The Lucky Ones (21 page)

23

THE SKY WAS A PERFECT ROBIN’S EGG BLUE; THE clouds hung in it like cotton balls and the air smelled of fresh-mown grass. Astrid drove with a sure hand, and her magenta silk scarf billowed in the breeze. She realized how well she was driving and knew that it was a dream—in waking life she required a chauffeur.
No
, she told herself,
don’t wake up
. But it was too late—she had realized the fiction of her dream, and by now she could hear the rain.

By the time she lurched forward from her bed she knew that the rain wasn’t real, either. It was the drumming of fingertips against the windowpane, soft enough that it might have been one of nature’s midnight noises. But it wasn’t. A fearful light passed over her eyes as her mind came out of sleep and she comprehended the unknown presence outside her window. Then she realized that it was Victor, come to save her.

Her white nightgown billowed around her body as she tiptoed to the window, and she couldn’t wait to pull back the curtain so that she could see him clearly. There he was, stock still and returning her stare with a steady, open gaze. Just looking at him was a better escape than her dream.

“Are you crazy?” There were so many other things she might have said, but she wasn’t accustomed to making big, romantic pronouncements. Usually boys made them to her. The fact that she could still quip made her feel that her life wasn’t quite so desperate as it seemed. She placed her cheek against the window’s frame, to cool her skin.

He blinked, reminding her how beautiful his lashes were. “It’s possible.”

“They’ll kill you.” She shook her head. “Really, it’s a wonder they haven’t already.”

“Charlie doesn’t know. I wouldn’t be here to talk if he knew. For some reason, though, he reassigned me—I’m not your bodyguard anymore.”

“I know.” She rolled her eyes toward the far side of the room, indicating the door and the man who waited on its other side. They both thought about that man and what he would do if he found them here, like this, and drew closer, although she kept part of the window firmly between them. She could see that out beyond his shoulder the world was dark and velvety, and for a moment she allowed herself to believe that she could go anywhere in it. “How did you get up here?”

He glanced ruefully at the long fall to the grass below. “I guess love makes a man do some dumb things.”

“Charlie hit me.”

Victor winced as though he himself had been hit. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head and went on in a hushed, pitiable tone. “Whatever happened at the police station—he actually thinks it’s
my
fault. He says I told a Fed what happened the night he killed Coyle Mink’s man. He says they know something only I could know. And I didn’t tell
anybody
about that.”

“You told Letty and Cordelia.” He said this quickly, and it was so out of place in their conversation that she stepped away from him. It hadn’t occurred to Astrid that Charlie might be right about there being a rat—that it could have anything to do with her—and the notion that Letty or Cordelia might pass on information about her was ridiculous. When he saw her blanch, Victor went on: “That night. At the hotel. You told them. I was coming back from putting the flowers in a vase, and…”

The night teemed with insects, but they could not compete with the sudden buzz of apprehension at her temples. “I didn’t know you heard that.”

Her voice had risen—was it because he’d kept something from her? Because he was acting strange?—and he placed his hand over her mouth. The gesture put her spirit in revolt. A man had already hit her once that day, and in retaliation she sunk her teeth into his palm. He kept on staring into her eyes just as steadily, as though he didn’t feel the pain. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed.

“Why are
you
sorry?” She exhaled sharply through her nose and turned her cheek to him. “I’m the one who bit you,” she acknowledged, without a hint of apology.

“I’m sorry I didn’t protect you from seeing something so awful. I’m sorry to put you in danger. I’m sorry I can’t keep away.” He pushed strands of dark hair back from his forehead. “But I love you.”

She frowned and stared over his shoulder. The sky over the Sound had a mauve lining—light from bootleggers’ boats, probably. Maybe Charlie’s own people. After several silent seconds, she came to the same conclusion he had. “All right, you love me,” she admitted, with a bitter toss of her head. “What is there to do about it?”

“I want you to come with me.”

“What?”

“Now.”

Her body relaxed away from the window. For a moment she hesitated there between his pretty words and the room behind her, which was the way back to everything she knew. “I can’t come with you,” she said as she stepped forward into his arms. Her eyes sank closed and she breathed in the smell of him, his skin and the soap he shaved with, which had already come to seem nice and familiar to her. All day she had longed for this smell, and known it would muck up her whole life.

