He grinned wickedly. “Maybe I should stay away twice as long next time. And the business was really that. Besides, there are some things about London one should only do and see alone.”
“Thanks for the consideration,” she said.
His grin remained. “This is the bon vivant talking, you know. I am one, by the way. I’m living it up even if Uncle Harry is no longer supporting me directly. Come and have a cup of tea. I can’t pry anything stronger out of our good boniface here until opening time.”
Like Portia, he jumped from subject to subject without warning when he rambled, Lenny thought. “Nothing, thanks. I just had breakfast.”
“Then we’ll take a walk. Whistle when the pub is open, captain.” Taking her hand, Tommy Price led her to the door and out into the bright sunshine.
“Race you to that driftwood and back.”
“On these heels?” Lenny swept a hand down, indicating the green, full cotton skirt that swirled as she took a step, and the matching green pumps she had put on because she liked her legs better in heels. “And who is Uncle Harry?”
“The man who had a favorite nephew,” Tommy said. He grinned down at her. “He kept me in funds, lo, these many years—probably so I wouldn’t come and live with him. Then he decided to die—at a ripely satisfactory age—and he left me quantities of stocks and other things that keep giving birth to dividends.”
Lenny shook her head. She could see his imposing Bentley sports coupé parked where Barr’s Riley had been last night. Nothing but the best for T. Price, he had always said.
“Tell me what you’re doing here.” They both said it together and laughed. Tommy said, “I’ll talk if you’ll come for a ride with me. On a day like this, the air calls for laughter and cheer, quantities of wine, dancing and singing in the meadow.”
She hesitated, but Tommy’s grip on her arm, steering her toward the car, was insistent. Perhaps this would be the quickest way to get rid of Tommy, she told herself.
“I’m a working girl, remember,” she said. She slid into the luxurious interior and waited until he came around and got beneath the wheel. “I have to be serious part of my day.”
“Have to make up for lost time,” he said. He started the car, backed around and went smoothly up the gravel to the village. As they turned, Lenny could see the back of the inn and a bit of the bay between it and the headland that bore the cottages. She thought she recognized Barr coming from his cottage. He was trotting down toward the inn. Then he stopped and shaded his eyes as though looking after them.
The big Bentley turned again, blotting out her view. It snaked silently past the church and onto the open road. Lenny turned to look ahead.
“How in heaven’s name did you ever find me?” she demanded. “I left instructions at the hotel not to give out my address.”
“That’s the effect old T. Price has on ‘em,” he said with a rueful side glance at her. “But hotels aren’t immune to extra cash; at least underpaid clerks aren’t. And by convincing a certain one that I was your deserted husband, I got your address here.”
“Tommy—not really!”
“The deserted part is true,” he said with mock-heaviness. “Why did you turn from the fleshpots so soon?”
“There’s a little church here,” she said. Somehow, although she had known the question would come, she wasn’t quite prepared for it. “And Leon was busy and …”
The car slowed and his head swiveled toward her. “Leon is here?”
She remembered now that she had deliberately not mentioned Leon before. “You didn’t know?”
The car picked up speed again. “Hell no, or I’d have looked the old rake up. He was the one you were really looking for at the airport then?”
“No,” she admitted. “You know Leon wouldn’t get up that early. I saw him in the evening.”
There was a strain between them. She could feel it in the silence that fell. Tommy broke it. “So things have happened?”
“What do you mean by that?” She said it quickly, too quickly.
“Now don’t go getting scratchy with Uncle T., honey. It’s just that you don’t sound quite the same now when you say ‘Leon.’ There’s no smoke of passion coming out with the word.”
“Tommy!”
He was not at all gay now. “This is the day I’ve been waiting for, and I’m bumbling again, as usual.”
She put a hand on his arm. “You’re very sweet, Tommy.”
He was grinning again, apparently having thrown aside his brief mood. “Yep, I’m the guy they coined the phrase ‘I love him like a brother’ for. But on to more cheerful things. How goes the work?”
