Bette

by Lyn Cote

  Had Mrs. Lovelady included the pertinent information of why she’d left Ivy Manor? Feeling her face blaze, she gazed down into her drink. I didn’t want anyone—she amended, I didn’t want Ted to know that. Why? Because Ted had been right all along? Because she’d put her trust in a man with clay feet? Because she’d been played for a fool?

  Yes, that and much more she’d sincerely hoped Ted Gaston would never find out. He would have to bring it up. She couldn’t. Then she remembered Bermuda—Ted kissing her under that purple bougainvillea and proposing they have an affair. Then the photo of Maurielle flashed in front of her—invisible, but very real. It stung and added a waspish overtone to her next question. “Why does Mr. Hoover care about my working at the State Department?”

  “A good question—to which you know the answer. You’re too valuable an agent to sit at the State Department answering phones. What were you thinking, Bette?”

  Embarrassing tears popped into her eyes. I couldn’t face you, face anyone who knew me before. At least the gossips in Croftown had spread the news, saving her the necessity of saying, “Curt has asked for a divorce.” She continued looking down, hoping he wouldn’t notice her reaction. Hoping if he did, he wouldn’t mention it. “Has the agency started hiring female agents?”

  “No, sorry.” He paused. “And I mean that; I’d love working with you again. But no, not the FBI. On the other hand, Mr. Hoover and I know someone else who’d be thrilled to meet you.”

  This made Bette glance up. Some knot deep inside her loosened a fraction. Someone would be thrilled by her? “Who?”

  He ignored her question. “Things have really begun to heat up again—internationally.”

  “You mean Truman’s fight against communists in Greece and Turkey?” Bette swirled the ice in her coffee, trying not to notice how much she wanted to look at Ted, study him.

  “The woman reads the newspapers.” Ted made a gesture as if he were awarding her a prize.

  “I can still read between the lines, too.” Why hadn’t the war put an end to strife? Hadn’t enough thousands, millions died? She cautiously lifted her eyes to his, wishing she could be as cool as he. “We’re fighting Stalin’s agents now, not Hitler’s Abwehr.” She tingled with the approving look he gave her in response.

  Sitting alone and close to Ted was sensitizing her to him in the same old way. He had such an expressive face, so unlike Curt, who always tried to appear the cool academic. Stop comparing them. You have no future with any man—whether Curt finally succeeds in getting the divorce or not. If I let Curt divorce me, I won’t be welcome in my own church. I won’t be able to remarry. And there will be a child. Without thinking, she pressed a hand to her abdomen.

  “Would you be interested in helping your country again?” Ted asked, shaking her loose from her misery.

  Should she have anticipated this? Of course Ted hadn’t looked her up for any personal reason. Against her will, the disappointment crushed her. She stared into the creamy-tan coffee as if it held the answer.

  “Well?”

  “What are we talking about?” She dragged her mind back to the present. “The new Central Intelligence Agency?”

  “You can take the girl out of espionage, but you can’t take the espionage out of the girl,” Ted quipped. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Interested?”

  Say no. A baby’s on the way. This part of your life is over. She looked into Ted’s blue eyes. He hadn’t asked about Curt. Did that mean he knew or not, cared or not? Did it matter? Why did she care?

  “Well?” Ted goaded her.

  Three days after arriving in Washington, D.C, Bette entered the restaurant at the Willard Hotel. She wore a carefully chosen two-piece suit in severe black. She offered her gloved hand to Rear Admiral Souers, the man appointed by President Truman to head the new CIA. Once again she experienced the jolt that such a powerful man would be interested in meeting her. Somehow Curt’s rejection had led her to believe no man would want her or respect her. So she was surprised, but heartened.

  “So nice to meet you, sir.” The net veil of her new ebony hat concealed her face, as she had planned it to. She gave him a polite smile, holding back her inner uncertainty. Had she let her hopes get too high? She might still be asked to become nothing more than a glorified but very trustworthy secretary. The war was over and the anti-female career bias had settled back in place. Rosy the Riveter was supposed to return to the kitchen and smile about it. That had been her plan, too—until Curt had made it ludicrous.