“Because you don’t love me?” For the first time a crack emerged in his steadiness.

“I do,” she murmured.

“Then we have to go, right now. It’s too dangerous to stay. If Charlie suspects any little thing—if he caught the slightest whiff of my being here now…” His heart had begun to beat erratically; she could feel it through his shirt. In the same rushed way, he continued: “If you come with me now, I can make you safe. I will keep you safe forever and never lie to you again.”

“Lie to me?” She drew back, covering her sheer nightgown with her arms. “What lie?”

“Astrid, don’t you see?
I
told the Feds. I’m an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“What?” Before she could help herself she was throwing up her hands, hitting his chest. It was a good thing he got his hand over her mouth again, otherwise surely she would have screamed to wake the whole house. She struggled against him a long time. It was only when she felt the energy seeping out of her limbs that she stopped. His hand remained over her mouth until she turned her wounded eyes up at him. “Is that why you told me you loved me?”

“God, no.” Victor shook his head. “This is the worst thing for the investigation, for my career. I can’t help it that I love you.” He shrugged. “I just do.”

“Oh.” She drew a little back from him, thinking. “How could I go away with you? Charlie would find us, wouldn’t he? And then…”

“Trust me. I can protect you. But it’s too dangerous for you here, and for me, too. I thought they’d keep him for longer, and it would give us a chance to get away. I was wrong, and—I’ve only made it worse. Please, Astrid, let’s go now.”

“I can’t go without saying good-bye to the girls! Anyway, you’re right, if Charlie hasn’t killed you yet, he doesn’t know…”

“But Cordelia does. She’s figured it out. And it’s only a matter of time till she tells her brother.”

Astrid’s eyes darkened. “Cordelia wouldn’t do that.” Once she’d said it out loud, she knew that it was true.

“Are you sure?”

As she became aware of Victor’s nervousness, his sense of their precarious position, she herself grew calm. With all the tumult of the afternoon, she had forgotten the good advice she’d been collecting, the map she’d been making of her many options. Anyway, it was rather more interesting now that she knew her secret lover had a badge. “I’ll come with you, Victor, but not yet. I have a little money of my own, you know—my father’s mother gave it to me when I married. And that woman, Madame Philomena, at the St. Regis—she told me where I could put it, in the stock market, to make it bigger. She said it would triple in three months.”

“That doesn’t matter, money; it’s—”

“It matters to
me
, darling! You don’t know how much I love pretty things, and I’d hate to think what a strain it would be for you, trying to get them on a policeman’s salary.”

Victor took a breath, and from the sound of it, she would have thought the air was full of icicles. “I’m not sure. If he knows the things you’ve said to me, the things we’ve done—” He broke off, and she knew that he couldn’t bear to think what her fate would be if Charlie knew that she had been kissing another man.

“Don’t worry.” She gazed up at him and let her fingernails graze his shoulder. “I can control Charlie. He’s angry now, but he never stays angry long. I have him wrapped around my finger, you see, and I’m a really top-notch liar when I want to be.”

For the first time that evening, Victor looked away from her. Strands of his black hair fell down over his eyes, and he cursed, too low for her to discern the actual word, only loud enough that she knew he was angry and he didn’t like what she had suggested.

“That wouldn’t be wise.”

“Trust me.”

He cursed low again. “I had better get out of here.”

“Yes, you had.”

With his index finger he traced the line of her chin. “Happy birthday.”

“Oh! You’re right! It must be past midnight by now…” She giggled faintly at how unlikely it was for her, of all people, to forget her birthday. “I guess I’m a grown-up now.”

“Well.”

“Well.” She released him and stepped back. As soon as she was no longer touching him, however, her fear returned. An emptiness crept through her, and she wished she hadn’t insisted on staying here another day. She wished she was with him, any place but here, and that she could curl against his chest. “But Victor?”

“Yes?”

“Will you still be here tomorrow?”

His brows worked together sorrowfully, and his lips parted. Then his hands were on her neck and her face, his fingers pushed through the yellow strands of her hair, and his mouth was hovering near hers. Not kissing, but in that moment of resistance, she felt all the force of his being. Her eyes rolled up, meeting his at close range, and then he covered her mouth with his. The heat of the kiss was catching; it spread to her toes swift as wildfire.

