A Rather Charming Invitation (2 page)

“Nor I,” said Jeremy firmly. “Let’s toss a coin. Call it.”

“Heads,” I said. He flipped the coin. I lost. I sighed, and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Bonjour,
chère
Penn-ee,” said the voice on the other end—female, light, slightly high-pitched, and a bit agitated. “I am Honorine, your
cousine
from Mougins. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I need your help. I think I’m under arrest!”

“Who—what—?” I stammered. The one thing I didn’t ask was,
where
? But that’s what she chose to tell me.

“I am calling from my mobile phone and I am in ze police car!” she cried. “We are coming soon. The policeman, he does not
comprend
that I am innocent!”

“Good God,” I said involuntarily, flabbergasted. This girl knew my name, but, after all, it had been printed recently in all the newspapers:
American Heiress Uncovers Another Priceless Treasure
. So, we’d had our share of strangers skulking on our doorstep—usually looking to engage us on some far-fetched quest for dubious fortune. I’d never heard of a cousin Honorine. Yet there was something authentic in her attitude that made me pause.

“Who is it?” Jeremy asked, startled by the comical look on my face.

“Er, well,” I said, covering the mouthpiece, “she says she’s my cousin, and she’s under arrest.”

Jeremy gave me a reproachful nod. “It’s because of that brass plaque you put next to the front door.
Nichols and Laidley, Ltd. Discretion guaranteed. Inquire within.
You
will
keep pretending we live in a 1930s movie!” he chided affectionately.

“I hardly think you can lay the blame for this on my whimsical little sign,” I objected. “Our new agency is bound to attract eccentric clients. This only proves that we’ve got to hire someone to field all the phone calls and letters.” Just then, I heard a car pull up in front of the house.

“I think we are here now,” said the girl on the phone. I repeated this to Jeremy.

“Oh, hell,” he said resignedly, lifting his feet off the ottoman, rising from his chair, and going down the hallway to the little reception room at the front of the house. I followed him, and we peered out the window. Sure enough, a police car was parked at the curb. No siren, thankfully, but a few flashing lights. Jeremy studied the driver, who was getting out of the car.

“Hey,” Jeremy said, “that’s Danny.”

Danny is the cop who keeps an eye on our corner of Belgravia, and he helped us out when this townhouse was burgled by cousin Rollo. Which gives you an idea of the kind of relatives I already have. So I think I can be forgiven for not having “the more, the merrier” as a family motto.

“I’d better see what this is all about,” Jeremy said, going to the front door.

I remained at the window, transfixed. “
Allô, allô?
” said the voice in my ear, still on the phone, as the girl got out of the passenger side of the police car, her mobile phone clapped to her ear, while Danny escorted her toward our steps.

“Yes, we’re coming to meet you at the door,” I said hastily. The girl clicked off. I figured I’d better talk to my folks
tout de suite
, so I quickly made a long-distance call to the States. As soon as I heard my father’s rich Burgundian drawl, I blurted out quite unceremoniously, “Hey, Dad, there’s a French girl on my doorstep who says she’s a cousin. Do we know somebody named Honorine?”

There was a brief pause as my father absorbed this.

“Honorine,” I repeated helpfully. “Cousin. Do we know her? Is she for real?”

“
Bien sûr!
” he said. “She’s actually the daughter of
ma cousine
Leonora. Is some-zing wrong? What’s she doing in London?”

“Getting herself arrested,” I cried. “She showed up here with a cop. What am I to do with her?”

“Let her in,” my father advised quickly. “Help her if you can. Find out what’s the trouble and call me back. Meanwhile, I’ll phone Leonora to see what she can tell us.”

I hung up, and now heard voices at the front door, so I went out to face the music. Jeremy was standing in the vestibule, holding the door open, talking to our visitors, but not inviting them in. Danny, with his policeman’s expression of I’ve-seen-everything, stood on the front stoop, with the girl beside him.

