Baroness (5 page)

She leaned away from him, turned. He met her eyes, humor in them.

“Don't you think I could be an actress? Maybe in the picture shows?”

His gaze dipped to her mouth, back up to her eyes. “I think you are a pretty girl on the loose in Paris who's had too much Pernod.” He tried to touch his forehead to hers, but she jerked away.

“I haven't had a drop to drink tonight. Besides, you're one to talk, Dash. Fresh out of Harvard, your father's millions in your back pocket, idling away your life in Paris. You're the one who's had too much Pernod.”

“C'mon, Red, don't be sore. Sure, you could be in the movies. It's just that I think you're destined for a different life. Your father has millions—”

“He's my stepfather—”

“And he'll want to marry you off to some wealthy duke who can give you a title and keep you in diamonds.”

She wanted to slap him then, something brash and hot inside her. “What if I don't want that? What if I think marriage is outdated and
bourgeoisie
? What if I don't plan to ever get married?”

The last thing she expected was his slow, languid smile. “Doesn't mean you can't fall in love, right?”

When he kissed her again, she had already agreed. He confused her so, and her breath caught in her chest when he pulled away, kissed her forehead, her eyes.

“And what of you, Dash? Don't you dream big dreams?”

“I don't have dreams.” He found her eyes, searching them for a long moment, smiled, something dangerous and intoxicating. “I have inspiration.”

“There you are!” Blanche called down from the embankment as Dash broke away from her. “Come up here, you two. Pem is bleeding!”

Dash untangled himself from her, and she followed as he scrambled up to the street.

Pem sat on the sidewalk, his hands to his nose, blood on his linen jacket.

“What happened?”

Blanche knelt next to him, holding a handkerchief to his face. “A couple of sailors suggested something rude—”

“I'm a lover, not a fighter,” Pem said mournfully. “But I gave it my best shot at defending her honor.”

Blanche laughed, clearly unaffected by Pem's misery. “Good thing a gendarme happened by or he just might be defending me on the bottom of the Seine.”

“Break my heart, will you, Blanche?” Pem turned to Dash. “I had it sorted.”

“I'm sure you did. Want to point me in the direction of those sots?” Dash said as he hooked his hand under Pem's arm and hauled him to his feet as Blanche scrambled up beside him. Pem took the handkerchief, examined it.

Rosie put her hand on his arm. “Dash.”

He glanced at her. “C'mon, Red. You're not going to let Pem bleed for nothing, are you?”

“I think I don't want you bleeding all over my new dress.”

“I'll buy you another one.” He grinned at her and tucked his arm around her waist, his voice low in her ear. “It's too early for the night to be tamed, don't you think, Red?”

Oh.

His voice could turn her to honey, and she kept hearing his words…

Inspiration.

She was his
inspiration
.

But it scared her a little too. She feared what his words might encourage if they continued their walk along the Seine.

“Take me home, Dash. There is plenty of taming yet to do this season. Besides, we have to get up early if we want to make the train.”

His grin didn't quite meet his eyes, but he hailed a cab. They squeezed into the backseat, she sat on Dash's lap, and he let his hand linger on the small of her back, heating her through.

When they reached her house, he climbed out behind and walked her to the door. In the shadows he pressed a lingering kiss to her lips, suggestion in his touch. “The moon is still up, and Lilly is asleep.”

“Dash—”

“You know I won't sleep a wink for thinking of you.”

She pressed her hand to his chest, the doorframe in her spine. “Tomorrow—”

“Yes, tomorrow. We'll play the ponies for more than money.” He winked. “I'll be by at six.”

Her voice had vanished and she let herself inside, closing the door and leaning against it as she counted her heartbeats.

Then she smiled and pressed her fingers to her lips. Maybe she
was
just a pretty girl in Paris, maybe this was all she could dream.

But what if this was everything?

Lilly. She'd have to waken her and tell her their plans. Then pack a picnic lunch. Then lay out her clothing and bathe…

Perhaps Blanche had been correct—they should have simply stayed out all night.

