Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel. Vance Louis Joseph

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      "You needn't have been, Bel."

      "Don't know about that. Dick took it pretty hard when you accepted me, and if I'm any judge now, he's come back only to be hit twice as hard, in the same place, too. If not, he's got no right to look at you the way he does."

      "I don't think you were in a good condition to judge." Bel winced, because he had laid himself open to this, and it could be taken two ways, neither comforting. It was actually a relief to hear Lucinda add: "You seemed to be fairly preoccupied yourself, at the table."

      "Oh, bored to tears, assure you. Amelie's a pretty little thing, amiable enough, but nobody to talk to – no conversation whatever."

      Lucinda limited comment to a mildly quizzical look. Her maid, having answered the door, was announcing that the car was waiting for Mr. Druce. Bellamy nodded, but seemed in no hurry. What was on his mind?

      "Doing anything special today?"

      Lucinda shook her head slowly, watching him with a half-smile lambent with lazy intelligence. He felt vaguely uneasy, as who should of a sudden find himself hard by the brink of some abysmal indiscretion.

      "Thought we might meet somewhere for luncheon, if you're lunching out."

      "I'd love to." Lucinda put out an arm deliciously rounded beneath skin of a texture fairer and finer than any other Bellamy had ever seen, and took a morocco-bound engagement book from her escritoire. "Let me see…" She riffled the leaves. "I know I've got some shopping to do – "

      "Have you, now!"

      "And Mrs. Rossiter Wade's bridge-tea for some charity or other this afternoon, but… Oh, yes! I'm having Fanny Lontaine to lunch at the Ritz, with Nelly Guest and Jean Sedley. What a pity. Though nothing can prevent your coming, too, if you like."

      A dark suspicion knitted Bellamy's eyebrows. "Some actress? Sounds like it."

      "Fanny Lontaine?" Needless to ask which he meant, the other women were fixtures of their immediate circle. Lucinda laughed. "Nothing of the sort. Fanny was at school with me – Frances Worth – "

      "Chicago people?" Bellamy put in with symptoms of approval. "Not a bad lot. Old man Worth – 'Terror of the Wheat Pit', they called him – died not long ago in the odour of iniquity, leaving eighty millions or so. Your little schoolmate ought to be fairly well-fixed."

      "I don't know, I'm sure. I believe it's something to do with the will that brought them over. Fanny's father disliked Harry Lontaine, so Fanny had to run away to marry him and was duly excommunicated by the family. She's lived in England ever since; her husband's an Englishman."

      "I see: another of your charity cases."

      "Hardly. They're stopping at the Ritz, that's where I met Fanny the other day."

      "Anybody can stop there, but not everybody can get away."

      "Does it matter?"

      "It's only I don't like seeing you made use of, Linda. Your name makes you fair game for every climber and fortune-hunter who can claim or scrape acquaintance with you."

      "But my friends – "

      "Oh, you're forever being too friendly with stray cats. Why did you ask Nelly and Jean to meet this woman if it wasn't in the hope they'd take her up, too?"

      Lucinda shrugged. "Come to my luncheon and see for yourself. Not that I think you'd care for Fanny, though she is pretty to death."

      "Why not, if you like her so much?"

      "She's not at all the type you seem to find most attractive. Why is it, I've often wondered, the women you lose your head about are almost always a bit – well – !"

      Bellamy flushed sullenly. It was one of his crosses that he seemed never to have the right answer ready for Lucinda when she took that line. After all, there is only one salvation for a man married to a woman cleverer than himself: to do no wrong.

      "Oh, if you're going to rake up ancient history – !"

      But Lucinda pursued pensively, as if she hadn't heard: "I presume you've got to run after that sort, Bel, because they don't know you as well as I do – can't."

      Even a slow man may have wit enough not to try to answer the unanswerable. Bellamy got stiffly to his feet.

      "I'll drop in at the Ritz if I can make it."

      "Do, dear … And Bel!" Lucinda rose impulsively and ran to him. "I'm sorry, Bel, I was so catty just now. Only, you know, there are some things one can't help feeling keenly. Dear!"

      She clung to him, lifting to his lips a face tempting beyond all telling. Insensibly his temper yielded, and catching her to him, he kissed her with a warmth that had long been missing in his caresses.

      "Linda: you're a witch!"

      "I wish I were … enough of a witch, at least, to make you realize nobody cares for you as I do, nor ever will. Bel: don't go yet. There's something I want to ask you…"

      "Yes?" He held her close, smiling down magnanimously at that pretty, intent face. As long as she loved him so, couldn't do without him, all was well, he could do pretty much as he liked – within reasonable limits, of course, bounds dictated by ordinary discretion. "What's on the busy mind?"

      "I've been wondering if we couldn't go away together somewhere this Winter." Lucinda divined hostility in the tensing of the arm round her waist. "We're not really happy here, dearest – "

      "But you were in Europe all Summer."

      "Not with you, except for a few weeks. You took me over but left me to come back to business affairs that could have got along perfectly without you. And while you were with me, what was different from our life here? Nothing but the geography of our environment. Meeting the same people, doing the same things, living in the self-same groove abroad as at home – that sort of thing's no good for us, Bel."

      "What's wrong with the way we live?"

      "Its desperate sameness wears on us till we turn for distraction to foolish things, things we wouldn't dream of doing if we weren't bored. Look through my calendar there; you'll find I'm booked up for weeks ahead, and week in and week out the same old round. And so with you. Consciously or unconsciously you resent it, dear, you're driven to look for something different, some excitement to lift you out of the deadly rut. As for me … Would you like it if I took a lover simply because I was bored silly, too?"

      "Linda!"

      "But don't you see that's what we're coming to, that is how it's bound to end with us if we go on this way, all the time drifting a little farther apart? Why can't we run away from it all for a while, you and I, forget it, and find ourselves again? Take me to Egypt, India, any place where we won't see the same people all the time and do the same things every day. I feel as if I'd lost you already – "

      "What nonsense!"

      "Oh, perhaps not altogether yet. But slowly and surely I am losing you. Bel: I want my husband and – he needs me. Give me a chance to find him again and prove to him I'm something better than – than a boutonnière to a man of fashion."

      "Boutonnière?"

      "A neglected wife, the finishing touch."

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