How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (13 page)

“Annette,” she said, “would not like that one bit.”

She bounced out of her chair, came up to us. I saw now that she had on a pretty, overly girlish frock, just as she had the first time I met her in New York. I assumed her father liked to see her this way.

“You and Papa must become friends,” she said to me. “It would not be fair to make me choose between you.”

“Oh ho!” her father said, turning a look to me that was half amusement, half accusation. “You've only been here a short time, yet already your importance has grown so much that my daughter thinks any choice between us would be equal?”

Hearing the two of them, father and daughter, speaking in the same room for the first time, I was finally able to see where Annette got her peculiar formality from. Edgar Rawlings was nothing if not formal. I would have thought it a by-product of being an ambassador, whether the job caused the formality in the man or the man had been chosen for the job because he was so formal, but I had already known one ambassador, hadn't I? And Buster Keating had never been like this.

“I'm sure she didn't mean that at all.” I blushed. “Children have a tendency to overstate even the simplest of cases.”

“Oh no, Miss Bell,” he said, sitting down again. “Once a thing has been said, it cannot then be unsaid. My daughter has declared by implication that her feelings for us are equal. We must now deal with the world such as it has been presented to us.”

“If you insist,” I said, no longer knowing what to say to this strange man.

“Please sit,” he said abruptly. “It makes me nervous having you tower over me so.”

I hated to give up the advantage, but saw no polite way in which I could refuse.

“If you insist,” I said again, tucking my skirt carefully under me as I took a seat beside Annette on the sofa.

“Do you find me attractive?” he asked suddenly.

I wondered if he had somehow read my mind earlier.

“Why do you ask?” I countered. “Is that a requirement for employment here?”

“No requirement.” He shook his head. “I was merely curious. You seem so…unsettled by me.”

“I don't even know you,” I said. “I cannot answer such a question without knowing you.”

“Not even objectively?” he said.

“I don't know how to be objective,” I said. “It is a trick I have never learned.”

“Papa has brought me a present!” Annette cried, no longer able to contain her excitement in the face of all this boring adult talk.

“Papa always brings Annette a present when he comes back after having gone away,” Ambassador Rawlings said. “And,” he added, looking at her pointedly, “if Annette behaves herself and lets Papa continue his conversation with the new governess, perhaps Annette will get her present from Papa tonight.”

“That hardly seems fair,” pouted Annette, crossing her arms. “Why should I have to wait?”

“Because waiting for good things builds character,” said her father. “Now then,” he continued, turning to me, “Annette has been filling my head this last hour with how accomplished you are at a wide variety of things.”

It seemed to me that Annette and I had barely talked since I'd been there. What could she have been talking of then?

“I am guessing that,” he went on without waiting for an answer, “like the last governess, you play the piano well?”

“The piano?” I almost choked on the words.

He put a hand to his ear, obnoxious man. “Is there an echo in here?”

He indicated the piano in the corner with an abrupt gesture.

“Play,” he commanded.

“Play?”

“Yes, Little Sir Echo, play something for us, for our amusement.”

That's Little
Ms.
Echo to you, I thought, rising to my feet and striding to the instrument. If they wanted amusement, I could surely provide them with that.

Sitting down, I tilted my head to one side with eyes staring into space affectedly, as though I were waiting for Beethovenish inspiration to come.

Then I tickled the ivories.

Duh, duh, duh. Duhduhduhduhduhduh. Duh, duh, duh. Duhduh—

“Stop!” he cried.

I looked up. “You do not like my song?” I asked.

“Chopsticks?”

“You are familiar with the tune, then?” I said.

“Yes, I…” he sputtered. “Surely you can play something other than
that
…can't you?”

I gave the matter a moment's serious thought, head tilted again.

“I can play the first twenty-five notes of ‘Stairway to Heaven.'” I thought some more, counting on my fingers this time. “And I can also play the first sixteen notes of
Für Elise.
I can even repeat them so it sounds like a bit of a song. But when it gets to the part where it changes? That part I don't know how to do at all.” I thought one last time. “I'm pretty sure that's it,” I said.

He looked at Annette as if someone had to be to blame for this turn of events.

“Don't blame her,” I said. “I don't believe for a second that she misinformed you about my musical talents, of which I have, as I've amply displayed, none. I'm sure that she must have merely said I have some sort of talents and you, basing your extrapolation on your experience of previous governesses, leapfrogged to this insane idea that I could play on demand.”

I rose from my seat, prepared to take my leave.

“Since it is now obvious that I cannot entertain you in the way in which you desire…”

“Sitsit
sit
.” He was impatient as he pointed to the couch. “There is no need to be so prickly with me all the time, Miss Bell…
Sit!
”

Now,
there
was an invitation that would be hard for a girl to resist.

Despite my instinct to bolt and run, I obeyed the instruction.

“Your lack of piano…
finesse
is not really important. The last governess played well enough, but she had the tendency to play the same song. She played it over and over again. I really thought, after a point, that I might go mad with it.”

“And what song was that?” I couldn't help but ask.

