Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

"I'm sure of that," Bellamy agreed with a straight face. "Not only that, but if you've any time at all to spare for your job, Mrs. Lontaine, the percentage of impaired eyesight among native sons must be high."

"Appreciation is such a beautiful thing!" Fanny purred. "Dear man! I do hope you'll be lingering in our midst a long, long time."

"No such luck for me. A few days at most. I only ran out to go over some matters with my man of business out here."

"The square-headed body with the blue gimlet eyes?" Fanny enquired, openly appraising the person who had accompanied Bellamy to this meeting, but who remained in the car with stony gaze riveted on nothing in particular – "who looks like a private detective in a five-reel re-hash of the eternal triangle?"

"The same."

"You have so many interests in California, you need a man on the spot to look after them?"

"Not many but, such as they are, of prime importance to me," Bellamy corrected with meaning.

"How romantic!" Fanny sighed, with a look so provocative that Bellamy's mouth twitched involuntarily and he hoped fervently that Lucinda wasn't looking.

He needn't have worried. Lucinda was too thoroughly occupied with her own reactions to the several more agitating aspects of this predicament to have any thoughts to spare for frivolous by-issues.

Not only that, but in pace with the growth of her interest in Summerlad, the sense of detachment from all actual relationship to Bellamy had come to be so absolute it could never have occurred to her to be anything but entertained by the notion of a reciprocal interest springing up between Fanny Lontaine and her husband. Fanny knew her way about, in the by-ways of flirtation was as sure of foot as any chamois on its native crags. As for Bellamy, in Lucinda's sight he was no longer property of hers, he was free to follow the list of his whim, free as the wind, as free as herself…

But the bare conception of anything of the sort was far from her mind just then, too many graver considerations were making imperative demands. To begin with, she was at one and the same time grateful to Bellamy for being so decent about her assumed identity and in a raging temper with him for having dared to follow her across the Continent, in sequel to the even more intolerable insolence of setting detectives to spy upon her. No more than in Fanny's mind was there question in Lucinda's as to the real calling of that "man of business" whom Bellamy had left in his car. But she earnestly wanted to know how long and how closely that one had been her shadow, and what he had reported concerning the interests professional and social which had been engaging her.

More than this, Lucinda was at a loss to think how to deal with Bel, now he was here. Patently on his good behaviour, taking care of himself, not drinking too much; more like the man she had married for love so long ago; showing so vast an improvement over the Bellamy of later years that his unpretending presence alone somehow was enough to diminish the stature of every man present and place even Summerlad on the defensive – Lynn Summerlad, the crowned exquisite of the screen! – obviously the Bel of today was not to be reckoned with as readily as one had reckoned with the drink-stupid, conscience-racked Bel of yesterday.

Disturbed by the sound of a voice addressing her in a tone pitched to pass unheard by Bellamy, she lifted perplexed eyes to Summerlad's face.

"You're dining with me tonight. Don't forget."

"I don't know …" Lucinda doubted. "Ought I?"

"Why on earth not? Surely you won't let him influence you?"

"I don't know what's best. It might be better to see him tonight and get it over with."

"Don't be foolish. Besides, I'm telling you, not asking you. I'll call for you as soon as I can get home, change, and run back to the Hollywood."

She liked and resented this dictation, and showed both emotions in a semi-petulant smile which she intended as a preface to a retort that was never uttered. For Bellamy interrupted, and immediately she was glad of Summerlad's insistence and forgave him.

"Anxious to see you, Linda, of course, and have a talk, some time when you're not professionally engaged. Tonight be agreeable?"

"Sorry, Bel, but I'm booked for tonight."

"Tomorrow, then?"

"But tomorrow night Cindy has a date with us," Fanny objected.

"I'm out of luck. Never mind: I know Linda won't keep me in suspense forever."

"No: you may call on me the next night, Bel."

"That will be Friday. At the Hollywood, of course? Many thanks. And now I mustn't keep you, it's a long ride back and you must be quite tired out with your long day's work, the emotional strain and everything."

