Conquerors of the Sky by Thomas Fleming

Amanda and her brother Gordon drank cool orange juice on the porch of their turreted white mansion, which her father had named Casa Felicidad, the house of happiness. They stepped out of their night clothes and walked naked among the blossoming trees. “There is no shame,” her father said. “California is a new beginning. We can stop believing in ridiculous things like God. We’re free to be noble and good without God.”
    He let Amanda touch the dangling part of his body. She put her hand into the russet hair beneath her mother’s belly and felt her cleft. Her brother Gordon did the same things. Then in the dawn stillness on the dewy grass with orange blossoms drifting around them her father and mother showed Amanda and Gordon how men and women loved each other.
    Amanda gazed at Adrian and spoke the meaning of this memory carefully, softly, intending the words only for him, indifferent to what Clarissa thought. “For those who believe in it, California is Eden,” she said.

WAR HERO
    A week after he brought Amanda Cadwallader to dinner, Adrian Van Ness visited his mother’s Beacon Hill town house for tea. She was wearing the pearl choker that Geoffrey Tillotson had given her for her fortieth birthday. The Tiffany lamp beside the tea table cast a golden glow on the silvery jewels.
    â€œYour little girl from the golden West is charming,” Clarissa said. “So unspoiled. It’s hard to believe they even have schools out there.”
    â€œI think I’m in love with her,” Adrian said.
    â€œDarling, never confuse love and sympathy. You feel sorry for someone who’s such a lost lamb. Can you imagine her as hostess at a New York dinner party?”
    â€œShe’s very intelligent. She has excellent taste in poetry.”
    â€œYou mean she likes yours.”
    Clarissa Ames Van Ness smiled mockingly at Adrian. She was so sure of her
social and intellectual superiority, so certain of her ability to control her son. It was exactly what Adrian needed to convince him he was in love with Amanda Cadwallader.
    Physically, Amanda was the total opposite of Adrian’s dark, elegant mother. Amanda’s face was long and angular, more sensitive than beautiful. Her slim body was almost boyish. Her streaming auburn hair proclaimed both her femininity and her western innocence. All of which made her attractive to Adrian.
    Beneath his hyperactive intellect, Adrian was searching for a woman who would help him escape his mother’s looming presence. He was emotionally exhausted by their alternating bouts of affection and anger. He did not, he could not, stop loving Clarissa Van Ness. But he could not resolve her apparent indifference to his father’s fate.
    Defying and irritating his mother—and enjoying every minute of it—Adrian continued to see Amanda. He struggled to change her mind about the war in Europe. But her California naivete was impenetrable. She simply insisted America had everything to lose and nothing to gain by entering the war. Her knowledge of European history was zero, her interest in it zero minus. She did not really argue. She believed. Adrian told himself it was part of her innocence. He even began to doubt his own arguments in favor of intervention.
    They did not spend all their time arguing about peace and war. At the movies, Adrian teased Amanda about her resemblance to Mary Pickford, whose beatific smile and cascades of auburn ringlets had made her America’s sweetheart. Amanda disarmed him by taking his hand and whispering. “I only want to be your sweetheart.”
    As spring advanced, they went for walks in the country and rows on the Charles River. Amanda was a fervent believer in exercise in the open air. On one of these excursions on the water, Amanda revealed more than an enthusiasm for California’s scenery behind her smile. Adrian grew weary at the oars and suggested they tie up at a grassy spot on the river above