Passion's Promise Read Online Free PDF Page A

smiled. "To you, mademoiselle, welcome home." They clinked glasses and sipped slowly at the champagne. It was precisely the way they liked it, a good year and icy cold.
    "How's Whit, by the way? Seeing him for dinner tonight?"
    "Fine. And no, I'm going to bed to recover from the trip."
    "I don't think I believe that, but I'll accept it if you say so."
    "What a wise man you are, Edward. That's probably why I love you."
    He looked at her for a moment then, and took her hand. "Kezia, be careful. Please."
    "Yes, Edward. I know. I am."
    The lunch was pleasant, as all then1lunches were. She inquired about all his most important clients, remembered all their names, and wanted to know what he had done about the couch in his apartment that so desperately needed re-upholstering. They said hello to everyone they knew, and were joined for brief moments by two of his partners in the firm. She told him a little about her trip, and she kept an eye on the comings and goings and pairings of the natives.
    She left him outside at three. The "surprise" photographer from Women's Wear dutifully took their photograph, and Edward hailed her a cab before he walked back to his office. He always felt better when he knew she was back in town. He could be there if she needed him, and he felt closer to her life.
    He never really knew, but he had an idea that there was more to her life than Raffles and parties given by the Marshes. And much more to her life than Whit. But she didn't tell Edward, and he didn't ask. He didn't really want to know as long as she was all right— "careful," as he put it. But there was too much of her father in her to be satisfied with a man like Whit. Edward knew that only too well. It had taken more than two years to settle her father's will discreetly, and execute the arrangements for the two women no one had known about.
    The cab took Kezia home and deposited her at her door with a flourish of brakes and scattered curbside litter, and Kezia went upstairs and hung the white Dior dress neatly in the closet Half an hour later she was in jeans, her hair hanging free, the answering service instructed to pick up her calls. She was "resting" and didn't want to be disturbed until the following noon. A few moments later, she was gone.
    She walked away from her house and slipped quietly into the subway at Seventy-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue. No makeup, no handbag, just a coin purse in her pocket and a smile in her eyes.
    The subway was like a concentrated potion of New York, each sound and smell magnified, each character more extreme. Funny old ladies with faces made up like masks, gay boys in pants so tight one could almost see the hah* on their legs, magnificent girls carrying portfolios on then- way to modeling engagements, and men who smelled of sweat and cigars, whom one wanted not to be near, and the occasional passenger for Wall Street in striped suit, short hair, and hornrims. It was a symphony of sights and odors and sounds conducted to the shrieking background beat of the trains, brakes screaming, wheels rattling. Kezia stood holding her breath and closing her eyes against the hot breeze and flying litter swept up by the oncoming train, then moved inside quickly, sidestepping the doors as they closed.
    She found a seat next to an old woman carrying a shopping bag. A young couple sat down next to her at the next stop, and furtively shared a joint, unobserved by the transit patrolman who moved through the car, eyes fixed ahead of him. Kezia found herself smiling, wondering if the old woman on her other side would get high from the smell. Then the train screeched to a halt at Canal Street and it was time to get off. Kezia danced quickly up the steps and looked around.
    She was home again. Another home. Warehouses and tired tenements, fire escapes and delicatessens, and a few blocks away the art galleries and coffee houses and lofts crowded with artists and writers, sculptors and poets, beards and bandannas. A place