“Maybe it should go someplace like the Smithsonian,” I suggested. “Considering the historical significance.”
“There’s a thought,” Phillip concurred. “A priceless legacy for the nation, all those jewels and coin, not to mention an opportunity to rewrite history.”
“Of course,” I went on, “the finder might prefer to keep it secret.”
“To what end?” Robert asked.
“He might sell it off quietly and buy an island somewhere. Live in paradise.”
For a instant Phillip seemed downright startled. “You’d consider that?”
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t you?”
Phillip looked at me thoughtfully. “Perhaps,” he smiled, and for the next several moments two of us compared our visions of paradise, mine centering on palm trees and margueritas, his involving The Perfect Light for Painting. Eventually we progressed from wine to coffee, and finally it was time to leave.
Our host escorted us back through the house and out to the car. I fished out my keys, feeling a little smug at having navigated the evening without serious mishap, when suddenly Phillip turned to Robert. “I keep meaning to ask you something,” he said. “The other day you mentioned accepting a job in Fredericksburg and I confess I’m curious. Why Fredericksburg over … Charleston, wasn’t it? Such a lovely city.”
I looked wordlessly at Robert who said, “Quite lovely.”
Phillip smiled. “So what has Fredericksburg to offer you? Besides a job, that is.”
There was a longish pause. While I tried to think up a lie, Robert fell back on the truth.
“Kathleen,” he said, looking straight at Phillip. “It offers Kathleen.”
I felt the floor drop out from under me. Phillip coughed delicately. Finally, my voice broke the heavy silence. “I’m leaving Cameron.”
Phillip smiled gently. “Your mother mentioned that you weren’t … happy.”
“She doesn’t know about … this,” I went on. “Not yet. Nor, of course, does Cameron. So if you—”
Phillip took my hand in his. “Of course, Kathy Lee. I will keep your secret. I promise you.”
I looked at his face, smooth and slightly fleshy, and at his gentle, watery blue eyes, and I read nothing but kindness and concern in his expression.
“I believe you,” I said.
We chatted a littler longer in the dark by the car, slapping away at mosquitoes. Phillip told us that he planned to spend an increasing part of his time in Nags Head, but that he could never give up Fredericksburg entirely. I told him I knew what he meant. It was, after all, home.
Chapter 40
As we finally drove away from Phillip’s house, Robert flung his head against the seatback and sighed. “A man and his hobby horse. Good Lord, Phillip rides his treasure, does he not?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“We had some difficult moments,” he went on. “Did you know his interest in such inconvenient subjects?”
“Not a clue. If I had, I would have cancelled. Some of his hobbies hit a little close to home.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure, Kitty?”
I glanced at him. “Shall we discuss your spirit of adventure?”
He knew exactly what I meant. “I cannot explain why I said what I did, except that I love you. I am here because of you, Kitty. Of all the words I spoke tonight, only those were true.”
His words made me feel strong and brave-hearted. I loved him. And because I loved him, I could do anything, face anything. I lifted my right hand from the wheel and touched his cheek, felt him turn his head and kiss my palm.
“Besides,” Robert continued a moment later, “he was fishing, Kitty. When Phillip asked me about Fredericksburg, he was probing, and none too gently. He saw that we were more than casual friends. Even in your rather liberated times, as you call them, the fact that we were together must have invited conjecture.”
I nodded. “You knew about the cipher wheel,” I said.
“Oh yes. When we were chasing smugglers on the coast, we were trained in the use of such devices, though I never had cause to use one myself.” He sighed with longing. “Such fun we had in those days.”
“I bet. And despite what you told Phillip, you have heard of the Dalveys, haven’t you?”
“I thought I hid that quite well.”
“From anyone but me. Besides, I remembered the thefts you mentioned, and Peter’s thieves.”
“I recalled their name the minute Phillip mentioned it, Kitty, though what Peter told me of them was merely hearsay.”
“Do you think any of it is true? The treasure? The enormous size of it?”
“I cannot imagine it. There are always thefts from the quartermaster by the locals, as opportunity presents itself — some of it quite sizeable at times. But I knew nothing of thefts on such a grand or elaborate scale, or any losses so damaging to headquarters.” He paused. “What pains me is to imagine that it may be true, that lives might have been spared—”
“Had the war ended earlier,” I finished. “Yes, I saw it in your face. But I can’t believe it either. It’s nothing more than a conspiracy theory, like speculating on the Kennedy assassination or, I don’t know, the identity of Jack the Ripper.”
“Who?”
I shook my head, too tired to explain, and for a while we drove in comfortable silence. Then Robert cleared his throat. “You know, Kathleen, I quite liked Phillip’s screened room. Wonderfully clever, that. Someday, we shall have one like it.”
*****
I called John and Helen’s the minute we got home, hoping Lila was still awake. Ideally, after a long day on the farm chasing the children and sipping Helen’s excellent Bloody Marys, she would be too tired to argue about another marathon drive to Pennsylvania.
My plan almost worked. Lila was awake, all right, and she was plenty tired, but she was completely up to a case of near hysterics over my (as she termed it) “suicidal” trip.
