to know you. Don't let her intimidate you, love. We've got nothing to hide.”
“Should I tell her about the baby?”
“Why not?” Brad looked proudly at her and they exchanged a smile, but Teddy was quick to intervene.
“No, don't.” They both looked at him, startled, and he blushed.
“Christ, why not?” B.J. looked almost annoyed. He had only been home for a few hours, and he was already feeling unnerved by his family. What odd people they were, he remembered now, and all the intrigues and plots and tensions and insults. His mother always kept them all at fever pitch, and it annoyed him severely to become a part of that again now. “Why shouldn't Serena tell her?”
“Why don't you tell her together?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I'm not sure. But she might say something to upset Serena.” Brad thought about it for a moment and then nodded.
“All right. Anyway”—he looked pointedly at his wife—”don't let the old bag push you around, love. Just be yourself and she won't be able to resist you.” He bent down to give her a hug and thought that he could almost feel her tremble. “You're not afraid of her, are you?”
Serena thought about it for a moment and then nodded at him. “Yes, I think I am. She's a very striking, very strong woman.” She had also been much prettier than Serena had expected, and much tougher. Serena had never met anyone quite like her. Her grandmother had been a strong woman, but in a much purer sense. Her grandmother had had quiet strength and determination. Margaret Fullerton had something different. One sensed instantly about her that she used her strength to get what she wanted, and perhaps in ways that were occasionally ugly. There was something that ran just under the surface of Margaret Fullerton that was as cold as ice and as hard as nails.
“There's nothing to be afraid of, Serena.” He said it gently as he pulled her off the couch and prepared to take her to the blue room, where his mother had said they would be staying, and as Teddy followed them upstairs he was praying that his brother was right.
21
As it turned out, Brad was still in the tub at the hour of Serena's appointed meeting with his mother. And the butler led the way downstairs, down a hall with walls covered with small exquisite paintings, three tiny Corots, a small Cézanne, a Pissarro, two Renoir sketches, a Cassatt. The paintings were beautifully framed and hung as though in an art gallery, with excellent lighting, against wonderfully draped taupe velvet walls. The carpeting beneath her feet was thick and of the same pale mocha color, it was in sharp contrast to the marble floors she was so used to in Rome and Venice and Paris. The softness of the carpeting beneath her feet in the Fullertons' apartment felt as though she were walking on clouds. The furniture was all handsome and quiet, there was a great deal of Queen Anne, some Chippendale, some Hepplewhite, and a few quiet Louis XV pieces, but everywhere were rich woods and subdued colors. There was none of the gilt and marble of the richer Louis XV pieces or the Grecian-inspired Louis XVI. The Fullerton apartment was done in excellent taste, with the best of everything in evidence in rich abundance, but none of it was showy. Even the colors Margaret had chosen for her home were soft beiges, warm browns, ivory shades, and here and there a deep green or a restful blue. There were no peaches or rubies or brilliant greens. It was a whole other look than the Renaissance splendors of the palazzi Serena had known, which she had to admit that she still liked better. Yet this had a certain warmth to it, and it was all as elegant and restrained as Margaret Fullerton herself.
When the butler stopped at her boudoir door, he stepped aside for Serena to knock, and then bowed rapidly and disappeared as Serena entered. She found her mother-in-law sitting in a small room at a beautiful little oval table, a butler's tray from the era of George III, with a drink in her hand, and a heavily carved crystal decanter and another glass on a silver tray, waiting for Serena's arrival. There was a large portrait over the small ivory couch on which she sat, and the man in it wore a huge mustache and pince-nez, over dark turn-of-the-century clothes, and his eyes seemed to leap out