Forbidden Read online

  She did not tell him her name, either. The braids and the Cleopatra eye shadow would not give a clue to the romantic French princess she had been on the cover of Famous.

  There was a certain thrill in using her famous last name. Sometimes she loved to watch a person’s face as connections were made. Jayquith? the eyebrows would say. Hollings Jayquith? the lips would move. His daughter? Theodora Jayquith? Her niece?

  It could be fun.

  But nobody knew better than Annabel the price you could pay for a last name. Taught the hard way by school events, tennis club matches, and hunt club weekends, she knew that once the two syllables of her last name were uttered, everything was irrevocably changed. Nothing could be ordinary. Nothing could be casual. People wanted to know what it was like to be so wealthy. They wanted to know about Aunt Theodora, what was she really like, whether Annabel, too, had met the incredible array of celebrities who paraded in and out of Theodora’s life every day. People wanted invitations. They wanted to stand uncomfortably close, as if fame and wealth really did rub off. They wanted to touch her, as if they planned to take some of her for a souvenir.

  Annabel wanted this man to think only of her. So when he said “I’m Daniel,” she said, “I’m Annabel.” She held her breath. A woman would have known there was only one Annabel. But she was safe. To him, it was only a name.

  Daniel fished in his pockets. Annabel loved how men filled their pockets. She loved his hand, too big for the pocket. She loved his smooth cool palm, full of pennies waiting for her to choose.

  She took the oldest penny, the one that looked as if it had experience, and had been around the world. She didn’t want any shiny new amateur penny. She wanted one to make the wish come true.

  Wish I may, wish I might

  Have the wish I wish tonight …

  True love.

  She wanted to whisper out loud, leaning into the sh and the t—an incantation. As if, like Pharaoh’s daughter, she was surrounded by priestesses who could turn alligators into gods. But she didn’t want the young man to laugh at her.

  It turned out that one wish was not enough. She took a second penny, and then a third. Each penny she gripped with such intensity she could hardly bear to let go. They fell slowly through the water, and then lay on top of the others, indistinguishable. Get to work, Annabel told the pennies.

  Daniel handed over pennies until he had none left. “What’s your wish?” he asked finally. “Must be important.” His hand, now empty of change, rested comfortably on her waist, as if it had always been there and always would be.

  His voice was melodious. Made for duets, thought Annabel, and blushed in the dark. If she told this poor guy she was already planning duets, he’d be out of the Egyptian Room faster than King Tut on a chariot. “That would be telling,” said Annabel. “The wish might not come true.”

  He grinned. At first she had not thought he was handsome, but now she changed her mind. People said you could look into a soul through the eyes, but Annabel disagreed. You looked in through the smile.

  “Let’s dance,” said Daniel. “I love dancing, don’t you?”

  The drama of the dark and the intensity of the wishes evaporated. She was just a pretty girl with an adorable boy who’d asked her to dance.

  “Alternatively,” said Daniel, sounding younger and younger, “we could eat. I like eating more than anything. You’re not on a diet, are you? I hate girls on diets. One quick shove into the Nile for you if you’re on a diet.”

  Annabel promised that she was not now, never had been, and never intended to be on a diet. They walked through the papyrus to find the buffet. “We name our cats after rivers,” he told her. “We actually have a cat named Nile. We used to have Amazon and Mississippi, too, but they had a bad habit of sleeping in the road.”

  “Oh, no!” said Annabel. “I love cats. You should have kept them indoors.”

  “Do Amazon and Mississippi sound like indoor cats to you?”

  “Good point.”

  The light was better around the food tables. Annabel feasted her eyes on Daniel while he loaded her plate with cakes and pastries.

  “Are you supposed to look like Pharaoh’s daughter?” said Daniel. “If so, you win.”

  “You, however, are not wearing a loincloth.”