That was easier. Lenny leaned back, letting the warm air flow over her, enjoying the leisurely ride that took them now along the coast, now inland through groves of trees, through tiny villages, across rolling stretches of farmland and pasture.
Tommy Price could talk well when he wished, and before she knew it, Lenny found lunchtime had come. Tommy swung the car from the highway; wound down a gravel road and then onto a dirt track that deposited them in a thick forest of beech and oak.
“Robin Hood’s hangout,” he said. “A little to the south, but I swear it looks just like it. Come on, fair Maid Marian, and gnaw a haunch of venison with old Friar Tuck.”
Reaching behind the seat, he produced a great hamper that he carried easily in one large hand. She scooped up a car robe and they walked along through a grove of trees to where a rivulet of water was partially dammed by a fallen log, making a small pond. Tommy spread the robe on sun-dappled grass nearby and deposited the hamper in the middle.
“Now if I haven’t forgotten everything as usual,” he began cheerfully.
Lenny felt a sudden surge of quite childish delight. Kicking off her shoes, she went on her knees to the hamper and began rummaging through it. Lifting a frost-damp silver jug from the hamper, she set it down, dipped in again. It was like a treasure hunt. He had provided everything. Bread-and-butter sandwiches, a pair of small roasted chickens, a tremendous thermos of coffee, a meat pie, tarts, and a sack of assorted fruit.
“This comes first,” he said. Undoing the lid of the silver jug, he slipped two cups from it and poured them full. “The world’s most innocuous cocktail. Pineapple juice, sugar, a couple of beat-up old eggs, and a faint dash of rum to give it flavor. Sip.”
She sipped. It tasted wonderful, cool and fruit-flavored. Tommy tipped his cup to her.
“May your success be mine e’en though our hearts ne’er entwine.”
“You’re still a rotten poet, Tommy.”
He beamed and drank. Lenny followed suit. The rum in this was certainly faint, as he had said, just enough to give it flavor. They used over half the contents of the jug as an aperitif, and then attacked the chickens and meat pie. Lenny found that she was tremendously hungry and ate ravenously.
“Are you writing anything, Tommy?”
“Doing research,” he said, around a chicken leg. He grinned. “Best excuse in the world. I can do research forever.”
“I have to publish if I want a better job,” she said. She felt broody about it. Taking a bite of meat pie, she washed it down with a gulp of cocktail. “I have no Uncle Harry.”
“Neither do I any more. But you do have an Uncle Tommy.” He licked his fingers with concentration, then wiped them on a paper napkin. “And Uncle Tommy means it.”
“Uhm.” When he got this way, with the glint of humor gone from his pale eyes, she always felt slightly uncomfortable. She evaded the issue by holding out her cup.
Tommy drained the last of the jug’s contents into their glasses. “Dessert?”
“Not right now.” She was thirsty and she drank the cocktail. “A little coffee, maybe.”
He produced it, poured her a cup and then, in the manner of an amateur magician drawing a rabbit from his pocket, came up with a flask of brandy. He laced the coffee and then lighted and passed her a cigarette.
“Full?”
“Uhm.” She wriggled arou
nd so that she could prop her back against his knee. She thought idly that despite his bumbling Tommy was a good man to lean on, so big and strong. A solid man in some ways. She twisted her head and looked up into his face. “Are you a solid man, Tommy?”
“The Rock of Gib, that’s me.” He smiled down at her, reached out and tucked back a strand of blond hair that had slipped over one eye. “I’m always being told that I’m not solid. But what the hell? I satisfy me and I have only me to satisfy.”
She rubbed her back against his leg. “I like you the way you are. Don’t get any more solid.”
He said seriously, “Maybe you’d like me better—or in a different way—if I weren’t a vacuum?”
She felt the faint discomfort rise again and turned away, sipping at her coffee. He said, “Sorry, Lenny. I shouldn’t try to hunt on old pal Leon’s preserves.”
“You weren’t, Tommy.” The thought of it made Lenny feel sorry for herself. Because it was true. Leon no longer had any preserve. And she felt a little sorry for Tommy, too. He had always been so patient and uncomplaining, and she had treated him like—well, like a brother.
