The Testimony

by Laura London

  She squirmed regretfully from under his warm body and sat up, smoothing her hair. “We of the saner sex have names for men who inflame us to the fullness of our womanhood and leave us unsatisfied.”

  He sat up too, watching her movements with a lazy, appreciative smile. “Oh, yeah? What?”

  “They’re called jerks.”

  “If it’s any consolation”—he skimmed a fingertip lightly down the inside of her arm—“I’m also inflamed to the fullness of my manhood.”

  “Really?” she said wickedly. “I thought that was a telephone pole in your pocket.”

  “That’s it!” He swooped her back into his arms. “Back to bed with you. It drives me wild when you talk dirty.” In a moment he added, “Mmm. See where flattery gets you?”

  When the doorbell rang, she murmured, “Max is here” against his lips in the husky sweet tone of someone in the throes.

  In the same tone he said, “Max can take a flying—”

  “Sorry, Mr. Hospitality.” She smiled. “I think you have to answer the door.”

  He stood up slowly. “You’re right.” His smile answered hers as he cupped her chin. “Do you think you could lie like that until I get back?”

  “I don’t know. This position could get kind of boring without you.”

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You know I was kidding a minute ago. If you don’t want him in the house, I can take him out someplace.”

  “I was kidding too—kind of. Let the poor guy in.”

  “Thanks. Don’t come down if it makes you uncomfortable. He’s a nice kid, though. I wouldn’t let him anywhere near here otherwise.”

  She knew. Wrapped cocoonlike in a summer quilt, she listened to the murmur of voices floating up the stairs. At two forty-five, soft animated laughter from below roused her from a light sleep. They were still at it. Curiosity overcame her when sleep would not, and she pulled on cotton jeans and a white tank top with pearl embroidery and descended the stairs, rubbing her arms awake. On the bottom step she hesitated, then poked her head around the corner with a diffident “Hi!”

  Jesse was stretched out on the couch. Max sat upright in the recliner, blinking at her nervously from behind wire-rimmed glasses that slipped down his thin nose as she entered. He was even smaller than her father, slender, loosely boned, and probably not a day over twenty.

  “Oh! Mrs. Ludan!” He stood up in his tennis shoes, pushing his glasses back into place with his forefinger. “Did I wake you up?”

  It would have taken a colder heart than hers to rebuff that guileless anxiety. “No. I thought I’d come down to say hello.”

  She had the strong feeling he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He was staring at her worshipfully, in a way that she was only used to from people who were under seven and clad in tutus. Jesse was watching them both with amusement. She noticed there were no empty glasses on the tables. Trying to normalize things by slipping into the role of chipper homemaker, she said, “I’m getting myself something from the kitchen. Can I get you something, Max? A beer?” What do I bring a convict? Four Roses? Gin on the rocks?

  “Uh, if it’s not too much trouble,” Max said, looking wistful, “I’d like herbal tea if you have it.” Confidingly he added, “I don’t like to put unnatural substances into my body.”

  She made sure to avoid Jesse’s grin as she went to the kitchen, returning in five minutes carrying a teapot and three cups.

  Sipping from his cup, thanking her, Max said, “This feels so good. It’s the first peppermint tea I’ve had in months. I’ve only been out three days.”

  She could believe it. He bore the appearance of someone who’d been shot out of a cannon. It seemed hard for him to look directly into her eyes, and his hands made occasional aimless movements that conveyed a faint tinge of disorientation.

  “I understand you and Jesse were in the same cell block,” she said, trying to make the words cell block sound no more significant than if the men had been fraternity brothers.

  “Yes. He kept me from going out of my skull.”

  Fascinated, she said, “I’d like to hear about it.”

