Hellfire

chair. Her father’s eyes were coldly furious now.

“I’m not going to hit you,” he told her. “Perhaps I should, but I won’t. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. But I will tell you this now, Tracy, and you had better listen and you had better understand, because I won’t tell you again. From this moment on, you will treat Carolyn with all the respect you would give your own mother, or any other adult woman. I don’t care anymore how you feel about her. The only thing I care about is how you treat her. From now on, you will be friendly and helpful and polite, whether I am in the house or not. As for Beth, yes, she will be coming back here to live. And it won’t be because she has no other place to go. It will be because both her mother and I love her very much. And you will treat her the same way you will treat Carolyn. You will go even further. You will make friends with Beth, unless she’s not interested in being friends with you. In that case, you will simply be polite to her, and stay out of her way. When she comes home tomorrow, you will tell her you are sorry about what happened to her father, and you will apologize for having poisoned her horse—”

“It was my horse,” Tracy exploded. Suddenly she was on her feet, glaring at her father with naked fury. “It was my horse, and I had the right to do anything I wanted to it! And it’s my house, and I can act any way I want to here, and you can’t stop me. I hate you!”

Phillip rose to his feet. “Very well,” he said softly. “If that’s the way you feel, there’s only one thing I can do. In the morning, I’ll make some calls and find a school for you.”

“Good!” Tracy shot back, her feet planted wide apart on the carpet, her face a mask of angry belligerence. “And I hope it’s as far away from here as you can get!”

“Oh, it will be,” Phillip replied. “But of course since you’ll be there year-round from now on, we’ll have to find one that has no vacations. Also, of course, one that has no horses.” He looked down, his eyes fixing on his daughter. “No privileges of any sort, I should think,” he said softly. “It appears that you’ve already had far too many of those.”

Tracy searched her father’s face, trying to see if he really meant what he was saying. “I … I’ll run away!”

Phillip shrugged. “If you do, then you do. But if I were you, I’d think about it pretty hard. I understand life can be pretty rough out there for a girl of your age.” Then he turned and left the library, closing the door quietly behind him. Tracy, frozen with rage and disbelief, stood perfectly still for a moment, then went to the bar and began throwing the glasses at the door, one by one.

Phillip and Hannah met at the bottom of the stairs as the first crash of breaking crystal emanated from the library. The old woman’s eyes widened, and she almost dropped the small overnight case she carried in her right hand. She said nothing, but her eyes questioned Phillip.

“It’s Tracy,” he said mildly. “She’s a little upset right now, but I imagine she’ll calm down when she runs out of glasses. If she asks you to clean up the mess for her, please do me the favor of playing deaf.” He thought he heard her gasp as her head bobbed dutifully. “Oh … and, Hannah,” he added as he started up the stairs. “From now on, there will be no need for you to do anything about Tracy’s room. Shell be cleaning it up herself, starting tomorrow.”

Hannah’s brows arched, and she eyed Phillip shrewdly. “Is that what this is all about?” she asked, tilting her head toward the library.

“I’m afraid not,” Phillip replied. “She doesn’t even know about having to clean her own room yet.”

“In that case, sir, I’ll lock up the rest of the crystal and the china as soon as I get back from the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Phillip said, and found himself grinning as he went up the stairs and turned toward his mother’s suite. He found Abigail sitting in her favorite chair, a book facedown in her lap. The moment he came into the room, her sharp old eyes fell on him suspiciously.

“What in the name of God is that racket, Phillip?” she demanded.

“It’s Tracy, Mother,” he replied. “I have finally put my foot down with her.” As briefly as possible, he explained to his mother what he had told his daughter, and why. When he was done, the old lady gazed at him from beneath hooded eyes.

“You’re making a terrible mistake, Phillip.”

Phillip shrugged, and dropped into the chair opposite her. “It seems to me I’ve been making a series of terrible mistakes with Tracy all her life.” His mother, though, didn’t seem to have heard him. She was staring at him now with the disapproval a mother reserves for a wayward child. What, he wondered, was she angry about now? And then he realized that the chair he had unconsciously sunk into had never been occupied by anyone but his father. “He’s dead, Mother,” he said quietly. “Is the chair in the mausoleum not enough? Is this supposed to be a shrine as well?”

He immediately regretted the words, but there was no recovering them.

“Sit where you wish,” Abigail replied, her voice cold. “Since you seem intent on taking over his place in this house, you might as well take his chair as well. But as for Tracy, you can’t simply change the rules on a child like her. She’s far too sensitive.”

“I’m afraid I can’t agree with your assessment of her sensitivity,” Phillip observed dryly. “And as to the rules, I haven’t changed them. I’ve simply established some.”

“And you expect me to allow it?” Abigail asked, her expression hardening.

“It’s not a question of your allowing anything,” Phillip replied. “I’m simply setting some limits and rules on my daughter, that’s all.”

Abigail’s lips twisted with scorn. “Your daughter? I suppose you have a biological right to say that, but I’d hardly say you’ve fulfilled the functions of a father with her.”

Phillip refused to rise to the bait. “And of course you’d be right in saying it,” he agreed. “But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s time she learned that being a Sturgess does not make her anything special, and I intend to teach her that.”

“By punishing her for being naturally resentful of the wrong sort of people intruding into her life?”

“That’s enough, Mother,” Phillip said, rising to his feet. “I simply wanted to find out how you were. I didn’t come in here to debate with you.”

Abigail’s voice took on the coldness that Phillip had long since learned to recognize as the ultimate sign of his mother’s rage. “And you presumed that I would simply acquiesce?”

“I don’t presume anything, Mother,” he replied, struggling to retain control of his own anger. “But it does occur to me that you might be just the slightest bit interested in how Beth is doing. Her father died this afternoon. Is protecting Tracy’s selfishness really more important than Beth’s welfare?”

“There’s nothing I can do for Beth Rogers,” was Abigail’s acerbic reply. “But there is a great deal I can do for my own granddaughter. Not the least of which is preventing you from moving young Beth back into this house.”

“Because she’s ‘the wrong sort of person,’ Mother?” Phillip asked wearily.

“Not at all,” Abigail shot back. “I do not want her here because I regard her as a danger to us all.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother. You’re sounding as paranoid as Father was just before he died.”

“I am not the least bit convinced that your father did not have all his faculties intact,” Abigail stiffly replied.

Phillip sighed. “All right, Mother. There’s obviously no point in discussing it anymore. If you need anything, I’ll be in my rooms.”

“If I need anything, I shall ring for Hannah, just as I’ve done for the last forty years.”

“Hannah’s not here. She’s gone to the hospital to take some things to Carolyn.”

Tracy stared angrily at the empty bar, looking for something else to throw. But there was nothing. The last of the three dozen crystal tumblers that had sat on those shelves for as long as she could remember now lay smashed at the bottom of the library door. The door itself was marked with a series of crescent-shaped scars where the glasses had struck it, and Tracy, even in her rage at her father, was sure that those marks would never be removed. For the rest of her life they would be there in the door, a constant reminder of this day when her father had turned against her.

But there was still her grandmother.

Her grandmother would take her side, and convince her father that he was wrong, that instead of letting Beth