I and My True Love by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page A

became something he could cope with efficiently—they began discussing the Shasta water reclamation project—and Hallis was both intelligent and interested. It’s a pity we didn’t get talking this way when Sylvia and Kate Jerold were here, Turner thought as he finished an explanation and found it well received. Then he smiled at his conceit. But, just then, another thought struck him. He looked at Hallis with new understanding. He was smooth. Very smooth. He might be twenty pounds overweight, disguise it with specially cut clothes, but he was pretty light on his feet.
    Turner’s smile became a broad grin. So Hallis would tolerate no opposition when it came to women?
    “Sylvia,” Amy said in a low voice, drawing her aside from Kate and Miriam Hugenberg. “About Jan... I did try to jump in and pretend I had a schoolgirl sort of crush on him, but it didn’t help at all. Except that Martin looked at me as if I were out of my mind. Oh, Sylvia, what will you do?”
    “Nothing.” She touched Amy’s arm and moved to the coffee table.
    Amy’s anxious face didn’t look reassured. In a way, she was hurt, too. Now, she could see, there would be no more serious confidences. Did Sylvia blame her for having given the wrong advice six years ago? At the time, romantic as she had been, she had meant it honestly and well. But if Sylvia had listened to her, Sylvia would have given up this house and her marriage, and gone off with Jan Brovic. And what would Sylvia have had today? With Czechoslovakia as it was now?
    Amy looked around the comfortable secure room, and then at Sylvia pouring coffee by the fire. Yes, Amy thought, as things turned out I gave her bad advice. Yet Sylvia would never know how painfully honest I was with her: I was in love with Jan Brovic, too; I would have gone away with him if he had asked me.
    She went over to sit beside Kate, listening wide-eyed to Miriam Hugenberg’s description of pre-war Budapest. She nibbled the thin chocolate mints, lying temptingly in a silver shell on the rosewood table at her elbow. She wished moodily that if she were seized with such violent likings nowadays it might be for fruit or milk rather than this impossible craze for candy. The twins will produce teeth full of cavities, she thought mournfully. Twins... she tried not to imagine their three-room apartment. Poor Martin...perhaps he’d better join a club, after all.
    “I think you must come to my party,” Miriam Hugenberg was saying to Kate. “Sylvia, you will bring her, won’t you?”
    Sylvia said she would be delighted.
    “And do bring that friend of your brother’s,” Miriam told Kate, following her first rule for any party she gave: never invite a woman by herself; balance her with a male, with two if possible. “He’s a very silent young man. It’s hard to believe he’s from Texas, isn’t it? But I suppose that’s why he has done so well in the Army. He enlisted as a private, did you know? Now, if Stewart Hallis ever enlisted as a private, he’d probably spend his war service in the guardhouse or whatever they call it for lashing his superior officer with his tongue.” She laughed merrily.
    “Of course,” Amy said, rather bitterly, “that would save him from being shot-over, wouldn’t it?”
    Now that’s unfair, Kate thought.
    “I’ve shocked Kate,” Amy remarked with a smile. “Here, darling, take this dish of mints away, will you? As far away as possible. Thank you.”
    “Sometimes I wish I could be brave enough to drop Stewart Hallis from my list,” Miriam said frankly. “Except, of course, I’d rather have him as my friend than as my enemy. But now I’m being naughty. Sylvia likes him, don’t you, Sylvia?”
    “Payton thinks quite a lot of him,” Sylvia said.
    “Does he, my dear?”

4
    By the time the dinner party had assembled again, in the drawing-room, it was almost half-past ten and Payton Pleydell had arrived. With him, he brought two young men who entered the room casually,