Читать книгу The Secret Prince - Kathryn Jensen - Страница 8

Elly bounced in anticipation on the edge of the hotel bed, her ear pressed to the telephone receiver. Someone had gone to find her father to take her call. She’d never seen the castle in person, but photographs of Der Kristallenpalast, the famous crystal palace, revealed an immense, turreted structure of pale, lustrous marble and hundreds of richly appointed rooms. Frank Anderson could easily be half a mile from the nearest phone.

His unmistakable smoker’s voice suddenly rasped across the line. “It’s about time. What do you have?”

“It’s a boy!” she cried.

“The old king had a son with the Jennings girl?”

Elly grinned, enjoying her moment of triumph. “That girl is now in her fifties, goes by Madge and is being really stubborn about admitting that she had a royal fling thirty-some years ago.”

“Understandable,” he grumbled. “She married now? Not wanting her husband to know about her past?”

“No,” Elly admitted with a sigh. “But she’s sticking to a story about an American husband who died young. I’m certain she made him up for her son’s benefit.”

“But you’re sure about this young man?”

She hesitated barely a heartbeat. “Yes. Dad, he even looks like Jacob. And the photos of Karl when he was young could be Daniel Eastwood today. They have the same dark hair and strong, angular features, although Eastwood’s eyes are dark brown, not blue.”

“That could easily come from the mother’s side. Good. I’ll tell Jacob.”

“Do we have enough to prove legally he’s the old king’s son, though?” she asked. She trusted her intuition and the facts she’d uncovered, but the law was another thing.

“Karl was studying at the Sorbonne the same time as Margaret Jennings, according to the school’s records. He kept her love letters to him and her farewell note. A handwriting expert can make quick work of comparing this woman’s handwriting with that of the person who wrote those letters. There are other documents as well.”

Elly was so excited she could barely speak. But she was also deeply moved by the drama revealed by the decades-old letters they’d found. Those must have been desperate times for a young prince, soon to become king, and his frightened mistress. Had Karl even known that the girl he’d fallen in love with but could never marry carried his child? Nothing they’d found to this date mentioned her pregnancy. How very sad, Elly thought, if the man had died never knowing he had another son.

But now, years later, wonderful things might come of this discovery for Dan and his mother. Not that they deserved it, Elly thought ruefully, tossing her out the way they’d done. But imagine discovering a brother you never knew existed! And a royal one at that!

“What now?” Elly asked her father breathlessly.

“Jacob’s advisors told me this morning that if you found the woman and she had a child by the king, they’d want both of them brought over on the first possible plane.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Damage control. They believe that with the pair here in Elbia, the press will have a harder time getting to them. There are also some touchy legal issues to be ironed out, the sooner the better from the crown’s perspective.”

Elly’s mind whirled, and she felt short of breath. “Eastwood doesn’t even believe me. How will I get him on a plane to Europe? Dad, this isn’t our job. All we agreed to do was verify historical records. We’re not private investigators.”

“Elizabeth.” His chastising papa-bear growl ended in a soft cough. She hated that he smoked. But since her mother had died there had been no one, including herself, who could talk sense to the man about his health or anything else.

“Well, we’re not!” she insisted.

“We have no choice at this point. The king blames us for the leak. He’s absolutely convinced that no one in his court would peddle such volatile news to the press. Now we have to do what we can to save a bad situation. And—” He balked.

“There’s more bad news?” She didn’t want to think about one more complication.

“Consider the many implications of this discovery, Elly. There is enormous wealth at stake. Even an illegitimate child might demand a portion of his father’s fortune. And what about the mother? As far as we know, she has never been compensated for her pregnancy or given any financial help in raising the boy.”

Elly rolled her eyes to the motel room’s chalky ceiling. The packet of letters her father had only recently discovered hidden behind a panel in an ancient armoire had turned into a modern Pandora’s box. In addition to the love notes, signed “adoringly, Margaret,” other letters, returned from the United States as undeliverable, indicated that over the next ten years Karl had tried to locate his lost love, but failed. Perhaps it was just his beloved Margaret he searched for. Or maybe he feared the existence of a child and knew the danger an illegitimate offspring, older by several months than his son by the queen, would pose to his dynasty.

“Get them on a plane,” Elly repeated dully, shaking her head. “Short of kidnapping mother and son, I’m not sure how I’ll manage that.”

