The Shadow Queen

by Rebecca Dean

  Across the street, a very well-dressed Edith Miller was waving furiously in her direction.

  Wallis, who had always liked Edith despite the fact that she lacked spirit, waved back and waited while Edith crossed the street toward her.

  “No one told me you were back in town.” Edith hugged her tight. “Where is it you’ve been all this while? With relatives in Louisiana? Or was it Florida?”

  “Florida.”

  “Well, you sure look well on all that Florida sun. You just wait till I tell Violet and Mabel that you are back in town. They are both married now—so is Pamela Denby, but I guess you know all about Pamela’s marriage to John Jasper Bachman. Mrs. Bachman—John Jasper’s mother—is great friends with my mother, and so I get to hear all the news. They live in London, and because Pamela’s mother is married to an earl, they move in the very highest of social circles.”

  “How very nice for the two of them.” Wallis found it hard to sound suitably sincere, but with great difficulty, she managed it. Then she bade Edith a swift good-bye, not wanting to hear another word about Pamela and John Jasper.

  Both of them were in her past now. She wasn’t in love with John Jasper anymore. She was in love with Win—and when she returned to Pensacola, she was determined to make him even crazier about her—so crazy he would have no option but to make her a proposal of marriage.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Win’s reception of her when she returned was ardent. He’d missed her—and he made her well aware that he had missed her badly.

  Wallis was jubilant. Though her nerves had been so shredded by Rob’s death and the all-too-regular sound of the bloodcurdling crash siren that she’d needed to escape the air station for a little while, she had done so with a fear she had barely allowed herself to acknowledge: the fear that on her return, Win would have transferred his affections to someone else.

  That he hadn’t filled her with supreme confidence in the hold she now believed she had over him.

  There was only one fly in the ointment.

  Win’s relationships had previously nearly always been with married women. He was a man accustomed to full sexual intimacy—an intimacy Wallis had no intention of providing. To give way to the temptation—a temptation so strong she often had to exert all her considerable willpower in order to resist it—would, she knew, ensure they would never walk down the aisle together.

  It was Win who solved the problem by showing her how, in the dark of the movie theater where most of their kissing and cuddling took place, she could, by sliding her hand into his pants and allowing him to guide her hand, satisfy him.

  She found doing as he asked—and the stifled grunting noises he then made and that she had to cover by coughing as hard as she could—both exciting and bizarre. She had never been afraid of being daring, and being so now was all part and parcel of her campaign to bind Win to her forever—and she was also determined to perfect her new ability so that Win would get more pleasure from it than anyone else had ever given him.

  Other kinds of lessons also continued. Whenever he was a guest at the Mustins’, which was regularly, he kept the promise he had made to teach her how to make a great variety of cocktails.

  She spent Christmas in Baltimore with her mother and Aunt Bessie, and by then she could make a White Lion, a brandy smash, a Golden Slipper, a whiskey julep, and an applejack sour, as well as a good half dozen other cocktails.

  The problem was ingredients. Between them, her mother and aunt could rustle up bourbon whiskey, gin, rum (though not Santa Cruz rum, which Win insisted was the only possible sort for White Lions), Madeira wine, a bottle of maraschino, raspberry syrup, and lemons and limes.

  A gentleman friend of her mother’s obligingly bought Santa Cruz rum, Yellow Chartreuse, curaçao, crème de violette, and cider brandy for the applejack.

  It was, the friend in question said when the holidays were over, the best Christmas he had ever had, or ever expected to have.

  For a Christmas present, Win gave Wallis a bottle of heliotrope perfume. It wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted a ring. She gave him a silver-plated money clip engraved with his initials. She didn’t care for the perfume but wore it—and hoped that something more to her liking would come her way later in the year.

  In January it was Archie Crosby who took her to one side for a private word, rather as Rob Allinson had done shortly before he had been killed.

