Читать книгу High of Heart - Emilie Loring - Страница 3

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Peter Corey stood on the hilltop in a world transfused with enchantment by the magic glow of a late winter sunset. He thoughtfully regarded the mouth of the girl who faced him. Her arm was slipped through the rein of a bay horse whose satin skin rippled with every movement of the muscles under it. It could be lovely, that mouth, but during the months of their engagement he had learned that its present tightness foreboded trouble. Something was coming. It came.

“I won’t play second fiddle to Constance Trent, Peter. Either put her out of your life entirely or our engagement ends here and now,” Lydia Austen threatened.

Two sharp lines cut between his dark brows as he met the challenge in her angry green eyes. Beautiful but hard. He caught back the thought as disloyalty to his future wife. Behind her the sky was a crimson field patched with purple and lavender clouds, threaded by horizontal paths of topaz, jade and turquoise. High up rode a single star like the light at a masthead. Her brown riding costume was the perfection of tailoring, the green ascot accentuated the fairness of her skin, every ash-blond hair on her uncovered head which the sunset had turned to red silver, was in place.

He had a sudden vision of Con’s dark hair fluffing and lifting in this light breeze. He clicked the shutter of memory. Better keep his mind on the present. He had come to a moment of decision which required his entire attention. His hand in its string glove which matched the hunting yellow of his riding jersey, tightened on the rein of his roan who was nudging his arm with a sleek nose.

“You are unfair about Con, Lydia,” he protested gravely. “Her father, Gordon Trent, who was a business associate of my father’s, brought her to us ten years ago when he learned that his number was up. She was thirteen and he made Mother her guardian. He lived for five years after that. I’m sure that his sense of security about his child lengthened his life. She’s a grand person. She has been daughter and sister in our home. Ours is the only family she has.”

“The only family which acknowledges her, you mean. Everyone knows that her mother deserted her husband when the child was three years old and ran off with another man. Her father was the younger son of an English baron, wasn’t he? She’d better live on that family for a while.”

“Con is not living on the Coreys, if that’s what is troubling you, Lydia.” Peter’s voice was sharp with impatience. “The property her father left yields a fair income. She fitted herself to be a private secretary, but she won’t even look for a job because she thinks there are dozens of women, to say nothing of boys and men, who need the work and she doesn’t, except for extras.” He smiled. “She’s so full of energy and ideas that she has to be absorbed in something, so she’s visiting all the older people, collecting their reminiscences and the stories they remember of happenings in our town, particularly of the World War. You know, she’s got something worth while there.”

“Patriotic, isn’t she, for an alien!”

“Con! An alien!” He chuckled. “I would hate to have her hear you say that. She is one of those fierce ‘Right or wrong, my country’ patriots. She was born in the United States. She is an American citizen. I doubt if her father’s family knows of her existence. He married an American after he came to this country. Even if it means losing you, I will not stop managing Con’s business as you have hinted so many times of late, nor will I put her out of my life. Just to complete the record, you might as well know that should she lose her money and be unable to find a job she would be welcome to anything the Coreys have.”

Lydia Austen’s eyes sparked with anger as they met his steady gray ones. She shrugged, removed her left glove and drew off a ring. A round-cut diamond flashed like a sinister eye in her pink palm.

“That settles it! Take it. You have made your choice between Constance Trent and me.”

He disregarded the outstretched hand. His eyes held hers.

“Sure you want it this way, Lydia?” he asked. “You promised to set the date for our marriage today. I have adjusted my business that I may be away three months on a wedding trip. Now you wreck all our plans by your silly jealousy.”

“It isn’t silly and it isn’t jealousy. It’s commonsense. There are hurdles enough along the rocky road of matrimony without facing a big one at the start. If you really loved me you would throw Con over in a minute. For the last time, will you do it?”

“No.”

“In spite of your irresistible smile and your charm I’ve suspected that you are streaked with New England granite, Peter. Now I know it. I don’t care for granite.”

She dropped the ring into the pocket of his brown home-spun riding jacket.

“That’s that! It’s through. Finished. I’m going.”

