She walked out of the drawing room just in time to see Hero’s cousin hauling a stack of books in from the porch. A set of scales was balanced on top, and the tip of her tongue stuck out from the corner of her mouth in concentration.
“Oh,” Beatrice said when she noticed Maggie. “Don’t mind me. I figured instead of waiting on the mythical boys Hero keeps mentioning, I could haul in some of my things piece by piece; then when it’s light enough, I’ll take the trunk up myself.”
Maggie’s head tilted. “Not really the napping sort, are you?”
Beatrice blew a curl out of her eyes. “No, I suppose not.”
“Well,” said Maggie, moving past her. She’d help if she didn’t now have to round up a comprehensive set number for a cellist who’d never played with them. “Don’t mind us either, and you’ll fit right in.”
CHAPTER 4
MEN OF SOME OTHER METAL
By the time Benedick, Prince, and Claude made it back to Hey Nonny Nonny, the Model T limping along, it was nearly lunch. They were a miserable assembly, covered in grease, dirt, and booze, their clothes sweated through twice over. At this rate they’d be serving their tears at the Masquerade tomorrow.
Claude had grown quiet, a little less cavalier about missing his exam that afternoon, while Benedick’s mood only improved the closer they got to Flower Hill. The days on Long Island seemed to have twice as many hours as in the city; a decent drink was two miles away, and an evening paper was six. That was what made Hey Nonny Nonny such a prime spot. A hidden pearl of nightlife and excitement without traveling to Manhattan.
In the daytime it was the opposite of the life he knew: very merry and very poor. Supperless one night and feasting the next; borrowing one another’s last dollars for the sake of laundered tablecloths or a fixed microphone, knowing a good night could win them back the butter or milk they’d sacrificed for the next day’s breakfast.
When they pulled into the drive, he was so caught up in how right it all felt that he almost didn’t notice the girl on the shabby porch.
She was sitting cross-legged on a wicker chair, her skirt bunched around her knees so it looked as if she were wearing bulky trousers. She didn’t seem like one of Hero’s friends, her plain travel clothes a decade out of fashion and her untidy hair of no fashion at all. Not to mention the three books on her lap; Hero could barely be bothered to crack a gossip rag.
“Who is that?” asked Benedick.
“Must be the cousin?” Prince answered.
The girl lifted her head as they passed, and alarm spread over her features as she took in the bullet holes and the shattered window. Benedick checked behind them, just to be sure none of their semi-destroyed wares were visible.
The mysterious girl disappeared from sight as they went around the side of the house.
“I didn’t see the Lambda,” said Prince. “Did you?”
“No,” Benedick said with dismay. “Maybe that wasn’t the cousin, and they’re still in Manhattan?”
Before anyone could suggest they unload the Lizzie and send it back on the road, it sputtered and sank several inches into the weedy ground, smoke trailing from the engine.
“I beg your pardon.”
Benedick’s heart issued an unwelcome thump at the sudden voice at his side. The girl from the porch was right by the door, and she was peering in at them.
She continued. “There’s not a band of outlaws behind you to finish the job, is there? Your axle is bent, I don’t know if you noticed. That’s why the back wheel was rotating so poorly. Do you board here? I bet I could fix your axle, and possibly the leak, too, as a courtesy—if my uncle has any tools lying around, which, well, let’s not hold our breaths, but—”
Benedick held up a hand. If he angled it right, he could block her mouth from his line of vision.
She blinked at his hand, then looked back at him. Her voice cooled and slowed to a more human pace. “What? Do you want me to stop talking, is that what that is?”
Perhaps she didn’t know she was the sort of presence that required slow digestion at first. Her stare was direct—channeled through absurdly big eyes, the kind a more inclined man might trip and drown in, if he weren’t watching his step—but she was not exceptionally pretty. She was just aggressively there.
“Yes, all right.” Her gaze swept through the car, over them. Benedick’s skin itched. “There’s a chance you’ve been through some trauma. I’ll speak slowly. My name’s Beatrice Clark. I’m the landlord’s niece.”
