“You’d better not be kissing me,” I told him. “You’d forget yourself sometime and then Ben would be sure we were crazy. Ben doesn’t know anything about the secret except that my twin brother is in the army under an assumed name.”
“Don’t worry about that ten-minute egg,” he told me. “We’ll negotiate some way of keeping you safe and worryless.... I’ll try to get a transfer. Get you in with me!”
“Well—I don’t know,” I admitted doubtfully. “It would be lots of fun, but ... well, I don’t know.”
Then Ben arrived and we started out on a party that turned out to be loads of fun because the Captain could not make love to any of the women and none of the women could make love to me—because whenever anyone tried it, he just burst out laughing so hard that I had to laugh, too. We were just like a couple of kids, and Ben thought we were crazy.
Maybe we were, but the Captain seemed to be very happy. And I’m damned sure I was!
—7—
Although the Captain hadn’t had any chance to make love to me, we became better acquainted and everything was going along smoothly. He didn’t pay any attention to the pretty mam’selles any more and he didn’t drink but only a little now and then, and Ben said, “Damfidont believe you guys is what they calls satiated! Grog shops and ladies parlors don’t appeal to ya atall any more.... Well, it takes a strong he-man to stand the gaff in this burg—which bein’ so, I’ll see ya later!”
We were glad to be alone for a while—and if another Intelligence man hadn’t come in, I think we both might have forgotten that I was in a man’s uniform.... Oh, I loved that man so terribly much: so much it almost hurt sometimes!
He was a wild man! He wanted us to be married just as soon as possible!
But we were leaving Paris next day for a trip down the coast, to look over the bases at Brest, St. Nazaire and Bordeaux, so I wouldn’t become the secret bride of Captain Clark Winstead for at least a few more weeks—all I hoped was that nothing happened now to ruin everything. But, of course, it would be my luck.... Well, we couldn’t cross a river until we got to it, and then maybe we’d find a bridge. I hadn’t fully recovered from the shock of the last good luck I had: I mean about Jay-Jay, for it was just luck and nothing else that the Captain ran into Leon and mistaking him for me insisted upon taking him to his rooms. It was just dumb luck: if it had happened the day before, or the day after or an hour later, it wouldn’t have done me the least bit of good, and I don’t know what the Captain would have done under the circumstances, if Leon hadn’t been there to take my place in the ordeal.... As I say, I couldn’t expect too much luck—but I did hope that Jay-Jay was finished, once and for all.... As for marrying Captain Winstead, well, that was something we’d just have to worry about for a while.