Patricia Potter (4 page)

Michael limped to the window, which was now open to the soft sea breeze, and looked through the huge oaks draped with moss. He could just barely see patches of Jekyll Creek and the salt marshes beyond. The sea smell was familiar, still intoxicating as it had been from the first moment he sailed away from Germany on a tramp steamer. He wished he were back at sea, away from the plotting and machinations of ambitious men.

Ambitious men. His father had been one. He had died one. His father had embraced National Socialism despite his aristocratic background, despite his wealth. But he had been a bully, and his temperament had suited the new bullies of this century.

Michael felt a puppet on a string now, strung and manipulated by men like his father.

A knock came at the door, and he moved toward it, opening it to the uniformed attendant. “Suh,” the black man said softly, “tea will be served downstairs at three,” and Michael nodded as the man backed away.

Michael was no stranger to blacks, having visited nearly every port in the world. But the grave soft courtesy of the servants and employees on this island was new. He looked out the window again and wondered whether time had come to a complete stop. It seemed that way here. He wished it had, wished it could.

Then he thrust aside the troublesome thoughts. He had been given few choices, and now he must do the best with what he had.

He had a few hours now, however. A few hours of his own. Michael ran a comb through his thick hair which had been tangled by the tangy sea mist. It was militarily short, but rebellious tendrils still had a tendency to curl and fall over his forehead. He would take a walk. A walk to clear his head, to investigate the island, to make plans. There were a dozen reasons, not to mention a certain young woman who might, at this moment, be building sand castles in the sun. As quickly as the limp and cane allowed, he moved to the door and down the corridor and the stately stairs.

When he inquired about the beach, he discovered it was more than a mile away. The club employee took a look at his cane and offered the use of what he called a “red bug.” Michael soon discovered the red bug was a clever little motorized vehicle powered by gasoline. Consisting of little more than a frame, four wheels, two seats and a steering wheel, it was, the staff member said, remarkably adaptable to the crushed-shell roads, the beach, and the dirt trails. Everyone used them, the man explained, adults and children alike.

Feeling like the child he had never been, he soon discovered the vehicle perfect for exploring, and he drove past the elaborate cottages, down the roads lined with live oaks, their languid limbs laden with Spanish moss. Southern magnolias and palmetto abounded, as did blooming dogwood. The green carpet beneath them was dotted with fern and wood flowers, and the air was musky with the mingled sweet and tangy scents of wildflowers and the sea.

No one else was on the road, and aside from the
put-put
of his vehicle there was only the whisper of wind and the fetching song of a mockingbird.

He reached some old dune ridges, which were covered with a forest of wind-sculpted live oak tress, all their branches stretched out toward the interior in an odd, lopsided pattern. He parked and took up his cane, limping across the dunes to a wide beach.

Michael felt an inexplicable but fierce stab of disappointment that he saw no human figures, no woman and children, although there were hundreds of birds playing and hunting at the water’s edge. The depth of his disappointment was really quite remarkable, and completely unlike anything he had previously experienced. He pondered briefly how those few moments on the cruiser could have made such an impact, and then dismissed the thought with the iron control he had so well developed.

Instead, he looked at the beach with a certain appreciation. It was low tide, and the sand appeared endless before it melted into the foam-licked gray water. He took a turn to the left, where huge oak trees, part of their knurled roots unearthed by wind and sand, clustered above the beach. At high tide they would almost meet the water, challenging it to do its worst.

The sand was hard, not like the soft sand of many other beaches he had walked, and easy for his injured leg to maneuver. The leg was aching, for he had been on it all morning, but each day it grew stronger and he had extended his walks from half a mile to two miles. Usually by the time he finished, streaks of agony ran up and down the length of his calf, but he welcomed the pain. He had come so damned close to losing it.

Michael closed his eyes, remembering the moment when particles of metal had ripped into his flesh, tearing it open through the bone. He had been lucky. He’d had a fine surgeon who chose to try to repair it rather than amputate. He was then sent to one of the best doctors in Berlin. He didn’t know why until later. And then he had wondered whether the price had been worth it.

But for today, he would forget the cost. Seabirds danced happily on the beach, and gulls swept gracefully down in the water. A cool breeze broke the unexpected heat of a late March day, and mild waves rushed in pleasant rhythm up the beach. The rich, unforgettable smell of water teaming with life filled his senses and melded there with the echoing wild, lonely call of a gull and the scolding heckling of smaller birds competing for a sea-discarded offering. After two months in a hospital and suffocating, claustrophobic days in a submarine, he greedily absorbed the sights and sounds and smells. He could almost forget why he was here. Almost.

He reached a curve in the beach, where it swung around to face the marshes, and he turned back, his limp becoming more pronounced as the leg rebelled. He wondered how far he had come. The sun was lowering now, its brightness fading slightly as the bright ball slid down the horizon. But still it favored the ocean with its rays, sending flecks of gold dust across its shimmering surface. Deceptively calm, deceptively peaceful.

Michael knew the ocean, knew the water in each of its moods. The sea had been his parents, his teacher, his security. He had run away to sea, at fourteen, lying about his age. He had run away from his father, from a mother who suffered repeated abuse and yet still adored the man who did it to her. Michael hadn’t been able to understand, to accept, and he knew if he’d stayed he would one day kill his father. So he had left, and found the roughest, most exacting school there was. It was a world harder for him than most, for he carried a natural arrogance and charm which came from wealth and breeding, and those characteristics alienated the rough seamen. He’d had to fight his way to respect, to repeatedly prove himself by working harder, longer than anyone else. He’d had a natural aptitude and ear for languages and could easily slide in and out of the rough sea speech with its heavy emphasis on descriptive curses. His mother had been Canadian, and he spoke English as well as his native German, and during his travels picked up French and Spanish as well as a smattering of other languages. It was that talent, he knew, that had brought him to the attention of Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, German intelligence.

