Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,19

husbands. And if we choose well in that category, then we shall see all manner of wonders. That is the hand we ladies are dealt. I for one am quite good at playing this particular game and making a laugh of it.”

But Sal frowned at her perfect logic. “I guess I’ve just never taken up the hand that was played me.”

“I wonder.”

He held her gaze. “Nobody tells me what to do. I go anywhere I like, and my life is what I make it.”

“You seem to think balls and things are very silly, and yet you serve a master who attends them all the time. Your life is what he makes it, no? Look me in the eyes and tell me you go where you like, and that your life is exactly as your soul would make it.”

But he couldn’t quite look her in the eye. She spent a few moments studying him, and concluded that he might be sort of all-right-looking, from the right angle and in the right light. He had dark eyes and lashes, and a nose that curved nicely, and a full mouth, but it was all so funnily put together, as though his face had been left out in the sun, and melted slightly, and would remain forever with its features not precisely aligned.

“I don’t usually underestimate people,” he said after a while.

“From you that must be a high compliment!”

“Do you care about this dinner?”

Vida glanced at the others sitting at their table. “You mean the rolls and the squabs and the potatoes dauphinois? Not even a little.”

“If you are really so keen to see the map room, I could show it to you.”

He had already stood up from the table, taken a step back from the opulent dinner that was just then being ferried through the room by a hundred uniformed waiters and deposited plate by plate before the first-class diners. Vida hesitated a moment—for what would the room make of her leaving early? Would her parents hear that she had not stayed put, that she was not acting like a marriageable young girl? Would she end up in worse trouble? But Sal had made clear that Fitzhugh would not be coming. She hated the idea of everyone seeing her waiting around for him. She had another look at her dining companions—the men with nothing to talk about but boating and racing and sports, the women absolutely stuffing their faces with Waldorf salad out of boredom—and decided to do what most excited her curiosity.

“All right,” she said, and led the way to the closest exit, to make sure that as few of the other first-class passengers as possible saw her leave with the nobody. But once they were through the door, and she saw the glitter in his dark eyes and a hint of that amused smile, she thought she had better clarify for him, too: “Only because I have nothing better to do at present.”

Six

“This does not seem the most direct route.” Some girls, saying a thing like that, would affect a treacly coyness. Not so Vida. She’d had a look at the layout of the many decks of the Princess and she knew where she was going, and that they were taking a very meandering path to the map room. She followed the nobody who called himself Sal down a flight of stairs, and—eager for Sal to know that if he were playing a trick on her, she would see to it that he lost his job—spoke directly. “Did you hear me? I prefer a direct route.”

He glanced over his shoulder but didn’t quite look at her as he reached the bottom stair, pushed open a door, and led them onto the polished blond deck of the open-air promenade. “You like telling other people what to do, don’t you?”

“Well, who doesn’t?” A gust of night caused her to shiver. Strangely, though the air seemed very still, it had energy. Not like sea spray close to land—which always had a whiff of rot—but instead a kind of dense, clean-smelling weight. Beyond the railings, she could see almost nothing. That heavy air crept in like a spirit. “I like things done right. And sometimes,” she went on, “that means telling other people what to do.”

“You said you wanted adventure,” he replied simply.

She almost smiled at that. “Did I? Maybe. But I don’t remember asking you to take me on one.”

“Yes, I know. You only wanted to see the map room. But you were very