Father Fever

“D’Artagnan,” he replied, liking the mystery. He didn’t have to share his past, his fears, his regrets. “I’m a defender of France, a—”

She put a hand on his arm to stop him and he felt the small, sizzling jolt of it go right to his heart.

“No,” she said seriously. “What do you really do?”

There was a subtle urgency in her voice that alerted him to something, he wasn’t sure what.

But she smiled sweetly at him, and he decided it was the sudden rise in volume of the room’s noise level. Too many years as a secret agent had left him with a certain paranoia that was difficult to shake.

The musicians had arrived and set up in the conservatory off the living room. Their tuning up rivaled the laughter and conversation of the hundred or so guests moving through the first floor.

A mellow mood settled over him and suddenly the last place he wanted to be with this woman was wedged on a stair in a room grown so loud that conversation was becoming difficult.

“Will you come upstairs with me?” he asked.

It wasn’t until he saw the flash in her eyes, even behind the mask, that he realized how that abrupt question must have sounded.

“No, no, no,” he assured her quickly. “I meant upstairs to the sitting room. I can’t even hear myself think down here.”

She continued to look suspicious.

Oh, no, he thought. She’d been so warm and interested in what he had to say a moment ago. That careless question couldn’t mean the end of what had seemed so promising.

He remembered her interest in the house—though he was suddenly having a little difficulty focusing on the details that might interest her—and said quickly, “And I have more to tell you.”

“About what?” she asked a little stiffly.

“About the house. About…why I’m here.”

She sat still for one more moment, then she picked up her plate and stood. “All right,” she said. “I’d love to hear more.”

AT LAST! Athena thought. The prospect of information she could use!

She preceded him up the stairs, then waited at the top for him to take the lead. He’d left the little reading alcove near the head of the stairs, she noticed, a half-moon-shaped spot where the railing looped out to look down on the floor below.

Her aunt’s cane-seated rocker was gone, but in its place was a high-back leather chair and matching ottoman. The stained glass lamp depicting birds in flight, which she’d always admired as a child and had looked forward to sitting beside one day, stood nearby.

But D’Artagnan was moving along the corridor to a room at the far end. They passed several bedrooms on the way, but she knew that the sitting room he was heading for connected to the master bedroom.

His step was unsteady, she saw, as he changed course ever so slightly to avoid collision with the doorway. She wondered what accounted for that. He’d had several glasses of champagne while they were sitting on the stairs, but the glasses were small. He hadn’t eaten, though, and champagne did have more of a kick than other types of alcohol.

There was a green futon where the gold brocade settee had been. Her aunt used to read them bedtime stories in this room when she and her sisters were very small, then they would all scamper off to their own bedrooms.

She put her plate on a low bamboo table and sat down.

He refilled their glasses, sat beside her on the futon, then raised his glass to hers. “To new discoveries,” he said.

“Discoveries?” she questioned.

He clicked the rim of his glass to hers. “You. I’ve been looking for you.”

She felt a moment’s trepidation. Did he know her plan? He couldn’t possibly. “You have? Why?”

He put a hand to the beaded headpiece that covered her hair and touched gently. “Because I need you,” he whispered, suddenly urgent, intense. “Where…have you been?”

There was sincerity in what she could see of his eyes. Tenderness in his touch. Response rose in her, instinctive and as urgent as he sounded.

She put her glass down and reminded herself sharply of why she was here. And that this could be the man who’d coerced her aunt out of her home, possibly even caused her death. At the very least, he was one of Hartford’s friends. She had to know more.

She took a prawn from her plate and put it to his lips. “I think you need something to eat,” she said. “Come on. Take a bite.”

He nipped the edge of the prawn with his teeth and drew it into his mouth. “I don’t remember these being this good,” he said, “until you touched them.”

“You were going to tell me about the house.” She drank from her glass to encourage him to drink his, on the principle of in vino veritas.

He obliged her. “It’s a place,” he said, his voice very quiet as he concentrated on her, “for lots of children. For visiting grandparents. For friends to sleep over and for club meetings and loud Christmas parties.”

For a moment she couldn’t reply. She’d always thought that, too, but as long as she’d been coming here, it had housed only Aunt Sadie and a cook-housekeeper. She’d looked forward to herself and her sisters and their families giving it the bursting-at-the-seams hilarity it deserved.

But did he own it? Was he Hartford? “Then, it’s your home?” she asked.

He didn’t seem to have heard her.

“I never had that,” he went on. He took her glass from her and put it with his on the table. He sloshed a little and she reached forward instinctively to mop up the liquid with a napkin, but he stopped her, catching her hand in his and leaning her back into his other arm.

“My house was empty. Of everything. Three times bigger than this but…” He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “No laughter. No music. No voices in the dark.”

Athena was struck by that description. She could hear the silence he described. And for one surprisingly clear moment, could imagine a small boy alone in a big, dark house, surrounded by that silence.

She could feel his loneliness.

He tugged at her headpiece. “Can we take this off?” he asked.

She forced her mind away from him and back to what she was trying to do here. She pulled off the headpiece and let her hair fall.

“It’s…beautiful,” he said softly, pulling her into his arms and rubbing his cheek against it. She was beginning to lose her focus. She didn’t want to know that he’d had an empty, lonely childhood. She didn’t want to feel sympathy for this man.

She wanted to know if he owned the house, and if so, how he’d gotten it and whether or not he’d had anything to do with the plane crash that killed Sadie.

“D’Artagnan!” she said sharply, for want of his real name.

“Here, Constance,” he said, falling onto his back and bringing her with him. “I’m yours.” He held her face in both his hands and kissed her.

He smelled of toothpaste and champagne and an herbal aftershave. He was ardent and tender at the same time, and even in this slightly tipsy state, he was completely competent and masterful.

Then, while she was distracted by her own loss of equilibrium even though she was the sober one, he slipped up her mask and smiled as he looked into her face.

“I knew it,” he whispered. “Beautiful. Beautiful.” Then he winced, closed his eyes and muttered a quiet expletive.