  This time, as it was now well accepted she was Win’s girl, she didn’t expect a declaration of love from Archie, but neither did she expect what came.

  “I don’t want you to get upset at what I’m goin’ to say, Wallis,” he said, his homely face looking desperately uncomfortable. “I like you far too much to want to upset you, but it’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time, and I just hoped time would take care of things and that I wouldn’t have to say it.”

  Wallis stared at him in bewilderment. “You’re not making a lick of sense, Archie.”

  Archie shifted his feet uncomfortably and then said bluntly, “It’s you and Win, Wallis. I’d just rather you weren’t getting so heavily involved with him. He’s not the sort of guy you need.”

  Wallis’s bewilderment changed to amusement. It hadn’t occurred to her that Archie wanted to step into Win’s shoes where she was concerned, and he had so little chance of doing so she found it funny.

  Keeping a straight face with difficulty, she said lightly, “Please don’t worry about Win and me, Archie. The two of us are just swell together—and you’re wrong in thinking he isn’t the guy for me. He is exactly the kind of guy for me.”

  Instead of letting the subject drop, Archie stubbornly held his ground. “You only see one side of Win, Wallis, because when he’s with you he’s always out having a good time and enjoying himself.”

  “Well, of course he is!” Wallis’s amusement was fast fading, and she was beginning to get cross. “What’s wrong with that? You wouldn’t want him to be miserable when he was out with me, would you?”

  “No, of course I wouldn’t. I just want you to know that isn’t the real Win Spencer. Please don’t get me wrong about what I’m about to say, Wallis. I like Win. Hell, as a buddy and in a tight corner he’s the best there is. But he’s the moodiest guy you’re ever likely to meet, and I know that’s a side of him you’ve never seen.”

  Wallis shrugged her shoulders. “So what? Everyone gets moody at times.”

  Archie gritted his teeth and then said, “When Win gets moody, he gets violent. Especially when he’s had too much to drink.”

  Wallis’s amusement returned. She knew that when the men stationed at Pensacola wanted to let rip, they didn’t do it at the country club, but visited the bars in town. If Win, as an officer, had had occasion to break up the brawls his trainee pilots no doubt often got into, she didn’t mind one little bit. That Win was so obviously a tough guy, not to be messed with, was one of his main attractions for her.

  Seeing her uncaring reaction, Archie looked as if he were steeling himself to say a great deal more. Bored with the subject, Wallis didn’t let him. Tucking her arm into his, just as she had done with Rob, she said firmly, “No more talk about Win, Archie. I don’t need to hear it. Let’s talk about Lieutenant Johnson’s young single sister-in-law who is visiting at the moment. She’s in her early twenties—just the right age for you—and a glorious redhead. Now, are you going to move in on her fast or let some other clown beat you to it?”

  The subject always uppermost on everyone’s mind was the Great War, which, in the spring of 1916, because of the main belligerents’ vast empires, seemed to involve every country on earth except America.

  “And all President Wilson suggests is that when the war is over, a league of nations should be formed in order to keep the world at peace and that the United States would be willing to join such an international organization!” Henry said explosively over the dinner table one evening when no guests were present. “How, in the name of all that is holy, is the world ever to be
at peace without America pitching in? The Allies need our help so badly, it’s pitiful.”

  “Well, we are helping in every way we can, honey.” Corinne hated any talk of the war, and she certainly hated the thought of American boys going into battle on foreign fields. “We’ve cut all our economic ties to Germany, and we’re supplying Britain with practically everything she asks for.”

  “Except fighting men.” Henry rarely spoke harshly to Corinne, but he did so now.

  To Wallis’s surprise, Corinne didn’t back down. Instead she said spiritedly, “That’s because the war is a European thing which doesn’t involve America. It’s only spread over such a large part of the world because the countries involved have empires which most Americans—including me—don’t approve of!”