  “It’s a scary place.” The light-colored eyes behind the glasses held ineffable sadness. “Like living at the bottom of a well. And the people—” He didn’t seem to be able to go any further on the thought. “But Jesse used to think of the damnedest things to do to pass the time. I suppose he told you how he taught the whole cell block to play bridge? We held these bridge tournaments that would go on for days. Can you imagine all these unshaved tough guys in prison coveralls saying, ‘Four no trump—five spades’?” His tight mouth took on a reminiscing smile. “He used to make up these games of dungeons and dragons for us too. Everyone got into it, even old Willie Smith, who was fifty-five and in for drunk and disorderly. Sometimes the guards played too.”

  How amazing, she thought. How like Jesse. She was suddenly glad that Max had come. She said, “He used to play with his younger brothers.”

  Max nodded. “That’s what he told us. I—well, in prison I used to bend his ear all the time with stuff that was eating me. I guess that’s why I came tonight. I needed someone to talk to. Everyone in prison’s a bullshit artist—you kind of have to make yourself like that. It’s a very paranoid place. But Jesse stayed a human being.” He put down his teacup and stood, holding his hand out to Jesse. “Thanks. I was really desperate for someone to talk to.”

  Jesse stood and took his hand in a warm grip and clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, I’ve been there,” he said.

  “You sure were,” Max said. “But I’ll bet you handled this better than I have.”

  And Jesse said, “You’d be surprised, Max. If that’s what you think, you’d really be surprised.”

  It was too late for Max to catch a connecting bus back to his apartment, so she and Jesse walked him to the taxi stand two blocks away. There was a funny moment among the three of them when Jesse gave him a twenty to cover the cab fare and Max reimbursed him with a check and then discovered that his balance wouldn’t cover it.

  They waved good-bye to him and then meandered through the night hand in hand, the jazz strains from the open window of the lone remaining taxi at the stand drifting after them. Flirty breezes beckoned from the lake, and the aerated fragrance of tumbling water, and they could have turned down the block to their house but kept on, hearing the wave song swell as they neared the beach.

  “Jess?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How many more of your friends from the cell block did you tell to call you anytime when they got out of jail?”

  “I’ve been trying to remember.” There was a smile in his voice. “I think about eight or nine.”

  Her moan was long suffering but humorous too, and it made him turn to look at her walking beside him, the faint light touching her blowing hair, the ivory roses in her earlobes, her white Windbreaker. Inside he was feeling a thousand dismantled pieces beginning to reconnect, as though the healing in his mind were a physical act, a body repairing itself. There was a burst of lightness within him matching the bright pattern of stars strung out above in an ebony heaven. He wanted to share the feeling with her in some way, but couldn’t seem to find the right words.

  On the street corner they passed a wire trash basket, and he said, “Hey!” And when she looked, he took his cigarette pack from his pocket and tossed it inside.

  Then he closed his hands around her waist and swung her lightly, gaily around in the golden cone of light from a street lamp. When she was set down, a little breathless, she said, “It helped you to help him!”

  “Yes.” It had. It was a blow against his own inner desolation and against the sensation of powerlessness that had taken this long to begin eroding. “That poor kid. I had all kinds of good advice for him wrapped up in neat ribbons like a May basket, about opening up again, about taking time before going back to work to relearn who you are… great advice. I wished I’d been there when I got out to give it to myself.”

&n
bsp; She laid her hand on his shoulder as they walked through the bluff-side park, weaving between sandboxes and horses on springs and monkey bars. Pewter light from the three-quarter moon dissolved in a mist on the horizon far out on the lake and lit the waves disintegrating against the breakwater.

  They stepped onto a path that zigzagged down the bluff face to the sand at the water’s edge. Walking slowly, holding hands, they negotiated the last hairpin turn of the trail, brushing aside dark whispers of windswept grass.

  “I remember the day we went to court,” she said. “You were quiet, but oh, so strong.”

  Together they stepped onto the beach, taking off their shoes, feeling the dry sand swirl like cool satin against their skin.

  “No, I cried that day,” he said, and experienced a burst of heady pleasure at having been able to tell her at last.

  She took a quick step in front of him and laid her hands on his chest, searching his face. “When?”

  He stroked her hair back from her face and gently collected it in his hands behind her neck, treasuring it away from the wanton wind. “In the property room, after I was ordered upstairs. I don’t think I’ve told you much about that day…”

  “No.”

