by Pamela Morsi
"G-g-good evening," she sputtered.
"Good evening to you, Miss Gertrude," he answered.
The two stared at each other in silence.
Stefanski looked as if he had just come in from work. His snowy white linen shirt was covered by a four-button pinstriped gray vest that matched his trousers. At his throat was a carefully chosen and conservatively tied silk Windsor.
"I asked Aunt Gertrude to help you to chaperone us, Mr. Stefanski," Claire chimed in. "I hope you don't mind."
Gertrude glanced back at her niece, stunned. Mikolai had not known that she was coming? She had arrived in his backyard uninvited! Gertrude was momentarily horrified. How unconscionably eager she must appear! What if he had changed his mind?
She had no time for further conjecture as he stepped forward to graciously take her hand. "I wouldn't have let Teodor talk me into playing this summer game on such a cool fall evening if he hadn't suggested that we would be honored with your pleasant company, Miss Gertrude."
His words and actions were exceedingly gallant, but his face was a somber mask. He was friendly and polite, he even appeared pleased to have her there, but as Gertrude looked deeply into his eyes, she saw more. She saw so much more that it scared her. Hope, anxiety, excitement, wariness, all warred in his glance and she knew his desires and doubts mirrored her own.
This was no small dalliance that they contemplated. It was to be no fevered night of spontaneous impropriety. It was a calculated decision to engage in an illicit act. An act that Gertrude feared would change her life and her expectations forever.
"We're so glad that you've come to join us, Miss Gertrude," Teddy called out across the lawn as he hammered the far stake into the ground.
Gertrude forced her gaze from the man behind her and pasted a smile upon her face as she answered his son. "Thank you very much."
"You and Father will make great partners," he called back. "But he doesn't have much experience."
"Oh, I'm sure your father ... I mean . . . oh—" Gertrude's cheeks were blazing.
"Claire tells me that you are a fine player," Teddy continued.
"Oh, that, yes, I mean—" She felt very foolish and attempted a modest shrug. "I have won a game or two, I suppose."
"Then Miss Gertrude is definitely the other half of my team," Mikolai announced. "I have never actually played this game," he confided more quietly. "I have been assured by many who know, that it is quite easy. But I believe I can use your help."
"I'll do what I can," Gertrude answered him.
'Terrific!" Claire declared with delight. “Teddy and I against you two. It's like playing couples, isn't it, Teddy?"
The young man nodded as he came toward them. "Claire and I are both crack players, but we haven't been partnered together in a good long while. I suppose that will even up the competition a bit."
"Even it up?" Gertrude asked.
"Yes, you two being older and wiser are not as apt to make the mistakes that we are," Teddy said, joking.
"Age is no guarantee of wisdom," his father answered. "And I believe that the widely held truth about mistakes is that anyone can make them."
"Well," Claire said with a youthful giggle. "We'll just have to hope that you two make plenty of them tonight."
Gertrude swallowed nervously.
Mikolai cleared his throat.
"Let's get started," Teddy said with excitement. "Since you are dressed in blue, Miss Gertrude, you and Father can have the blue and black."
Claire sighed. "I guess that leaves us with red and yellow." She rolled her eyes. "You have to be the cardinal, Teddy. I want to be the canary."
The young man laughed. "Shouldn't it be the other way?" he said. "Red for anger and yellow for cowardice. That's more like us; when I miss a shot Claire gets angry at me, so I'm coward enough to shoot carefully."
The young people's light humor was not so easily matched by their elders. As Gertrude set up her ball half the distance between the starting stake and the first wicket, she felt a gnawing excitement that made her hand tremble. But it in no way brought a smile to her face. Her palms were sweaty as she clutched the mallet firmly. She glanced up only for a moment, but it was long enough to catch sight of Mikolai. He was watching her, but looked almost as disquieted as she felt. Her light blue tub-silk shirtwaist had been chosen for comfort and ease of movement. At that moment she felt as if her chest were swathed in a half ton of chain mail. And her mannish-cut navy skirt seemed heavy enough to be made of lead instead of poplin.
She took a deep breath and tried to regain her self-control. She was here. The words had been said between them. There was nothing for her to do except play out the game and pray that Mr. Stefanski would be as loath to actually speak about the other day as she was.
Gertrude drew back her mallet and gave her blue-striped ball a mighty whack. This action drew light applause from her opponents.
With her first stroke Gertrude took the first two wickets easily. However, she blundered both her point shots and had to step aside as Teddy took his turn.
The young man took quick advantage of his position, making four wickets before his efforts too fell short.
“Teddy's halfway to the turning stake!" Claire announced unnecessarily. "You'd better do very well with your shots, Mr. Stefanski, black goes next."
"How exactly do I do this?" he asked.
Teddy showed him where to start and he gave it a very good first try, but he hit the ball rather sideways and it went catty-corner through the first wicket, missing the second.
"That's a rough one to get back," Teddy told him. He looked over at Gertrude. "He's your partner, maybe you had better advise him."
"Please, Miss Gertrude," Mikolai said politely. "Do advise me."
She found it hard to look at him. She had known him so very long. Yet tonight, his words, his look, seemed to take her breath away. They certainly took the words from her mouth.