  Slapping her napkin down on the table, she rose to her feet, her eyes flashing angry sparks. “Remember what another of our presidents said, Henry? America would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries. Well, what was good enough for President Monroe is good enough for me—and I bet a dime to a dollar that it’s good enough for the wives and the mothers of the men who, if America entered the war, would be the ones doing the fighting!”

  And on that note she swept out of the dining room, leaving both Henry and Wallis staring after her openmouthed—Henry because Corinne had never before ever spoken to him in such a fashion in front of another person, and Wallis because she’d never before known Corinne to voice an opinion on a serious subject, and the fact that Corinne even knew about the Monroe Doctrine, let alone could quote it, was a surprise so startling as to be almost unbelievable.

  Later, when she thought about it again in the privacy of her bedroom, she wondered if Corinne had heard someone else recently quote it. She also wondered who the person in question could be, and, for the first time, if her beautiful, golden-haired cousin was secretly spending time with an officer on the air station and wasn’t being entirely faithful to her much older husband.

  Spring at Pensacola was a time of great beauty. In the Mustins’ yard a riot of jasmine clothed the fencing in impenetrable tangles of scented yellow blossoms. On the terrace, decorative pots overflowed with red and gold zinnias, delicate sky blue larkspur and, Wallis’s favorite, pale lilac anemones with deep indigo hearts.

  In the countryside, pink dogwood was everywhere, and it seemed to Wallis as if the entire state of Florida were perfumed by the heady white blossom of the orange trees.

  Her relationship with Win was growing more intense week by week and month by month and, impatient as she was for a proposal of marriage, she now had no doubt that there would be one.

  When cocktail-making lessons at the Mustins’ began to pall—and when only Corinne and other guests were present and Henry was absent—Win began teaching her how to play poker. Considering how abysmal she was at math, under Win’s expert tutelage she took to the card game like a duck to water. What thrilled her most about it was that the money she won wasn’t money that came from an allowance paid by Uncle Sol, or money that came from the small amount her grandmother had left her. It was money gained by her own skill and her own efforts, and the fact that she soon became known on the air station as a poker player to be reckoned with amused Win vastly.

  Something that didn’t amuse him was when men paid her admiring attention. When they did so, his reaction was always instant and fierce—and on one occasion it was so fierce it scared the life out of her.

  It happened on an evening when, instead of dining at the country club, they had gone into Pensacola for dinner.

  A man in his early twenties, in civilian clothing, had wolfwhistled her as she and Win had been about to walk into a restaurant.

  Wallis hadn’t found the attention in the least insulting, but Win’s reaction had been instantaneous.

  With an ugly blasphemy he had spun around, closing the distance between himself and the man in swift strides. Couples strolling nearby, sensing that an altercation was imminent, had speedily scattered.

  Wallis, sensing the same thing, had run after Win, shouting that the wolf whistle didn’t matter.

  Ignoring her, he had seized hold of the man and then, to her horror, had grabbed him by the throat and slammed his head hard against a wall.

  With blood trickling down his face, the man had buckled at the knees, slumping into a huddle at Win’s feet.

  Women had screamed. A crowd had gathered. Win, not troubling to see how badly injured his victim was, had brushed his uniform down and then pushed his way through the spectators to where Wallis was standing, almost senseless with shock.

  All he had said, as he had taken hold of her arm, was, “We have a table booked for eight. We need to be on our way.”

  “But shouldn’t we call for an ambulance?” She hadn’t been able to see if the man was still so dazed as to be semiconscious because of the crowd that had gathered around him, but even if he wasn’t she knew he must still be bleeding.

  “If he needs one, someone will call one.”

  He’d propelled her into the restaurant and had ordered himself a stiff brandy. Minutes later the police had arrived and Wallis had been forced to admire the way Win dealt with the situation. He had made it sound as if his reaction to her having been insulted was the only possible reaction for a man of honor. While the questioning was going on, news had come that the man was on his feet and the police officers, mindful of the gold stripes on Win’s uniformed shoulders, had shared a drink with them and left.

