How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (19 page)

“What are you two fine ladies doing over here all by your lonesomes?” he asked, surprising me with his American accent.

How painful—he wanted to make awkward small talk with us!

“Miss Bell will not let me generally mingle, Mr. Miller,” Annette sniffed. “And I would so like to mingle.”

“I've heard a lot about the indomitable Miss Bell.” The man smiled.

“You have?”

“Yes, Edgar has spoken of you, if not often—” he paused “—then energetically.”

“He has? What has he said?”

He suddenly appeared reticent. “Only that Annette is thriving under your care.” He paused again, as though trying to think. “Oh, and that you saved his life.”

“He told you
that?
”

“Well—” he smiled ruefully “—he did say that he could have burned to death because you used a toothbrush glass instead of something more substantial, but he was damn grateful.”

I looked sharply at Annette, concerned that she might be upset at first learning of the danger her father had been in and concerned she'd pick up bad words from this crass man that I'd later somehow get blamed for, but I saw that I might not have bothered. He, in all his boring lack of finery, was of no interest to her; her eyes were glued on all the peacocks and hens in the room.

“I'm Robert Miller,” he said, offering his hand.

“Mr. Miller,” I asked, “tell me, how do you know the ambassador?”

“Why, you could say he works for me,” he said.

“Really?” I was surprised. “I didn't think ambassadors worked for anybody, unless of course the president. You must be joking.”

“If you like,” he said indulgently. “But ambassadors do generally work for the people, so I guess you could say he works for me. Come to that, he works for you, too.”

Now,
there
was a thought I'd never had before. I liked that thought.

“Mr. Miller always knows who everybody is,” Annette suddenly interrupted. “Tell us who everybody is, please.”

But as he went through the list of people before us, it was of far more interest to Annette than it was to me. I found myself, curiously, only interested in learning the identity of one person there.

“Bebe Iversdottir,” he said of the Icelandic beauty who was now seated at the piano, her red skirts spread about her on the bench as she prepared to play for the ambassador.

Bestowing a possessive look upon him, she lowered her fingers to the keys, proceeding to whip off some impressive classical piece with the same ease with which I put on my socks. She smiled that possessive smile throughout and I felt a sharp pain inside when I saw him smiling back at her. Apparently, he did not mind being possessed.

“Who is she?” I finally asked.

“The daughter of a dignitary,” said Robert Miller. “They make quite a lovely couple, don't they?”

I wondered that Annette did not seem to mind seeing her father with this woman. And then I wondered at my own reaction. Surely I could never compete with a woman like that. Bebe Iversdottir was everything I wasn't. Cool. Self-assured. Poised. Beautiful.

It made my heart hurt to look at them.

Oh, well,
I told myself.
It's probably indigestion.

I saw that Annette was so enraptured by what she was looking at, she was no longer paying attention to what must seem to her our boring adult conversation.

As Bebe's fingers moved into a round of Broadway show tunes, perhaps in tribute to her American host, I turned to Robert.

“Should they really be doing this so…openly?” I asked.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“This public display of obvious affection,” I said.

“Are you jealous, Miss Bell?”

“No, of course not,” I lied to him, lied to myself.

Now that the moment was here, and I could ask someone about the ambassador's wife, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

“I guess I just think a man in his position should be more careful,” I finally said. “Plus, I don't think it would do him any harm to consider how this might be affecting Annette.”

Robert looked down at the charge at my side: she was clapping her hands in time to some song from Bob Fosse's
All that Jazz
and laughing with glee.

“Isn't Miss Iversdottir the most amazingly beautiful creature you've ever seen?” she asked.

“Don't look now,” Robert leaned down to whisper, “but I don't think Annette is traumatized by this.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe that's because small children don't always know what they're seeing when they look at something.”

“And you're sure you do?” he countered.

I shrugged. “I see an ambassador behaving indiscreetly with one of his guests,” I said.

“I see a man who often works far too hard having just a little bit of fun for once in his life,” he said.

“Then we'll have to just agree to disagree.”

“You look like you could use a bit of fun for a change too, Miss Bell,” he said. “How about a dance?”

“Oh, no,” I started to protest, already picturing the decidedly
un
fashionable statement we would make: he in his cheap fed suit, me in my Sunday Bloody Sunday dress.

He wouldn't be deterred, though.

“Come on—” he tugged a little harder “—Edgar won't mind.”

I was about to protest that, as well—what was it to me whether Edgar minded what I did or not?—but he already had one hand at the base of my spine, taking my hand in his other. And before I could think to say anything else, my feet remembered all sorts of moves they hadn't been encouraged to use in a long time.

“You can really dance, Miss Bell!” His surprise was evident.

“She really can,” I heard the familiar ironic voice say behind me.

I turned in Robert's arms to find Ambassador Rawlings standing there. Then he reached over and tapped Robert Miller on the shoulder.

“May I cut in?” he asked.

“Well…” The other man looked reluctant to give me up. “I suppose the etiquette of this sort of thing dictates that I say yes, doesn't it?”

“It does.”

“Well, I suppose I could always ask her again later.”

Robert started to hand me over.

“Hey,” I said, “don't I get any say in the matter?”

