Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(38)
Author: Anne Rice

Someone had been swimming steadily back and forth across the pool.

Through the gardenia bushes, Mona had seen that it was Rowan, naked, and moving with incredible speed through lap after lap. Rowan took her breaths regularly, head to the side, the way professional swimmers do it, or the way that athletic doctors do it, who want to work the body and condition it, and maybe even heal it and bring it back into prime form.

No time to disturb her, Mona had thought, still sleepy, longing for the couch again, in fact, so sluggish she might have fallen down on the cool grass. Something about the scene had disturbed her, however; maybe that Rowan was nude, or that she swam so rapidly and so steadily; or maybe just that the guard was around and might be a peeping Tom in the bushes right now, which Mona didn’t like.

Whatever, Rowan had known all about the guards on the property. She’d spent an hour with Ryan on that subject alone.

Mona had gone back to sleep.

Now, as she woke, it was Rowan she thought of, even before invoking the face of Yuri, or feeling routinely and religiously guilty about Michael, or at once reminding herself, rather like giving her own arm a cruel pinch, that Gifford and her mother were both dead.

She stared at the sunlight bathing the floor and the gold damask chair nearest the window. Maybe that was what this was all about. The lights had gone dim for Mona when Alicia and Gifford died, there was no doubt of it. And now, just because this woman was interested in her, this mysterious woman who meant so much to her for countless reasons, the lights were bright again.

Aaron’s death was terrible, but she could handle it. In fact, what she felt more than anything else was the same selfish excitement she’d known yesterday at Rowan’s first expression of interest, at her first confidential and respectful glance.

Probably wants to ask me if I want to go to boarding school, Mona thought. High heels lying there. She couldn’t put those on again. But it was nice to walk on the bare boards at First Street. They were always polished now, with the new staff. Yancy, the houseman, buffed them for hours. Even old Eugenia had been working more and grumbling less.

Mona rose, straightened out the silk dress which was perhaps ruined now, she wasn’t really sure. She walked over to the garden window and let the sun flood over her, warm and fresh, the air full of humidity and sweetness from the garden—all the things she usually took for granted, but which at First Street seemed doubly wonderful, and worth a moment’s meditation before rushing headlong into the day.

Protein, complex carbos, vitamin C. She was famished. Last night there had been the usual groaning sideboard, with all the family coming to put their arms around Beatrice, but Mona had forgotten to eat.

“No wonder you woke up in the night, you idiot.” When she failed to eat, she invariably had a headache. Now she thought again, suddenly, of Rowan swimming alone, and the thought disturbed her again—the nudity, the strange disregard for the hour and the presence of the guards. Hell, you idiot, she’s from California. They do stuff like that out there night and day.

She stretched, spread her legs apart, touched her toes with her hands, and then leaned backwards, shaking her hair from side to side till it felt loose and cool again, and then she walked out of the room and back the long corridor, through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Eggs, orange juice, Michael’s concoction. Maybe there was a goodly supply.

The smell of fresh coffee surprised her. Immediately she took a black china mug from the cupboard and lifted the pot. Very black, espresso, Michael’s kind of coffee, the kind he’d loved in San Francisco. But she realized this wasn’t what she wanted at all. She craved something cool and good. Orange juice. Michael always had bottles of it, mixed and ready, in the refrigerator. She filled another cup with orange juice, and carefully capped the jug to keep all the vitamins from dying in the air.

Suddenly she realized she wasn’t alone.

Rowan was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her. Rowan was smoking a cigarette which she tapped now above a fine china saucer with flowers along the edge. She wore a black silk suit and pearl earrings, and there was a little string of pearls around her neck, too. It was one of those suits with a long curvaceous jacket, double-breasted and fully buttoned, with no blouse or shirt beneath it, only bare flesh to a discreet cleft.

“I didn’t see you,” Mona confessed.

Rowan nodded. “Do you know who bought these clothes for me?” The voice was as chocolaty and smooth as it had been last night, after all the soreness had gone away.

“Probably the same person who bought this dress for me,” said Mona. “Beatrice. My closets are bulging with stuff from Beatrice. And it’s all silk.”

“So are my closets,” said Rowan, and there came again that bright smile.

Rowan’s hair was brushed back from her face, but otherwise natural, curling loosely just above her collar; her eyelashes looked very dark and distinct, and she wore a pale violet-pink lipstick that carefully outlined a rather beautifully shaped mouth.

“You’re really OK, aren’t you?” asked Mona.

“Sit down here, will you?” said Rowan. She gestured to the chair at the other end of the table.

Mona obeyed.

An expensive fragrance emanated from Rowan, rather like citrus and rain.

The black silk suit was really terrific; in the days before the wedding, Rowan had never been seen in anything so deliberately sensual. Bea had a way of sneaking into people’s closets and checking their sizes, not just by label but with a tape measure, and then dressing them up the way that she, Beatrice, thought they ought to look.

Well, with Rowan she’d done well.

And I’ve destroyed this blue dress, thought Mona. Just not ready for this kind of thing. Or those high heels she’d kicked off on the living room floor.

Rowan lowered her head as she crushed out her cigarette. A deep forward curl of ash-blond hair fell into the hollow of her cheek. Her face looked lean and awesomely dramatic. It was as if sickness and sorrow had given her the very gauntness for which starlets and models starve themselves to death.

For this sort of beauty, Mona was no contender. It was red hair and curves with her, and always would be. If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t like Mona.

Rowan gave a soft laugh.

“How long have you been doing it?” asked Mona, taking a deep gulp of her coffee. It had just reached the right temperature. Delicious. In two minutes it would be too cold to drink. “Reading my mind, I mean. It’s not consistent, is it?”