Patricia Potter (6 page)

“When do you expect to return to duty?”

“Another month, I hope.”

The conversation was interrupted by a maid announcing dinner.

Connor lifted the remnants of his glass. “To a quick victory.”

Michael followed suit. “To victory.”

Catered by the clubhouse, the dinner was excellent. The menu included broiled oysters, fresh trout in an exquisite sauce, beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes, asparagus and tomatoes, and sherbet, each course accompanied by a different wine, and the meal followed by a superior port. Elizabeth had steered the conversation away from the war and had asked some questions of her own. She referred to Meara several times in very affectionate terms. Michael knew he was tactfully being put on notice.

He’d rehearsed all the answers. Many of them came easily. He’d visited Manitoba, the real Fielding’s hometown, and he could speak of it without hesitation. He had roamed all over Canada one summer, trying to feel some kind of connection, a sense of belonging, but it had never come to him. He’d discovered in that unfulfilling journey that he was indeed German, that despite his father and the unhappy childhood memories he loved his own native land with a depth he had not expected.

So now he spoke easily of the multiple lakes and rivers and heavy forests of Manitoba with knowledge and even a touch of affection.

“It sounds beautiful.” Elizabeth sighed.

“If you are part Eskimo,” Michael said with a slight smile.

“It must be very different from this island.”

“Yes. But they both have a wild beauty of their own.”

“You must have seen many unusual places,” Cal Connor interceded.

Michael grimaced. “I was first officer, which means I seldom left the ship. There are usually a hundred chores while in port. I’m afraid I did most of my sightseeing through books.” He smiled a little self-consciously. Not only sightseeing but education, he thought privately. Unlike the real Michael Fielding, Eric von Steimen had finished his formal schooling at fourteen, although he’d had an excellent start in Latin and math and language at the private schools he’d attended before leaving home.

Elizabeth steered the conversation to activities on the island. “We usually eat dinner at the clubhouse,” she said, “but Cal wasn’t up to the formality tonight.”

“Do you always come down for Easter?”

“The children and I usually come here before Thanksgiving and stay through Easter,” she said, “and Cal would join us when he could. There’s even a school here for the children. But Cal was so busy this fall, and then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been helping with war bonds and the canteens for our soldiers. Very few of the other families have been here all season. It seems…somehow disloyal to enjoy ourselves when so many of our young men are dying.” The words came wistfully, unexpectedly tugging painfully at Michael’s conscience.

He had not expected to like those destined to become Germany’s hostages. In all the briefings, he had been told these men, these members of the Jekyll Island Club, were ruthless, cold individuals who cared little about anything but making money and securing power. He had told himself they were not civilians but soldiers because of their participation in the war effort; they were even more dangerous to his fellow countrymen because they provided the guns and the airplanes and the ships. He had equated them, in his mind, with the memory of the powerful father he’d detested, making it easier for him to accept the role into which he’d been forced. But he liked Cal Connor with his blunt honesty and obvious affection for his family. He liked Elizabeth Connor with her soft manner and caring eyes. And Meara? At least she wouldn’t be involved in his plans.

Or would she?

The strategy was to take only the men in a lightning swift attack launched from a submarine, to take them and hold them as prisoners of the Third Reich. The members of the Jekyll Island Club controlled nearly one-sixth of the world’s wealth and were involved in nearly every aspect of the American war machine. The disappearance of even several of this group could cripple American production. The loss of these men, several of them advisers to President Roosevelt, would be incalculable. And the effect on American morale would be tremendous; the fact that Germany could stage a lightning raid on the coast would panic the entire east and west coasts of America.

“More wine?” Elizabeth asked, breaking into his thoughts, and he noticed the Connors were exchanging questioning looks.

“I’m sorry,” he said, realizing that the smile had fled his face, and his inattention had been quite obvious.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Elizabeth Connor said. “I should never have mentioned…”

She faltered, and he realized that she felt she had erred in mentioning the dying, assuming perhaps that many of his friends had been lost. Once more, he felt pangs of conscience and regret streaking through him. God, how he hated this whole affair. He would give his soul, or what there was of one, to be back on a ship.

Connor broke in. “We’re having a barbecue tomorrow. We’d be pleased if you could attend.”

“A barbecue?”

Elizabeth laughed. “That was my reaction when I first started coming here. A distinctly southern tradition I think you’d enjoy. You can meet some of the other members and guests.”

Michael knew he should feel a sense of triumph. But he didn’t. Only a sickness in his gut. He’d been accepted. He’d accomplished in one night what Canaris and his people had expected would take him days, even weeks. He forced a smile. “Thank you, I would,” he said, the sickness in him growing deeper.

The betrayal had begun.

Chapter Three

T
HE EVENING SKY
glowed over the marshes. There was no other word for it. The moon had never seemed quite as large or as perfect, even when he was at sea. The stars had never appeared quite as profuse or bright.

The hour was late when Michael left the Connor cottage, and he did not expect Meara to be waiting. Reason hoped she was not.

Lost in thought, in a certain empty desolation, he didn’t see her until he heard her soft voice call, “Michael.” For a moment he stood still. Michael, not Eric. Remember that. She was calling someone who didn’t exist.

But despite that warning voice, he felt pleasure and warmth run unexpectedly through him. He spun around, nearly dropping the cane, and saw her sitting in a swing under a tree, her face and body obscured by shadows.

As he approached, she looked young and infinitely vulnerable, and he wished he had never said anything earlier, had not asked her to meet him. She was lovely in the moonlight, just as she had been in sunlight. Her skin appeared translucent in the soft light filtering through the trees and flickering across her face as one foot nervously pushed the swing from side to side.

