She laughed aloud. “So did I.”

“But you must do a lot of that as an ambassador's wife. I think I would find it exhausting.”

“Sometimes I do.” For some reason it was easy to be honest with him. “Most of the time I enjoy it. My husband makes it very easy for me. He shares a lot of the burdens.” Nick fell silent at her words, thinking of Hillary dancing with the Italian, and as she watched his face she felt that she had not been very tactful. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say …” But the added words only made matters worse, and Nick looked up at her with a sad, boyish grin.

“Don't apologize. I don't think the state of my marriage is much of a secret. There's very little we share, except our son, and a mutual distrust of each other.”

“I'm sorry.” Her voice was very soft in the warm night. “It must be difficult for you.”

He sighed softly and looked up at the sky before looking back at her. “I guess it is …I don't know anymore, Liane. This is all I ever remember between us. It's been this way for a long time.” It was the first time he had called her by her first name but she didn't mind it. “I suppose she takes more liberties now than she did at first. But she's fought against this marriage since the very beginning. My captive bride.” He tried to smile but it was a feeble attempt. “It's a far cry from the romance you described to me between you and your husband.”

“Marriage is never easy every day. We have our difficult moments too, but we share common goals, common loves and interests.”

“And you're nothing like my wife.” He looked her straight in the eye. And he suddenly realized that she must have heard them that afternoon. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. And she sensed that he knew. Had he asked her just then, she wouldn't have denied it. She sensed that this man needed a friend, and some open, honest talk. It was as though something within him were cracking wide open and he needed a hand to hold. She was willing to lend him hers for a time, and he felt that and was grateful to her. “My marriage is a joke, Liane. And the joke is on me. She's never been faithful to me right from the first. She has to prove that she doesn't belong to anyone, least of all me.” It was rejection of the cruelest kind.

“Are you faithful to her?” Liane's voice was gentle in the night.

“I have been. I'm not sure why. Foolish, I suppose.” And he felt the fool now, remembering the bite on her neck. And as he thought of it, something deep inside him began to stir. “I shouldn't tell you my problems, Liane. I must sound like a horse's ass, standing here, moaning about my wife. You know, the damnedest thing is that I'm not even sure I care. I saw her dancing with someone tonight, and I didn't feel a thing. I care about what people think, what they see, but I'm not really sure I care about her. I did once. But I think it's finally all gone.” He stood looking out to sea, thinking of the years ahead. He would stay with her until Johnny grew up, he knew, but after that? He raised his eyes to Liane's again. “It makes me feel old sometimes, as though the good times are all gone, the happy moments to share, the ecstasy of being in love. I don't think I'll ever see that again.” His voice was sad and soft and she left her chair and walked to where he stood.

“Don't say that. You have years and years ahead, you can't know what life has in store.” Armand often said that and it was true, he had learned that after the death of Odile, after a year of despair, suddenly there had been Liane.

“You know what life has in store for me, my friend? It has business deals and steel contracts and luncheons with important men. That's not much with which to warm the heart on a cold night.”

Her voice was as soft as his. “You have your son.”

Nick nodded, and she thought she saw tears in his eyes. “I do. Thank God for that. I would die without him.” She was touched by his love for his son, but she also knew that it was unhealthy for a man his age to have only that. He needed a woman he could love and who could love him. He looked at her ruefully then. “I'm thirty-eight years old, and I feel like there's nothing left.” It was a side of him she would never have known had they not talked that night. He seemed so confident, so sure of life, but she hadn't known about Hillary before, and her constant travels through other men's beds.

“Why don't you divorce her and try to get custody of the boy?” Indeed ships made for open talk between strangers.

“Do you really think I'd have a chance?” It was clear from the tone of his voice that he thought he did not.

“You might.”

“In the States, where they believe in motherhood and apple pie? Besides, I'd have to prove what she is, and the scandal would destroy us all. I don't want Johnny to know about that.”

“Eventually he'll know anyway, if that's what she is.”

