“I never said that it would.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Annie said.
“I’m not sure that you do.”
“I’m not marrying Eric because I have nothing else going on. I will have a job. A career. A life outside of him.”
“But behind it all you need a safety net. Let me be that person. Not Eric. Let it be me. Listen, Annie, I’m not going to forbid you from marrying him.”
“Good. Because you can’t.”
“Just remember,” she said, “that whatever happens, however things pan out when he returns, you can back out. A job, no job. Money or not. Your path is not carved in stone and no agreement is permanent. Not an engagement. Not a land deal. Nothing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Eric would never tell me that I was stuck. He says the opposite, that I don’t have to keep my promise. I can back out of the engagement, no hard feelings. He claims I’m too good for him, which is patently untrue.”
“I’m glad he’s not pressuring you,” Laurel said.
“He’d never pressure me!”
“But I wasn’t referring to Eric. I was talking about you.”
Annie squinted in confusion. Her temples began to throb.
“Me?” she said. “Me?”
“Yes. If things are different when he gets back … if you change, or if he does, know that you don’t have to say ‘I do’ because you already promised ‘I will.’”
Annie continued to stand there, head pounding as Laurel’s words played in her mind. Would Annie do it if she had to? If Eric turned out not to be the person she loved, would she say no? Annie believed that she would.
“I know I don’t have to marry him,” she said at last. “And I won’t, unless it’s the right time with the right person, which I’m positive that Eric is. Either way, twenty-two or forty years old, one engagement or fifteen, I can wait.”
She also understood she didn’t have to.
“Okay,” Laurel said, nodding. “Great. Though I’d prefer something less than fifteen engagements.”
“It was a joke,” Annie said. “Something I read in a book.”
Laurel smiled.
“A book,” she said. “Of course. Look, I’m sorry for bringing this up when maybe I didn’t need to. It’s funny … there’s, I don’t know, something different about you lately. On this trip you’ve suddenly seemed older, more grown-up. I suppose that’s quite the sad commentary on how much I’ve been away.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Mom. I’ve kept busy and even had a little fun besides.”
“I hope so.” Laurel sighed. “I’d hate for you to have bad memories of this trip. Or, worse, no memories of it at all.”
“No danger of that.”
“Good.” Laurel sighed again. “So, should we blow this taco stand or what? Or do you want to keep regaling the fine citizens of Banbury with our deepest personal problems?”
“Let’s go,” Annie said. “But first, I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Mom. ‘Blow this taco stand’? Please don’t speak that way again. I think it’s a form of child abuse.”
Laurel closed her eyes and laughed.
It was such a happy sound: light, high, and twinkly. Annie realized then how very long it’d been since she’d heard it. This town was getting to Laurel. It was getting to both of them.
“I have to ask,” Laurel said as they rounded the corner toward the inn. “Nicola says you’ve been running around meeting strange people, asking odd questions, borrowing bikes and flashlights. For what, exactly?”
“Um.” Annie paused and let her mother walk a few steps ahead. “I’ve been doing some, uh, research.”
“Research?” Laurel stopped, then turned back around.
“Yes. Research. On the town history.”
“Oh good grief.” Laurel rolled her eyes. “Is this about that old book you found?”
“Well, sort of,” she admitted. “I mean, it was the genesis.”
Because though it was about the book, it was not entirely so. Not anymore.
“Sweetheart, put it out of your mind. Stop spinning your wheels on this nonsense. Actually, I forgot to mention, but the other day, after you asked about the Grange, I looked into it for you.”
“You looked into it?” Annie leveled her eyes on Laurel. “What do you mean you ‘looked into it’?”
Did she trespass? Stand outside? See her only child coming and going?
“As it turns out,” Laurel said. “The property is gone.”
“Gone.”
“Yup.” Laurel answered with a stiff nod. “Gone. They razed the Grange. Mowed right on over it.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, um, Nicola?”
Nicola. Nicola who lent Annie the bike. Nicola who told her the address of the Grange and said to bother her best girlfriend next door.
“Are you positive?” Annie asked, a squeak in her throat. “Absolutely certain? Maybe you heard it wrong.”
“I thought the same thing. So when I had a few minutes on the way home the other night, I swung by. And the whole thing was … pssst.” Laurel whistled through her teeth. “Completely flattened, like it’d never been there in the first place.”
“Flattened. Really.”
“Yep. Don’t look so upset! It was just an old house. There are better things to see around here!” Laurel grinned. Annie never noticed how pointy her incisors were. “You know what I’m thinking? We need a big ol’ glass of wine. Where can we find some around here?”
“I’m sure Nicola has something,” Annie said, disoriented. Her headache had morphed into full-blown vertigo. “She, uh, usually puts out wine and cheese this time of day.”
“Yes!” her mom chirped.
Annie started.
“Um, what?”
“Nicola’s sundry wines and cheeses!” Laurel sang. “And the cakes. Don’t forget the cakes!”
With an exaggerated wink, she did a little gun-shooting motion, the kind of which Laurel Haley had never made in her lifetime. Then she jauntily bounced up the stairs of the inn. Annie remained at the bottom, mouth open, her tongue tacky and dry.