  “Sure I am. Hidden under the cummerbund.” He added a honeycake to her plate. Annabel suppressed a desire to lick the honey off his sticky fingers. Get a grip, she told herself, but of course she didn’t, and instead began gathering clues from Daniel. “Are you in college?” she asked. Annabel could hardly wait to go to college herself. She was crossing the continent. It felt as if she were crossing some great divide in her life as well. Sometimes she was out of breath just thinking of the leap it would involve.

  “Just graduated.” He dismissed the four years without names or description. “How about you?”

  She smiled. “Just graduated. But from Wythefield.” So they were four years apart. That was good. Annabel found boys her age annoying. They could only talk about cars, stereo systems, or sports. Annabel had a limited interest in all three.

  Annabel felt the eyes of the gathering upon them. She was used to it, and knew how to maintain a private conversation in the midst of a crowd, but with Daniel, she did not want a crowd. She wanted true privacy. “You need to make a wish, too, Daniel.”

  Daniel nodded, accepting her suggestion. Pennies gone, he used a quarter. “That means my wish is worth twenty-five of yours,” he told her. Then he surprised her. Staring at the silver coin as if it held some five-thousand-year-old truth from the real Temple of Dendur, he threw his quarter with unexpected violence. It splashed down far away. He, too, watched it sink, and the muscles in his jaw, the tendons in his throat, tightened.

  Annabel approved. Hollings Jayquith had that fierce approach. You would never find her father absently dropping a penny in the water. He hurled himself into life. He never let things fall where they might. “What’s your wish?” she said.

  “I have a mission.”

  Bad word. Was he too religious? An environmental fanatic? A political freak? Now that she thought about it, this particular fund-raiser might draw the fanatics of the world. “A mission?” she repeated dubiously. She wanted Daniel to be flawless.

  But Daniel did not discuss his mission. He changed the subject. “What are you doing this summer?” he asked her.

  Dreaming of college, actually. Sometimes when she thought about the courses she would take, the friends she would have, and the freedom she would exercise, Annabel had to break into dancing and clapping. Love her father and aunt though she did, she was headed for the opposite coast. At college she would be a woman, not a girl; an adult, not an obedient boarding school child; studying for a career, not grades. And in August she would work at Aunt Theodora’s network, a summer intern supposedly treated like any other summer intern. “Nothing special,” she said, although she expected every day of summer to be special. “A little travel. Some tennis.” She didn’t want to talk about anything serious now. “How about you?”

  “Just hanging around, resting up for law school.” He was smiling again. He must be looking forward to law school.

  Everybody at this kind of party spent the evening smiling, but their smiles meant nothing. Whether or not you were having fun, the rules said you must smile widely and continually. Daniel’s smile was real. She had the odd sensation of wanting to possess his smile, the way she possessed yachts and town houses. She had to look away, lest he read her thoughts. “Let’s do something tonight,” she said, falling into his smile.

  “Most people,” Daniel told her, “would call a charity ball at the Egyptian Room doing something.”

  “Boring charity, though.”

  “Difficult to get interested in Mr. Thiell’s hobby,” agreed Daniel, laughing. “Have you ever visited one of his wildlife preserves?”

  “I thought they were wrapped up with flesh-slicing wire to keep visiting human beings out.” Her Aunt Theodora�
�s long-time escort, J Thiell, owned gambling casinos from Nevada and the Dakotas to New Jersey and the West Indies. In an attempt to polish his image, Mr. Thiell had taken up a fashionable cause. The environment. Trees. Green space. He would buy big old abandoned factories and whatever acreage went with them. Then he’d demolish the buildings and turn the grounds into one of his Wildlife Preserves.

  “The Preserves are so small,” said Daniel, “that I always wonder just what wildlife he’s preserving.”

  “Chipmunks.”

  Daniel laughed. “Grasshoppers.”

  Without discussion, they began dancing. The music was slow, soaring with violins. The shadows elongated Daniel’s dark features. He, too, looked like an Egyptian painted on a wall, proud and mysterious.

  In her white gauze and bright jewelry, she glittered every time she passed under a torch. Daniel touched her earrings and made them swing. They were tiny cats suspended in repeating circles of gold. He seemed mesmerized by the pendulum action.