Ambassador Rawlings placed his hand at the small of my back, where Robert's hand had been a moment before, and looked down at me.

“No,” he said, “you don't.”

As we began to move, I tried to ignore how good it felt to have his hand there, how different the feelings were in me than when I'd danced with the other man. Shouldn't an employee, particularly a governess, feel awkward about dancing with her boss?

Suddenly, I felt so awkward, had talked myself into it really, that I stepped on his toe.

“Ouch!” he couldn't help saying.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It's all right,” he said. “Just try to leave the other intact so I can at least hop around.”

“Sorry,” I said again, wishing myself elsewhere.

“What happened?” he asked with surprising gentleness. “A minute ago, you were practically dancing like Julie Andrews.”

“I must have gotten distracted,” I said.

We danced for a moment in silence and I managed to get my rhythm back.

“There!” he said finally. “You're doing it again. Wherever did you learn to dance so well?”

I explained how when I was younger, my aunt insisted on lessons.

“She said I was such a klutz, I might learn some grace that way.”

“You certainly are graceful,” he observed.

“Only when I dance,” I said, ruefully looking down at the stain on my dress. “The rest of the time, I'm still me.”

The music stopped so abruptly that we were still moving for a moment afterward, until stopping abruptly ourselves. It was as though we, the ambassador and I, had been an old-fashioned record spinning on a turntable and someone had decided they didn't like the tune, picking up the needle and dragging it across the vinyl.

We were just disengaging when Bebe Iversdottir came up beside us.

She smiled sweetly at the ambassador, but there was a lot of ice there.

“I did not play so that you could dance with another woman,” she said, still smiling all the while as though she was just teasing, when it was clear to me at least that she wasn't.

“I'm sorry, my dear,” he said, taking the hand she held out. “I didn't mean to make you feel neglected.”

Odd, he was holding her hand but he was still looking at me.

“It's okay,” I said awkwardly, since no one had said anything that should have elicited that response from me. “I should be taking Annette upstairs soon anyway.”

“Yes,” agreed Bebe. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”

I was halfway back to Annette when I heard her say to him, “I'm sure Annette's governess is adequate, if a bit shoddy in appearance, but wouldn't your daughter be better off going to boarding school? Myself, I went to a fine place in Switzerland from an early age. If you'd like, I can recommend…”

I didn't stay to hear any more from her, to hear an answer from him.

“Come on, Annette,” I said. “It's time both of us went to bed.”

“But I was hoping to meet Miss Bebe personally! I am sure she would like me very much!”

“I'm sure that's true,” I said, not believing it for a second. What kind of cold woman would suggest sending a little girl to live somewhere that was several hours by plane away from her father? I knew what it was like to be separated, at such a young age, from my father, to feel alone in a world without parents. No matter what else might be right, the wrongness of that had skewed my entire childhood.

“But,” I told Annette, “it looks like your father and…Miss Bebe are dancing again, so perhaps it's best you meet her another time.”

As I looked back at the happy couple, I tried to tell myself it didn't bother me at all.

 

Upstairs, it seemed to take forever to get Annette settled in for the night. She kept coming up with excuses—she needed to brush her teeth a second time, she needed a glass of water, she needed to pee—to delay having me turn out the light. But I saw it for what it was: she wanted to relive what she saw as the grandeur and romance of the evening and I was the only person available with whom to do so.

“Have you ever seen such beautiful people?” she bubbled.

“They were an attractive crowd,” I admitted, pulling the blankets up over her.

“And Miss Bebe was the most attractive of all!” she said.

I tucked the blanket up under her chin, thought about what she'd said.

“I suppose that's true,” I said.

“I wonder what kind of mother she would make,” Annette asked dreamily.

A positively horrid one,
I wanted to say.
She'd make the Evil Stepmother look like Snow White.

Out loud, I said, “Who can ever guess what kind of mother a woman would make? Sometimes, people surprise you.”

“Papa really enjoyed dancing with you,” she said out of the blue.

I was caught off guard.

“Do you really think so?” I couldn't stop myself from asking.

“Oh, yes. You would have seen his face if you had not had your own turned down almost the whole time. He was smiling bigger than I'd ever seen him smile before.”

That made me feel unaccountably happy, a feeling I quickly shoved aside.

“Oh,” I said, “he was probably overcompensating, trying not to let the pain show of me stepping on his feet. I'm sure he was happier dancing with Miss Bebe.”

“It's hard to say,” she said, taking the matter quite seriously. “He did seem to smile a lot with her, too.”

“Well,” I said, kissing her on the forehead, “if you don't go to sleep soon, you'll be too tired to do any smiling yourself tomorrow.”

“Good night, Miss Bell,” she said, at last giving in to a yawn as she rolled over onto her side, tucked her little hands under the pillow. “Even if you are not as glamorous as Miss Bebe, I love you all the same.”

She was so sweet, so dear to me. I hated to think I might not one day be with her, hated to think of Ambassador Rawlings succumbing to Bebe's suggestion to send her away.

“I love you, too,” I said softly, turning out the light. “Sweet dreams.”

 

Safe at last in my own room, I removed my dress and tossed it in the trash basket; those wine stains would never come out. Then I prepared for bed, brushed my teeth, put on my white gown.