  “The hearing was… something I’ll never forget. Four hours. There was no kidding around, Chris. They wanted me to talk. Again and again the judge would lean over at me and say, “Are you aware, Mr. Ludan, that if you refuse to answer that question you can be charged with conspiracy and we can lock you off the streets for the next seven years of your life?’ And I’d say, ‘Excuse me, Your Honor, I’d like to confer with my attorney,’ and I’d go back to Jack and say, ‘Jesus, can they do that?’ And he’d say, ‘Take it easy, Jess, they can, but not without risking a national hurricane over it.’ And when I said, ‘Would they do that?’ he said he didn’t know.

  “And finally Jack leaned over to me and said, ‘Kid, if you don’t answer them now, they’re going to nail your rear end in prison.’ I was sick, Chris, sick and sweating; but I heard myself refuse again and the judge whapped his gavel and said, ‘Sir, you’re in violation of section 972.08 of the Wisconsin state statutes and I order you confined to the county jail for a period of one year, or until such time as this investigation is concluded.’ Slam. That was it. Jack asked for bail and work release. The judge denied them both.”

  He bent one knee forward. His brow pressed against hers. “I had that one second to tell Jack a message for you, and then the sheriff’s deputy came and put cuffs on me—”

  “Cuffs!” Her involuntary cry sent a stream of warm air against his lips.

  “It’s standard. And in the back hall they locked me in ankle chains to these other guys who’d just been convicted.”

  “Oh, dear God,” she whispered, her arms stretched up around his neck, clinging tightly.

  “It was like becoming a subhuman form of life,” he said jerkily, rubbing her with his brow. “Then they took us up to the property room and I just kept thinking, My God, a year, a year away from Christine, and I thought, What if they bring charges against me and I’m here for seven years? Seven years, Christine. What would have happened between us?” He stopped briefly to press a shaking kiss on her lips. “And then they came and put my whole identity into a brown envelope with my name on it—pens, billfold, watch, even my goddamn shoelaces—and then they wanted to take my wedding ring, and that’s when I cried.”

  He was shaking slightly. His eyes were closed, but she could feel the curve of his cheek forming a smile.

  “Can you believe it?” he said. “Of all the places to break down. No one could find any Kleenex, of course, so there I stood, snuffling into my sleeve. The guards were looking uncomfortable as hell because they don’t want to have to lock up some poor loser of a reporter, and behind me this guy who’d been convicted of armed robbery patted my shoulder and asked me if it was my first time. That’s why I asked you not to come, Chris. I could pretend over the phone.”

  The pressure of his arms on her back became almost painful, but she didn’t care.

  “Do you know,” she said softly, tracing a finger down his cheek, “I’ve never seen you cry. What was it like?”

  “Suffocating. I haven’t had enough practice to do it properly. My body ached everywhere, as if I had the flu. I was a real spectacle, let me tell you. What would you have thought if you’d seen me like that?”

  “That you were human, Jess,” she whispered. “Just that you were human.”

  He pulled back and looked at her, and then he kissed her in the delicate breezes of a new day.

  They sat together in the sand, watching the dawn. Peachy fingers shot up from the horizon, reaching into the night’s fleeing purple, reflecting on the water as it changed from black to sky blue and cloud white. The gulls wheeled and looked for nourishment, and, out at the mouth of the harbor, the breakwater was doing its job.

  “I’ve been thinking, Jesse,” she said, “about your column. I know you think that hard news is more important, but if the column goes daily, you can dig into whatever you want. Topical things too.”

  “True.” He dragged her onto his lap, laying back the open sides of her Windbreaker. His head bent, he placed his lips on the rise of her chest above the lacy edge of her top, sensitizing himself to each breath she took.

  “When I was growing up,” he said softly, “I never knew it would be like this.”

  “What?”