  “An honor to meet you, ma’am.” The Rear Admiral stood across from her in his impressive Navy reserve uniform adorned with ribbons and medals.

  At that moment, Ted appeared beside Bette. She sensed his arrival with a visceral reaction. Ted had come to stand with her. It gave her daunted spirit a small measure of confidence. And caution.

  Souers shook Ted’s hand. “I didn’t know you’d be here, Gaston.”

  Ted smiled. “Bette’s my protégé and I like to witness any and all progress in her career.” When she sat, both men took their seats. A waiter appeared with a silver pot of coffee and a pitcher of water.

  Bette tried to suppress her marked reaction to Ted’s appearance. She had no doubt Ted was quite capable of proposing another affair. Would he? She shuddered at the thought. After Curt’s betrayal, she felt stripped, vulnerable. Why did she feel like Curt’s defection was her fault? Why did people look at her as if she were to blame? As if she, not Curt, had done something disgraceful?

  Souers’s steady gaze focused on Bette. “Your dossier is quite impressive. But I thought you had retired.”

  Bette took a deep breath, suppressing the rush of unwelcome emotion this reminder unleashed. “Things didn’t turn out as I expected.”

  Ted sipped his coffee. But she could feel his attention. He hadn’t asked her any personal questions about her marriage before this meeting. Did he know about Curt? Would he ask her when they were alone again?

  “I can’t say that I’m sorry to hear that you have come out of retirement.” A corner of Souers’s stern mouth lifted. “After I finished reading your record, I think you’re just the kind of agent we need. Things are happening so fast in Europe espionage-wise that we need to hit the ground running. We need someone with a sharp eye, and you have that. You seem to notice things that other operatives overlook. In this new struggle, we need that kind of talent. I have something in mind that would start immediately with a sharp learning curve. Are you interested?”

  Bette felt something inside her ease. Curt didn’t want her but her country still did. She looked down at her black-gloved hands primly folded in her lap. But I’m going to have a baby. Spies don’t have babies.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ivy Manor, July 1946

  Her eyes gritty with lack of sleep, Chloe rose, careful not to disturb Roarke. In her rose-sprigged nightgown, she walked softly to the window that looked out over Ivy Manor, its darkened back lawn, its distant tobacco fields and grove of buttonwood and scrub pine. She rubbed the back of her tight neck as she looked out on the moonlit scene. Home—her home.

  Tonight, here alone, she admitted to herself the truth that she was in her middle years—something she usually tried to ignore. No matter her care to keep her complexion protected from the sun, little telltale lines had begun forming around her eyes and mouth. So far she’d resisted dressing in the black or navy colors matrons over thirty were supposed to wear. But dressing in young colors hadn’t held the clock back. Or the spiteful gossip about her losing her looks—payback for her unconventional ways. But that wasn’t what she was losing sleep over.

  “Can’t you sleep?” Roarke asked behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I was trying not to disturb you.” In well-worn blue pajamas, her husband rose from the bed and came to stand behind her. He settled his arm around her front just below her neck and leaned his face into her nape. “I never tire of fee
ling you close to me.”

  “I hope you never do.” Just his nearness comforted her; Roarke loved her and he was here.

  “It’s the children, isn’t it?” He rubbed his face into the back of her hair.

  His touch soothed her even as it heightened her desire to be closer to him. She relaxed against him, luxuriating in the firmness of his chest. “How did everything unravel?” She pressed a kiss to the top of his hand. “I was so happy—so grateful that Curt and Jamie survived the war. But after all that, new problems came.”

  Roarke pulled her even closer against his warmth. “War has a way of mixing things up.” His voice rumbled beside her ear. “Curt wouldn’t have met that French girl. And Jamie would have come home to Maryland.”

  His breath on her neck made her respond to him like fingers strumming guitar strings. She reached back with both hands and slid her fingers into his thick hair.

  “I wonder what is keeping Jamie in Hawaii in the Air Force.”