“Something will happen if you persist in these endless drives,” she wailed. “It is completely stupid, Kathy Lee.”
“The agent needs to see me tomorrow,” I said patiently, “and if I sign those papers, she might very well be able to sell the house by Monday.”
This only partly mollified her. “I wouldn’t be so worried, Honey, if it wasn’t for this Tipton tendency for…you know. Auto mishaps.”
There it was again: The Tipton Death by Car Curse. “I won’t have an accident, Mother. I’ll be very careful.” For a moment I debated telling her about Robert so that she wouldn’t think I was driving all that distance alone. But how much could I tell her? And would she, in her present frame of mind, think I had picked up a stranger, a drifter, a serial killer? No, I decided. Now was not the time to mention some guy I had found in Bennett's garden shed.
“And it’s a holiday weekend,” Lila went on, cutting into my thoughts. “The highway will be simply gridlocked.”
“This isn’t a holiday weekend, Mother. The Fourth is next Tuesday.”
“It will be a four day weekend, Kathy Lee—”
We argued back and forth. Finally, to console her, I promised that when Mary Stein sold the house, I would never leave Fredericksburg again.
My mother’s last words to me were: “You’ll be home in time for Sunday dinner, won’t you, Sweetheart?”
And mine to her were: “I promise.”
*****
After I talked to Lila, Robert and I spread a blanket on the beach and built a small bonfire out of driftwood. Then we carefully and methodically destroyed absolutely everything we confiscated from the hapless Alfred — film, prints, notebook and motel receipt. There was something cathartic about this little exercise in arson, as if it left nothing but the future before us.
The notion pleased me. I raised my eyes from the fire and smiled at Robert.
“What is it?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Happy thoughts. That’s all.”
“The best kind,” he replied, smiling back.
Then he said, “It came to me, that elusive memory this afternoon. 'T'isn't much, but I’m glad I have it.”
I reached out to touch his arm. “Tell me.”
“My father intended me for the church,” he said simply.
“You’re kidding.” I was amazed, though I shouldn’t have been. Like the army, the Church was a convenient place to stash a younger son. “Does that explain your middle name?”
“Christian?” he smiled. “Perhaps it does. Wishful thinking and so on. My father had a living to give, the parish that belonged to Talbots, and he just as soon it went to me. Sent me up to Oxford where I read history and Latin at Christ Church — and escaped to Town at every opportunity. I wrote him finally, to say I should like a commission better than a parish.”
“And he agreed?”
“Surprisingly, yes. He wrote me back and said he never had much ecclesiastical hope of me, anyway. Then he offered to buy my commission if I would come home first and help him with Talbots for a while. I did it gladly. I’ve always loved the work. After Christmas he sent me off, a new-made lieutenant. T'was the best time I ever had with him, those months at home that year.”
He paused, thinking, and cleared his throat. “We were friends for a time. We both felt it. And then he forbade me Anne, and I married her anyway. I was more than a disobedient son. I was a treacherous friend. A son can be forgiven, but not a friend.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.
“Some things are not meant to be. And this … this no longer matters. I feel light in my heart, Kitty. And clear in my head.”
He leaned back on his elbows for a while, staring at the fire, and then eased down flat on the blanket with his arms crossed behind his head, staring at the stars in comfortable silence. After a time the fire burned down so low that I got up and covered it with sand to put it out. When I was done I stood beside him, wiggling my toes against his hip. “It’s very late,” I said. “Let’s go up to the house.”
“Nay, Kitty,” he said, reaching up to touch my hand. “Bide with me awhile.”
Bide with me. The man didn’t have to ask me twice. I sank back down beside him and we lay for a while on our backs, hip to hip, my long leg pressed against his longer one, staring at the unchanging stars. Then I turned slightly and slid my hand inside his opened shirt so that my my palm rested lightly on his chest. I could hear his heart beat beneath my fingers.
“I have things to say, Kitty,” he said presently. “Difficult things. Complicated. I scarce know where to start.”
I really hate conversations that begin this way. They always sound so bleak, filled with news no one wants to hear. “Start at the beginning,” I told him reluctantly.
“I have been reading.”
“You’re always reading.”
“I’ve been trying to comprehend this out-of-wedlock-business that seems to flourish so openly in your society.”
“Is this what we’re going to talk about?”
“Yes, Kitty. Help me to understand it.”
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t a discussion on the breakdown of traditional mores in modern society. “What part of this out-of-wedlock business are you interested in?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“The living together part, or the having babies part.”
“Oh. Both, actually.”
“Well, I would think it’s conducted much like it was — is — on the, um, other side,” I said, sliding my fingertips down his sternum. “That is, women have children without having husbands and couples live together without the benefit of clergy.”
“Yes, yes, Kitty. Of course. What I mean is, are arrangements like this accepted by polite society?”
“Of course not. Unless someone in polite society is practicing one out-of-wedlock activity or the other. Then, of course, it’s fine.” My fingers explored the arch at the base of his rib cage. “Where is all this leading us, Robert?
“To you.” He shifted, raising himself on one elbow to look down at me. “If there is a babe, Kitty,” he said, tracing my jaw with his fingers, “I will stand by you. I would marry you now if you were free. That’s what troubles me, actually.”
