The Promise - By Danielle Steel Page 0,18

had kissed Marion on the cheek and gotten hold of Peter Gregson at his home. Gregson would do it. He wanted Nancy out west immediately, and Marion had arranged for a special compartment and two nurses in first class on a jet heading for San Francisco at eight o'clock that morning. She was sparing no expense. “She's a lucky girl, Marion.” Wickfield looked at her in admiration as she crushed out another cigarette.

“I think so. And I don't want Michael to know, Wicky. Is that clear?” It was, and so was the “or else” in her voice. “If someone does tell him, I cancel her treatment.”

“But why? He has a right to know what you've done for the girl.”

“It's between the two of us. The four of us, including you and Gregson. Michael doesn't need to know anything. When he comes out of the coma, you're not to mention the girl to him at all. It will only agitate him.”

If he ever came out of the coma. Marion had dozed in the chair at his side all night long despite Wicky's protests. But she had felt strangely revived after her talk with the girl. She had freed Michael at last. Now he could live. In a way, she had given them both life. She knew she had been right to do what she'd done. “You won't say anything then, will you, Robert?” She never called him that, except to remind him what the Hillyard money had done for his hospital.

“Of course not, if that's what you want.”

“It is.”

There was the dull clank of the ambulance door closing, and the last of the blue blankets swathing the girl disappeared with the two nurses' backs. The nurses would be with her for the first six or eight months in San Francisco. After that, Gregson had said, she wouldn't need them. But for those six or eight months, she would spend much of her time with her eyes bandaged, as he worked on her lids and her nose, her brow and her cheekbones. He had a whole face to reconstruct. There would be other expenses involved, too. Nancy would need almost constant care by a psychiatrist as she underwent the emotional shock of becoming a new person. There was no way Gregson could give her back the self she had been. He had to create a whole new woman. And Marion liked that idea just fine: the girl would be that much more removed from Michael. It took away the possibility of an accident, a chance meeting in an airport five years later. Marion didn't want that to happen. Her mind ran over the list of arrangements she had made with Gregson on the phone at four o'clock that morning, one o'clock San Francisco time. He had sounded bright and alive and dynamic, a man in his forties with an extraordinary international reputation in his field. She was a damn lucky girl. He said he'd have his secretary work it all out. The apartment, the clothes. They had quickly run over the cost of eighteen months of surgery, and the additional expense of psychiatric help, constant nurses for a while, and even general support. They had settled on four hundred thousand dollars as a reasonable figure. Marion would call the bank at nine and have it transferred to Gregson's account on the coast. It would be there when his own bank opened at nine. Not that he was worried. He knew who Marion Hillyard was. Who didn't?

“Why don't you come inside and have some breakfast, Marion?” Wickfield was losing hope of having any influence on her at all, and Calloway had said that he couldn't leave New York until that morning. Wickfield didn't know that Marion had told him not to. She had wanted to be alone to work out her “business” arrangements. And everything had worked out just perfectly. “Marion?”

“Hm?”

“Breakfast?”

“Later, Wicky. Later. I want to see Michael.”

“I'll go up and take a look at him now.”

Marion stopped in the ladies' room for a moment, while Wickfield went ahead to see Michael. But he didn't expect any immediate change; he had checked him only an hour before.

But there was a strange stillness when Marion came into the room five minutes later. Wicky was standing back from the bed with a look of solemnity, and the nurse had left the room. The New England sun was streaming across the bed, and from somewhere there was the steady sound of water dripping into a sink.