Читать книгу The Wicked Redhead - Beatriz Williams - Страница 11

INSTEAD, I take the stairs, which lead downward to a series of bright rooms arranged around some kind of courtyard, smelling of lemon and eucalyptus, and go out through the front door and across the beaten lane to the beach on the other side. The woman awaits me patiently, wearing a calm, beatific smile beneath a pair of strict cheekbones, and a wary tilt to her dark, straight eyebrows. The Florida sun has washed her fair skin in shades of delicate apricot, which become her extremely. Under the cold sky of a New York City winter, she might be nothing more than handsome.

“I hope you slept well, Miss Kelly,” she says, by way of greeting, in a voice that speaks of private schooling and a dignified upbringing. I want to reply, Sure looks that way, don’t it, by the late angle of that afternoon sun, but I can be civil when civility is called for. My own vowels were shaped by a cadre of disciplined nuns, you know, though they do have a tendency to revert to their original form when left unattended.

“Very well, thank you,” I reply, in my best Bryn Mawr accent, though I did attend that fine institution but a single year. “I appreciate your taking us in like that, right in the middle of the night like a pair of thieves. I hope we didn’t scare you.”

She laughs pleasantly. “Well, you gave us a shock, that’s for certain. But Ollie’s an old friend, a dear old friend, and he’s welcome in our house anytime. Even at three o’clock in the morning.”

“I see Patsy’s making herself at home. I hope she hasn’t been any trouble.”

“Oh, not at all! She’s a darling. She’s your sister, Ollie said?”

“My baby sister. Five last year.” I shade my eyes and watch the small fry gambol about, soaking themselves in the kind of abandon we older, wiser ones have long since discarded. We haven’t yet told my baby sister that she is an orphan, that her daddy has joined our mama under the wet soil of River Junction, Maryland, and that the brother she adored—the brother who all but reared her up himself—now basks in the everlasting peace of the Lord Almighty. She imagines, I guess, we’ve taken her on a surprise vacation to a southern paradise, and as I watch her play, I have no desire to disabuse her of this illusion. The sun grows hot on my hair and my shoulders, the milky skin of my redhead’s neck. The salt air fills my chest. The pungent sky makes my heart race in recollection of my dream, and I clench my fist to quell the memory. “She must be over the moon. I don’t know that she’s ever seen the ocean beach before.”

“She’s taking to it wonderfully. Sammy and Evelyn practically grew up in the water. They’ve been looking out for her.”

“So I see. You have beautiful children, Mrs.—” I cut up short and turn to her. “Ah! I apologize. Ollie never did tell me your name, and I was about dead last night by the time—”

“Oh, look at me. Chattering on like this, and I haven’t even introduced myself! Fitzwilliam. Virginia Fitzwilliam.” She holds out her hand. “And my husband, Simon, who’s gone off with your Ollie right now, I’m afraid.”

I clasp her hot, firm hand and tilt my head back to the house. More like a villa, I perceive, the kind of Mediterranean building you see in pictures of Italy or the south of France, an impromptu eruption of yellow walls and red tiles and round arches. I consider the words your Ollie, carelessly uttered, and my stomach grows a pair of energetic hummingbirds. “In there?” I ask.

“No, no. In town. To our offices. I understand they meant to talk business.” Her expression turns a little blank, enough to send an electric signal shimmering across the surface of my brain, which—as you perceive—is something of a suspicious organ to begin with.

“Business?” I inquire.

“Now, Miss Kelly. I imagine you can tell me far more about all this than I can tell you.”

“But you’re too polite to ask.”

Mrs. Fitzwilliam places her two hands on the underside of her enormous belly, as if the infant has begun to weigh upon her insides and wants support. Turns her head and looks back out to sea, where her children play. “For what it’s worth, Miss Kelly, my husband left the rum-running business some time ago. He wasn’t cut out for it.”

“A rumrunner, was he?”

