Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (4 page)

Mac told her about his score of cousins and second cousins, about his three dowager aunts whose tastes ran toward syrupy rum drinks and radio soap operas, about his mother and father and their valor in the face of Douglas’s death, about how they had never—not once!—made Mac feel guilty because he’d been lucky and his brother had not.

“They’re great people,” Mac said as they wound their way through the old streets of London. “Solid. Decent. The kind who’d give you the shirts off their backs.” He looked down at her, then laughed at her confusion. “That’s a colloquialism. It means they’re generous.”

She nodded. “I imagine your mother is a marvelous cook.”

“The best.”

“Apple pie?”

 He chucked her under the chin. “Been seeing too many old Andy Hardy movies, Janie. America isn’t all apple pie and baseball, you know.”

Oh, she definitely knew. America had been Jane’s passion for years. During the blitz she’d cowered with her dad in the underground shelter and imagined herself strolling down Fifth Avenue in her best dress with her most becoming hat tilted jauntily upon her head. While the bombs exploded overhead, destroying centuries of civilization and tradition, Jane conjured up visions of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek and of the glorious Clark Gable as he swept Vivien Leigh into his arms and up that mythical staircase in
Gone with the Wind
.

She could have listened to Mac’s stories for hours. As they walked the narrow streets to her uncle’s mews house, London dropped away and she was there on Hansen Street in a place called Forest Hills, watching the Wilsons as they shoveled snow off their walk and helping Mac’s mother, Edna, with her rosebushes. She’d always thought of Americans as being too busy to care about things like gardens, but it seemed Edna Weaver was as besotted with her flowers as any proper Englishwoman.

And there were Nancy and Gerry who had met each other through the mail and fallen in love without ever having laid eyes upon each other. “We all laughed at her,” Mac admitted with a rueful shake of his head. “I thought she was a love-struck kid with her head in the clouds.” Seven years and three children later, Nancy and Gerry Sturdevant were still together. Still in love. Still happy.

It can work
, her heart whispered.
Don’t let happiness slip away
....

Mac launched into a story about his days at Columbia University and the indignities associated with joining a fraternity, and Jane was sorry to see they were in front of Uncle Nigel’s home.

“Nigel’s a trifle eccentric,” she warned as they pressed the front door buzzer.

“Doesn’t bother me,” said Mac.

“He can be a bit off-putting.”

He gripped her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Don’t apologize for him, Janie.”

“It’s simply that I’ve never brought anyone here to meet him before.”

“First and last, Janie. This is the real thing.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“And you can’t possibly know it isn’t. Take a chance, Janie. What do you have to lose?”

“You’re reading too much into this, Mac,” she said, struggling to keep her emotional equilibrium. “We’re here for a typewriter. Nothing more.”

“You’re lying, Janie.”

She giggled, a most unusual sound coming from the dignified Jane Townsend, but then this had been a most unusual day. “Mind your manners, Mr. Weaver. My uncle may be eccentric but he’s a bona fide genius when it comes to human nature.” She poked him in the sternum with her forefinger. “Don’t you dare say anything untoward.”

“Like asking for your hand in marriage?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

“Mac, please! He might take you seriously.” Nigel was both a Trotskyite and a romantic, an odd combination that kept him bemoaning the nature of capitalism on one hand and courting show girls on the other. “If you so much as mention marriage, I shall—”

The door swung open and Roxie, Nigel’s bleached-blond fortyish wife, clasped Jane to her heroic bosom. “Lovey! It’s been so long. Come in, come in. I was about to fix a cuppa for Peaches. Come upstairs and join us.”

Jane, who was smothered in lilac perfume and powdered flesh, glanced over at Mac and shrugged. “Roxie, this is MacKenzie Weaver.”

Roxie abandoned Jane to embrace the handsome American. “Have a look at this one, lovey, will you? Such a strapping boy. American, is it?”

Mac, who was beginning to wonder if his passport was tattooed on his forehead, submitted to the affectionate hug from the older woman. “Guilty, Mrs. Townsend.”

Roxie made a face. “Go away with you. Mrs. Townsend!” Her laugh was loud and brassy. “It’s Roxie to my friends.”

He inclined his head. “Roxie, then.”