She was surprised to find that not only was she in a mood of pity, but that she was pleasantly numb. Tommy’s innocuous cocktails had pulled a dirty trick on her, she decided.
She said, “Tommy, I’m a little tight.”
“Brandy kills rum,” he said with the faintest trace of thickness in his speech. “So.” He added more brandy to her coffee. She took it down in two swallows. “See?”
“Better,” she decided gravely. He took her cup away and set it beside his own. He did something with his legs so that suddenly she no longer had her side to him but was facing him.
“What you said about Leon, Lenny—how can I take that?”
Poor Tommy, always hoping. She said, “You’re sweet, Tommy,” and leaned toward him to brush her lips lightly over his chin. “Take it the way you want to.” There, that should make him feel better.
He had one hand half-supporting her neck, his heavy fingers running through the hair at the back of her head. “I’d like to. But—what’s the trouble?”
“No trouble. Times change.”
He smiled and shook his head. The smile was only on his lips. She had not seen his eyes so serious in a long while. “I know you too well, Lenny. Is Leon bothering you? I can make him stop, you know.” As if unable to maintain a serious mood, he grinned. “Sir T. Price, knight, charging down on the foe …”
“Stop it, Tommy. You don’t have to make me laugh.”
“I didn’t bring you here to make you cry. And I am serious. If I can help …”
If he could help? If only he could. Feeling as she did, she did need help, needed someone to turn to. And who was there? Not Barr, nor Portia—there was no one except Tommy. And Tommy was such a humbler.
Or was he? Watching him now, she noticed things about him that she had never noticed before—the steady seriousness in his pale blue eyes, the set of his jaw …
She was drunker than she had thought, or she never would have done it. Later, she told herself that, but she wasn’t really sure. She heard herself say, “Tommy, you can help, maybe.”
“Anything, Lenny love.”
“I’m serious. I—I want your advice, Tommy. Promise me you won’t try to do anything—be heroic or foolish. Just give me your advice.”
“Anything. And I am being serious.”
There was no humor in the way he looked down at her. She swallowed. She had started now and she did need someone she could confide in. Tommy had always been dependable as a shoulder to cry on. She hated herself for thinking of him that way. It wasn’t fair to him.
In an effort to make herself feel that she was being fair, she said in a small voice, “Kiss me, Tommy.”
He answered her so quietly that she thought he was angry. “You don’t have to pay me for my advice, Lenny.”
“Tommy!”
He bent down, his face inches from hers. “I know you, Lenny. You aren’t really a conceited person in most ways, but in this one you are. You keep feeling sorry for me because I love you and you can’t reciprocate. It flatters you to have me hanging about. And now you want to repay me. Sorry.”
She had never seen him like this. He was not angry, not really. He was very matter-of-fact. His bluntness made her feel an awful fool. She thought, And now I’ve lost him, too.
Weakly, she said, “You think it’s rebound from Leon, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She winced again. She wanted to cry, but swallowed back the tears and sat up. “Can I have some more coffee?”
Silently he got it for her, but he did not add brandy until she asked for it. It was the brandy she really wanted. She was losing her courage and, as she felt it slip away, she had a desperate desire to hang on to it. Oddly, after the way Tommy had just spoken to her, she felt more than ever that she had to tell him her troubles. She wanted him to understand why she was acting this way. He was really not the complete fool at all.
Taking the brandy flask, she added more to the coffee. “It isn’t rebound, Tommy.” She moved so that she could look up at him without touching him. “You see, I found out about Leon.”
“Found out about him?”
“He’s a spy.” There. It was out. How ridiculous it sounded. She hurried on, the words pouring out, trying to explain, bringing in everything—the Chief and Stark, Portia, even Barr, all her suspicions and fears.
Her tongue kept getting thick, making her stumble over words, but her mind remained clear. As she finished, she realized that Tommy had not really felt his drinks at all. His expression told her that. He was listening intently and looking at her. He wasn’t as surprised as he should be, she thought. He neither answered her implied questions nor asked any of his own. He just looked at her, and his eyes reminded her of Barr’s last night at dinner. Watchful. Waiting.
