Elizabeth Lane – On the Wings of Love (страница 6)
“Poor Mr. Garrick!” said Maude.
“Pooh! He got out alive, didn’t he?” Alex’s feigned disinterest masked a sense of wonder. This shattered wreck of wood, wire and stiffened cloth had flown in the sky. Its pilot had seen the earth as she herself had never seen it—the sweep of the land, with clustered towns and pencil-line roads; the alabaster curve of beach where land met sea; the harbor, with boats scuttling like water striders on a pond. Rafe Garrick had soared over hills and valleys. He had looked down on birds and on the sun-gilded tops of clouds.
Then, like Icarus, he had fallen out of the sky.
“If he’s awake, he’ll want to know about his aeroplane,” Maude said. “Maybe you ought to go and tell him they got it off the beach. And while you’re at it, maybe you should ask if he’d like the servants to bring him some lunch.”
Alex turned her head to let the breeze cool her sweat-dampened hair. “I don’t want to go back in there, Mama. He’s rude. I…don’t think he likes me. I don’t think I like him, either.”
“That’s no excuse, Alexandra. Anyone can learn to keep a civil tongue.”
“Someone should tell Mr. Garrick that.” Alex tossed her head. “I’ve had my turn with him, thank you.”
Maude’s breath eased outward in a sigh of defeat. “You’re as strong-willed as your father! All right, I’ll go and talk to Mr. Garrick, and you get ready for the tea at Mrs. Townsend’s this afternoon. You really ought to bathe if there’s time.”
“Mama, you talk to me as if I were still five years old. I’m a grown woman. I think I’m old enough to decide whether or not I ought to bathe,” Alex said.
Maude tugged at a stubborn strand of wool. “Now what did I tell you about that sharp tongue, Alex? Talk to other people the way you talk to me, and you may find yourself very sorry one day.” The yarn had tangled again. Maude fell silent for a moment while she worked it free. “And while we’re at it,” she continued, “what’s this I hear about you driving?”
“Driving?” Alex parroted the word, trying to sound innocent, though she knew it wouldn’t work.
“Elvira Hodge told me she saw you flying down the road in your father’s Pierce-Arrow last night. She said you must have been going at least thirty-five miles an hour.”
“I like driving autos. And I like going fast.”
“It isn’t safe. What’s more, it isn’t ladylike.”
“Alice Roosevelt drives.”
“Alice Roosevelt also smokes. Does that mean every young girl in America should take up the disgusting habit?” Maude removed her glasses, folded the needlepoint and put it back into her wicker sewing box. “Alexandra, I’m not going to sit here and waste time arguing with you. No matter what I say, you’ll do as you please. I’m going inside now to see if Mr. Garrick needs anything from the servants.”
She rose to her feet, tall and pale in a dress of gray batiste, her light brown hair coiled into a double chignon and covered with a net. She closed the screen carefully as she went back into the house.
Alex watched her mother go, sorry now that she had been so difficult. Maude’s life was hard enough without a contrary and willful daughter adding to the burdens of it. Alex knew. She knew it all too well.
She remembered her first year at boarding school. She’d been only fourteen at the time, and racked with homesickness. On a dreary November Saturday she had impulsively caught a train home, arriving at the station just after dusk.
Alex would never forget the look of the house that evening as she walked up the drive—strangely dark and brooding, with just one light, dimly flickering in the window of her parents’ bedroom. Buck’s dark green Cadillac was parked at the foot of the front steps.
The door was unlocked. Alex stepped into the cavernous foyer. “Mama? Papa?”
No one had answered, not even the servants. Alex had been close to tears before she remembered that this was the night of her mother’s big charity ball. Not only would she be busy running the affair at the country club, but Mamie, the cook, and Cummings, the butler, would be helping as well.
That was when she’d heard it—the creak of a floorboard in an upstairs room, and faintly, the rumble of her father’s laughter.
“Papa!” she’d whispered eagerly. She was not alone after all. Grabbing her satchel, she’d raced up the stairs.
At the landing she’d hesitated. The upstairs hallway had been dark, the door to her parents’ bedroom closed. Only a sliver of yellow light had shone through the crack at the bottom.
Trembling, Alex had listened and waited. At last her hand had crept to the doorknob, then hesitated as she heard another sound, a rhythmic creaking that sounded like a bedspring.