“We own a shipping company,” she says simply, and I guess she doesn’t need to say more. After all, any fool with a seaworthy boat and a sober pilot can get his start in the rum-running trade off the coast of the eastern United States, and a lucrative trade it is, too. A fellow with the foresight or the luck to own a fleet of such craft? Why, he might clear a fortune, in short order. He ought to clear a fortune, if he’s got a lick of mortal sense. Nothing extraordinary about that.

“I see. And I suppose that shipping company brought you to Anson’s notice?”

“Anson? Do you mean Ollie?”

“I beg your pardon. Anson’s his middle name. He took what I guess you’d call a nom de guerre for a time, which is when I met him. And you know how it is with names.”

She smiles. “They have a way of sticking to people.”

“Yes. But to you he’s Oliver Marshall. Reckon I shall have to get used to that.”

We have both returned our attention to the children splashing in the surf, but when I say these words Mrs. Fitzwilliam glances back at me. “No, don’t do that. Keep him by the name you knew him first. The name you fell in love with.”

“Who says we’re in love?”

She laughs. “Nobody needs to say it, Miss Kelly. My goodness. I have eyes in my head, even at three o’clock in the morning.”

“Then you might consider an appointment with an oculist, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”

Instead of replying, Mrs. Fitzwilliam calls out to the boy, who—together with his sister—has begun to swing Patsy between them. “Sammy! Put her down, now. She’s not used to the ocean.”

“Oh, she’ll be all right,” I say, but Sammy and his sister obediently lower Patsy back to her feet. Patsy makes an imperious squeal and tugs at their hands, yet they will not be moved by her. I start forward to settle the matter, until Mrs. Fitzwilliam takes my arm.

“No,” she says. “Let them be. Sammy’s got a way with him. He knows how to handle the younger ones.”

“Lucky for you, I guess. With another one on the way.”

“Yes.” She releases my arm and nods to my sling. “Simon tells me you took some bruising.”

“Did he, now?”

“Well, he didn’t need to. For one thing, there’s a nasty swelling right there on your left cheekbone. And Ollie told us a little of your story, while Simon was changing his bandage.”

“Oh? And just what did Ollie tell you?”

“That the two of you had been through a fight. Beaten about by a criminal of some kind.” Her voice is kind, full of sympathy and all that, but not overspilling. I don’t believe Mrs. Fitzwilliam is the overspilling sort of person, which is a trait I prize, and one you rarely find in women. Why, most females about smother you with sympathy for your troubles, and then expect you to smother them in turn, until the two of you can hardly breathe for the wetness of your mutual commiseration. Whereas I prefer the wetness of a nice dry martini, myself.

I tell her: “I guess that’s true. But we survived, I guess. I’ll do just fine, as I’m sure your husband told you.”

“No doubt.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam speaks so soft, the words be swallowed right up by that purring ocean nearby. “But the truth is, Ollie’s worried sick about you. And I don’t know what happened back there, among those bootleggers of yours. I’m not sure I want to know. God knows I’ve seen enough evil to make me grateful for my present peace. But whatever it is, whatever you’ve endured, believe me. That man would rather die than see you come to further hurt.”

I wrap one hand about my stiff elbow and stare at the round, bald spine of a rising wave. The heavy pause as it commences to overturn into the foam. Because what can I say to this woman? Can I tell her how my insides ache like murder from the battering of my stepfather, who did punish me for my betrayal of him? Can I tell her about my arm he nearly broke in two, about my belly into which he drove his meat fist? Can I tell her about the sight of my brother’s neck, broken like a rag doll, or how it feels to witness a man being struck in the jaw with a set of brass knuckles, such that you will never forget the sight, you will witness it evermore you close your eyes?

She’s but a stranger, after all, and my hurts belong only to me.

Mrs. Fitzwilliam touches my shoulder. “I have an idea. Let’s drive into town and meet them, shall we?”