  “I don’t have any idea.” He softly kissed the side of her neck.

  She felt the stubble of his new beard against the sensitive skin of her nape. She lowered her hands and put them over his as she prepared to reveal the deep guilt that had kept her from sleep. “I keep thinking that I should have been a better mother,” she whispered, soft against the night sounds from the open window. “What if I hadn’t spent the first ten years of Bette’s life away from her?” The old guilt still had the power to grind and shred her. Regret was the saddest word she knew.

  “This is not your fault.” Roarke shook her just enough to show his objection. “You did the best you could. So did I. Life didn’t play softball with us either. Remember what my mother said on her deathbed? That she must have been a bad mother to lose both her children? Well, that wasn’t true of her then and it’s not true of you now.”

  “I know it wasn’t true of your mother.” Chloe closed her eyes and pictured Miss Estelle lying on her deathbed with Bette and Jamie—just children—on either side of her. It was an image she would never forget. “She was wonderful and so was your father. But—you’re right—they couldn’t stop history any more than we can.”

  Roarke nodded against the back of her head, ruffling her hair, rasping her scalp. “I do regret that we wasted the 1920s. We could have been together, but I was so stubborn.”

  Chloe rotated in his arms and kissed him—putting all her love for him into the warm touch of her lips on his. Then she drew breath. “We were together for the 1930s and we have our boys and we finished raising Bette and Jamie together. You’re right—we will not play these blame games.”

  Roarke took his time kissing her back. He let his lips roam over her soft skin, breathing in her subtle fragrance—roses and Chloe. “We’re going to do something special for our twentieth anniversary. Just think—1950 is coming up fast. I was thinking Paris or—”

  “Maybe Hawaii?” Chloe suggested, tracing his stubbly jaw with her forefinger.

  “Yes, let’s hope we’ll be visiting Jamie and maybe he’ll have a family by then.”

  Chloe straightened. “We can only wait and pray. Bette and Curt, and Jamie will have to sort everything out for themselves.”

  “I know.” Roarke pulled her back for another lingering kiss.

  “Mmmm. I can’t believe I’ll be fifty when we celebrate our twentieth,” she murmured against his mouth. “I’ll be an old woman.”

  “Never.” Roarke chuckled. His mouth explored the tender skin of her throat and she sighed her pleasure. When she feared her knees would melt, she moaned his name softly.

  Then he lifted her and carried her toward their bed. When she tried to object, he chided, “You’re still as slender as you were when we married. And don’t tell me to be careful of my back. That day hasn’t come yet.”

  She chuckled and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Roarke, you are the love of my life.”

  “And you’re mine.” He kissed her eyes.

  I love this man. Please, dear Lord, give us many more years together.

  On a July Saturday morning, in a linen suit that was already wrinkling in the heat, Curt stood at the door of the Lovelady townhouse. He held his hat in his hands and shifted from one foot to the other. He tapped the knocker again. Standing here at this familiar door brought a wave of unexpected nostalgia. He recalled all those pre-war Sundays he’d stopped here to escort Bette to church and then brought her back here in the twilight for a good-night kiss—two kids together. He felt his emotions rising so fast he couldn’t stem the flow or sort them all.

  The door opened. Bette, looking lovely though slightly disheveled in a white-satin robe, stood before him. “You.”

  The one syllable held a wealth of meaning—all negative. He ignored the underlying message, “Go away.” They stared at one another—inches between them. In a rush, he recalled the nights he’d spent with her in the little cottage behind Ivy Manor. He stopped himself. “Good morning, Bette,” he said in a tight voice. “I was wondering if we could talk.”

  “About what?” She challenged him with a lift of her chin.

  He wasn’t going to say, “About us.” “We . . . I need to discuss some things with you.”

  With a grimace, Bette stepped back and waved him inside. She led him to the parlor. “I slept late this morning,” she said, looking down at her robe. “Sit down. What do you want?”

  He perched on the edge of the blue wingback chair, his hat in his hand. “I want to know if you’ve reconsidered giving me a divorce.”