24

“WHAT IS IT?” CORDELIA DEMANDED, HOLDING THE door to the Calla Lily Suite open only a few inches.

Keller, lingering in the third-floor hall, pressed up on his toes as though that might allow him a vantage of Letty and Astrid, dressing within. “There’s a man who wants to speak with you.”

Cordelia cleared her throat, and Keller lowered his heels and met her eyes. “You know Charlie said no guests in the house.”

“That’s why I came to get you. He’s at the front door.”

“Why didn’t you just ask him what it’s about?” she went on impatiently.

Keller returned her gaze, a slow grin spreading across the lower half of his face. “I could’ve,” he replied. “But he’s awfully insistent. Anyway, I checked him out; he’s not armed.”

Behind her, Milly was trying to help ready Astrid and Letty, both of whom were out of sorts—Astrid kept chastising the maid for things she hadn’t done, and Letty had just dropped a hairbrush, an eye shadow tin, and a pitcher of water in rapid succession. Down below, under the white tent that had gone up yesterday afternoon despite Jones’s protestations and her own, men in bow ties were circulating with cocktails, and girls who had despaired of ever being at one of Dogwood’s epic fetes were already squealing and demanding that their dates trot with them on the dance floor. Every time a squeal was loud enough to carry to the third-floor balcony, Cordelia had to press her fingertips to her forehead, just between the brows; her nerves were rather frayed, as well, and she closed her eyes for a moment and wished that all the people downstairs would disappear so that she could get some rest and be up early for Max’s big race. He had been strange when she’d brought him sandwiches at the airfield that afternoon, and she longed for tomorrow, when she’d watch him beat Eddie Laramie and they could go on as before.

“All right,” she said, when she realized that being cross with Keller wasn’t going to fix anything.

“Where are you going?” Astrid called, leaning away from the vanity. Her narrow, arced brows quivered together anxiously.

“I’ll be right back. Put some music on! We’re all going to have to go to a party, whether we feel like it or not.”

The first strains of Kate Smith warbling “Maybe, Who Knows” wafted from Cordelia’s bedroom as she rounded the first flight of stairs. Outside of that room, the dress she wore seemed unjustifiably white—it was silk, and its neck cut a straight horizontal line across her chest, interrupted only by the inch-thick black straps. The hem brushed loosely against her mid-calf; she had bought it at the beginning of the season, before so much had happened and before the summer turned her so speckled and brown. Keller was ahead of her, and when they reached the bottom of the staircase, he drew back the heavy front door and assumed a watchful position a few feet behind her. Two more guards hovered outside.

The man was standing on the front porch, facing away. The illuminated white tent was casting the night clouds periwinkle, but there really weren’t so many of those. Already the balmy night was blowing them away; by tomorrow, the sky would be clear. As on her first night at Dogwood, guests had been instructed to park along the road, but for all that, Charlie’s men had not able to contain the party under the tent—she could see at least one couple, pressed up against one of the trees that lined the gravel drive, which her brother’s guards had either missed or chosen to ignore.

“Hello,” Cordelia said, when it became obvious that the man wasn’t going to turn around.

“Oh!” He rotated the toes of his wingtips in her direction and held out his hand for her to shake. “You’re Miss Grey?”

“Yes.” Coming down the stairs she had worried that her dress was too innocent for the girl she had recently become. But now, before a stranger, she hoped that her hair, which was braided in a crown around her head, wasn’t too feminine and childlike.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The man assessed her with his shrewd, hooded eyes before nodding, as though he had concluded that she was indeed who she said she was. “Howard Ogilvy, Esquire, executor of the Max Darby Aviation Fund.”

“I see.” Cordelia brushed her hands against the bodice of her dress, smoothing it, as she brought herself up to her full height. “How can I help you?”

“Mr. Darby sent me. He’s trying to rest now, naturally, but he wanted to see that I delivered you this letter.” He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a lined white piece of paper that had been folded in thirds. “And he wanted to make sure you know what it means to him that you’ll be at the finish line tomorrow.”

“Of course I’ll be at the finish line,” Cordelia replied, taking the letter and wondering why that might possibly need saying. “Thank you,” she added softly.

“Good night,” Mr. Ogilvy announced, quite suddenly, and by the time Cordelia had glanced up he was halfway down the front steps.

