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Sloan English let go of Darcy’s wrist. He struggled to rise. “I don’t need an ambulance. I’ll leave. I’m just causing trouble here—”
He heaved himself up enough to prop his weight on his elbows. Even that exertion made him gasp, and his chest rose and fell alarmingly. Darcy saw a vein in his temple banging like a small blue hammer.
“Please,” she begged, grasping his shoulder to restrain him, “don’t…Please.”
His flesh was hard beneath her hand, the muscles lively. But his skin was still unnaturally hot and his shirt damp with perspiration. He struggled to a sitting position, and she could not stop him; for a sick man, he showed an astonishing amount of strength.
But then his strength failed him. He tried to pull himself to his feet, but instead toppled like a marionette whose strings have betrayed it. He would have struck the marble, but once again Darcy caught him.
He fell back, his head in her lap, his eyes clenched shut in frustration and pain. “Sorry,” he rasped, “sorry.”
The vein in his temple beat more violently. Darcy cradled his head helplessly. The sirens’ whine grew higher, louder. “Help’s coming,” she whispered. “Just stay still.”
His eyes opened tiredly. His head turned, and he stared into the grinning face of the bookworm. “My God,” he breathed hoarsely. “What’s that?”
“It’s only a bookworm,” she soothed, pushing it away.
“Shouldn’t I be protecting you from it?” he asked, and tried to smile. Instead he shuddered, as if racked by a chill.
“It’s harmless,” she said. He squeezed shut his eyes, frowning, and shuddered again. She used the hem of her T-shirt to wipe the mist of sweat from his forehead, his upper lip. “Shh. Easy.”
Sloan’s hand fumbled to find hers again, then closed over it.
“Room’s spinning again,” he said through his teeth. “Anchor me.”
She laced her fingers through his, held on tight.
The skirling of the sirens became unbearable, overwhelming. They filled the air, they beat on Darcy’s eardrums, they sounded like all the hounds of hell about to close in.
Then came a moment of miraculous silence, so absolute she thought she’d gone deaf.
“They’re here,” Emerald said with excitement.
A flurry of sounds—metallic doors slamming, people’s voices, hurried footsteps. Darcy thought she could hear a police radio in the background.
“Here!” yelled Rose Alice, opening the screen door. “He’s in here! He’s declared germ warfare on us! Hurry!”
Dammit, Rose Alice, lighten up. Anger flashed through Darcy, but vanished almost instantly, swallowed up by the chaos spilling into the house.
Paramedics swarmed inside. They pushed her away, they hovered over Sloan English, poking and prodding him. They barked terse, incomprehensible orders to one another. Darcy rose to her feet to watch them, but she felt limp and spent. Rose Alice and Emerald stood on the porch, talking animatedly to a tall policeman.
Attendants were strapping Sloan to a gurney and unfolding a blanket to cover him. “What’d he say he had?” asked a boyish paramedic with a shock of blond hair.
“Malay fever,” said a stocky Hispanic woman, stowing a blood pressure cuff in a black bag. “It’s an ugly bastard. It can come back on you.”
“Ugh,” said the youth, cringing. “Can we get it?”
“No way,” she answered. She turned to Darcy. Her brown eyes were coolly professional, yet not unkind. “He said he’d been in the tropics. That right?”
“I think so,” said Darcy. “He mentioned Kuala Lumpur.”
“How long ago did he get this fever? Doesn’t look like he really recovered from his first bout with it.”
“I—I have no idea,” Darcy stammered. She looked at Sloan, strapped to the gurney, covered now, his blanket like a shroud. His head rolled back and forth as if the fever were riding him into a land of nightmare.
“Will he be all right?” Darcy asked, touching the woman’s arm.
“Should be,” the woman said shortly. “Needs rest. Here—” she said. “He seemed to want you to have this.” She handed Darcy the card she’d refused before. Numbly she took it.
The two male attendants began wheeling the gurney toward the door. Darcy quickly moved to Sloan’s side. “Sloan—Mr. English—can you hear me?”
“Stay back, lady,” the blond boy said. “You can’t come.”
“Sloan?” she begged.
His dark lashes flicked. He turned his head toward the sound of her voice. The green eyes opened. “I’ll make this up to you,” he said in a thick voice.
“It’s all right,” she said.