“We don’t have much time,” Frank reminded her. “If I were that young man or his mother, I’d want to find a good place to hide out for a while. The press will eat them alive.”

Elly shook her head. “Something tells me this guy isn’t the type to run away from anything.”

“Elizabeth,” her father whispered hoarsely, sounding increasingly worried, “if this explodes in our faces, our professional reputation will be destroyed. We might as well give up the business. Do you understand?”

She swallowed. It was that bad then. “I’ll bring them to you,” she promised. “Somehow.”

Dan was thirty minutes late for his appointment with the contractor, mostly because he had other things on his mind. His thoughts boomeranged back and forth between memories of manhandling an attractive redhead out his mother’s door, his hand placed strategically on her pretty rump, and the less enjoyable knowledge that he’d probably never see Elly Anderson again.

Luckily, the contractor was still in his office. They negotiated a few terms, signed the contract. Within a week the storm damage to the bungalows closest to the shoreline would be repaired. One less thing to worry about.

Dan drove back toward the Haven along Ocean Avenue and turned into the parking lot. A flash of crimson hair in the sunlight caught his eye. Setting the parking brake on his SUV, he squinted through the windshield into the wintry glare. A man and a woman stood where the lot met the sandy boardwalk.

Elly’s elegant legs appeared even longer whenever the wind flipped up the hem of her skirt. Her hair, lifting free of confining pins, swirled in russet waves around her face as she talked to Kevin and occasionally lifted a hand to hold flaming wisps out of her eyes.

“What’s that woman up to now?” he muttered, heaving himself up out of the car.

Dear old Kev wore that deer-staring-into-headlights expression common to men confronted by a pretty woman. Dan only hoped his friend hadn’t said anything to encourage Elly’s snooping. He jogged across the parking lot toward them.

“I thought we agreed you were through with this nonsense!” Dan shouted into the wind.

Elly turned to observe him, her eyes far too enticing to cool his simmering blood. Simmering because he was furious with her but also because she looked so deliciously disheveled with the wind tugging at her skirt and hair, and teasing open the collar of her jacket to reveal a sliver of flesh at the top of her breast.

She planted her feet firmly and straightened her spine to meet him. “We need to talk, Mr. Eastwood.”

“Isn’t that where we started this morning?”

Kevin looked from one to the other of them with a puzzled expression then backed off two steps. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’ll let you two hash things out. Got work to do.”

To Dan’s surprise, Elly didn’t so much as blink or make any move that might be construed as retreat. “I need you and Mrs. Eastwood on a plane for Europe,” she stated. “Tonight at the latest.”

He laughed. “You’re not only wrong about my mother, you’re insane!”

“No,” she said solemnly, “I’m not. Not on either account. I have evidence. Please listen to me. If you don’t, both of you are going to be hurt far more than you can imagine.”

There was something fervent and beyond argument in her tone. This was a woman who believed in what she said. For the first time Dan felt deep in his gut that Elizabeth Anderson wasn’t flinging idle fairy tales at him or working some kind of confidence game. He remembered the look on his mother’s face earlier that day. Madge had been afraid—not of lies, but of the truth. And that terrified him.

He looked at his watch. “It’s getting close to lunch time. Are you hungry?”

Elly gave him a guarded look. “Famished,” she admitted. “No time for breakfast this morning. Why?”

“Let’s get a table at Kirby’s. We can talk this out over crab cakes.”

Kirby’s, one of the most popular seafood restaurants on Ocean Avenue, was nearly deserted during off season. They sat in a fifties-style red vinyl booth and Dan ordered two steaming crab cake platters piled high with salty French fries, little paper cups of sweet coleslaw on the side.

Elly poured a stream of rich ketchup over her fries and dug in hungrily. Dan ate more slowly than usual, watching her. He was aware of her thin ankles crossed beneath the table, visible through the space between his bench and the table top. When he lifted his eyes they fixed with fascination on her animated lips as she relished the crunchy potatoes and fat crab cake with its savory Old Bay seasonings perfuming the room around them.

He found it impossible to hold onto his irritation with her. But he was curious and more than a little suspicious of her motives for wanting to whisk him off to another continent. “So tell me about this proof. And why the urgency to get me out of the country?”

