Silk and Stone Read Free Page B

be treated like a fool!”
    Cold sweat trickled down Frannie’s back. She jerked at the door, opened it, and looked back at her sister miserably. “I’m not going to lose Carl. And I’m not going to be like the rest of this family—patronizing and narrow-minded. You’re just taking the easy way out,” Frannie whispered. “You know it, and you hate it, and it’ll make you sorry.”
    Alexandra rubbed her arm across her swollen eyes, a bitter, girlish gesture that made her look vulnerable for just an instant. But when she lowered her arm, her gaze was hard, set. “Just keep my secrets for me, Frannie. I’ll worry about the rest.”
    Frannie nodded. “You’re my sister.”
    She left Alexandra alone with that small vow, and fled.

    Frannie huddled miserably in the azalea garden beyond the backyard lights at Highview. The house blazed with lights and music as Dukes danced withVanderveers and all were impeccably polite to one another. Alexandra and Judge Vanderveer had left hours ago in the judge’s shiny Edsel, showered in rice and confetti. Frannie’s last image of her sister was burned deeply in her mind: smiling, as sleek as a model in her beautiful white suit, looking like a blond Jackie Kennedy, with the ruby dangling prominently down the front of her jacket.
    Frannie had been reduced to hiding from their parents and thinking about Carl Ryder. They’d met last year at a dance hosted by the Raleigh Young Ladies’ Progressive Club. The club performed its civic duties by busing fresh-faced second lieutenants up from Fort Bragg.
    Carl was no second lieutenant; he was a sergeant who’d been assigned to drive the bus. The club matrons let him into the dance but were in high lather over the situation: He was not elite pickings for progressive young ladies.
    He was, in fact, the orphaned son of mill workers, and he’d been on his own since he was sixteen, had joined the army at eighteen—four years ago—and loved it dearly. His one ambition in life was to be a soldier. But when he saw Frannie across the dance floor, and she saw him from her corner behind the punch table, where she was trying furtively to read Jack Kerouac without anyone noticing, it was love at first sight. She could almost hear “Some Enchanted Evening.”
    He’d walked up to her, spit-and-polished, very formal and polite, and then he’d bowed and said, “You’re a sight for sore eyes, miss.”
    It was love at first sight on both sides, and they found ways to meet in secret, until her parents discovered them and put a stop to the romance. Dukes didn’t carry on with mill workers, they’d said, as if Carl were destined to be a mill hand simply because of his bloodlines.
    She’d vowed not to forget him when he was transferred to Fort Benning, down in Georgia. His letters came every week, squirreled away for her by her parents’ sympathetic housekeeper, and Frannie feasted longingly on his earnest, simple, carefully spelled words for months.
    She doubted she’d ever see him again. Knowing now what her parents had done to get him out of her life, she hated them.
    “Frannie.” Her name came out of the darkness beyond a row of juniper shrubs. Her name, spoken in Carl’s deep drawl. She ran to him, astonished, frightened, and ecstatic. They held each other and kissed with frantic welcome. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. He was dressed in trousers and a plaid shirt. “Carl, you didn’t desert, did you?”
    “Of course not. What kind of man do you think I am? I’m on leave, Frannie. I got a week. I borrowed a car and drove the whole way from Georgia without a stop. I had to come find you. I’m getting shipped over to Germany.”
    “Oh, no.”
    He got down on one knee and took her hands. “We don’t have much time. I know this sounds crazy, but … come with me. I love you. Marry me. Please.”
    Her mind whirled. What did she have to look forward to here? College, next year, but she wanted to study philosophy and her