A Summer Affair

by Susan Wiggs

  “So,” said Miss Isabel, oblivious to Lucas’s thoughts, “Where does your father keep his guns?”

  His neck prickled. China clattered as June took away the breakfast dishes, her face tight and disapproving.

  “He doesn’t keep any that I know of,” Lucas admitted. “But I’m certain we can borrow one.” Actually, he was not certain Frank Jackson would oblige. But that was the magical thing about Miss Isabel. Even when you weren’t sure of yourself she made you believe anything was possible.

  “Excellent,” she said, bustling toward the door. “We should get started immediately.”

  Thirty-Two

  After early-morning rounds at the Rescue League, Blue hurried home with an eagerness that felt new to him. Since going to Isabel’s bed, he’d begun to look at life with different eyes. Each night, he went to her and they made love with feverish intensity, creating a world of their own, unconnected to the outside. It was a fiercely private ecstasy; he discovered a place inside himself he didn’t know existed and only Isabel was privy to, his most secret self, a place of dreams.

  He knew the idyll could not last forever. They would have to decide what to do about their love affair. In a lighthearted moment, he’d declared he would make an honest woman of her. She had laughed and sworn that loving him was the most honest thing she’d ever done.

  By the time he reached the house, he was burning—again. It seemed to be his natural state these days. He couldn’t wait to see her, and only the fact that Bernadette was in the foyer kept him from calling out to Isabel.

  He took the stairs two at a time, hoping she had not yet dressed for the day. But the room was empty, the bed made. Her light, floral essence lingered in the empty bedroom. He went back downstairs, where Bernadette was fluffing a feather duster at a fringed lampshade.

  “Where is Miss Fish-Wooten?”

  The maid ducked her head, but not before he caught a glimpse of her knowing smile. “I believe she’s gone somewhere with Master Lucas, sir. The two of them are thick as thieves these days.” She paused in her dusting to regard him with that peculiarly womanly wisdom no man could ever attain. “Go and have something to eat, sir. It’s been a long night.”

  He didn’t begrudge the friendship that had grown between Isabel and Lucas over the summer. He’d defied convention, bringing Lucas up motherless, and he knew that was a burden on the boy. Over the years, he’d encountered any number of willing candidates, but he didn’t know how to share his life without giving his heart, and he refused to give his heart.

  Now Isabel had taken up residence in his heart, almost against his will. And she seemed to like Lucas immensely. Perhaps, in her way, she even loved him.

  Love. It was a concept she spoke of in lighthearted tones. She’d never said she was leaving, but she hadn’t promised to stay, either. He wondered what it would do to Lucas if she left. And that led to the real question—what would it do to him if she left?

  He tried to shake off the thought as he went to the kitchen. Breakfast was over, but a fine aroma pervaded the dining room. He shut his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply.

  Coffee. Real, perfectly-brewed coffee.

  In this household, such a thing used to be as rare as delivering triplets. But since Isabel had quietly but determinedly taken charge of preparing the coffee, it was a daily occurrence.

  He drew himself a cup and savored it, watching the curls of steam rise up and dissipate in the sunlit room. What a simple pleasure this was, a late-morning cup of coffee in a quiet room. But he didn’t linger, because his concerns about Isabel forced him to determine a plan of action.

  He hurried to his chamber, and as he was getting cleaned up, he heard someone whistling. A few seconds later, he realized it was him. Whistling. He almost never whistled. He’d nearly forgotten that he could. Bending forward over the shaving basin, he felt a stirring inside him, an alien warmth, something so long buried he scarcely recognized it. Then he realized what it was. Hope. Hope for a different life, a life ruled by joy rather than duty, filled by delight rather than dread. And he knew what it was that made him feel this way—Isabel. She had moved into his life, into his heart, and changed the way he saw the world. Since finding her, he realized that now his days were to be anticipated, even enjoyed rather than merely endured from moment to moment.