"Well, I suppose—"
When she glanced up into his face, she forgot what she was going to say.
"I thought I would just hit it back toward the middle," Mikolai said. "Would that be a good course?"
"But you only have one shot, Mr. Stefanski," she answered.
"Can't I just wait here until everyone else shoots again? Then I will get another chance."
She shook her head. "A second chance at this isn't likely," she said. "Claire is up next and if you're in position to take the wicket, she'll probably get you and the wicket, too."
"Oh," he answered, looking more carefully at the glowing candles on the wickets and his own black-striped ball.
"You must always be aware of the players that come after you," she said. "They have almost as much control of your outcome as you do."
On Gertrude's advice, Mikolai took a small shot that only altered the angle for the wicket. Leaving the way clear for Claire to pass him by, which she did easily, taking two more wickets before she rolled out of bounds.
Through the next couple of rounds it quickly became clear that, age notwithstanding, the young people were roundly trouncing Gertrude and Mikolai. Shot after shot Gertrude fumbled. And although Mikolai's attempts were valiant, it was obvious he was still very new to the swing of the mallet.
Father and son found themselves simultaneously going for the center wicket. Mikolai, however, was heading toward it while Teddy was already coming back.
It was almost sheer luck when Gertrude's bad shot hit the corner of a wicket and accidentally rolled to a stop against Teddy's lead ball.
"Roquet! Aunt Gertrude's made a roquet!"
It was the first truly lucky happenstance that the blue-and- black team had been given. Claire and Teddy were as excited for Gertrude as if she were playing on their team and not against them.
"Knock him off the field!" Claire called with delight.
"Hey!" Teddy feigned an angry snarl. "You're supposed to be on my team."
Gertrude smiled with as much good-natured enthusiasm as she could manage.
She just wanted the game over. And the sooner Claire and Teddy won it, the sooner she could go home.
The proper stroke to a roquet was to place the foot upon one's own ball to hold it still, then strike it as hard as possible. The force from the strike would propel the opponent's ball away from a shot and, with luck, out of play completely. Gertrude fumbled around trying to get her foot positioned right. Unfortunately her new spoon-heel high-button boots were not cooperating.
"What's wrong?"
"I can't get a good grip on the ball," Gertrude said with exasperation. "The soles are too slick and the space between the flat and the heel is too narrow."
"Let me hold it for you," Mikolai said.
Gertrude raised her eyes in surprise.
"That's allowed, isn't it?" he asked Teddy.
"Sure, it's allowed."
"And after all, she is my partner," Mikolai pointed out unnecessarily.
Slipping his own mallet under his arm, he walked away from the others, across the lawn to where she stood, and knelt down at Gertrude's feet. Grasping the ball, he held it firmly, waiting for her stroke.
"I'm afraid I'll hit your hand," she said.
"No," he answered. "You'll hit the ball. You are a woman that I could trust with more than hammered fingers."
She looked at him then. Once more he was not speaking of the things he was trying to say. On one bended knee on the ground before her, he was looking up into her eyes. Asking. Telling. Listening. The mallet was still in her grasp as she waited a long instant, knowing he was going to speak.
His words were low and quiet and spoken so gently they could have been a poem or a love song. "I have secured an apartment above the cigar store on south Second Street," he said. "There is a back entrance off the alley. I can be there tomorrow at three, if that is good for you."
"That's . . . that's fine," she answered.
As the fire of thrill and fear surged through her veins, she raised her mallet and pounded the dead ball with a mighty blow. She did miss his hand, and the force of her stroke passed to Teddy's yellow-striped winner and sent it careening out of bounds.
"What a stroke!"
"Aunt Gertrude, that was great."
"It's the best shot she's made all day."
Chapter Twenty-Four
“IT’S WORKING, TEDDY,“ Claire whispered to her croquet partner. "It's really working."
Glancing up, he observed closely the members of the opposing team standing across the lawn. "It had better work," he complained quietly. "If I have to hear one more well-meant lecture about the responsibilities of marriage, I'll simply lose my mind."
"Did you see him whispering to her when she took the roquet?"
Teddy nodded.
"I bet she was asking him right then about how and when they are going to tell us."
"I don't know," Teddy said.
"It's your turn, Claire," Gertrude called.
Without ceremony the young woman easily knocked her ball through the double wickets at the top of the field and hit the turning stake.
'Two point shots," she announced. "And here is two more."
As good as her word, she shot back through the way she had come. It looked as if she might make up for Teddy being hurled out of play, but she fouled on the third shot and had to relinquish her turn to Mr. Stefanski.
"Father hasn't said one word against you," Teddy told her as they watched the older man managing the wickets with little style, but a good deal of determination. "He talks as if he thinks you'd make a good wife."
"I would make a good wife!" Claire exclaimed. Her raised voice momentarily drew attention to her and she grinned foolishly at the other couple for a moment before they turned their attention back to play. "He's my father, too," she whispered to Teddy. "Of course he would say that."
"Well, it seems that he wouldn't say that to me," Teddy told her. "He wouldn't say it to me if you were really my sister."
