Read Online Blessing in Disguise by Eileen Goudge - Free Book Online Page A

forgot what she was going to say. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep it up.
    Cordelia adjusted her ivory gabardine skirt, lining up its pleats with the same care with which, each spring, she marked with string the rows of tiny seedlings to be planted in her herb garden. For a delicious second, she let her mind drift ahead to thoughts of the mild fall afternoon that awaited her at the end of her present ordeal. She imagined herself, in her gardening pants and floppy straw hat, kneeling in the rich soil of her garden, working side by side with Gabe as they harvested the last of the summer’s herbs.
    Gabe ...
    In Dan’s darkly masculine office with its faint but pervasive odor of cigar smoke, Cordelia nevertheless felt as if a fierce sun were burning her face, heating her whole body. She willed herself not to think about Gabe. She must concentrate on what was happening here, now; on Dan Killian and the nasty little bomb she could sense he was about to drop. ...
    She watched Dan’s meaty hand stir among the papers on his desk and finally haul up a newspaper clipping that fluttered restlessly in the tepid air from the ancient air-conditioner.
    “Right out of the Constitution,” he pronounced, as if it were the founding fathers’ great document instead of just a silly newspaper. “Says here, Dellie, that your Grace—who you know we’re all just so proud of she might just as well be right smack in the middle of Jackson Park, bronzed and with a plaque at her feet—says here that Grace is writing a book, a bi- o -graphy,” he added sententiously, drawing one word out into three. “About her daddy. About Eugene.”
    “This is hardly news to me, Dan,” interrupted Cordelia. She’d known about the book long before Grace had ever set a word down on paper, had been excited about it even, until this ... this ... Oh, the unfairness, the cruelty of it!
    “Most of it complimentary, from what I understand,” he went on. “But there is some stuff that’s downright disturbing. Something about—hell, I’ll come right out and say it—Gene being involved in a man’s killing. A black man.” He kept his head low, tucked into the loose chins wattling his neck, his pale eyes peering mournfully above the gold rims of his spectacles. “Excuse me, Dellie, but that’s just what it says.”
    “I know what it says, Dan.” She immediately regretted letting her impatience show. She heard her mother’s voice in her head: A lady is polite and well mannered at all times, even when subjected to undue pressure. “I get the Constitution, too, delivered right to my doorstep. Though, if you ask me, with half what’s in it these days, they might as well just toss it straight into the trash can.”
    “But surely—”
    “I have discussed this with Grace, and have given her my thoughts on the subject,” Cordelia said, her tone as precise as the snipping of secateurs on a particularly thorny bush.
    Inside, though, she could feel her heart slipping like new shoes on icy pavement, and with it her careful composure. She steeled herself. No, she wasn’t going to let Dan Killian, who had once felt her breast in a hothouse, see her fall apart now. Instead, she replayed in her mind last week’s phone call from Grace. The outrageousness of her dragging that long-ago tragedy into the light again! And now the newspapers making Gene out to be some kind of ... of murderer. Or, at very best, a liar.
    Oh, yes, she knew what had really happened that day. Gene had confided in her immediately afterwards. How could he not? They’d shared everything. She alone knew how tortured he’d been, for months on end, wracked with misery and self-doubt. But she didn’t have to have been there to know he hadn’t murdered that poor man ... that he’d only done what she, or anyone, would have expected of him. Why, he’d risked his own life to save Margaret’s!
    But if he’d told the truth? With Gene’s integrity in question, his enemies on Capitol