Читать книгу The Daughters of Nightsong - V. J. Banis - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

Raymond Andrieux took off his sleeve guards and visor and got up from the stool beside the lab table. He picked up the Sung Dynasty vial and replaced it in the safe, smiling smugly to himself. A more unscrupulous man would have no compunctions about leaving the beautiful Lydia Nightsong and making his own fortune by reproducing her tantalizing perfume.

He had no such ambitions—yet. All his life he’d been lazy and it was much more interesting to spend other people’s money than spend his own. Depleting one’s own financial reserves only resulted in poverty, while depleting another’s money gave him greater security.

He had been left a bit of money when his father died, but he was too selfish to touch any of it. Instead, he spent the funds belonging to his father’s cosmetic firm, running it into ruin. It made little difference to Raymond because the company belonged to the estate executors, not to him, so what did he care about their money? It wasn’t his fault that they had put him in charge in order to retain the family firm name.

Raymond had luck and courage and always prided himself on being clever. It didn’t require much energy to be crafty; all he found necessary was a simple disregard for everyone else and a quick mind for opportunity.

He was not called Le Nez for nothing, either. Not only did he have a nose for scents, he had a nose for people as well, and especially for women. It was a talent he liked boasting about. He could tell if a woman had something weak in her makeup; just by getting close to her he knew just what temptation she couldn’t resist.

Lydia Nightsong was a determined woman whose purpose was to try and buy her daughter’s affection. In the week or so that he’d spent with them he was quick to see April’s dislike of her mother and Lydia’s obsession with trying to impress her child with her success.

And there was something else about Lydia which he had yet to figure out. Raymond had known many women who wanted wealth because of the luxuries it provided; Lydia didn’t seem to enjoy the affluence in which she lived. She wore handsome jewels but could afford better. She made do with a maid and a housekeeper when she could easily afford three times as many servants. So it wasn’t a love of money that drove her, and it wasn’t only her daughter she wanted to impress. There was some other underlying reason for this compulsion to duplicate Nightsong and Raymond was sure it wasn’t the fortune it would make.

He glanced at the locked safe and then at the beaker resting on the laboratory table. He’d succeeded in copying the Empress’s fragrance but he didn’t intend telling Lydia just yet. There were a few things he had to find out about her and then there was the price to be settled upon. She’d promised him anything and money did not seem enough.

When they were finishing their coffee in Lydia’s drawing room Raymond helped himself to a balloon of brandy and said, “I’m getting very near to the duplication.”

Lydia’s cup clattered on its saucer. “Oh, Raymond, how wonderful. When?”

“Very soon, I think.” He carried his glass back to the velvet settee and settled himself across from her, stretching his long, trim legs out in front of him. He was disappointed when her eyes didn’t move over him. He knew he was extremely handsome and woman constantly admired him. Yet, for all their secret love-making he always got the impression that Lydia was envisioning herself with someone else.

He felt annoyed when she lowered her eyes and got up to refill her coffee cup.

“We haven’t agreed upon my price, you realize.”

Lydia came back and sat down. “As I told you, Raymond, you have but to name a figure. It was agreed that I would pay you whatever you asked.”

Her heart was pounding faster as she saw the way he was looking at her. She saw the lust in his eyes but all she could think about was that the scent would be duplicated. At last she was close to what she’d set out to accomplish, to have her revenge for what Peter MacNair had done to her in China. She’d make her great fortune and show him and the world that despite all the efforts to destroy her, she had bettered them all. With Raymond Andrieux’s help she would have her triumph and whatever the cost, it would be worth it.

“I wasn’t thinking in terms of money,” Raymond said, watching her carefully.

Yes, he could even have her, Lydia told herself as she sipped her coffee. She didn’t love him, of course, but she could not deny that he was the only man other than Peter MacNair to arouse her sexually.

Lydia raised her eyes to him. “A price does not always have to be money.”

His slow, steady smile brightened his face. “You’re a very curious woman, Lydia,” he said.

“Oh? How so?”

He kept his gaze level. “Nothing seems to disturb you.”

“Perhaps that is because I have had too many disruptions in my life already. I’ve learned how to deal with just about every situation.”

“Toward what end?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Raymond sat forward. “What do you want, Lydia? Why are you so determined to succeed? You don’t seem to really enjoy any of this,” he said, motioning to the tasteful luxury of the drawing room.