  Look at me, not my jewelry, Annabel willed him.

  He looked at her.

  She recognized him.

  Emmie had been boasting about him for weeks.

  He was Daniel Madison Ransom.

  Three

  EVEN ANNABEL JAYQUITH WAS thrilled.

  Who in America had not followed the life of Daniel Madison Ransom? Emmie had been wildly excited when the Pearses found out that Daniel Madison Ransom would be an usher at Venice’s wedding. When Emmie found an article about Daniel in one of her celeb magazines, even Annabel read it twice.

  A boy made famous by one fact: His father had been murdered.

  Senator Madison Ransom and his wife, Catherine, had truly been among the beautiful people. She was honey-blonde and he was mahogany-dark. Lithe and athletic, they dressed in the casual way of people who came into the world perfect, and to whom the world was perfect in return. Every talk show wanted the Ransoms. Theodora must have interviewed them together or separately a dozen times. The senator and his wife were articulate, idealistic, and decent. It was the decency that drew America to them. There had been much talk about Senator Ransom becoming President of the United States when he was older and more seasoned.

  It was Catherine who made The Camp famous. Catherine Ransom engineered the architecture to evoke Abe Lincoln. Even though The Camp was twenty sophisticated rooms of lake-front, you would have thought the Ransoms and their sweet little boy Daniel were actually pioneers in a one-room log cabin. Plenty of people called their summer homes “camps,” but only Catherine got away with it.

  When the senator hosted a meeting between the Russian premier and the British prime minister, America went crazy. If owning a house made of logs turned you into a president, Senator Ransom would have been elected that afternoon.

  Instead he was murdered.

  A few months after the historic Camp Conference, when America hung on every word he uttered, Senator Madison Ransom took the floor of the Senate. He had previously announced—through Theodora Jayquith—that he was going to expose an entire, unnamed industry. He would prove he was presidential material.

  Senator Ransom wrote his own speeches, used no notes, and had no text. At last—a politician without a squadron of speech writers. Madison Ransom stood before the Senate, his wife and son proudly in the gallery. His future, and theirs, seemed assured.

  When the shots rang out, the chaos was incredible. Senators dived for safety. Security sprang into position. Screams ricocheted as loudly as bullets. Twelve-year-old Daniel Ransom watched his father die.

  Only moments later, the killer was also killed, shot by the police as he fled the building. His body was never identified; his fingerprints were unknown. And most of all, his motive was unknown. Had he had a grudge? Was he crazy? Had he been hired?

  No one knew.

  Nor did anyone know the content of the speech that Senator Ransom never made. He had wanted complete surprise. No leaks. No escape route for the people he was about to slug.

  The funeral was as impressive as if Madison Ransom really had been president. Dignitaries from around the world and the nation came to walk behind the casket. Daniel, tears running down his cheeks, was filmed every step of the way. He was a small twelve-year-old, frail and appealing. Every woman in America wanted to comfort this sad little boy.

  It was the kind of death that attracted everybody: a romantic murder. Reporters never tired of writing shallow articles about the assassination and producers were always glad to make yet another TV special.

  America’s television and magazines followed the child with greedy fascination. Daniel Ransom was lucky; he did well in life. The coverage would have been a nightmare if he had failed. He grew bigger, for which he was grateful. He ceased to be pretty and he photographed poorly. This did not in any way stop the photographers from following him everywhere.

  The world saw young Ransom crewing in an America’s Cup race at sixteen; attending Wimbledon tennis championships; partying with movie stars, and eating at the latest trendy restaurants with Broadway playwrights. Daniel did not look at the photographers who chased him, nor would he answer the reporters’ questions.

  Not one interview did the widow or the son ever give—not even to Theodora Jayquith, who had practically sponsored the senator’s fame.

  Daniel Madison Ransom! Those, thought Annabel Jayquith, were powerful pennies. The one other person my age who would understand the liability of a famous last name. The one other person who dreads introducing himself. In Daniel’s case, no doubt, people would insist on telling him where they had been and what they had been doing at the moment his father was killed. A person would tire of that.

