Stranger at Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  Logan stepped back, folding his arms, and watched the couple swing away from him. He tried to keep a nonchalant smile in place, but it was not as easy as it once might have been. He had rather enjoyed that last dance, or more accurately, had enjoyed holding Allison in his arms.

  No doubt most observers would have felt the two made a fine couple, he thought. She probably had brought him here as part of a scheme to work her wiles on Fairgate. It would be just like her, he thought. But as he watched them, Logan could not help but think there was something sharp and dissonant about Fairgate’s harsh, angular features next to Allison’s soft loveliness. It grated against Logan’s sensitivities, even as he tried to convince himself that he should not care whom Allison danced with. He would not be here that much longer. He would be gone and that would be that.

  With the thought of his business in Port Strathy came the jarring reminder that Fairgate’s sudden appearance could prove a major dilemma. If he should chance to remember their previous association, and revealed what he knew, it might be difficult for Logan to talk his way out of. But Logan was not left to his thoughts, or his aloneness, for long. The moment Allison melted away with Fairgate, several girls swarmed toward him. The first to lay claim was Saundra Bramford.

  “We are very progressive around here, Mr. Macintyre,” she said. “The girls are not expected to have to wait to be asked. And I especially, as hostess, must see that my guests are properly cared for.”

  All for progress, Logan took Saundra’s slim arm just as the slow beat reverted to a swing. For that Logan should have been thankful, for the Bramford girl, in many years of trying to teach her cloddish brother to dance, had nearly forgotten how to do anything but lead. But Logan soon found himself being handed off from girl to girl to girl, and it was not until the call for dinner sounded that he saw Allison again.

  Following dinner, Logan and Allison found themselves together for several more dances. Whenever the music turned to a slow tune, each unconsciously sought the other out, trying, however, to make their encounters seem accidental. But whenever Allison was in the company of another man, Logan found himself with no scarcity of society girls, for they seemed ever available. He was frequently the object of scowls from the young men whose dates seemed far too intrigued with Allison’s mysterious friend.

  He managed to avoid any further contact with Fairgate, though Angela Cunningham, who had accompanied the young lord of Dalmount, always seemed to migrate toward Logan whenever Charles was with Allison. The last thing Logan wanted to do was attract Fairgate’s attention. But Miss Cunningham, in addition to being rather pretty herself, was precocious and difficult to refuse.

  When the huge grandfather clock in the entryway chimed ten o’clock, Logan began to give thought to the trip home. It had taken a good hour to drive to the Bramford estate, but since their arrival a fresh rainstorm had descended and the roads, already poor, might add still another hour to the return. The MacNeils had said nothing to him about when they expected their daughter home, but he did not want to take any chances with their good graces.

  He determined to seek out Allison at the first opportunity. However, when next the music stopped, it was to the sharp ringing of a spoon against a crystal glass. A gradual hush fell over the crowd, the band stopped playing, and all eyes turned toward where Lady Bramford stood on the platform beside the band.

  “Children,” she said, “I have an announcement.” She paused, as if for effect, then continued. “I’ve just had word that our road is washed out. I’m afraid you are all quite stranded—”

  Before she could finish, a great cheer rose from the young people, for in their youthful estimation, the most perfect end to an evening such as this would be not to have it end at all.

  Lady Bramford, none too pleased at the prospects, but attempting to make the best of it, cleared her throat daintily. When that had no effect on the reveling group, the cornet player blasted a shrill note, bringing silence. “As I was saying,” she continued, “you will be our guests until morning, at which time we will be able to send a crew out to repair the road. Accommodations will be prepared for you all—I hope you won’t mind being a bit crowded.”

  Far from minding, the guests doubted that anything could be more exciting! Logan, however, was hardly looking forward to another twelve hours of such highbrow company. He would have given anything to be able to spend the night with the fishermen at Hamilton’s.