“Wait!” With letter still in hand, she hurried down after him.

When he heard her, he paused and turned, resting his hand on the curved stone balustrade and staring back at her expectantly. “Yes?”

“I just wanted to know—” His eyes were so piercing she had to glance down and turn the letter over several times before going on. “Who do you work for?”

“Well, I work for Mr. Darby, of course…and also for the man who funds his flight ambitions.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. Who is he?”

Mr. Ogilvy smiled subtly, as though this line of questioning amused him. He cleared his throat. “Well, the elder Mr. Hale signs the checks, but I’ve only ever spoken to Thomas Hale.”

The sound of his name, even spoken in that easy, eloquent way, was enough to knock her off balance, and though she reached out for something to hold her she couldn’t find the balustrade. Luckily, Thom’s lawyer was quick and caught her hand before she lost her footing. “Thank you, Mr. Ogilvy,” she said, blinking her eyes to bring them back into focus. “I’m sorry. You surprised me, I guess.”

“I think I have.”

“Does Max know?”

“No.”

When her vision was clear again, she let go of him and backed up a few steps. “Well, thank you, I had better…”

“Cordelia, Thomas’s instructions to me when we began this whole aviation caper were very specific. I was to tell no one who was funding Max Darby, except you, and only if you asked. Well, that seemed unlikely, so I didn’t think much of it. I spoke to him this evening, just before I came over here, and when I told him of my errand, he repeated his instructions.”

Her head, nodding, felt so heavy it was a wonder her neck could support it.

“And he added that, if you did ask, I could tell you that his offer still stands. He’s in Nova Scotia now, but I know how to reach him.” Ogilvy took the letter out of Cordelia’s hand, and, using the gold pen that had been in his breast pocket, he scrawled a telephone number. “That’s how to reach my office. There’s always someone there, day and night; they’ll find me if it’s urgent, all right?”

“All right.”

“Watch out for yourself, dear,” he said, and then he was gone.

A sigh several days in the making escaped Cordelia’s lips as she stared at the place where Mr. Ogilvy had vanished into the gloaming. He hadn’t been gone long, only a matter of seconds, when she saw the red ember of a cigarette appear and start to grow larger. The smoker wasn’t moving very fast, and after a few moments of worried speculation, Cordelia recognized Billie Marsh, wearing a men’s white dress shirt tucked into loose-fitting yellow trousers.

“Hello, dolly!” she called.

“Am I glad to see
your
face!” Cordelia tucked the folded letter under her neckline and put on a smile. “We’re all in shambles.”

“Shambles are my specialty,” Billie said, as she rose up the steps to meet Cordelia and, putting an easy arm around her shoulders, escorted her back into the house.

“Oh, Billie, thank goodness it’s you,” Astrid blurted. “We are having an absolute crisis!”

“Hello, Letty,” Billie said as she crossed from the entrance of the Calla Lily Suite to the vanity table where Astrid had spent the last quarter hour frowning at her reflection. Placing a hand on her stepsister’s shoulders, Billie bent and kissed her cheek. “Absolute, or total? You must be utterly clear on the severity of the crisis, darling, if I am to help you at all.”

“Totally, utterly absolute!” Astrid pouted at her stepsister’s reflection, and as the dark-haired girl drew back to light a cigarette, she adjusted the diamond tiara perched atop blond waves of hair. “You see, I always planned to wear my grandmother Donal’s tiara when I had my debut, and when I married and realized there was never going to be any debut, I thought I would just wear it when I turned eighteen. But now I
am
eighteen, and I wonder if I’m not a bit too old, really, and a bit too married, to be wearing an accessory meant for a princess…”

“Don’t tell me you have given up on being a princess,” Billie replied as she retreated toward the bed and lounged against its edge. Cordelia, who had come in behind her, perched on the bed as well, placing an ashtray between them. “I will have absolutely no reason left to carry on in this nasty, brutish world.”

“Oh, don’t be sarcastic!” Astrid stood, so that the ruffles of her long, slim magenta dress flounced around her body as she stepped across the carpet. “And give me one of those.”

“That’s not very Astrid,” Billie replied, although she nonetheless extended her pack of cigarettes and, once Astrid had one balanced between her lips, lit it.