Prince recovered first. He leaned over the wheel and offered one of his comfortable smiles. “Hello, Miss Clark. You’re Hero’s cousin? I’m Prince, and this is my friend, Benedick Scott, and his schoolmate, Claude Blaine. I guess we look pretty bad, but we had a somewhat unplanned morning. The situation is not as unscrupulous as it appears. Or smells.”
The side of her mouth lifted. “I was warned about you, yes. Would you like me to get Hero?”
“Don’t trouble yourself. Ben, why don’t you take Blaine in so he can get cleaned up, and then perhaps you can show Miss Clark here where we keep the tools?”
Benedick cut his eyes to Prince, and received, for his trouble, a subtle throat clearing. He sighed, understanding that he was to keep the cousin occupied and away from the car.
“Pardon me,” he drawled, making a show of opening the door so she was forced to step back. He unearthed his typewriter from under the seat; a quick peek inside showed Isabella had weathered the trip all right. “Come with me, Blaine. We’ll get you a spare shirt to borrow for the ride back. And Miss Clark? If you’d do me the great honor of following us in, I’ll point you to the special automotive toolbox once he’s settled.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Scott.” There was a dryness to her voice that suggested she knew there might not be a special automotive toolbox, but she trailed behind them nonetheless.
“I like this house,” Claude said, stepping onto the wraparound porch, not a hint of irony to his tone. “Don’t you think there’s something deliciously untidy about it? Like a tree house in the woods.”
“If your tree houses run the size of mansions,” said Beatrice.
“Oh, this is much smaller than our estate in England.”
“Of course it is.”
Benedick opened the back service door and stepped inside a dusty hallway. Even with the two babbling accessories behind him, he felt his equilibrium realign, become right.
He’d have lost his nerve or his balance years ago if he hadn’t had Hey Nonny Nonny to come and breathe in. There were things inside him that he lost outside its walls, that he could only seem to find again once he was back.
“How is it you’re a boarder, again? You seem young.” Beatrice’s voice reasserted itself in his consciousness in a matter of seconds. It was a voice made for that sort of thing: precise, like an aimed arrow. Already he wished he could hear less of it if only because it was so difficult to ignore.
“I’m not,” Claude answered. “This is my first time here. Scott and I go to prep school in Brooklyn. Or we did, rather.”
Benedick interrupted. “The main stairs are this way.”
He led them down a second hall, a threadbare rug beneath their feet, passing a wall lamp that, when tugged, would open up a foot-wide passage to the kitchen. He heard Beatrice draw a breath behind him, signaling that her arrow voice was about to let fly again, so he spoke before she could. “Hey Nonny Nonny was owned by the Ottoman family—Anna Stahr’s parents—before the turn of the century, then known simply as the Ottoman Cottage.”
“You see?” Claude said. “Cottage.”
“Anna”—Benedick continued—“was disowned by her parents, for both her unseemly brand of politics and her choice of husband, but she was the apple of her father’s eye, so instead of cutting her off entirely, they gave her the deed for this property and told her never to contact them again. She rechristened it Hey Nonny Nonny.”
They reached the staircase in the foyer, and he bounded up the step
s two at a time.
Beatrice asked, “I thought you weren’t a boarder? How do you know that story?”
He had only himself to blame for giving her the opening. Luckily they’d reached Prince’s room. “Ah, here we are. Don’t move an inch,” he told Beatrice sweetly, then gestured at Claude to follow him inside. “I’ll just be a few moments getting Mr. Blaine here settled.”
He shut the door and grabbed a fresh shirt from a dresser drawer, along with a half-used bar of soap from Prince’s washbasin. “Washroom’s down the hall if you need it.”
“You don’t honestly think they’d expel me?” Claude asked, taking the soap and shirt. “By now they’ll know I’m gone.”
“Your family funds the fencing team and at least two-thirds of the library. You’ll be fine.”
Claude’s expression drooped in relief; it always helped to have one’s privilege confirmed. “Still, this car situation is a bit rummy.”