  Against all expectations, he faced a startling truth. A passion beyond reason had taken hold of the cold, controlled part of him and unfurled the heart of a man who had rediscovered the world. It was time to tell her, Blue decided. Past time.

  The notion was simple, so simple it was completely impossible. Here he was, a settled man in the middle of his life, with his heart pounding madly over a flibbertigibbet of a female who took pride in the fact that she never stayed in one place.

  How had this happened? How had he reached this place?

  He finished dressing, surprising himself again by putting on a deep blue waistcoat he almost never wore and charcoal-colored trousers normally reserved for Sunday. Then he went downstairs, rushing like a lad on his way to his first dance.

  As he passed the doorway to the parlor, he paused, and the anticipation running through him slowed with a sense of duty. He stepped into the doorway, paused again, then went in. This had been Sancha’s favorite room, the place where she received guests, where she played the piano in the evening. The room contained a virtual shrine to her, he realized with some discomfort. A formal bridal portrait rendered in oils dominated the mantel. There was a cabinet filled with smaller portraits and a good many photographs, the sepia shades fading with the years. He paused to study a picture showing the two of them standing in front of the house, his arm around her, his smile wide and sunny. Would he ever be that happy, that hopeful, again?

  He thought about Isabel, and for the first time in years, he thought, yes.

  He heard someone out in the hall and turned to see Efrena in the doorway. She eyed him curiously, and though she made no comment, she seemed intrigued by the obvious care he’d taken in dressing. “I have to send for the farrier again,” she said. “Gonzalo’s shoe is not right.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, then frowned. “I haven’t ridden him in a week.”

  “Oh, then…perhaps it was a bad fit from the start.” She ducked her head.

  “Lucas took him out, didn’t he?”

  “The boy is allowed to go driving during the day, is he not?”

  “Where did he go driving?”

  “He did not say.”

  Blue fought to hold annoyance at bay. Isabel made him believe he could live a different life, but it wasn’t so simple to change. He was so accustomed to spending his days running his practice and the Rescue League that he had forgotten how to do something just for the pleasure of it, how to take an afternoon’s drive or go down to the sea and look at the waves. He felt a small flicker of envy for Lucas.

  Efrena rubbed her arms as though it was cold, even though the afternoon breeze wafting in through the open window was warmed by the summer sun. “I have never liked this room,” she said, looking around the parlor, her gaze alighting on the shrine of portraits. “Too many ghosts.”

  Her words struck him with a dull, unpleasant surprise. “She was your best friend.”

  “That’s why I don’t like this room,” she explained. Her precise, convent-bred Spanish accent gave extra weight to her words. “These pictures, they only remind me of the shortness of her life. They make me want to go back to that day and put things right. Shoo her away from the camp. Don’t let her put on my jacket. Keep a closer eye on the men.”

  The pain that pulsed in her voice touched him. He was not the only one in this household who grieved. “You couldn’t have changed that. You couldn’t have changed anything that happened that day.”

  “Neither,” she stated, “could you.”

  The truth settled around them like a shroud. In ten years, they had never spoken of these things, not in this way. Why not? he wondered. Why in God’s name had they both
waited to say things that were so obvious?

  The deepest wish in his heart burst free. “I want to marry Isabel.”

  Her dark eyes flashed at him. Other than that, her expression didn’t change. “I know. Everyone knows. Except perhaps Isabel.”

  “Am I that transparent?”

  “You’re in love. It shines from you.”

  He studied the photographs in the glass case, looking at the man he used to be, years before. Smiling, carefree, young. He had shone. He’d known how to feel happiness. It radiated from him. If Efrena was right, perhaps that spark was not gone. “This is insane,” he said, pacing back and forth in a panic of disbelief. “I can’t marry her. In seven years’ time, I’ll have reached the half-century mark.”

  “And how old will you be in seven years’ time if you do not marry her?” asked Efrena. Shaking her head in exasperation, she left the room.