Now I got a closer look at her. She was pretty in a schoolgirl kind of way, with shiny chestnut brown hair smoothed back from a clear, pale complexion and wide, bright dark eyes. I guessed her to be in her early twenties; she was wearing torn jeans and a chic jacket, with a student-style backpack slung behind her. She seemed frightened and affronted, but when she saw me peer around Jeremy, her face lit up with touching relief and trust.

Danny was in the midst of explaining to Jeremy that Honorine had been picked up with a bunch of drunken kids outside a bar not far from here. “She doesn’t appear to have been drinking, and she insists she didn’t even know the other kids on the street who were causing a ruckus—says she just happened to be there when the trouble broke out,” Danny was saying in a low voice.

“Why’d you bring her here?” Jeremy asked, eyeing Honorine to see if she was conning us.

“She hasn’t got an address in London, so I asked if she had any family in town, and she says you’re it,” Danny replied.

“She does. I mean, we are,” I said. Jeremy gave me an astonished look. “I just spoke to my folks,” I said hurriedly.

“When I heard this address, I knew it was you guys, so I thought I’d run her over here, but I’m sticking my neck out,” Danny warned. “Can you vouch for her?”

I looked at Honorine. I realized we’d all been talking about her as if she were deaf, dumb, and blind . . . instead of merely French. “What happened?” I asked her gently.

With injured dignity, Honorine explained that she never meant to inconvenience us; she had planned to “crash” with some of her older ex-pat university chums who’d been working and living in London. Her pals had left her a standing invitation to join them whenever she could. But when she arrived, she discovered that her friends’ group in London had recently split up, some married and some transferred to far-flung places like America and Japan.

So Honorine was left stranded. The landlord told her that only one of her friends was still in town, but had moved with no forwarding address. He gave her the name of the pub that her crowd favored. But when Honorine went there, the bartender told her she’d just missed her friend. And while she was out on the street trying to figure out her next move, she got swept up with that rowdy crowd outside the pub. Her voice went up in a slight wail at the mention of the pub, and she glanced apprehensively at Danny.

“How did you get my address?” I asked her.

“My mother sent you an invitation, weeks ago,” Honorine said matter-of-factly. “She made me write out the address on the envelope for her. Did you not receive it?” she asked curiously, without recrimination.

“We’ve been just swamped with mail,” I said apologetically, stepping back so that they could enter the vestibule. “We’re only now catching up. . . .”

I glanced guiltily at the floor, where today’s multitude of letters and courier envelopes were scattered in a corner, having been slipped through the slot. Neither of us had picked up the day’s haul, because it would require carrying it into the adjacent reception room, and thereby facing up to the great big bin of unopened, unsolicited mail that just keeps stacking up with alarming regularity. When your inheritance is written up in the press, you start to feel like someone who won the lottery, because suddenly, everyone’s your “best friend” and wants a piece of the action, including people you barely knew in school . . . or, relatives you never even knew you had.

Jeremy, aware of what all this mail on the floor must look like to outsiders, scooped it up and tried to offhandedly pitch it into the reception-room bin before anyone noticed. But Honorine and Danny, intrigued, followed him to the little room to see if the letter from her mother was there.

Honorine gazed at the overstuffed bin; then, like a hunting spaniel who’d spied its prey, she reached into the chaos, and pulled out a violet-colored envelope, lightly scented with violet sachet, addressed in a perfect, beautiful schoolgirl handwriting.

“Voilà!
” she said triumphantly, handing it to me.

It was really quite lovely stationery, elegant and artful, as if from a bygone European era. While everyone watched, I opened the envelope carefully, unfolding the matching note inside:

It was signed by Leonora. The invitation, indeed sent weeks ago, was for this upcoming weekend. “So sorry!” I said, deeply embarrassed. Honorine shrugged.

“Thank you, Danny,” Jeremy said in his lawyer’s voice. “We can take it from here.”

“Just keep her off the streets and out of the pubs, hey?” Danny said as he departed.

“Won’t you come in and sit down?” I asked Honorine, leading her through the hallway. She followed more shyly, now that the danger of being arrested was past, and she realized she was entering our little sanctuary.

Jeremy, ever observant, and with that quiet English reserve of his that goes a long way toward calming people down, said, “Honorine, when’s the last time you’ve eaten?”