Michael wondered why he was so drawn to her. He had always chosen sophisticated women before, often jaded ones, who expected nothing more than a few hours of pampering and pleasure. Innocence had always troubled him, and he’d believed cynically that its presumed value had no relation to reality, especially for a man who had no intention of marrying. He preferred experience, not fumbling hesitancy and fear.

But as clear green eyes studied him with no little puzzlement of their own, he felt an uncertainty, an obsessive longing to be with her, to share in the obvious pleasure she took in everything, to know something of that exultant spirit that seemed to embrace everyone and everything.

He hadn’t realized how lifeless his own existence had been until he’d seen her laughing with pure joy this morning. With just the joy of being alive.

Without will, without conscious thought, he held out his free hand, and she glided up from the swing and looped her fingers with his. The contact was jolting in its warmth. Jolting and yet oddly natural.

“You shouldn’t be here with me,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.

“The Connors?”

“I’m full grown now,” Meara said lightly, yet there was uncertainty in it too, as if she’d made a decision she wasn’t quite sure was wise.

“Are you?” The question was wondering. “I feel an ancient with you.”

She paused, holding him back as she looked up and studied his face. Her free hand went up and touched the barely visible lines around his eyes. “Methuselah,” she said with gentle mockery.

“Perhaps not that bad,” Michael responded, his mouth turning upward at one side. “Not quite nine hundred and sixty-nine years.”

She laughed. “Is that how old he was? I don’t think I ever knew.”

“Every bit,” Michael confirmed solemnly.

“That’s just a guess.”

“No, I’m a receptacle for all sorts of strange and meaningless pieces of information like that,” he said seriously, but with underlying self-mockery in his tone. “At one port, a man was selling an old set of encyclopedias for the price of a drink. There’s a lot of empty hours at sea, and I went through each book, picking up the damnedest assortment of facts. Nothing useful, mind you, but I did discover how old Methuselah was.”

They were walking again, down the road that led to the nearest beach. “And what else did you discover?”

“That lovely young ladies should not walk in the moonlight with strange men.”

“Are you a strange man? I didn’t think so when we met on the cruiser today. It was almost like…I had known you before, that I’d been—” She stopped, but he knew what she was about to say. The words hung in the air.
Like I’d been waiting for you.

He knew the words, because he felt it too. From the moment he had seen her, he had felt it, that he had been waiting all his life for someone like her without quite knowing it. He was a fool for being here, for wallowing in something that was beyond his reach, that was bound to hurt her seriously if he let this…infatuation go any further. He didn’t want that. God, he didn’t want that. She was too full of joy, too completely alive, too untouched by the kind of violent life he’d lived.

His attention elsewhere, he stumbled slightly on a rock, and he felt the tightening of her fingers on his. He knew his limp was more pronounced, mainly because he had been on his leg so much today. She stopped suddenly. “Your leg—is it too far to the beach?”

Michael’s hand tightened on hers. “Remember, I’m here for exercise.”

“It’s more than a mile,” she protested.

“Ah, but nothing compared to watching huge turtles lay eggs, and the moon paint the water with silver,” he said with an engaging chuckle as he repeated her words from the afternoon. They were said with a wistful amusement that seeped into Meara’s being and settled cozily there. She had never felt so comfortable with anyone, so comfortable and yet so expectant.

When they reached the beach, however, there was a bonfire roaring ahead and the infectious sound of young voices. He saw a man stand and call Meara’s name, but she shook her head and started to guide Michael away from the fire, but he hung back.

Michael looked at them and then at Meara. That’s where she should be. Not with him. Dear God, not with him. What in the hell was he doing?

“Go to your friends,” he said suddenly. “I’m more tired than I thought,” he added, forcing his voice to a coolness he didn’t feel. “I think I’ll go back.”

“I’ll go with you,” Meara said, wishing the bonfire would disappear.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want you to. It’s early yet, and this is your first day here. See your friends.” His hand withdrew from hers and he brought it up to touch her cheek, so smooth and perfect in the moonlight. “Please stay. For me. Or I’ll feel that I’ve ruined your evening.”

As his hand withdrew, Meara felt another kind of defection. The whimsy of several moments earlier was gone, and a stiff, cool stranger stood beside her.

“I shouldn’t have brought you so far.” There was self-accusation in her voice.

Her regret made him feel worse. “No need to worry. A little rest and I’ll be as good as new. Why don’t you join them over there?”

“But I don’t—”

“Please,” he said. It was almost an order the way he said it. He even recognized an odd hint of desperation in his own voice.

“All right,” she replied, and he knew she wanted to please him. It was not knowledge he welcomed, and he knew his frown had deepened. He nodded.

But still she hesitated and for a second so did he, not wanting to leave her, reluctant to sever the rare bond that had so extraordinarily linked them since he first saw her.

“Good night,” he said abruptly and turned around and left, his limp even more pronounced than it had been earlier.

It was a long walk back over the crushed-shell road, his footsteps and the strike of the cane resounding in the quiet night as the sound of the young people faded. He welcomed the pain in his leg, for it dulled the sensations that had been building in his body, deflected some of the terrible guilt he felt. He heard the muted sound of an animal rushing away from his approach, and he wished he could run, could escape. When he reached the clubhouse, sweat had beaded on his forehead from the pain in his leg and the bitter confusion in his mind.

He knew he had been a fool to press his endurance, but he had wanted those moments with Meara. He told himself that he’d believed the attraction would go away with familiarity, but it hadn’t. Instead, her hand had fitted so well in his, and her piquant sense of humor delighted him. He had wanted to kiss her so badly, to fold her into his arms. Thank God for the bonfire.