Читать книгу That Summer In Maine - Muriel Jensen - Страница 13

“But what are you doing here?” she demanded, still smiling.

“Your father sent me,” he replied. She’d stopped in her tracks again and he coaxed her forward. “It’s kind of a long story and should probably be saved for the ride home. Right now the police will want to talk to you.”

It was several hours before the police were finished with Maggie and her party, and a doctor took care of Duffy’s shoulder. Duffy called home to tell her father that she was safe.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed prayerfully, then added, “I owe you, son.”

“I was happy to help.”

“Will you ask her to call me when you finally get her home? It doesn’t matter what time.”

“She’s insisting on flying home tonight, so it’ll probably be early morning.”

“I’ll wait for your call.”

Her friends were all going back to the count’s place to recover from the ordeal, but Maggie declined his invitation.

“You’re going to fly to London tonight?” the man she’d introduced as her agent asked. “That’ll be exhausting.”

“I’m already exhausted,” she replied, giving him a hug. “And my friend, here, has gotten us a flight.” Then she hugged the rest of the group in turn.

He blessed her father’s CIA connections as he happily accepted her praise and gratitude.

They caught up on the way home—what she’d been doing, what he’d been doing.

She skipped over the loss of her husband and children with a falsely philosophical “And every life has its ups and downs, my downs were just more abysmal than most people’s.” Then she gave him a phony smile. “But my career’s ongoing, I work all the time, and I like that. When did you go into security?”

“After the Army. I was young and strong and felt invincible.” He reached overhead to adjust the air in her direction. “I guess there just wasn’t enough threat to my life, so I went looking for it in other people’s by going to work as a bodyguard. Went off on my own after a year. Our headquarters are in New York, but we work all over the world.”

“I love New York. It’s like a slightly less dignified London.”

They compared lives in the big city, she told him she did needlework for relaxation and he told her he loved to prowl garage sales, refinish old furniture, make useful items out of junk and that one day when he retired he would open a shop.

“I’m never going to retire,” she said in the taxi that drove them from Heathrow to Wandsworth Common, a tony part of London. “They’re going to have to drag me off the stage when I die in Baldy’s arms.”

“Baldy?”

“My actor friend. You met him at the police station. The one with the attitude. We work together a lot.”

“Isn’t his wife jealous?” He couldn’t imagine any woman willingly letting her husband kiss Maggie Lawton, whether it was in the script or not.

She shook her head. “After three wives, he’s a confirmed bachelor. And since all his wives were actresses, the fact that I’m a confirmed bachelor girl simplifies his life. Saves him from falling in love with me.” She added as an aside, “He always falls in love with his leading lady.”

“Isn’t it bad for an actor to be so confused?”

“Not at all. Being unable to tell your real life from your stage life is the sign of a good actor.”

“How do you stay sane that way?”

She rolled her head on the back of the cab’s upholstery and grinned at him. “Who told you actors were sane?”

Her home was unlike anything he’d ever seen, except in movies. The substantial Victorian she lived in was huge and almost two hundred years old, similar in design to the other residences near the lush park. The grass, the potted flowers in the doorway and the rich vanilla color of the stone walls glistened in the early morning light as she unlocked her door.

Inside, the ceilings were high, the windows long and draped in gold brocade. Off-white silk fabric adorned the walls, which were hung with paintings that he guessed were originals.

The furnishings were formal and elegant, he noted, as he wandered after Maggie through a vast living room with a marble fireplace and up a mahogany staircase to an upstairs flooded with sunlight.

“Eponine is away for a week, thank God,” she said as she pushed open a door and gestured him inside. “Or she’d be weeping all over me. She’s very emotional.”

“Friend? Housekeeper?”

“Both,” she replied. “I’ve tried to talk her into auditioning for a role. I think she’d be a natural. But she says she’d worry about who would take care of me.”

He had to meet this Eponine, he thought. And put her mind to rest.

“I promised your father you’d call him as soon as you got home,” he said as he walked into a bedroom decorated in brown and gold, with old maps on the wall and a fireplace. Everything required for a small office was at one end, while the other was set up for luxurious sleeping. He whistled softly at the elegance of it.

He wondered if this had been her husband’s office but didn’t want to ask.

“I sold the house in Devon when…after the accident.” She hesitated only an instant, but the quick diversion suggested she still couldn’t say, “when they died.” He could certainly understand that. He couldn’t imagine losing his boys and ever coming to a point when he could accept it.

“I’ve always loved the city,” she went on, going to a door at the far end of the room to show him there was a very elegant bathroom there complete with hot tub. “You can’t be lonely here. There’s always someplace to go and something to do.”

