“Yes. I leave Friday. You know Mom. If I’m not there by dark, Senator Hawkes will have a delegation of the National Guard on his doorstep.”
Mannington smiled, then reached again into his coat and took out a matching gold cigarette lighter and flicked it into flame. “I suppose your family’s going down to the Cape.”
“Yes. It wouldn’t be Labor Day if we stayed in the city.”
“Good. Look, we’re going to be in Hyannis Port. There are some people I’d like you to meet. Why don’t you come over for dinner Saturday night?”
Bryce was startled. No Mannington, he had vowed solemnly to Leslie. Just you and me. He could picture her face if he suggested dinner with him! Finally he shook his head. “I’d like that, but I’m going to have a guest with me.”
“Fine, bring him along.” He caught the expression on Bryce’s face and chuckled. “Or is it bring her along?”
Bryce flushed a little. “Well…I’d feel a little funny doing that.”
“Nonsense! I’d like to meet this lucky young lady. Anyone I know?”
Bryce shook his head quickly. “No, just a friend.”
Mannington winked knowingly. “Okay, then bring your friend. Let’s say Saturday then. Seven o’clock?”
It was like saying no to a D-9 Caterpillar. “Really,” Bryce started, “I think another time—”
Mannington’s smile hardened just the slightest trace. “These are important people, Bryce. They’ll play an important role in our national strategy.”
Bryce sighed. He could always leave Leslie with his folks. “Fine.”
“You know where we live, don’t you? Just down from the Kennedy compound.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Bryce let out his breath, feeling as if Mannington had taken his elbow and was steering him down a crowded street.
For the next half an hour, and then all the way back into the city, they talked about the ratification drive—which personnel to recruit, where to set up various state headquarters, which states to target first. Bryce nodded, made appropriate sounds at the right time, and tried to put away a growing sense of uneasiness. Senator Hawkes gave Bryce a lot of head, and Bryce liked that. It was how he operated best. Was Mannington going to be this intimately involved every step of the campaign? Bryce tried to shake off his growing sense of dismay.
As the chauffeur pulled up in front of the Senate Office Building, Bryce opened the door and started to get out. “Thanks for lunch.”
“Oh, by the way.”
Bryce turned back.
Mannington smiled briefly. “Word on the street is that you’ve been seeing one of the volunteer workers from the Save the Constitution group.”
That startled Bryce enough that the expression on his face gave Mannington his answer.
“Is it the same one who challenged you during that television interview that day?”
“Yes.” Bryce kept his voice even, even as he cursed the town in which he lived. The proverbial glass house had nothing on Washington, D.C. A man could miss one day of washing his socks and find it plastered on the front pages of every newspaper in the city the next morning.
Mannington smiled again, but there was no mistaking what was in his eyes. “I’d think about that carefully, Bryce.”
Bryce nodded, keeping his own face impassive.
“People could misconstrue that, you dating someone from the opposition.”
“I suppose they could.”
“Not only could, but would,” Mannington said pointedly. “Well, think it over. And we’ll see you Saturday.”
He shut the door, and the limo moved smoothly out into the traffic. For a long moment, Bryce stood at the curb, barely aware of the stifling heat as he thought with growing resentment about the neat little box into which Mannington had just shoved him.
“Leslie?”
She looked up.
It was her principal. “Telephone.”
Surprised, she hurried to the office and picked it up. “This is Leslie.”
“Hello, Miss Adams. I don’t know if you know me or not, but my name is Elliot Mannington.”
“Yes,” she said, feeling a sudden catch in her throat. Had something happened to Bryce?
“Look, Miss Adams, I don’t normally interfere in other people’s affairs, but…”
Five minutes later as Leslie came out of the office, her mouth set in a tight line, she had her second surprise. An older man was waiting in the hall. He straightened when he saw her. “Miss Adams?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if you remember me. The other night at the Marriott?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Gorham.”
His eyes showed pleasure for a moment but then instantly sobered again. “I happen to know what that phone call you just got was all about. Would you mind if we talked?”
Bryce was at his computer, working hard to finish the draft of the farm bill that Senator Hawkes was co-sponsoring in return for Senator Weatherby’s swing vote on the Hawkes/Larkin bill. His buzzer rang.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Sherwood, it’s a Leslie Adams on line one.”
“Good.” He punched the button. “Hi, Leslie.”
“Hello, Bryce.”
Her tone was even, almost cool. He didn’t notice. “I tried to call you earlier, but I didn’t want to get you out of class.”
“Yes, I got your message.”
“Good. Listen, I talked to Mom and Dad last night. Everything’s set. They’re really excited about your coming.” He laughed. “It took me almost half an hour to calm my mother down.”
There was no response, and Bryce felt the first stirring of a warning bell. “I told them we’d arrive around seven or eight on Friday. We’ll just meet them at Cape Cod.”
“And what about Saturday?” Leslie asked quietly.
“On the beach and in the sailboat,” he said exuberantly.
“I meant what about Saturday night?”