Lydia looked wistful. “I have not had a very attractive past.” She paused, not wanting to look back. “April has had a particularly difficult time of it. It’s better now that Empress Cosmetics has begun making money. Still, even now I feel I could never make up to her all she’s been made to suffer.”

“No,” Raymond said slowly. “I am a very intuitive man. There is something deeper, even deeper than April.”

Lydia looked up sharply, then lowered her eyes just as quickly for fear he’d seen the truth in them. “April is my only reason for whatever I do.”

“She’s an exquisite creature,” Raymond said softly.

Again Lydia looked up quickly. There was something unnerving in the way he had spoken.

He saw her questioning look and said, “I can understand why you would want to give her the world. She is a charming young lady.”

“It has been hard for her, living here in San Francisco. There is a great dislike for Orientals. Her father was Chinese.”

“I assumed as much. You never told me of your husband.”

Lydia grew uneasy. “There isn’t much to tell,” she said evasively. “My parents were missionaries. They both died of cholera and I was left alone. A Mandarin prince, Ke Loo, took a fancy to me and we married.”

“And is your husband dead?” he asked.

“My husband,” she said, a bit too sharply, “is in China—and, I assure you, of little consequence in my life.”

He made no reply, and she was embarrassed at having spoken so rudely. It was a subject on which she was more than a little sensitive. Why should her life be affected, after all, by a cruel Mandarin who lived in a palace thousands of miles away, a man she had always hated and feared? Too, she could not help a certain feeling of guilt for the son who had been left behind in China, now a prince in his own right, but more, far more to her than that.

Raymond got to his feet when April came into the room. She was dressed in yellow silk—the Imperial color of China. She looked cool and expensive, he thought, a prized China figurine, fragile and alive with brilliance.

April’s appearance surprised Lydia. Since the angry scene after David left that day, she only saw April at meals, and even then the girl sat sullen and ill-tempered. Of late however, April seemed less hostile, as though she had resigned herself. Yet Lydia wasn’t completely sure her diagnosis was right. There was a strange light in April’s eyes and she had a conspiratorial air about her now that prompted Lydia to study her more closely.

Raymond said, “Have you changed your mind and decided to join us for coffee after all, April?”

April smiled charmingly. “I was finishing the book I started, but the ending depressed me so I thought I’d try and take my mind from it by joining you.”

“And what book is that?” Lydia asked.

“Just a book,” April said, dismissing her. “Tell me about Paris, Monsieur Andrieux. At dinner you mentioned a great fair which is planned.”

“Ah, what a grand affair it will be. You must let me take you there.”

Lydia said, “An exposition?”

“Yes. It will open in 1889.” He gave her a cool smile. “Perhaps we can introduce Nightsong to all of Europe then.”

She beamed in anticipation.

“France cannot possibly be as beautiful and enchanting as China,” April said abruptly, spoiling Lydia’s pleasure.

Raymond chuckled and said, “It would be disloyal of me to agree and impolite of me to argue. Let me just say that I would like to show you my beautiful country and let you decide for yourself.”

“Only if you’ll permit me to show you mine,” April countered.

“But this is your country,” Lydia reminded her gently.

Without a glance at her mother April said to Raymond, “I was born in China, you know. I believe one’s homeland is the land where one was born.”

Raymond shifted uncomfortably. “Let me tell you about the Paris exposition,” he said, pointedly returning to safer ground. “They are right now building a steel tower that will be the tallest structure in all the world. Eiffel’s tower, they call it, after the architect who designed it. It will have hydraulic elevators that will carry the people all the way to the very top, with places where you can eat and shop, observation platforms—even a weather station is planned. And the fair itself will surpass any other ever held, even your centennial when the telephone was introduced.”

“It sounds very exciting,” Lydia said, her earlier excitement having been cooled by April.

“It is in Paris at the exposition where we will have the Empress Cosmetic exhibit and introduce Nightsong. And we must create new creams and lotions and powders.” He grew more serious and added, “You must begin thinking of expansion, Lydia. You will find you have outgrown San Francisco in the next year, even America. Nightsong will enrapture the whole world.” He smiled at April. “It will even enchant your beloved China.”

April’s face clouded with anger. “The Empress will never permit her personal essence to be capitalized upon. She will kill whoever dares attempt it.”

