Book Two Josh Roden Conway Chapter 17

The boat went steadily, cutting the waves with its sound like the flowing of stiff silk.

Charlotte and Sutton and McClane, stranded at Dunkirk on their way to England, had been taken on board the naval transport Victoria. They were the only passengers besides some young soldiers, and these had left them a clear space on the deck. Charlotte was sitting by herself under the lee of a cabin when McClane came to her there.

He was straddling and rubbing his hands. Something had pleased him.

"I knew," he said, "that some day I should get you three. And that I should get those ambulances."

She couldn't tell whether he meant that he always got what he wanted or that he had foreseen John Conway's fate which would ultimately give it him.

"The ambulances--Yes. You always wanted them."

"Not more than I wanted you and Sutton."

He seemed aware of her secret antagonism, yet without resentment, waiting till it had died down before he spoke again. He was sitting beside her now.

"What are you going to do about Conway?"

"Nothing. Except lie about him to his father."

"That's all right as long as you don't lie about him to yourself."

"I've lied about him to other people. Never to myself. I was in love with him, if that's what you mean. But he finished that. What's finished is finished. I haven't a scrap of feeling for him left."