  He stared one last time at the portrait of Sancha. So beautiful. He’d loved her so much. So much that losing her had destroyed him. His heart had frozen. A wall of ice had protected him from ever loving that way again.

  In his mind, love and fear had become entangled so that it seemed one couldn’t exist without the other. Lucas had suffered from the fear and desperation that had edged Blue’s love for him. Only now was he starting to realize how poisonous that was. He was so afraid the boy would get hurt—or worse—that love had twisted into something dark and joyless and controlling. Thinking back over the years, he realized that a wedge of silence separated them. There was a gaping chasm they tiptoed around and always had. It had begun the day Sancha died, the day he hoped Lucas didn’t remember.

  His first love smiled down at him, Madonna-like. My hair is graying at the temples, Sancha, he thought. I’m growing old and you’re eternally young.

  “Goodbye, Sancha,” he whispered through the empty air. Then he turned away and walked out of the room to find Isabel.

  Thirty-Three

  From the third firing station, Isabel sighted down the length of the gun barrel, sensing the trajectory of the target well before it was launched into the sky. The shooting tournament was going well, she reflected with satisfaction. She had outscored the shooter behind her and planned to break away with this next round.

  A fat purse awaited her if she succeeded. Enough to purchase a ticket to her next destination.

  “Pull,” she said, her voice ringing with self-confidence.

  If she won today, her visit to San Francisco was over.

  The thought sneaked in through an undefended entry in her mind. Unbelievably, her aim faltered. No more than an eyelash, but enough to put her shot off the mark.

  She stared, flabbergasted, at her failure. The clay pigeon emitted only an indignant puff of dust as it arced out of sight and disappeared into a field of wild grass and sand dunes.

  “Lost,” shouted the referee, correctly calling the shot.

  A ripple of speculation swept through the crowd of fashionably dressed men and women in the observation gallery. It was a railed boardwalk built along the edge of the dunes, affording a view of the shooting range and, on a fine day like today, the wide, flat bay in the distance. At the moment, the boardwalk was crammed, for this was the biggest purse of the season. Tournaments, Isabel had quickly learned, were considered a sport of gentlemen and ladies of refinement, even more so than golf or boating. It was something else to like about San Francisco, she reflected.

  Being a foreigner, Isabel was not the favorite here today, but her consistency and skill had won her the respect of the onlookers. Now they were obviously surprised by her amateurish lapse in concentration.

  The missed shot landed her in second place for the time being. She had thought to capture the prize with ease. Few shooters, male or female, possessed her knack for timing and accuracy. Yet now she realized that, going into the final round of the contest, she trailed behind the elegant and skilled Mrs. Clarice Hatcher. Since the charity ball, Isabel had not given the woman a thought, but here she was again, imperious and sure of herself.

  Unbuttoning the wrist fastening of her shooting glove, Isabel offered Mrs. Hatcher a respectful nod as the lady passed her on the way to the refreshments stand. Mrs. Hatcher returned the greeting, her eyes dark and unreadable beneath the brim of a hat that bore the dramatic ribbon trimmings of a French designer. Isabel did not begrudge her the lead spot. She had won it fair and square, and if there was something a bit chilly in her manner, that was not Isabel’s concern. She had blown her aim and lost the lead, and only the next two rounds would determine the winner in the ladies’ division. Isabel conceded that if she didn’t take control, she might find herself in a shoot-off with Mrs. Hatcher.

  Frustrated, she decided to see how Lucas was doing in his division. Since hearing about the match, they had spent hours practicing at Hayes Park. Despite a lack of experience, Lucas possessed a marksman’s eye and a good sense of timing. Though not yet in a league with champions who had been practicing their sport for years, Lucas was holding his own in the junior men’s division.

  She milled through the crowd of spectators and shooters. Russ Gardens was a beautiful setting of shady arbors and mossy banks. Families picnicked on its green slopes, and a band played in a distant gazebo. The Sand Hills Shooting Club was made up of the cream of society, and she was an expert at acting as though she was one of them. She smiled and murmured greetings, gliding along as gentlemen tipped their hats and ladies said, “How do you do?”

