I'll See You in Paris (28 page)

“Is it…?” Pru took several steps closer. “Is that Mrs. Spencer?”

She'd walked past the painting countless times over the last few months. The Grand Dining Hall was an excellent shortcut between the kitchen and the nesting places of several packs of pups. The painting was sublime, yes, but it had never occurred to Pru that the woman was the same one who motored through town wild-haired, demon-eyed, and screaming at children.

“It is the duchess herself,” Win said. “Or Mrs. Spencer, if you please.”

The portrait was a flare of color, a winter's sunset of pinks and silver and white. In it Gladys Deacon sat on an upholstered bench, the cushion dipping beneath her. She wore a dress of pink organza, off-the-shoulder, with roses tumbling down the front. Her hair was pulled back in finger waves and secured at the nape of her neck. She rested against a pink pillow, white and black feathers splayed out behind her. The hint of birds, Pru thought with a droll smile. How appropriate.

“She's stunning.” Pru felt a little breathless.

If the portrait was any indication, the duchess was the fetchingest woman of her time, just as Mrs. Spencer always claimed.

“Stunning she is,” Win agreed. “The artist is Giovanni Boldini, the most famous portraitist of his day. They called him the Master of Swish due to the grace of his brushstrokes.”

“I can see why. The painting moves, as though she's alive. I can almost hear her talking to someone off frame.”

“The man was gifted,” Win said. “Though he had the choicest subjects to work with. Boldini and John Singer Sargent painted all the stunners of the Belle
É
poque. Sargent sketched Gladys Deacon numerous times, but ultimately never painted the duchess for fear of not being able to capture her true beauty.”

“So Boldini was more of a risk-taker, then?” Pru asked.

“That, or he was hoping for a good shag. The man was a known cad.” Win gave Pru a quick wink. “Boldini painted Coon, too. The duke was furious both times but had to allow it. A Boldini portrait was a mark of social standing.”

Win took a few steps closer to the painting. He studied it for a minute as he ran his hand along a crevice on the wall.

“She was a fine-looking broad,” he said.

So this was Mrs. Spencer. Beneath it all, behind the guns and the spaniels, she was a young woman, painted by a celebrated artist, looking toward some nameless companion elsewhere in the room.

“What is going on with this wall?” Win mumbled, still pushing against the crack. “I hope this room doesn't split in two.”

“Or the house,” Pru said. “Do you think it's her, Seton? Really her?”

Win peered over his shoulder.

“Of course it is! Look at the color of the eyes, the shape of her nose. Can't you tell?”

Pru nodded.

“Yes. I suppose I can.”

Win lifted his hand from the wall. He took a step back.

“You're looking well, Lady Marlborough,” he said and took a deep bow. “As always, it's a pleasure to see you.”

He turned and took a seat at the table

“Sit.” He patted the chair beside him. “Have a rest.”

Pru nodded and followed his lead, all the while surreptitiously eyeing the door. Surely Mrs. Spencer would barrel through at any second. She'd yell at Pru for not doing her work, and at the biographer for not doing his.

“Where do you go from here, Miss Valentine?” Win asked.

“How's that?”

“After you leave the Grange? Where shall you go?”

Pru cackled, though she was not especially amused.

“What a question,” she said.

The embarrassing truth was that Pru had no idea where she'd go. This was her world now, as unglamorous and unkempt as it was. Given Mrs. Spencer could die at any time, life at the Grange was also fleeting. Where did she go from there, indeed.

“So you don't know where you're headed, either,” he said with a smirk. “Join the club.”

“No. I do. I'll, uh, return stateside.”

“Where, though? Rumor has it America is fairly expansive.”

“East Coast,” Pru mumbled.

It sounded right, for the most part. California seemed an impossibly far journey, in more ways than one. On the other hand, Boston was unthinkable too.

“New York maybe,” she added.

“Sounds like you have it well thought out.”

“Yes, plans like mesh.” Pru locked her fingers together. “I should be leading armies with my tightly constructed agenda.”