There was a long pause as Bryce felt the bottom dropping out from under him. “Saturday night?”
“Yes. I believe the time is seven o’clock somewhere in Hyannis Port.”
Bryce just stared at his desk, stunned. He had barely left Mannington an hour and a half before. He had said nothing to anyone…
“I appreciate getting the invitation directly from him. It gives it so much more meaning that way.”
“Mannington called you?” Bryce said in disbelief.
“Yes.” Her voice was hard with bitterness. “Of course the invitation came only after a very broad hint that it would really be better for your career if I didn’t accompany you to Cape Cod, but if I insisted, he would really love to meet the girl who finally has Bryce Sherwood on the hook.”
Bryce sat back slowly, cursing Mannington. Where did the man get off taking a hand in Bryce’s private life? “Leslie, I—”
“But the phone call wasn’t nearly as interesting as the visit I just had with another friend of yours.”
Feeling battered, Bryce barely managed a quiet “Who?” but he was not sure he wanted to hear.
“Oh, it’s been quite the afternoon.”
“Who?”
“Nathaniel Gorham.”
Bryce felt the breath go out of him.
“What? no innocent protestations that you don’t know the man? You put up such a good show the other night at dinner.”
“Look, Leslie, yes, I do know Gorham. He’s…” His voice trailed off as he thought about how to finish that sentence.
“Why did you pretend you didn’t know him?”
“That is a long story. But I give you my word, it had nothing to do with trying to deceive you.”
“Is it true Mannington has offered you a shot at Senator Hawkes’s job next election?”
That caught him completely off guard, and he didn’t answer.
“And that they’re talking about the eventual possibility of the White House?”
“Leslie, I—”
“No wonder Mannington suggested I could hurt your career.”
“Leslie, listen to me. I don’t know what Gorham has been telling you—”
“Well, I’ll tell you one more thing he said.”
Bryce sighed, cursing the old man from Boston, cursing Mannington, cursing the fact that all this had blown up in his face before he had had a chance to talk with her. “What?”
“He said that Mannington has already suggested to you that it would be better if you stopped seeing me. Is that true?”
“Yes, but—”
“And what did you say to him when he said that?”
Somehow Bryce should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. Gorham was too efficient to let an opportunity like this pass. “I…He caught me totally by surprise. I guess I just stared at him.”
“How courageous.”
Bryce flared at that. “That’s not fair, Leslie. If you really think I’m going to let Mannington tell me what to do with my private life, that doesn’t say much about your opinion of me.”
She was silent for several seconds, then sighed. “Bryce, it doesn’t really matter what I think, or what you think. This whole thing just makes it clear that we have our heads in the sand. It’s not going to work.”
He took a breath, not wanting to ask, but knowing he had to. “So no Cape Cod?”
Her voice was suddenly low and husky. “I’m sorry, Bryce, but I can’t take any more of this.”
“Leslie, I can explain everything. Just give me a chance.”
“Bryce, I…You really do have a wonderful career ahead of you. I wouldn’t want slow you down.”
“Leslie,” he cried, pleading now.
“Good-bye, Bryce. Thank you for everything.”
And with that there was a soft click, and Bryce was left to stare at the dead phone.
Chapter 12
Bryce worked until nearly midnight that night, finishing up the last of his work for the senator and cleaning out his office. He kept telling himself that he wasn’t sure he would move his things into the office Mannington had leased for him, but underneath he knew it was a bluff. In spite of his anger at Mannington for calling Leslie, he knew he still wanted a shot at the ratification campaign. Besides, it was Gorham that was the primary target for his fury.
By eight o’clock the next morning, Bryce was packed and ready to leave for Boston. He threw the last of his luggage in the trunk and got in. As he made his way through traffic to the Capital Beltway and took the northbound on-ramp, he thrust away the thought that if it weren’t for Nathaniel Gorham, he would be turning south for Arlington. But now, Leslie Adams was a dead issue. This time there would be not resurrecting it, and the sooner he accepted that the better. He selected a Beethoven symphony from his box of cassettes, put it in the tape deck, laid the speedometer on sixty-five, set the cruise control, and settled back in his seat. There would be lovely women by the ton dotting the beaches of Cape Cod, any dozen of which would be thrilled to get an attentive look from a senior senator’s senior aide.
He shook his head, knowing that when he reached the point of trying to lie to himself, he was in bad shape. He cranked up the volume on the stereo and hunched down in the seat, scowling out at the world.
He crossed over into Connecticut shortly before noon and stopped for gas at Norwalk. As he got back in the car, on impulse he got out the map. He had followed Interstate 95 all the way up through Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. Tired of the urban corridor, he decided he was running enough ahead of schedule to try a little of New England’s back country. If he took U.S. 7 north, he could pick up Interstate 84 at Danbury and follow it all the way to Boston. It would take him through Hartford, but that was the only large city he would have to go through.
