Aces (46 page)

“Boeleck was a genius,” Blaize said, as Hugh Luddy came over to join them. “But so are you, Mister Gold, for so brilliantly
adapting the late master’s theories to meet future contingencies.”

“Young man, you make me blush,” Herman said quietly. “Unfortunately, your opinion of my theories seems to be a minority viewpoint.”

“Ah, there you are, Greene,” Luddy interrupted, taking hold of the young pilot’s arm and leading him away. “Come along, now.
You mustn’t monopolize Mister Gold, you know. Anyway, I need to talk to you concerning the Super-shark. Now, what was this
you were telling the chief mechanic about excessive torque?…”

Erica, watching, thought Blaize looked quite reluctant to go. “He’s a nice enough young man, don’t you think, Herman?” she
asked once the young man was out of earshot.

“Yeah.” Herman looked at her. “Now what’s all this Lord stuff about?”

Erica filled him in on what she’d learned about Blaize Greene. When she was done, Herman smiled. “Why do you think our young
peer was so intent upon buttering me up?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything, darling, if you hadn’t picked up on it.” Erica laughed, giving his arm an affectionate squeeze.
“Whatever do you think he wants?”

“I’m sure we’ll find out, sooner or later,” Herman muttered, as Suzy appeared in the archway separating the patio area from
the veranda dining room, and came racing toward them.

“Mother, Daddy, I’ve been looking all over for you!” she said. “Did you know that Blaize is—”

“We know all about it.” Erica laughed.

“During lunch Blaize offered to take me sightseeing around Venice this afternoon!” Suzy continued. “Please, may I go?”

Erica and her husband exchanged looks.

“Do you suppose
this
is what all that buttering up business just now was about?” Herman wondered out loud.

“I suppose there’s no harm in it,” she fretted. “I mean, he
has
to be a gentleman…”

“His Lordship had better
stay
one, too,” Herman muttered, but softly, so that only Erica could hear him.

“You be back at our hotel suite for dinner,” Erica said.

“Yes, Mother.” Suzy kissed her cheek. “Thank you!” She gave Herman a kiss. “Thank you, too, Daddy.”

Herman was smiling as she ran off. “Know who she reminded me of just now?”

“Who?” Erica asked absently, watching her daughter disappear inside the veranda.

“You,” Herman said.

“Not really!” Erica said, startled. “For one thing, she has a much better figure than I do. More on top and on the bottom.”
She laughed.

“I guess what I meant was the way she came running toward us,” Herman explained. “With her blonde hair flying behind her,
her bright brown eyes, her excited smile.” He paused. “I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t see it.” He smiled. “Because
to me she looked just the way you used to look when I was courting you, back in Nebraska. Remember how you’d come flying down
off the farmhouse porch to greet me? And you weren’t much older than our daughter is now, as I recall…”

Erica, forcing a smile, nodded vaguely. She suddenly wished that she knew a great deal more about Blaize Greene, and not out
of idle curiosity, or admiration for his charm…

What Herman was remembering was how she’d looked when she’d been in the first throes of an infatuation for a certain young
man—who happened to be a rakish young pilot…

Suzy spent twenty fretful minutes in the powder room. She was frantic to hurry back to Blaize, who was cooling his heels in
the hotel lobby. What if at this very instant he was changing his mind about taking her sightseeing?

On the other hand, she had to make sure that she looked perfect. At least, as perfect as possible, given what she had at hand
to work with…

She took her comb from out of her alligator shoulder bag and did the best she could with it, all the while cursing the sea
breeze that had put a frizzy curl into her shoulder-length hair. She tugged at her dress, trying to smooth it out. It was
pale blue linen, and had wrinkled in the back. She felt like crying. She looked terrible! She wished that she had known to
wear something more glamorous, but who dressed glamorously for a day of sightseeing and going to the beach to watch races?

She quickly freshened her makeup, and decided that the dark blue, silk scarf she had knotted around her neck could be used
as a turban to both hide her frizzy hair and keep it out of her eyes during the windy boat ride back to Venice.