  The old Isabel would have found the refined but festive atmosphere entirely delightful. Mingling with Hopkinses, Chases and Stanfords was something most San Franciscans only dreamed of doing. Yet she felt a vague nudge of discontent. These people were interesting enough, but they didn’t know her. She’d crafted her entire existence around that concept. Now, thanks to Blue Calhoun, she was starting to question herself. This was skimming along the surface of life, never dipping deeply into its very essence. She realized that she could go along for years like this. She could spend the rest of her days in shallow pursuits, meeting delightful people and then promptly forgetting them. And she did not delude herself—as soon as she left, they would forget her, too. Perhaps at a dinner party they might remember the eccentric English lady with the sharp tongue and steady aim, and regale their friends with an anecdote about her. But at the end of it all, she was no more than a passing acquaintance, a ship putting out to sea and then disappearing over the horizon.

  Uncomfortable with the thought, she went to find Lucas. He stood amid a group of other boys with their entry numbers tied to their upper arms. His grin widened as he shaded his eyes to study the scores on the posting board.

  What a marvelous profile he had, she thought with an unexpected rush of affection. He was such a beautiful boy. He was taller than the others, black-haired and blue-eyed, with an actual cleft in his chin. Other people were watching Lucas, too, simply because he was so glorious to look at. The Swansea and Portman girls, whom she recognized from the evening at the Excelsior Hotel, strolled past Lucas, their looks of longing almost painful in their intensity. Isabel couldn’t help but smile. One day, women were going to flock to him, and she hoped he would choose wisely and well.

  An unfamiliar sensation jabbed at her, and it took several moments before she was able to identify the fierce emotion that grabbed her and held on tight. It was a feeling made up of love and happiness and something almost spiritual, something that transcended ordinary sentiment. Pride. And not just ordinary pride but something more gratifying: maternal pride. She’d never had a mother to take pride in her. She’d never had a child to take pride in. But she had seen this look on the faces of other women watching their sons at cricket matches or their daughters playing the piano.

  Oh, Sancha Montgomery Calhoun, she thought. You have a magnificent son. I hope somewhere, somehow, you know that.

  Isabel knew she would think of Lucas often after she was gone. She would wonder and worry. She wished she could be present to see the future unfold f
or this handsome youth. Who would he love, and who would love him back? What would the years bring him? She would never know for certain, but his future would be filled with laughter, tears, happiness, heartache, riches, poverty and everything in between—all the pleasures and perils of a life fully lived.

  She caught herself longing to be present to witness Lucas’s coming-of-age, to celebrate the happy times with him, to commiserate with him over the inevitable bad times. This was a foreign and discomfiting notion for her—to want to stay in someone’s life instead of leaving all the time.

  Her smile as she offered a dainty curtsy to Mr. Larkin Spivey, a shooting club official, felt strained. This was not a good time to experience such inconvenient longings. Her life consisted of travels without end, and it was foolish to change direction now.

  To gather her composure, she went to the refreshments booth and helped herself to two glasses of lemonade. Then, squaring her shoulders, she marched up to Lucas.

  His grin seemed a mile wide. “Miss Fish-Wooten, look at the board. I’m third in my division.”

  “Of course you are,” she said briskly, handing him a glass. “I expected no less.”

  The look in his eyes warmed. “Thank you. Maybe that’s why I’m doing well,” he said. “Because you expect me to.”

  “You say that rather pointedly. Why do I sense a rather oblique complaint against your father?”

  “He expects me to fail at things. To misbehave. To…disappoint him.” He raised and lowered his shoulders in a martyr-like shrug. “Perhaps that’s why I do.”

  “How terribly clever of you to come up with a convenient way to blame your shortcomings on your father. I declare, you must be studying the works of Dr. Freud.”