Twain's End Read Free Page A

then back up into her eyes. His expression softened into affection.
    Before she could respond, he switched hands with his cigar, then raised his other wrist for her to work on. “How long did Miss Keller say she was staying?”
    â€œThree days. She leaves Monday.”
    â€œI agreed to that?”
    â€œYou asked her to stay ten. Don’t worry, I made nice for you.”
    â€œHa. Good. Well, Helen’s a sweet girl. Think I should invite her to be one of my Angelfish?”
    â€œIsn’t she a little old for that?” Isabel busied herself with his cuff. “Anyhow, I suppose she’s occupied with her new book just out.”
    â€œI’m going to ask her anyway.”
    This wasn’t about his little club for girls. Who cared about them? They were like daughters to him—better than daughters, he said, because they did not cause him grief. They were not her competition.
    â€œDon’t be jealous, Lioness.”
    â€œI’m not jealous.” She pulled back from him, finished with his sleeves.
    â€œYou are. I see it in your mouth.”
    â€œI am not jealous.”
    â€œClara says you are.”
    â€œClara is a troublemaker.”
    â€œYou’re damn right about that.” He pecked her again on the cheek. “Get my pants.”

2.

    January 8, 1909
    Stormfield, Redding, Connecticut
    T HE SNOW GLAZING THE King’s front lawn was blue in the gathering twilight. Shivering in a wind that held the stony smell of winter, Isabel aimed her attention not at the horse-drawn sleigh jingling its way up the drive, but at a large chip in the paint on one of the thick wooden spindles of the balustrade behind which she stood. The balustrade was supposed to have been made of solid stone, but in the last phase of building the house, Clara had suddenly demanded a large private suite, so sacrifices had to be made. The fountain on the rear terrace had been denied its statue of Cupid; the house faced with a thinner skin of plaster; the balustrade cheapened. Now this chip, the size of a silver dollar and roughly the shape of The King’s home state of Missouri, served as Clara’s smug agent, there to remind Isabel who really was in power.
    Making a mental note to ask the caretaker to paint the spot immediately, Isabel changed her focus to the sleigh coming to a halt on the other side of the offending baluster. It was a new sleigh, two-seated, leather-cushioned, black-painted, and gold-trimmed, all to the lordly tune of $463. Isabel knew this because she had bought it. The King had said not to spare any expense. He always said not to spare any expense.
    Although already sufficiently wealthy—he was the best-paidwriter in the world, the lord of the literary lions—The King had the habit of believing himself on the verge of striking it even richer. Not even his devastating bankruptcy in the previous decade, which had forced him on a worldwide tour to pay off his debts, had cured him of this belief. His very well-being seemed to hang upon his expectation of a forthcoming financial bonanza. He could never get enough.
    The horse settled in with a last jangle of bells against its muscular haunches. The King’s coachman, Giuseppe, hopped down and folded back the hood of the sleigh to reveal three passengers huddled under a shaggy buffalo robe. He helped out the first of them, a willowy young woman who was pretty in a fleshy-cheeked Germanic way, with chestnut locks curling from under the vast drooping brim of her hat. She waited on the shoveled flagstones, stiffly alert, her eyes as pale blue and empty as medicine-bottle glass. A squat woman in a tight coat stepped down next, followed by an athletic gentleman wearing round wire glasses. When he took his place next to the younger woman, she brightened.
    The King drawled over his shoulder to Isabel, “Look, Helen smells me. She knows everyone by their scent.”
    Miss Keller broke from the others and, with quick