As she put her hair up, exposing her neck, she smiled to herself. A friend had read in a dirty book she’d discovered in her
parents’ bedroom that discriminating gentlemen found the nape of a lady’s neck to be scintillating… Her friend had said that
the book had photographs in it of men and women
doing it
. Suzy theoretically knew all about how
it
was done, but she’d never been able to imagine actually going about
it
. Especially not with the awkward, silly schoolboys she knew… Of course, a dashing man like Blaize—an aristocrat—had probably
done
it
hundreds of times…

Erica took a last look at herself in the mirror. She wished she had some jewelry with her, but all she was wearing was her
gold, Cartier tank watch on its alligator strap. The watch had been a gift from her father. She’d found it in the glove-box
of the bright red Jaguar runabout her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday.

She experimented with buttoning and unbuttoning the top of her dress to expose a bit of cleavage. She better not, she decided,
she might still run into her mother… Anyway, her sort of ripe, hourglass figure—her father like to tease her by calling her
“
saftig
”—was supposed to be out of fashion…

She wondered if Blaize was thinking that very thing at this very moment… She hurried out to the lobby, and felt like pinching
herself to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming when she saw that he was still there.

At first Suzy was amused and put at ease by Blaize’s charm, but as the afternoon of sightseeing wore on, she grew disappointed
by his behavior toward her. He’d been so debonair and romantically attentive at lunch. He’d made her feel like a woman: the
most special, only woman in the world! Now, as they trudged from palace, to museum, to church, he became more and more removed
and aloof. He was still very kind, but the quality of his attentiveness had changed. She sensed that in his eyes she’d become
less a woman, and more a kid sister.

Early on Blaize had promised her a gondola ride along the Grand Canal. At the time, it had sounded wonderful, but if Blaize
insisted on continuing in his role of combination tour guide/distant uncle, Suzy thought that the gondola ride would be about
as romantic as an excursion with her father.

In fact, Blaize was beginning to bore her. Her feet were aching, and if she had to look at one more painting while he dryly
recounted some obscure anecdote about the artist, she was going to scream.

They were quayside at the Grand Canal, near the Grassi Palace, not far from the hotel where her family was staying. Suzy was
thinking about cutting the afternoon short and going back to the hotel for a nap, when a curious thing happened while Blaize
was negotiating in Italian with a gondolier concerning their ride.

“I’m afraid this fellow is booked for the immediate present,” Blaize told her as he attempted to lead her away.

“No, he isn’t,” Suzy said, standing her ground. “That’s not what he said, or even what you two were talking about. You two
were arguing about money.”

“W-what? What do you mean?”

He was actually stammering, Suzy realized. Like a flesh-and-blood person, not a movie star reciting lines, or a tour guide
drearily recounting historical trivia. His eyes were piercing: bright green and glinting beneath the snap brim of his grey
felt fedora. At first Suzy thought he was angry, but then she realized that he was smarting from embarrassment over being
caught in his lie.

“I didn’t know you could speak Italian,” he said softly.

“I don’t speak it nearly as well as you, but I do understand it pretty well. And French, and German, needless to say.”

“Are all American schoolgirls so well educated?” he asked gruffly.

“Don’t try to change the subject. Why did you lie to me just now?”

“I just—Well… I just thought it would be easier to explain it that way, I suppose,” Blaize said.

To his credit he managed to rally a confident smile, but Suzy wasn’t going to buy it.

“Come now, we’ll find another fellow to take us for a ride—” He once again took her arm, trying to lead her away, but she
resisted.

“That gondolier didn’t ask for very much money,” she observed.

“Suzy—” He sounded very much like he was going to lose his temper.

“Don’t you take that sharp tone with me!” she warned. “I’m the one who was lied to!”

“And how would you know what the going rate is for a gondola ride?” he challenged.

Suzy stared at him, trying to figure it out. When the realization hit, she had to struggle not to laugh or even smile. Ironic
or not, any hint of amusement on her part would be far more than Blaize could possibly bear. “You don’t have the money, do
you?” she asked quietly.