He wasn’t sure why, but the words didn’t ring true. He was sure there was always someplace to go and something to do, but he didn’t think that assuaged her loneliness.

“Have a hot bath and a good sleep,” she said, blowing him a kiss, “and I’ll take you somewhere wonderful for dinner. Then we can arrange to send you home on the Concorde.”

She closed the door on him before he could tell her that he might go home on the Concorde, but he wasn’t going alone.

MAGGIE DIDN’T KNOW why she was shaking. She didn’t think this was fear. She’d kept her head throughout their captivity—well, except for when she’d mistaken Duffy for one of her captors and that had been an honest mistake—and the danger was over now. Everything that could hurt her had been dealt with effectively by Duffy March and the gendarmerie.

So, why was she shaking? She’d showered, put on her favorite white silk negligee, then found herself trembling like a pudding. She had to pull Duffy’s sweater back over her head to try to stop it.

Delayed reaction? she wondered, as she climbed in under the covers. But how could that be when she hadn’t really cared what had happened? When she’d simply shut down everything that could make her care?

Then it came to her. It was Duffy. It was that glimpse of life as it had been once, when it all still lay ahead of her full of hope and expectation. It was remembering the heroic little boy he’d been, determined to battle the asthma that plagued him, so that he could live a normal life.

Well, he’d certainly done it, she thought, reaching for her address book and phone. He’d grown tall and strong with the proportions and confidence of a tested athlete. She guessed he’d outgrown the asthma. She remembered that he’d embarked on a regimen to strengthen his muscles—and had been smart enough to know that the plan should include his brain. They’d often done homework together when she’d stayed with him, she fighting to understand the secrets of geometry that eluded her, and he doing extra reading in the subjects that interested him.

She closed her eyes and thought, with a lessening of the tremors, that it was good she’d had that glimpse of the old days. She could never be that Maggie again, but it was good to remember—though not for too long.

It wasn’t going to help to call her father, but she had to. She knew how much he worried about her in normal circumstances; she could just imagine what her kidnapping had done to him. She hadn’t seen him since the funeral, had resisted his pleas that she come home for a visit, because she’d have to be herself at home and she couldn’t face that yet. She got by only by playing role after role that allowed her to be someone else.

“Oh, Maggie!” he breathed when he heard her voice. “Sweetheart, I was so worried about you.”

“I know, Dad. I’m sorry.” She was grateful that her voice sounded strong and even. “I’m fine, I promise. And it’s such a treat to see Duffy.”

“I knew he’d keep you safe.”

“That he did.”

“Maggie…” He paused and she knew he was building up to something. “I want you to come home for a visit.”

“Daddy, I want to,” she lied, “but I have eight performances a week and I…”

“Don’t you have an understudy or something? I mean, didn’t someone else have to go on for you while you were kidnapped?”

She searched her mind frantically for a viable excuse.

“And, you know, I don’t like to worry you, but I haven’t been all that well since the attack, and I’d like to know…”

She sat up and leaned forward. “What attack?”

He hesitated.

“What attack?” she repeated.

“The heart attack.”

Her first thought was that he was putting her on—manipulating her. But he’d never done that before. And since she’d lost Harry and the boys, he tried particularly hard not to worry her.

“When did this happen?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well…because I was only in the hospital a few days, and the doctor said it was just a sort of warning to be careful. So I’ve been careful.”

He’d been careful, but her kidnapping probably hadn’t done much to keep him calm.

“Okay, Dad,” she said. “I’ll come. But I have to work it out with my director.”

“I’d love that, Maggie.” He sounded relieved.

She promised to do it soon and let him know her plans. Then she hung up the phone and lay stiffly against the headboard, feeling those curious tremors coming on again.

She couldn’t go home—but it sounded as though she had to. God.

She tried to make plans—to organize things in the hope it would make the tremors go away.

In the morning she’d call her travel agent to see about getting Duffy the next flight home on the Concorde. Then she’d call the bank and see about replacing her credit cards, her driver’s license, all the things she’d lost when the kidnappers had taken her backpack from her. They were probably still somewhere on the mountain. Life was going to be very inconvenient until everything was replaced.

Then she’d call her director and see about getting a week off in July. Exhaustion overtook her despite the tremors, and she fell asleep, thinking that if she was going to go home, she’d have to do it as a star—not as the real Maggie Lawton. That was the only way she could protect herself.

SHE DREAMED OF EVERYTHING that had happened—of her and Baldy and the Thickes visiting Gerard to help celebrate his birthday. Of the argument over what to do with the Sunday afternoon, then the decision to go hiking in the park. She saw the remote uphill spot, heard Prissie’s whiny remark about the trail being too steep and rocky, then the sudden appearance of men with Uzis.

