I'll See You in Paris (15 page)

“Honestly, Miss Valentine! Do you ever stop?”

“Mrs. Spencer,” Win said, outright grinning now.

He was entirely enchanted by Pru. Problem was, he had no capacity to enchant in return. It was not in his genetic makeup. He only hoped to not repel her altogether.

“Surely your story is fabulous,” he said. “If nothing else, you're intriguing enough,
lovely
enough, that the good people of Banbury think you're Gladys Deacon. As you must know, she was universally agreed upon as the most intelligent and beautiful woman to ever exist.”

“I'm sure she wasn't as spectacular as all that.”

“Oh but she was! With that fine-spun, red-gold hair. Her stunning blue eyes. And that magnificent style! The bright colors … the fur, the feathers, the beads.”

Mrs. Spencer made a puffing sound but then—could that be right?—she reddened. Had Win Seton gotten to her that quickly? He was buttering up the old broad, any goat could tell. Pru found herself impressed.

“Feathers and beads?” Mrs. Spencer said. “Sounds a bit obvious. Like a damned peacock.”

“A dazzling peacock.”

“They also thought the duchess was nuts,” she said. “Did your Blenheim exploits teach you that? The duke's family thought the great, grand Duchess of Marlborough was touched in the head.”

“Only because she went missing,” Win said. “Nearly forty years and for no discernible reason.”

“Her husband was dead. He left her alone, in a prison, with people who despised her. Is that not ample reason for you?”

“A prison? Surely you don't mean Blenheim.”

“Of course I mean Blenheim! It's a monolithic beast of a supposed home.”

“Lady—Mrs. Spencer—I've been to Blenheim countless times. It's breathtaking. Surely the duchess would've been pleased by the meticulous grounds, the statues of her likeness in the gardens, those blue eyes of hers painted on the portico ceiling.”

“What's a little paint and some plaster?” Mrs. Spencer grouched.

“Even if the palace didn't please the duchess, surely she could've absconded to their London home, or her private Paris pied-
à
-terre. Why would a woman of her stature disappear so completely?”

“You'd have to ask her directly.”

“Please, Mrs. Spencer,” Win said. “Let me write about you. Allow me to commit your life to the page. We'd have a jolly good time in the process, the two of us.” He glanced at Pru. “The three.”

“I'm not sure,” Mrs. Spencer said, and began to pace. “I'm not sure about any of this.”

“You do have fascinating stories,” Pru said, jumping in. “The German POWs who cut your trees. The years you spent in Paris. All those broken engagements.”

With that, Mrs. Spencer leaned forward and tried to wallop Pru in the head with a newspaper.

“You
would
be interested in broken engagements,” Mrs. Spencer harrumphed as Pru ducked out of reach. She turned back to Seton. “Well, writer, if I say yes, I suppose you'd make a gadfly of yourself and set up shop in this very house.”

“Please call me Win. And yes, that's the idea. To stay in residence. It would enable me to get closer to the subject.”

“Also you probably don't have a quid to your name.”

“Think of yourself as a patron to the arts,” Win said.

“Oh Lord, that must mean you fancy yourself the art. I don't know.” She sighed. “What do you think, Miss Valentine?”

“Uh, what?” Pru said. She did not expect to be called to vote. “Me?”

“Yes, of course you! Good grief, and they say
I'm
touched in the head. What say you, Miss Valentine?”

It was the question, wasn't it?

What exactly
did
Pru think of this unfamiliar man? The sort-of-handsome writer who'd shown up in the brush wearing pressed attire? Clothes that were, it must be said, already sullied by dog hair and slobber.

“I guess it's fine?” she said tepidly.

He didn't seem dangerous. Of course, just because someone wasn't dangerous didn't mean he wasn't trouble.

On the other hand, it'd be nice to have another (human) body in the house. Someone to guard against the specter of Tom and, more important, help clean up after all the damned dogs.

“How do you feel about spaniels?” Pru asked.

“Wonderful creatures. Positively aces.”

Pru turned toward Mrs. Spencer.

“Let's do a trial run,” she said. “See how it works out.”

