Normally, Marian would have insisted upon dressing shortly after they had finished making love, but with the twins not due to return home for another hour, she decided to allow herself the luxury of lying entwined in her husband's arms for a little while longer. Surprisingly, it was Harold who was the one to end their embrace and get out of bed.
"Darling?" Marian ventured, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice as she watched him don his robe.
"Don't go anywhere just yet, my dear little librarian," Harold assured her with the manic enthusiasm that always colored his voice when he was struck by an exciting new idea. "I just thought of the perfect end-note to a lovely evening… "
Marian knew there was no stopping him when he got like this. Sighing good-naturedly, she lay back down and waited for her husband to return with whatever it was he had in mind.
Indeed, it wasn't long before Harold reappeared with two tumblers and a bottle of something that looked suspiciously familiar.
Marian gasped. "Harold, is that – wine?"
"Pinot Noir, all the way from Burgundy," he confirmed, looking awfully pleased with himself as he uncorked the bottle and poured a little of its contents into a glass. Beaming, he presented the tumbler to her and poured one for himself. "As I recall, you enjoyed this one quite a bit."
Marian's stomach curdled as the familiar, voluptuous aroma wafted beneath her nose, and she hastily set the tumbler on her end table. "Harold, are you mad?" she asked, appalled.
Harold's grin faded. "Now, why would you say a thing like that?"
"In case you've forgotten, alcohol is illegal in the United States," she said severely. "I can't believe you actually took the risk of smuggling this across the borders – we could have been arrested!"
He rolled his eyes. "We wouldn't have been arrested. Fined perhaps, and the wine confiscated, but arrested? Not if I had anything to say about it."
"You think your silver tongue can talk you out of anything, don't you?" Marian replied, shaking her head in disbelief. "How could you put us in danger like that?"
"Well, excuse me for wanting to take a little romance of Paris home with us," Harold said, sounding sore.
Her eyes widened. "Romance? Your actions put you on par with any lowlife bootleg smuggler! What a thing to do, bringing illegal liquor into this country – into our home. Suppose the girls were to find it? I want you to dispose of that wine, immediately."
"This wine was expensive!" he protested.
"I don't care," Marian said dismissively. "Get rid of it!"
Harold gazed at her with a mutinous expression, and his grip tightened protectively around the bottle. "No, I won't. And I won't be ordered around – you're my wife, not my mother."
"Harold," she said in a measured voice, "if you don't dispose of that wine, then I will."
An extremely tense silence descended upon the bedroom as husband and wife glared at each other. Then –
"Fine!" Harold exclaimed. "If that's the way you'll have it, I'm leaving – and I'm taking my wine with me."
"Fine!" Marian echoed, her voice just as heated, and turned away from her husband.
She sat in cold silence as Harold stormed around their bedroom, hastily throwing on a suit and muttering dark oaths under his breath. But when Marian heard him say something about wives being more trouble than they were worth, she could no longer contain her fury; the words that had been lurking on the tip of her tongue for some time now, waiting for a moment like this, finally burst out of her.
"Oh, I wish we'd never gone to Paris!"
Harold, who was in the midst of putting on his suit-coat, froze. He turned to face her, the hurt evident in his eyes.
Realizing she had gone too far, Marian sheepishly tried to make amends. "Harold, I – "
But her husband had already turned away. "Don't even bother," he said, his voice soft and sad as he exited the room.
Had Marian been dressed, she would have rushed right after him. She even leapt out of bed, with the thought of making herself presentable as quickly as possible. But before she could so much as grab her girdle from the nearby chair, she heard the front door slam shut.
Sighing, Marian reached for her nightgown instead; Penny and Elly would be home soon, and someone had to be there to greet them. Not to mention she had to dispose of the wine-filled tumblers Harold had left behind! As soon as she had dressed in her nightclothes and straightened up the bedroom, Marian took the glasses to the kitchen and poured their contents down the drain of the sink – wincing at the odor as she did so. For good measure, she turned on the faucet and let the hot water run for a few moments.
But even after all traces of the wine were gone, Marian's stomach still wouldn't settle. Consoling herself with a glass of warm milk, she settled on the parlor sofa with Pride and Prejudice and waited for her daughters to come home.
