Duchess (15 page)

Yes, one meeting with Fletcher and Rolfe, with her standing nearly outside the conversation as they negotiated for rights to control her career, made her realize the reality of her position at the studio. Fragile at best; at worst, redundant. She refused to use the word
replaceable
, but after six weeks, Fletcher and even Irene had taken over management so skillfully, the gap of her absence now would close behind her, without even a sucking sound to signify her departure.

But Irene was right. Rosie had to return triumphant from this last film, this last tour through Europe, or she'd have no place to return to.

“Rolfe seems to think that this role could be my best. And we both know I need something to resurrect my career.” Rosie leaned into the mirror of her dressing table, drawing on a line of black liner across her lid. Tonight, she'd appear on Rolfe's arm, make a splash at the Coconut Grove, before she'd leave on a flight tomorrow to New York City then board a ship to Europe.

A year with Duke Van Horne, in his presence, dodging those blue eyes.

Irene seemed to read her heart. “And the duke? Why is he doing this? Does he still care for you?”

“I don't know.” She closed one eye, pasted on a line of fake lashes. Kept her eye closed as they dried. She'd wear a bejeweled turban instead of her wig, a fashion statement. “He says it is because he couldn't stop thinking about me, or at least I thought that's what he said. But there didn't seem the faintest hint of warmth in his words. Almost as if he begrudged my appearance in his thoughts.” She kept seeing the resigned, almost sad expression as he took her hand. Pity more than love, perhaps. “He said he forgave me for hurting him.”

Irene leaned over Sammy's shoulder, pointed out a picture, read the words on the page. Then she looked up and met Rosie's gaze in the mirror. “I hardly think he should have to forgive you.”

“I lied to him. I didn't tell him I was married.”

“He didn't mention he was a duke.” Irene raised an eyebrow.

Rosie pasted on the other eyelash. Kept her eye closed. “So, we both had secrets. Maybe we just start over. Colleagues.”

“Is that what you want? To start over with Rolfe? You don't think you'll fall in love with him again?”

She opened her eyes, blinked. Yes, she'd be the delight of the cameras tonight. “No.”

Irene frowned.

Rosie uncapped her lipstick, painted the ox-blood red onto her lips. Smacked them. Then turned to Irene. “Listen, I can admit that Rolfe is dangerous, with those blue eyes, that way he makes me long to be in his arms. But if I've learned anything in the past eight years, it's not to give away my heart. This business is fickle, and I have to look out for myself.” She got up and stepped into her closet. A black evening gown, sequined straps, a low back, hung on a hanger. She let her silk dressing gown slide to the floor as Louise released the dress from the hanger. She helped Rosie into the gown, and it smoothed over her too-thin body. But she'd put on weight, even in the last four days since Rolfe's appearance.

She'd have her figure back by the time they started shooting. And someday soon, her hair.

“And what about us? We'll miss you terribly, you know.”

Her gaze went to Sammy, reading on the floor, his dark hair tousled, the sun on his cheeks. A terrible knot of pain tightened in Rosie's chest.

“You'll send me pictures and visit. Please visit.”

Irene got up and nudged him with her foot. “Of course we will,” she said, but her words lacked vigor. She helped Sammy off the floor and didn't meet Rosie's eyes.

“What is it, Irene?”

She sighed. Then kissed the top of Sammy's head. “Run along to the kitchen, sweetheart, and ask Dorian for some sugar sandwiches.”

When he'd left, Irene turned to her, her eyes red. “You're like a sister to me, Rosie, and you and Sammy are all I have. My parents have disowned me, although they love Sammy with all their hearts. If you don't come back—”

Rosie crossed the room and took Irene's hands. “I'm coming back, I promise.”

“You better.” Irene managed a smile. “And Rolfe Van Horne better be everything he says he is.”

She leaned in and gave Rosie a quick kiss on the cheek then squeezed her hands and followed Sammy.

Yes. Their futures depended on Rolfe and his glorious plans.

She stood at the bureau mirror as Louise worked the clasp to her pearls, the ones that dangled down her open back, a memory of Dashielle and his generosity. Or more accurately, his guilt. Then she grabbed her gloves off the bureau.

“I'll have your clothing packed and shipped to the airport for tomorrow's departure,” Louise said.

“Thank you.” Rosie walked over to her window, hidden behind the closed drapes. She'd kept them drawn most of the summer to keep out the heat, capture the cool air. Now, she flung them open.

The late-hour sunshine poured into the room, rose-gold across the floor of her carpet, draping over the satin white sheets of her bed. Twilight bathed the neighborhood of Beverly Hills.