“A trial run? Miss Valentine, you're barely out of yours.”

Mrs. Spencer tried to frown but her resolve was splintering.

“All right,” she said at last. “I'll permit this dreggy writer to live with us and pen my memoirs. What a waste of paper.”

“Brilliant!” Win said and gave a loud clap. “Who wants to help with my baggage? It's out on the street.”

“Before you start hauling all your rubbish into my home, one thing I want to make clear, Mr. Seton.”

“Like I said, call me Win.”

“I will not call you Win. For one, it's impolite. For two, it reminds me of Winston Churchill and you do not want to be mistaken for him. Mr. Seton, this book will be mine, not yours. I get the final say on what goes into it. Do you understand?”

“That's what I planned all along,” he said.

“Also I want a cut. A financial interest.”

“A cut?” Win gawped. “That's not how biographies customarily work.”

“I don't care about custom!” she said. “I care about what makes me happy. This is your choice. I give you my time and you compensate me as I please.”

Win pretended to ruminate on the offer, though everyone in the room knew he'd agree to the terms. Money was not the point of the book. The book was the point. Moreover, he'd made precisely nothing from his authorial endeavors thus far. Mrs. Spencer was welcome to her half of zed.

“Very well, Mrs. Spencer,” he said. “I accept your proposal.”

Frankly, he didn't have another choice. What was the price of a dream anyway? Win Seton was willing to give up half the money for the whole of this, his last chance to prove his worth.

 

Twenty-four

THE GRANGE

CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

NOVEMBER 2001

 

Gladys's father was arrested for murder. “Parisian flirtations” aside, you simply couldn't shoot someone through a couch and expect to get away with it.

That is, unless you cried adultery. In those days, murder was an acceptable response to a cheating wife. Had Edward Deacon attested to Florence's dalliance with the now-dead Coco, she would've been the one in the clink. But Mr. Deacon refused to turn her in. Noble or stupid? It was certainly up for debate.

Mrs. Deacon did feel some guilt about the outcome. Immediately after her husband's sentencing, she canceled an engagement with the Princesse de Sagan. Florence didn't care to endure a luncheon less than twenty-four hours after her husband was carted off. She may not have loved him, but Florence Deacon had some semblance of a heart.

Alas, the press did not take kindly to this social misstep. Famed dandy Count Robert de Montesquiou wrote a poem about the event, asking at the end, “Does disaster preclude politeness?”

Evidently, it did not. Florence would not make such a mistake again.

—J. Casper Augustine Seton,

The Missing Duchess: A Biography

“I like this Win character,” Annie said. “I'm glad Pru had the good sense to let him stay.”

“Ha!” Gus responded with a small arf. “Well, you can join the very short line of people who have ever shared that sentiment. You like him in what manner, exactly?”

“I don't know. He seems funny, affable.”

“Yes, he
seems
that way, doesn't he?”

“You're a tough customer,” Annie said. “So this marginally affable Win Seton wrote a book called
The Missing Duchess
. In your story he's writing about Mrs. Spencer. So voil
à
! Your not-really-a-mystery is solved. Mrs. Spencer is the Duchess of Marlborough. The duchess is she.”

“The mystery is hardly solved. My dear, you are a pretty thing, smart as a whip, but I feel as though you're not listening with both ears. Win said he'd write the book with or without the woman's assistance. He was exactly the kind of person who, if Mrs. Spencer had become the least bit troublesome, would've written whatever the hell he wanted just to put something on the page. And Mrs. Spencer was always troublesome.”

Gus started walking back down the road, away from the Grange. He indicated for Annie to follow.

“Wait,” she called. “Maybe we should try to—”

“Go inside?” he finished for her, smiling over his shoulder. “You are persistent. And cruel. Poor old man, one foot in the grave, and you want to get him thrown in the brig?”

“You're not anywhere near the grave, much less one foot in it.”

Annie jogged to catch up.

“Sorry, mademoiselle, no trespassing for me today,” Gus said. “Let me walk you back to your hotel. The Banbury Inn? Nicola Teepers? Whew. She's a chatty one, isn't she?”