Rosie shook away the smile and took the stairs lightly, then padded down the hall to Lilly's room. She wouldn't be surprised to find her cousin still reading, the light pooling over her pillows, or even before the hearth, a fire crackling to ward off the spring chill.

As she opened the door, an eerie silence breathed through her. No cracking fire, no slumber breathing from Lilly's bed. Lilly's
still-made
bed. Rosie turned on the light and stared, her heart loosening from its moors and dropping.

No Lilly. And from the looks of it, she hadn't returned all day.

Rosie didn't care that she awoke Amelia, or that the housekeeper was in her nightclothes. “Did Lilly come home today?”

Amelia shook her head. “No, ma'am. I thought she was with you.”

Rosie pressed her hand against her breath, hot in her chest. “She's not here?”

Amelia shook her head then grabbed her robe to follow Rosie back to Lilly's boudoir. Rosie stood in the lit room, unable to purge the images too easily conjured. “Where could she be?”

She went to the alcove in the window, picked up the overturned copy of Zane Grey, and pressed her hand to the page.

Amelia stood at the door. “I'll brew some tea.”

Rosie nodded then sat back, drew up her legs under her dress, and stared out into the graying night.
Lilly, where are you?

* * * * *

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lilly knew she should go home. That Rosie might be worried.

But the Cathedral of Notre Dame sparkled under the moonlight and the music floated down the dark, mysterious Seine, and for the first time in six years, she felt as if life might be more than what she left behind. She could taste it, the freshness of the breeze, smelling of freedom, of the sky. Maybe there was a place for her outside Montana, if she just looked for it.

“There are so many stars.”

“If you think those are pretty, I should take you for a ride in the country. When the moon is full, waxing over a rolling French hillside, frosting the trees, turning the lakes to ribbons of molten silver. Glorious.”

Rennie leaned over the edge of the bridge, the reflection of the moon in his eyes as he spoke, as if seeing something beyond the skyline of Paris.

“You sound like one of those writers I met today. But you're talking about flying, aren't you?” Lilly said.

“From the sky, everything looks so small. You can put your thumb over an entire river, a barn, or a house and make it disappear. Everything drops away except for the wind in your ears and the feeling that you are weightless, nothing to bind you to this earth.”

She could sink into his voice—the way he described Paris, or his upbringing on the farm in Canada, not so far from her ranch in Montana. “Did you learn to fly in the war?”

“I went to England and signed up there with the RAF. They gave us a crash course and sent us over to France. I flew a Sopwith Camel with the 209th Squadron.”

She wanted to ask, but instead, she stared into the black water of the river, watching a silhouette of a couple on the sidewalk walking arm in arm.

The charisma of the night seemed to wheedle from him a piece of himself, and he surprised her with his tone, intimate, and even a little sad.

“It was different, flying in the war. You went up knowing it could be your last time. The German Flying Circus had a chap named Richthoven who could knock anything out of the skies. They called him the Red Battle Flyer. He was finally taken out by my flight commander, Roy. Even then, he didn't crash, just set his plane down in a sugar beet field and died. Shot in the head.”

The drama of the Great War had ended so soon after her arrival in New York, for Lilly the entire affair lacked the tragedy it should. Sure, she'd seen soldiers return home, some of them missing arms or legs, but mostly she'd seen the war through Aunt Jinx's grief over her runaway son, Jack. Lilly had only known Jack a day at most before the revelation of her aunt's affair drove him to war.

What if her cousin Jack was right here, in Paris, lunching at a café, or painting out of one of those suitcases along the river? Maybe she'd passed him in her tour of Paris, as Rennie charmed the day away.

She still couldn't believe she'd spent the day with a stranger.

Only now, perhaps not a stranger at all.

“It's a miracle you survived,” she said as Rennie's words faded into the fold of night.

Rennie looked away from her. “I'm not sure I believe in miracles anymore. I saw too many friends burn in their planes to believe in miracles.”

He straightened up from the railing, turned to her, and his eyes glistened. She looked away, the sharpness of his emotions cutting through her.

