Free Leon Uris by O'Hara's Choice Page A

her clothing.
    Zachary, she thought, this is everything!
    Her gasps rose to a pant. She reached for him, but he held her off.
    “I admire your confidence and candor, Amanda, and I appreciate your affection of the moment, but this is all we can have.”
    “Touch me one more time.”
    “No.”
    “Then kiss me again.”
    “Please, no.”
    “Then you are a coward!” she said with sudden anger.
    “Have you ever watched a man lashed with a cat-o’-nine-tailsand seen what he looks like after a month in solitary on bread and water?”
    “That is what it seems like for me to take on the curse of being a female. I exaggerate but I don’t look forward to a life of it.”
    Giggles from the girls on the garden bench reached their ears and a resumption of the waltz flowed out from the great hall.
    “Will I ever see you again?” he asked.
    “You’re stationed in Washington. After your debut here tonight,” she said, “we are bound to run into each other. I don’t feel we have to go out of our way to avoid each other.”
    Amanda had been given a dose of her own medicine, finding herself spiraling beyond her capacity to control. She had dared herself into a magic moment and knew instantly that she must continue to own those moments in the future.
    But it was so good, a thrill so wild, that the Marine standing before her could well take her over.
    Zachary’s mouth had gone dry. Fear? No, I’m not afraid, but was anything before ever like this?
    “I don’t think we have to go out of our way to avoid each other,” she repeated.
    “I want to hold you again,” he said.
    “No.”
    “It feels too good. You’re the one who’s afraid, Amanda.”
    “Damn you, Zachary!”
    “And damn you, Amanda!”

• 10 •
AMP
1888—Prichard’s Inn—the Next Night
    The night was blustery and vile by the time Captain Storm arrived. After exchanging greetings, the stable boy brought in logs and renewed the fire as Tobias devoured his meal. Mr. Prichard, in his nightshirt, set out numerous bottles for them on the hearth and bid them good night.
    The Gunny and the captain nailed their eyes to Ben Boone, who folded up a letter from the commandant.
    “We’ve been aced out of an entire new class of heavy-armored cruisers. They’ll be carrying fourteen-inch guns, but no Marines.”
    “So, I traveled all the way from China to hear this?”
    “The navy set aside some space for us to hang up a few hammocks in case of emergency between the numbers one and two boilers and next to the powder store six decks down.”
    “With a straw bottom to feed the sea horses,” Gunny said.
    “How many years you got in the Corps, Gunny?”
    He scratched his head and counted some on his fingers. “Twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven.”
    “What about you, Toby?”
    “Forty-four.”
    “Count me in for forty-three,” Ben said. “What’s that come to?”
    “A hundred and fourteen years,” the captain answered.
    “You shipping over, Gunny?”
    “Shipping out,” the Gunny corrected. “I’m looking forward to my thirty-year retirement parade.”
    “You may be the first man to have the entire Marine Corps pass in review,” Ben said. The other two knew what the major was getting around to.
    “You’ve sailed past more ship masts than there are men left in the Corps. Under a thousand, counting the three who mustered out last week.”
    “I’m going to be seventy in a few years,” Tobias said. “I know you men think I’m loaded with rare jade, but running a Chinese military school was a form of water torture. My back has a hundred and twenty stab wounds in it, all anonymous. Thank Christ I had Matilda with me. You’ve heard the term going native ? That’s me.”
    Ben blinked in sudden realization that Tobias Storm’s mighty mustache had turned white.
    “All we got left is John Philip Sousa and that Marine band in lion-tamer-red uniforms and a Marine anthem lifted from an Offenbach operetta. All we do is guard shipyards.”
    As though on cue,