“I know you feel I’m intruding,” she began, spearing another fry with her fork and shaking it at him in schoolmarm fashion, “and I don’t like being put in the position of having to accuse anyone of lying about their past but—”

“But that’s precisely what you are doing, isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice.

Elly pursed her lips and studied him for a long moment, as if searching for diplomatic words. “People can be very creative about their past, if they are afraid. A woman has to be particularly careful. And a single mom always has to explain herself to others. No doubt your mother felt that a dead husband was easier for people to accept than the truth.”

“And that truth is?” He might be willing to believe her. Might. But not without one hell of an explanation.

Elly continued with obvious caution as she pulled a manila envelope from the briefcase on the bench beside her. “I have photocopies of letters found on the von Austerand family’s property. There now is little doubt that the ones signed Margaret were written by your mother, but we can verify that as soon as she is in Elbia.”

She put up a hand to stop him from interrupting. “We believe your mother fell deeply in love with Karl von Austerand the year she studied in Paris. She probably believed they would marry, but he wasn’t completely honest with her. He was engaged to another woman of royal blood. And he was the crown prince, soon to become King of Elbia.

“Karl was attending the college under an assumed name to avoid publicity. When Madge discovered they could never wed, she ran home to America—probably just after learning she was pregnant. Instead of returning to her parents’ home in Massachusetts, she found a place to live in Baltimore and hid her shame by inventing a husband. The move probably was intended to elude Karl, too. Perhaps she feared what he might do if he discovered their child. You.”

Dan could feel the heat rising from his chest to his throat. He glared at the folder resting on the table beneath her hand. “This is very difficult to believe,” he said tightly.

Elly slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry. See for yourself.”

He couldn’t move, was barely capable of breathing. Still furious with Elly, he was nevertheless increasingly fearful that what she claimed might be true. She didn’t have to tell him how drastically his life would change if it was.

And what about Madge’s quiet existence? She hated confrontation. She had always favored a life without complications. Any shattered love affair and unwanted baby were as complicated as life got. Unless the father of your baby was a man whose family’s status rivaled that of the royals of England or Monaco—people with unlimited wealth and power, who could never escape their celebrity or stay off the front page of grocery-store gossip rags for long.

Elly rested her warm hand over his on the tabletop. “This must be a shock to you. You’ve grown up believing one thing, and here I am telling you everything is different. I’m sorry. Truly, I am.” Her eyes shone with sincerity and compassion. “I would have preferred to let your mother keep her secret. But it’s out of my hands now. Others have found out, so you both needed to know.”

He couldn’t utter a word. His lips felt as stiff as if he’d climbed from a December ocean.

“Take your time reading while you finish eating,” she offered. “Then let me know what you think.” Her accent was flavored with New England. Maple-syrup sweet, with a touch of Yankee logic. He would have liked to get to know her better, a whole lot better. She seemed a nice person, in addition to being so easy on the eyes. But it appeared that more pressing matters were on deck.

Dan took a bite of his cooling crab cake and chewed without tasting anything, then studied her as she sipped her cola. “There’s a lot riding on this, isn’t there? I mean, aside from being hounded by the press.”

She slanted him a look that would have done the Mona Lisa proud. “There might be.”

Dan slipped a thin stack of photocopies from the envelope. He scanned the first report quickly:

Daniel Robert Jennings. Born August 20, 1970. Verified location of birth: Baltimore, Maryland. Birth certificate on record. Mother: Margaret Jennings. No father listed. Name of mother and child legally changed three months later: Eastwood. Reason given: marriage to Carl Eastwood. No Carl Eastwood match through public records. Internet search unsuccessful. Social Security source reports no matches for location and dates given. Results: Suspect fictitious name.

There were other reports, which he read hastily, his pulse throbbing in his temple, his mouth going stone dry…

Margaret Jennings, scholarship student at the Sorbonne, 1969-1970. Superior student. Dropped out of school 3/70. Reason given: personal.

Frigid droplets of sweat skittered down the back of his neck. He stared at the next page’s remarks: “Love letters signed ‘your adoring Margaret,’ no envelopes.” There were even photocopies of two of the letters. He tried not to think about the passion and longing behind the words, which seemed far too personal to be read by other than the two people involved. But he needed only to glance at the handwriting to know it was amazingly similar to Madge’s flowery style. Then there was another notation:

Letters from His Royal Highness Karl von Austerand to one Margaret Jennings in the United States, dated 1970 (3), 1972 (2), 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1980—all returned as undeliverable.

