“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 fiancé 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.
“Annie, this n—”
“I know! I know!” she said, and clonked her head on the table. “I’m the worst.”
She looked back up.
“Reason number four hundred thirty-seven that I’m so agitated,” she said. “I’m a spaz. A klutz. Not to mention the world’s most overachieving meddler.”
Face locked in an expression Annie could’ve read (irritation? bewilderment?), Gus handed back the transcripts. He wiped a dribble of sweat from his forehead.
“You’re not nearly as bad as all that,” he said.
“I beg to differ,” A
nnie said. “So what’s next? What happens after this? Help a mess of a girl out.”
“What happens after what?”
“Did Mrs. Spencer finally crack?” she asked. “Or did Win just grill the poor woman until she keeled over from exhaustion or old age? And let’s not forget the wan and waifish Pru Valentine observing from the corner. She must’ve read like a thousand books by the time Win got his written.”
“Well,” Gus said, eyes holding steady to the transcripts on the table. “Mrs. Spencer eventually started talking. She did begin to aid Win, albeit in her own marginally helpful way.”
“Marginally helpful. Sounds about right. So did she finally cop to being the duchess?”
“Not precisely. She gave Win more to work with, but her usual ‘I’m no duchess’ rigmarole remained.”
“Why’d she even bother, then?” Annie asked. “If she wasn’t going to tell the whole story why not keep yammering on about chickens and geese?”
“A fair question and she probably would’ve done exactly that, absent a little interference from the universe.”
“The universe?”
“Or God. Fate. What have you. You see, nearly overnight, Mrs. Spencer began to see Pru not as a diaphanous, wide-eyed household employee but a bona fide romantic rival. And no one, especially not an American, was going to steal the woman’s carefully crafted, century-old show.”
Thirty-four
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
“So I brought you duck,” Pru said, setting a plate on Win’s desk. “Not our ducks, of course. From the market. Although, who knows where they got them, so perhaps they’re ours after all.”
She nudged aside a few errant pieces of paper, fully expecting Win to bat her away. He was particular about the kind of mess he liked to have. But instead he sat unmoving, arms hanging limply like wet ropes in his lap.
“What’s the damage this time?” she asked. “You’re not improving the ‘moody writer’ cliché, by the way.”
“I thought she’d bite the hook,” he said in his most pitiable, sad-sack voice. “With Prince Willy dangling helplessly on the end like that, world peace in the balance. I thought this story would finally take flight.”
“She gave some color,” Pru pointed out. “It wasn’t a total waste.”
“What do you know of it? You were reading a bloody book.”
“I can do two things at once. And the Prince Willy conversation happened days ago! Why are you still twisted round the axle about it?”
Win glanced up and with one hand pushed back a chunk of floppy hair. Gone was the precise crew cut, which seemed so hopelessly old-fashioned when Pru first saw him. Even his formerly smooth face was now covered in stubble, partway to a beard. Facial hair: another thing Win Seton could only start and not finish all the way.
“Has it really been days?” he asked. “It feels like hours.”
“Times flies when you’re having fun. And you are clearly having a blast. Come on, try some duck. You look gaunt. Moping must really take it out of a person.”
“It makes no sense,” Win said, refusing to listen. “Gladys Deacon was nothing if not showy, full of her own greatness. Preventing a war? How is this not enough to wring the duchess out of Mrs. Spencer?”
“Maybe she truly sees herself as Mrs. Spencer.”
Either that or the writer was wrong from the start. It was a theory Pru had been batting around for the last several days.
Thirty-four years old and he’d accomplished little. Win Seton was an authority on exactly nothing and, on top of that, seemed perfectly content to hole up in a room like a naughty child from a Dickens novel. Pru didn’t understand how a bloke could seem so aimless and yet so determined at the same time. It made her question everything.
“This is never going to happen, is it?” Seton moaned. “The whole deal will go balls-up and everyone will be right about me. Every last damned person.”
“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Pru said halfheartedly as she arranged the duck. “Mrs. Spencer will come around.”
Pru didn’t necessarily believe this and in fact understood where Mrs. Spencer was coming from. They were both rather fed up with Win’s relentless sulking. You’d think he was the one who lost a fiancé in the war. Or the one pretending to be crazy as a loon.
“I can’t go up there again,” she announced the next evening as Mrs. Spencer cooked a batch of eggs on the stovetop.
“So don’t,” Mrs. Spencer answered simply.
“You could fix him, you know.”
“Gracious. And how might I accomplish that?”
“If you gave the poor bastard even the slightest drop of information, you could turn this whole thing around.”
