Wildfire at Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

someone else.
    "I'm going to desert you at dinner, Alma, if you'll forgive me." Alastair made his excuses. "Miss Brooke and I are old friends, and we've a lot to talk about."
    Mrs. Corrigan looked vaguely resentful, and I wondered for a moment if she were going to invite me to join their table, until I realized that she was hesitating between two evils, the hazard of having another woman near her husband, and the loss of the society of her husband's friend. She had, in fact, the air of one for whom life has for a long time been an affair of perpetual small calculations such as this. I felt sorry for her. Through Alastair's pleasant flow of conversational nothings, I shot a glance at Hartley Corrigan, just in time to see the look on his face as the lounge door opened behind me, and Marcia Maling drifted towards us on a cloud of Chanel No. 5. My pity for Alma Corrigan became, suddenly, acute. She seemed to have no defenses. She simply stood there, dowdy, dumb, and patently resentful, while Marcia, including us all in her gay "How were the fish, my dears?" enveloped the whole group in the warm exuberance of her personality.
    The whole group, yes—but somehow, I thought, as I watched her, and listened to some absurd fish story she was parodying—somehow she had cut out
    Hartley Corrigan from the herd, and penned him as neatly as if she were champion bitch at the sheep trials, and he were a marked wether. And as for the tall Irishman, it was plain that, for all he was conscious of the rest of us, the two of them might as well have been alone.
    I found I did not wan! to meet Alma Corrigan's eyes, and looked away. I was wishing the gong would go.
    The hall was full of people now: all the members of Marcia's list seemed to be assembled. There were the Cowdray-Simpsons, being attentive to an ancient white-haired lady with a hearing aid; there, in a corner, were the two oddly assorted teachers, silent and a little glum; my friend of the boat, Roderick Grant, was consulting a barometer in earnest confabulation with a stocky individual who must be Ronald Beagle; and, deep in a newspaper, sat the unmistakable Hubert Hay, dapper and rotund in the yellowest of Regency waistcoats.
    Then Nicholas came quickly round the corner of the stairs, and started down the last flight into the hall.
    He saw me straightaway. He paused almost imperceptibly, then descended the last few stairs and came straight across the hall.
    "Alastair," I said, under my breath, furious to find that my throat felt tight and dry.
    Alastair turned, saw Nicholas, and took the plunge as smoothly as an Olympic swimmer.
    "Hi, Nick!" he said. "Look who's here.... Do you remember Janet Brooke?"
    He stressed the surname ever so slightly. Nicholas's black brows lifted a fraction of an inch, and something flickered behind his eyes. Then he said: "Of course. Hello, Gianetta. How are you?"
    It came back to me sharply, irrelevantly, that Nicholas was the only person who had never shortened my name. I met his eyes with an effort, and said, calmly enough: "I'm fine, thank you. And you?"
    "Oh, very fit. You're here on holiday, I take it?"

    "Just a short break. Hugo sent me away... ." It was over, the awkward moment, the dreaded moment, sliding past in a ripple of commonplaces, the easy mechanical politenesses that are so much more than empty convention; they are the greaves and cuirasses that arm the naked nerve. And now we could turn from one another in relief, as we were gathered into the group of which Marcia Maling was still the radiant point. She had been talking to Hartley Corrigan, but I could see her watching Nicholas from under her lashes, and now she said, turning to me: "Another old friend, darling?"
    I had forgotten for the moment that she was an actress,
    and stared at her in surprise, so beautifully artless had
    the question been. Then I saw the amusement at the back
    of her eyes, and said coolly: "Yes, another old friend.
    My London life is catching me up even here, it