Read Online Strong Spirits [Spirits 01] by Alice Duncan - Free Book Online Page B

gaze to the absolutely gorgeous Persian rug upon which my little Gumm feet rested.
           Lieutenant Farrington took my hand and gazed at me with an intensity that surprised me. “Mrs. Kincaid told us about your husband’s wounds and subsequent distress, Mrs. Majesty. Please allow me to offer you my sympathy and best wishes for his full recovery.”
           “I fear there’s not much chance of that, but I do thank you.”
           The nice man shook his head sorrowfully. “I heard he took some mustard gas in France.”
           “Yes.”
           “The Kaiser ought to be executed for ever even thinking of using that pernicious gas,” he said with a good deal more vehemence than I’d heretofore believed his magnificently handsome body contained.
           “I agree.” I sounded bitter. And why not? I felt bitter.
           “Tut, tut,” murmured Harold, trying to sound sympathetic, I’m sure, but not quite achieving it. “Let’s not get maudlin, kiddies.”
           “Really, Harry,” Lieutenant Farrington said repressively. “Have you no heart?”
           “Not much, I fear.” Harold cocked his head at me, then grinned. “That’s not true. I am sorry for your poor husband, Mrs. Majesty. And for you. It must be a trial for one of your tender years to have to support a family. And I know very well that women don’t get paid as much as men.”
           For some reason, Harold’s matter-of-fact statement of the facts of my case made tears fill my eyes. I felt stupid. “Thanks,” I said, which was about as much as I could say at the moment.
           He patted me on the back. Lieutenant Farrington offered me a clean white hankie he hastily pulled from his uniform pocket. I shook my head, in control again, more or less. “Thank you. I’m all right.” With a ruthlessness I’d been forced to cultivate since the war, I swallowed my tears. “And I do appreciate your—understanding.” I’d been going to say “sympathy,” but it was the understanding I truly appreciated.
           Medora Trunick rushed over to me then, probably because I was with Lieutenant Farrington, and grabbed my hands. “Oh, Mrs. Majesty, I’m so utterly embarrassed at having interrupted your séance.”
           I’ll just bet she was. I wasted one of my gracious smiles on her and told her it was nothing, that things like that happened all the time, which was a lie, and that everything was fine. She began simpering for Lieutenant Farrington then, and I almost managed to escape. Unfortunately, at that very moment Miss Anastasia Kincaid, sister to Harold and approximately my age, made her sneering entrance.
           Stacy, as she liked to be called, had bobbed hair and wore a high-brimmed hat with about a million dollars worth of beads on it. She was clad in a thin sleeveless dress, likewise heavily beaded and that revealed the whole of her bare arms. It had a skirt I considered scandalously short (and I’m no prude). She’d obviously rolled her stockings below her knees, because her kneecaps showed, carried a lit cigarette in a long, expensive-looking cigarette holder, had dipped heavily into the rouge pot before going out for the evening, had lips the color of red barn paint, and looked as if she were perishing from ennui. Taking in the full glory of her, I thought it was small wonder parents had begun to moan and groan about the immorality of the younger generation.
           I’d met Stacy Kincaid once or twice before, and didn’t like her. At all. She was one of those spoiled rich kids who liked to think of themselves as superior to everyone else in the world and bored by everything in it.
           As far as I was concerned, she hadn’t lived long enough to be bored. Also, as near as I could figure, she’d never done a single solitary thing either for herself or for anyone else, so her demeanor of condescending superiority fell as flat as a