by Carolyn Hart
“I didn’t hear you, Spencer.”
“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t startle you.”
“Not at all.” She closed the piano lid and stood. “Did your day go well?”
He frowned, a quick, nervous frown that she recognized. Spencer frowned so often now.
“It’s touch and go. Touch and go,” he said somberly.
Catharine wished she could say something to ease the strain in him, but she knew him well enough, for all their distance now, to know she couldn’t help. He’d always been very ambitious, determined to succeed in the Foreign Service. Perhaps it was his very absorption in his future that first attracted her in Paris. He was so different from Reggie. She knew that no matter what happened, Spencer would plunge ahead, determined, intent on his goal.
It was much later, several years after they were married, that she’d realized clearly and dispassionately that Spencer would always move to his own advantage—and she’d realized also that her wealth was a marked advantage to his progress in the State Department. The MacLeish fortune made possible very lovely homes no matter where they were posted and exquisite dinner parties that put Spencer on an equal social footing with the scions of great families who often served as ambassadors.
Spencer had always put the first priority on his work, but, since Charles’s death, he’d redoubled his efforts and worked harder than ever. Catharine didn’t begrudge the long hours. Each of them had to grieve in his own way. He worked nights and weekends, coordinating American shipments of foodstuffs and arms across the Atlantic to England; now standing alone against Hitler. She knew that not even Spencer could separate in his mind how much pressure came from the war and how much from himself.
“Are the figures very bad?”
“Worse and worse.” Spencer shook his head. “If the wolf packs keep it up, there isn’t any hope. The tonnage loss is staggering—and Britain can’t fight on if the supplies don’t arrive.” He pushed his hand through his thinning blond hair and managed a tight smile. “But we can’t live with it every minute. We have a very special invitation tonight, thanks to you, Catharine. Lord Laswell wants us to join him at the Savoy.”
Catharine’s eyes dropped away from Spencer’s. She looked down at the muted pattern in the dusty rose rug. It was at the Savoy . . .
“Lord Laswell said his wife found you very charming.”
Slowly, Catharine looked up at Spencer. She wondered what he would say if she replied, “Oh, yes, that dreadful, empty-headed woman.” Instead, she said quietly, “That’s nice.”
Spencer was smiling at her warmly. “You know, Catharine, I really do appreciate your efforts, the way you go out with our British friends. I know this night club business isn’t your kind of thing, but you’ve been very good to cement relations.”
No, nightclubbing didn’t thrill her. She went, as part of a rather desperately jolly young set, because it was harder to hear the sirens and the bombs when the music played.
She wondered what Spencer would say if she told him that. Would he understand?
He was still beaming at her. “In any event, it’s turning out very well indeed. It could be important to know Lord Laswell.”
Oh, yes, she understood Spencer. It never hurt an ambitious American diplomat to be on good terms with a powerful British peer.
“The Savoy,” she repeated slowly.
Jack Maguire paused at the top of the steps leading down to the Savoy dining room, just as he had every evening for the past six nights.
Tonight his perseverance was rewarded.
He saw her at once, at the same table where he’d first glimpsed her. And there was Lord Laswell again.
He started down the steps, smiling. He’d wondered how he would feel when he saw her again. Would the magic be gone? Tonight she wore a silver dress that revealed bare shoulders and the soft fullness of her breasts; the magic was still there. She was lovely, remote, desirable.
He moved quickly down the steps into the dining room. When he reached her table, his eyes still intent on her, the rather supercilious-looking blond man beside her looked up inquiringly.
Jack looked directly at her. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Jack Maguire.”
He would never forget the instant before she answered. Time stretched out; sound and movement faded away. There was nothing in the world but her; nothing mattered but her answer.
She looked up, her violet eyes dark with uncertainty. “I . . .” She paused. “Of course, I remember you, Mr. Maguire.”
He heard the tiny tremor in her voice.