“What are you talking about!” Blaize began to bluster. “That’s just the most absurd thing…”

“
Do
you?” She waited for him to say something, but her answer came when he looked away, blushing bright crimson. She turned to
the gondolier and in halting Italian politely requested his services at the rate he had just quoted.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Blaize demanded.

“Taking
you
for a gondola ride,” Suzy said. “And don’t get all huffy about it!”

“I won’t have it!”

“Why?”

“I
can’t
let you to pay! I think we can find a gondolier who will charge us less. I have
some
money…”

“If you only have a little I wouldn’t dream of letting you spend it on me,” Suzy said firmly. “Especially not when my purse
is literally stuffed with lira. Also, we don’t have much time. I have to be back at my hotel to have dinner with my family.
Now, then, you promised me a ride, and I mean to have it. Unless you intend to go back on your word, and surely a gentlemen
such as yourself would never do that?”

Blaize sighed. “My dear girl, it’s just that…” He hesitated, looking anguished. “You’re right, of course…”

“Is it that you find yourself a little short of cash just now?” Suzy asked sympathetically.

Blaize offered her a whimsical smile. “I mean that apart from the salary I receive from Stoat-Black—and somehow that gets
spent even before I actually receive it—I don’t have any money at all. Never ever. I’m quite absolutely broke.” He sighed.
“Oh, Suze, what you must think of me?…”

“
Suze?
…” She smiled. “Suze—I like that!” She stood up on tiptoe to give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “Shall I tell you what I
think? Until this moment I was thinking that you were turning out to be an awful stuffed shirt, but now I think you’re delightful,
all over again.”

* * *

Suzy worked hard to get Blaize to talk about himself as they drifted along the Grand Canal, past wondrous mansions and palaces
fronted by mooring posts striped like barbers’ poles. She felt regal; like Cleopatra on her barge as she basked in the warm
sunshine, listening to the water gently lapping against the gondola’s gleaming black prow. Meanwhile, in response to her gentle
prodding, Blaize haltingly revealed his past to her.

“My family did have a fair amount of money once,” he confided as their gondola slid lazily into the cool, dim shadows beneath
the elaborately arched, white marble, Ponte di Rialto. “But then my father put everything into the British film industry.
This was just after the war, you understand.”

“I didn’t know there was a substantial film industry in your country,” Suzy said. They were sitting with their shoulders touching,
sunk deep into comfortable velvet cushions.

“There isn’t,” Blaize laughed ruefully. “Oh, there were high hopes for one, but it was all put to rest by your Hollywood.
My father was wiped out.”

The gondola slowly made its way out from beneath the bridge, and rounded the bend, passing the ancient, German-built warehouse
that was now used as the post office.

“Anyway, it was rather a dreadful time after father found out the extent of his losses,” Blaize continued. “I was just a little
boy, but somehow I remember it all quite well. Perhaps it was because it was just around that time as well that my mother
died. My father inherited her estate, which for a period afforded us a small but tidy income. My father left the principal
untouched for as long as he could, but postwar prices were high, my father was accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and finances
were never His Lordship’s forte, in any event. We eventually lost the house in Belgravia, and were forced to retreat to Weltingham.”

“Where’s that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Blaize smiled at her. “That’s our holding in Yorkshire.”

“A castle?” Suzy asked eagerly, her head full of fanciful images of moats, and stables, and oh-so-proper servants in formal
attire serving high teas beneath candy-striped awnings erected on vast green lawns.

“Perhaps once I might have said Weltingham was a castle,” Blaize told her, sounding wistful. “But no more. It became rather
run-down, and there was no money for repairs. Anyway, my elder brother, the Earl of Weltingham, and I lived there with my
father, until we were sent off to school. My brother and I both went to Eaton. Don’t ask how my father managed to pay the
tuition. Actually, I don’t think he did. Some of his chums with money probably helped out. Eventually, my brother went to
Oxford, and I to Cambridge University, both of us on scholarships. My brother successfully read for the Bar. I studied engineering,
but after a couple of years I got impatient being cooped up in a classroom. I wanted some hands-on experience with airplanes,
so I left school and learned how to fly.”