Bellamy was punctiliously gallant about helping Lucinda and Fanny into their car, then returned to his own, wagging a cavalier farewell to Summerlad as the latter sped away with Jacques in the orange-and-black juggernaut.

When they had been some time under way Fanny broke in upon Lucinda's meditations with an ecstatic murmur: "Priceless!"

Lucinda came to with a frown. "I'm glad you think so," she said shortly.

"Don't be upstage. You know it's priceless. Why didn't you tell me your Bel was such a lamb?"

"He's not my Bel any more, and I don't consider him a lamb."

"Then I presume you've no objection to my vamping him?"

"None whatever, if it amuses you, dear. But why waste your powder on such small game? Any pretty piece can vamp Bel. I'm not sure she need even be pretty."

"Only for your sake, darling. I don't fancy the brute, thanks."

"For my sake?"

"Don't you see through his little game? He's out here to persuade you he's a changed man, a reformed character, and beg you to take him back on probation."

"Then he's far stupider than I imagined."

"Whereas if he falls for my girlish wiles, I'll have shown him up in all his deceitfulness."

"Don't put yourself out on my account." Lucinda curled a lip. "I wouldn't take Bel back no matter how absolute his reformation."

Fanny wanted to ask more questions but, heeding the counsel of discretion, contented herself with a little private sigh. Going on her tone, Lucinda quite meant what she had just said. Good news for Harry, whose plans would be seriously embarrassed if there were any real reason to fear the defection of Lucinda through reconciliation with her husband. For of course, if she took Druce on again, it would mean an end to the still young history of Linda Lee: Druce never would consent to let his wife continue in the picture business.

"All the same, if you don't mind, I think I'll practise on Bellamy."

"Oh, I don't mind. But Harry might."

"Oh, Harry!" Fanny had a laugh of light scorn. "For all Harry cares – !"

But Lucinda was inattentive; she had lapsed swiftly into an abstraction which had little or nothing to do with the unseasonable reappearance of Bellamy or the prospect of a wearing time with him before he could be finally discouraged. Whatever proposals Bel might wish to make, the answer to them all stood immutably decreed by Lucinda's heart.

It was not with matters of such certainty that she was concerned, but with the problematical issue of the Summerlad affair, an issue whose imminence was to be measured now by hours. Nothing that had happened since had served to erase the impression of that first kiss, nothing conceivable could seem half so momentous. The presence of the camera had meant nothing, they had kissed in earnest; mute, her lips had confessed too much. It remained only to be determined whether or not Summerlad had understood their message. If he had, Lucinda well knew, she was a lost woman.

She was possessed with a species of rapturous alarm…

XXVIII

In sequel Lucinda knew two days made up of emotions singularly stratified. This notwithstanding the fact (of which she needed to remind herself with provoking frequency) that she had put Bel out of her life for good and all, he was less than nothing to her now and, in the simple nature of things, seeing she was pledged to another, never could be more – more, at least, than the trial his pertinacity was rendering him at present.

Most of the time, of course, all of it spent with Lynn or in dreaming of him, she was merely but comprehensibly a young woman in love and glad of it; pleased with herself, pleased with her lover, delighting in the sweet secrecy with which it were seemly for the while to screen their love.

Nevertheless, dark hours alternated in apprehension of what she was resolved must be her final talk with Bel. But how successful dared she hope to be in the business of making Bel agree even to that? Lucinda found it by no means easy to compose an attitude which she could depend upon to dishearten Bel decisively, without going to the length of telling him point-blank that she was in love with another man and meant to marry him as soon as her professional commitments would leave her free to go through the mill of Reno. And to know Bellamy as she did was to have a good warrant for mistrusting lest, far from reeling down to defeat under the impact of that revelation, he might be moved merely to make fun of it. It would be just like Bel to refuse to believe that Lucinda Druce née Harrington meant to marry a movie actor.