She adjusted a soft green hat at a smart angle. Without comment Peter Corey helped her mount. Swung into his saddle. Led the way down the hill. Click of pebbles against hoofs, creak of leather, the far, faint throb of an engine were the only sounds which stirred the brooding silence of the pungent, conifer-scented air. They entered the highway. Lydia Austen reined in the bay horse.

“Far as we go together, Peter,” she announced jauntily. “Being engaged to you has been a liberal education—in restraint. If you should change your mind, should decide that you prefer me to Constance Trent, I mean,” her eyes and lips flashed an alluring smile—“better let me know at once, I’m thinking of joining my sister Gertie, Lady Coswell, at her country home in England. Au revoir.”

Motionless as a bronze rider on a bronze horse Peter Corey watched her out of sight. Was this just one more of the bitter arguments which had been recurring of late between Lydia and himself or was it the final crack-up of their engagement?

He visualized her small, tight mouth, which could be so sweet, her angry eyes, felt for the ring she had dropped into his pocket and answered his own question.

“Final!”

At the sound of his voice the roan turned his head and whinnied. Peter patted the sleek mane.

“I get you, Big Brother. You are thinking of home and the grain bin while I sit here wondering why I asked Lydia to marry me. Get going, stout fella.”

Why did I? He followed that train of thought as the horse trotted toward Red Maples. Smoke in my eyes? I never felt the rapture I thought went with love. It needed something, less allure, perhaps, and a red-blooded transfusion of sympathetic understanding. We don’t even enjoy the same things. Must have been an emotional brainstorm blown up by the feeling of emptiness in the house while Mother and Con were in South America last summer.

He thought of the long, unbearably hot days in the city when he had worked as he had never worked before and of the evenings when he had plunged into the swift current of unceasing gaiety whipped up by Lydia Austen and her friends. It had meant escape for a few hours from the maze of racketeer investigation into which his work had led him with the result that he hadn’t taken a vacation in four years. Looked now as if the one he had planned had gone blooey.

Apparently this is just one of those days, his thoughts trooped on. This morning news comes that Dafter, the blackmailing, bank-robbing expert who is in the upper brackets of the Bad Man class, once more has slipped through the net FBI men had thought unbreakable and now Lydia gives me my congé. Why don’t I feel defeated and jilted, instead of having a sense of emerging from fog into sunshine?

He faced the question squarely and knew that lately, deep in his consciousness, he had been aware that when he proposed marriage to Lydia Austen he had taken the most important step in a man’s life impulsively, thoughtlessly—he, who had been privileged to see the close and stimulating partnership of his mother and father grow more beautiful as the years passed. That Lydia could be sweet and sympathetic and provocative was no excuse for him. He would have put on the wise-older-brother act to Tim if he had done such a fool thing. He didn’t deserve this easy release from a tragic mistake.

Deserve it or not, he was free. He knew now how a man felt who had been subconsciously aware that he was approaching the edge of a precipice and had been snatched back. He squared his shoulders and drew a long breath. March was going out. Already there was a faint scent of spring in the air. What would he do with a three months’ vacation?

What would his mother say? He remembered her consternation when he had told her of his engagement, her exclamation, “To Lydia Austen!” and her haste to attribute her shocked voice to surprise.

And he remembered how Con had sprung from the corner of the living-room sofa in which she had been curled reading. He even remembered how Whiskers, the wire-haired terrier, squatting beside her, had regarded her with his white head tipped and a black ear cocked as she exclaimed:

“Engaged to that poisonous girl, Peter! You’re crazy! Her PQ is one hundred per cent., she’s all smiles and charm when a man’s in sight, but you should see her with the female of the species, it’s minus, then. Besides, she’s silly about Lady Somebody or other, that sister of hers who married an English baronet. ’Twouldn’t be long before she threw you over for a Lord Whosis. She’s—”

“Connie, my dear,” Angela Corey’s vibrant voice had stemmed the passionate torrent of protest, but only for an instant.

“I can’t help it, Angel. You, his mother, and I can’t sit on the side lines and see Peter mess up his life, without protesting, can we?”

“After all, it is my life, Con,” he had reminded caustically, hurt to the soul by her lack of sympathy in what he had felt then was his Big Moment.