“We ought to be able to patch up the Model T enough to get to Manhasset; then you can take the train back. That’s what I do most of the time. Even if the car’s truly done for, it’s not quite two miles. We can walk. Give us half an hour. Maybe I can get some coffee and food in the meantime.”
“Sure you won’t come back with me?”
Halfway out the door Benedick glanced back over his shoulder. “Not on your life, Blaine.”
The hallway was empty.
Not two minutes, and Beatrice Clark was gone. Dread swept over him.
He hurried down the steps, tentatively calling, “Miss Clark?” He searched downstairs, but found her nowhere. Finally, with resignation, he went outside. The Model T was in the same place, off-kilter, much less smoky, but Beatrice wasn’t there either. Benedick checked the backseat. Prince had already unloaded the survivors of their trip.
As he shut the door again, a swinging branch nearly took his feet out from under him. With a strangled shout, he jerked back and tumbled to the ground.
“Oops—excuse me. I didn’t realize you were there.”
None other than Beatrice Clark finished crawling out from under the car, twirling a misshapen tree branch in one hand. “Turns out, your axle is fine, but this was lodged up in the frame. Can you imagine?”
Her question was not entirely rhetorical. He could hear the underlying accusation, but for once in his life words failed him. She was wearing a pair of men’s coveralls, threadbare and stained, the sleeves rolled up past her elbows. Boots, the kind Prince would approve of, were tied to her calves.
“Would you like help, Mr. Scott?” She extended a hand down to him.
“Certainly not.” He stood on his own, brushing himself off—not that it made much difference at this point. “Where did you find tools?”
“In the car. Most good drivers keep the basics with them, especially with the old Fords.” She lifted the hood and propped it open with the branch. “Your other problem, at least what I could see from the bottom up, is that one of the . . . holes you acquired caught a valve, and it’s leaking. The quickest fix, without a mechanic’s shop, is to get some plain cloth and dip it in heated rosin—sap essentially—then lay a bit of rubber scrap over that and tie it tight. If you like—”
“I told you to wait inside,” Benedick, frustrated, cut her off.
She turned and nailed him with a look. You wouldn’t think such a skinny, odd, plainish thing could deliver such a blistering stare, but she managed.
“The first thing you ought to know about me, Mr. Scott, is I don’t like being told what to do. Secondly, we both know ‘special automotive toolbox’ was your name for whatever distraction you were going to cook up to keep me away from the car, and of course now we see why.”
Benedick stiffened defensively. He strode forward and snatched the branch in one hand. The hood slammed closed.
“Here’s a riddle for you, Miss Clark, since you’re so clever. If you figured out we were trying to keep you away from the car, why venture out to do precisely that?”
“Obviously you were hiding—”
“If you ask me, it speaks of a naturally rebellious nature; you yourself claimed the character flaw with pride. Now, as I recall, you were retrieved early this morning from Inwood, near northern Manhattan, which anyone can tell you is the location of a home for wayward and criminal girls. The conclusion practically draws itself.” He turned the branch in his hand, faux-casually examining the knots and lines in the wood. “Seems to me you are at the charity of your relatives. With a reputation for trouble. I consider it a kindness to tell you that it might behoove you to mind your own business.”
Color flooded into Beatrice’s cheeks; however, it looked less like the flush of embarrassment than like a building rage. Her chin lifted. She inhaled through her nose, and Benedick felt a little as if he were at the end of a gun being cocked to fire.
“Fair point,” Beatrice said. “Though it begs the question, Mr. Scott, of how a city prep boy knows a countryside house and its occupants so well. You are clearly rich, clearly educated, and as an actual rebel I consider it a kindness to tell you that you are but an amateur. For all your astute observation, it seems to me you and I are in the same spot, subject to the same mercies.”
She stepped closer. Benedick resisted the urge to put back the distance between them.
“If we are destined to be enemies,” she said, “remember this: I belong to Hey Nonny Nonny by blood, and you belong only by what appears to be arrogant whimsy. Sir.”
