O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [58]
“Well, don’t ask me, Horace, but the Vanderbilts were the most important family left who had a male available.”
Horace drank in the meaning of her words. The Constitution was still weeks and weeks off, but the hens were picking off the stud roosters at a fearsome rate. The Lustgarten brothers were inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, but they were shrewd operators. They had plugged both ends of the Mississippi River with a variety of breweries under different names, then collected every stop on the river. It was a classic monopoly. Could the Vanderbilts be fronting, let’s say, a dummy brewery to open in, say, Kansas City?
“Well, Daisy, who is left? Any of the Newport scene?”
“The pickings are getting rather slim, but I have a notion or two. There’s no need to panic yet.”
“To hell! She’s on the verge of staging another of her tantrums. That goddamned Marine.”
“Amanda and Private O’Hara are about to crash into a stone wall. I’d wager it must be weighing heavily on their minds today. Horace! Don’t make a bull’s rush. I know Amanda will come to you.”
• 18 •
ELYSIAN
At the Same Time—Deep in the Woods of Inverness
Amanda and Private O’Hara’s ride was altogether pleasant. She had left the sporting horses home. Old Banjo and Miss Godiva had senior status, so Zach was spared her usual flaming romp.
They came to a confluence of three streams. Old Banjo took a drink, picked out the right stream, and followed it to a wall of thick brush. The wily critters inched their way through as their riders lay down over their necks.
A passage opened. An uphill climb in pebbly water to a sudden glade, pond, and bank, and free and happy flowers and mystic-scented magnolia and willow branches cascading to the water.
They leaped from their horses and rushed together in a fevered embrace . . . never let her go, never let him go. He lifted her up on her toes and twirled her about, both of them light-headed from the surge of rapture and mumbled “oh Gods” and “hold me’s” and “Amanda” and “Zach” and as they called each other’s name like angels’ kisses.
They had reached Elysian.
It took a time of holding before they’d dare part so they could behold each other, then they touched foreheads, held hands, and let the moment consume them.
With a sudden burst of exuberance Zach let out a cry of joy and dove into the pond and threw water into his face. Amanda followed him, kicked water on him, and he flung himself bodily into the pond again and she flung herself atop him and they rolled around and around like two porkers in mud heaven.
The kisses were soaked as he pulled her to her feet, flung her over his shoulder, and scrambled up the bank. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around his knees and she called his name over and over.
Zach looked down at the beauty and what rushed through him now near caved him in. He backed away, telling himself to stop now before his power to resist had flown.
They said something, both of them, about going slowly mad during the absence, about counting minutes, about . . . Now they stared curiously at each other, rather dumbfounded . . .
“I love you, Zach.”
His mouth trembled and his voice went awry. “I love you, Amanda.”
“I love you, Zach. I never knew that any such person as a Zachary O’Hara existed in this world.”
They sat and he held his head in his hands, repeating words he had never spoken. “I love you,” he said, and got a bit silly and mimicked himself, “I love you.”
Now that, Amanda Kerr, was a real confession by a real man, a Marine man, a man who never existed before. They spoke nonsense for a while, using the conversation to give themselves time to allow what was happening to sink in.
The urge came on them to pour themselves into each other and they clung and slowly became the victims of what they had declared.
They could hold each other until dark like this, but sooner or later they had to come out of the woods, and this knowledge began to scratch at their passion like hard chalk against a blackboard.