Lydia grew uneasy, remembering suddenly that what April said was much more than the ranting of a jealous child. More than once the Empress’s long arm of revenge had stretched itself across the ocean that separated San Francisco from the Forbidden City in Peking.

“What April says is true, Raymond,” she said aloud. “I suppose I should have mentioned it, but there have been attempts on my life...Chinese assassins obviously in the employ of the Dowager Empress. Your connection with her personal scent may have put your life in danger too.”

Raymond laughed. “Oh, no, you don’t, Lydia. You cannot scare me off now that I am so close to making us both a fortune. I have never been afraid of any woman’s threats, not even those of an imperial dowager empress.”

April said, “My Empress does not make idle threats, Monsieur Andrieux.”

“Every woman makes idle threats, little one,” he said tolerantly. “But then you yourselves are women and put importance on such things.”

April felt her patience with him beginning to run out. She wondered if all Frenchmen were so egotistical and complacent. David wasn’t like that. He understood when she talked of the mysterious powers and the omnipotence of her magnificent Dowager Empress.

“I’m going to bed,” April announced. With an imperious toss of her hair she turned and walked out of the room in a swirl of yellow silk.

Ascending the stairs to her room, she shut her eyes and tried to put Raymond and her mother out of her mind. What did they matter now? Hadn’t David given her his word that they’d be married soon and that he’d take her home to her father and to China?

Let them have their expositions and their steel towers and their dreams of money and success. David was making the final arrangements; she was to meet him tomorrow night and after that nothing her mother did would ever matter to her again.

* * * *

Lorna MacNair’s face was creased with agitation as she knocked impatiently on her son’s bedroom door. When he didn’t answer she knocked again and said, “You’re not asleep, David, don’t pretend to me that you are. I want to talk with you, so kindly open the door this instant.”

She was about to knock again when she heard the latch being unclasped and the door opened. David stood looking sleepy as he pulled himself into his robe. “I was asleep,” he insisted. “What time is it?”

“It isn’t late and whether you were asleep or not makes no difference to me. I will have words with you, young man.” She put the flat of her hand against the panel of the door and pushed it wide. “Sit down, David,” she ordered, nodding to the leather tufted chair under the reading lamp.

She started to pace back and forth at the foot of his bed. Suddenly she stopped and whirled on him. “How dare you do this to me?”

David’s eyes went wide as he stared up at her. He knew what she meant. One more day and he and April would be away. Why had she found out now? Where had he slipped up?

“What are you talking about, Mother?”

“Don’t you dare anger me any more than I am by pretending ignorance,” she warned him. “April Nightsong. You’ve been seeing her.”

She knew, he could see it in her face. His only defense would be the truth—but it needn’t be the whole truth, he told himself. “All right, so I’ve been seeing April, Mother, what’s the harm in that? We meet sometimes in the afternoon.”

“She’s Chinese!”

“So?”

Lorna started pacing again, running her hands through her hair. “Good God, David, have you completely lost your senses? How can you possibly humiliate me this way by running around with such trash?”

He knew he was wrong to lose his temper but it was unavoidable. He would permit no one, not even his mother, to insult April. “Humiliate you?” he spat. “April is the finest, most decent girl I’ve ever met.”

“She’s Chinese, for God’s sake!”

“I wonder, Mother, if it is so much that she’s Chinese as that she is Lydia Nightsong’s daughter.”

Lorna turned abruptly, pulling off the spectacles she only wore in the privacy of her home. “What is that supposed to imply?”

“April told me all about her mother and my father.”

“What about Peter and her mother?”

“Now it’s my turn to warn you not to play the innocent, Mother. When I first met April she didn’t know who I was and when I told her we laughed about her having met Father. He used to come to their house on Van Ness to see her mother. She’d been too young to think, at the time, that they were anything but just friends. Then a man started watching her house. He even talked to her once, asked her questions about Father and how often he came to visit and whether he stayed all night.”

“I forbid this!” Lorna said, the color draining from her face. She didn’t want to think of the payment Mr. Ramsey had demanded of her for his reports. She put her hands over her ears. “All right, so your father was on more than friendly terms with Lydia Nightsong. That was over and finished long ago and it has nothing whatever to do with you and this Chinese girl. I forbid it, David! Do you hear me? I forbid it!”