Benedick stared at this frizzy-haired blight on his sanctuary and had the uncanny feeling of resuming an eternal battle. Destiny indeed. “Who says we must be enemies?” he said, switching tracks. He tossed the branch aside and offered a smile. Beatrice did not return it. “If you care so much, then go ahead and finish your good deed of the day. Sap’s that way, if you need it.” He pointed at the woods beyond Hey Nonny Nonny and took two steps toward the house but, unable to help himself, turned back. He held out his hands, every bit of his oily, dirty, sweaty, ruined clothes on display. “What about me is clearly rich?”
Beatrice laughed. Her laugh was as uninhibited and untidy as the rest of her. “Mr. Scott, even if a little ground ends up on your clothes, it doesn’t stop you from walking on it as if you owned it.”
His father walked like that. Benedick didn’t. Did he?
Having no other reply (again), he went inside, this time to the kitchen. The pantry kitchen was barely bigger than his own bedroom: a stove, an icebox, one rickety cupboard, and ladles and spoons hanging from bent iron nails. Mostly it served as the secret entrance for the speakeasy.
Maggie was at the deep sink up to her elbows in a bucket of water, on her tiptoes so she could reach all the way in. He recognized the growling set of her mouth and knew she was pondering the value of one good scream.
“Hello, Mags,” he said.
She straightened. “Ben! How you—whoa.” She held up a hand and took a step back. “You smell like a drunk man buried alive and dug up again.”
“Exactly!”
She gave him a funny look.
“I don’t smell like a prep school graduate, now do I?”
“Dunno. Only rich white boys get away with being strange as you are.” Her eyes crinkled at his frown. She flicked filmy water at him. “I’m joking.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Washing dishes, what’s it look like? Never mind I’ve got five sets to practice for the Masquerade and the band will be here tonight; but the stack was taller than Prince, and all anybody can say is ‘We’ll get to it, we’ll get to it.’ When? When we’re eating off the floor, that’s when.” Her cheeks puffed as she caught her breath. “I am not the maid, Ben. I’m not. Hey Nonny Nonny was supposed to save me from this kind of work.”
Hey Nonny Nonny used to have a maid, back in its heyday. Two, and a housekeeper and a cook and a butler who’d managed the valets and waiters. After Anna’s death they left one by one. Not out of disloyalty, but because they still had families to feed, an
d Leo stopped being able to pay them.
“I’ll finish the dishes.” He shoved up his sleeves, ignoring the urge to shout out the back porch: See? Look!
Maggie, doubtful, put a hand on her hip.
Benedick nudged her gently aside and grabbed a plate from the dirty stack. “You’re not the maid,” he said, “and I’m not rich and useless.”
Maggie’s face softened. “You are strange, though,” she said, coming to his other side. He scrubbed and rinsed; she dried and put away.
“You meet the new cousin?” asked Maggie.
“Did I have the misfortune?” Benedick grumbled. “Yes.”
“What? Don’t like her?”
“Do you?” He didn’t bother hiding his incredulity.
“Why wouldn’t I? Don’t know her much yet, but she was nice, I guess. You’re just mad ’cause she’s smarter than you.”
“How do you know she’s smarter than me?”
“’Cause she’s the kind who’s smarter than everybody.”
“You cannot possibly know that already.”
“Can so. Eyes never lie, and she’s got brainy eyes.”
“What kind of eyes do I have?”
“Dreamer eyes.”
“Mags!”
“What? Ain’t a bad thing.” She turned at a muted thumping inside the open pantry. Benedick handed her the last glass just as the back wall shifted, got stuck a moment, then popped open.
Hero stepped through. “And whatever happened to Corney?”
“The Minskys bought him out,” said Prince, coming up behind her. He had to duck through the entrance to avoid hitting his head. “They’ve bought out everyone from the rum line.”
“We can’t keep watering down our already watered-down supply— Ben!” Hero’s eyes lit up. “You’re home! Come here immediately, so I can kiss you.” He walked dutifully over and leaned down to let her buss him on the cheek. “Are you finished with that dreadful school of yours yet? I hate seeing you only a few days at a time.”
“Done as a Christmas ham.”
“I guess that’s about the only piece of good news I’ve heard all day. Did you meet my cousin yet?”
Speak Easy, Speak Love Page 4