The Great Russel - waters between Channel Islands of Jethou and Sark - Marion came to, a swelling pain at the base of her skull, and a cloudy-at-best recall of where she was and what she was doing. She could see nothing, though she was not blindfolded. Her wrists and ankles were in restraints, and there was something very unpleasantly stuffed down her mouth and throat.
But even so she could smell the sea, feel the rise and billowing of the waves. The scent of fish, damp nets and lobster cages came to her. She was on a boat.
Well, her hazy mind told her, it had been awhile...Birthday. It was someone's birthday. A birthday, on the water.
1939 - America - Cincinnati, Ohio - It had not taken Marion Nighten long to realize that she preferred the company of the Merton family far less than did her parents; these fellow Britons to which her father and mother had turned her care over upon her announcement that she would travel to the United States to put Saracen's Beau through his paces on the American Equestrian Circuit.
But of course she understood the necessity of them, at least initially. One such as her father could not just set his unmarried daughter on an oceanliner without a proper chaperone to cross the Atlantic. Respectable people had to be found who were setting out with a similar destination. And the Mertons, Lord Walter, Lady Elsie and daughter Susan, were perfectly respectable. And perfectly dull and drear. Marion had decided this was to be the last party she would attend with them, the last day she would agree to take rooms with them. She was not here to follow someone else's course. She was here to chart her own. And she knew herself to be more than equal to the task.
And...America was not England. The further she traveled in-country the more she noted the freedoms of the middle-and even upper-class. To be. To express, to...founder, and yet to endure. At least her somewhat star-struck mind told her it was so. Ergo, today was to be her last day of enslavement to the Mertons. Tomorrow would see the re-birth of Lady Marion Nighten: lone, competent, and unchaperoned.
She would eat where and when she liked, take rooms where and when she wished, and focus as much time on Beau as she saw fit, without regard to 'important' parties or mind-enlarging 'occasions', many of which seemed to largely be designed to flatter and fawn over the Mertons and their noble status (a consequence, no doubt, of them visiting a country without such notables of its own).
Today it was a birthday party, for a young man also connected to the Circuit. The invitation had originally only been extended to Marion, but Lady Merton made it obvious that she was sure that Lady Nighten would not agree to her daughter accepting an invitation without her guardians going along as well, as the family throwing the party were of no particular acquaintance to either the Mertons or the Nightens.
She walked into the amusement park, dubbed "Coney Island" (surely a misnomer-even Marion knew that to be located in New York City), on the arm of Susan Merton (no rights to a hereditary 'Lady' prefixing her name), and made their way to the nearby pavilion known as 'Moonlight Gardens', where the late-afternoon party was being held.
It was a two-story square structure, hanging vines and creeper climbing down romantically from the upper floor's cast iron verandah. It was like walking into a large building, the center of which was without a roof, open to the sky, ringed by the squarely linear building and its second-floor balcony with cast iron railings. The 250-foot by 100-foot dancefloor (it did not seem to be proper to call it a ballroom as it was not, technically, a room) under the stars once it turned night, colorful paper lanterns and such strung on haphazard wires and ropes that crisscrossed the open area, a bar visible along one wall.
The musicians had a covered bandstand to play under, and the cement-covered-in-rubber dancefloor was surrounded (as in many a nightclub) by small tables intimately mushrooming about its edges, some located further back, under the balcony overhang.
It was not dark, though, and dinner would be served first, before night fell and the dancing (at least for the younger set) truly began in earnest.
Marion excused herself quickly, leaving Susan at a table with her parents, and walked back toward the entrance. Before she got there she sighted a nicely concealed table behind some greenery and thought to hide out, luxuriating in being unmonitored for the present moment.
It was the smoke of his cigarette that first told her she was not truly alone.
"Lost a wager on you, today," came a man's voice, its country drawl appealing, but unfamiliar to her.
She tried to incline her head from where she sat, but was still unable to see who was speaking, so she stood and found the source of the voice well-hidden behind a large potted fern, his back leaning against a balcony's white support column.
A frown furrowed her brow, but not seriously. "You were betting on me?"
