Free The Hounds and the Fury by Rita Mae Brown Page B

it.”
    He laughed. “I am. Bluntly put: Better to have Jason in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”
    She exhaled through her nostrils. “You’re right, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to start creating whippers-in of people who write big checks. I just won’t.”
    “Well, let’s see how it plays.”
    After hanging up, Sister relayed Walter’s half of the conversation to her curious friend.
    “Who knows? He might turn out all right.” Betty clearly supported Walter in this. “Since you, Shaker, Sybil, and myself might be working with Dr. Woods, let’s list his good qualities.”
    A brief silence was followed by Sister saying, “Brilliant intellectually. Driven. Rich, although some of that wealth has to be inherited. We’ve never met his people, you know. He rarely mentions them except that they live in Newport Beach, California. Let’s see. Well, he’s handsome.”
    “Succumbs to flattery, especially from women,” Betty added.
    The two women looked at each other and laughed. “What man doesn’t?”
    “I’m on empty.”
    “By the time you know whether he really can make a whipper-in, you’ll have figured out how to handle him,” Betty said.
    “Or he’ll have figured out how to handle me.”
    “That’s easy.” Betty tossed her sponge in the bucket. “Do what you say.”

CHAPTER 8
    T he glow of candlelight and the free flow of champagne improved everyone’s complexions.
    Betty and Bobby Franklin’s modest, pretty clapboard house sat on forty acres. Bobby had wanted to name this patch of land Mortgage Manor, but Betty prevailed, and the name remained Tricorn Farm, for once a hatter had lived here who made tricorns in the eighteenth century.
    The hunt membership plus flotsam and jetsam from town and country jammed into the traditionally decorated house. A time traveler from colonial Williamsburg would have felt at home. Jennifer and Sari, after dutifully greeting guests, sped away to a party where the median age was twenty. At the Franklins’ the median age had to be forty, which for two girls in their freshman year at Colby College might as well have been one hundred and ten.
    While the Franklins’ daughter and Sari might have had no need of candlelight’s soft glow, it added to Sister Jane’s natural radiance. The soft glow didn’t hurt Tedi and Edward Bancroft, either.
    It most certainly didn’t hurt Frederika Thomas, whose creamy cleavage pulsated in the light from the fireplaces, the candles flickering in the two-hundred-fifty-year-old chandeliers. Freddie’s bosom, much admired, rose and fell at a pace she controlled. The more they heaved, the more she sought to impress upon the gentleman (it was usually a gentleman) with whom she spoke that she was deeply impressed with his conversation. Perhaps, given the height of the heave, she might even be sexually interested. When Freddie discovered the power of her mammary glands, she made certain to wear low-cut dresses or blouses. A snug cashmere turtleneck could be worn to good effect as well. Freddie had mastered this technique by eighteen. At thirty-four she had perfected it.
    Speaking with Sister, a respectable 38C, which suited her six-foot frame, Freddie kept her glories at a moderate pace with the chat. Freddie admired Sister but had never thought of seducing her. Good thing, because Sister would have laughed herself silly.
    “Poor Marty.” Freddie’s doe eyes widened further. “You just know she’s dying to come. This is
the party.
Anyone not invited to the Franklins’ winds up at the country club, I suppose. Well, at least Marty will be able to wear her major jewels. Crawford’s no cheapskate.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, Sister saw Iffy in her motorized metal wheelchair festooned with party lights and sparklers, which Iffy intended to set off at midnight. “Marty needs a scooter like Iffy’s. I’m surprised those rubies and diamonds don’t bend her double.”
    “I’d kill for those