The Unloved by John Saul Read Free Book Online Page B

there while it got cold, then called Marguerite up here so you could hit her with your cane?”
    Helena’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and when she spoke, her voice was a malevolent hiss. “Watch what you say, Kevin. You don’t know her as I do. You haven’t been here! You went away and left us alone! Don’t you start criticizing now, young—”
    “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Mother,” Kevin snapped. “Stop behaving like a child. Marguerite, come on. Ruby can reheat it, or I’ll do it myself. But you come back down and finish your dinner.”
    Marguerite started to get up from the floor, but before she had regained her feet, Helena’s voice lashed out like a whip.
    “No! I want her to do it, Kevin! If she’s going to spend her life acting like a servant, who are you to stop her?”
    Stunned, Kevin looked down at his sister.
    Though her eyes had filled with tears, Marguerite said nothing. Instead, she simply pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, and picked up her mother’s tray.
    *      *      *
    It was long after midnight when Kevin slid out of bed, careful not to disturb Anne, whose breathing had slipped into the regular rhythms of sleep hours before. Kevin himself had lain awake, feeling the house around him, his nostrils filled with the familiar scents of his childhood, the summer night heavy with the shrill sounds of tropical insects. All of it seemed so far in the past and yet was still so familiar.
    But the image that hung in his mind was that of Marguerite, crouched painfully on the floor, betraying nothing of her pain and humiliation, quietly suffering her mother’s fury. How long had it been like this? he wondered. And why had Marguerite never called him, never told him what was happening and what her life had come to?
    Or did she even realize that her existence didn’t have to be tied to a bitter woman who was living in the past?
    Knowing he wasn’t going to drift into sleep, he put on a light robe and went out into the broad corridor, closing the door behind him. He needed no lights—every inch of the house seemed familiar to him, and as he moved along the hall toward the main staircase, he remembered each of the rooms as he passed them.
    Even when he was a child, the many guest rooms of the mansion had already begun to deteriorate, for the wide circle of wealthy friends his grandparents had once entertained had long since disappeared, along with the large staff of servants necessary to keep up the house in the manner for which it was designed. Though he hadn’t yet looked at them, he was certain they were just as he remembered them, although no doubt more faded—the Blue Room, the Emerald Room, the Rose Room—all of them with their damask wallpaper, their matching carpets, their marble fireplaces.
    He moved down the stairs, through the small reception room and into the main salon, instinctively sidestepping the bench of the grand piano. He switched on the crystal lamp on the table behind the Louis XVI sofa, and the room was suffused with a soft glow that couldn’t quite wash the shadows away from the far corners. He crossed toward the double doors that led through a small solarium to the dining room,pausing for a moment to gaze up at the portrait of his mother above the fireplace.
    Done in France by a society painter who had been the rage among touring Americans, his mother was posed in the formal costume of a danseuse of her day, her hair drawn back from her face, her high cheekbones needing no makeup to accentuate them. One hand was lifted gracefully, and her left leg was oddly bent, as if she were about to loft herself to her toes. Kevin stared at the picture for several minutes, trying to see in that youthful face any faint hints of the haggard and bitter harridan the portrait’s subject had become.
    There were none.
    He moved on, then, pausing in the solarium, but passing quickly through the dining room and the butler’s pantry to the enormous old-fashioned kitchen. Little here