Cate Campbell Read Online Free Page A

home gravely injured, hopelessly shell-shocked, or maimed for life. The numbers were even worse for the Brits, who had been in the war three years longer.
    Frank could guess at what had caused this man’s misery. The business was supposed to go to a son who had fallen and would never return. Or his position was being held for him in the hope he would one day recover enough to take it. Or the general strike of ’19 had set the business back so far that this man, in the face of his loss, had no more heart for it.
    Frank couldn’t bear to hear it. He had no solace to offer. He growled, “Sorry to trouble you,” and turned sharply away. He let the door swing shut behind him. He didn’t look back to see if the man had recovered himself or had buried his face in his hands to weep.
    And now, after a day of such disappointments, Frank stood on the steps of the Alexis waiting for a strange car to take him to have dinner with people he didn’t know, and would never meet in the normal run of things. What kind of family would produce a man like Preston Benedict? People of privilege, certainly. Money, advantages, history, good fortune. He would simply have to endure it, tolerate the careful questions and the looks of pity. He would be polite, as he was brought up to be, and he would make his escape as early as he decently could, to go in search of more whisky.
     
    The Essex was a sleek black vehicle, and the driver who stepped out of it, courteously inquiring as to Frank’s name, was every bit as sleek and nearly as black. When he had ascertained that Frank was, in fact, Major Frank Parrish, the driver bowed, very much like one of the British officers’ batmen.
    The car was one of the new enclosed sedans, with burgundy velvet upholstery and polished windows shining like crystal under the electric streetlights. The driver introduced himself as “Blake, sir. Mr. Benedict’s butler.” He asked in cultured accents about the suitability of the Alexis, and Frank’s liking for Seattle, as he adjusted dials and choke and headlamps. He pressed the electric starter, engaged the clutch, and began the climb up Madison and away from the city center, driving with the same dignity he displayed in his speech.
    Frank settled back on the wide seat to watch the town spin slowly by. The car took a left turn, and he craned his neck to find a street sign. Broadway. They drove for another five minutes, making way for the occasional cart, and once for a streetcar clanging its way along the road, then turned right and wound even higher onto a tree-lined hill.
    “Aloha Street, Major,” Blake said as the car followed the twisting road. He turned left at the top of the hill. “Fourteenth Avenue. The Benedicts built their home here thirty years ago.” He pulled to a stop in front of an enormous white building with elegant pillars and a broad porch that wrapped around the three sides Frank could see. For a painful moment Frank simply stared at it. Benedict had called it “the house,” but this was like no house Frank had ever set foot in.
    Cupolas decorated every wall. Lights shone from three floors. A tall tree of a type Frank didn’t recognize stretched dark, leafless branches across the façade, and a wide, manicured lawn surrounded it.
    The butler said, “Here we are, sir. Benedict Hall.” Frank suddenly longed to change his mind, refuse the invitation after all, but Blake was already out of the automobile, holding the door.
    As Frank climbed out, Blake bowed again. “I’ll announce you, Major.”
    Frank followed him up the walk, feeling utterly out of place. Such formality belonged, it seemed to him, to a different age. His Montana roots had taught him nothing about such things, though he had seen it in the British forces. The aristocrats, the officers, found it natural that some other man should clean their shoes and oil their rifles, even serve tea in a dirty trench while bullets flew overhead. Frank had never become accustomed to