“It was at the War Relief meeting, wasn’t it? Mr. Maguire, I don’t believe you’ve met my husband, Spencer Cavanaugh.”
Spencer rose. As they shook hands, Jack appraised his adversary.
Cavanaugh was tall, slender, and elegant; his tuxedo fit perfectly. His face was smooth and expressionless, like a banker’s. He was too polite to show irritation at Jack’s arrival, but his disinterest was clear. He did introduce Jack around the table, and he asked perfunctorily, “Won’t you join us, Mr. Maguire?”
Jack smiled. “For a moment. I’m meeting friends for dinner, but they haven’t arrived yet.”
When the waiter brought a chair, Jack gestured for it to be placed next to hers. As he sat down, Spencer asked, “Are you involved in the War Relief effort, Mr. Maguire?”
“No. I’m a correspondent with INS.”
For an instant, Spencer’s face froze; then he said carefully, “Oh, of course.” He turned to the rest of the table. “Maguire here is a newspaper chap.” He said it pleasantly, but he’d given warning.
“And you, Mr. Cavanaugh?” Jack asked, his own voice smooth and pleasant.
Spencer looked a little affronted. “I thought since you’d met Catharine . . .” He paused and cleared his throat. “I’m State Department. Financial adviser at the embassy.”
“Yes, of course,” Jack said agreeably. “I’d forgotten for a moment. Challenging work, I know.”
“Not the sort of thing to discuss in public,” Spencer said stiffly.
“Certainly not.”
Lord Laswell broke in. “Too much talk altogether these days. Can’t help but aid Fritz. We must . . .”
Spencer turned toward his host, and Jack looked at Catharine.
She looked back, unsmiling.
The band slid into “Harbor Lights.”
“Would you like to dance?”
She didn’t answer, but she slowly stood, paused for an instant, then turned toward the dance floor. Following, he once again sensed in her an impulse to flight, though she walked gracefully and unhurriedly ahead. When they reached the dance floor and she turned to face him, Jack felt a rush of triumph. In only an instant, she would be in his arms.
He held her lightly and smiled down at her grave and serious face. “You are very lovely.”
She stiffened a little. “I don’t know you.” She stared up at him, her violet eyes huge and dark and questioning. “Why did you come up to the table?”
“You know why.”
Slowly, she shook her head.
“Yes, you do. I saw you—and I had to know you.”
She tried to smile. “That’s very kind of you.”
“No. It isn’t kind. Or sensible. I saw you—and you looked so alone.”
“That first night?”
He nodded.
“I was with friends.”
“You were all alone.”
“Yes.” The word was faint, just a breath of sound. The hand resting on his arm tightened for a moment. “You see a very great deal, Mr. Maguire.”
“Jack.”
“Jack.” She said his name tentatively, but it marked a beginning, and they both knew it.
The plaintive song was almost over, and Catharine glanced back toward her table. He felt the beginning of a withdrawal.
“Catharine, meet me tomorrow.”
The music ended.
They still stood in a dancers’ embrace. Her eyes were e
normous now, filled with uncertainty. She pulled away and started across the floor.
Spencer didn’t see them coming. He was deep in conversation with Lord Laswell.
“At four o’clock,” Jack said urgently. “At the little bridge in St. James’s Park.”
The muffled roar of faraway explosions woke Catharine. She lay rigid in her bed, listening; then, slowly, she began to relax. The bombs weren’t coming nearer, at least not yet. Her hands were clenched in tight fists. She fought the fear, contained it. All across London, millions lay in their beds, frightened, too, or moved in restless sleep in the underground stations, or stumbled wearily down steps to cellars.
Was Spencer awake now, too?
Surely he must be. No one could sleep through the dull rumble of destruction, louder now, louder and nearer. Did he, too, lie and stare sightless through the dark, made doubly dark and airless by the blackout curtains?
But they didn’t comfort each other.
Spencer. How long had it been since she and Spencer had held each other, talked, loved? So long. Such a long and lonely time.