“We still have to talk,” he said, then sucked in his breath sharply.
“Yes,” she assured him. “We do.”
“I—I never got your phone number,” he said. “I dropped your card.”
They were nearly to the ambulance now. She looked back at the porch. She saw her card lying at the policeman’s feet. “I’ll get it for you,” she promised.
She turned and sprinted back to the porch, then snatched up the card. But by the time she ran back to the ambulance, Sloan’s gurney had been loaded. They were shutting the doors.
“Please—please,” she begged, thrusting the card at the woman. “Give this to him. It’s important.”
The woman looked at her, her expression unreadable, but reached out and took the card.
“Step back,” said the ambulance driver. Darcy found herself pushed backward. The doors clanged shut. She watched as the driver climbed inside. He fired up the engine, turned on the hellish siren. He pulled away and left her standing there.
She watched it go, until it disappeared around the curve of the long drive. She looked down at the card in her hand.
It bore Sloan English’s name and corporate title. It told her his business address and phone number, gave her a company e-mail address, but nothing else. It told her nothing of the man himself.
SUBJECT: WHAT HAVE I DONE?
From: Olivia@USAserve.com
To: BanditKing@USAserve.com
Oh, Lord, darling, what have I done? I hit the wrong button and accidentally sent a copy of the message I wrote you this morning to Emerald OF ALL PEOPLE!!!
She’ll have kittens—medieval ones. She’ll run to Darcy and carry on and make it sound as if I’m the scarlet woman of the Apocalypse.
Bloody computer. I could kick it around the block. Oh, hell—I could kick myself around the block. How could I pull such a fumble-fingered stunt?
I can only hope my girls will be as understanding as your family. Otherwise they’ll think the little men in white coats should come and lock me up. Oh, sweetheart, I feel like such an utter fool. I hope with all my heart that this doesn’t make any trouble.
Love and many desperate kisses,
Your Repentant Olivia,
Who now wishes she’d met you via carrier pigeon
SUBJECT: Calm Down, My Lovely
From: BanditKing@USAserve.com
To: Olivia@USAserve.com
My Dearest Olivia—
Not so much wailing and lamentation, dear heart. This e-mail is a new sort of magic loosed on the world, and like all magic, it can backfire as we try to master it. You are like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, my dear, only far lovelier.
My love, no one should be allowed to wrest from us this sweet and delicate thing we have been fortunate enough to find. Not your family, no matter how beloved they are, and not mine.
But, most treasured Olivia, I have a confession. My family did not take the news as well as I had hoped. We had, in fact, a bit of a set-to about it.
I did not mean to deceive you, dearest, but neither did I wish to burden you. As the Bard says, the course of true love never did run smooth.
We must take these challenges as they come, and calmly.
A thousand kisses,
Your Devoted John
P.S. What are medieval kittens?
SUBJECT: THE DARK AGES, OR SULKING AS A MILITARY ART
From: Olivia@USAserve.com
To: BanditKing@USAserve.com
Medieval kittens don’t just throw a fit; they set it on fire and catapult it across the moat. Trust me on this, I’ve been in the castle when it’s under siege.
Darling, you say the wisest and most tender things, but exactly what do you mean—your family didn’t take the news the way you’d hoped? That there was “a bit of a set-to”?
My sweet, handsome, sexy John, please don’t withhold things from me. You promised you never would. What, precisely, are your sister and son saying to you about this?
Concerned But Trying To Be Calm,
Your Own Olivia,
Who Loves You Truly, Madly, Deeply
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU HAVE TO PHONE MOTHER,” Emerald said. “Right now. This has gone too far. Rose Alice nearly hit that man with a golf club.”
Darcy turned to a mirror and tried to smooth her tumbled hair. Her heart still knocked unaccountably hard against her ribs, and the mirror showed her that her face was pale, but her cheeks bright pink.
“Da-ar-cee,” Emerald said with something close to a whine. “I mean it. You’ve got to call Mama.”
“Give me a minute,” said Darcy, fastening her silver barrette. She took a deep breath to calm herself.
The studio was quiet again. Rose Alice, still in high dudgeon, had stalked back to the house, obviously feeling un-appreciated. The ambulance had left; the police cars were gone.