One moment she stood as stiff as a rail, the next she wilted, like a flower hiding from the sun. “Oh, David,” she said coming behind his chair and putting her arm protectively around his shoulders. “Why can’t you be more like your sister and brother?”

“Susan’s all business, just like father. And even at eleven, Efrem’s still a boy. Which would you prefer I be like?” he asked sarcastically.

“At least they know what society expects of them.”

“Society?” David scoffed. He stood up, feeling uncomfortable under the touch of her arm. She had never been particularly demonstrative and the falseness of it now made him uneasy. “Holy cow, Mother, this is 1887. The world is changing. A whole new century is coming up. A guy’s got to be modern if he’s going to get along.”

“Paying court to a Chinese is not what I would consider being modern. Taboos will always be with us and a liaison between a Caucasian man and an oriental girl will always meet with disapproval from both sides. Her people will no more welcome you than we will welcome her.”

He thought about the scene he’d had with Mrs. Nightsong. He knew it was useless to argue with these closed minds. What did they know about love? They were far too old to understand this blind, raging obsession he had for April. Every second he was away from her was torment.

Well, tomorrow night things would be different. They would be away where no one would ever find them and once they reached the protection of April’s father’s palace in Kalgan, they need never have to worry about anyone keeping them apart again.

“Very well, Mother,” David said, feigning resignation. “If you forbid my seeing April ever again, there is very little I can do about it.”

“Then you will stop seeing this girl?”

David shrugged. “What choice have I? I will see her tomorrow, of course. It would be the gentlemanly thing for me to do.” He put on a beaten expression and hated himself for the sham.

Lorna smiled sadly and patted his head. “One day you will thank me for all of this, David.” She went to the door and opened it. Before leaving she stood with her hand on the knob and looked back at him. His head was down, his shoulders slumped. Her heart went out to him; but it was all for the good, she told herself as she closed the door.

Outside, as she went toward her room a slow smile curved her lips. Lydia Nightsong hadn’t gotten her husband and neither would she have her son.

She shivered slightly as she thought of the payment Mr. Ramsey would again expect of her for his information about David and the Chinese girl. With a deep sigh she squared her shoulders and told herself that it would be worth it.

“What was all the loud talk?” Peter asked when Lorna came into his bedroom. It had been a long time since they shared a bedroom and whenever Lorna came to him, which she did all too often, it lowered her even further in his esteem. To the world she was a tower of strength and of social decorum. To Peter, his wife was little better than a moneyed tramp. He knew full well that his appeal for her had always been physical. He had used that fact to his advantage—and still did—but it did nothing to increase his respect for either of them.

“A misunderstanding with David,” she replied. “It’s all straightened out.”

She gave him a seductive smile, putting her spectacles on the nightstand. “I thought perhaps you would like some companionship,” she said.

“Not tonight,” he answered sharply. He threw back the coverlet and slipped into a robe. “I have some reports to do.”

She watched her husband go out of the room. It was a blatantly masculine room, all leather and brass and mahogany so dark it was nearly black. Such a room could easily have overpowered a man, but it paled before Peter MacNair. The sight of him, his long legged stride, his splendid body, never ceased to stir up those tantalizingly sensual urges that churned inside her. Despite the coldness of her manner, Peter inevitably roused a desire within her, a desire she was often at pains to keep concealed until her natural demands grew unbearable.

Afterward, when she’d groveled at his feet, she would burn with shame at the memory of how she’d writhed and moaned and clawed like a common whore, like a woman enslaved by her husband’s sexuality.

It disgusted her to think that she was so enslaved to his masculinity. She would have preferred to hate him without reservation. She knew he had bought her with his pounding loins and sexual endowments. And she’d willingly exchanged her father’s wealth for the feel of Peter’s naked, muscular body.

Socially he was beneath her, of course, and she seethed with scorn for him when he denied her as he just had. It gnawed at her when he turned to other women, which he did all too frequently, according to Mr. Ramsey’s reports. It especially enraged her when he was with Lydia, whom she knew was more to Peter than she or any other woman could ever be.

Lorna sat looking at the closed door to the study. Her hunger for him filled her with both joy and despair. After several minutes she picked up her spectacles from the nightstand, gave them a hard push against the bridge of her nose and quickly returned to her own bedroom.