She was well-brought-up enough to deny the necessity of feeding her, so she answered very casually, “Oh, in Paris, just before I boarded the train.”

“That must have been ages ago,” I commented.

Honorine admitted that, upon her arrival in London, she had walked all the way from the station to the house where she expected to find her friend, and then spent the whole day searching for her. We insisted she come into the kitchen and share our supper. Jeremy and I had dined out at lunchtime rather significantly with law colleagues of his, so I’d planned to have only soup tonight. But I managed to add some tasty cold sandwiches on a nice fresh baguette, with olives and a green salad, all of which Honorine ate very gratefully. Despite her genteel manners, it was obvious that she was really quite hungry.

Between her French delicacy and Jeremy’s reserve, the conversation would have been quiet and tactful, with huge gaps of unspoken questions. However, although my bloodline is both French and English, I am an American, and we have no qualms about cutting to the chase.

“So, what’s up, Honorine? Did you run away from home?” I asked, half-teasing and half-serious. Her startled, then sheepish expression made it clear that she had indeed flown the coop.

But all she said was, “What must you think of me!” She sighed, glancing down in embarrassment at her own dusty, disheveled state. “
Normalement
, I would not choose this foolish way to introduce myself to my famous
cousine
, Penny Nichols, ‘the international, adventuring American heiress’!” she exclaimed with a smile as she quoted the papers. “I wonder,” she murmured, “if I might impose upon you further, to allow me to wash up a bit? Then I will look for a student hostel or something—”

I saw the fatigued look in her eyes. “You can stay overnight,” I said promptly. “We have a guest suite upstairs, so you’ll have a bath and bed to yourself. Tomorrow we’ll sort this all out.”

“
Merci
,” she said, following me up the staircase. We passed the second floor, which had belonged to Great- Aunt Penelope, with its library, two bedrooms, dining room and little kitchen; these were now our living quarters. Jeremy and I had managed to pool some of our unexpected windfall to buy the other two apartments from elderly residents eager to retire to warmer climes. We’d converted the first level into our offices. The third-floor flat was a one-bedroom version of the second, perfect for guests.

“You’ll have plenty of privacy here,” I assured Honorine. She gave me a grateful smile as I left, closing the door behind me.

When I came back downstairs, Jeremy had already tidied up the last of the dishes in the big kitchen where we prefer to cook at the end of a busy workday. We returned to our study, and he said wryly, “Well, Honorine got out of telling us the rest of her story rather gracefully. And I must say, you aided and abetted her. Sleepover, indeed. What will you do if she’s brought drugs or other problems to this little slumber party of yours?”

“Oh, stop it,” I said. “Are you joking? That kid?”

The phone rang, and this time Jeremy picked it up, but when he heard it was my father, he switched to speaker mode, so we could all take part in the conversation. Dad announced that Leonora was absolutely livid with Honorine, who, after a mother-daughter quarrel, departed without so much as a by-your-leave, and had now disgraced the family by nearly getting arrested in London.

“Leonora says she cannot think what possessed her wayward daughter to trouble you two in this way,” my father said, having been instructed to deliver this message, “so she apologizes deeply for the inconvenience.”

“Well, we owe her an apology as well,” I confessed. “We never answered the nice invitation that she sent us, weeks ago. Don’t tell Mom.”

“I heard that,” came my mother’s crisp English reprimand, as she picked up the extension. “You are wasting your time, swearing your father to secrecy. We tell each other everything, don’t we, darling?”

“Everything I can remember,” my father replied, playfully exaggerating his age.

Jeremy just grinned at me. He’s fascinated by my parents, whom he sees as a wonderful pair of eccentric hermits with a mystifying synchronicity between them. From my father, I inherited my brown eyes and a fascination with tales from the past. From my mother, I got my copper-colored hair and a fairly unexpected way of occasionally blurting out my thoughts to clear the air.

“Dad, what’s the story with Leonora?” I inquired. “Do you know her well? How come I never met her?”

“Ah,
oui
,” he sighed. “Leonora is my younger cousin. Her mother and mine were sisters. We grew up together in Burgundy.”