She went immediately to the leaded casement windows and opened them wide. It was too dark to see anything beyond the lighted terrace far below, but she could hear the distant pounding of the sea. A salt-laden haze coated the panes of the windows.
Feeling suddenly tired, she walked over to the bed. A freshly starched white counterpane stretched across it like the membrane of a drum. As she pulled it back from the pillows, there was a light knocking at the door. When she opened it, Helen Bellayne was standing in the hallway.
“I was wondering...” she began, and stopped. “Oh hell, I just wanted to make sure you had something suitable to wear to dinner tonight. Sam told me that you might not have any formal dinner clothes.”
“I was going to wear my best uniform,” said Liza.
“Can’t allow that,” said Helen, shaking her head firmly. “Not the way I saw Nicky eyeing you earlier in the great hall. You are the first woman to put the light in his eyes in a long time, my dear.”
“I don’t have anything else to wear,” she said, “and I...”
“We’re about the same size,” said Helen, “and I brought one more thing than I need.”
She left the room for several minutes, returning with a dark-blue silk evening dress over one arm and a pair of black pumps in her hand.
“I can’t promise that this dress will even last through the evening,” she said. “It’s one of the last of the best. My mother wore it to a soiree with the Queen Mother at the coronation of George the Sixth. I had it altered to fit me some years ago. I think you’ll fill it out nicely.”
“Really, I don’t know how to thank you,” said Liza.
“One more piece of advice, if I may,” said Helen. “As someone who has attended these parties on many occasions, you should be prepared for a very late evening. I would suggest that you take a bath while there is still some hot water left, and then take a short nap.”
As soon as she was gone, Liza decided to follow her advice. Finding the bathroom down the hall, she ran a hot bath and lingered in it until someone began knocking on the door ten minutes later.
Returning to her little room, she opened the windows wide again, removed her bathrobe, and climbed naked into the four-poster bed. She fell asleep to the sound of the restless sea.
CHAPTER 24
“Y
ou look absolutely ravishing,” said Charlie Wainwright, his eyes gleaming with pleasure as she came down the broad staircase in the blue silk evening gown. The dress fit as if it had been made for her, accentuating her slim, curvaceous figure in a simple, elegant way.
Liza burst out laughing when she saw the costume he had assembled for the dinner party. His black tuxedo jacket looked as if it had last been worn to a celebration of the Spanish Armada, and it didn’t match the red-striped navy uniform pants. The bow tie at the neck of his rumpled white dress shirt was canary yellow with black polka dots. A long blue-and-white scarf hung across his shoulders.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded with a lopsided grin.
“You are,” she said.
“Well, you’ve missed the cocktail hour,” he said in a way that made it clear he hadn’t. “Everyone’s already at dinner.”
A thirty-piece orchestra was playing a Mozart symphony in the great hall as they went through it into the formal dining room. The three hundred guests were seated at three parallel fifty-foot-long white-damask-covered tables. Silver candelabras were set along each tabletop, providing a romantic illumination to the dramatic setting.
Lady Ainsley sat at the head of the center table, with Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke on her right and Lord Hastings Ismay on her left. Nicholas was a few place settings down from Ismay, who was Churchill’s chief of staff.
Charlie led her to a spot near the middle of the third table. At one of the two unoccupied settings, a small engraved card rested on a pewter plate. “Lieutenant Elizabeth Mintz,” it read. She laughed, having seen a lot worse botchings of her name through the years.
With Charlie slouching in the adjacent seat, she glanced down the line of guests at their table, catching a brief glimpse of General Kilgore behind one of the silver candelabras. He was sitting next to the same plump young blonde woman with ringed curls Liza had seen him with at the Palace Theatre. Tonight, she was wearing a pink ruffled evening gown. Opposite him was Admiral Jellico, wearing his gold-encrusted navy dress uniform. Helen Bellayne sat at his right. Seeing Liza, she smiled and gave her a silent “thumbs up” gesture.
Directly across from Liza sat a retired British Army officer who had to be approaching ninety. His wide-lapelled scarlet military jacket was festooned with medals and decorations. He had a prominent hawk nose, and his leathery face was furrowed with lavender veins. Sitting next to him was a dowager of about seventy in an old lace-trimmed Victorian gown that revealed the swell of her ponderous breasts. Her hair was an astonishing shade of reddish orange.