He rolled his eyes, smiled ruefully.

“Für Elise,”
he said.

I stifled a smile.

He settled back in his own chair, a lion temporarily appeased.

“Well,” he said, “if you can't play the piano, and you most clearly cannot, then what can be these sparkling talents of yours that dear Annette is so keen on?”

“Miss Charlotte is a great writer!” piped up Annette, no longer able to remain out of the conversation.

“A great writer?” He looked at me with mocking interest. “Annette did say something earlier about you being a writer, she was insistent that you should have writerly…
things
in your room, but I assumed she must be talking about something that was no more than a hobby of yours.”

“Some would indeed call it just that,” I conceded.

“Oh no, Papa!” Annette was truly distraught at this. “Miss Charlotte is going to be a bestselling novelist!”

“A best…?” There was that mocking look again. “Why then have I never heard of you before?”

“Perhaps you don't like novels,” I said.

“Oh, I like novels very much,” he said. “Tell me—which bestselling novels did you write?”

“Didn't you hear the part where Annette said ‘going to write'?” I said. “I haven't written any yet.”

“Ah.” He gave a smile, more like a smirk or a sneer, that I did not like at all. “You are one of
those
kinds of writers.”

“Which kind is that?” I demanded, trying my best to impersonate a woman who could
do
haughty.

“The kind that want to be writers without having written, of course,” he said.

How dare he?

“You asswipe,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that, Miss Bell?” He placed his hand behind his ear as though straining to hear me better. “You speak so softly at times.”

“I said—” I smiled sweetly through gritted teeth “—You. Are. Wise.”

I turned to Annette.

“Somehow,” I said, “I don't think your father is impressed.”

“Not impressed?” She looked surprised, wounded. Suddenly, she brightened. “Then how about this.” She turned to her father, challenging him. “Miss Bell is a star!”

“A
star?
” He was incredulous.

So was I. What was Annette talking about?

“Oh, yes,” Annette bubbled. “Mrs. Fairly told me all about it.”

Oh, no,
I groaned inwardly.

“What exactly did Mrs. Fairly tell you?” he asked.

“She said that, when Miss Charlotte was a little girl, even younger than me, she starred in commercials!”

He turned to me.
“Commercials?”

I barely nodded.

Please,
I prayed,
don't let Annette say any more.

“What commercials did you make?” he prodded.

“I was the Gubber Snack Foods Kid,” I muttered so quietly I could barely hear myself.

“What?” he asked.

“She was the Gubber Snack Foods Kid!” Annette shouted.

“The Gub…?
What?
”

“Gubber Snack Foods,” I said tersely. “They make organic snacks. For kids.”

“How…
progressive.
” He smirked. Then: “My, you
are
a star.”

“She is!” said Annette. “She really is! Miss Bell, tell Papa your famous line.”

I felt like a particularly silly bug under his microscope. “Please do,” he said.

I studied the floor. “‘It's…'” I couldn't get the words out. “‘It's…it's…
Gubber
licious,'” I finally said dumbly, leaving off the exclamation point from all those commercials.

“‘It's…
Gubber
licious'?” he asked.

I nodded.

He settled back in his chair, smirked again.

“Yes,” he said, “a real star. We are lucky to have you, I see.”

Perhaps he grew tired of taunting me about one thing, for he moved on to something else.

“Do you know anything at all about the country in which you find yourself, Miss Bell?” he asked.

I shrugged. “It is an island,” I said. I shrugged again. “The people here are almost invariably tall. And blonde. They do not seem to be much like me.”

“It also has the highest percentage of books per capita than any other country in the world.”

“I didn't know that,” I conceded.

“Perhaps one day they will have
your
books here.”

Don't hold your breath,
I wanted to say. But this time, at least, I was wise enough to hold my tongue. Why give him anything at all, since every time I spoke, it only seemed to provide him with more ammunition with which to embarrass me.

Perhaps he took pity on me, or had grown bored with the game, for he turned to the little person beside me.

“Annette,” he commanded, “if you look in the hall closet, behind my briefcase, you will find a prettily wrapped present that is solely for your enjoyment. Go get it and bring it back here so that Miss Bell and I might have the pleasure of watching you open it.”

He was such a different person with her—still stiff and formal, but with an underlying and unmistakable feeling of love—that it would have been easy, in that moment of watching the two framed together, to forget what a jerk he could be.

But, of course…

While she was gone, we engaged in a staring contest, one I refused to lose. And for the first time, it occurred to me that I was
enjoying
myself. I had led such a solitary existence that, previously, I had rarely had the chance to wrangle with a man's mind. Buster, by virtue of his job, had been a smart man, and his connections should have made him an interesting man, but whatever smarts he had possessed, he had never bothered to use them with me.

But this sparring was something new in my existence. I found that I liked it. I was good at it!

If I had wanted a change from tranquillity, I had certainly found it in the person of Ambassador Edgar Rawlings. And, if I had been Buster Keating's subordinate, I vowed that I would never be this man's and I resolved never to utter the odious phrase “I guess” again.