Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

I had a lonely meal and afterward sat on the stern rail smoking a cigarette. The night was warm enough so that I didn’t bother to put on any more than I had worn during the day. I had finished my cigarette but was still seated there bare-chested and barefooted when they returned about nine.

Arden Trader had donned a white linen suit to go to dinner. Peggy had put on a dress but hadn’t bothered with stockings. She wore thong sandals on her bare feet.

There were two inflated rubber mats with removable canvas back rests on the stern deck. Without the back rests you could lie full length on them for sunbathing. With the back rests in place, they made deck-level lounging chairs. Peggy sank onto the one right in front of me, leaned against the back rest, and kicked off her sandals.

“Let’s enjoy the moonlight for a while,” she said to her husband. “How about a cigarette?”

He knelt beside her with his back to me, placed a cigarette in her mouth, and lit it. After taking one draw, she took it from her mouth, put her arms about his neck, and drew him to her.

Ever since she had left the wheelhouse that afternoon, I had been stewing about what transpired there. I had finally decided that if she wasn’t going to leave her husband, we were not going to have just an affair.

I still wanted her as a wife more than I’ve ever wanted anything, and maybe if she had been married ten years, I might have settled for having her just as a mistress. But I wasn’t quite rat enough to cuckold a groom on his honeymoon.

Apparently, my soul-searching had been for nothing. I could think of no reason for her deliberate show of affection in front of me other than that she had decided to let me know in definite terms that the scene in the wheelhouse had been a mistake. I looked away, not wanting to see her kissed by Trader.

I felt something touch my left foot and glanced down. My pulse started to pound when I saw her right foot rubbing against my instep. Her carmine-tipped toes waggled in urgent demand for some response.

With her arms wrapped around her husband, the gesture seemed more likely to be an invitation for a clandestine affair than a signal that she wanted a more permanent relationship. Since I had already decided against settling for that, my conscience told me to withdraw my foot.

My desire for her was stronger than my conscience. I raised my foot and pressed its sole against hers. Her toes worked against mine and along the sole of my foot in a lascivious caress, all the time her arms tightening around her husband’s neck until finally it was he who broke the kiss.

As he started to rise, her foot drew away from mine, and I dropped mine back flat on the deck. Trader sank onto the other mat and lit a cigarette.

“I’m beginning to like this married life,” he said to me with a grin. “You ought to try it, Dan.”

“I may if I ever meet the right girl,” I said, getting to my feet. “Think I’ll turn in. It’s been a long day.”

“Good night, Dan,” Peggy said softly.

“Night,” I said without looking at her, and headed for the wheelhouse.

The following morning when I climbed down on deck, Arden Trader was screwing some kind of bracket to the timber immediately right of the hatchway which led below.

“Morning,” I said. “What’s that?”

“Morning, Dan,” he said affably. “I’m installing an outside shaving mirror I picked up in town last night. The head’s too small and too poorly lighted to get a decent shave.”

He lifted a round shaving mirror from a paper bag and slipped the two small vertical shafts at its back into holes in the top of the bracket. Then he moved the bottom of the mirror in and out to demonstrate that it could be adjusted to suit the height of anyone using it.

“Now all I need is a basin of hot water and my shaving equipment,” he said as he started below. “You can use it when I’m finished if you want.”

I did use it from then on.

I had no opportunity to be alone with Peggy during the two days we were in port because Trader was playing the attentive groom. By the second day, I couldn’t stand his constant little attentions to her and, since I wasn’t needed aboard because they were taking their meals in town, took the day off and spent it on the beach by myself.

On the third day, we pulled out for Nassau. As the trip would take six hours, we got under way at eight a.m. About ten, Peggy came into the pilothouse, again wearing a bikini.

“He’s taking a nap,” she said, and with no more preamble moved into my arms.

I spiked the wheel so as to have both arms free. Hers went about my neck, and her body pressed against mine as our lips met. We were both trembling when she finally struggled from my arms and stepped back. It was none too soon.

She backed clear to the pilothouse door. We were both so out of control, if her husband had walked in at that moment, neither of us could have concealed our naked emotion from him.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered.

My good resolutions lay in shreds. I didn’t care what we did so long as it meant being together in some way. If she wanted to shed Trader and marry me, I would be happiest. But now I was willing to settle for just an affair if she wanted that. If she had suggested solving our problem by holding hands and jumping over the rail, I would have at least considered it.

I jerked out the spike and gripped the wheel with both hands in an effort to control my trembling. “What do you want to do?”

“Do you love me?”

“Do you have to ask?” I demanded.

“I want to hear you say it.”

I took a deep breath. “I love you. I’m absolutely nuts about you.”

She closed her eyes. “I love you, too,” she said almost inaudibly. “I’ve never felt such overwhelming love. Do you want to many me? Answer me truly, Dan.”

“There’s nothing I want more,” I said in a husky voice.

Her eyes opened, and she seemed to get a little control of herself. In a more normal tone, she said, “I couldn’t just have an affair, Dan. Despite my behavior, I’m really a quite moral person. I’m not a prude. If I were single, and we were alone out here and planned to get married when we reached port, I wouldn’t insist we wait until the proper words were spoken. But there’s some Puritan strain deep within me that makes it impossible for me to violate my marriage vows.”

“We aren’t going to have an affair,” I told her. “I’ve already told you I want you for my wife.”

“But I have a husband.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble getting an annulment after this short a marriage. Why do you think it would cost you a half million?”

“Because I know Arden. I know him so well, I made him sign a premarital agreement waiving all claim to my estate except whatever I decided to leave him in my will. I didn’t think it wise to put him in a position where he could become rich if I died.”

I turned to stare at her. “If you thought him capable of murdering you, why in the devil did you marry him? What possessed you?”

“Oh. I really didn’t think he might try to kill me. But he’s a fortune hunter, and you don’t place temptation in the hands of men such as Arden. Because he is a fortune hunter, I know he’ll hold me up if I ask for an annulment. My guess that his price for cooperating will be a half million is based on sound experience. That’s exactly what it cost each of two women friends of mine to shed fortune-hunting husbands.”

“Wouldn’t your premarital agreement cover that?”

“That only applies in case of my death,” she said. “Actually, I could get out of paying him a red cent if I wanted a legal battle. No court would grant him any kind of settlement. But there’s a pattern of blackmail men such as Arden use. If I refuse to pay him off, Arden will fight me in court with every dirty tactic he knows. He’ll drag my reputation through the mud by filing countersuit for divorce and accusing me of infidelity with a dozen men. The tabloids will have a field day.”