I'll See You in Paris (19 page)

Thirty-two

THE BANBURY INN

BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

NOVEMBER 2001

 

Gladys's mother was nothing if not determined.

When Florence decided to focus exclusively on making matches for her girls, she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. And well into the nightmares of various wives throughout Europe.

Dorothy, the baby of the family and daughter of the slain lover, married a prince and a then a count. At one point she carried the storied name of Radziwill.

Pretty but cantankerous Edith wed a wealthy industrialist. What she lacked in title she made up for in cash, and many times over. The other sisters would be forever jealous of Edith, and her ability to spend without thought.

As we know, Gladys would go on to marry the Duke of Marlborough but not before she smashed through a cadre of notables such as Prince William of Prussia, Hope diamond owner Lord Francis Pelham-Clinton-Hope, the Dukes of Norfolk and of Camastra, General Joffre, Lord Brooke, among untold others.

These relationships may not have lasted but they all contributed to the very essence of Gladys Deacon. When someone complimented her political knowledge at a dinner party, Gladys famously proclaimed, “Of course I'm well informed! I've slept with eleven prime ministers and most kings!”

—J. Casper Augustine Seton,

The Missing Duchess: A Biography

“Please be ready by six o'clock for dinner,” said the note from Laurel.

Whatever grain of regret Annie had about the false-jogger story disappeared at around 6:10.

By 6:15, her annoyance turned to anger.

When the clock hit 6:45, Annie wrote off her mother completely. Who was this unreliable woman and what had she done with Laurel Haley? At least Annie had a few “friends” to keep her company, stolen as they were.

Sifting through the pages, Annie thought about Mrs. Spencer and how living with her must've been unnerving in ways that had little to do with yowling outbursts or physical threats. It was the woman's carefully guarded cunning that frightened Annie the most. How had Win ever wrenched a book from her?

With a sigh, Annie pitched the transcripts onto the desk, and then watched as they slid, slow-motion style, straight toward an open bottle of Diet Coke. She screeched when the drink toppled over.

“Shit!” Annie lurched to standing. “Annie! You idiot!”

She swiped the papers from the desk.

“Dammit!”

She blew on them. She shook them. She held them up only to watch helplessly as trails of Diet Coke ran to the floor.

“Annie, you
wanker,
” she said, eyes watering.

She was done for. The drink's delicious chemical black magic would obliterate the papers as surely as it was eating away at her insides.

“Dammit all to hell.”

Just her luck. The one time she made any sort of coordinated contact between two separate objects ended in disaster. Her youth softball coach would be pleased to know she was not made entirely of striking out.

Annie kicked at the chair in frustration, but missed of course, then peeled the most soda-drenched sheet from the desktop. After pressing it against her shirt, Annie held it up to the light.

That's when she noticed. On the back of the paper was an address, written in pencil, in what appeared to be a woman's hand.

24 Quai de Béthune

144071200

The address of someone in Paris perhaps? And what was the second line? It wasn't a zip code. A phone number, maybe?

Without thinking, Annie picked up the phone and began to dial.

“We're sorry, but your number cannot be reached as dialed. Please try again.”

Annie frowned. She remembered from a semester abroad junior year that the correct country code for France was 33. Annie tried again but the congenial-voiced British lady was back.
We're sorry
 …

With a small huff, she hung up. Probably better not to get through. She'd have a hard time explaining long-distance charges to her mom.

“Quai de B
é
thune,” she said as she paced the room, staring at the address.

It sounded familiar, which was why she guessed Paris, but Annie couldn't exactly place the name. An address along the Seine, most likely, as you needed water to have a quay.

“Quai de B
é
thune,” she repeated and inspected the paper.

It was starting to crumple and dry, a faint brown blotch marring the sheet top to bottom. Annie glanced at the other papers on the desk, most of them equally stained and damp. She'd kick herself but would probably bungle that, too.

“Damn it,” she muttered. “Gus is going to kill me.”

Suddenly, she heard a click.

