Dance with the Devil

intruder had not gotten his key by accident or theft. When she considered the scene in the recreation room the night before, she was certain one of Alex's friends was involved.
        The remainder of the morning, the lunch hour and the early part of the afternoon, she spent with Lydia, answering some correspondence for her and for Alex, who dealt with the family's financial management, buying and selling stocks and securities with a finesse and canniness that indicated he was a most clever investor. Too, they discussed a number of books and writers, all of which they agreed upon, though offering each other new insights and points of view. Normally, Katherine would have enjoyed the discussion. But these were not normal times.
        At 2:30, Lydia dismissed her for the afternoon. By three, she had changed into her ski clothes and made the trek out to the slope, through the curtain of cold, dry snow. She knew that she needed to get away from the house for a while, meet some people from the town and get a bit of fresh mountain air. Then she'd be her old self again, jolted out of her mood by the change of scenery. At least, that's what she hoped.
        She descended the brisk, winding trail at top speed, the wind hard, the snow like a spray of ice in her face, frosting her lashes and brows. At the bottom, she carefully stacked the skis in the racks, stabbed the poles into a snow mound by the pylon, and went for a walk into town.
        At the cafe on the square, where she intended to have a cup of coffee and talk again with Bertha, she found Michael Harrison and a group of his friends dawdling over what they called a “late lunch” but which was obviously a good, long, mid-afternoon gab-fest. Eight of them sat at the long table, three girls and five men, laughing as they worked at pastries and steaming mugs of coffee.
        “You've got to join us,” Michael said, fetching an extra chair to the already crowded table by the window and jamming it in next to his own, patting it as an invitation.
        “I don't want to interrupt anything,” Katherine said, though she did sit down beside him.
        “You won't be interrupting at all!” he assured her. He motioned to his friends. “These loose-lipped wonders wouldn't stop chattering for the end of the world.”
        “Especially not then,” a tall, blond boy said. His name, she learned later, was Kerry Markwood. “If it was the end of the world, we'd have to talk twice as fast to be sure that we got everything in!”
        As simply as that, she was included in the group and made to feel perfectly at home. Indeed, in one minute, these people did more by their attitudes to make her comfortable than Alex's friends had done in several hours. Introductions were hurriedly made as Michael described each friend in turn with some good-humored insult that brought laughter from all present. Katherine learned their names slowly, however, as the afternoon wore on and the conversation got better and better. There was no unrelieved pessimism here-indeed, hardly a single note of glum-ness. As an antidote to Alex's crowd, these people could hardly be equaled.
        Too, she was unaccountably pleased to see that, though there were girls present, they seemed to be with other men, not with Michael. He was as solicitous of her as he might have been of a wife, anxious that she have coffee when she wanted it and that there was always a plate of pastries near her. More than the others even, he was careful to include her in all conversations, and in time he put his arm over the back of her chair, giving the illusion of protection.
        The restaurant clock read 6:15 when someone suggested they break it up for the day. Surprised that darkness had crept in without her noticing, Katherine realized that she would be hard-pressed to reach the top of the mountain again and have sufficient time to clean up and make it to dinner with the Bolands.
        “Let me take you up in the Rover.”
        “I don't think Alex would like it.”
        “You mean you care what he thinks that much?” he asked, his voice suddenly brittle.
        “Only as concerns my job,” she said.
        “He can't object to me driving you home.”
        She said, “Oh, Michael, you don't know how he can go on about you when the subject comes up. And I have to sit there and listen to it.”
        He softened perceptibly. “I'm sorry,” he said.
        They were standing outside the