Catharine moved uncomfortably. She remembered the feel of strong arms, the warmth of a hand at her waist, and the melancholy strains of “Harbor Lights.”
What madness impelled her to pretend that she knew him?
Not madness. Hunger.
She wanted to know him. The thought rang as clear, sharp, and distinct as a single bell at dawn. She wanted terribly, passionately, desperately to know him, to know who he was, where he came from, and where he was going, to know whether her instinctive response could become a miracle of closeness or was just a product of her own loneliness.
He saw that she was alone despite her laughing companions. It was profoundly true, profoundly and painfully true, and she wanted to know the man who saw that.
She loosened her tightly clenched hands. The explosions were farther away now. Others would die tonight, but not she.
She remembered the sound of his voice. It was a little hoarse, but deep and confident. “Meet me tomorrow. At four at the little bridge in St. James’s Park.”
She could do it very easily, of course. There was a meeting at three not far from there. She could walk to the park and, despite the piled-up sandbags and barrage balloons, there would be signs of spring. Anyone might want to walk in the park in the spring.
She was a married woman. She had never been unfaithful to Spencer, never considered it. It was unthinkable. Once again, Jack’s face filled her mind, touched her heart.
Jack lit another cigarette as he paced impatiently up and down. It was only five minutes after four, so there was no need to panic, but he felt a welling sense of fear. She must come. She must.
Then he saw her. Happiness flooded through him, and he knew it had been years and years since he had felt this alive.
She walked with her arms swinging loosely. Her sleek black hair was rolled at the nape of her neck beneath her yellow hat. The drawn-back hair emphasized the striking beauty of her face, the clean line of bone from jaw to chin, and the vividness of her violet eyes. Her stride checked for just an instant when she saw him; then she came ahead.
Jack dropped his cigarette, ground it out, and hurried to meet her. He reached out to take her hands. “You came.”
“I don’t know why. I don’t know anything about you,” she said breathlessly.
“Where shall I start?”
“Anywhere.”
“Jack Maguire. Third of four Maguire boys. Grew up in Chicago. Good Catholic family. My brother Ralph’s a priest. Everybody’s respectable but me.”
She laughed, more at ease now. “Why aren’t you respectable?”
He grinned. “There’s something a little disreputable about dodging around the world covering prize fights and executions and wars.”
“You’ve done all that?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
He stopped and looked down; his face grew serious. “I guess I’ve been looking for something all my life.”
She stared up into intensely alive blue eyes. His hand reached out and gently touched her cheek, a feather-light stroke. “I think I’ve been looking for you.”
She felt the sudden burn of tears in her eyes; then she turned and walked away, jamming her hands into the pockets of her raincoat.
He followed and had to bend near to hear her.
“I’ll disappoint you. I’m just Catharine Cavanaugh.” She drew her breath in sharply. “Mrs. Spencer Cavanaugh—and I shouldn’t be here.”
He reached out and gripped her shoulder and turned her to face him. “But you came.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She shook her head at that.
“Why, Catharine?” he repeated insistently.
“Oh, God,” she replied bitterly. “For so many reasons—and I guess all of them are wrong.”
“Do you love your husband?”
That was the question, the direct challenge, the demand. She stared up at him, her face strained and taut.
“Answer me, Catharine.”
Finally, and the pain in her eyes hurt him, she whispered, “No.”
“Why did you marry him?”
“You don’t ask much, do you?”
Abruptly, he pulled her into his arms, curved his arms around her, pressed his face against her hair. She stood rigid in his embrace, and then he said gently, “Please, Catharine. Tell me.”
Her hands came free from her pockets, and she reached out and clung to him. She clung to him for a long moment, then pulled free and looked away, looked across the water toward Duck Island. “I’d have to go back a good many years.”
“Go back.”
She stared at the glittering water and, for the first time in ages, permitted herself to remember. “It was the summer I was seventeen . . .”