“A drop of information?” Mrs. Spencer balked. “Have you not been paying attention? Every blasted night I go up there and spill my secrets!”
“The only thing you’ve spilled is whisky and chewing tobacco,” Pru said. “And thanks to your lack of help, the entire content of his story could fit on a matchbook, and I fear he’s irreversibly depressed as a result.”
“It’s not my fault he’s a shitty writer,” Mrs. Spencer said as she scraped the eggs into a chipped cobalt bowl.
“It’s a game to you, same as threatening townsfolk. Same as your cats with their half-dead and partially strangled mice. Just throw another rodent onto the heap.”
“His queries are nonsense.” Mrs. Spencer turned a salt shaker over the eggs and shook with zeal. “How am I supposed to answer questions about someone else’s life? Now. Go deliver his food.”
“I think you should. Then stick around. Do some reminiscing. Give the man an anecdote or two.”
“No, thank you.”
“I don’t know why you derive such enormous pleasure in being so damned fussy!”
Pru swiped a loaf of bread from the counter and stomped off, rolling her eyes as she went.
“Stupid, bananas woman,” Pru said, clomping up the stairs. “Stupid, bananas house.”
At the top step, she hesitated. Pru looked toward Win’s room. Though his light was on, she didn’t hear the usual smack-ding of the typewriter or the even squeak of his chair. Seton was a vigorous typist, always putting his full body weight into it as he careened his way down the page.
“Win?” Pru whispered.
Perhaps she’d finally have a spot of luck and he’d be sleeping or showering or passed out in his own filth. They wouldn’t have to talk and Pru could leave his plate outside the door in true Dickensian fashion. It was getting awkward, the ongoing dialogue about the book that wasn’t happening. Welcome to the family, Win would’ve said, had she told him how she felt.
“Mr. Seton?” she said.
She prodded the door open. Like everything else in the house, it whined with the slightest tap. As Pru shuffled forward, she noticed Win’s desk was empty, save three flies buzzing around an old, dirtied plate.
“Oh thank God.” Pru leaned against the doorjamb and exhaled loudly. “Maybe you’ve finally decided to bathe. Or put an end to your misery.”
“No such luck,” said a voice.
She whipped around. Win sat on the bed, a bottle of wine lodged between his thighs. Freud would have a field day with that one.
“I … uh…” she stuttered.
“I’m afraid you’ve found me alive and kicking. Don’t fret, Miss Valentine, you’re hardly the first to express such opinion. Come, won’t you join me? Misery loves company. Especially in the form of mysterious young companions of the clinically insane.”
Thirty-five
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
“Oh, hello,” Pru said, heart knocking against her chest. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Obviously.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
Win shook his head and waved her off. She strained to keep her eyes at window level o
r higher, given the man was in his underclothes, the bottle of wine jutting aggressively from between his legs. Pru noted that his thighs were athletic, ropy, and blanketed in blond hair. Then she promptly scolded herself for noting them in the first place.
“I’m the one who should apologize for my indecent state and vulgar behavior,” Win said. “You know, you’re far too refined to be living here.”
“I’m not even close to refined, which is probably why I haven’t run screaming for the hills as any sensible person would’ve by now.”
“Perhaps ‘refined’ isn’t the best word. You do have a certain, shall we say … ‘womanly dignity of a diminutive order.’”
“Womanly dignity of a diminutive order,” she repeated.
The description was not his. Pru closed her eyes and at once remembered the smell of the book from which the words came.
“Hardy?” she said, and opened her eyes again. “Am I right?”
“Yep.” He nodded, then took a swig of wine. “Said of Bathsheba’s maid Liddy in Far from the Madding Crowd.”
“So I’m the maid?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose that’s exactly what I am.”
“Aw hell, don’t be blue. I’m the resident miserable wretch. You have the dignity, at a minimum.”
“You’re hardly a wretch,” she lied.
“You are the one who suggested I should off myself only moments ago. Good grief, don’t look so plucked. You were right.” He took another drink of wine. “Someone should put me out of my misery.”
Win picked up his voice recorder, which had previously been on the bed.
“This bloody device,” he said. “Do you know what’s on it?”
“Your conversations with Mrs. Spencer?”
“Correct. Otherwise known as nothing. Zed. Sweet Fanny Adams. Here. Let me play a chord.”
He pressed a button.
“The geese,” Mrs. Spencer said, her voice crackling on the tape. “A family of geese lives at the pond. Every night at six o’clock they take flight, right on cue. Together they make one large circle around Banbury and then return home. I like rituals, don’t you, Mr. Seton?”
I'll See You in Paris Page 15