“Uh, Mom?”
At the top step, Laurel glanced over her right shoulder.
“What is it, Annie?”
“Well, it’s about the Gr…” she began.
Then Annie pulled back. It was not the time to ask. The exchange was too confusing, the pieces inexorably scattered. She didn’t even know where to start, or which aspect of the lie was most upsetting.
“Oh, never mind,” she said.
“Okay!” Laurel shrugged cheerfully. “Well, let’s get a move on! That wine can’t be poured too quickly!”
Annie shook her head and silently trailed after her mom, staring at Laurel’s birdlike back in confusion. All this time she wanted more information about her dad but it seemed Laurel wasn’t so thoroughly known herself. Some safety net. Damned thing was full of holes.
Forty-two
THE GEORGE & DRAGON
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite half-storyteller,” Annie said, taking a stool beside Gus at the bar. “Hiya, Ned, what’s cooking?”
“Hello, Annie. Fine day, isn’t it?”
Lord help her, she was a regular. Annie tossed her backpack to the ground.
“It’s fair,” she said. “Though I expect the weather to turn to shit at any moment. So, Gustavo, what’s going on?”
“Gustavo?” The man scowled. “Have we met? Because you look exactly like an amiable young lady with whom I’m acquainted. But you are lacking in her good graces.”
“Been hanging out with you too much, I s’pect,” Ned said.
He pushed a beer toward her and went to help a patron at the far end of the bar.
“So I have a question,” Annie said and sipped her beer.
Ned had given her a new kind to t
ry, something with a dark amber hue. Four years of college and it took hanging out with some geezer in a pub to make her enjoy the taste of beer.
“Actually I have several questions,” she said. “But let me start with one. Can you think of any possible reason a person might lie about the Grange?”
“In what way did they lie?”
“This person said it was gone, razed, when obviously it’s not.”
Gus swiveled to face her.
“Someone claimed it was gone?” he said. “Who?”
“Oh. This random person I bumped into at the inn. A stranger, apparently.”
“Apparently?” Gus took a sip of his own beer, though the glass was mostly drained. “Can’t say, really, without knowing the context. Razing is the ultimate plan, though. Maybe this ‘random’ got his or her wires crossed. Or is anxious to buy a miniestate when they go for sale.”
“Is that a definite?” Annie asked. “That they’ll bulldoze the property? I thought you were only speculating about the developers.”
“No, they’re trying to get their grubby paws in there as soon as practicable. Sadly for them, there’s been a holdup with the permit, a local fussbudget is trying to have it designated as a historical site.”
Annie thought of the first thing she’d stolen, the note tacked onto the front gate. “Application for Grade II building: House. Early 18th century. Coursed limestone and ironstone rubble…”
“Alas, the Grange is changing hands as we speak,” Gus added.
“What do you mean changing hands?” Annie asked, looking at him cross-eyed. “Like, it’s on the market? Up for sale?”
“Not in the traditional sense, with estate agents and whatnot. Could you imagine an open house? Straight from any homebuyer’s nightmare. Anyway, yes, it’s being sold—in a private transaction.”
“Private transaction?” Annie said, heart thwacking in her chest. “What kind of private transaction?”
“The money kind? I’ll sell you my land and you give me a few quid? Is that not how it works stateside?”
“The permit,” she said. “It delayed the sale?”
Had it also impeded American ex-lawyers? Ones who sat in meetings all day while ignoring aimless daughters? Because when Annie heard the words “delayed” and “transaction” she could only think of Laurel.
“Yes, it’s held up the sale for some weeks now,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“The woman I met. I think she is part of the transaction. Maybe a seller.”
“Did she say that?”
“In a way.”
“Who was it?” Gus asked, voice coming out like bullets. “Did she give a name? What did she look like?”
“Blond,” Annie said. “Petite. American, like me.”
Was it possible?
Was Laurel’s property the Grange itself? It was family land, she’d claimed. Could Laurel be related to the duchess? Or to Edith Junior? Or to Tom or Win?
“Who inherited the property when the duchess died?” Annie asked.
“I mentioned before, Mrs. Spencer didn’t bequeath it to any one person. It’s held in a blind trust by a variety of parties. Did you get this woman’s name? The petite American?”
“What about Win?”
Annie thought of the address from the transcripts, the same address etched into the luggage tag perpetually tucked in her pocket. She carried it around now, like a talisman, a piece of good luck.
“Does Win own the Grange?” she pressed.
“No,” Gus said. “Win Seton does not own the Grange.”
“Is there a way I could get in contact with him?”
“Why would you want to do that? I told you—”
“Gus, you’re killing me here. Everyone’s killing me. Just give me what I want!”
After releasing a frustrated grunt, Annie kicked at the bar. Ned’s glare immediately snapped in her direction. Property damage. Another petty crime for the ever-growing list. She gave Ned a feeble smile.
“Annie, calm down,” Gus said. “I don’t understand why you’re so plucked.”
She removed the luggage tag from her pocket and slapped it on the counter.
“What do you think about this?” she asked.
Gus’s face reddened.