What had started to be a cloudless day had now socked in with a solid overcast, and as he finished lunch at a small diner next to the gas station, a warm drizzle started to fall. He drove more leisurely now, letting the strains of a Mozart piano concerto and the rich green countryside massage him until the tension slowly began to slough off. The rain had increased now, and the steady swipe of the windshield wipers seemed to almost match the tempo of the music.
Half an hour out of Norwalk, the weather really settled in, and Bryce had to turn the wipers up to full speed. The clouds were dark and low to the ground, and flashes of sheet lightning rippled occasionally in the gray mass above him, followed immediately by the deep rumble of the thunder. He had driven smack into the middle of a good old-fashioned New England summer thunderstorm. Not that he minded. He had loved thunderstorms from the time he was a kid. He turned off the tape deck so as to hear the thunder better.
Five miles north of a little town called Cannondale, he came around a gentle curve where the road followed the line of the Norwalk River. The rain was coming down hard enough that he had let his speed drop to under fifty. As he crossed over a narrow bridge, a dark figure suddenly loomed up in front of him, standing right on the edge of the pavement. Bryce gasped, instinctively jerking the wheel to the left even as he stabbed at the brake. The BMW had a superb suspension system, or he might have thrown it into a broadside spin on the rain-slick pavement.
“You idiot!” he shouted as he straightened the car out, the surge of adrenaline instantly putting his heart into a thudding drumbeat. Then suddenly he slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a sliding halt. The details of the figure who had loomed up out of the storm finally registered in his brain. He yanked at the door and leaped out, staring back the way he had come.
The dark figure was trudging steadily toward him—long dark coat, knee-length trousers, white socks, head erect. Bryce groaned.
He got back in the car and slammed the door. In a moment the other door opened and Gorham slid in beside him. There wasn’t a drop of water on him. “Much obliged,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
Gorham smiled briefly. “Heard you were going to Boston. Thought I’d see what my hometown looks like nowadays.”
“Just like that, huh?”
Gorham scowled right back at him. “Just like what?”
“After that little trick you pulled with Leslie that’s all you’ve got to say?” He waited, but Gorham didn’t answer. Finally, in disgust, he put the car in gear and started out again. “I asked you a question.”
Gorham swung around, his mouth tight. “I thought I was doing that young lady a favor by getting you two together. But when I saw what you were doing to her, I knew I had made a mistake.”
“What!” Bryce yelled. “What was I doing to her? You know that dinner appointment with Mannington was not my idea. I tried to get out of it.”
“Yeah, you really stood up to him.”
“You meddling old fool! You think I’d let Mannington tell me what to do with Leslie? No way, man. This was just your way of getting back at me because you can’t convince me you’re right.”
Gorham was silent, but there was a pained expression on his face as he stared out through the windshield and the rain. Finally, when he spoke, it was not directly to Bryce. “It’s not surprising really,” he mused. “You grew up in a wealthy home, never wanting for anything, having everything done for you. Socially sheltered, gently reared—it’s no wonder you’ve lost the capacity to feel any commitment to something besides yourself.”
“Oh, brother!” Bryce exploded. “Shall we have a little funeral music while you lament my passing?”
The old man finally turned to Bryce, eyes filled with sadness. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “You familiar with this document?” he asked.
“What document?”
He started reading. “‘When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands…’” His eyes dropped further down. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—’”
“Come on, Gorham,�
�� Bryce cut in rudely. “I know what the Declaration of Independence is.”
“Do you know how it ends?” the old man asked softly.
Bryce’s mouth opened, then shut again. His mind was racing, but he couldn’t remember.
“Well,” he said wearily, “let me read it to you. Perhaps you can learn something.” He turned a page, skimmed quickly, found the place. “ ‘And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’”
Finally he looked up at Bryce. “You think that was an empty boast, a little grand theatrics with which to conclude the document?”
“No, I—”
“Five of those whose signatures are at the bottom of that paper were captured by the British, tortured as traitors until they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost sons in the war. Carter Braxton of Virginia was a wealthy planter and trader. He saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He had to sell everything to pay his debts, and he died a pauper.
“At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson learned that General Cornwallis had taken over his home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General Washington to open fire anyway. The home was destroyed. Nelson died bankrupt.
“John Hart…” Gorham’s voice suddenly faltered. He took a breath, then went on, a huskiness deepening the tone noticeably. “John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she lay dying. Their thirteen children had to flee for their lives as well. For over a year he lived in caves and in the forest. After the surrender, he returned to find his wife dead, his children gone. Thirteen children, and every one of them vanished! He died a few weeks later of a broken heart.”
Bryce let our his breath slowly, moved in spite of himself. “All right. I’ve never said that those men were—”
“No!” Gorham suddenly roared. “Don’t you say it! Don’t you even speak of those men. They gave their lives! They gave their blood! And here you are, pouting like a child because a young lady finally saw you for what you are.”
Surprised by the sudden intensity in Gorham, Bryce did not respond, just drove on silently, moodily.
Gerald N. Lund 4-In-1 Fiction eBook Bundle Page 95