Annie lifted her head with a jerk. Across the room, the doorknob jiggled. Her heart jumped.

“Crap!” she yelled, and scurried to collect the transcripts. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Most were wet. She could already feel them clumping together.

“Annie?” Laurel said. “Are you in there? Dang it, my key always jams in this lock.”

“Yes, yes, coming!”

She looked at the papers now in her hands, and saw no choice but to cram them into her backpack. Annie cringed as the sheets bunched together into soggy globs of pulp.

The door popped open.

“Oh, hi, Mom,” Annie said to the rasp of her backpack's zipper.

She chucked it toward the bed, almost pummeling Laurel as she made her way across the room.

“Ugh! I'm so late! Whoops … flying backpack.”

“Nice of you to show,” Annie grumbled.

“I am so sorry,” Laurel said.

She paused to catch her breath as Annie gawked, astonished to see her mom looking so wild and unkempt. Laurel's face was shiny, her hair a riot of knots and gnarls. And the suit. It looked like something out of the donation bin at church.

“Mom?”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Laurel said again. “The meeting ran over and traffic was abominable and…”

She stopped, then exhaled, appearing to deflate all at once.

“In other words,” she said. “All the regular excuses.”

“Yeah,” Annie answered with a grunt. “Exactly. Your excuses are getting old so feel free to sell them to someone else because I'm no longer in the market.”

Annie should've given her mom more leeway, seeing as how her own actions of late weren't exactly beyond reproach. But she couldn't help herself, an alarming trend the past few days.

“Honey, you seem agitated,” Laurel noted.

“Of course I'm agitated! You're an hour late and I'm starving!”

It was both of these things, but also more.

Yes, Annie was miffed at her mom and her stomach felt like it was trying to reach through her skin for something to eat. But she was also unfairly irritated with Eric for being so wonderful and then getting on a ship. And she was bugged by Nicola Teepers, proprietress. The woman could've included international dialing instructions beside the phone.

She also resented Gus for spooling out information in dribs and drabs, as slow to the story as Mrs. Spencer was with Win. Hell, Annie was even mad at Mrs. Spencer, a woman dead some twenty years.

But more than all of these people combined, Annie was most furious with herself. The Diet Coke spill. A “job” she loved that was a complete invention. And what kind of person could be mad at Laurel, Gus, Nicola, and Eric in the first place?

What exactly was Annie getting worked up about anyway? How could a book drive her so thoroughly insane, an old tale that was probably more fiction than fact? Of all the people in Gus's story, Annie couldn't believe it was Win that she sympathized with the most. The book, the story, these things were make-or-break for the man. How was it Annie completely understood? Why did she feel the same way?

 

Thirty-three

THE GEORGE & DRAGON

BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

NOVEMBER 2001

 

Sometime during her thirteenth year, Gladys learned about the Duke of Marlborough's betrothal to Consuelo Vanderbilt, whom he wed in 1895 in exchange for $2.5 million worth of Beech Creek Railway stock.

“I suppose you have read about the engagement of the Duke of Marlborough,” Gladys wrote to a friend. “O dear me if I was only a little older I might catch him yet! But
hélas!
I am too young though mature in the arts of woman's witchcraft and what is the use of one without the other? And I will have to give up all chance to ever get Marlborough.”

Sure, she spent a few moments envying Consuelo's good fortune and glittering new existence, but Gladys Deacon was not a woman who stopped at moral or romantic defeat. She vowed to get Marlborough, and in the end, that's exactly what she did.

—J. Casper Augustine Seton,

The Missing Duchess: A Biography

Annie hesitated in the doorway.

She scanned the bar and decided Gus wasn't there. Another strikeout for the hapless Miss Haley. Annie let her shoulders slump and shuffled back toward the sidewalk.

Then came a sharp whistle.

“Annie!” called a voice.

She poked her head back inside.

“Hey, Ned!” she said. “I, uh…”

“He's over there.” He jerked his thumb toward the corner. “Fading into the woodwork, the old codger. I'm as shocked as you are.”