  The next hour was spent telephoning families with the news, made all the more frantic by the fear that the phone line would go out any minute.

  “I know, Mum, it’s a rotten go, but what can I do?” . . .

  “Yes, Father, you’ll have to mention the conditions of the roads in the next House session. Until then . . . we’ll just have to make do.” . . .

  “It’s terrible—but somehow, Mother, I’ll survive it.”

  And so went the calls until scores of parents were feeling sorry for their hapless children. And the children themselves did little to dissuade such feelings, knowing that no parent would feel very comfortable with the thought that their children were having a good time.

  By midnight the sleeping accommodations had been arranged—the young ladies in the east wing, the men in the west.

  It would be hours before slumber would descend in either wing, however. To the east, sleep was forestalled by the endless gossip concerning the evening. Who had danced with whom, and how often. Wasn’t Saundra Bramford’s engagement to be announced tonight? What had happened? And why was her beau so conspicuously absent?

  Logan’s name came up frequently in the various rooms of the east wing. Who was the dashing stranger? Why hadn’t anyone heard of his family before this? Could he be from the Continent? No, he had an unmistakable Scottish accent. But hadn’t someone said he was from London? Too bad of Allison to keep him all to herself.

  On her part, Allison wasn’t quite sure how to react to all the attention Logan had generated among her friends. She had brought him for this very purpose, but now that it had worked so well, she had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He was her discovery, and the raves of the other young ladies naturally reflected on her. But they detracted from her in a sense, as well. She wouldn’t have minded so much if during her sallies among the other young men, he had been idle and disconsolate at her absence. But he hadn’t appeared to miss her company in the least.

  She joined halfheartedly into the girlish banter around her, and was downright sullen as she finally snuggled down under the blankets to try to find some solace in sleep. What she had expected from the evening, she couldn’t quite specify. Had she brought Logan Macintyre here hoping to make him fall in love with her? Was she irritated because she was unexpectedly beginning to fall in love with him? No—of course not! That was ridiculous! He was nothing! A commoner! And a brash egotist as well! She refused to think about it anymore.

  And with such a turmoil of confusions and questions rattling around in her brain, Allison drifted into an uneasy but dreamless sleep.

  Logan had other matters occupying his mind at that moment. The young men, not given to gossip, had found more practical means of passing their time. By some ill stroke of the draw, Logan had been housed with the boorish Clifford Arylin-Michaels and Charles Fairgate. His first thought was that the young lord had purposefully machinated the seemingly coincidental accommodations in order to get him alone to question him, or perhaps for some other purpose yet to be named. Somehow he did not perceive Fairgate as a man who ever fell victim to mere chance. But as the young lord said nothing, there was no way for Logan to find out what he knew without dangerously jogging his memory. His only choice for the present was to continue playing the innocent, and hope that what Fairgate knew about his Glasgow background would not come to light.

  A few minutes after they were settled, Eddie Bramford and two others whom Logan did not know came into the room.

  “It’s too early for sleep,” said Bramford, brandishing a deck of cards. “Anyone game?”r />
  Fairgate nodded his assent, but Arylin-Michaels abstained on the grounds that he was too intelligent to participate in low games of “chance.” Then several eyes turned to Logan. What he most feared was to get involved in a game which would simulate that situation so many years ago and which might therefore refresh Fairgate’s memory all too keenly. He had changed a lot from the coarse and grubby fifteen-year-old he was then. But not enough to stand up to a test this severe.

  “I think I’ll pass,” he said, punctuating his words with a convincing yawn and stretch. “I’m awfully tired.”

  “Aw, come on,” prodded Bramford. “You stole all our girls tonight. The least you can do is give us a chance to get even.” His voice revealed his cheerful nature.

  “I hope you don’t think I was trying to—”

  “No,” interrupted Bramford. “We’d never hold a little thing like that against you. It’s hardly your fault if those crazy girls—you know they’re all younger than us men!”—he looked around at his two friends knowingly and with a sly grin—“all go a bit featherheaded the minute they lay eyes on someone new.”

