A Certain Summer by Patricia Beard

Author:Patricia Beard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HELEN decided to wait to tell Jack and Kathleen what she had learned until the weekend was over, Frank had left, and they were alone.

Depending on Jack’s reaction, she was considering asking him if he wanted to leave Wauregan and go to France with her to pay tribute to his father’s service. If he agreed, perhaps he would be able to start his life at a new school without feeling the emotional suspense that had haunted them both for so long.

Earlier in the summer she had received a letter from an old school friend, the Countess Pauline de Voubray, an American married to a French count whose château a few kilometers outside of Saint-Jean-de-Luz had been in his family since the fifteenth century. It was the unsuspecting, good-natured count who had unwittingly caused offense when he asked a Wauregan banker what he “did.” Their château had been occupied by the Germans during the war, and the de Voubrays had been exiled to the servants’ quarters, from which they served the occupying officer and his staff. A great deal of damage had been done to the house and its furnishings during the occupation, and the de Voubrays had just completed an expensive renovation. At Pauline’s suggestion, they had decided to open a few suites to personally recommended paying guests, to compensate for the cost of the repairs. Pauline had written to invite Helen to come in August and test their skills as professional hosts.

Helen had not planned to go, as it would have interrupted her last summer at Wauregan with Jack before he left for boarding school. Now it occurred to her that if Jack was willing, they might go to France together to see the place where Arthur had conducted his mission, and from which he had been taken to die. It would be a way of saying good-bye, and the de Voubrays might be able to help Jack understand why the work his father had been doing was important.

• • •

When she put on her bathing suit after the night of Frank’s revelations, she realized that the one person she wanted to talk to about Arthur was Peter. She headed out to the beach, expecting to see him, but was disappointed to find that he wasn’t there. She lingered in the water until her fingers were wrinkled and she was too cold to stay in, but he didn’t show up.

Peter was avoiding her. He had seen Frank arrive again, and assumed that he was courting Helen. He was still unsettled enough that he didn’t think he had the strength to enter a contest for her affection. Frank, he told himself, was more appropriate in age and experience, and, as Jack’s godfather, he was already almost part of the family.

When the Judge came downstairs and saw Peter sitting at the breakfast table, brooding over a cup of coffee, he asked why he was still inside on a beautiful morning. Peter mumbled that Helen was probably swimming with her houseguest, and he didn’t want to be a third wheel.

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