Yellow Room (34 page)

“I still don’t know why she went out at all that night, Jerry.”

“I rather imagine,” he said quietly, “she had decided to do away with the things on the hill. Too much was happening; Lucy’s death the night before, for instance.”

“Why did he come back, Jerry? It seems so strange. To hide out, up there on the hill—”

“Well, look, my dear. He was trying to protect his father. He waited for the inquest, but if Lucy knew anything she didn’t tell it. Nevertheless he knew Marguerite too well to trust her. If she had told Lucy she was to see the colonel that night Lucy might break down, under pressure.

“So he saw Lucy that night at the hospital, and because she thought he meant to kill her, or perhaps because she thought he was a ghost, she—well, she died of fright. That’s all I know, and it doesn’t matter now. What does matter, my darling, is that it’s over. All over.”

She cried a little then, not for the colonel, at peace at last, not even—he realized gratefully—for Don, doing his man’s work in a man’s war. Some of it was relief, but there was grief, too; for the colonel, for Lucy, and for Joe now sitting alone in his empty house. For Mrs. Ward. And even, he thought wryly, for Marguerite herself, because she, too, had been young and had wanted to live. He let her alone, beyond giving her what he termed a perfectly good shoulder to weep on.

“More beautiful women than you have sobbed on it,” he said. “But to hell with them. You’re my girl now. Or are you?”

She smiled after a minute or two her old smile, which had so endeared her to him from the beginning.

“I’ll be good to you, darling,” he said gravely. “I’ve got a job to do, but I’ll be coming back. I’d like to know I was coming back to you. Men have lived because of that, you know,” he added. “Because they had someone to come back to.”

“Why do I have to wait?” she asked. “I’m tired of being the spinster in the family. Or are you really asking me to marry you at last?”

He drew her into his arms, the muscular arms which had been trained to kill in many wartime ways, but which could also be gentle and protective.

“I’m asking you to marry me,” he said. “Here and now. Before I go. Will you?”

“Tim gives you excellent references.”

“Never mind Tim. Or Alex either. I’m not marrying them. Will you, darling?”

“Of course,” she said. “I thought you’d never really say it.”

There was nothing saturnine about his smile as he held her ever closer. He had forgotten his job. He had even forgotten his leg, which was fine. He put his full weight on it, and without warning it gave a jump and began to ache furiously. He released her with a grunt

“Hell!” he said. “We may even have a little time for a honeymoon, sweetheart.” And sat down abruptly on the nearest chair.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1945 by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Copyright © 1973 by Frederick R. Rinehart and Alan G. Rinehart.

Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

978-1-4804-3659-6

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