Jane was enduring an agony of embarrassment as she wondered when, if ever, Roxie would release Mac from her hug. “Is Uncle Nigel upstairs?”

Roxie rolled her big brown saucer-eyes and slapped her forehead with the back of one plump hand. “Raining cats and dogs and I have you standing out here about to catch your death.” She stepped into the vestibule and motioned them inside. “Peaches is in the library. Leave your coats with me and go on with you. I’ll bring up the tea in two shakes.”

The stairway was part of the original structure. Narrow and steep, it angled sharply to the left at midpoint, then angled back to the right three steps from the top. As far as stairways went, it required the utmost concentration, lest you tumble backward to the stone floor of the vestibule.

Jane was accustomed to the staircase and navigated it smoothly. Mac, who was following behind Jane, navigated it with great difficulty. Jane’s bottom, small and rounded like a ripe pear, was inches away from him as they climbed the stairs, and it took a monumental act of will to keep from leaning forward and taking a bite. He was glad it was a long staircase because the view was about as good as it gets. Delicate frame. Tiny nipped-in waist he could span with his hands. Gently flared hips that slid sleekly into legs longer than you’d imagine on a woman built on so small a scale. And that hair—silky, black as night, drifting over her shoulder and down her back. That hair was made to fan across his pillow every morning for the rest of his life.

Not the kind of thoughts a man should be entertaining when he was ten seconds away from meeting his woman’s only living relative.
Think of something less dangerous, Weaver
. Baseball. Tennis. A rousing game of rugby. Anything but the way she’d feel in his arms.

The second-floor landing opened into a narrow library, lined on both sides with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of deep mahogany. Thousands of leather-bound books filled those shelves, interspersed here and there with green plants and the accumulated paraphernalia of a life well lived.

Nigel Albert Townsend was a portly man in his early seventies. His skin was pink and clear—English skin, Mac called it. A product of fog and lorry exhaust and that odd collection of genes that produced Churchill and Richard the Lion Heart and beauties like Janie. He looked up from his newspaper at the sound of their footsteps.

“Jane?” He pushed his eyeglasses down on his nose and peered at them over the frames. “I believed you to be spending the day with young Queen Bess.”

Jane crossed the room and placed a kiss atop his shiny pate. “Don’t tell me you didn’t peek out your window at the procession, Uncle Nigel, for I shan’t believe it for an instant.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Nigel Townsend, eyeing Mac with open curiosity. “And who is your friend, m’dear?”

Jane performed the introductions with alacrity. Mac stepped forward and pumped the older man’s hand.

“You Americans,” said Nigel with a shake of his head. “You’re not gripping the pommel of a Western saddle, young man.” He flexed his fingers and scowled in mock pain. “This is—or
was
—a human hand.”

Jane wanted to disappear beneath the floorboards. One living relative to her name, and that one living relative had to insult Mac.

Mac, however, was having a fine time. Nigel was a sharp old bird, capable of setting up little traps designed to snare an unsuspecting victim. The handshake, for one. Mac hadn’t exerted anything but the most normal degree of pressure. Nigel was trying to discomfit him.
Sorry, Nigel,
thought Mac with a grin.
I’m afraid I don’t discomfit that easily
.

“Sit down,” said Nigel after a moment had gone by. “I don’t know if my chairs are big enough for you, Mr. Weaver, but you’re welcome to give them a try.” All this said from the comfort of a huge wing chair of burgundy leather.

Jane despaired when Mac pulled up a chair for her then one for himself. His sheer size dominated the room and she winced as he lowered his frame into a straight-back chair scaled for Munchkins from
The Wizard of Oz
. Nigel didn’t blink. Neither did Mac. Jane, however, was beginning to perspire.
Please, Mac
, she thought desperately.
Don’t say anything about that foolish marriage proposal
....

They made small talk for a few minutes. Jane prattled on about the queen’s coach, about Prince Charles and Princess Anne waving from the balcony at Buckingham Palace, and the crowds in front of Westminster Abbey. Nigel made the right noises, but he was more interested in sizing up Mac, who was every bit as interested in sizing up Nigel in return.

