A Midnight Clear (2 page)

But he persisted. “Hello,” he called after her.

And Suzanne—dear, sweet Suzanne in whose bed Frances was going to have to hide a frog—stopped cold and looked back. “Do you know him?”

“
No
, and I don’t care to. Let’s go.”

It was a credit to all her mother’s training that Frances didn’t look back once.

“I take it the marriage business isn’t going so well.”

Joseph Reynolds lifted his head from his hands and braced them against the edge of the chair as Steven Fleming walked into their shared room at Bancroft Hall, tossing his book bag onto his desk.

“No,” Joe said. “I said hello to her, twice. I gave her the look”—he demonstrated again the look he’d practiced with Steven, the one that was supposed to make a girl weak kneed—“and do you know what she said to her sister?”

Steven flopped into his own desk chair and began unbuttoning his coat. “Something bad?”

Oh, Steven could be so careless when it wasn’t his heart on the line. Joe didn’t have the luxury. “She said she didn’t care to know me.”

Just the memory made his mouth burn again with a sharp, bitter taste. He couldn’t even get her to say hello to him. None of the worst humiliations of his plebe year had been this bad. He was tempted to cradle his head in his hands again, but he settled for linking them between his knees.

“Huh.” Again, Steven sounded mighty unconcerned. “You know, Joe, when you first got this fool idea in your head—”

“It’s not a fool idea! I only… She intrigues me.” Joe didn’t dare admit all of it—that he feared he was actually in love with her. In love with a girl he’d barely exchanged two words with. One who wouldn’t even say hello to him. One who
didn’t care to know who he was
.

Perhaps it was a fool idea. Joe clenched his hands tight together, but it didn’t help a bit with the dismay choking him.

“Intrigued by an admiral’s daughter? How convenient for you.”

It wasn’t that at all. Oh, Joe knew how it would look from the outside. Ambitious first-class midshipman pursuing Dumfries’s daughter—he’d have called it mercenary himself. Only, it was happening to Joe and it didn’t feel mercenary at all. It felt confusing and achy and gave him the sweats when he thought of her—the long, cool fall of her blonde curls, the elegant turn of her ankles, the refined sweep of her neck—every bit of her made every bit of him throb.

Being in love felt remarkably like a bad head cold.

“I know it looks bad, but Dumfries doesn’t have anything to do with it. If you’d have seen her, you’d understand.”

Steven rubbed his face. “Well, you’ve almost got me convinced. Trouble is, it doesn’t sound like you’ve got her convinced.” Steven raised a hand into his “debating” stance—first two fingers cocked, thumb curling round. Joe knew it well from their late night study sessions. “Maybe you should forget about this. I mean, you won’t need to get married for at least another few years. Then you can find a girl who’d actually care to know you.”

It was sound advice. Joe dug his elbows deeper into his thighs and pondered the entrenchment of this infatuation in his heart. “I wish I could,” he finally said. “It’s been two weeks since I first saw her, two weeks I’ve been trying to get her attention, and it’s only getting worse.”

This was what came of being a closet romantic. Your heart did damn fool things exactly when it wasn’t supposed to. Or at least Joe’s did, for as long as he could remember.

It had all started in his first clear memory of watching the ocean. He’d probably been about five or so, and the sight of the sea stretching endlessly before him had produced something indescribable in his heart. A sense of infinite vastness, uncurling endlessly, sending ripples of wonder shuddering through him.
 

A man could feel that way about the ocean of course—a sailor was supposed to. But a man wasn’t supposed to feel that way when he read a moving bit of poetry. Or when he saw a young couple in love. Or imagined the woman he might share his life with.

So Joe kept his romantic heart secret, safe. Only Steven knew Joe was pursuing Frances and even his roommate didn’t know how deep Joe’s feelings went.

“Pick another girl.” Steven clearly didn’t understand the extent of the problem. “That might cure you.”

No, it likely wouldn’t. Joe ran a hand across the back of his neck, his crewcut pricking his fingertips. “Maybe it’s the haircut and the uniform. She can’t tell me apart from any of the other sailors running around.” More memorable—he could try for that.

Steven reclined in his chair, tipping it back on two legs as he tucked his hands behind his head. “I never had a problem with a girl forgetting who I was.”

Steven was all talk there—Joe knew for a fact Steven had no steady girl and wasn’t too interested in obtaining one. Not that Joe should be worrying about it either. He had other problems than a crush—even a painfully insistent one.
 

“I screwed up a landing today,” he confessed.

“You? The boy wonder of the biplane?”

“Nothing was damaged. At least, not beyond repair.” He’d come in too low and fast, snapping a landing wheel off and skidding to an ignominious halt on the runway.
 

He was fine, the plane would be fine—but it had been a near thing. And not at all like him.

“You’re blaming the poor admiral’s daughter?”

“Her name is Frances,” Joe corrected. It suited her. It was a name of simple elegance, feminine without frippery. “And no, it was my own inattention.” Because he couldn’t get Frances out of his head. Or her indifference to him.

“Because you were thinking of her.”

Yes.
Of the fall of her blonde curls, kind of like Veronica Lake’s only more refined. Of the assured way she walked—she knew exactly where she was going. He’d wanted to go with her the moment he’d seen her. Wanted all sorts of ridiculous things from and with her.

Joe forced himself to attention. “I’ve got to do something. Talk to her, get over her… But something.”

“Mmm.” Steven sounded like he was falling asleep.

