Soldier And The Society Girl. Vivian Leiber

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      Still, he could be a gentleman if he wanted.

      But for his purposes, being a gentleman didn’t suit.

      After emptying the can, he put it on the hospitality tray. He returned the pen.

      And then he let loose a burp.

      Not a grotesque burp, but loud, clearly satisfying and utterly unrepentant.

      “Mr. Fairchild, are you sure you want me to continue working on this calendar?” the aide said.

      Her words hung in the air. Winston stared in horror. Derek shifted his crossed legs just a bit so that another drop of Washington street tar divebombed onto Mrs. Martin Van Buren’s precious coffee table.

      “Don’t you think it would be a mistake to send me anywhere?” he asked, letting loose another burp. Resisting the urge to put his hand over his mouth.

      “General, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. After all, he’s not housebroken,” the representative from Arizona pointed out. “He could do anything out there.”

      “I could,” Derek agreed and burped for emphasis.

      “He does that once on Larry King Live and we’ve got a real situation,” the undersecretary said.

      The congressman from New York gnawed at his pencil.

      The general glared at Derek, willing him into an embarrassed apology.

      “Soldier,” he warned.

      “General,” Winston Fairchild said, leaning forward in his seat. “If I might offer a possible solution...”

      “What?” the general snarled.

      “Call Protocol,” Winston said to his aide. “Get Chessey Banks Bailey on the phone. Gentleman, this man needs the functional equivalent of Mary Poppins.”

      

      On the other side of the building, in a basement office of an annex to an annex with a single six-inch-square dusty window near its ceiling, Chessey Banks Bailey arranged ten linen envelopes on her gunmetal government-issue desk. Each proper and perfect envelope had her name on it, and each one posed a problem.

      Chessey was a Banks Bailey of the Banks Baileys whose ancestors crossed over on the Mayflower, the same Baileys that had made a fortune in diamonds or furs or maybe it was farming—but it was so far in the past that no one could remember. However, the family members were pleased with the way their money doubled and tripled and quadrupled over the years. Banks Bailey women appeared regularly in the pages of Town & Country . Their husbands were featured in Forbes and Fortune. Their homes in House Beautiful and their pets in Pedigree.

      It would have been a surprise to the columnists of any of these papers to learn that none of the Banks Bailey money had ended up in Chessey’s purse.

      The linen envelopes were this June’s invitations to family weddings and christenings and dinner parties. For each and every one of them, Chessey would come up with something to wear and something to give. The former was not too much of a problem, because her cousins were quite generous about last year’s clothes. Although the Chanel suits and dresses by Dior ran short because Chessey inherited her legs from her mother, Chessey kept these hand-me-downs neatly mended and pressed. She was quite confident that she’d manage to have something appropriate to wear for every occasion she was duty-bound to attend.

      The second problem, what to give, was more daunting. Her cousins had, in quite rapid succession upon reaching their twenties, married men of highly developed pedigrees and portfolios. Chessey was always thrilled by love matches and considered the fact that every cousin had married a millionaire a wondrous statistical oddity. Still, weddings required a gift and millionaires marrying Baileys expected more than a toaster from the local housewares store. And christenings—well, something engraved was always nice. She snuck a peek at her checking account balance.

      In a toss-up between eating and presents, she’d pick presents. Besides, she could always make up for her choices by eating well at the parties. She made a list of the RSVP’s she’d have to return, the presents to select and the times of all these events.

      She picked up her phone on its first ring. “Good morning, Chessey Banks Bailey, Protocol.”

      “Get up to the eighth floor, stat,” a voice snarled and then hung up without waiting for a reply.

      She recognized the trademark charm of her boss’s aide.

      “Good morning to you, too,” she said to the dial tone. “I’m just fine, and how are you?”

      She put down the phone.

      A summons to Winston Fairchild’s office. She made a quick check of her lipstick, satisfied that none of it had ended up on her teeth. Then she grabbed her briefcase, on impulse throwing in her clutch purse.

      Winston Fairchild III. Everything a woman could want in a man. Intelligent, refined, cultured. A Harvard graduate. Distinguished family. He was exactly the kind of man her family would welcome for Sunday dinners, holiday weekends. So suitable that she might even be considered a normal Banks Bailey were he escorting her. Even her grandmother had asked her why she didn’t invite him to the family compound.

      Chessey allowed herself the briefest of fantasies. A fantasy involving classical music, reading the hefty Sunday New York Times together, drinking cappuccino.

      Completely unattainable, Chessey concluded, knowing that she was not like any other Banks Bailey cousin and therefore Winston Fairchild had a habit of looking at a point just above her head, far, far away, whenever they passed each other in the hallway.

      

      Chessey knocked first on the wood paneled door and, on hearing a vague response, entered the corner office. She had only been summoned once before, two years ago for Winston Fairchild III’s one-minute “glad to have you on board at the State Department, fill out your withholding form at my secretary’s desk” talk. She noted that the ficus in the enamel planter still looked dead.

      The office was more crowded than she remembered.

      The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two congressmen and a Defense Department undersecretary. Chessey quickly recovered from her gee-whiz reflex. She held out a slim, manicured hand to introduce herself to the general, Winston having conceded the duty with a vague you-know-everyone-here wave.

      As she exchanged introductions with the New York representative, she saw what looked to be a circus performer with his feet up on the table.

      He slouched against the cushions of the chintz couch and reared his head back to catch the peanuts he threw in the air. He never missed. After four such dazzling feats, while explaining to the horrified congressman from Arizona that he once did this two hundred times in a row, the performer did a double take in her direction. A peanut landed in his lap.

      He was breathtakingly handsome—but only if you went in for strong, primitive types. The kind with hard, square jaws. Frankly appraising blue eyes. Sharply defined muscles. Coarse, callused hands. Incongruously boyish smiles.

      Which СКАЧАТЬ