A hint of movement at her open door jarred her back to reality. It was Glenn.
"You're very good," he said from the doorway.
She was glad it was he, glad he was smiling at her, and glad he had found pleasure in her playing.
She smiled shyly. "Not so good. I've gotten careless."
"Maybe. But the range of your repertoire is wonderful. I know of only one other person who can play so many songs with such accuracy."
"Who?"
"Me."
There it was again: smugness. Or was he just teasing her? Magda decided to call his bluff. She held out the mandolin.
"Prove it."
Grinning, Glenn stepped into the room, pulled the three-legged stool over to the bed, seated himself, and reached for the mandolin. After making a show of "properly" tuning the instrument, he began to play. Magda listened in awe. For such a big man with such large hands, his touch on the mandolin was astonishingly delicate. He was obviously showing off, playing many of the same tunes but in a more intricate style.
She studied him. She liked the way his blue shirt stretched across the width of his shoulders. His sleeves were rolled back to the elbows, and she watched the play of the muscles and tendons under the skin of his forearms as he worked the mandolin. There were scars on those arms, crisscrossing the wrists and trailing up to the point where the shirt hid the rest of him. She wanted to ask him about those scars but decided it was too personal a question.
However, she could certainly question him about how he played some of the songs.
"You played the last one wrong," she told him.
"Which one?"
"I call it 'The Bricklayer's Lady.' I know the lyrics vary from place to place, but the melody is always the same."
"Not always," Glenn said. "This was how it was originally played."
"How can you be so sure?" That irritating smugness again.
"Because the village tauter who taught me was ancient when we met, and she's now been dead many years."
"What village?" Magda felt indignation touch her. This was her area of expertise. Who was he to correct her?
"Kranich—near Suceava."
"Oh ... Moldavian. That might explain the difference." She glanced up and caught him staring at her.
"Lonely without your father?"
Magda thought about that. She had missed Papa sorely at first and had felt at a loss as to what to do with herself without him. But at the moment she was very content to be sitting here with Glenn, listening to him play, and yes, even arguing with him. She should never have allowed him in her room, even with the door open, but he made her feel safe. And she liked his looks, especially his blue eyes, even though he seemed to be a master at preventing her from reading much in them.
"Yes," she said. "And no."
He laughed. "A straightforward answer—two of them!"
A silence grew between them, and Magda became aware that Glenn was very much a man, a long-boned man with flesh packed tightly to those bones. There was an aura of maleness about him that she had never noticed in anyone else. It had escaped her last night and this morning, but here in this tiny room it filled all the empty spaces. It caressed her, making her feel strange and special. A primitive sensation. She had heard of animal magnetism ... was that what she was experiencing now in his presence? Or was it just that he seemed so alive? He fairly bristled with vitality.
"You have a husband?" he asked, his gaze resting on the gold band on her right ring finger—her mother's wedding band.
"No."
"A lover then?"
"Of course not."
"Why not?"
"Because..." Magda hesitated. She didn't dare tell him that except in her dreams she had given up on the possibility of life with a man. All the good men she had met in the past few years were married, and the unmarried ones would remain so for reasons of their own or because no self-respecting woman would have them. But certainly all the men she had ever met were stooped and pallid things compared with the one who sat across from her now. "Because I'm beyond the age when that sort of thing has any importance!" she said finally.
"You're a mere babe!"
"And you? Are you married?"
"Not at the moment."
"Have you been?"
"Many times."
"Play another song!" Magda said in exasperation. Glenn seemed to prefer teasing to giving her straight answers.
But after a while the playing stopped and the talking began. Their conversation ranged over a wide array of topics, but always as they related to her. Magda found herself talking about everything that interested her, starting with music and with the Gypsies and Romanian rural folk who were the source of the music she loved, and on to her hopes and dreams and opinions. The words trickled out fitfully at first, but swelled to a steady stream as Glenn encouraged her to go on. For one of the few times in her life, Magda was doing all the talking. And Glenn listened. He seemed genuinely interested in whatever she had to say, unlike so many other men who would listen only as far as the first opportunity to turn the conversation to themselves. Glenn kept turning the talk away from himself and back toward her.
Hours slipped by, until shadows began darkening the inn. Magda yawned.
"Excuse me," she said, "I think I'm boring myself. Enough of me. What about you? Where are you from?"
Glenn shrugged. "I grew up all over western Europe, but I guess you could say I'm British."
"You speak Romanian exceptionally well—almost like a native."
"I've visited often, even lived with some Romanian families here and there."
"But as a British subject, aren't you taking a chance being in Romania? Especially with the Nazis so close?"
Glenn hesitated. "Actually, I have no citizenship anywhere. I have papers from various countries proclaiming my citizenship, but I have no country. In these mountains, one doesn't need a country."
A man without a country? Magda had never heard of such a thing. To whom did he owe allegiance? "Be careful. There aren't too many red-haired Romanians."
"True." He smiled and ran a hand through his hair. "But the Germans are in the keep and the Iron Guard stays out of the mountains if it knows what's good for it. I'll keep to myself while I'm here, and I shouldn't be here that long."
Magda felt a stab of disappointment—she liked having him around.
"How long?" She felt she had asked the question too quickly, but it couldn't be helped. She wanted to know.
"Long enough for a last visit before Germany and Romania declare war on Russia."
"That's not—!"
"It's inevitable. And soon." He rose from the stool.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to let you rest. You need it."
Glenn leaned forward and pressed the mandolin back into her hands. For a moment their fingers touched and Magda felt a sensation like an electric shock, jolting her, making her tingle all over. But she did not pull her hand away ... Oh, no ... because that would make the feeling stop, would halt the delicious warmth spreading throughout her body and down along her legs.
She could see that Glenn felt it, too, in his own way.
Then he broke contact and retreated to the door. The feeling ebbed, leaving her a trifle weak. Magda wanted to stop Glenn, to grasp his hand and tell him to stay. But she could not imagine herself doing such a thing and was shocked that she even wanted to. Uncertainty held her back, too. The emotions and sensations boiling within were new to her. How would she control them?