The fear came again. She rolled over, away from him, scrambled to her feet and began to run. She went in her stocking feet, scarcely aware of the grass and rocks and bits of twigs that she stepped on. She felt the little pond lap at her ankles and splash up as she started through it.
He shouted, “Lenny!” in such a hurt, puzzled voice that she felt a great rush of shame. She stopped suddenly and turned. Her foot slipped on a mossy stone and she floundered. She knew that she was going to fall and she could not stop herself. The water was surprisingly cold, and it tasted of moss and mud as it went into her mouth.
Tommy hauled her out and she stood before him, water dripping from her blouse and full skirt, even from her hair. She felt utterly wretched and miserable and wished that she could cry, but somehow she could not.
Gently he reached out and plucked at her hair. He held up a thick strand of green. “Moss,” he said gravely.
Lenny giggled. Then she sneezed. Tommy said, “Whoa! Od Doc Price to the rescue.” He scooped her up, damp as she was, and carried her back to the blanket. He tossed everything from it and rolled it about her.
“Now,” he said, “wriggle those clothes off. I’ll wring them out and get you a little drier.”
She wriggled and handed him, piece by piece, her blouse and skirt and slip. Her stockings were all ladders and she threw them aside. Tommy squeezed her clothing and draped it over branches in full sunlight. He poured her the last of the coffee, adding the brandy himself this time, and held up her head while she drank. She lay back down, his jacket making a pillow under her head.
“Lenny, what in heaven’s name?”
“I—I guess I was a little tight,” she answered lamely. She wasn’t at all now. “I’m sorry.”
He bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “So am I. I thought for a moment the old Price physiognomy had frightened you.”
She reached up and touched his face with her fingertips. It was warm in the blanket. The brandy was warming, too. She felt drowsy, sleepily affectionate. Like a kitten.
“It’s a nice face.”
“All yours. F
rom Uncle Tommy, I mean. Here I am offering you a rich uncle again. The last time you turned me down and look what happened. Moss.”
She smiled lazily and replied in kind. “You turned me down, too.”
“Uncle Tommy comes without strings.”
“Maybe,” Lenny said, “I want strings. Maybe I’m not the type to go about with loose ends flapping.”
He was very close to her. “When it comes to persistence, I can’t hold that overworked candle to you, can I?”
“No,” she admitted. “Kiss me, Tommy. I’m scared.”
It was a small girl’s request, and he kissed her as if she were a small girl. Slowly her arms lifted and held him against her. She thought rather vaguely, It doesn’t even have to be Leon any more, and then suddenly Tommy was no longer gentle, but kissing her savagely and she couldn’t think.
He stopped abruptly. Lenny lay feeling her bruised mouth and wondering what had happened. Then she heard the sounds, people walking, two voices laughing. She opened her eyes and lifted her head.
A couple was coming through the trees toward them. She saw bright green slacks and a green turtle-neck sweater, similar to the yellow ones Portia Sloane had worn yesterday, beside a gray flannel suit, and she wondered if they would try to pretend surprise at seeing her there with Tommy.
But in a way she was glad they had come.
CHAPTER VI
Barr saw the Bentley drive off and even before he asked Doddsby he knew that he was too late, that Lenny had gone off in the car with a man who called himself Tommy Price.
He trotted back to Portia’s cottage and found her in the garden. When she heard him, she rose, an armload of flowers gathered to her breast.
“Rob! And you ran all the way just to see me?”
He looked at her, wanting to be angry because she was so often teasing him like this, reminding him of his infatuation for her. In a way, it was cruel, but in another it was not—it was just Portia.
“Do you know a man who calls himself Tommy Price?”
Something in his voice, in his expression, wiped the smile from her lips. Without answering, she carried the flowers into the house. Barr followed. She dropped the flowers into the kitchen sink and reached up to a shelf for a vase.
The Tide Can't Wait Page 6