was relieved to hear Darcy’s voice. Darcy certainly had her eccentricities, but she was a rock of stability compared to Emerald.
“Darling,” Olivia said with admirable calm, “I’ve been expecting to hear from you.”
“You have?” Darcy’s tone was cautious.
“Yes,” said Olivia. She looked out the window and watched the gray sea froth against the dark shore. “Did Emerald ask you to call?”
“Well, yes, actually, she did.” Darcy paused. “Do you know what this is about?”
Olivia drew in a calming breath. “I accidentally sent her a copy of a letter meant for someone else. The blasted keyboard has too many keys. I keep hitting things I don’t mean to hit. I suppose she went and read it.”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “She did.”
“And I suppose she came running with it to you.”
“Yes. She did.”
“And I suppose you read it.”
“Yes. I did.”
Olivia believed the best defense was a good offense. “In my day,” she said loftily, “we wouldn’t dream of reading another person’s letters. It would be considered the vilest form of snooping. The mail was sacred. Privacy was respected.”
“E-mail isn’t real mail, Mother. No law protects it. It’s about as private as a billboard. You shouldn’t say anything in it you wouldn’t want the world to know. I could take that letter and copy it a hundred times and tape it to every telephone pole in town.”
Olivia frowned. “That’s shocking violation of rights,” she said. “I will write my congressman.”
“You do that,” Darcy said. “It won’t change a thing. In the meantime, Emerald’s concerned over your involvement with this—this BanditKing person. I’m a bit concerned myself.”
“Do I intrude on your love life?” Olivia challenged. “No, I do not. Not since you were fourteen and came home with that dreadful hoodlum with the green hair and the nose ring.”
“He grew up to be an accountant,” Darcy said. “He belongs to the Conservative Voters League and the Rotary Club.”
“Obviously not your type, either way,” said Olivia. “Not that I’m a meddler. And I’ll thank you not to meddle, either.”
Ha—take that, Olivia thought. Darcy loved her freedom too much to be comfortable interfering with someone else’s.
“I don’t want to meddle,” Darcy said, and to her credit, she sounded as if she meant it. “But Emerald’s worried. She says you have to be extremely careful about getting involved with someone on the Internet. She knows her way around it better than you and me put together.”
“Emerald sat in her room talking to boys who pretended they were wizards and Vikings. She only knows about the fantastic, not the real.”
“Isn’t this romance moving awfully fast?”
“Fiddle-dee-dee,” Olivia said with blitheness she did not really feel. “I am an adult and, if I do say so myself, a woman of some sophistication and experience. I can handle my own business, thank you very much.”
Olivia bit her lower lip and waited for Darcy’s reply. In truth, she was herself amazed by how quickly she had fallen in love with John English. She felt she knew him better and more deeply than she had ever known another human being. And, miraculously, he felt the same about her.
Olivia had spent her adult life hiding her emotions behind an aloofly flippant attitude. But somehow John English saw through the facade to the vulnerability she had never let another person glimpse.
“Mother,” Darcy said carefully, “this is so unlike you.”
“No, it’s just unlike my marriages. No man’s ever treated me this way before,” Olivia said, and it was the truth. “He’s kind and affectionate and understanding. I can talk to him about anything, and he’s always interested. I truly did not know the male of the species could be so sensitive and caring. It’s a new experience.”
“But you haven’t really—” Darcy sounded uncomfortable “—you don’t really know each other that well.”
Olivia smiled and thought, You’ve got no idea, darling.
The letters between Olivia and John had opened into intimacy with amazing swiftness. It was as if, cut loose from earthly bonds, the letters let them explore each other’s mind and soul in supernatural detail. Such mingling of thoughts and emotion quickly led them to question if sex could have the same, almost perfect, intensity. It did.
“Mother,” Darcy said in the same uneasy tone, “this isn’t easy to ask. But this man—”
“John,” corrected Olivia. “He’s not ‘this man.’ John English. Of Key West, Florida.”
“Fine. Whatever. John English,” said Darcy. “Do you have any idea how his family feels about this?”
This question came as an unpleasant surprise to Olivia. She realized that although her closeness to John seemed absolute, he had been hesitant about discussing the exact nature of his recent trouble with his family.
“His kin have been good enough to spare me their opinions,” Olivia said.
“Unfortunately, they haven’t spared me,” Darcy said. “John English’s son came here to talk.”
Olivia was stunned, horrified. “He came there?”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “To the guest house. Emerald was here—she’d just gotten your letter. Then he showed up. Sloan English.”
Olivia felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. Well. Sloan. We’ve never met. But—I’m surprised. He just got back to the States. I thought he’d been sick.”
“He is sick,” said Darcy. “He passed out in the foyer. An ambulance had to come and take him away. He’s in the hospital.”
“The hospital! My God,” said Olivia. “Is he going to be all right?”
“I have no idea,” answered Darcy. “But you’d better tell your Mr. English. We had quite a scene here.”
“A scene?” Olivia asked, feeling suddenly queasy.
“Rose Alice wanted to hit him with a golf club. She couldn’t find the bullets for the guns.”
Olivia put her hand to her forehead.
“And Emerald was in full knight rig, ready to run him through—but nobody stabbed him, nobody shot him.”
“Dear heaven. He’ll think we’re all insane.”
“Mother, he wasn’t quite in his right mind himself. He had a fever of a hundred and four. He wasn’t in any condition to be checking out his father’s love life.”
“Oh, damn, oh, dear,” Olivia said, flummoxed. “It doesn’t sound like what I’ve heard about him at all—just the opposite. Well, he shouldn’t have done it. It’s an invasion of your privacy, and it’s a threat to his health. He’s been a very sick man. I’ll have to tell John. What a shock. Which hospital?”
Darcy told her. “What exactly is wrong with this man, Mother? He said he had a fever he caught abroad, but—”
“Malay fever,” Olivia said. “There’s no cure for it but rest. He was supposed to be convalescing. Oh, John will be so upset. Do make sure Sloan’s as comfortable as possible. Please. He’s our guest—in a way.”
“Me? Make him comfortable?” Darcy was obviously appalled. “He’s not our guest. He wasn’t invited. He just—just descended on us. Now I know he wasn’t himself,