“Let’s think about this tactically.” Joe might not be able to use the skills the Naval Academy was drumming into him in the field yet, but he
could
use them to win this girl.

That woke Steven up. The man loved a good campaign. “Okay. What’s the objective?”

“To get her to go out with me.”

“Only the one date?”

“For now.” He’d know after one date, if she were the one meant for him, if his secret infatuation could be nurtured into something deeper, more lasting… Or if he had to let it go.

“What’s the first rule of an engagement?”

“Know your enemy.” Joe frowned. “But she’s not my enemy.”

“Okay,” Steven allowed. “She’s your adversary. Or at least her indifference to you is.”

Yeah, Joe could think of it like that. That was good. He shook a finger at Steven as he thought out loud. “I need to know what she likes.”

“That might have been good to know before you fell for her.”

Joe ignored Steven’s comment and the implication he was already in love with her. “I’ll need to make a careful study.”

“You’ll spy on her?”

“No.” That sounded awful, spying. “No. It’s recon.”

Steven laughed softly. “Recon. That’s a good one. Whatever you need to believe.”

“Your problem is you have no romance in your soul.”

“Thank God. A Naval officer has no need for
romance
.”

Steven was probably right. Trouble was, Joe might not have a need for romance in his soul, but it was there. And Frances Dumfries had called to it.

It had been her nose that had started all the trouble. From the back, she’d been lovely, of course, all of her perfectly arranged. Too perfectly; there was nothing there to snare his interest. She’d turned and revealed a perfectly proportioned face as well—except for her nose. It wasn’t classic and it wasn’t noble; her nose was a dollop in her face, a tiny bit of approachability in her cool expression.

He’d had the mad urge to nuzzle his nose against hers and his heart seemed to unfurl like a bloom and that was it—he was head over heels.

Stupid, romantic Joe, falling into stupid, romantic love at first sight.

And she wouldn’t even give him the time of day.

“You’re entirely the wrong man to help me with this,” he told Steven. Best to just plan it all himself.
 

“What?” That got his roommate’s goat. “I’m exactly the right man. Let me get a pen and paper and let’s start thinking of what this girl might like.”

“Frances.”

“You even say her name all wondering like. You poor bastard.” Steven turned to his desk, then stopped dead at the bag covering it. “Can I…?”

Joe gestured to his own desk, which was neat as pin and didn’t have a book bag cluttering it. “Knock yourself out. Or put your bag in its proper place. That might also help.”

Steven didn’t take his advice, and instead grabbed paper and a pen from Joe’s desk. “Where did you first see her? What was she doing? That might give us some clues.”

“Good thinking. It was at a social at the admiral’s house for the firsties. You were there.” Joe still couldn’t believe Steven hadn’t noticed her. She hadn’t only been one of the few women at the thing; she’d also been pretty beyond belief. “She was playing hostess.” She’d been so self-assured, as if entertaining all those midshipmen had been no more taxing than an afternoon tea with friends.

“I remember the social. But I don’t remember you talking to her.”

“I did.” She had a lovely voice. Once he’d gotten over his reaction to her adorable nose, they’d exchanged
hello
,
how are you
,
what’s your service selection
. A small conversation, but enough to have him tumbling even deeper. When she’d smiled, a warm, welcoming stretch of her mouth that was probably general, Joe had felt it so very specifically in his own overstretched heart. “She handed me a glass of lemonade, asked about my studies.”

“And you fell for her like that?” Steven paused in his scribblings and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t strike me as the type.”

Because Joe tried his best to hide his soft, inner heart. Like Steven had said, a Naval office had no need for romance in his soul. “I did see her coming out of the bookstore today.” No need to comment on whether or not he was “the type.”

“Started your recon already.” His roommate nodded approvingly. “What book did she have?”

“I couldn’t quite see it. I think it was by George Heyer.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Me either.” Which irritated him, because it could have been more of a clue to her interests. “Think I ought to give her a book by this fellow?”

“Probably couldn’t hurt.”

Joe pondered. “No, it could. MacClellan gave her flowers the other day and she turned him right down. He said she seemed almost offended by them.” Or maybe offended at him asking her out. Whatever the reason, Joe wasn’t going to repeat MacClellan’s mistakes. He pondered his hands. “Maybe I need to go dark here. A secret mission. She’s got a sister—I might enlist her help.”

“A secret mission?” Shock dripped from Steven’s voice. “On an admiral’s daughter? Goddamn, when did your balls turn to brass?” He leaned in. “Seriously, you should think about this. You piss off Dumfries and you won’t even get a commission in the Coast Guard. You’re a born aviator—everyone says so. Your talent is going to take you far in the Navy. Do you really want to risk that?”

It was true—there was nothing Joe loved better than flying a plane. It called to him, the same way Frances did. That widening expansiveness he felt when he looked over the ocean—he got the same sensation when he flew, only it was compressed sense of infinity that lodged right in his gut and made his nerves spark with excitement.

He loved the sea, but he
adored
the skies.

And he feared he adored Frances too, entirely against his better judgment.

“It’s not like I can’t both fly
and
date her,” he said, more to himself than to Steven. “After all, who’d make a better Navy wife than an admiral’s daughter?” All he had to do was convince her of that. Well, get to know her better and then convince her to marry him. “Come on.” He gestured to Steven. “Let’s get to planning.”

Hello
and practiced looks weren’t going to snare Frances Dumfries’s attention—but Joe was going to discover what would.