Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [144]
When we had seen neither barn nor cross-roads for a quarter-hour, and I was starting to wonder if Mr Rhoades might not be entirely honourable in his intentions, a barn appeared on the white-blanketed horizon. A large barn—enormous, in fact, although it lacked the normal complement of silos and farm buildings.
All was explained when we turned in to a drive past a sign proclaiming this the WEBSTER AIR FIELD. The barn was a hangar. Rhoades pulled up next to the front of it, opened our door, and then the three of us stopped dead as the sound of a screaming engine came from overhead. We gaped into the clear sky, and there saw a bright red fighter plane, to all appearances out of control and aiming to crash straight into the hangar. Or into the Rhoades motorcar. On it came, roaring full-throatedly, and at the last possible instant it pulled up, passing so close its wind buffeted our hats.
“There was something in the diary about an aviator’s jacket,” I recalled. “And Dorothea Cobb told me that Hélène’s brother was a Canadian fighter pilot. That must be he.”
The pilot, having scared us out of our wits, had circled and was lining up his plane with the runway.
“How does one land on the snow?” Iris wondered aloud.
“With care,” came a new voice. We looked at the small door to the barn, over which hung the sign OFFICE, and then lowered our eyes to the figure in the wheeled chair. The hand with which he was shielding his face was slick with old scar tissue, although he grinned as he watched the red machine drop lower and slow in the sky.
As one, Iris and I looked at each other, then at the aeroplane.
“Yep,” said the man. “You’re looking at my sister. Hi, Jimmy,” he added.
Young Mr Rhoades tore his eyes from the flying daredevil and shook his hand. “Morning, Ben. This here’s Miss Russell and Miss Sutherland. They’ve come looking for your sister. You mind taking care of returning them to town when they’re finished? I’ve got a pile of work.”
“Happy to. Good day, ladies. The name’s Ben O’Meary.”
O’Meary’s right hand was less disastrously scarred; close up, his face showed signs of a less comprehensive brush with the flames.
“Crashed in the War,” he told us, a phrase so matter-of-fact, he must have begun a thousand conversations with that same blunt explanation. “They scraped me out and sent me home, to teach my sister to fly. I run the business, she teaches the classes and does the stunt shows. Exactly the opposite of what we’d planned, but ain’t that life? You want to come in? She’ll be a minute.”
But we chose to wait in the open air for the pilot of the red fighter, and he manoeuvred his chair back through the doorway and left us in the cold.
The aeroplane taxied slowly on the slick surface, neared the barn, and then the engine coughed into silence. In a moment, the plane’s pilot climbed out of the cockpit and jumped easily to the ground.
She was a tall woman, as tall as I but broader in the shoulders, and I could well imagine her slinging a wounded Tommy across her back. Then she began to remove the layers of clothing that kept her from freezing. Thick scarf unwrapped from her neck and face, the helmet and goggles. Yes, there were those famous emerald eyes, that ebony hair, but something else as well, a small fact that Gabriel had failed to record.
She was what the boy’s parents would no doubt have termed a half breed. Ireland lay in her eyes and her surname, but those Irish ancestors had intermarried with folk who knew neither freckles nor red hair. She was perhaps a quarter American Indian, maybe an eighth, but plenty to mark her as an odd choice for the heir to one of the oldest dukedoms in England.
She was also extraordinarily beautiful.
She shook her short hair loose of the helmet’s marks and shot us a grin of pure high spirits, a grin I recognised instantly from a blurred photograph of overall-clad drivers in France. “You two ladies looking to learn to fly?” she asked. “Or you just wanting a quick pass over town? I’m happy to take you, but I hope you’ll