Yes, Rolfe Van Horne better be everything he said he was, give her everything he promised, because this was her last chance to be brilliant.

Her last chance to hear the applause.

She had agreed to meet Rolfe at the club, and she climbed into the backseat of her roadster, acquiescing to the studio's—or perhaps Rolfe's—insistence that she have a driver. She drank in the summer redolence of the manicured lawns, the English climbing roses, the sycamore trees, the towering palms along the Beverly Hills Boulevard. She loved this town and had thought, until six weeks ago, that she belonged here.

“No one can play this role like you can. If you don't do it, I won't produce it. But if you trust me, you will get everything you've always wanted
.”

Happiness? Peace? The sense that she couldn't lose it all, that it wouldn't slip out of her hands like sand?

She had wrapped a silk scarf around her neck, worn a small jacket for the ride over, and now held her turban in place, just in case the wind decided to take it. Still, she managed to wave to a few onlookers parked outside the Ambassador Hotel hoping to spot a starlet, or perhaps Grayson Clarke.

She allowed her driver to let her out on the sidewalk, under the long parapet that led to the Grove and couldn't help but be reminded of the night Dashielle had sold her to Rooney.

The night she'd seen Rolfe again, sitting at the table, wearing a look of disapproval.

It had vanished now as he emerged from where he waited in the corridor. He smiled at her, although she noticed it didn't quite touch his eyes. Polite, not warm. Dashing, not dear. Still, every inch a duke, in a tuxedo with tails, a top hat, a white silk scarf around his neck. He held out his elbow, his hands gloved. “You look beautiful.”

“I'm too thin,” she whispered as the flashbulbs splattered dots before her eyes.

He leaned down into her ear as they walked the long red carpet. “Are you ready for this?” The mood of a swing band drifted into the night, now settling like dust around them. They reached the door and he stopped at it, turning to her, searching her eyes.

She looked for the warmth and found nothing except the concern of her new director, her boss. Hoping she might hold up her end of the deal.

No, she wouldn't fall for him, not again. Because if this failed, her heart just might be the only thing that remained to call her own.

“I'm ready,” she said and met his eye, giving him her starlet smile, something printable as the press caught it.

“Very good,” he said. “Smile and be brilliant.”

Then he opened the door into the gala of her last chance.

Clearly, Rolfe saw something in her that she didn't, because this role he'd supposedly written for her didn't suit Rosie in the least.

A servant girl? From England? The script had her dressed in a dowdy uniform, buttoned up, austere and boring for the first twenty pages. Nothing of a hint of bombshell.

Not until her character escaped England for Belgium then Paris and became a courier in the underground resistance did Bridget become interesting, and even then she was tough and stubborn, not seductive and beautiful.

Certainly Rolfe didn't see Rosie as dowdy and boring?

But perhaps he did, because after that night on his arm at the Coconut Grove, and the interminable three-week trip to Paris, he'd all but abandoned her.

As if, after his initial words to woo her, he'd gotten what he'd come for.

Maybe he did pity her, his former professed love morphing into something of tragedy. Frankly, she understood that much more than his forgiveness.

Still, despite his forgiveness, or his pity, he seemed almost annoyed by her attempts to lure him into convivial conversation. She'd tried on the plane to delight him with a story of Rooney and his attempts to turn her into a jungle woman. He'd listened with what seemed a faux smile. Even as they ate together, he wouldn't look at her, preferring to stare out the window at the ocean.

Maybe he simply worried over the movie. It seemed that signing her had been his first step, instead of the last. He still had to scout locations, cast the remaining parts, meet with the director to approve the set, makeup, and costumes, and a thousand other details. No wonder he seemed tense. She should have asked more questions before her desperation made her sign away her life for a year or more.

Now, as if to confirm her growing feeling of abandonment, Rolfe had simply plunked her in this Paris apartment, her script in hand, and disappeared.

He'd also set her up with a dialogue coach, a French woman by the name of Nellie who fussed about Rosie's pronunciation of the British servant's dialect and made her walk the hall, chin up, like she might actually have to serve tea. Nellie reminded her of a thinner, more French version of her mother, but apparently Nellie Thoreau had worked with the actors from the French stage, possibly even Sarah Bernhardt, in her final days.

That made Rosie sit up and listen, take the woman's coaching to heart.

The scent of roses from the flower market on the street below made it all the way into the open window of her sixth-floor penthouse apartment, perfuming her sitting room as she lounged on the chaise, her script in a scattered mess around her. She'd begun a fresh read-through, highlighting her scenes, playing them out, before casting the pages to the floor in disgust.