Little flames leaped in her dark eyes. She was white as she flared:

“Sure it’s your life, Peter Corey, but I’ll remind you that my life is mine the next time you turn thumbs down on some of my boy friends. Because Angel laps up everything you say as gospel truth and I don’t want to worry her, I’ve been dumb enough to refuse to go out with those of whom you don’t approve. Never again. If you can’t do better with your own life you can’t manage mine.”

Since then there had been a chill in her manner to him, faint as the first frost on a windowpane, but it was there. She had been such an adoring youngster while she was growing up. College hadn’t diminished her devotion to him. The change had been like a cold wind against his heart. Would the breaking of his engagement melt the frost?

Whiskers charged down the stairs when Peter entered the hall at Red Maples. He jumped and quivered in welcome as he ran ahead into the softly lighted living room. The pearl lamp shades lined with soft pink gave the effect of glowing sea shells. His mother was at the tea table. There was always an aura of exquisiteness about her. The pale gray of her frock, her prematurely white hair, her lovely patrician face, were tinted by the rosy reflection of the fire which leaped and licked as if eager to see its tonguelike flames in the massive silver kettle.

Angela Corey looked up at her son with the smile and the light in her dark eyes he thought the most heartwarming sight in the world.

“You are early, Peter. Where is Lydia? I thought you were to ride with her and bring her here for tea.”

He backed up to the fire and rested an arm on the mantel. Better get it over, he decided.

“I was riding with Lydia. I didn’t bring her here because we parted at the foot of Shootflying Hill. She says—forever.”

“And what do you say, Peter?” Angela Corey’s voice was tense with anxiety.

“I? I agree with her. I think she has the right idea.”

“Peter! My dear! Thank God! With her you never would have had the rich and splendid life marriage should bring to you! I knew it and I’ve been as helpless as that eternally smiling woman on the Chinese screen at the garden-room door. I have been terrified for fear that sometime you would wake up and realize that you love—” she broke off the sentence sharply. “I am so glad! So hap—”

The word ended in a choked sob. Peter couldn’t remember that he had seen tears in his mother’s eyes since the death of his father ten years ago. Two great crystal drops rolled down her cheeks. She dabbed at them hastily. Her voice was shaken music as she apologized:

“Sorry, Peter. I should have thought of your pain and disappointment, before I rejoiced, my dear.”

“That’s all right, Mother. I’m not heartbroken. Of course, I may still be numb from the shock. Lydia was to set the date of our marriage today.”

“Why did she break with you?”

“She put it to me straight. Would I give up handling Con’s business affairs? If not she would give me up.”

“You wouldn’t consent?”

“The engagement is broken. There’s your answer. Something tells me that Con was the occasion, not the real reason of the break. Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. She is planning to visit her sister, Lady Coswell. She may see a title in the offing.”

“ ‘Oh, when I think of what I am

And what I useter was

I think I’ve thrown myself away

Without sufficient cause.’ ”

The words floated down from the hall above. The sweet husky voice died away in a theatrical trill. The wire-haired terrier cocked a drooping ear.

“Con acquired that song shortly after she heard of my engagement,” Peter Corey observed dryly. “I presume she thinks it fits my case to a T.”

“Don’t be bitter, Peter. Connie is modern—I don’t like that word in connection with her, it is used to excuse so much that is cheap and shoddy—but she is modern, in the best sense of the word. She knows what marriage means, that it is a fifty-fifty proposition, and she was convinced that in short order Lydia would smash yours on the rocks. That is her expression, not mine. Now that your engagement is broken I can tell you that your fiancée never lost a chance to plant barbs in Connie’s heart. Sly references to the mother who deserted her, who never has tried to find her, thrusts about her father’s family which has ignored her. Connie’s a thoroughbred. In spite of the way she has been treating you—I’ve noticed her frostiness—she is sweet and sound and loyal to the core. I couldn’t love a daughter of my own more than I love her. I’ve seen her face whiten and her lips compress but she never shot back at Lydia. She told me once that if she did it might react and hurt you.”

“Why haven’t I been told this before?”

“Because I have hoped and prayed you would find it out for yourself. You might have thought I was jealous.”