Sloan English’s BMW still stood in the driveway, and Darcy supposed someone would be sent for it. It was the only sign the man had been there—except for his business card. It lay on the bookcase between a vase of fantastic silk flowers and a sock monkey.
The card was nothing, she told herself—a scrap of paper with fancy engraving, a boring corporate ID signifying nothing. Wrong, said something deep and unexpected within her. It signifies him. Why does that make my heart rattle like a trapped thing shaking the bars of a cage?
She shook her head to clear it, but his image wouldn’t go away.
Emerald sat in the armchair watching her closely. “You certainly fussed over him,” she accused. “Was it because he’s handsome?”
Darcy turned from the mirror with an innocent air. “Handsome? Was he? I didn’t notice.”
“Ha,” sneered Emerald, polishing the studs on her gloves. “He’s handsome and you noticed. But you’d better remember—he’s the enemy.”
“He’s not ‘the enemy.’ Don’t be melodramatic.”
“I don’t have to,” Emerald said with a superior look. “He was melodramatic enough for everybody. He roars up to the door like a fire-breathing dragon. He rants. He raves. And then he falls over.”
“He wasn’t himself,” Darcy said defensively. “He was ill. I don’t think he knew how sick he was. His fever affected his judgment.”
“It was kind of cool how he keeled over that way,” Emerald said, pulling on her leather glove and admiring it. “Like he had the plague or something. I wonder if that’s how they did it during the Black Death.”
“Oh, really,” said Darcy, turning from her in irritation.
She picked the bookworm up from the floor. She set him on the worktable and adjusted his antennae.
“Anyway, you have to call Mother,” nagged Emerald. “That man’s in the hospital—somebody’s got to tell his family. She’s the only one who knows anybody, so you’ve got to. Unless you want his people to just get a cold, soulless call from the police.”
“I thought you considered them the enemy,” countered Darcy. “Why all this tender concern?”
“Well—” Emerald shrugged “—I have taken a vow of chivalry and courtesy and all that. Besides, it sounds like some of them might be on our side.”
Our side. Their side. Darcy fought not to flinch. She didn’t want her mother hurt by a frivolous and possibly dangerous romance, but neither did she want battle lines drawn.
Nor did she relish being the bearer of bad news. When she called her mother, she would deliver bad news not once, but three times over.
First, she and Emerald had learned of Olivia’s headlong affair, something Olivia had obviously wished kept secret, at least for now. Second, BanditKing’s family was also upset about the romance, sufficiently so to send Sloan English. And third, Sloan had been carried off to the hospital—and who knew how sick he was?
“Of course,” said Emerald, “I could ask Rose Alice to call. She wouldn’t be scared. She doesn’t mince words.”
Darcy wheeled to face her sister. “I’m not scared. It’s just that this is—a delicate matter. I have to think how to do it.”
“Just spit it out the way you usually do,” Emerald said. “You’ve always been mother’s daughter in that.”
“All right, fine,” Darcy grumbled, hooking her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans. “I’ll call. But I want some privacy. Go take a walk by the lake or something.”
“She’s my mother, too,” Emerald said, her chin high. “I have a right to stay and listen.”
Darcy drilled her with a look that would have made Attila the Hun obey. “Out,” she ordered.
With a resentful expression, Emerald went.
Darcy watched her leave. Then she gritted her teeth in uneasy anticipation and reached for the receiver.
OLIVIA FERRAR was a tall woman, slender and straight-backed, with her hair swept back in a chignon. Her face was still lovely, though not unmarked by time. Laugh lines crinkled the corners of her blue eyes and bracketed her mouth.
The mouth itself was usually set at an amused angle, and the eyes had a cool, irreverent twinkle. She was dressed in a cream-colored caftan that emphasized her graceful carriage, and the diamonds in her ears and on her fingers were tastefully understated.
Her condo overlooked a craggy strip of dark shore and a foaming sea. Spread on its rented sofa were wallpaper samples, fabric swatches and paint chips.
The smell of fresh paint hung heavily in the air. The old carpeting had just been, as her decorator said, “terminated with extreme hostility.” Olivia felt as if she were living in a five-room war zone.
But she had created a fragile island of peace in the front bedroom. She headed for it now, leaving the disordered living room. She was unusually pensive this afternoon, wondering how long she had before she heard from her daughters.
For she would hear from them. Of this there was no doubt.