He nodded. In a way she was right. But he also knew that his chances of getting custody of Johnny were very slim. She had unlimited family money to back her up, and he didn't know of any man who had defeated his wife in court on a custody case. He could never win. “I think, my friend, that I have to make do with what I've got. At least for the next year, we'll have a change of scene. I'm going to have a lot to do over here.”

“We all will.” Liane stared out into the night and then back at him. “Looking out at this, it's hard to believe that there's a troubled world out there.” She was curious about what she would find in France, if Armand was right that in a very short time there would be a war. “What will you do if the war comes, Nick? Go back to the States?”

“I guess I would. I might stay over here for a while, to finish my work, if I could. But I still don't believe we'll have to worry about that this year.” He knew that the Germans were getting prepared, he could tell from the volume of his work, but he also knew that they weren't ready yet. “Hopefully we'll all get home in time. And America will probably never get into a war over there. At least that's what Roosevelt says.”

“Armand says that Roosevelt doesn't mean what he says.” She was being very honest with him. “He says he's been preparing the country for war for several years.”

“I think he's just playing it safe. And it's good for the economy. It keeps people at work.”

She spoke without accusation, but with truth. “That must also be good for you.” And she was right. His steel contracts had boomed. But he leveled his eyes into hers.

“It's also good for you.” He knew only too well how successful Crockett Shipping had been, particularly in recent years. And she knew exactly what he meant, but she shook her head.

“I don't feel a part of that anymore.” Not since her uncle George had filled her father's shoes. Emotionally, she had severed her ties with that life a long time before.

“But you are a part of it, Liane.” He remembered now that she had been her father's only heir, and he marveled at how little it showed, unlike Hillary, who flaunted her expensive dresses and her furs and her jewels. There was something very quiet about Liane. If one had not been aware of her maiden name, one would never have known who or what she was. “You have a responsibility too.”

“To whom?” She looked troubled at his words.

“One day, if there is a war, your ships will carry troops. They'll go into battle, men will die.”

“There's nothing we can do to stop that.”

Nick smiled sadly at her. “Unfortunately, you're right. I think about it sometimes, about how people use our steel to build their war machines. But what can I do to change that? Not much. Nothing, in fact.”

“But you trade with the Germans, don't you?”

He hesitated, but not for long. “I do. I'll be in Berlin in three weeks. But I also do business with Italy and Belgium and England and France. It's a big industry, Liane, and industries have no heart.”

“Men do.” She looked directly at him, as though she expected something more.

“It's not as simple as that.”

“That's what Armand says.”

“He's right.”

She didn't answer him for a time, he had awoken something in her that she hadn't thought of in a long time, her responsibility to her father's shipping line. She put her dividends in the bank, put away the checks that came in, but she never thought anymore about where the ships went or what they did. It made her feel very helpless now. She couldn't begin to imagine questioning her uncle George. He would have been outraged at the thought, but if her father was still alive, she would have known more. “Did you ever meet my father, Nick?”

“No. We had someone else on the West Coast when he was alive. I was on Wall Street burning the midnight oil in those days.”

“He was a very special man.” It was easy for him to believe as he looked across the rail at Liane, and without thinking about it, he reached out and took her hand in his.

“You're very special too.”

“No, I'm not.” She left her hand in his, it was warm and powerful and strong, different from Armand's long, aristocratic fingers, lined by age since they had first held hers.

“You don't know how good you are, it's part of what's special about you. And you don't know how wise or how strong. You helped me a lot tonight. I'm growing tired of it all, and standing here with you, suddenly life doesn't seem quite so bad.”

“It's not. And it'll be better for you again one day.”

“Why do you think that?” He was still holding her hand and she smiled at him. He was a beautiful man, in the flower of his finest years, and she hated to see him waste them with a wife like his, but she felt good things about this man.

“I believe in justice, that's all.”

“Justice?” He looked amused.

“I think that difficult things happen in one's life in order to make one strong, but in the end decent people are rewarded with good people at their sides, and good things happen to them.”