It was a sunny, clear afternoon, and the air had that particular soft, silky feel that she would always, the rest of her life, associate with Pasadena. She’d just finished playing tennis with her father, and they looked up at Ted shouting.
“Hey, Dad, Cath, I’ve got a friend for you to meet.”
Catharine shaded her eyes, looked past her brother, and saw a tall, slim man with dark blond hair, sleepy blue eyes, and a curving blond mustache.
“This is Reggie, Sis. He’s the best polo player in England. Besides that, he shot down thirteen planes in the war.”
Reggie shrugged away Ted’s grand claims, but it was too late. Catharine was enchanted, and she fell headlong in love, a dreamy, wonderful first love.
The woman looked back at the girl, then said quietly to Jack, “I suppose I rather overwhelmed Reggie. I thought he was marvelous—and I told everyone so—and he was too much of a gentleman to make me look a fool.”
“He must have been the fool,” Jack interposed.
Catharine shook her head, her eyes dark. “We spent every minute together that summer, and I thought it was all settled. Then, without a word to me, he went back to England.”
She looked up at Jack and wondered what he thought. Could he picture the girl she had been? An eager, confident, happy girl, so different from the woman of today. At seventeen, she was so sure—and willing to plunge ahead no matter what convention might dictate.
Catharine looked back across the water. “I went to England.” A simple sentence, but what boldness it had required. She marveled now at that act. She had been so decisive, so certain. Oh, God, so very certain.
Catharine slowly shook her head. “He was too gentle to fend me off, though I began to realize there were times when he drank too much. He drank when he remembered the planes he’d shot down. Once he told me, ‘I could see his face. Catharine, he was just a kid. Just a kid.’ And his voice broke. Reggie tried to send me home. He said he could go for a while and then it was too hard and he had to drink and that wasn’t right for a girl like me.” Catharine watched the pelicans gather for their feeding. “But I was so sure. I wouldn’t let him go.”
Jack offered her a cigarette. He lit it and one for himself. “What happened, Catharine?”
“The day before the wedding, he took his biplane up—and flew it straight down into the ground.”
Jack blew out a thin stream of blue smoke, and, once again, he wanted to take her in his arms.
“You poor damn kid.”
“I went to Paris, art school. I learned how to paint still lifes, and that’s what my life was, a still life. A few years later, I went to a party at the American embassy. I met Spencer.”
He looked at her sharply. Her voice was even and uninflected, neither happy nor sad.
“Spencer was very nice to me.” She grimaced a little. “That sounds terribly prim, doesn’t it? But he was gentle and caring, and he wanted so much to marry me. Finally, I thought, why not? I married him, but you’re right, I didn’t love him. I didn’t want to love him. I didn’t want ever again to love anyone.”
She hadn’t been fair to Spencer. Had she ever been fair to him? But there had been happy days, many of them, and if she saw his faults, she saw his strengths, too: devotion to duty, good heartedness. If Charles had lived, they might have found in him an anchor for their lives.
But Charles had not lived.
She stared hopelessly at Jack.
“The first time I saw you,” Jack said gently, “I could see the pulse fluttering in your throat. I wanted to hold you in my arms and tell you it was all right.”
He reached out, but she stepped back, her composure broken.
“I’m sorry,” she said, choking back tears, “I shouldn’t have come today. I shouldn’t have come.” And she turned and ran blindly down the path.
“I have to see you.”
His voice was so strong over the telephone, it was almost like having him stand beside her. Catharine remembered with incredible precision the way his thick black hair curled behind his ears and the piercing brightness of his blue eyes.
She clutched the phone, tried to answer, couldn’t. Her throat felt tight and choked.
“I’ll come over there.”
“No,” she managed. She took a deep breath. “Jack, we’ve nothing to say to each other.” Oh, she knew that wasn’t true, but this was dangerous and foolish and would lead only to heartbreak. She would break this off before it could grow.