XXX
At nine fifteen, the front door creaked open and two blonde-haired, hazel-eyed girls wearing identical blue gingham dresses slipped into the house. After casting a furtive look around, the children quietly made their way toward the stairs.
"Penelope Anne. Elinor Jane," Marian said sternly. "Come into the parlor, please."
The girls immediately obeyed. As they approached, Elly stared at the rug with a sheepish expression, but Penny flashed Marian what she clearly thought was a winning smile. "Good evening, Mother," she said blithely, as if nothing was amiss.
"Indeed," she said, raising an eyebrow at her daughter. "You are aware it's fifteen minutes past your bedtime? The movie must have ended over a half hour ago – what took you so long in coming home?"
Elly's head popped up. "Oh, we weren't at the movies," she replied. Penny elbowed her, but Elly continued, "The cartoon was great fun, but the movie got boring, so we left. We spent the evening at Grandma's instead." When Penny glared at her, Elly hissed, "Well, she would have found out soon enough, anyhow!"
"You weren't supposed to tell her this soon," Penny scolded.
Marian hid her amusement. "Why not, Penny?"
"We meant it as a surprise," Penny said ruefully. "Grandma let us help her cook the Irish stew, and we wanted to bring some home for you. That's why we were late."
She looked so endearingly sincere that Marian would have softened, but for one undeniable incongruity. "If that's true, then where's the stew?"
"Oh, we left it out in the hall, just in case you were still up," Elly said cheerfully. "I'll go get it now!"
She retrieved the container of stew and would have opened it, but Marian put her hand over her daughter's. "That's very sweet of you, darling, but it's awfully late. Why don't you put the stew in the icebox, and then you and your sister can get ready for bed."
Penny's eyes brightened. "You're not going to punish us, then?" she asked, relieved.
This time, it was Elly who elbowed her sister, but Marian smiled. "No, darling. But the next time you two decide to change your plans like that, make sure you call home to let me know."
"Oh, we tried to," Penny assured her.
Marian froze, and her smile faded. "You did?"
"Grandma made us do that as soon as we got in the house," Elly said with a shrug. "But no one picked up."
Marian repressed a groan – the one time she had chosen to ignore the phone! When her cheeks crimsoned, the girls looked curiously at her, and then each other. Thinking it best to put an end to this precarious conversation, Marian cleared her throat. "Well, off to bed then," she said in a gentle but no-nonsense tone. "I'll be up to tuck you in shortly."
"Yes, Mother," the girls chorused.
When they reached the stairs, Penny turned back. "Will Dad say goodnight to us, too?"
Having prepared for this inquiry, Marian smoothly replied, "Your father was called away on emporium business. He'll be home later."
Satisfied with this explanation, Penny nodded and skittered up the stairs. Elly followed her sister – though she walked a bit more slowly, and her expression was vaguely worried.
Marian sighed. She was not surprised by her youngest daughter's reaction; a few weeks ago, Elly had witnessed one of her and Harold's spats. Since then, the girl had taken to gazing thoughtfully at her parents at times, as if she was puzzling out what this new development could possibly mean. It was rare that Marian and Harold fought – and they made it a point never to argue in the presence of their children – but on that particular occasion, they hadn't realized Elly was still in the parlor. As soon as they became aware of their daughter gazing at them with a startled expression, they had subsided. Harold carefully explained that parents didn't always see eye to eye on certain subjects – just as she and Penny sometimes disagreed, so did they. This seemed to soothe Elly somewhat, but Marian knew a piece of her daughter's childhood had vanished forever; she remembered how crushed she had been when she first overheard her parents fighting.
But as much as it pained her to admit, the girls' childish illusions would have to eventually fade as they matured into young women. And this inevitable eventuality would probably happen a lot sooner than Marian would have liked; possessing their mother's intelligence and father's keen sense of observation, the girls had always been uncommonly perceptive. Though this wasn't the first time Harold had stormed out of the house after a fight, it had been several years since such an occurrence. In those days, the girls were still too young to realize what was going on and, in any case, she and Harold had always patched things up quickly. But Penny and Elly were older now, so it would be a lot harder to conceal the truth of such situations from them. Hoping that her husband would soon return home in a more amenable frame of mind so they could discuss things and present their daughters with a happily united front tomorrow morning, Marian went to bid Penny and Elly good night.
