“You said ‘rumors’.” Consuela leaned forward.
“I’d be cautious about extracurricular activities.” Sibby took a small bite of a caviar sandwich. “There is so much for you to lose, my pet.”
“I’m in love,” Consuela said. Her eyes were so bright they dazzled him.
Sibby shrugged. “Divorce — and a one-room apartment on the West Side,” he said, conjuring up the worst nightmare he could think of.
“George won’t agree to a divorce,” she said. “I’m a piece of property he bought and owns. He won’t give me up.”
“So you have an affair with Greg and you laugh at him,” Sibby said. “It would seem, my sweet, that you can have your cake and eat it.”
A little shudder moved Consuela’s seductive body inside her clothes. “You don’t know George,” she said. “He would find a way to kill me if he discovered I was having an affair. And he would discover it, Sibby. I’m watched everywhere I go. At this very moment he knows I’m lunching with you.”
“Should I be frightened?” Sibby asked drily.
“Of course not, Sibby dear. He knows I’m perfectly safe with you.”
“Does he indeed?” Sibby said, his eyes narrowing.
“The thing with Greg began at the Davenports,” Consuela explained. “We went there for a week-end. George was called back unexpectedly to New York on business. I had a few hours with Greg. We weren’t watched because George had planned to do his own watching. In... in those few hours, Sibby, I learned that Greg was all I wanted in the world.”
“And George doesn’t suspect?”
“Not yet. I’m sure — not yet.”
“And how,” Sibby asked, “am I supposed to help?”
“This week-end,” Consuela said. She was breathing hard. “I must have a chance to be with Greg alone. If you will come to the Berkshires with us—”
“How will that help?”
“Now don’t be angry, Sibby. George despises you, but he will not object to my asking you. He will not object to my spending time with you while he works on his precious horses. He has a new jumper that he’ll be schooling. Greg will be staying at an Inn near town. While George thinks you and I are driving about the countryside, I will be with Greg. Please, Sibby! It’s the only way Greg and I can solve our problem.”
He looked at her, wondering. Suppose he demanded a special price? Suppose he insisted on playing the role of lover himself so that he could laugh at George Conrad for the rest of his life? He abandoned that thought because it was then, like a gentle mist drifting in from the sea, he became aware that the greatest of all sensations might be his. A word to George Conrad — the guilty lovers discovered — Sibby a spectator — and death to both these people who treated him so contemptuously. A faint prickle of excitement seemed to run over the whole skin of his body.
“I’ll help you, my sweet. Of course I’ll help you,” he said.
And now, Sibby thought, moving lazily between his silk sheets, the time was close at hand. Today — or tomorrow at the latest.
George Conrad was darkly handsome. He came to breakfast that morning — that hot August morning — in white twill riding breeches and black boots, his silver spurs clanking as he walked. He wore a white polo shirt with a knotted scarf at his throat — the scarf as scarlet as blood.
“What are you two planning for the day?” he asked, his black eyes insolently on Sibby who was at the sideboard helping: himself to creamed finnan haddie which he put on half a golden toasted English muffin.
Consuela sat at the head of the long, oak dining-room table, playing with a glass of juice and some thinly sliced gluten toast. She was almost glittering with excitement. The little fool, Sibby thought. Can’t she control herself? Surely she’ll give herself away.
“I thought of driving Sibby up into the hills — Vermont way,” she said, fighting for casualness. “An all-day picnic.”
George Conrad nodded. He cut into a thin, rare steak with a knife as sharp as a razor blade. Sibby shuddered. Steak for breakfast! “The things that please you grow more and more mysterious, Consuela,” George said drily. “But before you go—”
Consuela’s hand froze on its way toward her coffee cup. A flash of fear made her look — for just an instant — almost ugly.
George laughed. “Just a whim of mine, Connie dear,” George said. “I’d like you to see the new jumper I bought from Rawlinson. He’s a wonderful and terrible animal. He reminds me, in a way, of you, Consuela. Today I am going to teach him that I must have my way. I’d like you and Sibby to watch — if Sibby can bear the sight of a little violence.”
“If we’re to go to Vermont, George—”
“As soon as breakfast is finished we can go down to the training field,” George said, the matter settled as far as he was concerned.
Sibby enjoyed his finnan haddie. He could see Consuela writhing at the enforced delay. Shortly after breakfast she had expected to be in Greg Foster’s arms. The frustration smothered her, and yet the undertone of threat in George’s words couldn’t be ignored.
After breakfast they drove down to the training field, George in his Ferrari, and Sibby and Consuela in the Thunderbird convertible. If George had noticed the two wicker picnic baskets in the back of the Thunderbird — one for Sibby, who would actually spend the day alone, and one for Consuela and Greg Foster — he gave no sign of it.
The new horse, already saddled and waiting for George, was being walked up and down at the edge of the training field by a groom. It was a magnificent black animal, head held high, a light of challenge in wide-set eyes. Consuela pulled the Thunderbird up parallel to the fence surrounding the training field. George had already left the Ferrari and was walking toward the horse. He took over the reins from the groom and led the horse over to where Sibby and Consuela waited.
“Isn’t he a beauty?” George said. There was a curious note of tenderness in his voice which was quite unexpected to Sibby. George rubbed the horse’s nose gently. “He can jump over the moon — if he wanted to. But he has a bad habit of running out. This morning he’ll be cured — once and for all.”
George reached into the pocket of his gabardine riding coat and brought something into view. Sibby felt the small hairs rise on the back of his neck. What George held in his hand was a short length of steel, linked tire chain. He swung up into the saddle and sat there, smiling down at Consuela He was part of the horse — a centaur.
They cantered off down the field — man and horse one.
“I am about to be given an object lesson,” Consuela whispered, and her body, pressed back against Sibby, shuddered.
The field was spotted with jumps — fence and rail, brush, stone walls, with white-painted rail wings marking the entrance to each jump. Directly opposite the Thunderbird was a stone wall that looked to Sibby about five feet tall. Down the field George had turned the black horse toward that wall.
“So gentle, so tender!” Consuela said between clenched white teeth.
Down the field toward the jump came horse and man, first at a canter, then faster and faster. There was a thunder of hoofs, an almost shattering sense of power in the great black animal. Sibby felt himself gripping the top of the car door. They were almost at the wings of the jump when the big black head went down and the horse veered out to the right. At the same instant the steel chain glittered in the morning sunlight as George slashed viciously at the right side of the horse’s head. Something like a scream came from the animal — head suddenly flung up — and then a wild rearing and bucking. The chain rose and fell again.
The horse was suddenly still, shaking and trembling — but still. George turned him and came back along the fence. Sibby stared, fascinated, his eyes wide, his mouth dry. Consuela had lowered her face into her arms which she had crossed on the car’s steering wheel. Two bloody welts showed on the right side of the horse’s head, and its right eye was beginning to swell shut. George leaned forward, stroking the suddenly sweat-wet black neck.