It wasn't that she couldn't play the part, but rather, it just didn't suit her. She refused to be the woman destroyed by a broken heart. Even on the silver screen.

The street noise of the busy heart of Paris, at Chatelet, drifted inside, along with the coo of the pigeons on her balcony. The filmy gauze curtain fluttered in the wind, as if beckoning her to the streets below, to the nearby Garden de Tuileries, the Louvre. Rolfe must be mocking her because he picked an apartment directly facing the grand architecture of the Theatre Musicale from one bedroom balcony and the Hotel de Ville and Theatre Populaire from the other.

Paris conjured too many memories: Dash and the way he'd twisted her heart into a knot back in the day when she gave it away too easily. Lilly and the scare she gave Rosie the day she followed a Frenchman through Paris. Her mother, weeping in quiet darkness as she surrendered to the futility of the search for Jack, Rosie's brother. The epic funeral of Sarah Bernhardt, masses filling the streets, igniting Rosie's dream of the stage, stardom, the longing for applause.

“We won't be here long,” Rolfe had said as they ate dinner two nights ago, when he'd taken her out to a café along the
Champs-Elysees
. So little had changed in twelve years: the flower vendors still parked on the corners selling roses, carnations, and lilies; Peugeots and Mercedes clogging the streets along with horse and carriage; newspaper boys in berets shouting the headlines as they paced the sidewalks. She should pick up a Paris
Chronicle
, see if Uncle Oliver still listed his name on the masthead as owner.

“I just have to scout a location for the final sequence of scenes,” Rolfe said.

“And then to London?”

“Actually, then to Manchester. We'll be shooting at Woolshire Castle.”

“Where Bridget works as a servant.”

“And meets Jardin, the man she believes she loves.”

“This is the man Master Colin kills, or so she believes, also.” She'd read the script through once, but, “I don't understand why you make her wait so long before she realizes that her employer is trying to protect her? Don't you think it would help for her to know that Jardin was using her to obtain military secrets from her employer?”

“She has to learn to trust Colin, despite this lie she believes about him. I want her to fall in love with him despite herself.”

“Do you really think that is realistic?”

He'd stared at her then, something entering his eyes, then swallowed and turned away, watching the traffic along the street. “Maybe only in the movies,” he said quietly.

Only in the movies, indeed. How did he expect her to convincingly play a woman who falls in love with her betrayer? Instead she wanted to shake Bridget by the shoulders.
Don't give away your heart!

Now, Rosie picked up her script, flipping through the pages to the epic scene where the man she loves dies, poisoned. She sank down on the red velvet divan and tried to see the scene like Nellie said, to hear the sounds of the wind in the barn, to taste the anticipation as she went in search of the man she loved.

INT: CASTLE BARN – NIGHT

The manicured paddocks of the estate horses. Clean but eerie in the darkness

JARDIN lays in a stall, in the darkness moaning, sweating. The horses are still, glassy eyes watching him
.

BRIDGET enters, searching for JARDIN. We see her delight at their clandestine meeting turn to panic as she hears moaning. She betrays horror and confusion as she finds JARDIN hiding in the stall
.

BRIDGET

(horrified)

What is the matter with you? I was waiting, where were you?

JARDIN

(coughing)

I'm so sorry, Bridget. I wasn't clever enough
.

BRIDGET

I don't understand. (clawing at his clothing to find a wound.)

Are you hurt? I'll get help
.

JARDIN

(catching her hand)

Shh. It's too late
.

(He presses her hand to his mouth then coughs)
.

BRIDGET

Are you ill?

JARDIN

Poisoned, I fear. Your master is a sly one
.

BRIDGET

(disbelieving his words)

Master Colin did this to you? Why?

JARDIN

(Jardin doubles over in pain, moaning.)

Leave me, Bridget—

BRIDGET

Never—

JARDIN

(Jardin pushes her away)

Leave! Please, leave! Go!

BRIDGET

(Bridget arises, panic on her face in the dim light of her lamp. Backs away.)

I'll never forgive him. Never!

“It's just awful.”

Rosie tossed the pages across the room. She got up, walked over to the carved marble fireplace.

“That's something a writer never wants to see.”

She turned and startled at Rolfe in the doorway, his eyes on her, just enough wound in them for her to taste shame. “I came by to remind you of dinner tonight, but perhaps I should stay in my hotel room, rewriting my script.” He put the lilies on the table then began to pick up the pages.

In the afternoon light, with him dressed in a double-breasted linen suit, a fedora, he looked almost pedestrian, especially when he took off his hat, set it on the table, and followed with his jacket over the back of a chair. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt above the elbows. Then he sat on the divan, staring at the papers. Frowning.

