Programmed for Peril

the good sleep that follows an outdoor day. Trish came back to find Foster filling crystal goblets with golden liquid. He raised his high. “I drink to my love for you, Trish!” She was speechless, her eyes suddenly brimming. In toast, crystal rims rang in the round room. He reassured her again that recent awkward events had in no way diminished his feelings for her. In fact they had deepened. He held her shoulders lightly and looked into her eyes. “For that reason I think we should get married tomorrow. Here, where... no one can bother us. Look!” From his pocket he drew a ring box. He popped it open and removed two ornate wedding rings. “Hand-worked by the best Portuguese goldsmiths.” He put them on her palm. The candlelight glinted from the twists of filigree. Dazzled, she gasped.
    She was stunned. Doubly so, really. First because he was suggesting a hasty, private wedding. Second, because... she hesitated. She heard herself say, “Oh, I... can’t. Not this way.”
    The lenses of glasses magnified his widening eyes. “I... don’t understand. Why not? Now’s the time!” Past his surprise lay some other emotions that she couldn’t then grasp.
    She put the rings on the table and got up. She walked out onto the darkened stone balcony. Stars blazed above. He followed her, asking increasingly excited questions about her reaction. She tried to gather her thoughts, found them elusive as a journey to one of the distant starry specks. She knew she didn’t want to give in to Carson. Not one inch. She wanted to be married on the day she chose, in a style suitable to the Palmer family. At the next instant she wondered if those were her thoughts or her mother’s, she for whom the old ways would always be best.
    Past that came more, difficult to put into exact focus. In a way Carson’s madness was challenging her relationship with Foster. The gauntlet of the days until September fifteenth had yet to be run. When it was, however matters fell out, her love would have been put to a hard test. One she wanted to believe it would survive. Yet as Foster went on pleading, begging even, to have the wedding there the next day, she wondered if what had hovered for a moment in his eyes had been nothing more complicated than...
    Simple fear.
    From her own standpoint, what did her hesitancy mean? Foster said he loved her and wanted to prove it with a quick wedding. She hadn’t yet been wholly convinced that his feelings for Lois Smith-Patton belonged entirely to the past. Here, too, more testing, more challenging ought to be done. Or was Trish simply being stupid, playing fairy-tale princess who wanted her suitor to perform impossible tasks before consenting to give her hand? Behind that stance possibly stood something—or someone—else. She needed the time to find out just where a certain man stood in her life. A plain-spoken man with an alligator writhing on his arm.
    Dino Castelli.
    She never fully figured out, in the end, why she refused Foster’s suggestion.
    Only Melody enjoyed the return trip. She ran around the nearly empty first-class section and charmed the hostesses and stewards. They found Portuguese sweets and pastries and set a little table just for her. Trish and Foster ate and drank sparingly. In conversation they danced around the wedding that never was. The gold bands lay still potent in Foster’s vest pocket, as laden now with meanings and powers as rings of the Nibelungen.
    Once home she rushed to her mother and told her what had happened in the Algarve, or rather what had not happened. To her astonishment this woman who seldom saw her in the right said, “You did the proper thing, Patricia.”
    “1 did?” She wasn’t so sure.
    She nodded vigorously. Her freshly permed hair scarcely stirred. “Don’t you agree, Stoneman?”
    Stoneman Gore waved a wrist archly. “I very much agree.”
    “Indeed. We’ve been talking over your situation. And what we’re certain of is that you’re overreacting to these pranks,” her mother said.
    “Pranks?” She was still calling disasters pranks! Trish thought of dynamite going off in the law firm library. Marylou knew about that, but not about Trish, Carson, and Melody—together forever!
    “You’ve talked to the police. They’ll handle this annoying fellow, whoever he is,” Marylou drawled. “In the meantime, it’s your job to go ahead with a wedding that’ll be worthy of the Palmer family. I’m working like a mule toward that end, I assure