Dodo nodded. “He had a detective do a complete dossier on Nikki, the poor lamb. He doesn’t know I know it, and I’m terrified Nikki’ll find out. This absurd Frenchman gumshoeing around, asking my maid all sorts of questions.”
Fish looked at her. “Are you sure? That it was Mr. Reeves, I mean?”
“Of course. Who else gives a damn who I marry, darling?”
“It doesn’t sound like him, though.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, of course. There’s nothing about Nikki I haven’t been told—by him or by his friends. You know, the ones that have their duty to do, however painful?”
She looked at him earnestly. “—You like him, don’t you?”
Fish Finlay had a sudden sense of Caxson Reeves’s bleak hooded gaze fixed on him in absentia. She was waiting, her eyes wide and serious.
He grinned at her. “No, of course not.”
Dodo de Gradoff tossed her head back and laughed with delight.
“You’re divine, Fish. Who said the American male had lost all gallantry? If I weren’t old enough to be your mother—”
“Well, hardly,” Fish said.
“I’ll be thirty-nine my next birthday, if I don’t forget it. With my child at Newport this summer I can’t go on pretending I’m thirty-two.”
Fish shook his head. “—Wait a minute.”
“What do you mean?” Her sparkling gaiety vanished instantly.
“Your child isn’t coming to Newport.”
It came out quicker and flatter than he had meant it to.
“Who says so? Of course she’s coming.”
He shook his head again. “She wants to stay at home and go to secretarial school.”
For a moment she sat looking at him as blankly as if he’d spoken in Sanskrit. Then he realized it was not blankness. It was shock—as if he’d picked up a stick and hit her across the face.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
“Oh, no. It’s quite all right.” She got up and went to the balustrade. When she turned back after an instant, she smiled at him, too brightly. “But her home’s in Newport, you know —it’s not in Virginia. You must be mistaken—or she’s just being dramatic. If I had time, I’d run down and see her. Except that that wretched school’s so far out in the country . . . and Nikki and I have to be in Paris. There’s a tremendous costume ball; I’ve got to have a fitting on my dress. It’s all so stupid, but we’ve promised.”
She stood there a moment. “I’ll tell you. I’ll just call her and talk to her. There’s no use going clear down there.”
She started back into the living-room.
“I wouldn’t call her, Countess.”
“—Dodo.” She corrected him with a smile. “You make me feel so ancient. Anyway, we’re dropping that nonsense while we’re in America.”
She went inside, pulled a pale-blue telephone out from behind the mimosa, dialed and waited. “Oh, operator, I want to speak to Miss Jennifer Linton. I don’t have the number. It’s St. Margaret’s Hall, Westminster, Virginia. I don’t know, except that it’s somewhere near Charlottesville. That’s right. . . . Why wouldn’t you call her?”
“She’ll be in class, or somewhere. And she doesn’t want to come. I wouldn’t try to make her.”
“Try?” Dodo Maloney laughed. “Listen, darling. For the next less than four years and for when I break the Maloney Trust, I’m the boss. It’s me who says what Jennifer Linton does and doesn’t do.”
She listened. “Thank you, Westminster 604. Yes, I’m writing it down. Thanks a lot.”
She was going on to Fish, not writing. “This secretarial school is Anne Linton’s idea. Of course she wants Jennifer there. Who wouldn’t? In another four years Jennifer’s supposed to be a very rich young lady. Anne Linton’s not the angel of light—”
She listened again. “Then tell them to call her. It’s her mother. I really must speak to her. Yes, it is an emergency.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, Dodo,” Fish said again. “Kids hate to be yanked away—”
“Look, angel. I know my child better than you do. It makes her important to be yanked, as you call it, and there’s nothing she likes better than getting out of schoolwork. She loathes school. Anyway she’s not in class, she’s playing some crazy game. It’s what Nikki says, American schools just make Amazons out of girls. That’s been one of the child’s problems. She’s so enormous, and so full of adolescent antagonisms. She was a grim child. She hated Europe, and she hated me.”
She turned back to the phone, her face lighting. “Darling! It’s Mummy. How are you, lamb?”
The light died abruptly. “But it is an emergency, darling. Mr. Finlay’s here from the bank. He has the fantastic idea you aren’t coming to Newport with Mummy. . . .”
She was silent, listening to her daughter, her soft red mouth hardening, the cornflower blue eyes getting colder.
“Listen, my child,” she said curtly. “That’s ridiculous. If your friends aren’t up there, you can make new ones. I’ll get you some decent clothes. You’re not going to any secretarial school and you’re not getting a job. Understand that right here and now.”
She drew a long breath and let it out again.
“Jennifer—be quiet and listen to me. You’re coming to Newport. That’s flat. It isn’t just me and Nikki there. A cousin of Nikki’s is coming over. He’s just twenty-three and he’s a love, really.” Her voice sharpened. “And that’s plenty from you, my lamb. Don’t be such a rat, darling. You’re upsetting me horribly.”
She listened again, shaking her head at Fish. He turned to the window and looked out again. It was the scene he’d been sent up to try to avoid.
“Well, you’d better make up your mind to like it, darling,” Dodo said. “Because you’re coming, and no nonsense. Goodbye. Go back and finish your silly game. I’ll see you in Newport in June.”
Fish could see her reflected in the mirrored wall, her face stiff with stubborn anger and wounded pride. There was something else that seemed almost like compassion, struggling to soften and erase the other two.
“It’s so stupid, isn’t it?” she inquired lightly. “But I’ve promised Nikki. We had to have some attraction for his cousin, and I thought she’d love having a young man all of her own. But of course it’s my fault, in a way. I shouldn’t have let her stepmother take her away from me. And it shouldn’t hurt—but it does.”
“Why don’t you let her stay?” Fish asked. “Secretarial school’ll be good for her.”
“And let her marry some bookkeeper?” she asked sharply. Then she smiled and put her hand on his arm. “Sorry, darling. Tell Caxey you did your best. And tell him that if my child stays in Virginia he’s to cut off her stipend. We’ll just see if Anne Linton wants to keep her for free. So run along, darling. Nikki’ll be here, and I don’t want him to see me looking like an old hag. Goodbye, darling.”
At the door she stopped him. “Look, Fish.” She was frowning. “Would you do something?”
“Surely, if I can.”
“Go down to that blasted school and see the child. I don’t want to be horrible to her, but make her see I’m her mother, not Anne Linton. I’ve got to have her in Newport. You can tell her I’m going to break the Trust if you want to.