Summer Lightning Read Free Page B

smiled again and left her.
    Patting back a yawn, Chloe poured out a cup of tea and sipped it enjoyably. She pulled a thin dressing gown around her and stepped out onto her own little balcony.
    “O-oooh,” she murmured on a sigh of delight.
    There below her lay the fabled Grand Harbor of Malta, its winding, many-inleted surface smooth and pearly in the morning light. Lion-colored rocks surmounted by lion-colored fortifications of towers and bastions, some castellated, some picturesquely crumbling, rose steeply around its shores.
    Units of the fleet rested in it, and trim launches laid foaming tracks between them and the quays. A cruiser backed with infinite care out of a creek.
    Up the main fairway crept a liner, shrinking a little amid all this naval grandeur. It was pursued by an avid pack of painted djaisas —the water taxis of Malta—propelled by standing oarsmen like gondoliers.
    As Chloe watched, a little breeze sprang up. Small waves made bold to slap the warships and the sun struck sparks off the ruffled water. It was an enchanting scene.
    Reluctantly, vexed that her time to enjoy it was to be cut short by a man’s tyrannical whim, she turned and went indoors to bathe and dress.
    After breakfast she wandered out into the sparkling sunshine to explore the hotel’s flowery gardens.
    There was color and rich greeness all around her. The sky was flawless blue, birds twittered in the trees, a boxer dog came to greet her with a quiver of his stumpy tail and turned to pace sedately beside her.
    She ought to have felt happy; instead she was strangely ill at ease. She longed for the meeting at ten o’clock with Dominic Vining, but dreaded it even more.
    When he came, what line should she take? Should she protest again, argue, even forget pride and dignity and plead to be allowed to stay? Or should she be wise and go tamely back to London before her heart became more deeply involved?
    She couldn’t make up her mind. She could only wait and let events take their course—and hope.
    At five minutes to ten she stood waiting in the foyer, outwardly cool and poised, but with butterflies fluttering inside her.
    When ten had struck, he hadn’t arrived. Instead, the doors opened to admit a rough-haired, clever-looking young man with thick-lensed spectacles and an agreeable expression.
    After a glance around the foyer he came straight over to her.
    “Miss Linden?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good morning. I hope they made you comfortable?”
    “Very, thanks.”
    “Good. I’m Mark Tenby, one of Vining’s team. His personal secretary, actually. He was delayed by a telephone call from Valetta, and sent me on ahead to make his apologies. He shouldn’t be long.”
    He was eyeing her with candid admiration, thinking how fresh and charming she looked in her trim suit and crisp, coral pink blouse. He liked her bright hair, her slim grace, her voice.
    “I say, isn’t it just too bad that Dominic has this thing about not having women on a dig?” he burst out irrepressibly.
    She couldn’t help laughing.
    “It’s perfectly absurd. It’s medieval. I’m furious about it really,” she declared. “But there isn’t much to be done, is there, except retire gracefully?”
    He nodded rueful agreement. “Not,” he qualified loyally, “that he hasn’t had good reason to feel as he does.”
    She waited, dissembling her eager curiosity, for him to explain.
    Instead he said, “Excuse me a minute. I’ve just seen somebody. It’s my younger brother. And good heavens, Louise !”
    He had left her and was greeting a good-looking young naval lieutenant and a tallish, auburn-haired woman whose age Chloe put at thirty-two or three. She was very thin, and in her exquisite pale shantung dress and spike-heeled shoes, had the bizarre, improbable elegance of a fashion drawing.
    “Mark, my dear!” Her voice was a vibrant contralto. She made play with a pair of large, sparkling eyes, the color of seawater. Her heart-shaped face, with blunt nose and