“Well?” Elly asked, glancing up at him from her empty plate.

He smiled weakly. “I imagine Karl’s legitimate son might be a little nervous about this discovery of yours.”

“More than nervous. Particularly since you were born before he was.”

“Ouch.”

“It gets worse,” she assured him. “Somebody in the palace leaked rumors of the affair. A reporter and his photographer are hot on your trail. They were following me, but I shook them off in Baltimore. It’s only luck that I found you before they did.”

Dan no longer felt hungry. He pushed his plate away. Visions of TV cameras, reporters armed with microphones and endless telephone calls from pushy media hawks flooded his imagination. For an instant he tried to tell himself that it might be a good thing—free publicity for the Haven and his City Kids program.

A second later, reality smacked him upside his head. It wouldn’t be his property or his favorite charity that would get all the attention. It would be Madge and the past she’d tried so hard to hide from him, from her friends and neighbors, from the world. This would kill her.

He stared numbly at Elly across the table. “We didn’t ask for this.”

“I know. But I promise you, my father and I had nothing to do with letting your mother’s past become public knowledge. And now we’ll do everything we can to help both you and Madge weather the storm.”

“What do you intend to do? Wave a magic wand and make us disappear?”

She gave him another one of those delicious enigmatic smiles. “Something like that.”

Elly was relieved when Dan told her he would agree to go with her to Elbia. But convincing his mother to evacuate her comfy cottage was, at first, a struggle. Then came the first phone call from a Washington Star reporter.

Apparently the British press who had first been leaked the information had contacted several American newspapers in their search for the missing prince of Elbia. The Star put a team on the story and soon it was clear that the prying phone calls were destined to become even more harassing visits. Madge was so horrified at the prospect of her home being invaded she reluctantly agreed to the trip.

With help from the Elbian embassy, Elly booked all three of them on the Concorde for that night. On their way from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., they somehow picked up two carloads of reporters. “It’s all right,” Elly assured a frightened Madge, “as long as we keep moving, they can’t get to you. And State Department security is waiting for us at the airport.”

The limousine she had ordered raced the two black sedans through twisting roadways approaching the international terminals, then the three of them were led to a lounge where security guards kept the press at bay while they waited to board the plane. Soon, a State Department courier arrived with passports for Dan and his mother, and minutes later they were herded onto the immense jet without being accosted. She felt like giving a victory cheer. But as the sleek, tipped-nose Concorde took off with a gentle rumble into the night, Elly sensed they’d only temporarily eluded their troubles.

The seating on the Concorde felt far more spacious than that on most commercial flights. Elly had never flown on the famous French-built jet that only the elite of the world could afford. Two roomy seats were positioned on either side of the aisle, and the service was impeccably attentive. Madge and Dan sat on one side. Elly was on the opposite side of the aisle, at the window seat, while the place beside her remained empty.

After they’d taken off into the night, Elly closed her eyes for a moment. Exhaustion overcame her. She felt weightless; her mind drifted. Back to another time in her life. A time when there had been more than just two Andersons. Elly, Dad…Mom. She felt herself being sucked back in time as she pictured her mother’s face smiling down at her. Elly fought the memories, struggled to escape from the images that kept her from finding peace in her own life. Her heart began to race. Her breaths came in short, shallow puffs as the muscles in her chest constricted. Resisting was futile…

“It’s going to be all right, Elly,” her mother had promised when Elly became concerned that her baby brother might come at night while Elly slept. Then she’d miss all the excitement. “It’s all planned. The doctor will meet me at the hospital on the date you and I wrote on the calendar. Remember? I’ll have an operation called a cesarean section to take the baby from my tummy. You’ll be able to see him minutes after he’s born, then you and I will fight over who gets to cuddle him.”

They’d laughed together over that. Her father had told Elly that, at twelve years of age, she was almost old enough to be a little mother herself, at least in some cultures in other parts of the world. Even before the baby’s seventh month of gestation, she had begun to feel her little brother in her arms, to sense a growing protectiveness of him and know that they would be a wonderful family together—the four of them.

Then the half sleep she’d sunk into on the plane dragged her deeper into darker memories. Of that night.

