O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [73]
“And do you think all this is going to end?”
Nathaniel Culpeper mulled it over.
“Amanda Kerr is a woman outside of her generation, marked for greatness. She does not act in a haughty manner, yet everyone who comes into contact with her senses her keen mind and sees her regal bearing. She simply is. Having battled you to a tie score for nearly twenty years, she is also aware of her potency, her possible reach. Faced with a decision Amanda will surely conclude that as the wife of a Marine, she will end up personally unfulfilled, no matter how much she loves him.”
“Suppose she wants O’Hara and Dutchman’s Hook?”
“That’s certain to be her battle plan, right now,” Culpeper conceded, “but there is a flip side to the coin.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“O’Hara’s side. The core of the Corps is this insatiable drive. They are born different, beyond the lure of the spoils of commerce, industry, and governments.”
“Come now, Nathaniel, military officers are ordinary human beings with personal ambition.”
“Their ambition is to serve at the highest level. Strange breed, what? But, without an officer corps, no nation could be a viable nation.”
“And you believe O’Hara is so smitten?”
“He and the colors are one and the same. As Amanda Kerr would not be fulfilled in life by their marriage, neither would Zachary O’Hara.”
“Do you honestly think that he’d choose the Marines over her?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?”
Later in the afternoon, Horace requested that his daughter visit him in the parlor before dinner. “You heard?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Is this going to change things about?”
“No,” she answered immediately and firmly.
A feeling of comfort swept over him and eased out the tension.
“Glen has invited me to visit the Constable farm outside Richmond for a week or so. His daughter, Dixie Jane, will be there. I ought to get to know her,” Amanda said.
Horace drank that music in. There was nothing frivolous about it, no question of her resolve.
“Of course that pleases me right well,” he said.
“Mother will be returning to Inverness to pack us up for Newport. I’d have to go to Richmond without a chaperon.”
“Not to give it a second thought,” Horace answered. “I’m heading for Dutchman’s Hook tomorrow and I’ll be staying at my apartment there. Your uncles Donald and Malcolm are coming down to run some trials with me on Lochinvar,” he said in reference to the Kerr racing yacht.
Amanda smiled at her father’s persistence. Horace had a professional crew, but she was the one woman allowed aboard for the match races and often relieved her father at the helm. His passion for the regatta was still on the rise.
“How did the old Lochinvar fare this winter?”
“Well, I hope. We’ve outfitted her with that system I told you about.”
“The ‘Butterfly’?”
“Good, you remembered.”
“Will you be sailing her up to Newport?”
“No, that’s Malcolm and Donald’s job. I’ll come back to join you and Daisy at Inverness to train up.”
The Next Day—Dutchman’s Hook
America’s Cup had become bitter vetch for the British, who had pursued it futilely with a dozen challenges. For four decades, beginning in 1850, the Yankee upstarts had made something of a mockery of Britannia’s mastery of the sea. Not that anyone was surprised when the Yankees put a fine boat on the water, but they were commercial people, not sportsmen. It was difficult to comprehend that the Americans could build, crew, and captain a yacht better than the English. Actually, it was the lack of sportsmanship that grated on the Brits. The Cup was on display at the New York Yacht Club and the true sportsmen were forced to race on American water under American rules.
If horse racing was the sport of kings, then yacht racing was the sport of gods and America’s Cup became a search for the Holy Grail.
The United States entered the 1890s on a golden wave of unprecedented personal wealth. Suddenly the city of New York vied with London as the center of the universe.
For their playground, New Yorkers had the South