“You have to stop—”
“Stealing things. Yes. I know. I found this lodged in the banister at the Grange. It’s clearly the writer’s. You said when we first met that Win is in Paris. Is he still at this address? That is in Paris, correct?”
“Île Saint-Louis.” Gus nodded toward the tag. “It’s one of the oldest sections of the city. Many of the homes have been in families for centuries.”
“I know, I’ve been there,” Annie said. “And I’m not asking for the island’s history. I want to know if Win Seton lives at twenty-four Quai de Béthune?”
“How am I supposed to answer that?”
“You know, you’ve made a lot of disparaging remarks about the guy,” Annie said. “He’s a tosser, a wanker, a ne’er-do-well, on and on. You’re not exactly chuffing brilliant yourself.”
“You’re not using the term properly. It’s not a curse word.”
“What about Pru?” she asked. “Is Pru in Paris?”
“That would be highly unlikely. The young woman returned to America, eventually.”
“Really?” Annie said with a small pout. “She did? I actually thought…”
She hesitated and took a sip of beer, though was tiring of it already. What exactly did Annie think? What ending had she mapped out for these people, subconsciously or otherwise?
“It’s stupid,” she said. “I guess … I suppose I assumed they fell for each other. That after Win got what he needed from Mrs. Spencer, he returned to Paris and Pru joined him. Eventually.”
Annie pictured the transcript, Win’s address on the back, written in a woman’s hand. She had assumed it was Pru’s.
“You thought they ended up together?” Gus said and frowned. “Well, sorry, there’s no happily ever after here.”
“Wow, okay.” Annie sighed. “I’m shocked. I don’t even know why since you never mentioned a romance. But they had this sweet rapport.”
“That they did.”
“So I thought…”
“Not altogether unreasonable.”
“He went and muffed the entire deal though, didn’t he?” she said. “They could’ve had a happily ever after but Win Seton screwed the pooch, just like you intimated he would.”
“I intimated that?”
“Of course you did! Basically, you’ve painted the guy as a loser.”
“Well, now, I never meant to go that far,” Gus said. “He was daft at times but not so bad a guy.”
“Not so bad? Tell me, Gus, how did you wrap up the story last time we spoke? Oh, that’s right, he lured Pru into his room and got her drunk on cheap wine. Sounds like a stand-up guy to me.”
“He didn’t lure her! She showed up!”
“Then Pru passed out, in his bed. Lord knows what kind of mischief he wheedled from her.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying,” Gus said, eyes boring into Annie. “But it was nothing like that. Win was often a bumbling do-nothing, and a bit too quick to take the piss out of people, but he was not a monster. Win Seton cared about people. He cared about Mrs. Spencer. And he definitely cared about Pru.”
“But Pru was naïve, incredibly sheltered. Win was worldly. He had tricks up his sleeve.”
“I’d hardly call the bloke ‘worldly.’ Did you miss the part where I mentioned he was coddled since birth? Pru was smarter and savvier in innumerable ways.”
“Then tell me what happened in the bed,” Annie demanded.
“Not a thing. Blimey, have some respect for the two.”
“All right. Fine. I’ll give them their so-called privacy. But if you’re going to claim it wasn’t Win who drove the girl away, then tell me what happened the next morning, when they woke up.”
Forty-three
&nb
sp; THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
Pru wakened to someone depositing two live chickens on her head.
“Miss Valentine!” called the shrill voice she’d grown oh-so-accustomed to hearing.
Even with the decibel level, it was a miracle Pru woke up. She’d become skilled at tuning out the old woman. On top of that, she was spectacularly hungover. Though there were the chickens, which helped.
“Do you know where I found these birds?” Mrs. Spencer asked.
“Um, in the yard?” Pru said, and scooted up onto her elbows.
She glanced over to see Win snoring heavily beside her. So he did sleep. It was a revelation.
Oh God.
Win was beside her.
And Mrs. Spencer was standing over them, surveying what appeared to be a wildly indecent sleeping arrangement though all parties were fully clothed.
“I can take the birds outside if you’d like,” Pru said, scrambling to her feet. “Silly chickens shouldn’t be in the house!”
“They were in your room, Miss Valentine!”
She felt the woman’s voice all the way down to her fingertips. From the moment Pru stepped onto the property, she understood Mrs. Spencer could kill a man at twenty paces. But this was the first time she was well and truly scared.
“I found these chickens in your room!” Mrs. Spencer bellowed. “Roosting because they had plenty of space to do so, my randy assistant having flown the coop!”
“I haven’t flown the coop,” Pru insisted, using a foot to feel for her shoes. She swallowed, the taste of the wine thick on her tongue. “I was helping Mr. Seton with his, er, writing. And fell asleep.”
“Passed out, more like, judging from the smell and your purple mouth. Is there a particular reason you’ve decided to cop off with my biographer?”
“Cop off?” Win said, immediately prodded into consciousness. “Is someone copulating? That hardly seems fair.”
“Lord Almighty!” Mrs. Spencer said and tossed up her hands.
The woman shook both fists at the ceiling, which sent the birds flapping about the room. The chickens spent the better part of five minutes disrupting papers and banging into windows and walls until finally releasing themselves out into the hallway.
I'll See You in Paris Page 19
