“Ready?” he asked.
“I think so.”
Luke opened the papers and began to read.
12
LONDON, ENGLAND
1944
CLARE!” CAPTAIN OWENS yelled at his sergeant, who was leaning against the jeep and staring into space. When he got no response, he waved his hand in front of his face but there was no reaction. “What the hell’s wrong with him?” He looked to a corporal standing on the other side of the jeep.
“Her,” Corporal Smith said as he reached up and took a cigarette from David Clare’s lips. It was burning down and about to singe him.
“Who?” the captain asked impatiently. Sometimes these men didn’t seem to realize there was a war going on.
The corporal took a last drag off Clare’s cigarette, then nodded toward the big building in front of them. It had once been beautiful, but now a quarter of it was rubble. Standing on the steps was General Austin, a short bulldog of a man who seemed to believe all words should be uttered as quickly, as succinctly, and as loudly as possible. His orders had been known to put tears in grown men’s eyes. The soldiers played a game they called “Worse than Austin.” First line of battle or fifteen minutes alone with Austin? Torture or Austin? In the last year they’d developed a catchphrase. “Better than Austin.” They used it when they were about to charge into gunfire. “This is Better than Austin,” they’d say before attaching bayonets and charging.
The short, sturdy general was standing on the steps, bawling out three young officers, and Sergeant Clare was staring at him as though he were in a trance.
“Austin?” the captain said in disgust. “He’s paralyzed by Austin? Oh hell! Get somebody else to drive the bastard. Clare! Come with me.”
Sergeant Clare didn’t move.
“Not him,” Corporal Smith said. “Her!”
Captain Owens looked back just as “she” stepped from behind a pillar, and he smiled. Oh yeah, her. Miss Edilean Harcourt, the general’s secretary. The Untouchable One. The woman who it sometimes seemed the entire military force lusted after, but no man had been able to get near. There was a rumor that her legs were three and a half feet long and there was a lot of discussion of what a man would do with legs like that.
Whatever their fantasies, no man had so much as received a smile from Miss Edilean Harcourt—but not for want of trying. Every type of man had tried every method known to win her. From an Englishman with an accent so elegant it was whispered he was royalty, to an American GI who’d grown up in the LA slums, they all tried.
Flowers, candy, love poems, nylons, even a banner saying MISS EDI, I LOVE YOU strung across the building during the night had elicited no response from her.
It had been a great game for the men who’d been there a while to watch the newcomers fall apart when they first saw Edilean Harcourt. She was a foot taller than the general and had a patrician beauty that the men couldn’t take their eyes off. The most common phrase uttered by new soldiers was, “She’s a goddess.”
When “that look” was seen in a new man’s eyes, money started changing hands. They bet on the number of days it would take before he was given Miss Edi’s “drop dead” look, and what the poor man would do to try to win her. They knew the general kept the chocolates sent to her, and he threw the flowers out the window. It was his hay fever. As for the nylons, all anyone knew was that all the girls in General Austin’s office wore perfect nylons.
So now Captain Owens shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Another man had fallen under her spell. “How long has he been like this?” he asked the corporal.
“Since yesterday. I don’t think he slept last night, just lay awake staring at the ceiling.”
“Great,” the captain said in sarcasm. “Just what I need. Clare was sent here specially to be Austin’s driver. He drove another general straight through enemy fire, didn’t blink an eye. He’s up for some medal, and Austin wants him.”
The corporal glanced at David Clare. He was a tall young man, dark blond hair, and blue eyes, and he was still standing in comatose silence as he stared at the woman on the porch. “From the look of him, he’d throw himself on a bomb for her.”
“Yeah, well, so would we all, but she’d probably just step over his body.”
“I see, sir,” the corporal said, “you’ve chosen the Ice Queen route.”
“Better that than to remember the roses I stole off a burned-out house and had tossed at my head by ol’ Hardheart Austin.”
“I understand, sir.”
“How about you?” the captain asked as he leaned against the jeep, took out a cigarette, and offered the corporal one.
“Parachute silk,” he said as he lit the captain’s cigarette, then his own. “Stole it from the quartermaster. I could be court-martialed,” he added, then shot a look at the captain.
“Don’t worry. Nobody reports crimes concerning Miss Harcourt.”