My husband’s arms opened wide. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”
I took a half-step toward him, then stopped abruptly. “What happened to your beard?”
“I singed it when the stove blew up. It didn’t seem worth keeping after that.” Bill raised a hand to touch his clean-shaven chin, and I gasped.
“What happened to your arm?” I demanded, coming another half-step closer.
Bill lowered his left hand, which was partially encased in a plaster cast. “When the stove blew up, I fell into the woodpile,” he explained. “It’s only a sprain, but they wanted to keep it immobile for a while. And before you ask about my glasses, yes, they’re new. I lost the old ones when the emergency evacuation team was loading me into the seaplane. Now, would you please stop devouring me with your eyes and give me a kiss? I’ve come an awfully long way to find you.”
Bill had come by seaplane, commuter plane, Concorde, helicopter, and rental car all the way from the blighted shores of Little Moose Lake to the stableyard of Cobb Farm in two days flat.
“I couldn’t get back to sleep after that phone call of yours,” he told me, “and I couldn’t concentrate on anything once I’d gotten up. That’s why the stove exploded. I think I did something wrong with the kerosene.”
I filled a bowl with reheated vegetable soup, and put it on the table in front of him. After enveloping him in a hug that had proved the soundness of his ribs, I’d pulled my battered husband into the house and straight back to the kitchen. No one had descended to check up on us. I assumed that their afternoon jaunts had put them all into fresh-air-induced comas.
“As I lay there in the woodpile,” Bill went on, “with half of my beard burnt off and my arm pinned underneath me, watching the staff rush around with fire extinguishers while Reeves and Randi and the rest of the bloody Biddifords stood back so as not to soil their lily-white hands, I said to myself, ‘Bill, what the hell are you doing here?’ ”
He paused to spoon up more soup, and I checked on the leftovers from dinner, which were warming in the oven. I kept glancing over my shoulder at my husband, not only because it was hard to believe that he was sitting in the same room with me, but because it was hard to believe that he was my husband. He looked like someone I’d never met before.
“ ‘Lori sounds like she’s in trouble,’ ” Bill continued, still recounting his interior dialogue. “ ‘Why the hell aren’t you there to help her out?’ ” Bill shrugged. “So I told the Biddifords to get stuffed, and radioed for the evac plane to take me out. God knows I was a medical emergency by then. Any more of that warm milk?”
I brought the saucepan to the table and refilled Bill’s mug, then piled a plate with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I cut the meat for him, because his left arm was basically useless-he’d managed to sprain the wrist attached to the hand that held the thumb he’d pierced with the fishhook. Poor old thumb, I thought, gazing tenderly at the lumpy white gauze wrapping protruding at an awkward angle from the cast.
I put the plate at Bill’s elbow, kissed the top of his head, and took a chair across the table from him. I couldn’t stop devouring him with my eyes. A combination of windburn and sunburn had brought a ruddy glow to his normally pallid complexion, and his smooth jaw was every bit as strong as Uncle Williston’s. The slim tortoiseshell frames of his new glasses didn’t overwhelm his brown eyes the way his old black frames had, and he’d topped a familiar pair of brown corduroy trousers with a bulky cable-knit fisherman’s sweater that I liked very much but had never seen before.
“The evac team took care of my arm and helped me to shave, so they could see if I’d burnt my face as well as my beard, then dropped me off in Bangor, where I caught a commuter flight for Logan. We got out just ahead of a terrific storm. I hope it blew the Biddifords to ... blazes.”
“But how did you get your new glasses?” I asked.
“Miss Kingsley. I called her from the Concorde and she had them waiting for me at Heathrow.” He touched a finger to the tortoiseshell frames and glanced at me bashfully. “Like ‘em?”
“I love them,” I said, and made a mental note to treat Miss Kingsley to champagne and caviar the next time I was in London.
Bill plucked at the sleeve of his sweater. “Miss Kingsley bought this for me, too, since I couldn’t bring my luggage on the evac plane. She also arranged for a helicopter to fly me to York and a rental car to get me from there to here. Paul’s been keeping her up-to-date on your travels.”
“Where’s the car?” I asked.