She remembered very clearly the terror she’d felt that first instant. The absolutely horrifying threat she’d felt to her life and her safety. It had taken her a moment to remember that she didn’t care whether she lived or died.

The dream proceeded just as events had happened, except that there was no rescue. The government refused to negotiate, her father never called for the now big and capable Duffy March to rescue his little girl, and the gentle and enigmatic Eduard aimed his Uzi at her and fired.

She awoke feeling the pain in her chest, gasping for air in a complete panic—the last two years of horror distilled into that one moment.

Her bedroom door burst open, and she saw Duffy hesitate in the doorway.

She said his name and reached a hand toward him, caught in a nebulous world somewhere between her dream and reality.

“What?” he asked, hurrying toward her. He sat on the bed beside her and wrapped an arm around her. “Nightmare?”

She put a hand to her stomach and held it up to show him the blood. “I’ve been shot!” she whispered. “You were…too late.”

He put a hand to where her other hand pressed against her middle to stanch the flow of blood.

Damn the shaking! But she supposed if she was about to expire from a chest wound, she had the right to tremble.

“Maggie,” he said, holding her hand up in front of her face. “You’ve been dreaming. No blood, see? You haven’t been shot. You’re fine.”

“I am not fine!” she screamed at him. “I have a hole in my chest! Right…here!” She put a hand to the terrible burning pain and realized with the sudden clarity of wakefulness that it was an old pain. It wasn’t from a bullet at all, but from a two-year-old grief she was not going to be able to survive.

And now that she’d acknowledged it, the pain became more than she could bear. It had barbs and tentacles she’d controlled by suppressing it, but they now beat her and choked her and made her cry out in anguish.

She heard herself sob.

She fought to escape, but the pain was tenacious and no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t get free.

DUFFY DIDN’T KNOW what to do but hold her. At first she fought him, screaming, then she clung to him and sobbed. She was wearing his sweater, and she felt slight and fragile under its folds. He wrapped his arms tightly around her as she trembled and wept, concluding that the nightmare must have triggered a response to her ordeal that somehow related to the pain of the past two years of her life.

“It’s okay, Maggie,” he whispered, rocking her in the middle of the bed. “You’re going to survive.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, finally quieting.

“You will,” he insisted firmly.

She stopped crying and leaned against him, tired and dispirited. “Most of the time I don’t even want to,” she said.

“You have to,” he said firmly. “You still have a father, you still have friends and, from what I read, you still have quite an audience.”

She leaned slightly away from him to look into his eyes. Hers were still filled with tears. His heart bled for her.

“You didn’t tell me my father had had a heart attack,” she said, her tone mildly accusing. “I’m surprised your father didn’t write or call me.”

For a minute he didn’t know what to say. He saw a pitcher of water and a cup on her beside table and reached for it to cover up his confusion. As far as he knew, Elliott hadn’t had a heart attack. He didn’t know everything that went on in the Lawtons’ lives, but his father usually kept him up on the important things. He couldn’t imagine he would have let that slip by.

“Where’d you hear that?” he asked, pouring water into the cup and handing it to her.

“Thank you. From my father! He told me when he was trying to get me to come home.” She looked at him with sudden suspicion as she sipped from the cup. “Or, didn’t it happen? I didn’t want to go home and he might have been…”

“Ah…well, I’m not sure. My father’s always trying to protect me, too. I know he’s been worried about your dad, so it’s entirely possible.” That was partly true. His father was always worried about his friend, who, at sixty-four, took off on nebulous missions for the State Department as though he was still a man in his prime. He just wasn’t sure he was worried about Elliott’s heart.

Duffy was suddenly distracted from that puzzle when he became aware of a subtle tension in the air. The intimacy of their embrace in the middle of the bed, hardly necessary now that she was composed again seemed to be generating it.

He knew she was aware of it, too, when her eyes met his in confused surprise. Using her hands on the mattress for leverage, she pushed herself slightly away from him. He noticed for the first time the tailored white silk nightshirt she wore—and the length of slender leg it revealed.

“I…I’m going to try to get time off,” she said a little distractedly, “sometime in July.”

He stood, going to the window and pushing her draperies back. The sun was low, long shadows falling across the park. The beautiful setting made him inexplicably homesick.

“Why don’t you just come home with me?” he suggested.

