I'll See You in Paris (3 page)

“Why are you selling it now?” Annie asked, still suspicious. “If you've had it for so long?”

“I wasn't being flip when I said it's my retirement. That's always been the plan, and in the last few months the land around it has come up for sale, making my property more valuable. Most people can't retire before age fifty. I'd still be working if I didn't have this in my back pocket.”

“So that's it? The mysterious house is nothing more than an investment?”

A funny look wiggled across Laurel's face.

“Yes,” she said. “Something like that. Listen, Annie-bear, we need to get to bed or we'll be dragging in the morning. Let's talk more on the flight. Or once we are in Banbury. We'll have plenty of heart-to-hearts, about property, marriages, whatever you want.”

Laurel looked at once tired, weary, and well beyond her age. For a moment Annie regretted pushing so hard.

“Mom, I'm sorry. It's just with everything…”

“Nothing to be sorry about. Good night,” Laurel said, and rubbed a hand over Annie's head. “I'm headed upstairs. See you in the morning. I love you.”

With a final sad smile, Laurel slipped out the door. Annie listened as her mother's footsteps retreated.

Once the floorboards groaned and squeaked overhead, Annie scrambled over to the cardboard box. Inside were several bound sets of paper, legal documents mostly. On top of them sat the book, that ancient blue book. It niggled at her as she lifted it from the box.

“The Missing Duchess,”
she read. “By J. Casper Augustine Seton.”

Annie fanned the pages beneath her nose. They were old and yellow, mustier than Goose Creek Hill itself. She let out a cough and flicked open a page.

They said you weren't anyone until Giovanni Boldini painted you. But of all the famed women he rendered, the princesses and countesses and heiresses, the Duchess of Marlborough was deemed the most enchanting.

“Annie?” her mom called from the top of the stairs.

She jumped, fumbling and bobbling the book before ultimately saving it from a union with the floor.

“Are you coming upstairs?” Laurel asked. “Please turn out the lights.”

“Yes! I'm coming!”

Annie took one last glance at the foiled lettering on the cover. Then she slid the book into the back of her sweatpants and shut off the light.

 

Three

THE BANBURY INN

BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

OCTOBER 2001

 

The Duchess of Marlborough was born Gladys Deacon on 7 February 1881 at the Hotel Brighton in Paris. She was the eldest, and most beautiful, of four exceptionally lovely girls.

The Deacons were a stormy, storied crew. Gladys's tortured, moonstruck father descended from the Boston Parkers, a family with more money than sense. Like any senseless gentry, the money soon matched their level of cunning. Which is to say, not much.

—J. Casper Augustine Seton,

The Missing Duchess: A Biography

The innkeeper was almost cartoon-grade British with her ruddy complexion and flat, uneven teeth.

“We're known for our cakes!” she sang. “You have to try our cakes!”

Her name was Nicola. Annie couldn't make out if she was closer in age to Laurel or to herself, one of those people who seemed young and old at the same time.

“There's a bakery down on Parsons Street,” she said, fluffing pillows as Laurel and Annie filed in behind her. “Theirs are scrumptious but you can't go wrong anywhere round here. Do you find this room suitable? I can move you, we're not too busy. This is my favorite, though. It gets the best light. Plus they don't make this pattern of bedspread anymore. It's one of a kind!”

“The room is perfect,” Laurel said, and set her bags on the bed. Nicola promptly moved them to the suitcase stand. “A complete delight.”

Their room was all English countryside with its whitewashed wood floors, sloped ceilings, and matching wrought-iron twin beds. Annie could tell that Laurel wasn't thrilled with the size of the beds but loved the room on sight.

The town was charming too, if not lacking a central square and featuring, according to Nicola, a “right mishmash of shops running higgledy-piggledy to and fro.” Annie saw through a dormer window what appeared to be the town's focal point: the Banbury Cross, a tall stone spire erupting out of the middle of a roundabout.

“I knew you'd find it top-notch!” Nicola said. “I'll let you two settle in. Ring if you need anything. I'm at the front desk all day and night. Alrighty then. Cheerio!”