"No," the man answered, putting fingers through his wavy (prematurely) salt and pepper hair to keep the curls slicked back against his head, as was the style, "on your horse, to be exact." He was not satisfied with the result, and tasked his fingers with the same job a second time. His eyes flicked up from where they had been intent on studying his cigarette's lengthening ash, to meet hers. "And maybe, maybe, a little on you."
Her tone of surprise was genuine. "You bet against Beau?" She took a step closer. This had suddenly become interesting.
"Hmmm." He made a sort of harrumph noise. "Didnt think he could do it. Didn't think he had it in him to take the day."
"Well," she spoke to him as though he were an errant child, "you will know better next time." Finding she did not like the idea that their conversation was over, she found a leading question to ask. "Was it very much to lose? I suppose you will say something like, 'oh, it is only money...'" It was the sort of thing men of her set at home were often heard to say, whether the amount in question was one they could afford to lose or not. A face-saving statement, a show of above-it-all indifference.
"Oh, it was far more than money, Sugar," this man said, bringing his foot down from the column, his shoulders and upper body coming away from the structure. "I lost the right to first introductions to his rider. And first dance."
So this was a little game, after all. Well, she was good at little games. "So you are a thief, as well as a poor handicapper."
"How's that?" He finally let the ash fall, flicking it off into the moist soil of the potted fern.
"For you have stolen one reward from the rightful winner. All you must do is exchange names with me. And I do not doubt that the invitation to a dance can be far behind..."
"Fred Otto," he nodded his head in a congenial, if not formal, way. "Unsuccessful riverboat gambler, and accused thief."
"So it is your birthday!" She extended her hand for the shaking. She had not known to whom the party invitation had referred, only that the Otto family were well-known on, and importantly involved in, the Circuit. "Marion Nighten, as I see you well know."
He took her hand, examining it for a moment, almost as though studying her nails to see if there were any dirt under them. "Never met a 'lady' before, Marion. Am I supposed to kiss this?"
She laughed, but genuinely, without simpering as many women would. "I rather think I would like you less if you did."
"Alright," he said, "can I offer you a smoke? Roll my own, but do a pretty good job of it, if I say so myself."
She shook her head to decline the offer. "Are you going to ask me to dance?" she questioned him, a little curious at why he had not already done so.
"Well," he shared, looking out from his hiding place to the still-arriving party guests. "Tell the truth, I probably won't be here when the real dancin' starts-not 'til they start to close the place down, and I'm sure a...gentle flower like yourself would long ago be settled back in her stall at the barn. Which barn is it, would you say, where you're at with your folks?"
"Not my 'folks', thank you very much, indeed, and the Mertons and I are at the Cincinnatian." Conversationally, she offered a thought she had yet to voice aloud. "I like it here, this far into your country."
"Why's that?"
"Fewer placenames stolen from 'the auld country', from 'jolly olde England'. More Indian names, more 'Cincinnati'. Only one of those in the world, yes? Zanzibar, Timbuktu, Cincinnati. It rather makes one feel like one's been somewhere."
"And y'all are so set on havin' been somewhere?"
She did not answer his question, suddenly feeling that she had let an important secret out that she had not really meant to share-much less with a stranger. She moved quickly to bury such a faux pas with action. "You save me a dance, Fred Otto," she told him, brassily. "I will make it a point to be here, no matter the late hour."
"Then by all means," he began, noting his rival, the winner of the bet, had arrive, "let's take a practice turn right now."
She let him (somewhat ridiculously) lead her out on to the deserted dancefloor, where the band was only lightly playing and no other couples yet were.
At the sight of the guest of honor's approach, the band quickly ramped into a popular song.
They began to dance.
Some moments later, the singer joined the musicians, providing the words to the tune, "Rock-a-bye my baby,/There ain't gonna be no war./There ain't gonna be no war over here./It's all on the other side,/We ain't gonna need no ride of Paul Revere./We're gonna have peace and quiet,/And if they start a riot,/We'll sit right back and keep score!"
