony's tone of voice turned hard. "This isn't

  easy for me, girl, not easy at all. I am trying to do you

  a favor, and in so doing I am not serving myself well

  at all. Now keep your silence until I've finished . . .

  and then you may hate me just as I deserve." Those cold blue eyes glued my tongue. I sat

  without moving.

  "From the very beginning of my marriage to

  Jill, Leigh seemed to hate me. She could never forgive

  me for taking her mother away from her father. She

  adored her father. I tried to win her affections. She

  wanted none of that. I didn't do a thing to harm her,

  and eventually I stopped trying to win her over. I

  knew she blamed me for her father's desperate unhappiness.

  "I came home from my long honeymoon with

  Jill disillusioned. Horribly disillusioned. I tried not to

  let anyone see it. Jill isn't capable of loving anyone

  more than she loves herself and her everlasting

  youthful image. My God, how that woman loves to

  look in mirrors!

  "
I grew disgusted seeing the way she had to

  have every hair in place all the time, always glancing

  to check on the shine on her nose, checking for

  lipstick smudges."

  His smile was crooked, bitter. "And so I came

  to realize too late that despite all the beauty Jill possessed, no man could love Jill for anything other than

  her facade. Jill has no depths. She's just a shell of a

  woman. Everything sweet, and thoughtful and kind

  went into her daughter. I began to be more aware of

  Leigh in a room than I was of her mother. Soon I was

  noticing a lovely adolescent girl who seldom glanced

  in any mirror. A girl who loved to wear simple, loose

  garments that fluttered when she moved, and her hair

  was long and loose and straight. Leigh waited on

  Troy, with pleasure and joy she waited on Troy. I

  loved and admired her for doing that.

  "Leigh was sensual without knowing she was.

  She radiated health that exuded sex. She moved with

  undulating hips, her small breasts jiggling unfettered

  beneath those fluttery garments. And Leigh was

  always angry with her mother, resenting me, until

  finally she discovered one day that her mother was

  very jealous. And that's when Leigh began to play up to me. I don't think it was malicious, it was just her revenge against a mother she thought had ruined her

  father's life."

  I knew what was coming!

  I just knew it! I pulled back and raised my

  hands to

  ward off his words, wanting to cry out and say no, no!

  "Leigh began to flirt with me. She dared to mock and

  tease me. Often she danced around me tugging at my

  hands, taunting me with words that often stung, for

  they hit the mark so often. 'You married a paper doll,'

  she'd chant to me time and again. 'Let Mother go back

  to my father,' she pleaded, 'and if you do, Tony, and if

  you do, I'll stay! I'm not in love with myself like she

  is.' And God help me, I wanted her. She was only

  thirteen years old and she had more sexuality in one

  small, white finger than her mother had in her entire

  body."

  "Stop!" I screamed. "I don't want to hear any

  more!"

  He went on relentlessly, like a river of melted

  snow that had to flood and destroy. "And one day

  when Leigh had taunted and teased me ruthlessly, for

  it was her game to punish me as much as she punished

  her mother, I grabbed her by her arm and pulled her into my study and locked the door behind me. I planned only to frighten her a little bit and make her realize she couldn't play a girl's game with a man. I was still just twenty years old, thwarted and angry, disgusted with myself for falling so witlessly into the trap Jill had set. Before we married, Jill had her lawyer draw up papers that would put half my gross worth into her hands if ever I sued her for divorce. And that would mean I could never divorce her and hope to salvage anything for Troy. And so when I slammed and locked that door, I was punishing Jill for cheating me, and punishing Leigh for making me so

  aware of my stupid mistakes."

  "You raped my mother . . . my thirteen-year-old

  mother?" I asked in a low, hoarse whisper. "You, with

  your background and your education, acted like some

  scumbag hillbilly?"

  "You don't understand," he said in a desperate

  kind of voice. "I had thought only to tease her,

  frighten her, believing she'd be more sophisticated and

  laugh and call me a fool, and then I wouldn't have

  been able to perform. But she excited me with her

  fright, with her panic, with her innocence that was so

  appalled by the thought of what I planned to do. I told

  myself she was pulling an act, for the girls of Winterhaven are notoriously open about sex. Yes, I raped

  your mother. Your thirteen-year-old mother." "You beast! You horrible man!" I yelled,

  jumping up and throwing myself at him and striking

  his chest. I tried to scratch his face, but he was quick.