  Logan laughed, looking quickly from face to face. They all seemed in accord except for Fairgate. His look, fairly well concealed but evident to one like Logan whose business required a knowledge of faces and their masks, revealed that he had indeed not forgotten Logan’s advances in the directions of his Angela Cunningham. His silence was all the more foreboding, knowing what Logan knew he knew, and he wondered what revenge the young lord might even now be planning.

  “I’m not really much of a card player,” said Logan.

  “We’ll be more than happy to teach you,” replied Fairgate, speaking now for the first time and looking him evenly in the eyes.

  “I . . . I really—”

  “We won’t take no for an answer,” insisted Bramford, “except from Clifford, because he’s a wet blanket, anyway.”

  Seeing that to continue with his resistance would only raise more questions than to give in, Logan resigned himself to his fate.

  The five, including Bramford’s Oxford cronies Raymond Crawford and Mitchell Robertson, sat in a circle on the floor since there was no table in the room large enough for the gamesters. Ray produced a box of chips and began placing stacks in front of each player.

  “I’m afraid,” said Logan, making one final attempt to retreat, “that I haven’t come prepared with much ready cash—”

  “Not to worry,” said Bramford. “We know you’re good for it.”

  Logan didn’t even want to think about what the progression of chips were worth, and he certainly wasn’t about to ask. Perhaps, being but the sons of wealth, these fellows might have little real wealth at their fingertips. The stakes might not be that high. But who could tell? He’d just have to put it out of his mind, and concentrate on playing like an amateur, making sure he neither won nor lost too much, and making sure the attention stayed on someone else when the pot grew large.

  Bramford dealt out the first hand, identifying the game as five-card draw. Each player threw a white chip into the pot. Logan had no idea if it represented a shilling, a quid, or a hundred pounds, but he tossed it in as if it were worth only the wood from which it had been made.

  The game progressed without incident. The pots remained small, the hands nothing much more than an occasional full house or straight, and Logan managed to lose an occasional big one for the sake of appearances, always gradually winning back his losses over the following several hands in small enough chunks that his profile in the game remained obscure.

  Whether Fairgate was watching him he could not tell, but the longer the game went the more he remembered why Fairgate had been such a perfect setup seven years earlier. Not only was his manner irritating and conceited—a fact which had only grown worse with the passage of time—his poker playing was of the worst sort. It was all Logan could do not to forget that he was supposed to be an inexperienced gambler. He simply could not pass up such an opportunity to outplay these “golden boys.” Especially Fairgate.

  At length the hand Logan had been waiting for came. With deuces wild—a typical university trick, Logan told himself, which had no part in men’s poker, but which he would take full advantage of since it was the house rule—he had drawn two cards to a jack-high full house. Bramford and Crawford were out. Robertson had raised twice, and he and Fairgate had both remained in. After Robertson’s second raise, Fairgate had raised again. Robertson folded. His eyes gleaming with the old magic, Logan threw in the calling chip, hesitated a moment, then threw in another blue.

  “Let’s see how good your hand really is, Fairgate. I’ll raise you again.”

  “You’re a cocky one, aren’t you, Macintyre,” replied Fairgate. “On the poker table as well as the dance floor. But this time I don’t think you can beat me. In fact, Macintyre,” he added with a slight curl to his already scornful lip, “I think you’re bluffing. I don’t think you’re quite man enough for our game. I don’t know where you come from, though I could swear I’ve seen you before. But one thing you’ll soon learn is not to mix where you don’t fit. So I’m going to call your bluff, Macintyre.”

  With the words he brazenly tossed a final blue chip into the middle of the floor, and with a flourish abandoned protocol and displayed his cards for all to see—a queen-high straight.

  “Beat that, Macintyre!” he said with a sneer, looking Logan deeply in the eyes, as if still trying in vain to recall the connection his mind seemed intent on making.