Fred Otto had noticed the stiffening of Marion Nighten in his arms, the coldness that seemed to begin to emanate from her. He had never thought much of this particular song before, though it was quite admired, and given quite a bit of radio play.
Then again, he had never been dancing to it with a girl from 'the other side', while the lyrics assured her that his side, his people, would be glad to let them suffer and fight it out while they watched on, keeping score as though at a sports game. Great balls of fire, what an idiot song! "Lady Nighten," he began to address her. They stopped dancing, now just standing in an embrace (albeit not a very intimate or close one), the center of all attention.
"Marion. Lady Marion, or, just Marion," she corrected him, somewhat hollowly and half-attentively. "Lady Nighten is my mother."
"Marion," Fred began again, it sounding more like 'maren', "what say we git?"
Her interest in the moment came back into focus. It was decidedly piqued by this invitation to 'git'. She cast a sidelong glance at the Mertons, still dutifully at their table, their dinner not yet finished, probably busy couching statements that would radiate the proper concern and disapproval at her dancing with a near-stranger on a deserted dancefloor for all to see. For making what they would view as 'a spectacle' of herself.
In less than five minutes, she and Fred Otto had found their way down (he knew it well) to the nearby boat landing, and into his 19-foot wooden Cris Craft Barrelback, and were free on the Ohio River.
"Where are we going?" she asked, knowing no respectable woman in her right mind would wait so long to ask such an important question.
"River Downs," he said from where he stood, one foot propped up on the green leather upholstery. "Be there in two shakes, it's just next door. Gotta see a man about a horse."
"You're taking me to a horsetrack?" she asked, incredulity in her voice. She was not sure what she had expected from this rather unexpected gentleman, but track racing was certainly not it.
"Wanna drive?" he asked her.
She moved over to take the banjo steering wheel, and his arms circled around her from the back, trying to instruct her at how to handle the throttle and steer, and conveniently embracing her.
Marion turned her head suddenly, almost colliding with his nose and said, somewhat insulted, "I know how to pilot a boat, thank you very much."
At her unexpected assertion (he had assumed that even if she was proficient with watercraft she would have played along with the 'my hands over your hands, my arms about you' flirting game) Fred promptly slid away from her proscribed personal space.
She hadn't meant to be quite so blunt. She offered an apology in the form of an interested question. "Why skive on your own party?"
He titled his head away from her direction for a moment, as though thinking, as though deciding whether to answer after her tart rebuff of him. He shrugged. "Tradition, etiquette, expectations. My life has been managed since the day that I was born. That wasn't my party, that was my mama's."
"And you will not do what gives her pleasure?"
"Sure. I do. And often. But she doesn't run my life. Any concessions I make to her are out of courtesy. Not obligation. She's got her party, and now I've got mine." He smiled.
She saw the dock and landing for the racetrack ahead. "And the horse?"
"Lardner's Ring. I mean to buy her. But first I mean to watch her run."
"The name," she asked, curious, "after the American sportswriter, the short story writer?"
He whistled at her question. "All that and brains, too. Happy damn birthday to me," he said, for the first time feeling pleased that the night would prove long, indeed.
Marion, used to being flirted with, but lonely, and far from anyone who cared about her, grinned into the late afternoon sun and opened the boat's throttle, sending all 130 of its horsepower into the waves.
As Marion (in the present) attempted a little grin with the memory of that day, the action birthed a sharp reminder of the head injury she could not quite recall getting, and she moaned (about all the noise she could make with whatever was stuffed down her throat).
A moment later, a large fisherman's knife-rather, the metallic tip of it-rent the fabric before her eyes, and she realized she had been within some type of coarse canvas sacking. In the late-afternoon-coming-on-evening sun she saw a face, dark of skin and black of eyes that was unfamiliar to her. This person held the fisherman's knife.
One of Marion's eyes saw the decking, against which she lay. The other saw what lay directly across from her: the waxen, lifeless face of young Dick Giddons, his eyes dull and empty. Dick Giddons, who would never again ask after her safety, never again ask her if she knew what she was doing.
...TBC...