Free The Fire Night Ball by Anne Carlisle Page B

obliging Marlena scoured the universe and discovered something uniquely historic. She'd found a humidor once in use by the Archbishop of Canterbury; it was displayed in B. L. Zebub's.
    The front of Drake's Roost was where Lila had made her mark and counteracted the gloom. She did so in the early days of their marriage, before Harry began to show his true colors with his childishly vindictive cheating.
    Where once there had been a formal entranceway, flanked with a pair of stone British lions on the outside and on the inside, a faded wall tapestry depicting a hunting scene from Merry Old England woven at a Benedictine monastery in the 17 th century, there were now three arched windows soaring from the tiled floor to the vaulted ceiling.
    An Alexander Calder mobile slowly rotated in the Wyoming wind that somehow managed to insinuate itself through fifty glass panels.
    But the most spectacular of her innovations was a glass elevator for transporting guests up to their fourth-floor ballroom without their missing the spectacular view down the mountainside. The glass elevator had replaced not only a hideous electric chair for elderly guests but also the massively ugly, ornate, grand staircase that Lila had always feared tumbling down, ala Scarlett O'Hara.
    Despite these improvements, Drake's Roost had the dank airlessness of a Gothic fortress. After the first year of marriage, Lila had patently refused to invite guests who were friends of hers to spend the night, until Harry built ranch-style Plover's Nest on the grounds of the former Plush House Inn to house them.
    When one day this estate belonged to her, Lila thought, she would sell it or give it away to some worthy cause her husband would loathe. Smiling at Harry's eventual comeuppance, she drew out the piece of paper she had tucked inside her black lace bra. It was Drummond’s most recent, tear-stained letter (the tears were his), begging her to visit him in California at some guru's campsite. She read it again, crumpled it up, and threw it into the stone fireplace.
    Something in her gut continued to warn her the time was past when, bored to madness by Drake's Roost, she could fly to an inspiring rendezvous.
    Her favorite bower of bliss with Drummond had been atop a skyscraper in San Francisco. Unluckily for them, Harry’s friends belonged to the Union Club, not the Bohemian Club. When word got out, the club's founding families made it clear to Lila's lawyer they didn’t approve of flagrant transgressions by a member’s wife. In the end, she had chosen to heed their warnings and had sent Drummond packing.
    A lot of good it had done her! Harry hadn’t been so impressed by her show of repentance as she would have liked, and patient Griselda was not her best role.
    However, it was only a matter of time until she prevailed in the contest.
    The young woman who had masterminded B. L. Zebub's and wore a construction hat over her curls at the Grand Opening was no more than a talented fool. Slowly but surely the slut was becoming irksome to Harry; at this point, it was a waiting game between them. And though she was highly intelligent, Marlena Bellum didn’t grasp the simple concept that skulking will eventually wear out a man’s desire.
    Lila felt sure enough of her present advantage to put it to the test. She planned to show up at the Fire Night Ball in an outfit that would rock Bellum back on her heels. Let the annoying competition prance about in hard hat and décolletage and stoke the bonfires with the boys. Let her just try to out-fox Lila Coffin.

Chapter Twelve
    As a result of smooth sailing during the shopping jaunt with Faith, Marlena felt positively light of heart as she drove up to Mill’s Creek-- unprecedented, actually, her feeling of high spirits. Queen came on the radio, and she began to sing along, deliberately ignoring an ominous darkening along the horizon.
    But, as she reached the top of the winding, half-mile long driveway to Mill’s Creek, icy rain and