“I don’t have any trouble playing fair. As I recall, you’re the one who cheats.”
Her voice became very cool, her tone very rounded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Canasta, poker, gin.”
“That’s absurd and you have absolutely no proof.” Rising, she helped herself to another cup of tea. “Besides, cards are entirely different.” Warmed by the fire, soothed by the tea, she smiled at him. As Michael recalled, that particular smile was lethal. And stunning. “Are you still holding a grudge over that five hundred I won from you?”
“I wouldn’t if you’d won it fairly.”
“I won it,” she countered. “That’s what counts. If I cheated and you didn’t catch me, then it follows that I cheated well enough for it to be legal.”
“You always had a crooked sense of logic.” He rose as well and came close. She had to admire the way he moved. It wasn’t quite a swagger because he didn’t put the effort into it. But it was very close. “If we play again, whatever we play, you won’t cheat me.”
Confident, she smiled at him. “Michael, we’ve known each other too long for you to intimidate me.” She reached a hand up to pat his cheek and found her wrist captured a second time. And a second time she saw and felt that same dangerous something she’d experienced upstairs.
There was no Uncle Jolley as a buffer between them now. Perhaps they’d both just begun to realize it. Whatever was between them that made them snarl and snap would have a long, cold winter to surface.
Perhaps neither one of them wanted to face it, but both were too stubborn to back down.
“Perhaps we’re just beginning to know each other,” Michael murmured.
She believed it. And didn’t like it. He wasn’t a posturing fool like Biff nor a harmless hulk like Hank. He might be a cousin by marriage only, but the blood between them had always run hot. There was violence in him. It showed sometimes in a look in his eyes, in the way he held himself. As though he wouldn’t ward off a blow but counter it. Pandora recognized it because there was violence in her, as well. Perhaps that was why she always felt compelled to shoot darts at him, just to see how many he could boomerang back at her.
They stood as they were a moment, gauging each other, reassessing. The wise thing to do was for each to acknowledge a hit and step aside. Pandora threw up her chin. Michael set for the volley. “We’ll go to the mat another time, Michael. At the moment, I’m a bit tired from the drive. If you’ll excuse me?”
“Rule number five,” he said without releasing her. “If one of us takes potshots at the other, they’ll damn well pay the consequences.” When he freed her arm, he went back for his cup. “See you at dinner, cousin.”
Pandora awoke just past dawn fully awake, rested and bursting with energy. Whether it had been the air in the mountains or the six hours of deep sleep, she was ready and eager to work. Breakfast could wait, she decided as she showered and dressed. She was going out to the garden shed, organizing her equipment and diving in.
The house was perfectly quiet and still dim as she made her way downstairs. The servants would sleep another hour or two, she thought as she stuck her head in the pantry and chose a muffin. As she recalled, Michael might sleep until noon.
They had made it through dinner without incident. Perhaps they’d been polite to each other because of Charles and Sweeney or perhaps because both of them had been too tired to snipe. Pandora wasn’t sure herself.
They’d dined under the cheerful lights of the big chandelier and had talked, when they’d talked, about the weather and the food.
By nine they’d gone their separate ways. Pandora to read until her eyes closed and Michael to work. Or so he’d said.
Outside the air was chill enough to cause Pandora’s skin to prickle. She hunched up the collar of her jacket and started across the lawn. It crunched underfoot with the early thin frost. She liked it—the absolute solitude, the lightness of the air, the incredible smell of mountain and river.
In Tibet she’d once come close to frostbite because she hadn’t been able to resist the snow and the swoop of rock. She didn’t find this slice of the Catskills any less fascinating. The winter was best, she’d always thought, when the snow skimmed the top of your boots and your voice came out in puffs of smoke.
Winter in the mountains was a time for the basics. Heat, food, work. There were times Pandora wanted only the basics. There were times in New York she’d argue for hours over unions, politics, civil rights because the fact was, she loved an argument. She wanted the stimulation of an opposing view over broad issues or niggling ones. She wanted the challenge, the heat and the exercise for her brain. But…
There were times she wanted nothing more than a quiet sunrise over frost-crisped ground and the promise of a warm drink by a hot fire. And there were times, though she’d rarely admit it even to herself, that she wanted a shoulder to lay her head against and a hand to hold. She’d been raised to see independence as a duty, not a choice. Her parents had the most balanced of relationships, equal to equal. Pandora saw them as something rare in a world where the scales tipped this way or that too often. At age eighteen, Pandora had decided she’d never settle for less than a full partnership. At age twenty, she decided marriage wasn’t for her. Instead she put all her passion, her energy and imagination into her work.
Straight-line dedication had paid off. She was successful, even prominent, and creatively she was fulfilled. It was more than many people ever achieved.
Now she pulled open the door of the utility shed. It was a big square building, as wide as the average barn, with hardwood floors and paneled walls. Uncle Jolley hadn’t believed in the primitive. Hitting the switch, she flooded the building with light.
As per her instructions, the crates and boxes she’d shipped had been stacked along one wall. The shelves where Uncle Jolley had kept his gardening tools during his brief, torrid gardening stage had been packed away. The plumbing was good, with a full-size stainless-steel sink and a small but more than adequate bath with shower enclosed in the rear. She counted five workbenches. The light and ventilation were excellent.
It wouldn’t take her long, Pandora figured, to turn the shed into an organized, productive workroom.
It took three hours.
Along one shelf were boxes of beads in various sizes—jet, amethyst, gold, polished wood, coral, ivory. She had trays of stones, precious and semiprecious, square cut, brilliants, teardrops and chips. In New York, they were kept in a safe. Here, she never considered it. She had gold, silver, bronze, copper. There were solid and hollow drills, hammers, tongs, pliers, nippers, files and clamps. One might have thought she did carpentry. Then there were scribes and drawplates, bottles of chemicals, and miles of string and fiber cord.
The money she’d invested in these materials had cost her every penny of an inheritance from her grandmother, and a good chunk of savings she’d earned as an apprentice. It had been worth it. Pandora picked up a file and tapped it against her palm. Well worth it.
She could forge gold and silver, cast alloys and string impossibly complex designs with the use of a few beads or shells. Metals could be worked into thin, threadlike strands or built into big bold chunks. Pandora could do as she chose, with tools that had hardly changed from those used by