They had been fine when dealing with a mother who had forsworn men. She doubted they’d be nearly so accepting now that she was having a passionate affair. Emerald, especially, would not.
For weeks now Olivia had come into the refuge of the bedroom with pleasure and excitement. It was where she usually communicated with her darling John.
She’d put a simple TV table next to the windows overlooking the harbor. On the table she’d set up the new computer, as if she were placing it on a shrine.
She did not, of course, think of the computer as a god. But it was as if she had miraculously been given a servant with magical powers—a benevolent troll, for instance. It existed to do her bidding, and at any time of the day or night, it fetched and sent love letters with breathtaking speed.
But today for the first time, the troll had whipped off its friendly mask and shown its ugly side. Its benevolence vanished in a twinkling—and it gave Olivia a frightening glimpse of its infinite capacity for mischief.
Olivia stared at the shiny little box squatting so proudly on her table. “Trickster,” she muttered. “Electronic toad. Traitor.”
She sighed and turned away, knowing the computer hadn’t betrayed her secret to her family. The fault was hers. Yet how was a woman to know that a machine so small would have so many confusing features? And that a simple tap of the keys could accidentally send one’s most private thoughts zipping around the stratosphere?
What made her feel worst was her fear of how the wayward e-mail message would upset her daughters. She loved her girls deeply and worried about them more than they knew. The last thing she wished to do was to worry them in return—especially Emerald.
Emerald had always needed the safety of her family, and until recently she’d needed it too much. The only friends she had were those in the Medieval Society, and the only time she seemed comfortable was playing a role. A senior at the University of Texas, she’d been offered dozens of scholarships, some quite wonderful. But Olivia knew Emerald would probably reject the best; the thought of going very far from Austin filled the girl with anxiety. For all her flamboyance, she was secretly shy.
Darcy, in contrast, was independent to a fault. She was talented, she was successful—but she seemed not to care a bit for money. She waved away fat contracts and sweetheart deals, determined to follow her own, often peculiar, interests.
Darcy was self-sufficient in other, more disturbing ways, as well. Men were interested in her, but she was seldom interested in return, at least not deeply or for long. She claimed she would never encumber herself with a husband. Lately Olivia had been beset by a nagging wish for grandchildren, but she was beginning to fear she would never have them. Perhaps both her daughters were too unconventional for marriage.
The phone rang, and she knew who it would be. Not John, who would be at work at this time of day. No. It would be her offspring, demanding to know if she’d lost her marbles.
The phone rang again, and Olivia squared her shoulders. She did not like confrontation, but after twenty years with Gus, she certainly didn’t fear it. She sighed, ran her hand over the perfect smoothness of her hair, and picked up the receiver.
“Mother, it’s me,” said Darcy.
Olivia was relieved to hear Darcy’s voice. Darcy certainly had her eccentricities, but she was a rock of stability compared to Emerald.
“Darling,” Olivia said with admirable calm, “I’ve been expecting to hear from you.”
“You have?” Darcy’s tone was cautious.
“Yes,” said Olivia. She looked out the window and watched the gray sea froth against the dark shore. “Did Emerald ask you to call?”
“Well, yes, actually, she did.” Darcy paused. “Do you know what this is about?”
Olivia drew in a calming breath. “I accidentally sent her a copy of a letter meant for someone else. The blasted keyboard has too many keys. I keep hitting things I don’t mean to hit. I suppose she went and read it.”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “She did.”
“And I suppose she came running with it to you.”
“Yes. She did.”
“And I suppose you read it.”
“Yes. I did.”
Olivia believed the best defense was a good offense. “In my day,” she said loftily, “we wouldn’t dream of reading another person’s letters. It would be considered the vilest form of snooping. The mail was sacred. Privacy was respected.”
“E-mail isn’t real mail, Mother. No law protects it. It’s about as private as a billboard. You shouldn’t say anything in it you wouldn’t want the world to know. I could take that letter and copy it a hundred times and tape it to every telephone pole in town.”
Olivia frowned. “That’s shocking violation of rights,” she said. “I will write my congressman.”
“You do that,” Darcy said. “It won’t change a thing. In the meantime, Emerald’s concerned over your involvement with this—this BanditKing person. I’m a bit concerned myself.”
