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Heartbreak House by SARA PARETSKY
Natasha's hair, as sleek and black as a raven's wing, framed the delicate oval of her face. Raoul thought she had never looked more desirable than now, with her dark, doelike eyes filled with tears, and a longing beyond tears.
"It's no good, darling," she whispered, summoning a valiant smile. "Papa has lost all his money. I must go to India with the Crawfords to mind their children."
"Darling-for you to be a na
"You haven't even mentioned marriage," Natasha whispered, looking at the bracelets on her slender wrists, wondering if they, too, must be sold, along with Mama's diamonds.
Raoul flushed more deeply. "We're engaged. Even if our families don't know about it. But how can I marry you now, when I have no prospects and your papa ca
Amy looked up. "Wonderful, Roxa
"No, no." Roxa
She turned the manuscript over and read aloud to Amy, "Natalie had never met Gra
"Yes, yes, I see," Amy agreed, wondering if there were another person in New York -in the world-who could use writhen with Roxa
Roxa
Amy, an expert on Roxa
Roxa
Amy, watching the shift from complacency to tragedy on her star's face, wondered what nerve-storm she now had to deflect. "Is everything all right, Roxa
Roxa
"Ke
"I thought he was trying." She fluttered tapered, manicured fingers, muscular from the weight of the rings they held up. "Mother kept telling me he was just taking advantage, but it's the kind of thing she's always saying about my boyfriends, ever since high school, jealous because she never had half as many when she was young. And when he hit me the first time and said he was truly sorry of course I believed him. Anyone would have. But when he walked off with a million in bearer bonds it was just too much. What else could I do? And then, well, you know I had to spend months in the hospital."
Amy did know. There had been dreadful late-night meetings at Gaudy Press over the news that Roxa
And then, in eleven weeks, gone on to write the thrilling tale of Natasha, the heiress victimized by her papa's trusted henchman, who embezzled all his money. "Poured white-hot from her molten pen" was the copy Gaudy would run in the national ad campaign.
"And I'm terrified that she'll marry that damned gardener next," Amy told her boss the next morning. "First it was the dreadful surgeon who slept with his women patients, then Ke
Clay Rossiter gri
"I'm the one who has to hold her hand through all these trials," Amy snapped. "She doesn't thrive: she trembles on the verge of a nervous breakdown."
"But, Amy, sweetie, don't you see-that's what makes her such a phenomenal success. She's the helpless waif who crops up in A Clean Wound, Embarrassment of Riches, and the rest. She believes in the agonies of all those idiotic Glendas and Cori
"It was tough," Amy said. "Of course she'd never heard of E. M. Forster-I finally had to show her the video of A Passage to India before she listened to me. And even then she only agreed to a title change when I persuaded her that Forster's estate would make money from her because her fans would buy the video thinking it was her story. And no, I haven't got a clue whether he's got an estate or if it would get royalties, and don't go talking to Lila Trumbull about it, either, for pity's sake. We're calling Natasha's misery Broken Covenant. Oh, by the way, A Clean Wound hit the paperback list at number two. We're printing another five hundred thousand."
Rossiter smiled. "Just keep feeding her herbal tea. Send her roses. Let her know we're her best friends. See if you can engender some kind of vicious streak in the gardener, assuming he hasn't got one already."
"You do that," Amy said, getting to her feet. "I've got a meeting with one of our few real writers-Gary Blanchard has done a beautiful book, a kind of modern-day quest set in the Dakotas. It'll sell around eight thousand, ten if we're lucky. Broken Covenant should make it possible to give him an advance."
After Amy left, Clay went back to the fax he'd received from Jambon et Cie PLC, his corporate masters in Brussels. They were very disappointed in Gaudy's third-quarter performance. It's true they'd made a profit, thanks to the strong showing of Embarrassment of Riches in hardcover, but Gaudy needed several more bankable stars. They were too dependent on Roxa