A Perfect Stranger by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page A

owned it, which was very rare. But it was not a house in which Raphaella could be happy now. It seemed more like a museum or a mausoleum to her than a home. It seemed cold and unfriendly, as did the staff, all of whom John Henry had had when she arrived. And she had never had the chance to redecorate any of the rooms. The house stood now, as it had then. For fourteen years it had been her home, and yet each time she left it, she felt like an orphan with her suitcase.
    More coffee, Mrs. Phillips? The elderly woman who had been the downstairs maid for thirty-six years gazed into Raphaella's face as she did each morning. Raphaella had seen that face five days a week for the last fourteen years, and still the woman was a stranger to her, and always would be. Her name was Marie.
    But this time Raphaella shook her head. Not this morning. I'm in a hurry, thank you. She glanced at the plain gold watch on her wrist, put down her napkin, and stood up. The flowered Spode dishes had belonged to John Henry's first wife. There were a lot of things like that in the house. Everything seemed to be someone else's. The first Mrs. Phillips, as the servants put it, or John Henry's mother's, or grandmother's' . Sometimes she felt that if a stranger were to walk through the house inquiring about artifacts and paintings and even small unimportant objects, there was not a single thing about which someone would say, Oh, that's Raphaella's. Nothing was Raphaella's, except her clothes and her books, and the huge collection of letters from the children in Spain, which she kept in boxes.
    Raphaella's heels clicked briefly across the black and white marble floor of the pantry. She picked up a phone there and buzzed softly on an inside line. A moment later it was picked up on the third floor by the morning nurse.
    Good morning. Is Mr. Phillips awake yet?
    Yes, but he's not quite ready. Ready. Ready for what? Raphaella felt an odd tug in her soul as she stood there. How could she resent him for what wasn't his fault? And yet how could this have happened to her? For those first seven years it had been so wonderful, so perfect' so'
    I'd like to come up for a moment, before I leave.
    Oh, dear, you're leaving this morning?
    Raphaella glanced at her watch again. In half an hour.
    All right. Then give us fifteen or twenty minutes. You can stop in for a few minutes on your way out. Poor John Henry. Ten minutes, and then nothing. There would be no one to visit him while she was gone. She would only be gone for four or five days, but still she wondered if maybe she shouldn't leave him. What if something happened? What if the nurses didn't pay attention to what they were doing? She always felt that way when she left him. Troubled, tormented, guilty, as though she had no right to a few days of her own. And then John Henry would persuade her to go, emerging from his reverie long enough to force her away from this nightmare that they had shared for so long. It wasn't even a nightmare anymore. It was just an emptiness, a limbo, a comatose state, while their lives continued to drone on.
    She took the elevator to the second floor and then walked to her bedroom after telling the nurse that she would be in to see her husband in fifteen minutes. She looked long and hard in the mirror then, smoothed the silky black hair, and ran a hand over the tight, heavy knot of it at the nape of her neck. She took a hat out of her closet. It was a beautiful creation she had bought in Paris the year before when hats returned to the world of high style. As she put it on carefully, tilting it to just the right angle, she wondered for a moment why she had bothered to buy it at all. Who would notice her beautiful hat? It had a whisper of black veiling that lent further mystery to her large almond-shaped eyes, and with the contrast of the black hat and her hair and the little veil, the creamy white of her skin seemed to stand out even more than before. She carefully applied a thin gloss of bright