LITMIR.BIZ

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driving lane.

      “It bothered you, right?” Beverly said, glancing at her friend’s still face. “Hearing he was with somebody else, it really got to you, didn’t it?”

      “A little,” Amanda said, not willing to discuss the unexpected pain she’d felt when she heard about the glamourous new woman in Edward’s life.

      “Maybe you’re still in love with him,” Beverly suggested comfortably. “Maybe you should go back to New York and check it out.”

      “And give up everything I’m beginning to achieve here? Just admit that it was all a big mistake and go running home saying, ‘please look after me, I’m so sorry, I’ll never do it again?’”

      “Yeah, I see the problem,” Beverly said slowly. “Especially since he’s not likely to move to where you are, right?”

      “Not likely,” Amanda agreed bitterly. “He spent years clawing his way up through the retail garment industry in New York to the point where he could manage his own store and draw a handpicked clientele. Believe me, Edward Price is not about to throw all that away for a woman, Bev. Any woman.”

      Beverly was silent a moment, her face thoughtful. “What does he look like?” she asked finally. “You know, I never did meet him, Mandy. Every time I came to New York, he was off on a buying trip to Paris or Bangkok or somewhere.”

      “I know.” Amanda frowned, clutching the wheel and trying to visualize Edward, startled again by the pain it caused her. “He’s about five-eleven,” she said at last, “thirty-five years old, very handsome and sophisticated. He has hazel eyes and auburn hair that he wears parted on the side and flowing over like this, you know…” She made a quick gesture with her gloved hand against her own dark head, indicating a graceful fall of hair.

      Beverly nodded with complete understanding. “Very trendy,” she said. “Like the guys in the suit ads in magazines, right? I wish I could talk Jeff into getting his hair cut that way. He always looks like his barber lives in the back of a saloon somewhere.”

      Amanda chuckled, but Beverly’s words stirred a chord of memory in the depths of her mind, a thought that had been nagging at her ever since they’d left the wedding party at the Double C and started the forty-mile journey back to Austin.

      “Bev,” she began slowly, “do you remember that English literature class we took in our sophomore year? I think it was called Late Victorian Poetry, something like that?”

      Beverly didn’t appear to hear the question. She was gazing out the side window at the neon signs and lighted storefronts that lined the highway for miles on the way into Austin.

      “Bev?” Amanda repeated, wondering why this whole question suddenly seemed so important.

      “Hmm?” Beverly asked, turning to look over at her friend. “What were you saying, Mandy? Something about college?”

      “Our sophomore-year English class,” Amanda repeated patiently. “Do you remember it?”

      Beverly chuckled. “Who could forget? Old Professor Starcross, with all that awful hair in his ears and the same mustard stain on his tie for the entire term—what a scream.”

      “Do you remember any of the poetry we studied?”

      Beverly opened the glove compartment, rummaging idly for a pack of mints. “I certainly remember the Brownings,” she said, popping a mint into her mouth and passing another to her friend. “Robert and Elizabeth, who could ever forget them? Wasn’t that just the most romantic thing you ever heard of, Mandy, the way they fell in love just by writing letters to each other and then he went sweeping into her house, gathered her into his arms and carried her away, right under the nose of her awful old father?”

      Beverly sighed, lost in the pleasure of the story.

      Amanda grinned fondly. “Beverly Townsend, you’re an incurable romantic, you know that? As a matter of fact,” she added more seriously, “I was interested in one of Browning’s poems, not his personal life. I wondered if you might recall it, Bev. It’s called ‘Andrea del Sarto.’”

      Beverly frowned, searching her memory while she munched thoughtfully on the mint. Despite her flippant manner, Beverly had a quick mind and an impressive memory. Amanda was confident she would be able to recall at least something of the poem in question.

      “I’ve got it,” Beverly announced finally. “Actually there’s two poems, kind of similar, and I always get them mixed up. The other one’s called ‘My Last Duchess.’ But the Del Sarto one, it’s about an artist, talking to his wife.”

      “And it ends with the line, ‘Again the Cousin’s whistle. Go, my Love.’ Right?”

      “Right,” Beverly agreed. “I always thought that was just about the saddest line in the English language. Tore my heart out, every time I read it.”

      Amanda felt a brief chill that touched her body with icy fingers, almost making her shiver. “Why?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “You know, I don’t really recall the poem at all, except for the title and that one line.”

      “Well, it’s this artist talking to his wife,” Beverly began cozily, resting against the door and turning to look at her friend, her blue eyes alight with interest. “She’s a whole lot younger than he is, you see, and she’s really beautiful and shallow. Completely selfish. He only married her because he was obsessed by her looks, and both of them know it. And in the poem, he’s begging her to just sit with him for a while and watch the sunset, but she can’t wait to be off with her friends or a boyfriend or whatever.”

      “Doesn’t she love him?”

      “Not a bit. She’s probably not even capable of love. That’s what he’s saying in the poem, ever so gently. He’s not really complaining about her, just saying how different their lives could have been, what a great painter he could have been and how much happiness they could have had if only she’d had enough depth to care for him a little and give him even the tiniest bit of support.”

      “But she’s just too shallow and superficial,” Amanda said grimly. “Too interested in herself and her own looks and nothing else.”

      “Absolutely,” Beverly agreed, missing the sudden edge in her friend’s voice. “Mostly, she’s just wishing the boring old guy will quit talking so she can take off and do what she wants.”

      Amanda nodded thoughtfully.

      “And the last line,” Beverly went on, “is because she’s itching to get away from him, you know, and be off about her own entertainment, leaving him sitting all alone in the sunset. Just to keep the peace, they’re pretending she’s going out with her cousin, but both of them know it’s not true. So he talks a little more about how he feels, all that he’s given up for her and how he feels it’s been worth it, just to have the privilege of looking on her beauty sometimes, even though most of his life is terribly sad and lonely. And then, finally, he sees that she’s anxious to be gone so he just says that line, ever so gently, the one about her cousin, and lets her go.”

      Amanda shivered again. Was that the opinion Brock had formed of her after just a few minutes’ conversation? Did he really see her as a woman who was all show and no substance? A woman so shallow and self-absorbed that she would give a man a life of lonely pain and emptiness?

      Her hands tightened on the wheel and she negotiated a corner a little too fast, slamming on the brakes and sending a sheet of water slashing past the roof of the car. She righted the vehicle just in time to merge unsteadily back into the flow of traffic.

      “Wow!” Beverly commented admiringly. “Not bad, Mandy. Since when did you get so reckless?”

      Amanda ignored the question, still absorbing the subtle insult of Brock Munroe’s final words to her.

      “Bev, what do you know about Brock Munroe?” she asked abruptly. “The tall dark-haired man who was Vernon’s best man at the wedding?”

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