Ring of Fear

“Nialla’s father was your trainer for five years, Lou. Russ Donnelly.”

Oh-why did Rafe have to say that? But for the steely grip of his hand around my elbow, I think I would have slid to the ground.

Louis Marchmount’s hand went to his forehead, his eyes blinked rapidly. He was plainly disconcerted with this information, and peered at me again, frowning, trying to correlate fact with memory.

“I’m terribly sorry, m’dear. Haven’t been well, you know. Awfully embarrassing. Really. Wendy?” There was a plaintive note in his voice.

“How could you, Ralph? I won’t have Lou upset. He’s not well.” She stepped on the gas, and the Cadillac took off like a drag-racer, one tire scraping against the high curbing of the exit, leaving a touch of burned rubber in the air.

“It’s to be hoped she’ll drive herself to death one day,” Rafe remarked as the car vanished.

I leaned against the Austin, taking a deep breath, trying to assimilate the impacts of that encounter. Wendy Madison hated her son: she loathed and despised him, and evidently took any and every opportunity to belittle and humiliate him. And Louis Marchmount did not remember a girl he’d raped less than a year ago. He couldn’t have been feigning it; he actually didn’t remember me.

“Well, will wonders never cease?”

I stared at Rafe, amazed at his reaction, at the laughter in his eyes. He laughed outright, for I guess I looked my astonishment.

“Marchmount didn’t recognize you, and she was remarkably polite. You know, I wonder if Garry isn’t right, and she’s after Lou. ‘I won’t have Lou upset.’ “ His mimicry was appallingly accurate. He had seated me back in the Austin, and as he closed the door, planted a kiss on my head. “Otherwise, I can assure you, Nialla, she would have tried to reduce the pair of us to sniveling, groveling impotence. Which is one of her favorite pastimes. But if she’s bemused by Marchmount…”

I caught his hand as he reached for the ignition switch.

“But don’t you see, Rafe, if Marchmount doesn’t recognize me, then who…?”

“Who what?” He’d been following his own line of thinking while I was off on the tangent most vital to me. “Hmmm. We need a drink, and home’s too far. Caminari’s is close by.”

Caminari’s turned out to be a large Tudorish restaurant, complete with ivy, on the corner of the main intersection (if you could call it that) of Locust Valley. But the maitre d’ was obviously well acquainted with Rafe Clery, and we were ushered to a small table by the wide windows that overlooked an attractively landscaped parking lot.

I certainly wasn’t the least bit interested in the damned parking lot, but the speed with which the daiquiris appeared at Rafe’s command was therapeutic. And he was in command again. For one brief moment there, with his mother, I had felt insecure in his presence. Silly, on reflection. He was wary of his mother, not cowed or awed. Though why he felt obligated to return courtesy for brickbats, I don’t know.

“I had hoped,” Rafe began after the waiter had retired, “that we could avoid an engagement with Madam, my mother, for a while.”

“She doesn’t look old enough to be your mother,” I blurted out, startled that that was the dominant impression.

Rafe gave a snort. “Madam can afford the best surgeons, m’dear.”

Face-lifting, of course. But her figure… “She can also afford a masseuse and anything else her heart desires, up to and including Louis Marchmount.” There was a world of disgust in Ms voice now, and his eyes, gazing past my left shoulder, reflected a cynicism I hated to see in him.

“I hate to see the way she affects you.”

Rafe looked at me in surprise. “She doesn’t affect me.”

“You’ve never heard your voice when you’re talking to her.”

He gave me a very level look, apparently digesting a novel thought. “I guess she does affect me… up to a certain point. I let her strictly alone, but she doesn’t always return the courtesy. She’s big on courtesy!”

He was off again, in some… some purgatory of her making. Then his eyes snapped back to mine, as if he’d arrived at a decision. He leaned toward me and began to speak in that cold emotionless tone he always used when discussing anything connected with his mother.

“Sordid biography, Chapter Two. Wendy Herrington has been, in order of their appearance, Mrs. Michael Clery, Countess Milanesi, Lady Branegg, Mrs. Horvath, and Mrs. Madison. Widowed honorably twice, Mexico three times. I have a full younger brother, Michael, half-brothers John Milanesi and Presby Branegg. Mick is a partner in a good corporation law firm. He and his wife-they’ve five kids-rarely come to the island. Pres has just finished Yale and is ‘looking for a job,’ and Giovanni has some position with the American branch of his father’s textile firm. Mother always married more money.

“Strangely enough, I think my mother really loved Michael Clery. If he’d lived, she’d be a much different person. But he didn’t. And she isn’t. I was rising six when he died, and I’ve only a few memories of him. Unfortunately.” The dead light in his eyes altered slightly. “I keep to the Dower House because I found you can’t combine her sort of ‘fun’”-his opprobrium was scathing-”with serious riding. I put up the Cyclone fence to limit social intercourse.” He looked at me again. “She’s mucked up my life too often, so that I limit the association to those occasions which are unavoidable in view of our unfortunate blood relationship. You need only accord her such civility as convention requires. And if she ever singles you out for her attentions, any attention, I want to know if I’m not present. Do I make our position clear in regard to Mrs. Wendy Madison?”