Why on earth had this seemed such a brilliant idea? Oh, certainly they needed the typewriter. They couldn’t very well turn in their stories without one, but she had a portable tucked safely away in her hotel room. She had wanted to bring Mac and her uncle together so they could—

What?

She looked from one man to the other. What on earth had she been expecting? She was fond of her uncle, but he had maintained a laissez-faire attitude toward her during the time when she’d needed him the most. He had been no better than she at handling the deaths of her brother and father, and had retreated deeper into his world of books and ideas, leaving Jane to struggle with the real world of war.

Still she harbored no bitterness. She was accustomed to shouldering burdens, to being the strong one when others fell apart beneath the strain. When you lost your mother early, as Jane had, you quickly learned to care for yourself. Her father had been shattered by the death of his wife; her brother, Jackie, had turned his anger outward, fighting with everyone in the neighborhood until his entry into the Royal Navy, where his anger was channeled into more worthwhile areas.

Make no mistake about it: Nigel’s approval wasn’t necessary, but there was a tiny part of Jane’s heart that devoutly wished for his blessing. Wouldn’t Nigel be amused by such a bourgeois thought!

The two men continued talking under, over and around the real reason for the visit. They talked about the weather. They talked about the queen. They talked about pipe tobacco, of all things.

Finally Jane’s nerves simply couldn’t take another second of that silent struggle for male dominance and she fled back down the stairs to help Roxie with the tea tray.

“The real thing, lovey?” Roxie asked, looking up from the tiny cucumber sandwiches she was preparing.

Jane nodded, too nervous to speak.
It is... it is... dear God, this simply cannot be happening
....

“Known him long?”

She shook her head.

“No matter,” said Roxie, fixing her with a sharp look. “Two years or two hours—when it’s right, it’s right.”

“I hope so,” said Jane, straining to hear what was going on in the library, “because I’m going to marry him.”

* * *

Upstairs, the two men stared at each other across the chessboard set up on the game table between their chairs. Nigel lit his pipe. Mac reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette.

“Have you known my niece long?”

“Not very.” He wasn’t about to undermine Jane. It was up to her to spring the unorthodox details on her uncle.

“Where did you meet?”

“At a gathering not too far from here.” True, if not forthcoming.

Nigel nodded. “She’s a beautiful girl, isn’t she?”

“Extremely.”

“You realize you’re the first young man she’s ever brought round to meet her reprobate uncle.” He peered at Mac. “Although you’re not all that young, are you?”

“Thirty-five.” Mac peered back at Nigel. “How old are you?”

“Touché, Mr. Weaver,” said Nigel, lifting his pipe in salute. “If your Senator McCarthy were half as clever as you, your country would be in even more distress than it already is.”

“We’re in agreement on that, Mr. Townsend.”

“Nigel.”

Peaches, thought Mac, thinking about Roxie’s pet name for the older man. He withheld a smile. “Call me Mac.”

“I’m a Trotskyite.”

“Jane told me.” He had to hand it to the old guy. Janie’s uncle sure knew how to jump start a conversation.

“I hope your government doesn’t have spies peering in my windows.”

“We’re safe. I’m not that big a fish.”

“If news reports are accurate, even minnows are unsafe.”

“I’m surprised you’re this interested in our domestic problems.”

“It distresses me to see a great country embark on such a destructive course.”

Mac didn’t have to ask for clarification. These days when the conversation turned to America, the first name on everyone’s lips was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Tail Gunner Joe, he called himself, the last bastion of defense against the rampant onslaught of communism in America. While there was no denying the very real danger of communism, it was hard for most thinking individuals to perceive that danger to be hidden in every schoolbook, newspaper and innocuous television comedy show. Joe McCarthy was out to save democracy from the Red Peril and it didn’t take a genius to see he didn’t mind profiting from the misfortunes of those who were cut down by innuendo and lies.

“It would seem your First Amendment rights don’t hold up under scrutiny,” said Nigel. “You give lip service to free speech but show bloody little interest in granting that right to anyone who disagrees with the powers that be.”

It wasn’t hard to see where Jane got her feistiness. “A rhetorical statement?” Mac countered.

“No. I’m quite curious about the dichotomy between Senator McCarthy’s witch-hunt and your Constitution’s affection for freedom of speech.”