“I'm sorry I threw them. If I had known you were standing there, I would have—”

“Lied to me?” He didn't smile, and she longed for the humor to appear in his eyes, but perhaps that had died over the ocean as well.

She folded her arms. A job. Her last chance. She swallowed. “If you want the truth, here it is. The critics are going to eat us alive, and we'll be laughed out of every theater across America.”

His lips tightened in a grim line.

She couldn't surrender to compassion, not when their careers hinged on this script. Or, at least her career. He'd always be a duke, she supposed. “Listen, I've read hundreds of scripts over the past five years.” She sat on one of the Louix IVX chairs. “If you must know, the romance—it's not believable. If you want me to play this role, this one you supposedly wrote for me, you have to write a convincing romance, not one built in the mind of a man.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me?”

“Rolfe, you've written this story from the man's perspective. It's simply too easy. First, you break her heart, and then—” She got up, and searched through the pages on the floor, finding the right one. “You have her accepting Colin's word for the fact he's been protecting her and having her declare her love.”

He shook his head. “I know you don't believe that she can fall in love with Colin after what she thinks he's done, but—”

“It's not just that. Let's start with her reactions to Jardin's death. Do you think she'd truly believe that Colin, her master, would do this? Even if she loved Jardin, she'd have some disbelief that Colin would want to destroy her life. Even if Colin is a terrible man.”

“Which he's not,” Rolfe said.

“Exactly. He's her benefactor. He rescued her when her mother died, took her into his castle to live. Yes, she became a servant, but he treated her kindly, taught her to read and write. Almost as if she might be a daughter. She wouldn't believe that he would hurt her. In fact, she might blame herself before she blamed him.”

Rolfe was staring at her. “Why?”

“She might tell herself that she should have never fallen in love, that if she had been stronger, then Jardin would have never been killed.”

Rolfe frowned at her. “But that's absurd. It wasn't her fault Jardin was working for the Germans. It wasn't her fault that he got in over his head.”

“She doesn't know that. All she knows is that Jardin died and that he blames Colin. She might blame Colin eventually, but she'll look at herself first and figure out what she did wrong.” She lifted a shoulder, came over to sit beside him. Sitting this close, she smelled his cologne lifting off him, the brush of his strong arm against her. The memory of being in his embrace rose too easily, and she shoved it away. “And then, there's this part. When Colin comes to her at the end and confesses that he loves her, by this time, she's so alone she can't possibly believe that he's been there all this time, protecting her.”

He seemed nonplussed by her presence next to him. “But she's seen glimpses of him. Times when he was driving away, or across a French café.”

“She did?” She leaned over and paged through his script. “I didn't see that.”

He looked crestfallen, for the first time, as if her words might actually mean something to him. It stirred something inside her. “Colin needs to understand the process she has to go through to understand that he loves her. See, for a man, a romance is about conquering the obstacles between himself and wooing the woman. It's about a journey to win the woman's heart. But for a woman, a romance is about accepting the truth that he loves her. Bridget accepts this too easily.”

She wasn't sure where that came from, but it felt right. It took years for her to believe Guthrie loved her, and as for Dashielle, she'd been right about him, hadn't she? “The truth is, after all she's gone through, she might not accept it at all.”

Rolfe was staring at the pages. “Indeed.” He sighed, put the script on the table. “So how would you write it?”

She considered him a moment. “Really?”

He reached over to where her lemonade sat on the table next to the divan. “I'm listening.” He took a sip of the lemonade, made a face. “I don't know how you stand it so tart.”

“I like it tart, it helps my voice. At least that's what Nellie says.”

He put it away. “So, Fitzgerald, rewrite the scene for me.”

Was that a touch of humor? She got up, walked away from him, glanced back, hoping for a grin.

She got something enigmatic but enough to suggest he might not be kidding.

“Okay, I'm Bridget, who, having just been rescued from the clutches of the Germans, returns to her home in the Paris countryside. She is packing, ready to run again, when Colin appears on her doorstep. He's dressed in the attire of a German general, the same attire he used to spring her from the prison.”

Rolfe rose. “He has had enough of her risking her life and wants to convince her to escape with him, back home to England.”

“But she's found purpose in what she's doing, especially after her losses. It's the only life she has.”

“But she has so much more.” He shook his head. “She just can't see it.”

“Maybe, but Colin will have to convince her of that,” she said.

He straightened, jutted his chin.

“What are you doing?”

“Becoming a German general. I'm trying to pretend my bones have stiffened.”