“So what do you do, my dear?” she asked, exposing large predatory teeth.
“I work in the security command at Supreme Headquarters in London,” said Liza.
The woman was trying to mask her double chin by holding her head very erect. It required her literally to look down her nose at the other guests.
“Sounds very important,” she said.
“Not at all, I’m afraid,” replied Liza.
“Don’t let her mislead you,” said Charlie. “She’s a detective … and a bloody good one, if they would just let her do her job.”
“A detective,” said the old officer in the scarlet military jacket. “How clever of you. Like Sherlock Holmes, you mean?”
“No, General Massengale, more like Nora Charles,” said Charlie.
“Nora Charles? Who is that?” the old woman demanded.
“Can you spot an evildoer just by looking at him?” demanded General Massengale, ignoring the dowager.
“No,” said Liza. “I don’t think anyone can.”
“She spotted me,” said Charlie, downing his highball as a waiter poured a ladleful of steaming consommé into his soup bowl from a silver tureen.
A legion of waiters were moving silently behind the chairs, some serving the aromatic soup, others ready to refill a guest’s glass as soon as it was empty. Charlie’s glass did not stay empty for long. After he had downed his third glass of claret, Liza turned to him and whispered, “Please don’t drink so much, Charlie.”
“Ahhh … the look of female disapproval … I have suffered under it all my life,” he answered back, his cheeks as red as jam. “This is play-time, old girl. I’ve been cooped up in the lair for weeks.”
Liza couldn’t help peeking over her shoulder at Nicholas Ainsley. From the look on his face, he clearly wasn’t thrilled to be there, and made no attempt to talk with the guests on either side of him. When he wasn’t staring at his plate, he kept glancing at his watch.
At one point, he looked in her direction and smiled. She couldn’t help smiling back at him. He picked up his wineglass and raised it in a silent toast, his eyes delivering the message, “Not much longer.”
What is it about him that I find so attractive? she wondered. She had met many men since arriving in England who were more imposing, distinguished, or even classically handsome. She decided it was simply the fact that being with him gave her pleasure. Perhaps it was his melancholy eyes. Her heart simply went out to him.
The main course was beef Wellington, surrounded on the red-and-gold china plate with potatoes au gratin, creamed spinach, and braised leeks. It was served along with another vintage red wine.
“Don’t know how Sylvia does it,” said General Massengale. “Haven’t had beef this good since before the war”
“It’s from Argentina, I believe,” said the old dowager. “At least that’s what Sylvia told someone.”
“I say … Wainwright.”
The voice came from a thin-faced, cadaverous man farther down the table. Still in his twenties, he wore a cream-and-gold military tunic and a cute little round hat topped with a gold pom-pom. His right hand was missing.
“Is that a Trinity crew scarf you’re wearing?”
“Would I wear any other?” Charlie responded belligerently.
“Just asking,” said the officer, who looked quite fierce to Liza in spite of his ludicrous pom-pom hat. “No need to get in a pucker.”
“Not a joking matter,” said the inebriated Charlie.
“So you rowed with the Blues?” the officer asked in a nostalgic tone.
Charlie nodded. “Nicky and I both, of course,” he said with unambiguous pride. “In the summer of 1938, we went over to Germany to race for the Goering Cup in Bad Ems.”
“Yes, I competed for it myself the year before you did,” said the other man. “That ghastly gold-plated shell casing with the Nazi eagle on it.”
“Exactly,” said Charlie. “Unfortunately, we were a bit hung over on the morning of the race. Too much Tokay, I’m afraid. Anyway, the German lads were all full of themselves, as you would expect—big tanned fellows, always doing calisthenics, took it for granted that we were rotten and decadent … quick to tell us so.”
“Of course,” said the crippled officer, nodding sympathetically. “I enjoyed killing several of those types at Benghazi.”
“Typical rules when we got to the starting line,” replied Charlie. “The starter would call out, ‘Are you ready?’ and if no one objected, he would fire his pistol. Well, no sooner did the starter call out, ‘Are you ready?’ than the five German crews were already racing up the course, oars flashing away. The starter never even fired his pistol.”