“You, jealous! You’re too big for that. Pity there aren’t more mothers like you.” He cleared his voice of emotion. “Speaking of mothers and Lydia’s thrusts, it is curious we’ve never heard a word of Con’s.”

“Gordon Trent never tried to trace her. As you know, he wouldn’t start action for divorce. I think to the day of his death he hoped she would come back to him. He loved her and knew that his one-time friend with whom she ran away would not marry her. He argued that if she wanted to be legally free she would appeal to him. She did not. Just dropped completely out of sight. Perhaps she changed her name, perhaps she died. Whatever happened, the child was well rid of her. You tried to trace her, didn’t you, Peter?”

“Yes. I knew that the uncertainty of her fate was like a thunderhead low on the horizon to Con. I wanted to make sure that the woman would not appear to threaten her or make her unhappy. I didn’t get hold of even a thread of clue as to what had happened to her, not surprising when all I had to start with was a faded, tinted photograph and her maiden name. Gordon Trent gave me those scraps of information. He would talk by the hour about his old home but if I mentioned his wife he would shut up like a clam. When Tim was all excited about that detective correspondence course he was taking, I turned over the picture and the sparse information I had to him and told him to go to it, cherchez la femme, but he didn’t get anywhere either.”

“Here’s Connie. As usual pelting downstairs like a mountain torrent. Will you tell her your engagement is broken, Peter?”

“Not here. Not now. Pour my tea, will you, Angel?”

“ ‘Lo Peter! Aren’t you home early?” Constance Trent asked as she entered the room. With a yelp of joy the dog rushed at her.

“Whiskers, you make me think of a bunch of fur strung on wires. You know you’d desert me like a flash if you sensed Peter in the offing. Cultivate poise, my lad. Where’s Lydia, Peter? She phoned that she would drop in this afternoon to ask me to be one of her bridesmaids. I didn’t know the happy date was set. She said her attendants would wear green. That lets me out. Green is frightfully unbecoming to me, she knew it, brings out the yellow in my skin. That’s the Voice of Experience speaking, in case you care. Watch your step, Angel. That cup’s running over!”

Peter’s eyes were on her as she dropped a kiss on the top of his mother’s head, an apology for her flippant voice, he knew, and dexterously replaced the brimming cup with an empty one. His heart felt as if it would expand to bursting point, his throat tightened. He understood now Con’s coldness toward him. Why had Lydia wanted to hurt her? His mother was right, she was sweet and sound to the core and loyalty was her middle name.

He tried to appraise her with the eyes of a stranger. The line of satin-black hair about her forehead was beautiful. Her brows, which had been left in their natural silky line, slanted ever so little. When she lifted heavily fringed lids her eyes were as dark as her hair, a rich, velvety black with a luminous glow when she was excited. Her skin, smooth as the petal of a gardenia, was slightly pink now from the reflection of her rose-color frock. Her nose was straight and adorable. Her mouth was generous and her vivid lips tipped up slightly at the corners; there was a dimple in her chin. “Exotic type,” a fashion reporter had described her.

“Is it your custom to glare at a witness as you are glaring at Connie, Peter?” his mother inquired with a lilt in her voice he hadn’t heard for months, not since the day he had told her of his engagement, to be exact. “Because if it is, I don’t wonder they call you Man-eating Corey, that you convict eighty per cent. of the criminals brought into your court.”

“Angel! What has happened to switch your spirit to high?” Constance demanded before Peter could answer. Her smooth throat contracted as if she were swallowing a sob before she added unsteadily:

“It’s—it’s wonderful to have your old self back.”

“Connie dear, have I been so selfish—”

A black-frocked rosy-cheeked maid with a white cap on her blond head entered and presented a card on a silver tray.

“The gentleman says it’s most important. He must see you and Mr. Peter, Madam.”

Angela Corey frowned at the card.

“ ‘Mr. Clive Neale; Neale, Bridgers and Bridgers, Solicitors, London,’ ” she read aloud. “Is he one of your British clients, Peter? Here’s something else—‘Representing Major General Lord Vandemere Trent-Gowan, Retired.’ ”

She looked up.

“Gowan! Trent-Gowan!” she exclaimed in a startled voice. “He’s your grandfather, Connie!”