Then, from beyond the door, a high-pitched laugh—a woman’s laugh, certainly not her mother’s—had shattered the darkness.
Alex had never told anyone about the experience. It remained imbedded in her soul like a splinter, as sharp and painful as the day it had happened.
Now, gingerly, she explored the tender area. She had to understand it. Sooner or later she would likely be married. She would be vulnerable, open to the same hurt and betrayal her mother had suffered. And she was afraid.
But surely she’d have the sense to fall in love with someone kind and decent, someone who would cherish and respect her. Not all men were like her father, Alex reassured herself. Or like Rafe Garrick.
She caught her breath, stunned by the force with which the young pilot’s image had entered her mind. Impressions rushed over her—standing in the surf with her arms around him, his head heavy against her breast, his dark, wet lashes lifting to give her the first glimpse of his eyes. She remembered afterward, undressing in her room, standing naked before the mirror, then picking up the sodden purple gown to touch the spots that were stained with his blood.
And only a short time ago she had come up from the beach and gone into his room. He had been sleeping—or so she’d thought. She had stood beside his bed, her eyes tracing the strong, stubborn lines of his face, the oddly attractive twist of his broken nose, the wave of dark chestnut hair that tumbled onto his forehead. A warm sense of possession had stolen over her. After all, hadn’t she been the first to reach him? Hadn’t she saved him from the sea? It was almost as if part of his life belonged to her.
Then Rafe Garrick had awakened, banishing all her illusions. He was not the kind of man to be possessed by her or by anyone. He was arrogant. He was quarrelsome. For all she knew, he could be out of his mind. And she would be out of her own mind as well, Alex told herself, if she had anything more to do with him.
“Alex!” Maude’s stricken cry from the upstairs window shattered her thoughts. “Telephone Dr. Fleury quickly! Mr. Garrick has fallen! I fear he may be dead!”
“He’s coming around.” Dr. Henry Fleury, a portly man in his sixties with small, neat hands and a mustache like William Howard Taft’s, waved a vial of ammonia under Rafe’s nose. “You needn’t have worried, Maude. It looks like he just fainted. Probably tried to get up too soon. He’s lucky he didn’t crack his skull on that armoire or do more damage to those broken ribs.”
“Thank heaven!” Maude sighed. “He was so white and so still. I really feared for a moment—”
Rafe moaned sharply and jerked his head as the ammonia vapor nipped into his senses. Alex hovered over them both, bobbing back and forth in an effort to get a closer look.
“Is he going to be all right?” she asked, truly anxious.
“Don’t worry, he’s a strong lad. He’ll mend as good as new. But I’d recommend you keep him in bed for a few more days.” Fleury glanced at Alex. He’d been the family doctor for as long as she could remember, and there was little about any of them that escaped his notice. What was he seeing now as he looked at her?
Rafe moaned again, his eyelids twitching as he inhaled the pungent spirits. Maude had found him facedown on the floor. Cummings had managed to hoist him back onto the bed, where he lay sprawled, his rangy frame filling the length and breadth of the mattress.
“That’s it,” said Fleury. “Wake up, lad. Let’s hope that fall knocked a little sense into you. You’re in no condition to be strolling about.”
“Oh!” Alex gave a little gasp as Rafe’s eyes opened, staring not at her but at the doctor.
“Who…who the bloody hell are you?” he muttered groggily.
“Mind your tongue. There are ladies here.” Fleury scowled in mock severity. “I set your leg yesterday, and I’ll thank you to stop trying to undo my good work.”
“Yesterday!” Rafe struggled to sit up. “What’s happened? Where’s my aeroplane?”
Fleury braced an arm against Rafe’s chest and used his considerable weight to keep the younger man down. “Not a word,” he said firmly. “Not until you lie back and promise not to move.”
Rafe’s breath eased out as he lay back on the pillow. “All right,” he said, grimacing with the pain in his ribs. “You’ve got me. I’m not going anywhere. Now somebody tell me what’s going on.”
“Simple enough.” The bedsprings creaked as Fleury sat down on a corner of the bed. “Your aeroplane crashed offshore yesterday afternoon. You were pulled out of the wreck, barely conscious. I set the leg and gave you a sedative to make you sleep. If I’d known you’d be rash enough to get up, I’d have strapped you to the bed.”