“Do you believe in miracles, Lilly Hoyt?”

She drew in a breath. “I didn't grow up with miracles. I grew up with hard work.”

“Says the woman of nineteen formidable years.”

She glanced at him, her gaze skimming quickly off his, his words stinging. “I don't suppose you saw a hint of God up there in the skies.”

He stared at her, those brown eyes sifting through her words. “Maybe it's not worth looking. Seems like heartbreak to put so much hope into something that might not even be there.”

“You don't believe in God?”

“Oh, I believe in God. I just don't think He cares. In fact, I think He's abandoned us. Try flying over a battlefield and you'll see I'm right.”

She had no words for this, churning them over inside. She hadn't given God much thought beyond the pews of her church on Sunday morning. If she looked around hard, however, she might agree with Rennie.

What use was God if He didn't show up for the important moments? Like saving her father? Or finding Jack? Maybe He had abandoned her. Maybe she had to figure out her life and where she fit into it on her own.

Rennie's hand slid into hers, warm and solid.

“Do you mind?” he said quietly.

“No.”

He smiled then and tugged her over the bridge, back to the Quai de la Tournelle
.

“I'm sorry I never got you back to Café a la Paix.”

“I'll have to alert a gendarme, see if he will rescue me.”

“I would put up a fight. They would have to arrest me and throw me in the Bastille.”

She heated down to her bones. The guilt of not meeting Rosie had slowly sloughed off her, leaving only the niggle of shame, and with his words, that too vanished. Frankly, Rosie would probably applaud today's adventures.

“I would bring you crepes and books from Sylvia,” Lilly said, laughing.

True to his word, Rennie had introduced her to a bookstore—Shakespeare and Company, located under the eyes of the cathedral in the Latin Quarter, on what Rennie called the Left Bank. Books crammed every cranny, tucked spine in or out, on their sides, or on end, massive walls with ladders climbing into the rafters to retrieve Homer and Dante and Flaubert. There, he'd loaded her up with what he called “real books”—a novel by a new author named James Joyce, another by a T. S. Eliot. And poems by a woman named Gertrude Stein. “She lives right here in Paris and has readings at her salon.”

He introduced Lilly to the proprietor, Sylvia Beach, and they drank tea, a spicy Indian mix that made her tongue sparkle in her mouth.

Then they strolled along the crisp gravel paths of the Luxembourg gardens, and Lilly lost herself inside this pocket of grace, abundant with cherry trees and leaf-strewn canals and thirsty willows. She drank in the flower gardens around the Palace and let Rennie buy her a cup of café au lait and a brioche as they sat at a wrought iron table, watching little straw-hatted boys dip their sailboats into the mirrored surface of the lake. Rennie then toured her through the Musee du Luxembourg to view the Cézannes and Monets and finally out the other side, to the Parthenon with its grand columns. They sat again at the original model of the Statue of Liberty.

“You can see the Eiffel Tower from here,” he said, and she made out the frame of it against the setting sun.

They ate dinner at a café off the Boulevard Montparnasse—Rennie called it Mount Parnassus—and finished off a plate of oysters, although she turned down the frothy beer for a lemonade.

Then he had walked her back along the garden to the Seine.

Now he stood on the curb to hail a cab. “The truth is, I don't want to take you home.”

She savored his words. “I really don't have a home anymore.”

“I thought New York was your home.”

“It's my mother's home. And my stepfather's home. My home is in Montana, on a ranch as big as this city. We have a herd of protected buffalo and a stake in a copper mine. But my mother owns the
Chronicle,
and she came back to New York to run it.”

“Your mother is the publisher of the
Chronicle
?”

“Along with my stepfather. I think she hopes I'll take up the reins one day, but I have no interest in the paper. I intend to someday return to Montana and run our ranch. I'm only here because my mother decided I needed some culture, and my cousin Rosie needed a companion.”

“Rosie is the one who left you during the procession?”

“She's probably out with her friends Dashielle and Blanche and Pembrook, glad to be rid of me.”

He was staring at her, his eyes darkening.