Forever by Margaret Pemberton Page A

myself.’
    Slowly Charles Lafayette rose to his feet. ‘There!’ he rasped, ‘beneath the tree. Do you see?’
    Leo looked. Desirée and her boyfriend were caught for all time indiscreetly kissing. He shrugged. ‘It was a little early, but so what? An hour later, everyone was kissing everyone else.’
    â€˜No, not them. Him! ’
    He stabbed at the dark figure beneath the oak. Leo looked from the film to his cousin and back again. Charles looked nearly as ill as Gussie had looked.
    â€˜I don’t know him. Who is he?’
    Charles did not answer for a long time. He stared at the frozen image and then said slowly, ‘He looks like Beauregard Clay.’
    â€˜And would Beauregard Clay have been such a disastrous guest?’ Leo asked, intrigued.
    Charles laughed harshly. ‘Beauregard Clay is dead. Gussie had a schoolgirl crush on him and she took his death pretty badly, for a time – until Bradley came along.’
    Leo regarded the dark figure beneath the trees with interest. ‘I see. No wonder the film gave her such a shock. But who is he? Beau’s brother?’
    â€˜Beau Clay’s brother is five foot three, fair-haired and lives in Houston. Only Judge Clay was at the party.’
    Leo turned back to the fim; the tense, intent figure beneath the trees was that of a young man, not an old man.
    â€˜Then who?’ he asked. ‘Your guest list was highly selective. Whom did you invite who resembles Beauregard Clay?’
    â€˜No one,’ Charles Lafayette snapped. ‘Not a damned soul, he said and tearing his eyes from the screen strode white-lipped from the room.
    Leo re-ran the film again, and the next film, and the next. Nearly the whole of Augusta’s party was depicted at one stage or another. Face after face reappeared, but no matter how carefully he searched the screen he saw no resemblance to the faceless figure beneath the trees. Whoever he had been, he had not danced. That powerful, slim-hipped figure would have been immediately recognizable. Even caught motionless, there was a sense of power under restraint emanating from his body.
    At last, tired and red-eyed from his efforts, Leo Lafayette switched off the projector and the lights in the room. Whoever he was, he had spoiled a nice evening. He was glad Bradley hadn’t been there to see the extent of Gussie’s reaction. Filled with a strange sense of foreboding, too restless for sleep, he lit a cigar and strolled out into the velvet blackness, gazing across the moonlit lawns to where the giant oak stood, its dark silhouette strangely menacing aginst the scudding clouds of the night sky.

Chapter Four
    Gussie lay in her vast bed, her eyes wide, staring blankly at the ceiling. How could she have forgotten him so easily? That lithe body, that unmistakeable way of standing, deceptively at ease, yet as alert as the most dangerous of predators. She bit her bottom lip and tasted blood. She had wanted him and she had bound him to her forever. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She was being hysterical. The man beneath the trees had not been Beau. Beau was dead. Shrouded in his family’s monolithic tomb. She had thought she had forgotten him. Her birthday party, her forthcoming wedding, Bradley, all had conspired to drive him from her mind, but now he was back in full force, her longing for him so intense it was a physical pain.
    Gussie threw herself from the bed and paced the room, pressing her hands against her throbbing temple. ‘Beau! Beau!’ Unconsciously she called his name aloud, her voice anguished. Why had he died? Why had he not lived and come for her on that far-off night of Midsummer’s Eve? She sat in the window seat, her tear-wet cheek pressed close to the glass as fireflies danced against the pane. If he had come for her she would have been marrying Beau in October. Beau with his hard glittering eyes and savage mouth; Beau with his indecent appetite for life and