Duchess (2 page)

“Don't jump.”

The voice found Rosie on the balcony of the presidential suite of the Taft, where Fletcher had taken rooms in the name of the studio. Inside, through the open French doors, a small orchestra played tunes from the show, and white-gloved waiters passed golden champagne around in fluted glasses to the few remaining guests. Rosie cradled a glass in her hands, nursing it really, planning to leave it untouched.

Her stomach had enough trouble staying calm.

She turned and frowned at the man entering the balcony. “What?”

He looked about thirty. He wore a tuxedo but had taken off his jacket, turning up the sleeves, opening the collar, as if to be done with the nonsense of formality. Still, he had a regal bearing about him, and when his eyes caught hers, something shifted inside her, a sense that she might know him.

But she couldn't place him as he smiled, raised an eyebrow, nodded. “You were brilliant. And beautiful. I've never seen anyone transform on the screen from small-town girl to starlet quite like you did. You're an amazing actress. Which is why I would hate to see you as a splat on the pavement.”

She moved away from the edge of the balcony. “Don't be silly. I wasn't going to jump.”

“You looked like you might be gauging the distance to the street.”

She rubbed her arms, gave a tinny laugh, and it sounded as if she'd had more than a sip of that champagne. “No, I'm just tired. I want to go to bed.” She cast a look inside and spotted Dash sitting on the arm of the gold sofa, gesticulating with his hands.

Concocting a new movie deal for her, she had no doubt. Good. She wanted to get back to work. No more cheesecake publicity photos. No more posing at the Brown Derby over a chicken salad sandwich or at the Coconut Club, being dipped in a tango by Valentino or that handsy John Barrymore.

And if the studio made over her boudoir one more time, she might take to sleeping at the Roosevelt Hotel.

She turned back to the balcony railing, wrapping her hand around the edge. She'd long ago kicked off her shoes, untied the fur stole from her shoulders, and left them with Dash's coat on a chair inside.

“So that accounts for the forlorn look. You're waiting for Parks.” He leaned over and braced his arms on the balcony. The wind reaped his smell, sent it back to her, a mix of exotic cologne and cigar smoke. He wore enough of five-o'clock shadow to temper the look of aristocracy, but she pegged him as one of her mother's set, New York Society. “I hate to break your heart, but he's got a reputation with the ladies.”

Once upon a time, yes. But he'd changed.

Except, he hadn't told the press that, had he? Why he wanted to keep their marriage a secret, she couldn't understand, despite his claims that it wouldn't look good for her career for her to be married to her producer.

She shrugged as if she didn't care. “I'm just trying to figure out who that woman was I saw on the screen tonight. I sat there in the theater, a cold sweat down my back, trying to comprehend that the person on the screen was really me.”

“Is it?”

She frowned at him, something quick.

He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were brilliant.” He raised his glass to her. “To the woman on the screen.”

She clinked her glass, forced a smile. “To her.”

“Your fans seem to love the woman they see. I think you shut down all of Fiftieth Street. They were still lined up after the premiere.”

She glanced at the bouquet of orchids a male admirer had thrust at her. No, it just didn't feel real.

“Are you a school chum of Dash's?”

He laughed and glanced at her. “No.”

“What's your name?”

“Rafe. Rafe Horne.”

He had blue eyes, so blue they contained a magic. Enough to steal the words from her mouth.

She took a sip of the champagne. Regretted it, although it helped her forage up her voice. “Your accent tells me you're not from around here.”

“Europe. But I have family on this side of the pond. I'm visiting. And doing some business.”

“And what business is that?”

He carried what looked like a glass of orange juice in his hand. “The movie business,” he said, but he winked at her.

Oh, so that's how he knew Dash. Maybe he'd been around the studio.

She set down the champagne, before she succumbed to the urge to gulp it down, and ran her hands up her bare arms. Up here, the rank stew of the city's street couldn't reach them, and a light breeze tempered the heat. She'd had enough of the studio talk of Dash and Fletcher and of watching Irene follow the pair around the room taking notes.

Her only friend, Grayson, had disappeared with Fletcher's redhead halfway through the party.

“The city seems like a blanket filled with stars from here,” Rafe said, staring out over the darkness.

“It's nothing like that during the day, I promise.”

He glanced at her. “You know New York?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Over to the southeast is the
Chronicle
Building. My Uncle Oliver is the publisher. And to the north, just off Central Park is the Dakota. My mother and stepfather have a seventh-floor apartment there with my little brother, Finn.”

“You're from New York City? I thought you lived in Kansas.”

She smiled and twisted the diamond band on her right hand. Dash never let her wear it on her left, even though the magistrate legally married them. A business arrangement. Not even the press knew.

She doubted even the studio knew, other than maybe Fletcher.

But her marriage to Dash meant that she had more control over her contract, and he got her at a bargain rate—one that included shares in their fledgling studio. Someday when Palace Studios began to make hits, her paltry weekly salary would pay off in spades.

“Sort of. I married a baseball player from Kansas. Fletcher adopted his story when he created mine.”

Rafe frowned. “You're married?”

She refused to look at Dash. Drew in a breath. “Guthrie died about two years ago, at the hands of a mobster here in New York.”