Nicola spun around and jostled downstairs. Annie and Laurel smiled weakly at each other.

It was the first time they'd been truly alone since their clash in Laurel's office. Was it resolved? Would they talk more? Get to the bottom of this father business? Or would they instead resume their usual ways? Annie wondered if she even cared. Right then the only feelings she could muster were of being tired and missing Eric. Seven months of not seeing him. How was she going to last?

“So here we are,” Laurel said. “And it's raining. Of course.”

She began sorting through her handbag.

“I know we just arrived, but I have to leave in a few minutes,” Laurel went on. “A meeting with a solicitor. You're welcome to join me, or you can hang out here. I can't imagine my meeting will be of any interest whatsoever.”

Annie sighed, surprised her mother had an obligation so soon. This “vacation” was starting out on a real high.

“Maybe I'll go with you,” Annie said, and slumped down onto the bed, physically exhausted though she'd spent most of the last twenty-four hours on her duff. “The weather's for crap plus it's not like I have anything else to do.”

“As your counsel, I advise against it.”

Laurel lifted the clothes from her suitcase, then refolded them and placed them into drawers. She lined her toiletries in the washroom, the little bottles standing at attention like soldiers. Annie wished her mom would leave her luggage momentarily unpacked, enjoy the change of scenery for at least a minute or two. But with Laurel there was always something to be done.

“I can't find the converter,” Laurel said, as Annie leaned back onto her elbows with an extra large sigh. “Did you grab it? I need to charge my phone.”

“Should be in my carry-on.”

“That's right. I saw you put it in there.”

As Laurel reached toward the bag, Annie remembered what she'd stashed inside. She sprang from the bed.

“Wait!” Annie yelped. It was the fastest she'd moved all week.

“Good grief, Annie, you almost knocked me over.”

“I'll get it. Here.”

She handed her mom the power converter as Laurel's battered copy of
The Missing Duchess
shifted down into the bottom of Annie's backpack.

“Okay…” Laurel said, one eyebrow raised. “Thanks.”

Would she be mad about the book? It was hard to guess, but on the train from Heathrow, Annie asked about it. Laurel's response was puzzling, mostly because it wasn't a response at all.

“What book?” she'd asked.

Their relationship wasn't perfect but usually Laurel treated Annie with truthfulness and respect, nameless fathers notwithstanding. This was a woman who, when asked by her kindergartner whether storks had to carry twins one at a time, treated the child to a full rundown of the vagaries of procreation. Laurel never shielded her daughter from anything, even when Annie preferred to stay in the dark.

Of course, there was the question of her father so Laurel was known to skim the tough parts of a story.

“What book?”
Annie parroted as they bumped through the countryside. “That book. The book book. From … home.”

“I'm pretty sure we have more than one book,” Laurel said. “We could open a used bookstore with what you've brought home in the last month.”

“No, this is your book. The blue one. It's old.”

“I have a lot of old books in my office.”

“You were holding it last night?” Annie tried.

“Hmm.” Laurel shrugged. “Probably picked it up along the way, like most things in that ancient house.”

Annie nodded but wasn't buying it. There was something about that book.

In twenty years she could scarcely remember Laurel reading anything other than legal briefs, the
Wall Street Journal,
or guides to management effectiveness passed on by a boss. Laurel had a collection of first editions lining her library walls but she'd never taken one out, as far as Annie knew. Moodily clutching books about duchesses was Annie's style, not her mom's.

The book felt familiar though, more so by the hour. Distracted by days and miles and the ache of missing Eric, Annie closed her eyes and tried to pull up the memories. They jammed somewhere behind her eyes.

“I was thinking,” she said as Laurel bustled around their room, bumping into desks and lamps, unaccustomed to the tight Banbury space. “I'll stay here until you get back. I feel like … reading.”

“Good plan. There's a fireplace down in the library. Might be just the spot to crack open a book and have some tea.”

“Or be force-fed Banbury cakes,” Annie added with a smirk.

