The Bluest Blood Read Online Free Page B

appendages, too, from what I heard. Mother Vivien had founded the Moral Ecologists, although she’d been eclipsed and supposedly seduced by the reverend. I’d seen her hard face and waist-length tresses on TV. Heard her shrill claims and demands. She seemed the least benevolent Mother since Medea.
    “Alas, she’s not here tonight,” Spiers said. Behind him, “the wife” scowled.
    “May I say…” Roederer’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I’m…I never expected you to come to my home, Reverend,” he finally managed. “I thought our interests and…and circles…were at opposite ends of…” He seemed too stunned and enervated to manufacture more words.
    Tea Roederer materialized, as if summoned. I hadn’t seen her approach, and she was a lot of woman to have missed. As tall as her husband, and as athletic and fit. They’d both been fished out of the same rich person’s Olympic-sized gene pool. Theodora Roederer was the sort of strong-featured woman called handsome as opposed to pretty, but she didn’t have the hunched self-effacing posture of women who try to minimize their height or plainness. After all, there was no one she needed to please, no cultural ideal she needed to meet. She was married to a descendant of Ben himself, was a zillionaire member of one of the world’s name-brand families. Why would she want to be anything except herself?
    Harvey Spiers’ smile was tightly strung. “We came because the wife was eager to dress up, celebrate, be worldly for once. We don’t generally have the time or inclination to be frivolous.”
    The Wife looked in anything but a party mood, but I had a new appreciation for why, perhaps, her expression was so unrelentingly tense.
    Spiers put his hands out, palms up, in a traditional gesture of mock male-helplessness. “I do as she says.” He winked at Mackenzie. Guy to guy. Loathsome.
    “Neddy?” Tea Roederer asked tentatively. Her outfit tonight was again anything but Main-Line dowdy. She wore a silver gown beaded with jet that seemed handed down from a wealthy flapper. It gave her a rakish air with overtones of smoky speakeasies, as did her silky black hair, also old-fashioned, with bangs to the eyebrows and the bob that was a mark of rebellion back in the Twenties.
    A student who was a good friend of the Roederers’ son had told me that Tea always wore a wig, and indeed devoted an entire room of the mansion to this strange affectation of hers. Rows of mannequin heads, he said, each wearing a different style and length. I supposed it was an expensive way to never have a bad hair day, and quicker than an in-house stylist.
    “Dearest?” she asked. Perhaps because of her costume, and his, the Roederers made me think of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Of course, Neddy and Tea’s idea of fun was less self-centered and alcoholic. Plus, they had more to spend.
    “Neddy, dearest?” she said again.
    “Forgive me,” he said. “Introductions are due. May I present Miss Pepper.”
    “We’ve met—at the library,” she said, with a gracious nod.
    I’d noticed the oddities of her speech the other day, too, including the way she said liberary. Her English was not noticeably accented, but perhaps the occasional mispronunciation was due to her multilingual background. Or perhaps it was another larky upper-class whim, like the wig.
    “And this is Mr. Mackenzie and…” Neddy paused. “The Reverend Harvey Spiers.”
    Tea’s face blanched so that freckles across both cheeks became obvious. She drew herself up and I could almost see breeding kick into overdrive. “Welcome to our home,” she said. However, she nodded only toward Mackenzie and me.
    Spiers chuckled, wallowing in their discomfort.
    “Fact is,” Reverend Spiers said, “this event is for my son’s school. We do what we can.”
    “Your son’s at Philly Prep?” I spoke too brightly, hoping to redirect and defuse the conversation. “I teach English there. Do I know him?”
    He