“You don't know the half of it.”

Once her pace finally caught with his, Annie wrapped both arms around herself. Her teeth clattered. She could feel winter coming.

“Here.” Gus unwound his scarf and passed it her way. “Borrow this. What were you thinking, coming out here in nothing but a pair of skimpy shorts? It's brass monkeys outside.”

“I was jogging.”

“You were doing nothing of the sort. Heaving, more like.”

“Hey!” she said, laughing as she wrapped the scarf around her neck.

Around them the air was damp and chilled. The sun shone overhead but the morning fog settled in the foothills. The cold was so much
colder
in England, so wet and final. It was nice to have something to guard against it. What was she thinking, indeed.

“I wish you were up for some breaking and entering,” Annie said, debating whether to tell him how easy it was.

“A tempting offer, but I must pass. This old codger's not nearly nimble enough for such larks. You'll have to find someone younger if you're looking for a coconspirator.”

“Maybe I can suss out some of those Banbury hooligans,” she said. “The ones who used to torture Mrs. Spencer.”

“Those very hooligans are now the doctors, teachers, and councilmen of this great town.”

“How disappointing,” she said. “Though I guess that's the way life turns out. People grow up. They mature.” Annie pretended to look at an invisible watch. “As for me, any minute now. I'm sure my mom is waiting.”

“I've been trying very hard to prevent maturation myself,” Gus countered.

“Hold on.” Annie turned to face him. “Were you one of them? A miscreant-turned-notable?”

“Lord no! Do I look like a town notable to you? What an insult.” He gave her a little wink. “I shudder at the thought.”

They walked a few more steps in silence, nothing but the sound of the road beneath their feet, the hum of cars in the distance.

“Who do you think controls it?” she asked. “The trust that owns the Grange? Not an old hooligan?”

“Last I heard it was more or less in the hands of developers, like all decent Oxfordshire parcels. Doubtless they'll turn it into miniestates any day now.”

“Yeah, I've heard the market's hot around here lately,” she said, thinking of her mom.

“Aggravatingly so. Banbury is starting to get hip to Londoners, God forbid. Estate agents are crawling all over the place. Homes that have been in families for centuries are coming onto the market. Everyone's a seller, at a price.”

Annie thought of Laurel's own land deal, her mother one of the many selling out to the highest bidder. There was comfortable retirement on one hand, and sullying quaint countrysides on the other. Annie would not mention this to Gus.

“Basic economics, I suppose,” she said, feeling morose. “Which is why I've always preferred books. Much to the detriment of my bank account and long-term job prospects, of course.”

“I tell you what, Annie, this world would do better to have more like you in it. Practicality is overrated.”

“Someone needs to tell my mom.”

A few more steps and they stopped in front of the inn. Annie looked up at her room but couldn't make out if anyone was in it.

“Are you traveling alone?” Gus asked. “Or with a companion? I can't recall you mentioning one way or another.”

“Oh,” she sighed. “Mostly on my own.”

Eric would not like this conversation. He would not like it one bit, seeing as how he was convinced the Earl of Winton was either a pervert, a kidnapper, or both.

Sometimes Annie wondered if she'd told Eric on purpose, to make him mad. She promised to marry him but her mother's qualms were beginning to infect her. God, how she loved that big Southern boy. But God, she was dumb to marry so young.

“On your own?” Gus said with a frown.

She started to nod, hearing Eric's voice (“you told him you were
alone
?”). It seemed somehow weird to say she was traveling with her mom, as though Gus might write her off as a bored schoolgirl not worthy of his time.

“I mean, I'm not totally alone,” Annie quickly clarified. “I'm meeting some family members along the way. But, you know, mostly it's just me.”

This was not so far from the truth.

“Are they expecting you any time soon?” he asked. “I have to be somewhere later this afternoon, but I might have time for another tale about the misanthrope you find so alluring.”

“He doesn't sound too misanthropic to me,” Annie said. “Seeing as how he helped himself onto the property, then shacked up with two women he'd never met.”