Coughing, Astrid lay her hand over her lightly powdered décolletage and let a whitish cloud fill the room. She remembered now why she disliked smoking: Cigarettes hurt your throat, and they tasted awful. But she was rather unhinged with the reckless turn her life had taken, and it reassured her somewhat to have something to do with her hands. Especially when that thing felt tough, and a little ugly. Downstairs Victor was somewhere pretending to be one of Charlie’s loyal soldiers, when in fact he was anything but, and meanwhile she was about to have to arrive among a bunch of people she hardly knew anymore and pretend to be the silly, indulgent girl they had come to expect.

“What are you staring at?” Billie had drifted across the room again and come to stand next to Letty, who was absorbed in the scene below.

“A lot of people who believe what they see in the pictures.”

“No, they just enjoy pretty faces, darling, same as you.” Billie put an arm around her and glanced back at the other two. “You three are a morose bunch! Let’s have a nice cold cocktail, shall we, and join the party before one of you gets the bright idea to jump.”

As if on cue, Milly appeared from the capacious dressing room, carrying a tray of juleps.

“Very good.” Billie took the tray from her and distributed the juleps. Once each girl had a drink, and they were standing in a circle, Billie raised hers and said: “Here’s to three beauties I shall never forget. Now, chin-chin, and let’s go enjoy this evening, for you never know how long we’ll have it this good!”

This toast drifted in and out of Astrid’s head as she descended the mahogany switchbacking stairs, her best friends just behind her and diamonds gleaming above her forehead. Of course Billie was right—she always was—there was no sense in being nervous about matters when she wasn’t going to be Mrs. Charlie Grey much longer, and it was perfectly obvious that the time would be best spent in enjoying the perks of the job. It wouldn’t be so long, really, until she could see Victor’s face again, and then she’d wink at him, to let him know who was
really
in her heart. Earlier that afternoon she had managed, amid the chaos, to slip off to the White Cove Savings and Trust and put all of her grandmother Donal’s gift into the Marietta Phonograph Company, so now it was only a matter of waiting, really, before she could do away with the dull nervous ache that throbbed between her temples.

That was the happy thought she tried to focus on as she put on a smile and met the crowd.

Letty arrived at the party in the wake of the birthday girl, who had collected an armful of calla lilies from a vase before they came downstairs and then exhibited great delight distributing them to the guests. The second-to-last lily went to Beau Ridley, himself a practitioner of notable scenes, who fell to one knee and kissed her knuckles in homage. The last flower was for Charlie—Astrid paused for a moment at the center of the tent, as the piano player gently tinkled the keys and the drummer beat out a slow march. Everyone began to clap time then, so Letty, however blue she felt, raised her hands and began clapping, too.

Astrid made a flourish with one arm, pointing the flower like a sword, before advancing as a fencer might toward Charlie, where she feigned at stabbing him in the heart. Charlie, wearing a suit of pale gold and a shirt of dark pink, and flanked on either side by his men, crossed both hands over his heart and stumbled forward, as though the lily really had struck him down. By then, the band was into a manic tango, and though neither Astrid nor Charlie knew how to tango, they did a good impression, lunging forward across the tent and then twirling back in the other direction. At the place where they had begun he dipped her low, so that she had to put her hand up to secure her tiara as she winked extravagantly at no one in particular.

The couples retook the floor one at a time, whispering what a perfect match Mr. and Mrs. Grey were, and Letty, still standing on the edge of the grass, sighed at this vision of a boy and girl who really
were
meant to put on a show together. Cordelia and Billie had been absorbed into the crowd as well, and she was left standing there, gazing at a mass of people decked in feathers and beads and brightly colored clothes, who had no doubt already forgotten her name, or that it had recently been called promising.

That the first person Letty saw when her gaze finally settled was Peachy Whitburn did not particularly surprise her; in fact, she might have been amused by this sad, comical symmetry, if it didn’t tighten the winch on her heart. Peachy’s strong New England shoulders were revealed by the navy column of her evening gown, and the girls on either side were pressing in to get a look at her left hand. With a wince, Letty apprehended the meaning of this tableau. The ring finger sparkled hatefully, reminding her of what she might have had if she weren’t always seeking something better for herself. How easy she had always felt with Grady, and with a flush of sorrow, she thought how she was never to feel that again.