  They slipped behind the great stones, through the dark and echoing chambers, and found their way out of the museum and onto the street. She wondered what her father would do to her when the Bruce-Newcombes told him that she’d left.

  She shivered and Daniel slipped his jacket off his shoulders and onto hers. Its lining, rich with his scent and his shape, caressed her bare arms.

  Last year, New York magazine had listed Daniel Madison Ransom among its sexiest bachelors. Annabel would vote for that. In fact, she had voted for that—the senior Wythefield dorm ran its own annual Sexiest Bachelor poll. She’d voted for Daniel last January, wondering vaguely why their paths had never crossed.

  Now their paths had crossed.

  The world of the fabulously wealthy was very enclosed. Even so, it was an astonishing coincidence.

  You don’t even know who I am, Daniel, Annabel said to him silently, but you’re scheduled to walk down the aisle with me next Saturday. You are a friend of the groom and I am a friend of the bride.

  The sidewalk had been hosed down. It gleamed wetly in the dark. The immense museum rose up behind them like a palace in France. Daniel signaled a taxi. The driver grinned from ear to ear when he saw Annabel. “Like your dress. Where you going in that dress?”

  She’d forgotten how exotic she looked. Where was she going? She would certainly stand out.

  “I know a place,” said Daniel, helping her into the taxi.

  They held hands. She could feel his fingerprints. She read his whorls and curls as if she were the FBI.

  We’ll be connected forever, Annabel told herself. Our fingerprints will grace the same glass and our hands will sign with the same pen.

  There had been enough insurance money to bury her parents, pay off their silly credit card charges, buy herself the expensive colored contacts and the wardrobe she desperately hoped was correct, and a one-way plane ticket. Jade hated Theodora for giving her away to such feckless people. They didn’t even have decent life insurance. Ten thousand dollars. What was that supposed to do?

  Jade had little left. Either she pulled this off quickly or …

  Well, she was Jade. She would pull it off quickly. Period.

  She had not locked the door behind her when she left Ohio, since there was nothing in the house Jade now cared about or ever had. A taxi took her to
the airport limousine service where she was deeply disappointed to find that the “limousine” was just a bus. She had expected to sit in the back, behind a chauffeur, on deep soft leather seats, with a tiny TV, a telephone, and a real bar. A particularly ordinary person took the seat next to her, in spite of the fact that Jade had carefully covered the seat with her purse and magazine.

  Ordinary people follow me everywhere. I cannot get rid of them. Theodora doesn’t put up with this. Her limousine is a limousine. And she is literally jet set. Has her own plane. Flies everywhere.

  Even the plane was not the stuff of which dreams were made. Passengers were seated three abreast, and the people on either side of her were fidgety and talkative and the man smelled of cigarettes and the woman of cheap perfume.

  Jade did not spend the first flight of her life wondering what it would be like to be a pilot or a hostess. She did not look out the window to watch America passing beneath her. She thought only of landing.

  New York. Where it would all begin.

  New York did not let her down. From the horse carriages gathered near the Jayquith Hotel at Central Park to the white and gray and black stretch limousines that drifted past the uniformed doormen, from the windows at Tiffany’s to the gowns at Bergdorf Goodman, New York was as awesome and splendid as she had known it would be.

  The lobby of the hotel alone was worth the trip. Its ceiling was as far away as the spire of a church. It rippled and sparkled with as much gold as palaces. The people who worked there wore uniforms like the Queen’s Guard and the flower arrangements spread as wide and as dramatic as Cinderella’s gown. People spoke in soft voices—not library voices; not fear of being heard—but with the assurance that they did not need to raise the volume in order to be obeyed.

  Jade could not, however, afford the Jayquith Hotel or anything like it. She ended up in an ugly place with utilitarian bedspreads and a television bolted to the wall. It was full of other people who couldn’t pay for a nice place, either. She hated all their jabbering excitement at seeing New York.