Armies. Pru dropped her hands as she felt a jab in her ribs, like a long-ago injury acting up. She hadn't thought about Charlie in a while. Or if she had, it was only for a moment. If and when she returned to the States, would he once again infiltrate her days and leak into her dreams?

Pru began to feel a little sick.

“Is everything all right, Miss Valentine? You look pale.”

“Yes, yes, I'm fab. And what about you?” she said quickly.

Go away, Charlie. Go the hell away.

“Will you go back to London?” she asked. “Is that your home?”

Win shrugged.

“I have a place in London, yes, a flat I share with two cousins. We also have a family home on the
Î
le Saint-Louis in Paris. Not sure on which doorstep I'll eventually find myself.”

“Maybe whichever is closest to your publisher?” she said.

“Come again?”

“Or your editor.” Pru pointed toward the painting. “For the biography? Once you finish writing, I imagine you'd want to be near your publishing house. Or does location not matter? I don't know how it works.”

“Uh…” He snickered bitterly. “As luck would have it, neither do I.”

“Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out,” she said, trying to appear chipper. “Once your book is a smash hit and you ascend to literati status you'll need to be where you can hobnob with other writers and visit all the best salons. Just ask Mrs. Spencer.”

“Lord, other writers. That doesn't sound fun at all.”

“So you don't know where you're going, either,” Pru said. “Excellent. I don't feel as bad about my complete lack of direction.”

“Blimey, never use this old goat as a barometer for ambition and drive. Of all the bars mine's the lowest. It's very nearly on the ground.”

“But think of how happy you'll be,” she said. “Once you finish writing and release Gladys Deacon out into the universe.”

“Will I be, though? It's funny … I … I…” He stuttered. “I've been chasing this dream for so long, I don't know what I'll do if I ever actually catch it.”

For the better part of twenty years, Win believed everything would be different once he wrote the book, just as Pru said. But would anything truly change? What was a book but a person's words, read by a few more persons? Once Win accomplished that, would it put his family's misgivings to bed, to speak nothing of the misgivings he had about himself?

“What do you mean ‘if'?” Pru asked. “You
will
catch it. And when you do, you'll hang on and ride that accomplishment as far as it can take you. I'll be the very first person in line to buy the book, and all the books that follow. I'll brag that I knew you when.”

“Yes, but what if it turns out…”

He stared up at Gladys Deacon, who appeared skeptical amid the feathers and pink.
You people are lost causes, aren't you?
she seemed to say.
The saddest crew I ever saw.

“What if this thing,” Win said, “this thing that I've wanted since eternity, what if I don't want it in the end?”

“Well, then you try to discover what it is you're really after.”

Win turned and locked eyes with her. Pru felt herself warm under his gaze.

“Actually, I have a better idea,” he said. “How 'bout this? How 'bout we hang around here until Mrs. Spencer passes? Then we'll continue on after she's bought the farm. The dogs will keep breeding into perpetuity, no doubt. Someone should look after them. I can write from anywhere.”

“Seton, you're bonkers! Mrs. Spencer isn't going to let us stay at the Grange without her. She barely tolerates us now!”

“But she'll never know!” Win said. “A benefit of being dead. Unless she haunts us, that is.”

“Which she undoubtedly would.”

“Listen, it'll work like this,” Win said. “After she's gone, we'll just very quietly … not leave. If anyone shows up we'll claim squatters' rights. Who'd want this old flea motel anyway? We'll while out our days bobbling about with no concrete plans of any kind. Just how it suits us.”

Pru smiled.

“That doesn't sound half bad,” she said.

“It doesn't sound even a little bad.”

Win stood. His knees crackled on the way up.

“Although,” he said, walking toward the door. He stopped, then looked again at Pru. “I guess we need to take heed, be careful what we wish for and all that.”

“What's wrong with a little wishing?”

“Miss Valentine, don't you see? Wishing is probably what landed us both in these messes to start.”