“Teutonic sportsmanship,” lamented the young man down the table. “So that was it, I suppose?”
“Not quite,” said Charlie. “Nicky was rowing stroke, of course…. We were just cruising along up the course, enjoying the sights, when we came to a bridge about halfway along to the finish line. One of the Nazi swine on the bridge spit on us as we passed under it.”
“In their nature,” said General Massengale from across the table. “They’re like bloody scorpions.”
“Well, that tore it,” said Charlie Wainwright. “Old Nicky cursed us up a blue streak and we took off as if the Hound of the Baskervilles was charging after us.”
He paused to finish his glass of claret.
“And?” demanded General Massengale.
“And. … we won,” said Charlie, grinning fiercely.
“Good show,” the general declared emphatically, as the one-handed officer thumped the table with his hook.
“Fatso Goering was by no means thrilled to give up his cup,” said Charlie.
“Where is it now?” asked the young officer.
“Damned if I know,” said Charlie. “We used it as an ashtray back at Trinity.”
The candles on the table had burned more than halfway down by the time they finished a final course of cherries en croûte with a variety of ripe cheeses. Putting down her lace napkin, Lady Ainsley rose grandly from the head of the table, took the arm of Field Marshal Alan Brooke, and began a procession back toward the great hall.
Liza stood up with the others as they prepared to follow her. She sensed someone standing next to her, and turned to find Nicholas Ainsley at her shoulder.
“You’re astonishingly lovely tonight, Liza,” he said.
He was wearing a simple black tuxedo with a blood-red tie at his throat. Unlike so many of the others, he had not pinned his military decorations on his lapel. His blue eyes were incredibly somber.
“So are you,” she found herself blurting back to him.
“Would you like to join me for the dancing?” he asked.
Liza turned to Charlie. He was vainly endeavoring to stay on his feet by clutching the back of his chair.
“Oh, Nicky … there you are…. Think I’ll lie down in the library for a bit,” he said, having trouble with the words. “Need to be ready for the sporting competitions.”
“Sporting competitions?” Liza repeated as he lurched off.
“Another weekend tradition—you’ll see later on,” said Nicholas, offering her his arm.
The great hall was crowded with revelers, some of whom had apparently just arrived. Under the muted glow of the glass chandeliers, the orchestra began to play “Moonlight Serenade.”
Nicholas took Liza in his arms and they began to dance, her cheek nestled comfortably along his right shoulder. He had a good fresh, healthy smell, leavened with lime-scented aftershave. She was surprised again at how well he danced, even with the prosthetic leg.
As they slowly moved across the floor, her eyes took in the remarkable panoply of fashions swirling around them, including silk and velvet floor-length gowns, daringly low-cut evening dresses, and old crinoline dresses with hoop skirts. Many of the women wore decorative headpieces made of feathers and fur that made them look like plumed birds. Across the floor, she saw General Massengale dancing with the old dowager, manfully moving her bulk around in a rough circle.
Her mind went back to a rainy night in New York when she had attended a Cornell mixer with a handsome boy named Howie Milstein. He had been a wonderful dancer, too. Her mother had written to her in England that he had been killed with his entire flight crew on a bombing mission over Stuttgart.
When the song ended, the orchestra leader introduced Vera Lynn, the famous London band singer, who was greeted with great applause by all the guests. The first number she sang was, “Long Ago and Far Away.”
Perhaps it was the champagne she had drunk, but Liza began to feel as if she were floating in a soft romantic haze. Time seemed to slow down, and the faces of the other dancers became no more than a blur in the muted candlelight. For a while she even lost track of where she was. At the same time, she was conscious of an excitement she had never experienced before. She was in England, at a real English castle, dancing with a young English lord.
The song came to an end, and Nicholas stepped away from her. Neither of them said anything; they simply gazed into each other’s eyes. As if slowly awakening to the real world, Liza could suddenly hear the happy conversational murmur of people around them, a stew of English, French, and other European tongues.
The orchestra started again. Vera Lynn began to sing “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” The strains of it were soothing as she moved back into Nicholas’s waiting arms. She closed her eyes, totally content in his warm embrace.