  "No wonder she ran away, no wonder! And you drove

  her into my father's arms so the hills and the cold and

  the hunger could kill her!"

  I kicked at his shins, so he released my hands to

  back off, and then I ran back at him, to strike again at

  his face. "I hate you! You killed her! You drove her

  from here into another kind of hell!"

  He easily seized my fists and held me off, his

  cynical smile growing more ironic. "She didn't run

  after the first time. Nor did she run after the second or

  the third. You see, your mother found out she enjoyed

  our forbidden lovemaking. It was exciting, thrilling.

  For her, and for me. She'd come to me, stand in the

  doorway, and wait. And when I advanced, she'd begin

  to shiver and quake. Sometimes tears would streak her

  face. When I touched her she'd fight and scream, but

  she knew no one could hear her screams, and in the

  end she'd succumb to my lovemaking like the

  promiscuous child she was beneath all that angelic

  sweetness."

  The flat of my palm found his face this time! The sting of my slap left a red stain there. I

  curled my fingers and tried to scratch his eyes from

  his face!

  "Stop it!" he commanded, thrusting me away so

  I staggered backward. "I won't have it! I meant never

  to tell you."

  Again I threw myself at him, striking at his

  face. He held me firmly by my shoulders and shook

  me until my hair flew wild. "Until I heard your birth

  date I didn't count the months. Now I have. Leigh ran

  from this house on the eighteenth day of June. And

  you were born on the twenty-second of February.

  That's eight months. She had lain with me at least two

  months off and on, and so, I have to presume there is

  a strong possibility that you are my daughter." I stopped flailing my arms in useless efforts to

  inflict some further harm to him. My blood drained

  from my face. A tingling started behind my ears, and

  my knees went weak. "I don't believe you," I said

  brokenly. I felt bruised, beaten. "It can't be true. I'm

  not Troy's niece, I can't be!"

  "I'm sorry, Heaven, so sorry. For you would

  have been perfect, the very one to save him from

  himself. But I have sat here this evening and heard your story of how Leigh met Luke Casteel, and heard the day of their marriage, and there is no way you can be Luke Casteel's daughter, unless you were born prematurely. Did your granny ever hint that you came

  early?"

  Backing off from him, I shook my head

  numbly. I wasn't Pa's daughter. Pa. A scumbag

  Casteel.

  "You said your father hated you, hated you

  from the day you were born. Heaven, it is entirely

  possible, Leigh being what she was, that she told your

  father she was pregnant before she married him. And

  now I am certain about who you are. It's your hair,

  Heaven, and your hands. Your hair is the same color

  and texture as Troy's, and your hands and fingers are

  shaped like his. Like mine. We both have the Tatterton fingers."

  He spread his hands, displaying his long,

  tapering fingers, before I gazed down at mine. They

  wer
e the same hands I'd seen all my life, small with

  long fingers and long oval nails--and half the women

  in the world had hair my color. Nothing exceptional.

  And I'd always believed Granny's hands would have

  looked like mine if she hadn't kept them working

  slavishly most of her life.

  Stunned and aching, sickened almost into

  vomiting, I turned and left his office. Stumbling up

  the stairs and into my room, I threw myself on my bed

  and cried.

  Not a Casteel? Not a no-good, rotten, scumbag

  Casteel with five uncles imprisoned for life? Tony strolled into my bedroom without

  knocking, to perch lightly on the foot of my bed, and

  this time his voice was soft and kind: "Don't make it

  so difficult, darling. I'm so sorry to ruin your romance

  with my brother. Though I am delighted to have you

  for my daughter. Everything will work out, you'll see.

  I know I have shocked and hurt you, and despite all

  that I've told you, I did love your mother. She was

  only a kid, and still I can't forget her. And in my own

  way I love you. I admire you and what you have done

  for my brother. I will be more than generous, so keep

  that in mind when next you see Troy. Tell him

  anything that will sound plausible. Don't give him

  pain that would drive him to end his life. For don't

  you know that's what his dreams are all about? He

  was born self-destructive! He is disappointed in the

  world, in everyone who died or went away and failed

  him, and so he seeks to escape."

  He moved to lay his heavy hand briefly on my shoulder before he got up and half turned toward the door. "Be good to him, for he's fragile, not like you or me or Jillian," he said in a choked voice. "He is an innocent in a world of vultures. He doesn't know how to hate. He only knows how to love, so he can later suffer and feel inadequate. So give to him the best you have in you, Heavenly, the very best you have to give.