Again she was tortured by Patricia Anderson’s agonized screams and her father’s shouts for help to the 911 operator. When she’d tried to go to her mother, Frank had blocked her from the bedroom, shouting frantically at her that she couldn’t go in, shoving her back into her own room as if she were being punished for a crime she didn’t understand.

Blue and red lights flashed in the street outside her window. She’d watched two paramedics rush into the house while the driver pulled a gurney from the ambulance. “She will be okay,” she whispered to herself. “Daddy said so.” But minutes passed and the ambulance still sat there. Soon Elly knew, without being told, that when they did bring her mother out it wouldn’t be to take her to the hospital.

Elly heard a whimper and something moist trickled down her cheeks. She twisted violently in her seat, felt the heaviness in her chest pressing relentlessly, then sensed a warm hand settling on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” It wasn’t her mother’s voice, as she’d so often imagined at the end of her worst attacks. This voice had a deeper, stronger timbre. “Elly?”

She blinked her eyes open and took a moment to orient herself to an adult world, lights dim along a slender, shining cabin. Her throat burned, and her temples throbbed hotly. Turning her head, she looked up at Dan who had crossed the aisle to sit in the vacant seat beside her.

“You were having a bad dream,” he murmured.

“Was I?” The break between the past and the present seemed liquid, as if she still might float back into the pain and experience it all over again.

Dan took her hand between his and rested it on his knee. “Want to tell me about it? If you share a dream, you can keep it from coming back, you know.” He smiled at her.

“Not this one.” She shivered then swallowed twice, trying to ease the roughness in her throat, trying to calm her drumming heartbeat. Horrid sounds still reverberated in her head. The awful coldness of death clutched at her. “This one’s a keeper, whether I want it or not.”

Dan frowned. “A bad one, huh?”

“The worst.” She would have let it go at that. But his quiet compassion and steady gaze beckoned her to say more. She had a sudden intuitive flash that she and Dan shared something—pasts that would haunt them and remain with them all of their lives. “It’s not fantasy,” she explained. “It’s like an instant replay of something that really happened.”

“Like a soldier having a flashback of battle?”

“Something like that.” Elly drew herself up in the seat, still trembling, and glanced across at Madge. She was fast asleep. “You’re really good to her,” she whispered.

“Why shouldn’t I be? She’s my mother.”

“Some people don’t appreciate what they have, the sacrifices their parents make for them.”

“I guess that’s true,” he agreed slowly, encouraging her with his steady gaze. “Aren’t you good to your mother?”

Her eyes closed. She shuddered.

“I’m sorry,” Dan whispered. “That was far too personal.” He took a deep breath. “I suppose I felt justified, since you’ve dug up so much about me. I know nothing of you, except that you work for your father.”

She shrugged, feeling a little calmer at the sound of his mellow voice. “There’s not a lot to tell. I was twelve years old. My parents had tried for years to have a second child. They were overjoyed when it looked as if my mother would carry to full term.” Her voice was flat, without the emotion she held so carefully within her. “Mom died in childbirth. My baby brother didn’t make it either.”

“That’s terrible.” He squeezed her hand. “It must have taken a long time to get over that.” Then their eyes met and he knew. “Or maybe you never have.”

She looked away from his too-perceptive gaze. The thick-glassed window to her left was black. No moon. But fat, white stars shone through the night over the endless Atlantic Ocean. She felt Dan’s thumb drawing comforting circles over the back of her hand.

Suddenly, Elly found herself talking. Pushing out words without taking a breath, baring her soul as she’d never done with anyone in her life. She couldn’t imagine why everything should tumble out of her at this moment, in front of this man. Perhaps because she fore-saw pain and a struggle coming his way. Or maybe it was because they would soon go their separate ways. Sharing the agony of her past and fears of the future with this man who was passing so briefly through her life was as devoid of threat as confiding in a wall.

As she let the words flow, telling him of the night she had lost her mother forever and her father for many months to his grief, Dan’s arm came around her, as if to shield her from her own memories.

“My dad just stopped functioning after my mother died. He didn’t go to work. He didn’t eat enough to keep a person alive. He started smoking again, and he drank quite a lot, I think. He spent a lot of time away—most of every day and always the nights. He wouldn’t mention her name. We didn’t talk.”

Dan stared at her, his eyes hard and dark with concern. “That was when you most needed him.”

