“And being married to him?” he asked in a choked voice. He wanted to know now.
“He's very serious,” she sighed, “everything he does is for the tour right now. I think he's doing it for me. I don't know, Nick… I thought I was doing the right thing. Maybe I made a mistake. I just don't know.”
“Cancel the trip,” he said urgently. “Divorce him.” He was panicking. He would do anything. He would marry her if that was what she wanted. But every fiber of his being told him she was in danger.
“I can't do that, Nick,” she said honorably. “It wouldn't be fair. He married me in good faith. I can't walk out on him. I owe him too much now. He's got so much riding on this tour, he's invested so much in it, not just the plane…” It didn't bear thinking about.
“You're not ready for it.”
But she was. And she knew it. “Yes, I am.”
“You don't love him.” He looked suddenly so young and so vulnerable. She wished she had waited for him, hut she hadn't.
“I'm not in love with him. I never was. He knew that. I told him about you, and he accepted it. But I do love him. He's been too good to me for me not to love him. I can't let him down now, Nick.”
“And afterward? Then what? You're stuck with him forever?”
“I don't know, Nick. There are no easy answers.”
“They're as easy as you want them to be,” he said stubbornly.
“That's what I said to you two years ago, Nick, before you left. And you didn't listen to me either.”
“Sometimes things seem more complicated than they are. We make them that way, but we don't have to,” he said wisely.
“I married him, Nick, for better or worse. Whether I loved you or not. I can't abandon him, just because you say so.”
“Maybe not,” Nick said tersely, “but he'll abandon you one day, emotionally if not otherwise, when this is over. It's all for publicity. You'll see, Cass. I know it.”
“Maybe. But until then, I owe him something. And I'm not going to break my word, or betray him. He is my husband. He deserves better than the two of us defiling him. I won't do it.”
He looked at her for a long time, and then seemed to sag as the force of her words hit him. “You're a good girl, Cass. He's a lucky man. I guess I've been a fool all along. I thought I was too old for you… and too poor… and too foolish. I was part right anyway.” And then he couldn't resist a cheap shot, “How does it feel to be married to one of the richest men in the world?”
“No different than being married to you would have been,” she came back at him quickly. “You're both spoiled boys who want everything your own way. Maybe all men are like that, rich or poor,” she said, meeting his gaze, and he laughed at her. She hadn't lost her spirit.
“Touché. I wish I could be happy for you, Cass, but I'm not.”
“Try. We don't have any other choice.” She had to live up to the choice she'd made. For all their sakes. She was an honorable woman. He nodded then, and eventually they walked back slowly, holding hands in the starlit night and talking. He realized more than ever what a fool he'd been, but he had made his decisions for her, and look what had happened. Her father had been right. He had set her free, and she had married someone else. But Desmond Williams… he hated everything he knew about him. And he was convinced to his bones that he was using Cassie. And she was much too young and innocent to know it. He was forty years old and he could read Desmond like the front page of the New
Cassie said good night to him on the front porch, and they didn't kiss again. And it was only after she had gone inside that Nick saw his old friend, quietly sitting in a chair and watching.
“Keeping an eye on me, Ace?” Nick asked with a tired grin, and sat down in a chair near him.
“I am. I told Cassie months ago I'll not have her defiling her marriage.”
“She's not going to. She's a good girl. And I'm a fool. You were right, Pat.”
“I was afraid I would be.” And then, in the partnership among men, he was honest with his old friend, the boy who had been his protégé in another war, a quarter of a century before. “The worst of it for her is that she still loves you. You can see it. Is she happy with him?”
“I don't think so. But she thinks she owes him everything.”
“She owes him a lot, Nick. There's no denying it.”
“And if she gets hurt?” Nick didn't want to say “killed” to her father. But it could happen, and they knew it. “What do we owe him then?”
“It's the risk we all take, Nick. You know it. She knows what she wants and she knows what she's doing. The only thing she's not sure about is you.”
“Neither am I. I still wouldn't have married her by now. I didn't want to leave her a widow.” He laughed emptily then. “I thought I was too old for her, but hell, he's almost as old as I am.”