His gaze turned from the sea and found three figures on the beach ahead of him. His heart lurched with sudden pleasure and anticipation, and despite the pain in his leg his steps hurried as he moved toward them.

Meara’s wind-tossed hair was even more glorious here as the sun seemed to center all its attention on catching each strand and painting it with a particularly splendid red-gold fire. Her profile was toward him, and as she had been on the yacht, she was smiling, her lips curved whimsically as she surveyed a crumbled tower. She wore a simple green dress which molded her slender body and which, he knew, deepened the emerald green of her eyes. She was barefoot, and long, slender legs bent comfortably behind her. Her lap was full of loose grains of sand, and her hands were caked with wet sand as she looked, her head cocked in mock dismay, at the fallen tower of a not very elegant sand castle. Absorbed in her task, she was oblivious to his presence. She was, he thought quickly, the most delightful sight he’d ever encountered.

“Enemy cannon?” Michael queried seriously and had the satisfaction of three faces looking quickly up, all of them flashing with welcome.

Meara shook her head wryly, but her eyes sparkled with warmth and mischief. “More like faulty construction techniques.”

Michael smiled slowly as he looked at the three of them. Tara’s blond hair, like Meara’s, was damp with sea air and fell in tangled curls down her back as a seven-year-old face looked up at him with the open delight of a child confident that everyone was her friend.

Peter jumped to his feet politely. “Perhaps you could help us, sir.” Despite the courtesy, there was an eagerness in his voice, even a touch of hero worship.

Leave!
Every cautious, sensible part of him emphasized the command. Make an excuse and leave.

But nothing inside him obeyed. His gaze caught Meara’s, a flow of energy and awareness passing between them with aching intensity, holding both of them motionless, neither able or willing to break the spell that enveloped them.

“Will you, sir?” Peter’s insistent voice intruded.

“Willya?” chimed Tara.

“Will you, Commander?” Meara’s request came softly, an irresistible plea dancing lightly in the air.

“I’m a sailor,” he demurred with a disarming modesty. “I doubt my architectural abilities are any better than yours. Now if it were a ship…”

Meara looked down at another tower that was just now tumbling down. “They can’t be any worse,” she observed. Then she noticed the cane and the leg he had favored this morning, and she looked suddenly chastened. “Perhaps your leg…”

She sounded concerned and self-reproachful, and the warmth in him deepened. It had been a long time since anyone had cared, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to react to it. He was a prisoner of that warmth, of hers and of his own. With a certain grace despite the obvious stiffness of the one leg, he lowered himself, feeling strangely out of place in so informal a position. He had never played in the sand before, had never really played at all. But all of a sudden, it seemed a very appealing pastime, especially when he saw the delighted approval in Meara’s eyes. When her hand accidentally brushed his, the warmth became an ache that seeped throughout his body.

He had more skill than he thought, and his suggestions, based in part on the castles he had seen in Europe, produced under eager hands a very superior product, an elaborate European castle with towers and turrets and double walls.

Only rarely during the afternoon, as the sun began to dip, did he remember his real purpose here, and that he was only playing a role. He was doing as he had been told, ingratiating himself, making friends, beginning a betrayal that he already suspected would destroy him as well as the intended victims. Perhaps that was why, he thought, he was grabbing these moments for his own. Tomorrow, Hans would be here, and plans would begin in earnest. God, he detested the man he was being forced to work with.

“We’re tiring you.” Meara’s voice interrupted his thought, and he knew he must be frowning, his eyes clouded.

“No, it’s been a pleasure.” His voice was softer than he’d intended, laced with a regret only he understood.

Peter began to move restlessly, and eagerly accepted Meara’s suggestion that he and Tara play ball.

As they moved away, Michael turned to Meara. “How long have you been with the Connors?”

“Forever,” she smiled. Fondness was in her voice as she continued. “My mother has been their maid for twenty years. I was too, for a while, and then I started taking care of Tara and Peter.”

“Where is she now?”

“In New York.”

“And your father?”

“He died just after I was born. An accident on the New York docks. He was a stevedore.”

There was a challenge in the way she said the words, and he understood it only too well. By his very presence here, he had to be wealthy and of fine background. Michael sensed she had also felt the fierce attraction between them and was telling him, quite honestly, of her own history before another step was taken by either of them. She was, in her own soft way, asking him if it mattered. Sudden guilt, deep and bitter, battered at him like storm-swept waves. Honesty was the one thing he couldn’t give. He was going to use her. He had no choice but to use her, but perhaps he could minimize the damage. He couldn’t allow the magic between them to continue. Better she think him a snob. He had what he wanted, an introduction to the Connors and, through them, to the others on the island.

Any more was idiocy. But still he didn’t leave. He damned himself, but still he didn’t leave. For some reason, he didn’t think Meara would be satisfied taking care of someone else’s children all her life, though she obviously did it very well.

“And now? What are your plans now?”

She smiled, and he knew he had been right, and that she appreciated his seeing it.

“Writing.”

He raised an eyebrow in question.

“I received my degree in journalism a month ago. I start with
Life
magazine this summer. Nothing very grand. An assistant to an assistant to an assistant,” she added quickly.

“I think that’s very grand, indeed,” he said quite truthfully and with some surprise. His recent contacts with women had been few and temporary, and never with the apparently growing number of women choosing a career over marriage.

Meara’s expression thanked him, and once more he felt a rare ripple of pleasure surge through him.