 

Forty-seven

THE GRANGE

CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND

JANUARY 1973

“Miss Valentine!”

A vigorous rapping erupted on the other side of the door. It was Win, of course. Mrs. Spencer never knocked.

“Miss Valentine! Are you in there? Let me in!”

Pru took her time to respond. She was comfortable right then, lounging beside a fire, wrapped up with a blanket and a book. This time it was P. G. Wodehouse's
Love Among the Chickens
. Pru hadn't read Wodehouse before. His works were humorous, lighthearted, not appropriate for a Very Serious literature major. What a bore she'd once been.

“Miss Valentine?”

“Yes,” she responded, somewhat reluctantly. “I'm here. I guess.”

She'd hardly gotten the words out when Win exploded into the room.

“You have to come with me!” he said, hopping toward her, his hair flapping like the ears of an excitable spaniel. “Now! It's urgent! I need to show you something!”

“Win…” Pru said with a groan. “It's late. I'm comfortable and I don't want to get up.”

“Don't be a loaf-about,” he said. “And it's not that late. Also, a fire? It's hardly cold at all.”

“It's January! And this house is draftier than Santa's sleigh.”

Plus everyone knew the best place to read was beside a snapping blaze, especially if you were thousands of miles from home. Or if you didn't have a home.

“I'm in the middle of a book,” she said.

Win eyed the cover.

“Love Among the Chickens,”
he said. “Well, I prefer his Blandings Castle series but to each her own. Anyhow, Wodehouse can wait. Trust me. You'll want to see this.”

Win reached for her hand. Pru took it with another groan. He lifted her to standing.

“I've a decade and a half on you,” he said. “And you're the one bellyaching like an old maid.”

“I'm not old. Just comfortable. Preferring to be unpestered.”

“Well, you are in the exact wrong residence for that.”

He led her down the hall.

“What about Mrs. Spencer?” she whispered as they pattered toward the stairs. “You know she hates it when we ‘ride roughshod' around the house after she's retired for the evening.”

“We're not roughshodding anything. And why do you care what a ninety-year-old woman thinks?”

“Well, she pays me for one. On top of that, she's already chapped at me for botching a puppy-weaning two days ago. No one told me I was supposed to be weaning him so I can't really be faulted. But naturally Mrs. Spencer doesn't care about such technicalities.”

“Not to worry,” Win said as he helped Pru over a broken step. “The old bird's out in a purple laudanum haze.”

She was out but for how long? The problem with purple laudanum hazes was that when Mrs. Spencer woke from them she was usually seeing red.

“So where are we going?” Pru asked.

When they hit the ground floor, Win guided her around the corner and toward the Grand Dining Hall.

“Oh good grief,” she said. “Back to the portrait? It's lovely but can't you moon over it unassisted?”

“Shush! This has nothing to do with the Boldini.”

When they stepped into the room, Pru's eyes went straight to Gladys Deacon's silver plume. That's when she noticed the wall beside it. The fissure from a few days before had transformed into a yawning divide.

“Oh my God!” she yelped. “What happened? Is the room collapsing? Do you have earthquakes in England? We should move the portrait so it doesn't get damaged. How do you even move a priceless work of art? A transport company?”

“No earthquakes. I opened the wall with my own two hands.”

“Mrs. Spencer is going to kill you! I mean truly kill you! Probably with a gun!”

“Miss Valentine. Look. Stop yammering and
look.
”

He dragged her closer. Pru's hands trembled like the earthquake she'd imagined.

“That crack in the wall,” he said. “The wall itself. It looked queer when we were in here the other day. So I decided to perform an inspection.”

They approached the opening, which was less a hole and more of an entrance, a door, a hatch into an entirely different room.

Pru gasped as they stepped together through the passageway.

“Is that…” she started.

“Yes. A secret library. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“Oh … my … God…”

She took a few more steps. They were suddenly surrounded, on all four sides, by books. Hundreds of books. Thousands, probably.

Pru's breath quickened as she scanned the room.