“Nicola is indeed inexplicably jazzed about currants and puff pastries.” Laurel picked up her phone. “Well, that was helpful. Not charged at all. Do you mind if I leave it here? I don't want to strand you but it's about to die.”

“If there are any emergencies I can figure out what to do. Nicola seems conscientious. She won't let me die in a fire or get coerced into any cults.”

“That's reassuring.”

“So, go! Scat!” Annie said, wiggling her fingers, suddenly itchy to be alone. “Be gone with you!”

Laurel gave her a worried smile, as if she were hesitant to leave her daughter, twenty-two and engaged to a man she hardly knew. They were in a new town and Annie might find herself lost in more ways than one. Alas, Laurel had stuff to do and Taking Care of Business was her greatest skill.

After reapplying a new coat of lipstick, Revlon Tickled Pink, in production since 1983, Laurel grabbed her handbag and scooted out into the hallway. The door had not even clicked when Annie shot across the room and rescued
The Missing Duchess
from the bottom of her bag.

“What book, my ass,” she mumbled, lifting the cover.

She turned to the first chapter and began to read.

In human relationships she offered nothing but an offensive arbitrariness, pursuing people in a flattering and ensnaring fashion, only so as to be able to break off with them noisily when the fancy struck her.
—
Art historian Bernard Berenson, on the Duchess of Marlborough

“Sounds delightful.” Annie snorted. She read the first sentence.

I arrived to Banbury on a Tuesday.

“Banbury?” Annie blurted, astonished.

She glanced out the window at the Banbury Cross. Sentence number one and already she was getting somewhere. Or, rather, she was there already.

It was cold and wet,
she read on,
as Banbury preferred to be.

After checking into an inn of middling regard, I stopped by a pub, figuring it was the exact kind of place where news gathered. I ordered a Watneys Red Barrel and set to work.

 

Four

THE BANBURY INN

BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

OCTOBER 2001

 

A background for the uninitiated.

By age ten Gladys Deacon had lived in four different countries.

At eleven she was placed in the custody of a convicted murderer. She was kidnapped at twelve.

At sixteen she debuted in London where she met her future husband, who was already married.

By twenty-one she was living independently in Paris, in an apartment she owned alone.

In 1906, at the age of twenty-five, Gladys cemented her friendship with Marcel Proust, which led to friendships with the most eminent writers of the era: Hardy, Wharton, Waugh. And of course Henry James.

Then there were the men, her incalculable lovers, too many to list as the index to a book should never be longer than the story itself. It suffices to say that by the time she married, Gladys had run through a roster of bachelors, eligible and otherwise. She dated the Duke of Norfolk, Roffredo Caetani, the Duke of Camastra, poet Robert Trevelyan, French politician Aristide Briand, General Joffre, and Lord Francis Pelham-Clinton-Hope, owner of the Hope diamond. Unfortunately forty-five carats was not sufficient diamond weight when the suitor also had a wonky leg.

For a time Gladys Deacon was engaged to the Crown Prince of Prussia, a tall, blond, shy sally of a man. The arrangement fell apart because she was not a princess and did not like being reminded of it. A shame, that. Their marriage would've created a German-American alliance and, they say, prevented the First World War.

—J. Casper Augustine Seton,

The Missing Duchess: A Biography

They'd been in Banbury for three days.

The land deal was already rocky, the terms changing by the hour. Laurel attended one meeting after another. Annie considered tagging along as there were only so many quaint streets to meander, a limited number of townsfolk to chat up. The limestone cottages were cute, yes, but there were so damned many of them.

“Castles,” Laurel said. “There are some beautiful castles nearby. Plus, London! We have to do London. I promise we'll act like proper tourists soon. I even brought a fanny pack and a list of ways to embarrass you.”

Castles were fine, fanny packs or not. London would be exciting. But at that point Annie would've settled for a few meals that weren't rushed, one conversation that didn't involve rumination on negotiating tactics. Her mother promised sightseeing. She promised bonding and “plenty of time for heart-to-hearts.” Laurel's heart didn't seem to be in it. Her mother had never felt so far away.