  Logan returned his gaze, debating within himself. After a pause of several moments, he laughed, almost nervously, and said, “You’re right, Fairgate; you’re a better man than I!” With that he threw his winning cards face-down onto the rest of the discarded deck. “You win!”

  34

  The Drive Home

  Allison was glad when the final goodbyes had been said and they could finally get away. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of the events of the previous evening, or where exactly she now stood with Logan. By inviting him, she had hoped to gain ground both in the estimation of her friends and in Logan’s eyes. But it seemed he had in fact been the one to become the talk of the ball, not her. She had hoped to play the new appreciation Logan would surely have for her to an advantage; now she realized she was in no position to do any such thing. If anything, he now held the upper hand.

  The rain had let up for a short while that morning, allowing workmen to repair the damaged section of road. But by the time Allison and Logan reached the Lindow Bridge, the clouds had amassed again. Below, as the Austin plodded across the ancient wooden structure, they could see the waters of the river lapping nearly at a level with the road. Allison had never seen the river this high before, but she had heard of other floods in the valley that had ripped away bridge, road, and anything else within several hundred feet of the river’s shores. Already the mighty rush of water was making the pilings of the bridge creak and sway dangerously. Allison held her breath as they crossed, wondering what the road ahead would be like.

  Logan slowed the car through a muddy bog shortly beyond the bridge, then suggested they turn back. But Allison made light of the weather.

  “Oh, this is nothing. It gets this way every spring.” She could hardly disguise the fact that she was more than a little frightened to be slipping and sliding around the road as they were. But she wanted to get home, and she could not betray her inner anxieties to a man of the world like Logan.

  Logan proceeded forward. The road was muddy, in some places covered completely with water, but still navigable. The Austin crept along like some strange amphibious creature. All at once a deafening crack of thunder shook the landscape, and the sky belched forth an almost instantaneous deluge of fresh rain. It fell so hard and thick that the automobile’s small windshield wipers were hopeless to fulfill their intended task. Logan could see nothing ahead of him.

  “Ali,” he said, “put your head out the window and let me know when I have to turn.”
/>   “What?”

  “I said stick your head out—”

  “I heard what you said. You must be joking. I’ll be drowned!”

  “Would you rather end up in a ditch alongside the road?”

  “It’s miles till the road turns.”

  “I saw a bend in the road just ahead.”

  “Impossible!”

  Logan blew out a sharp breath. “Ali, you are impossible!”

  “Don’t call me Ali!”

  “I’ll call you anything I please,” he retorted, the tension of trying to drive in the storm undermining his usual patience. “And unless you want me to think of something even more unpleasant, you had better—”

  He broke off as the steering wheel suddenly jerked out of control and the wheels of the car lurched over the edge of the muddy road. Logan pumped furiously on the water-soaked brakes. But he hardly needed to. The car bumped to a jerky stop, its two front tires off the road in a ditch full of water, its engine dead. Logan turned the key, but it only coughed and sputtered in response.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” said Allison smugly.

  Logan turned his head and stared at her, his burning eyes saying more than could any words.

  She turned away, perhaps humbled by the sound of her own outburst. “Now what?” she asked in a more contrite tone.

  “I suggest we sit here until the storm passes.”

  “That could take forever!”

  “Well, what do you expect me to do? Stop the rain? Would you prefer to walk for help in this downpour?”

  Pouting, Allison folded her arms and stared out the window as if she could see something. Finally, keeping her eyes focused ahead, she said, “I suppose I should have helped when you asked. I’m . . . I’m sorry I blamed you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “It’ll be alright.”

  Trying the key in the ignition again, Logan jammed his foot on the accelerator and pushed to the floor. Much to his surprise, the engine revved right up. He threw the gearshift into reverse and let out the clutch, but nothing followed except the sickening sound of helplessly spinning wheels in the mud of the road.