'No, Edward, I don't,' she replied. 'But maybe you can tell me.'
His face reddened, and suddenly she overflowed with the urge to destroy this moment, to cry out for forgiveness and explain that what he was thinking was not so. But the Queen Mary's horns blasted another time and Edward moved very quickly toward the door and then through it. Laura did not follow. The first important romance of her life had ended just that swiftly. Her father had always insisted that the critical moments in life always arrive with astonishing suddenness. Then they are gone. As always, Nigel Worthington had been correct. There was an eerie silence in her stateroom and her subsequent passage to America was quiet and uneventful. She kept to herself and made no friends. When she saw her own image in the mirror, she noticed that her expression alternated between sadness and relief.
Only one order of business remained: on her first day in New York, she insured Edward's ring and mailed it back to him.
FOUR
'I promised you a summer,' Barbara Worthington proclaimed soon after Laura's arrival from England. 'And I will give you a summer!'
Barbara Worthington was true to her word. A tall, blond, pretty large-boned girl of twenty, she blithely prescribed a brisk, adventuresome summer romance for her English cousin. Laura, rebounding from her battered engagement to Edward Shawcross, was in every mood to oblige.
Evenings were spent at Lake Contontic, one of the better-heeled sections of the Poconos. On weekend evenings touring bands came through-the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Buddy Rogers-fresh from Atlantic City or Philadelphia, and played Contontic's Lakeside Ballroom. There congregated what the social columns of the day's big-city newspapers referred to as 'the bright young people.' They were the privileged offspring of the correct families in New York and Philadelphia. They had the right clothes, the perfect addresses back in the city, the fastest, most expensive new cars and the unimpeachable pedigrees. Most had been coming to the lake with their families for a generation or more. Peter Whiteside had done his homework well before providing Laura with more than five dozen family names. Many were on his list.
She dutifully reported to him, penning chatty letters at the big old-fashioned oak desk in the Worthington family's cabin. She wrote about the people she had met. This, she thought to herself in the midst of a third handwritten letter, is the strangest, lowest-key 'spying' anyone in the world has ever been asked to do.
But she completed the letter and mailed it. She wrote at least one a week. But idly, she began to wonder whether Peter wasn't a trifle strange. What difference did it make what these new friends of Laura's thought? Why was Peter wasting government time on this? Or was it government time at all? Was a little Peeping Tom game? Or was it something she couldn't comprehend at all?
But, no. She considered Peter and how long she had known him. She thought of the very visible government office and the very clear instructions he had given her. For England, she recalled him saying. And then for some reason her mind drifted way, way back to her girlhood and another image was keyed: that of her father holding her in the bay window overlooking Kensington Gardens and explaining to a little girl who couldn't comprehend what war was and why he had gone to fight.
For England, he had said.
She drew a breath. It sounded frightfully specious, the whole thing. But she wrote a fourth letter and posted it to Whiteside's mailing address in London. Not long afterward she received a letter back.
'So glad you are enjoying yourself,' Peter Whiteside wrote. 'Everyone sounds fascinating. I never get to America anymore so you must tell me more! Facts. I want facts!'
She sighed. If she were a spy, she was a strange one. But so be it. For England.
*
Lakeside Ballroom was one of those vast, noisy summer auditoriums. It had gaudy crepe paper strung across the basketball backboards, from one to the next, was illuminated by a dangerous amount of colored candles plunked into the noses of cheap Chianti bottles, and was festooned with an explosion of red, yellow, and orange Chinese lanterns. It was also much more fun than it had any reasonable right to be.
Maybe it was the heavy aroma of leisure in the air. Maybe it was the mood of the summertime. Or maybe it was the excitement of the urbane young university crowd to whom Laura had been given entree by her cousin, who now doubled as her confidante and best friend. For whatever reason, Lakeside had long been a magical place for a summer romance. The girl who did not eventually lose her heart and everything else here at least once, Barbara explained cheerfully, had a hard, cold heart indeed.
'Of course, I don't have to explain such things to you, Laura,' Barbara said one evening in July, combing out her hair in the front seat of the family Ford. 'Husband hunting is permitted,' she said with a wink, 'as long as you're not hunting someone else's. And I don't know what it's like in England, but over here a girl never seals a deal without giving away a few free samples.'
Laura and Barbara exchanged a conspiratorial laugh as the conversation ended. An orchestra in green coats and gold trim was thumping out jazz tunes from the twenties one evening in late June when Laura, Barbara, Barbara's boyfriend Victor, and several friends entered the ballroom. It was only a few minutes later when Stephen Fowler wandered into the ballroom by himself. Laura, seated with Barbara and Victor at their usual corner table, felt herself one of many females watching the young man.
'Who's that?' she asked her cousin, who knew everyone.
'Stay away,' said Barbara.
Laura tugged excitedly on Barbara's sleeve. 'I want to know,' she insisted.
'That's Stephen Fowler,' Barbara said. 'Stay away unless you're prepared to be a very bad girl this summer.'
'Introduce me immediately,' answered Laura.
As Stephen scanned the ballroom, he saw Barbara beckon him to a seat at their table. Laura took a much closer look as the orchestra suddenly amused everyone with their version of Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy.
Stephen Fowler, tall and thin, with strong shoulders, and neatly trimmed brown hair, glanced at Barbara's cousin and smiled. He liked what he saw. Returning his gaze, then looking away, so did Laura. Her initial impression of him was one of an intelligent, athletic man, perhaps even one of those barbarian Americans who play their strange sort of football game at college. Barbara specialized in such men.
'Stephen,' Barbara said coyly, 'this is Laura Worthington. She's here for two months only and you're to keep your hands off.'
'Impossible,' said Stephen Fowler, taking Laura's hand and kissing it in an overly dramatic manner which amused everyone at the table, including Laura.
He is good-looking, Laura thought to herself. Too bad he's so aware of it.
'Stephen was Victor's residence counselor at Princeton,' Barbara said, by way of furthering the introduction.
'I had no life whatsoever before this very moment,' said Stephen, holding his gaze upon Laura.
'Oh, brother…' moaned Barbara.
'A man without a past, in other words,' countered Laura. 'How sorry I am for you,
Mr. Fowler,' she said with mock formality.
'I'm hardly worthy of your pity,' Stephen said, continuing the game. He hung his head in penitence.
'Oh, Curse you, Stephen!' Barbara chided merrily. 'Would you stop flirting and just ask the poor girl to dance?'
'Would you like to dance?' Stephen Fowler asked.
'I would love to dance,' is what Laura answered. He graciously took her by the hand and was aware of her accent for the first time. He had led her only a step or two toward the dance floor when they both heard Barbara calling after them with unwarranted glee.
'Oh, Stephie!' she sang out. Stephen turned and looked back to where Victor was lighting a cigarette from one of the candles. 'Be kind to her,' Barbara called. 'She's coming off a broken engagement. No dancing out to the