She blinked, surprised by the suggestion. “I can’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m the lead in a play,” she replied, her eyes a little desperate. “Because all my credit cards are in a gully somewhere in the Pyrenees. Because…”

“I can’t imagine your boss refusing you a couple of weeks R and R after what you’ve been through. And I’ll spring for your airfare and lend you some money until you get the credit cards straightened out.”

“I can’t leave the country without my passport.” She looked satisfied with that excuse. Even proud of it. “I’ve misplaced it in the shuffle of bags and reporters and hurry.”

He spotted her things apparently thrown carelessly on a chair when she’d changed for bed last night and saw her passport pinned to her bra strap. He hooked the lacy lavender thing in one finger and held it up, the book dangling.

“I’ll make reservations for two, then,” he said. “Give your father some peace of mind and you a probably much-needed rest.”

That surprised look she’d given him a moment ago registered a little longer, then turned to annoyance. She pushed herself to her feet with a sudden, imperious expression, intended, he was sure, to put him in his place.

“Look, Duffy,” she said, tossing her hair. He guessed she probably did that onstage. It was very effective. “I’m so grateful you came all this way to see to my safety. But that’s accomplished. I’m free now and our long friendship notwithstanding, your services are terminated.”

“Now, don’t get in a huff because I caught you in a fib,” he said. “I understand why you don’t want to go home, but that isn’t healthy. And if you’re going to get on with your life, you have to get serious about dealing with reality.”

“What do you know about dealing with reality?” she demanded, anger igniting in her eyes. “You own a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, and your business has offices in five countries. Your failures and your grief are still ahead of you.”

He arched an eyebrow at the deliberate ploy to gain the upper hand.

“Not so,” he corrected amiably. “I know about loss, if not death, and, being a bodyguard, I know that hiding doesn’t defeat your enemy. It just holds him off until the next time he finds you.” Then he smiled. “And while you might have been able to order me around when I was eight, things have changed considerably. Part of the deal when your father hired me was that I take you home. So the job isn’t done until I deliver you to Arlington.”

“I’m not ready to go yet.”

He spread both arms in a gesture of patience. “Then do what has to be done and I’ll wait.”

The room suddenly exploded in heavy perfume and rolling Rs when a very short, very hefty woman hurried in, moving a little like a tank in a blue dress with white polka dots and white tennis shoes. Her permed hair was a brassy shade of red.

“Madame Lawton!” the woman exclaimed. She’d apparently been crying and continued to sob as she rolled into the room and wrapped a very surprised Maggie in her embrace.

Maggie disappeared for a moment, and all Duffy heard was a thin, high-pitched, “Eponine! I thought you were on vacation!”

“Mais oui, but I heard the news!” Eponine said, taking a tissue from her pocket and dabbing her eyes with it. “I knew you would need me! Are you all right? Did they savage you?”

“Of course not,” Maggie replied. “I’m perfectly all right. There was no reason for you to spoil your trip.”

“Oh, but I could not leave you alo—” She stopped abruptly when she noticed Duffy standing bare-chested at the foot of the bed. She looked confused at first, then, after a head-to-toe scan, apparently decided the situation was not all that complicated.

“Oh, monsieur, I’m so sorry. Madame, please forgive me.” She put her fingertips to her mouth and turned in an embarrassed circle.

“No, no, no!” Maggie emphatically denied the woman’s assumption. Eponine took a step back in surprise at her vehemence. Duffy stood his ground. “It isn’t that at all. This is an old friend of mine from home,” she said with a glance at Duffy that suggested the term friend hung in the balance.

Eponine gave Duffy a sidelong glance that spoke volumes. “Friends are the most dangerous threat to a woman’s peace of mind because they become lovers so easily.”

Maggie shook her head. “He’s almost ten years younger than I am.”

Eponine drew a dreamy breath. “Ah, madame. That is even more merveilleux.”

“It’s eight years,” Duffy corrected, “and I’ll wager I’m far more experienced. You settled down with a family while I’ve never been married.”

Annoyed that she was losing control of the situation, Maggie said irritably, “Well, what does that have to do with anything?”

“I didn’t think it had anything to do with it,” Duffy replied, “but it seemed important to you.”

“Are you hungry?” she asked in that same impatient tone.

“Yes.”

“Eponine, you may stay to fix dinner for which I’ll add an extra day on to your vacation, then you must get back to your daughter.”

Eponine winked at Duffy. “Oui, madame.”

WHILE EPONINE PUTTERED in the kitchen and Duffy went off to make phone calls, Maggie took another shower, desperate to clear her addled brain.

Her life was growing more out of control by the moment. For years she’d been experiencing this hole in the center of her world that refused to heal, then she was kidnapped like some cabin boy in a novel, held at gunpoint, rescued by the boy she used to baby-sit more than twenty years ago, and now her maid thought they were having an affair. Her and Duffy March!

