Across the Years (The Emilie Loring Romances) by Emilie Loring

Author:Emilie Loring [Loring, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2021-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

XIV

“Coming?”

Kitty Teele’s gay voice shattered the silence which lay like a heavy fog between Faith and Wayne Marshall.

“We can’t talk here,” she whispered. “Meet me—meet me tomorrow afternoon at four near the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t believe you—but—” She broke off to answer Kitty.

“I’m coming! The aroma from those creamed oysters makes me ravenous.”

Only one episode stood out clearly after that. Duke had knocked over a full goblet of water on the table. Even in her preoccupation she had thought, How unlike him to be clumsy.… While he had fumbled for something with which to sop it up, the Count had pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his dinner jacket, had checked the rills and trickles before they could drop on Kitty’s glittering black frock.

While the others talked and laughed a sentence kept going over and over in her mind: “It was your brother!” Why couldn’t she forget it? Why couldn’t she laugh off Wayne’s statement as an absurdity? Whenever she tried, Irene’s words at the Inn burned red in her memory like a Neon sign: “When I entered his den his face was chalk-white as he fussed round his desk. He jumped as if he’d been shot when I spoke to him.”

If Ben had opened the Senator’s safe for a dishonest purpose he would be chalk-white, wouldn’t he? But of course he hadn’t. She was disloyal to believe it for an instant. As if drawn by a magnet she met Duke Tremaine’s intent eyes. Why was he looking at her? Had she answered someone at random?

She asked herself the question again at midnight as, still in her evening frock, she paced the floor of her sitting room. No sense going to bed. She couldn’t sleep with “It was your brother” overriding every other thought. As Wayne had said good night he had added casually:—

“Tomorrow at four. Lincoln Memorial.”

Duke had spoken to her immediately after. Had he heard the reminder? Suppose he had. When Kitty Teele didn’t need her she was constantly making dates with men friends to walk or ride or fly, wasn’t she?

If only she could have spoken to Wayne alone for just a minute. No chance. He had left with the Count for a late party. The Count! The speed and thoroughness with which Wayne’s bomb had blown from her mind all that glamour-girl stuff about luring him away from Irene would be funny, if she could see humor in anything with her heart aching like a tooth with an exposed nerve.

She pulled aside the curtain and looked out. The almost three-quarter moon rode high. Its brilliance paled the stars and lighted a cloud formation which loomed like a Maxfield Parrish castle, its impenetrable walls and conical towers faintly luminous.

A sound penetrated her absorption. Jemima was quacking, quacking like mad. The duck must have escaped from the pen. In spite of heartache, memory warmed her eyes with laughter. She had been just fourteen when she conceived the idea of becoming a capitalist by raising ducks. She

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