She sighed. “Yes, but I can’t blame him for distancing himself from me. If you ever saw my mother’s college graduation photo, you’d think that I could be her twin. It just hurt Dad too much to look at me, and think about her.”

“That’s no excuse for neglecting a child,” he snapped.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You can’t understand how it was.” She swallowed. Dare she go on? Dare she tell him the rest, the part that still controlled her future and wouldn’t let her move on with her own life? But now that she’d opened her soul to him it seemed impossible to stop the flood of feelings.

“Years later,” she whispered, “Dad told me what had happened that night. My mother had an enlarged heart. They’d known that since I was born and had elected to do a C-section. Her doctor had advised another C-section to take the stress off delivering her second baby. When she went into labor early, her heart couldn’t take it, and the baby died of asphyxiation before the medics could arrive.” She swallowed three times before she was able to look at him again. Tears clung to her eyelashes.

“I’m so sorry, Elly.”

She nodded, plunging on. “Dad insisted that I get a complete physical a few years later. He didn’t seem surprised when they found I’d inherited my mother’s heart problem, it was just a little larger than it should have been. Nothing easily fixed, just something to live cautiously with.

“From that day, I decided never to have children of my own. I love kids, I really do,” she insisted, her heart breaking even as she said the words. “But I can’t risk my life the way my mother did.”

“Death in childbirth is a very rare thing these days,” Dan commented gently. “Chances are, if she’d been able to reach a hospital, she’d have been all right. You shouldn’t—”

Elly pulled her hand away from him. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do!” she snapped. Not wanting to alarm the sleeping passengers around them, she choked back the sob that swelled inside her. The words came out in breathless gulps. “Don’t…lecture…me!”

“I’m not, Elly,” he whispered. “I’m just trying to state a medical reality. All sorts of advances have been made in the last ten or more years. Odds are that if you really want a baby, you could have one without complications.”

She glared at him. “Odds. Chances. Do you really believe that adding one more child to this earth is worth the risk to me or any other woman whose body isn’t strong enough?”

He didn’t answer.

She let out a long breath, feeling strangely better for the release of emotions. She thought more clearly now about her past choices.

Over the years, she’d had a few male friends—mostly kept at arm’s length with no physical relationship involved. A few she’d slept with, but only after first being sure they lacked all desire to settle down and start a family, then guaranteeing she couldn’t become pregnant with them. She had stayed on the Pill during those limited months in a relationship and, because she’d never given her heart, she hadn’t regretted when they’d moved on to other women. The last breakup had been heart-wrenching, though. Sam had been a good person and she’d grown intensely fond of him. His only crime was that he’d changed his mind. He had decided he wanted to be a husband and father instead of a boyfriend.

In the year since then Elly had let no one into her life. But sitting beside her now was a man who was as much temptation as any woman could handle. More than she could, she feared. Instinctively, she gauged the level of her reaction to him, and knew that the passion centered in the core of her being was new and real and strong. He had touched something in her no other man before him had been capable of, although they’d known each other only hours.

“What about you?” she asked quickly. “Why aren’t you married?” A tiny part of her hoped that his answer would be an echo of her own. I don’t want kids.

“I suppose at first I was too involved with other facets of my life,” he admitted. “The marines—that didn’t seem a time for settling down. I was stationed all over the place. Then I went to college on the GI Bill and earned my degree. After that I needed time to start my business. I’ve always wanted a family, but now that it seems the right time, the right woman doesn’t seem to be around.”

She cringed inside. Well, there it was. He was looking for a life-mate, a mother for his unborn children. And I am definitely not her, she thought with an irrational twinge of sadness. Yet Elly was still profoundly attracted to him. He set off tickly sensations in parts of her body she had forgotten existed.

Dan squeezed her softly around the shoulders and she looked up into his concerned gaze. “Feeling better?”

“Yes,” she admitted half-heartedly. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for lending your shoulder.” She patted the damp fabric of his blazer.

He glanced back at his own seat across the aisle. Madge had repositioned herself, lifting her legs to rest them across his cushion. Like many of the other passengers, she was asleep.

“Mind if I stay here for a while?”

Elly nodded. “No problem. She’ll need her strength when we get to Elbia.”

They talked through most of the night, keeping the conversation light. It was as if they both understood that much of what they’d already shared was too personal for people who had just met. But somehow, Elly thought, it had been the right time to speak of such things.