And he was turning out to be a surprise. The sweet, cooperative, well-behaved little boy who’d hung on her every word was now a stubborn, autocratic, know-it-all, who seemed to forget she had a mind of her own.

She was drying her hair when there was a loud rap on her half-open bathroom door. Duffy peered around it and handed her the phone. “Picked up this call for you. David Styron?”

She gave him a cool glance and took the phone. “Thank you. David?”

“Yes, Mags.” The large voice that could be heard from the back of the balcony boomed over the phone. Maggie had to hold it slightly away from her ear. “Glen tells me that you and Baldy are both well, but in need of a break after your ordeal. The devil’s negotiated you a month’s break—with pay—starting today.”

“What?” She turned to Duffy, suspecting his hand in this, but he was gone.

“What?”

“That’s right, my love. A whole month off. You must go to Cap Ferrat or someplace equally decadent and do nothing. But don’t get too tanned now, will you, or Nancy will have trouble making you up.”

“But, David, a month seems—”

“Long, yes I know. But Glen was insistent. He and Prissie are going to Bimini. And you mustn’t worry, Sukie Darwin was really quite good as Lady Bellows last night. She’s learned a lot watching you.”

Maggie didn’t know whether to be happy or upset. The fact that one’s understudy had been “really quite good” was good and bad news. She was very much aware that the theater was filled with younger and probably more talented women who could replace her in a moment. But it was startling to hear it confirmed.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” David insisted. “Just rest and recover, and come back to us in time for the London Women’s Charity night at the end of July. They’ve bought out the house and they’ll want to see you.”

Okay, that restored a modicum of her confidence.

“Thank you, David.”

“Take care, Mags.”

Damn. Now she had to go home. She closed her eyes against images of the three-story house, narrow and tall and happily ensconced in its downtown environment right next door to the Marches’ place.

Her mother had always been home, but Duffy’s mother had been a lawyer in her husband’s firm, and they’d been gone a lot of the time. The bank account Maggie had built up watching Duffy for them had paid all her incidental expenses her first year of college.

Then she’d been discovered by a film agent in her second year. He’d come to watch his daughter perform in The Rainmaker and had been impressed with Maggie’s portrayal of Lizzie. He’d offered to represent her, found her a bit part in a small film that was being shot in London.

There she’d met Harry Paget, a banker, and when the film wrapped, she’d stayed to marry him and trade the screen for the stage. She’d never regretted it.

Morgan and Alan had been born eleven months apart when she was in her middle twenties. When they were babies, they’d traveled with her everywhere, and when they were old enough to go to school, the theater had allowed her to spend afternoons with them before her performances.

Life had been good. The boys had been tall and blond like their father, with his tendency to take themselves seriously yet laugh at everything else. She’d found her husband and her boys endlessly fascinating.

Her parents had loved them, too, and when her mother died five years ago, her father had stayed with them for a month, trying to figure out how to go on.

Now that she’d experienced the same loss, she couldn’t imagine how he’d managed.

She looked at herself in the mirror and saw Lady Bellows, the role she’d played for the past eighteen months. She wore designer suits, though at the moment it was a pale-orange peignoir set, wore her hair in a chignon and held her chin in the air. Her staff adored her, but her butler feared her sexual appeal.

Good. She would hide in character as long as she was able.

She walked into the kitchen to find Duffy and Eponine sharing a bottle of wine and a plate of broiled shrimp. They were laughing together, and she was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy. Not for the alliance they seemed to have formed, she told herself, but for the laughter.

“Seems I’ve been given a month’s leave from the play,” she said, taking a chair opposite Duffy and smiling blandly at him as she reached for a shrimp. Eponine poured wine into the empty glass at her place. “You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

He met her gaze with innocence in his. “Now, how could I have accomplished that while drinking wine with Eponine?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, then nipped the shrimp in two.

“Though you did manage to find me in a remote spot in the Pyrenees. You appear to be a resourceful man.”

“But I had the French army on my side then.”

She glanced at her housekeeper, who also returned her a look of suspicious innocence. “Eponine has a lot in common with the French army.”

“So, this means we’ll be flying back together?” he asked.

She admitted defeat, if only to herself. She had to see her father, and putting it off until July would have served no purpose anyway.

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to pay my way,” she reminded him. “I’ll go to the bank in the morning, but with all my credit cards missing, and most of my assets in stocks and real estate, I may not be able to get much cash.”

“You can owe me,” he said with a grin.

That was precisely what she didn’t want to do.