Page 37 of Air Affair

“Hank.” There was a long pause. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll find out when you call me up to say you’re married.”

“Katherine, if I ever get married, and that’s a big ‘if,’ you will be at the wedding. And don’t get your hopes up about me marrying Rory. It’s not going to happen.”

“We’ll see.”

“Listen, Kate, I have to go, or I’ll be late for my flight.”

“Fine. Same time next week?”

“Yup.”

“Goodbye, Hank. And good luck.”

“Thanks. I need it.”

He hung up and drove to the airfield, wondering exactly how charming he’d have to be to convince Major Belmont to let him court his only daughter.

13

Rory absently added a flourish to the “W” in “Women” on the pro-suffrage signs she was painting with her aunt.

“My dear, you seem distracted,” said Aunt Alva.

“I’m sorry. It’s the party planning. I can hardly think of anything else,” she said, looking up.

“I applaud you for using your birthday to serve a good cause. Not many girls your age would think to do something like that.” Aunt Alva beamed at Rory, who blushed thinking of her ulterior motives. “That beastly Edward doesn’t deserve you, as I’ve told your father.”

“Has he relented at all?” she asked, rinsing a brush and opening a bottle of blue paint.

“Not yet. But don’t lose hope, dearest. We may not have won the day, but the campaign has hardly begun. I won’t have my favorite niece wedded to a philanderer.” She spread glue liberally on a stick and attached it to a sign. “Has Edward tried to contact you at all?”

No, which was surprising. “He’s been oddly silent. It worries me. I feel like he’s plotting against me, though of course that’s absurd.”

Aunt Alva shook her head. “It’s for the best, my dear. It’s always better to make a clean break and stay away from each other until tempers have cooled.”

Rory switched to the red paint to add flourishes to the word “vote.”

“Papa has threatened to disown me if I don’t give Edward a chance. He refuses to believe it’s over.”

Aunt Alva sighed. “Yes, he told me. Have no fear. If he disowns you, which I doubt he would actually do, you can always come and live with me.”

Something inside Rory unclenched at her aunt’s words. It was a relief to know she had options on the off chance that her father followed through on his threat.

“Thank you, Aunt Alva. That’s very generous of you.”

The thought of living with her aunt had a certain appeal. While she suspected Aunt Alva would be less oblivious to her sneaking out than her father, it would be nice to live with someone who respected her as a person and didn’t view her merely as a means of advancing the family’s interests. The tricky part would be figuring out how to see Hank. Aunt Alva wasn’t any more likely than her father to approve of her involving herself with a pilot.

It didn’t matter anyway because her father hadn’t done anything yet.

“I should get going,” Rory said. “I have an appointment to meet with a pilot’s widow in twenty minutes.”

Rory headed out and got into the back of her chauffeured car, ready to cross town to meet another war widow. This had all started as a way to see Hank again, but she couldn’t bring herself to raise funds for an organization that didn’t exist. With Evelyn’s help, and some strategic dropping of her father’s name, she had created the Pilot’s Benevolent Association from whole cloth in two weeks. It was exhausting, but never in her life had she felt so filled with purpose.

The driver pulled to a stop in front of a neat brick townhouse on the Upper West Side with flowering window boxes. She got out and rang the doorbell for apartment number two.

The woman who opened the door didn’t look much older than Rory. She had thick, shining auburn hair and soulful green eyes. She was dressed in a cotton dress that had obviously been dyed black. The tiny flowers of the original print peeked through in places. In her arms, she held a sleeping infant. “Miss Belmont?” the woman said quietly.

“Yes, that’s me. And I assume you are Mrs. Prince?” Rory whispered.