I was touched beyond all measure. “Robert—” I began softly.
“Nay, Kitty, let me speak. I had imagined, from what I’ve read, that we could live quietly without exciting much comment. I had imagined that we could do such a thing without cutting you off from your friends.
He meant that we could live together without burning our social bridges to the respectable half of the world.
“Yes, Robert, eventually we could, but—”
“Even if there was a babe?”
“Well, yes, I think so, especially since we’re adults, reasonably intelligent and consenting — although I imagine it would be received better if one of us had a full time job with health insurance. But listen, Robert—”
“Then a little while ago I finally understood what Alfred said,” he plunged on (not listening at all). “The actual import of what he said.”
“What do you mean?”
“The thing about your husband trying to prove you’re an…unfit mother, or however he phrased it. You would be unfit if you were…”
“Sleeping with another man,” I supplied. “Or living with one,” I added, “if I were still married.”
“Precisely so. That is my point. It’s not just our being together here, in Avon, that is of concern, is it?”
“No, Robert,” I said quietly. “Going forward will be dicey for a time.”
“We will have to be discreet.”
“Terribly so.” I paused. Here was an argument for remaining in Pennsylvania, at least until my divorce was final, but it wouldn’t work, not really, and I knew that. We had to go home. We had to face the music. We had to take Lila into our confidence and we had to quietly build an identity for Robert, some way, somehow. Robert could be Lila’s houseguest for a while, but sooner rather than later we would have to find a house for him, a place of his own, separate from any place I was staying.
“Are you all right, Kitty?”
I nodded. “I knew we’d have to face this,” I said. “We’ve been … we’ve had a sanctuary here. It will be awhile, months perhaps, before we can be together as openly as we have here. Are you terribly disappointed?”
“What are months,” Robert said thoughtfully, “in the scheme of things? What are months, or more, to us?”
In answer, I slipped my arms about his neck. “We shall make it right,” Robert whispered, his lips at my throat. “Believe me, for we shall.”
I could feel his breath on my skin. I could hear it in his chest. His arms held me, strong arms, and I knew he told the truth. We would make it right.
I brightened with a thought. “You know, you can stay in the old tenant house, across the field from my mother. No one’s lived in it for years but I think it’s habitable. We’ll make habitable. And you will be my mother’s tenant. We’ll pass you off as a writer in need of solitude—”
“I shall be a student of history, Kitty, and spend the days at the public library researching your Civil War. Of course, your friend Phillip will expect me to be teaching school.”
“If it comes to that,” I said, “we’ll tell him you’re working on your doctorate. That you received a grant from someplace, and—”
“And every night you’ll sneak in through an opened window, to disturb me in my bed.” He smiled. “But Kitty, we are ahead of ourselves. All this subterfuge will be for naught if you’re with child. T’would be all the proof your husband would need. That’s what worries me so, Kitty, my love. That I would unwittingly be the means of harming you—” he broke off, then tried again. “T'is past bearing to think a child of ours could be used by such a man. Damn the bastard!”
The bastard would be Cameron, of course. “Robert—” I began.
“If he is the occasion of any further pain to you,” he interrupted (mentally swishing his sword around), “
I shall be forced to kill him.”
“You can’t go around offing people just because they’re jerks,” I told him sharply. “Besides, there’s no need for this—”
“Quite right. There will be the police. How tedious. Do they still hang people, Kitty?
“Robert, listen to me,” I said impatiently. “There will be no baby!”
“Kitty!” He exclaimed, surprised. “Can you be so sure?”
I blushed. I could feel it creeping up my cheeks. We had discussed modern birth control in a brief and basic fashion as part of our curriculum, but evidently I had missed something vital. For a moment I was silent with embarrassment.
“I have used no contrivance,” he said softly. “Nor have you. We have used nothing from either of our worlds. Have we?”
His world knew condoms — and seldom used them. They knew diaphragms made of citrus rinds or sponges soaked in vinegar — and seldom used them. Mostly they knew coitus interruptus — and seldom used that, either. But my world, on the other hand, knows lots of… contrivances.
“The Pill, Robert,” I whispered self-consciously.
“What pill? I saw you take no pill.”
“The Pill. As in the pill.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, but he didn’t. He was utterly mystified. Here was another little classroom detail I had somehow overlooked.
“We need to talk,” I said, and stumbled through an explanation as vague as it no doubt was confusing. After a while Robert felt sorry for me and pulled my head back down upon his shoulder, stroking my hair and muttering gentle words as if he were reassuring a young and inexperienced girl.
And then he stopped, a fresh new thought occurring to him. “If you are taking this pill, Kitty, if you’ve continued to do so, then…” Suddenly, his voice tightened. “Then, forgive me, but I must ask: is your husband imposing himself upon you?”
“No,” I said quickly, telling the truth. Actually, I couldn’t remember the last time Cameron had imposed himself.
“Are you quite sure, Kitty?”
“Quite sure,” I smiled. “He imposes himself upon half the women in town. He doesn’t need to impose upon his wife.”
Out of Time Page 31