Rafe stilled, and she looked away. Yes, it sounded terribly, dramatically tragic when she just said it out loud like that. Which she hadn't, not for two years.

And she didn't follow with the rest. Like the fact that, at the time, she'd carried his child.

“I'm sorry,” Rafe said softly.

“It's in the past. So long ago, it's hard to remember.” Except, sometimes Guthrie visited her in her dreams. Sometimes he took her in his arms.

Sometimes she woke sobbing.

“You never forget your first love,” Rafe said quietly. She glanced at him, found compassion in his face and a shifting of pain through his eyes.

She couldn't bear to ask.

“Yeah, well, I'm with Dash now, and that life is over.” She shook her head. “I'm not the Kansas girl. Never was.”

“Now you're a star,” Rafe said, but she couldn't read his expression. Was he mocking her? Or…

He raised his glass to her. “I hope you get everything you dream for, Roxy Price.” Then he took her hand and kissed it through her glove.

She watched him return to the party and had no words to chase him.

Dash looked up, caught her eye. Smiled. She pressed her hand to her stomach. No more champagne for her.

She didn't look for Rafe as she returned to the party. Irene stood behind Dash, furiously scribbling notes. Yes, Rosie might call her pretty in a small-town way, with those hazel eyes, delicate heart-shaped lips. And if the studio added a little bleach in her hair…

Rosie sat on the edge of the sofa, pressing her hand into Dash's shoulder. He looked up at her.

“I'm tired. Can we go?”

He covered her hand with his. “Of course you are. I'll have one of the footmen see you home.”

“It's only five flights down, Dash. I can manage.”
But I don't want to
. She tried to put it into her eyes.
Come back to the suite with me
.

But he only glanced at Fletcher and then behind her to Irene, as if he needed the permission of either. His voice lowered. “Red, I have studio business.”

“At one o'clock in the morning?”

Oh, she didn't mean for her voice to rise. But it hung over the conversations in the room, and eyes turned toward her.

Including Rafe Horne's. His lips tightened into a thin line.

She produced a smile, something for her audience, and patted Dash, laughing. “Of course you do. Get me a fabulous role, Dashielle. I'll run and get my beauty sleep.”

Dash caught her hand as she turned away. “You're beautiful enough, darling.”

That earned him laughter, and she winked at him, for their public. The fussy star placated by the studio mogul.

She picked up her fox stole, slung it over her shoulder, found her shoes. A footman stood at the door, but she put her hand on his tuxedoed chest. “I can make my own way, thank you.”

She glanced at Rafe out of the corner of her eye. His gaze burned her neck as she left. “
I hope you get everything you dream for, Roxy Price
.”

To my Red Star. Fondly, Dash
.

Oh Dash. Rosie let the note drop on the bed and picked up the pearls. The bulk of the necklace hid behind a velvet cardboard pad. As she picked up the necklace and let it drip between her fingers, she discovered a choker with a diamond brooch in the center and two long pearl tails that hung off the clasp.

She slipped her dress off her shoulders, pinned the choker around her neck, and wandered into the bathroom, flipping on the light.

The brooch settled in the well of her neck, glittering like starlight. And when she turned, the long tails dripped down between her shoulder blades.

She shouldn't have doubted him.

Unbuttoning her dress at the side, she let it fall to the floor then scooped it up and draped it over the chair before her dressing table. She went to the closet and pulled out a filmy dressing gown, white ermine at the neck and wrists. She knotted it at her waist then returned to the bathroom and dabbed on a refresher of Moment Supreme at her wrists, behind her ears.

Turning off her bathroom light, she curled up in the center of her bed, upon the silky coverlet, her fingers trailing over the pearls.

Tonight, she'd leave her doors unlocked.

Rosie couldn't account for why the summer sun woke her early, slipping through the drapes and across the room to where she lay curled on the bed, her hand still at her pearls. Or why she bathed, washed her face, dressed in a pair of high-waist, wide-leg trousers and a black shift, slipped on an oversized straw hat and headed outside. Why she walked the seven blocks to Central Park and took the loop past the skating rink to the boathouse and then finally sat by the lake, watching ducks paddle and a little boy float a boat, his mother holding him by the scruff of his sailor suit.

Once upon a time, long ago, she'd taken Finley to float his toy boat in a pond in France while waiting for Dash to find her. To propose.

He'd broken her heart that day too.

Her gaze trailed to the bridge, and she closed her eyes against the images it scoured up. Pressed her hands to her ears.

She shouldn't be here.

Not yet.

She got up and found herself headed toward the Dakota. Probably they wouldn't yet be up and she'd only be disturbing them.

Most likely, they didn't want to see her, after what she'd done.

Still, the ache pressed her to the doorstep and she identified herself for the doorman with a name he'd know.

He called it up and announced her.

Miraculously, the housekeeper buzzed her in. Despite the years that had passed, she recognized the voice of Amelia, the woman who had served her mother for over three decades.

The lift stopped on the seventh floor, and Rosie had hardly stepped out when the door opened. Amelia stood in the frame, smoothing her white apron, smiling. “Miss Rose.”

“Amelia.” She wanted to hug her, but one didn't do that with the help—on either side of the country. “Is Mother in?”