  From then on she had appreciated just what it was Archie had tried to tell her. Win had a hair-trigger temper, and people crossed him, or insulted her, at their peril.

  In June her conscience about not having seen her mother since Christmas pricked her so strongly she could no longer ignore it.

  “I’m goin’ to have to make another trip to Baltimore, sweetheart,” she said to Win, hoping, because he had missed her so much the last time she had paid a visit home, that he wouldn’t make a scene about it.

  For a moment she thought he was going to do so. His thick black eyebrows drew together in the way they did whenever things weren’t going the way he wanted.

  “I won’t be gone for long, darling. A couple of weeks at most.”

  “I’m due leave.” His eyebrows were still pulled together, but this time she knew it wasn’t because his mood had suddenly changed, but because he was thinking. “How about I come with you to Baltimore? Meet your folks?”

  Wallis’s inner elation knew no bounds. Win would never have made such a suggestion if he weren’t intending asking her to marry him. If she showed that elation, though, he would know the reason for it, and she had enough savvy to know that displays of overeagerness for marriage had scuppered many an imminent proposal.

  “That would be great,” she said, with the same intonation in her voice as if he had suggested they go to Electric Park or Santa Rosa. “Mama loves socializing with new people, and Aunt Bessie will be thrilled to be told all about airplanes from the only aviator she is ever likely to meet.”

  To her mother and her aunt she wrote that she would be visiting soon—and that Win would be accompanying her—but that they were on no account to behave as if she and Win were already engaged.

  … because it could just possibly spoil everything and I do so want to become a Navy wife. Just treat him as my beau—which he most definitely is—and leave all talk of marriage till after he has finally popped the question.

  Her big decision, as the date of their trip drew nearer, was whether to introduce Win to her Uncle Sol, because she had absolutely no idea what her uncle’s reaction would be. Would he be pleased that she had a beau who, in traveling from Florida in order to meet her family, obviously had marriage in mind and who came from a family able to trace its lineage back to the 1600s—and who, into the bargain, was a naval officer holding a very responsible position at Pensacola? Or would he be furious that she was considering marriage to a man who was neither a member of
Baltimore high society nor conspicuously wealthy?

  In the end, she knew the introduction would have to be made. A sudden announcement, made from Pensacola, that she wished to become engaged to someone he had never met would mean he would, on principle, instantly oppose the match.

  When the day came for them to travel north, they did so by train, sitting in a compartment, her hand tightly held in his. There were other people in the compartment, but their handholding couldn’t be frowned on, because she was wearing a pair of kid gloves and so no one could tell that there were no rings on the third finger of her left hand.

  As the train steamed out of Florida into Georgia, Wallis was sure that this was exactly how it would be for the two of them when, after their wedding, they left by train for their honeymoon destination. Which would be where?

  Their wedding would, quite obviously, take place in Baltimore. Unless there were very unusual circumstances, brides always married in their hometown and at the church where they had been confirmed and at which their family were regular attendees, which, in her case, was the Episcopalian Christ Church.

  She knew Win was longing to say loving words to her, but with other people in the compartment it was impossible, and he had to content himself with occasionally giving her hand a very hard, meaningful squeeze. Meanwhile, she continued to daydream and make plans.

  Whom would she have as her matron of honor and her bridesmaids, and how many bridesmaids would she have? Too many, eight or ten, would be seen as being vulgar. Six would be the most acceptable number.

  She knew from Win that he had a sister, Ethel. Even if Ethel was plain as a pot, she would most definitely have to be invited to be a bridesmaid. Her cousin Lelia would also, without question, be another, and, if she had a Montague cousin as a bridesmaid, then she would have to drum up a Warfield cousin. She would also need to have a couple of friends from her Oldfields days, Alice Maud Van Rensselaer or Phoebe Schermerhorn or Ellen Yuille.