Annie squinted toward the rear of the pub and there sat Gus, in a booth, sipping cider with another man. His companion was a spindly fellow with a mop of curly black hair and a beak of a nose. So Gus knew other people. An unexpected surprise.

“Miss Annie?” Ned said, raising his forehead questioningly. “You can go on. Don't think he'd mind.”

“Oh, I don't want to bother them,” she said. “I'll catch Gus later! Cheers!”

Annie stepped back, eyes still caught on the mysterious meeting in the corner, when suddenly the corkscrewed man stood. He and Gus traded a mostly forced hug, followed by a series of aggressive back-pats. Wallops, more like. The man belted out a final “good-bye” and strode Annie's way. She froze. He swept past, smiling warmly in her direction.

“Annie!” Gus hollered just as she was about to (inexplicably) follow the strange man. “You've arrived just in time! My schedule's cleared for the day!”

“Oh, um, hi,” she mumbled, staggering toward his table. “What's up?”

“Not much is
up.
And how are you this lovely afternoon? I see you remain on the lam from authorities.”

“You're hilarious.”

Annie thumped her backpack onto the table and slouched down in the booth.

“You all right there, love?” Gus asked.

“Who knows,” she said. “So who was that guy? I thought you didn't have any friends.”

“Grace Almighty. You're right testy today, aren't you? And that, my dear, was no friend. That was my brother Jamie.”

Gus folded up his newspaper, then removed his glasses and set them on the table.

“Brother?” Annie said, blinking. “You have a … oh. Right. Nicola mentioned that. You never talk about him. Ever. It's weird.”

“What's there to say? There's not much to him.” Gus took a sip of cider. “So what is it?”

“What's what?”

“That.” He pointed at her with his glass. “Your face. The utter lack of cheer.”

“Oh. I don't know.” Annie thought about it for a second. “It's hard to say. I feel stuck, I suppose.”

“Stuck? In what way?”

In every way, if she was being honest.

Annie was stuck in the duchess's story, for one. And in Win's and Pru's. She was also physically stuck in England, her mom mostly absent and her fianc
é
on a boat.

On top of that, her very existence was stuck, trapped in the space between childhood and being an adult. Eric was off fighting wars; meanwhile she probably couldn't even lease a car without Laurel's signature.

“Annie?” Gus prodded.

“I'm just so frustrated,” she said. “All around and across the board. I'm just…”

She couldn't even finish the sentence.

“Ah. So this is about the research project.”

“Yes, among other things.”

“I'm not surprised,” Gus said. “You're an empathetic person. You're probably so deeply mired in the story, you've picked up on Win Seton's disgruntlement.”

“That's part of it. But, Gus. Seriously.” She tossed up her hands. “You're every bit as bad as Mrs. Spencer!”

“As bad as Mrs. Spencer?” His eyes widened. “I don't know if you've just complimented me or you want me to sod off.”

“You left me hanging the other day, outside the inn. A million pieces of the story scattered everywhere. I realize Nicola interrupted us, but you dumped the mess on me, and then you bailed.”

“I
bailed
?”

“You're not making this easy. And I have to say, it's not appreciated.”

“Annie, every story has a pace,” Gus said. “Including Mrs. Spencer's, and Win's. I can't just vomit it all up in one go. As a devotee of literature, you should know this implicitly.”

“Well, some stories move too slowly. Sluggish plots are the worst.”

Annie unzipped her backpack and pulled out the transcripts.

“Here's what I've been reading,” she said. “And yes, they're stolen and, yes, I've spilled Diet Coke on them and, yes, I'm a horrible steward of important documents. And to what end? It seems like most of what Win knew about Mrs. Spencer, the duchess, whoever she was … most of what he garnered was from newspaper articles and gossip columns, not from the woman herself.”

“Let's see what you have,” Gus said, putting his glasses back on.

He did a hero's job of appearing calm, of not seeming like he wanted to throttle Annie. For the first few seconds anyway. But when he turned over the most Diet Coke-laden sheet, his face went white.