Read Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) for Free Online

Seattle if Cousin Margot hadn’t suggested it. Allison remembered her from her first debutante party, tall and remote in a beaded silk dress and headband. Her young man had been interesting, the one-armed officer in his dress uniform, with vivid blue eyes and a touch of silver in his black hair. And he’d gotten into an actual fistfight with Preston! That had been marvelous, just like a film.
    She hadn’t been allowed to watch it, of course. The moment it started, her mother had dragged her into the house and up the stairs, as if watching two men fight would soil her forever. She kept the curtains drawn and wouldn’t let Allison come downstairs until Uncle Dickson came up to tell them the excitement was over. Allison had been forced to miss the end of the drama, and the rest of the event was just like all the other deb parties, boring, predictable, stifling in their sameness.
    Her adventure on Berengaria had been the only real diversion since the fistfight. She remembered it with longing.
    She had hurried out of the First Class Lounge and slipped down the staircase amidships. It was the first time since leaving Southampton she had been alone, and though she knew her mother would be angry, Allison felt alive, bubbling with champagne and reckless with freedom. She soon found herself standing in the doorway of the Second Class Lounge, where she gripped the doorjamb to keep from losing her balance as the ship rocked.
    The molded ceiling here was low, trapping the haze of cigar smoke emanating from the smoking room next door. A jazz band was playing a sloppy but energetic version of “The Sheik of Araby.” Men and women, some not much older than she was, were dancing, many more of them than in the First Class Lounge.
    They wore all varieties of evening dress, from smoking jackets and loose ties for the men to georgette dresses for the ladies, some of which reached no lower than midcalf. Beads and feathers, all of which Adelaide deplored, flew as the dancers spun around the parquet floor. They made Allison’s embroidered gauze dress, which trailed to the floor at the back and had been purchased just weeks ago in Paris, seem staid. The vendeuse had sworn it was going to be all the rage in the coming year, but now it seemed already out of date. Allison dropped her wrap and tugged at the neckline of the gown to make it dip a little lower. She couldn’t do much about the length, but she strove for a sophisticated pose in the doorway, hips thrust forward in the S-silhouette the Vogue models used. She tried not to look lost as she glanced around for someplace to sit.
    Before she found it, a man strutted up to her, grinning. “Gosh, a new face!” he said, in an accent she couldn’t quite place. He held out his ungloved hand in invitation. “Where’ve you been all this time, fair lady?”
    Before she could answer, the ship pitched wildly. Allison found herself gripping the strange man’s hand for balance. The people on the dance floor cried out and seized one another. Even the band faltered for a moment.
    As Berengaria righted herself, the man holding Allison’s hand laughed down at her. He was young, she saw, redheaded, and liberally freckled. He exclaimed, “Aren’t you scared?”
    “No,” she said. She tried to free her hand, but he refused to give it up.
    “Then dance with me, strange maiden!” he demanded. “I swore I would dance with every beautiful girl on this ship, but I’ve missed you somehow!” Still holding her hand, the sweat on his palm visibly staining her white gloves, he bowed, more deeply this time. “Tommy Fellowes, at your service. Newly freed from Exeter College, Oxford University, and de lighted to make your acquaintance.”
    Tommy Fellowes’s hands were bare, but he was otherwise properly attired in a tuxedo with a white vest and tie. He sported a wonderful set of dimples in his freckled cheeks, and Allison couldn’t help laughing with him. She was quite sure Adelaide would have despised