Devil May Care Read Free

portfolio. However, his rising spirits were dashed when Ellie turned off the highway onto an unpaved side road that deteriorated rapidly into a rutted, boggy trail lined with brambles and poison ivy. His head hit the roof of the car. He complained.
    "Aunt Kate likes privacy," Ellen replied, slowing down a little.
    Henry was plunged into gloom. Privacy, for the wealthy, was attained, in his experience, by walls, guards, dogs, and heavy gates. Neglected driveways meant poverty. This driveway went on for over a mile, and by the time they reached the end of it he was prepared for the worst--a tumbledown sharecropper's shack inhabited by a crazy old crone without teeth or shoes. They came out of the woods and Henry's eyes literally bulged.
    A wide green lawn, smooth as clipped velvet, three or four acres in extent, was dotted with handsome old trees, including two giant, symmetrical magnolias flanking the entrance gates. Henry caught a glimpse of a formal continental garden, with clipped boxwood hedges, behind the house, before Ellie swung the car around the graveled circle and stopped.
    The house was originally eighteenth century, but its red brick central core had spread out into innumerable wings. Half a million dollars, Henry thought, taking in the magnificently manicured lawns and the limitless expanse of slate roofs, chimney-crowned.
    Six hundred and fifty thousand ... A broad, roofed veranda enclosed part of the west wing. It looked like a comfortable place to sit on a warm afternoon, with its wrought-iron furniture, DEVIL-MAY-CARE 11
    softened by bright cushions; but at the moment it was not as impeccably neat as the other parts of the house and grounds. The furniture had been shoved into a huddle at one end. Henry revised his opinion of his hostess to fit the total image he had received thus far: old and a bit doddering, perhaps, but a delightful old lady ... By this time he would have considered Kate delightful if she had had tentacles and practiced cannibalism.
    A door led onto the veranda from the house. It was closed; but as Ellie got out of the car and started toward the steps it burst open and a figure emerged, waving its arms and moving its feet with insane agility.
    Its movement was so rapid that Henry could not see it clearly, but it seemed to be a child; the diminutive stature, the blowing locks of silver-gold, and the costume--jeans and flapping shirt--suggested late adolescence.
    The creature was dancing. A blast of sound issuing from the open door assured Henry of the correctness of this deduction. As he watched, openmouthed, the dancer's steps took her away from the door, along the length of the veranda; and then a second figure appeared, also dancing. This was presumably a male person, although it wore a short pleated skirt that barely reached its knees, and a sport shirt of violent purple. Silvery hair, lifted by the vigor of his movements, formed a halo around his flushed face.
    The music ended, with a blare like the moan of a dying cow. The male figure collapsed onto one of the porch chairs and sat panting, its neatly shod feet extended.
    The female figure turned and descended the steps.
    It was not a child. The hair was more silver than gold, the narrow pointed face was not free of wrinkles --or of freckles. The features were undistinguished, except for a pair of remarkable eyes, somewhat shadowed and sunken, but of a shade of azure so deep as to be almost cobalt--the true, rare
    12 Elizabeth Peters sapphire-blue. Glowing like gems, they matched the woman's sapphire earrings, stones the size of lima beans, framed in small diamonds. The earrings did not match the rest of the costume--jeans, dirty white sneakers, and a man's blue work shirt.
    This, no doubt about it, was Aunt Kate, Henry got out of the car, mashing his knee on the door handle in his haste. Without breaking stride Kate advanced upon him, her eyes fixed unwinkingly on his face. Henry was suddenly reminded-- although there was no physical