Black Rose

over her, and continued to walk straight to a table.
    “Aren’t these flowers sweet.” She looked directly at Jan Forrester as if she couldn’t hear the whispers under the forced chatter. “A nice reminder spring’s just around the corner. How are you, Jan?”
    “Oh, fine, Roz. I’m just fine, how about you?”
    “Couldn’t be better. How’s Quill doing?”
    She flushed, deep and rosy. “Oh, you know Quill.”
    “I certainly do. You just give him my best, won’t you?”
    It was pride that had her walking the gauntlet, mingling with the crowd, speaking with more than a dozen people before she moved to the pots of coffee and tea. She opted for tea, cold, rather than her habitual coffee.
    Her throat felt scalded.
    “Roz, honey, don’t you look fabulous.” Cissy sidled up, smelling of Obsession and smiling like a hungry cat. “I swear, nobody wears clothes like you do. What color would you call that suit?”
    Roz glanced down at the trim jacket and pants. “I have no idea.”
    “Apricot. That’s just what it looks like, a nice ripe apricot. That little turnip-head Mandy’s been flapping her foolish tongue as fast as she can,” she said under her breath. “You and me need to have ourselves a tête-à-tête .”
    “That’s all right, I’ve got the picture. Excuse me.” She walked deliberately to Mandy and had the small pleasure of watching the woman’s cheeks go white even as she stopped speaking in mid-sentence.

    “Mandy, how are you? I haven’t seen you since before Christmas. You didn’t make last month’s meeting.”
    “I was busy.”
    Roz took a slow sip of tea. “Life is a circus, isn’t it?”
    “You’ve been busy yourself.” Mandy jerked up her chin.
    “If there’s not one thing that needs doing, there’s a half dozen.”
    “Maybe if you spent more time tending to your own business, you wouldn’t have so much left over to make harassing phone calls or tell vicious lies.”
    All pretense of other conversation stopped, as if a switch had been thrown.
    “You don’t know me very well,” Roz said in the same conversational tone, “or you’d know that I don’t make any phone call that isn’t necessary. I don’t care to spend much time on the phone. And I don’t lie. I just don’t see the point in it when the truth usually serves best.”
    Mandy folded her arms, cocked a hip in an aggressive stance. “Everybody knows what you’ve been up to, but they’re too afraid of you to say it to your face.”
    “But you’re not—good for you—so you go right ahead and say what’s on your mind. Or if you’d feel more comfortable, we can have this conversation in private.”
    “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
    “No, not any more than I like having it in public.”
    “Just because your family’s gone back in Shelby County since God doesn’t give you the right to lord it over everybody. My family’s just as important as yours, and I’ve got as much money and prestige.”
    “Money and prestige don’t buy good manners. You aren’t showing any at the moment.”
    “You have nerve, talking to me about manners when you’re doing everything you can to ruin Bryce’s reputation, and mine.”
    “Bryce’s reputation is of his own making. And as for yours, honey, you haven’t even been on my radar screen. You seem like a likable enough girl. I’ve got nothing against you.”
    “You’ve been telling people I was a cheap tramp, using my daddy’s money to try to buy some class.”
    “And where’d you hear such a thing? Bryce, I imagine.”
    “Not only him.” With her chin still lifted, red spots of color flagged in her cheeks, Mandy looked over at Jan.
    “Jan?” Surprise softened Roz’s voice, and regret flickered in her heart, just once as she saw the woman flush. “You know better. Shame on you.”
    “It was something I heard, from a reliable source,” Jan said as she hunched her shoulders.
    “A reliable source?” Roz didn’t bother to temper the disgust in her voice. “And suddenly you’re, what, an investigative reporter hunting up sources? You might’ve come and asked me. It would’ve been the simple and decent thing to do before spreading such nonsense any further.”
    “Everyone knows how mad you were when Bryce showed up at your house with Mandy. This isn’t the place to discuss it.”
    “No, it isn’t, but it’s too late for that. At least this girl has the spine to say what she has to say straight to my face, which is more than