"Oh, of course I'm your sister," Claire ground out in frustration. "Do we have to go over this again?"
"I just think if it was true, they would have told us."
"We just have to give them a little more time. They are trying to figure out a way to break the news," she insisted.
"I hope so."
"What else could it be? Don't you see how strangely they act toward each other?"
Teddy glanced over at the two and nodded gravely.
"It does seem as if they are hiding something."
"We just need to push a little bit more," she said.
"Push a little bit more! Good heavens, Claire. What on earth are you planning now?"
"I'm not planning anything, really," she assured him quickly. "I just wish that you hadn't made it so clear that we want to wait. Go ahead, Teddy, it's your turn."
He managed to make it back onto the field, but nothing more. He stepped back to Claire's side and watched as Gertrude hit the turning stake.
"That's probably why they didn't tell us that night, you know," Claire commented. "If they thought we were going to get married soon, they would have told us right away."
"Sooner, later, I don't see what difference it would make," Teddy said.
"It makes all the difference in the world," Claire said. "They think that they have time. We're not to marry soon and we'll surely fall out of love with each other as time goes on."
"I can certainly see how that would happen."
"What do you mean by that?"
Teddy shook his head in exasperation. "I mean that there wasn't anything else that I could do. Good gravy, Claire, I had to tell him that we weren't getting married right away."
"I don't know why you couldn't have tried waiting a while before caving in to him."
"Caving in? He started talking about Polish weddings and speaking with your father." Teddy wiped his brow as if the mere thought of such a thing had broken him out in a sweat. "You put too much of this on me, Claire. I'm not used to lying to my father."
"It isn't lying, not exactly," Claire told him. "And it's not going any further than those two."
"It could have gone further," Teddy told her. "He wanted me to speak to your father. I couldn't do that."
Claire nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I do think that is a complication we should avoid."
"A complication we should avoid?"
"Yes," Claire agreed, nodding. "We'll leave George and Prudence out of this if we possibly can."
"What do you mean if we possibly can?" Teddy's tone was extremely wary. "Asking George Barkley if I can marry you is not a complication, it would be a complete disaster."
"It wouldn't go over too well, I suppose," she said with a slight chuckle.
"Claire," Teddy said solemnly as he gazed at her smile, "I think this business is going to get us into trouble, really bad trouble. I just have a feeling that things are not exactly what they seem."
"Oh, Teddy, stop worrying," Claire admonished. "I promise we're already in it as deep as we are going to get."
"Up to our necks," he lamented.
"We do have to push just a little," she said. "Just a little, but it won't mean much."
"With you, everything is much," he said.
She slapped him lightly on the arm. "Come on," she cajoled. "George and Prudence are definitely the last resort. Only if these two can't be made to talk will we take it to the Barkley house to be settled."
"George Barkley will likely settle it by punching me in the nose," Teddy declared. "Oh, stop worrying. It won't come to that."
"Miss Claire," Stefanski called out. "It is your shot."
She turned to grin at the two adults standing across the lawn. Aunt Gertrude and Mr. Stefanski. Her parents. Her real parents. They were still a rather handsome couple standing there next to each other, she thought. They were avoiding each other's eyes. Her smile broadened. Their actions made her believe. And somehow it made her proud.
"Look at them, Teddy," she said. "There is a secret between them, that's as clear as Christmas morning. It's just
a matter of time until the truth comes out."
Chapter Twenty-Five
GERTRUDE WAS SO nervous, she thought she might be developing a twitch in her left eye. Her stomach was also quite queasy. She could only be grateful that she hadn't been able to ingest a bite of food all day. She climbed the ironwork stairs at the back of the Second Street cigar store with indelicate haste.
She feared being seen. More than that, she feared losing her nerve and hurrying home. She raised her hand to knock, but it wasn't necessary. Mikolai Stefanski, looking large and masculine and strangely unfamiliar, opened the door.
"I was watching for you," he said.
She stared at him.
"Come in,"
She did.
Her feet seemed suddenly to have turned to lead, but she forced them across the threshold, past the gentleman she had come to see, and into the cold sterility of the rented room.
She was here. She was actually here. All night as she'd lain awake, she'd assured herself that she would not come. But she had.
Gertrude glanced around her, noting her surroundings as dispassionately as if she were visiting a train station. The walls of the little room were unlightened by either whitewash or paper, and unadorned except for a small shaving mirror nailed above the water pitcher. The afternoon sunlight streamed in through the one dingy window that faced Second Street, revealing the contents of the room. A small, scarred table with two mismatched chairs sat on one side and a rusty iron bed with a rolled-up tick resting on the bedsprings was on the other.
Her heart was pounding and her knees were knocking. She admonished herself for being such a coward. If she was going to leave, it would have to be now.
With slow, deliberate movements, Gertrude removed the pin from her hat. It was a long, thin, dangerous pin with a large jet obelisk at its head. She looked at it for a full minute before removing her hat and weaving it into the black silk braid.
"Where should I hang my hat?" she asked.
Mikolai was still holding his. He looked around for a hook or rack.
"There is no place," he told her.
Gertrude nodded. "I suppose not."