  “Why would you wonder that?” She brushed her lush, dark hair back from her face.

  And Curt remembered suddenly how beautiful she’d looked on their wedding day. Guilt clanged inside him—a deep, scolding knell. “I’m quite aware that the failure of our marriage is my fault,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t plan on falling in love with . . . I didn’t plan it.”

  He’d fallen in love with Maurielle in the midst of a skirmish near her village. He’d been separated from his squad. A bullet had grazed his shoulder. She cleaned and dressed his wound and they’d ended by making love. Guilt choked Curt.

  Bette eased down into a languid pose in complete opposition to his stiff posture. He didn’t like seeing her sit that way—like a woman replete with worldly knowledge. It wasn’t like her. He cleared his throat, starting to point this out, and then stopped. What he thought no longer mattered to her.

  “So you want to know if I’ll give you a divorce.” Bette crossed her legs, letting one foot dangle at him.

  He nodded, not liking his role in this conversation. He’d betrayed Bette by making love with Maurielle and then he’d betrayed Maurielle by resuming relations with Bette. Somehow he had to make things right with one of them. And Maurielle needed him more. He hated the words he was saying, but he’d made promises to Maurielle, and Maurielle had suffered so through the awful Nazi occupation. He couldn’t break his word to Maurielle—so frail, so lovely. Bette was the stronger of the two. “I’m leaving for France on Tuesday. I’d like to file for divorce and get the ball rolling before I leave.”

  Bette played with the thin satin tie of her robe. “Have you given any thought to our child?” She wouldn’t look at him.

  His shame blazed full now. “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I will of course pay alimony and child support. And I’d like to live close enough so that I can have the child on weekends.”

  “And just how will you manage to support two families on a teacher’s pay?” Bette’s tone taunted him.

  Curt had wondered this himself, but what could he say?

  “Have you written about my pregnancy to . . . her?”

  It felt as though someone were setting fire to his stomach. “No,” he forced himself to speak the distasteful words, “but she’ll do what’s right for . . . our child. She has a gentle heart.”

  Bette made a subtle sound of disbelief. “I had one, once upon a time.” She dropped the satin strings. “When you came home from the war,” Bette’s voice ha
rdened, “why didn’t you tell me you were going to leave me? Why did you get me pregnant knowing you would be deserting me?”

  He stared at his hands, hating the fact that her accusations were justified. “I know it sounds inadequate, but how could I tell you? ‘Pardon me, but I’d like a divorce?’ My parents, your parents, everyone was rallying around so happy we were back together. I just couldn’t—”

  “You could have sent me a Dear Joan letter,” Bette said with sarcasm. “Then this child wouldn’t have been conceived.”

  “I know, but I thought I should tell you face to face.”

  Bette gave a deep, weary sigh.

  It dragged through him, tearing through his pretension of honor.

  “I regret that you were not more honest with me,” she said at last. “And I regret that I didn’t realize that after waiting a decade to be together, we’d waited too long. I’m not the sweet little thing you fell in love with at Croftown High.”

  Was she trying to tell him that she was involved with someone else? He couldn’t believe that Bette had been unfaithful to him. That kind of behavior wasn’t in her. But then, he’d never imagined falling in love with Maurielle. What might his unfaithfulness have caused Bette to do? “Is there someone else?” he tried to stop the words but it was impossible.

  Bette gave him a narrowed look. “I don’t think that’s any of your business. This child, however, is. And I won’t have him or her slighted just because you decided to break the vows we took.”

  His face burned, but she had the right of it. “I won’t. I promise you. I want this child to be in my life, too. I won’t let the child down.” The way I let you down.

  “I still can’t think of divorce. I can’t.” Abruptly Bette stood up to dismiss him.

  “What are your plans, then?” he asked, rising politely, but hating her dismissal and hating himself more.

  “I’ve been offered an interesting position. And I may be traveling soon.”

  He paused, trying to figure out what she was going to do about their child. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready to have the baby? Won’t you want to be near home?”