“Do I intrude on your love life?” Olivia challenged. “No, I do not. Not since you were fourteen and came home with that dreadful hoodlum with the green hair and the nose ring.”
“He grew up to be an accountant,” Darcy said. “He belongs to the Conservative Voters League and the Rotary Club.”
“Obviously not your type, either way,” said Olivia. “Not that I’m a meddler. And I’ll thank you not to meddle, either.”
Ha—take that, Olivia thought. Darcy loved her freedom too much to be comfortable interfering with someone else’s.
“I don’t want to meddle,” Darcy said, and to her credit, she sounded as if she meant it. “But Emerald’s worried. She says you have to be extremely careful about getting involved with someone on the Internet. She knows her way around it better than you and me put together.”
“Emerald sat in her room talking to boys who pretended they were wizards and Vikings. She only knows about the fantastic, not the real.”
“Isn’t this romance moving awfully fast?”
“Fiddle-dee-dee,” Olivia said with blitheness she did not really feel. “I am an adult and, if I do say so myself, a woman of some sophistication and experience. I can handle my own business, thank you very much.”
Olivia bit her lower lip and waited for Darcy’s reply. In truth, she was herself amazed by how quickly she had fallen in love with John English. She felt she knew him better and more deeply than she had ever known another human being. And, miraculously, he felt the same about her.
Olivia had spent her adult life hiding her emotions behind an aloofly flippant attitude. But somehow John English saw through the facade to the vulnerability she had never let another person glimpse.
“Mother,” Darcy said carefully, “this is so unlike you.”
“No, it’s just unlike my marriages. No man’s ever treated me this way before,” Olivia said, and it was the truth. “He’s kind and affectionate and understanding. I can talk to him about anything, and he’s always interested. I truly did not know the male of the species could be so sensitive and caring. It’s a new experience.”
“But you haven’t really—” Darcy sounded uncomfortable “—you don’t really know each other that well.”
Olivia smiled and thought, You’ve got no idea, darling.
The letters between Olivia and John had opened into intimacy with amazing swiftness. It was as if, cut loose from earthly bonds, the letters let them explore each other’s mind and soul in supernatural detail. Such mingling of thoughts and emotion quickly led them to question if sex could have the same, almost perfect, intensity. It did.
“Mother,” Darcy said in the same uneasy tone, “this isn’t easy to ask. But this man—”
“John,” corrected Olivia. “He’s not ‘this man.’ John English. Of Key West, Florida.”
“Fine. Whatever. John English,” said Darcy. “Do you have any idea how his family feels about this?”
This question came as an unpleasant surprise to Olivia. She realized that although her closeness to John seemed absolute, he had been hesitant about discussing the exact nature of his recent trouble with his family.
“His kin have been good enough to spare me their opinions,” Olivia said.
“Unfortunately, they haven’t spared me,” Darcy said. “John English’s son came here to talk.”
Olivia was stunned, horrified. “He came there?”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “To the guest house. Emerald was here—she’d just gotten your letter. Then he showed up. Sloan English.”
Olivia felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. Well. Sloan. We’ve never met. But—I’m surprised. He just got back to the States. I thought he’d been sick.”
“He is sick,” said Darcy. “He passed out in the foyer. An ambulance had to come and take him away. He’s in the hospital.”
“The hospital! My God,” said Olivia. “Is he going to be all right?”
“I have no idea,” answered Darcy. “But you’d better tell your Mr. English. We had quite a scene here.”
“A scene?” Olivia asked, feeling suddenly queasy.
“Rose Alice wanted to hit him with a golf club. She couldn’t find the bullets for the guns.”
Olivia put her hand to her forehead.
“And Emerald was in full knight rig, ready to run him through—but nobody stabbed him, nobody shot him.”
“Dear heaven. He’ll think we’re all insane.”
“Mother, he wasn’t quite in his right mind himself. He had a fever of a hundred and four. He wasn’t in any condition to be checking out his father’s love life.”
“Oh, damn, oh, dear,” Olivia said, flummoxed. “It doesn’t sound like what I’ve heard about him at all—just the opposite. Well, he shouldn’t have done it. It’s an invasion of your privacy, and it’s a threat to his health. He’s been a very sick man. I’ll have to tell John. What a shock. Which hospital?”
Darcy told her. “What exactly is wrong with this man, Mother? He said he had a fever he caught abroad, but—”