  “Love,” he said. “I never knew it would be this deep.” His hands gently swept her sides, caressing the smooth warmth beneath her breasts, and then, with his thumbs beside them, he absorbed her deepening exhalations with his mouth. “We have a lifetime to make up that six months, don’t we?”

  “A lifetime…” she said.

  They helped each other to stand up and began to walk back toward the bluff, and home. Sand clung to them, and the sweet tang of sleeplessness, but in their eyes was a tender joy that no burden would ever dim. Jesse stopped halfway to the cliff and drew her against his heart. Their lips came together in a moment of clinging honey, her hair falling down his shoulders, her arms wrapped around his neck.

  “We’ve made it, Chris,” he said. “We’ve made it.”

  About the Author

  Laura London is the pen name for the husband and wife writing team Tom and Sharon Curtis. Married more than forty years, Tom and Sharon published ten historical and contemporary romance novels from 1976 to 1986, many of which have come to be regarded as classics in the genre. The Windflower is in numerous top 100 lists of best romances of the twentieth century, including Goodreads, The Romance Reader, All About Romance, and Dear Author. Tom and Sharon have been featured on both The Today Show and Good Morning America.

  The daughter of a petroleum geologist father and historian and magazine editor mother, Sharon was raised overseas and lived in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Canary Islands, Turkey, and Iran, and attended high school in London. As an adult, she worked in bookstore management.

  Tom attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison and has worked for a public television station as a writer and on-air reporter. He is currently employed as a semi-truck driver for a chemical company and plays guitar with a Celtic band that includes a son on bodhran and a daughter on fiddle. Together they have played eighteen years of annual performances at the largest Irish musical festival in the world.

  Find out the latest at www.facebook.com/lauralondonauthor.

  Also by Laura London

  A Heart Too Proud

  The Bad Baron’s Daughter

  Gypsy Heiress

  The Windflower

  Moonlight Mist

  Love’s a Stage

  Sunshine and Shadow

  The Golden Touch

  Mistakenly swept aboard an infamous pirate ship, Merry Wilding finds herself at the mercy of a wicked crew… and one sinfully handsome pirate.

  Please see the next page for a special excerpt of the beloved classic

  The Windflower and more from Laura
London.

  Chapter One

  FAIRFIELD, VIRGINIA. AUGUST 1813.

  Merry Patricia Wilding was sitting on a cobblestone wall, sketching three rutabagas and daydreaming about the unicorn. A spray of shade from the swelling branches of the walnut tree covered her and most of the kitchen garden, but even so, it was hotter here than it had been inside. A large taffy-colored dog with thick fur stole past the fence; she noticed it as a flicker of movement in the corner of her vision. Light dust floated in the air and settled on the helpless leaves. The breeze brought the scent of baking ground and sun-burnt greens.

  There was no one about to disturb her solitary concentration, or to mark the intriguing contrast she made with the homey products of the earth that grew freely near her soft-shod feet. Her appearance suggested a fragile, pale icon: lace and frail blossoms rather than fallen leaves and parsley plants. She was a slender girl, with delicate cheekbones set high in an oval face, and dark-lashed eyes, lazy from the day. Early that morning she had put up her heavy hair in anticipation of the heat, but the ivory combs and brass hairpins were working loose and silky red-gold strands had begun to collapse on the back of her neck. It never occurred to her that some might find the effect charming; it merely made her feel hot, untidy, and vaguely guilty, as though she ought to return to her bedroom and wind her hair back up. She would have been so much more comfortable, she thought, if she dared sit as the housemaids did on the back stoop in the evening, with the hems of their skirts pulled up past their knees, laps open, bare heels dug into the cool dirt. A slight smile touched her lips as she imagined her aunt’s reaction, should that lady discover her niece, Merry Patricia, in such a posture.

  Setting down her pencil, Merry spread and flexed her fingers and watched as a tiny yellow butterfly skimmed her shoulder to light on the ground, its thin wings fluttering against the flushing bulge of a carrot. The beans were heavy with plump rods, and there would be good eating from the sturdy ruby stalks of the rhubarb. Merry looked back to her drawing and lifted her pencil.