Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [61]
“I see you in the strangest of places,” he says amiably.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asks, moving a step backward.
He takes a step closer to her. “I am sure it was you, on the night of the Fourth, in a carriage by the side of the road? In the marshes?”
He cups an elbow in the palm of his hand and rests his chin on his knuckles. He studies her in an altogether impertinent manner, and she suddenly feels more naked than she did in the bedroom moments earlier. Indeed, his gaze is so frank and his smile so calculating that she wants to slap his face.
“No, it cannot possibly have been,” she says.
“Then I am mistaken,” he says, though he does not seem repentant. “But whyever are you here?” He makes a show of looking at his pocket watch. “It is so awfully early still. I am just about to go in to breakfast. I have had a walk. Will you join me?”
“No, I cannot,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow. She leaves him standing there. She discovers the stairs and heads in the direction of the sea, which is turning a dove gray as a result of a thickening cloud cover.
OLYMPIA’S FATHER normally takes his breakfast in solitude or, if there are others present, immersed in a book he holds beside his plate. But on the morning after Olympia’s visit to Haskell, her father looks up at her as she enters the breakfast room, and he continues to observe her as she takes her place and spreads her napkin over her lap. Though she wants to, Olympia cannot ask him to discontinue his stare, for that would be not only to acknowledge the unusual but also to speak to him in a manner that is not acceptable. Instead, she says good morning and pours herself a cup of tea. When she dares to glance up at him, she understands that his is not an angry stare, but rather one of some bewilderment, as though he needed to reassure himself that the girl before him is not, as it would appear, an imposter.
“Olympia, you look peaked,” her father says, halting a forkful of shirred egg in its progress to his mouth. “You are well? You worry me sometimes. I was particularly concerned when you did not come down for supper last night.”
“I am fine,” she says, eyeing the food before her. She is now ravenous, and the raspberry cake looks particularly appetizing. “You distress yourself too much. Really, Father, I am fine. If I were ill, I would say so.”
He takes a sip of tea.
“Well, you always have been a sensible girl,” he says. “That is a pretty dress.”
“Thank you,” she says.
“By the way, I am thinking of having a gala partially in honor of your sixteenth birthday.”
“A gala? Here?”
“Your mother and I are very proud of you, Olympia, and I have high hopes for your future.”
Though the word future strikes an uneasy and discordant note within her, she nods in her father’s direction. “Thank you,” she says.
“And also I have had a letter from the Reverend Edward Everett Hale. He says he may come to visit at that time. We shall have a dinner and dancing. I have in mind the tenth of August. About a hundred and twenty? Many of the summer people from Boston, of course, and Philbrick and Legny. Yes, that would be a treat. Which means I shall require you to finish Hale’s sermons before the event. You have, of course, read ‘Man Without a Country. ’”
“Yes, Father.”
“And I shall invite the Haskells as well, since I know that John is most eager to meet Hale. Haskell’s cottage is to be finished by that date, or so I am to understand. John cannot much appreciate hotel food each meal, regardless of how well prepared it is.”
“The tenth is less than four weeks away,” Olympia says.
“Yes, not much time at all. Invitations will have to go out the day after tomorrow at the latest. You and I will have to put together a guest list later this afternoon. Your mother will help us with writing out the invitations, I am sure.”
“Yes, of course,” Olympia says.
Silently,