R Is for Rebel (14 page)

For all her talk of independent thought and a sense of herself that hinged on an utter disregard for society's mores, she was a prisoner. The entire system had turned on her. Here she thought she was returning to some pedestrian, simplified male-female stereotype, a relationship that bore no undue scrutiny. Mainstream. The Usual.

What a hideous joke.

He would never open that door and pull her back in. She knew that after a few seconds. Not out of spite or to taunt her or to teach her a lesson, but simply because they both knew
she
was the one who had to acknowledge what she wanted… to open the door and walk in. Eyes open. Honest.

The tears were running hot and messy down her cheeks. She was quietly slobbering. She tried to count to ten, to gather the requisite self-control, the most basic courage. But she had no reserve. She tried to take a quick breath to right herself, to look at the opportunity she was about to squander.

She could not do it.

She had not made a sound. No whimper. Only silent, copious tears. But even through a thick fire door, Eliot must have been following the trajectory of her thoughts, the loss of every possibility. Her cowardice.

A brief, violent sound of shattering glass on the other side of the door sent her sprinting down the hall and—after an embarrassing visit to the front desk to ask for her own forgotten room number—back to her luxurious, lonely chamber.

***

Eliot was breathing hard after hurling the glass at the door. He heard Abigail's footsteps retreating and got up slowly to gather the larger pieces of glass and to call housekeeping to deal with the rest of the mess. He gave a short, vicious laugh at himself, marveling at the fact that certain clichés were so patently obvious that the very nature of what was meant was lost.
Nice
guys
finish
last.

Well, sure.

Obviously.

But to be taught such an object lesson by a flighty, airy, idiotic woman was almost more than he could stand. A piece of glass caught the edge of his left thumb and he dumped the shards into the small garbage bin in the bathroom and put the bit of bleeding flesh into his mouth to staunch it.

If all women were, if not repelled, at least bemused, by the good, true version of Eliot, he supposed he was perfectly capable of becoming a philandering, misogynistic rat bastard. He grabbed his cell phone from the desk and pulled up the TGV schedule site and made a reservation to get home to Geneva by lunchtime. It was just after six in the morning and he could easily make the eight o'clock train, allowing him plenty of time to shower and change and be out of Paris—and away from Abigail—long before she had any ridiculous notions about discussing or talking or coming to an understanding.

He needed to get home to the cool, organized comfort of his home in Geneva. Where he had what he needed.

Order.

Respect.

And he would start screwing women for the hell of it. As many models and stylists and fortune-hunters and dancers and poetesses and waitresses and heiresses as there were days in the week. And maybe he would lead a few of them on, just for sport, with ambiguous promises of delightful shared futures, and then laugh at their woeful misunderstanding of his intentions.

Silly trollops.

He doubted he could erase his feelings for Abigail, but he could certainly bury the hurt under a stack of meaningless affairs. He needed to get busy. He didn't need to spend another ounce of mental energy dissecting unfathomable ideas like why he had fallen in love with her or how it might have felt for the two of them to spend the rest of their lives mapping uncharted sexual territory.

What a debacle. He stormed into the bathroom and showered as if he were scrubbing off acid rain.

By the time he walked into the front hall of his nineteenth-century home in the Geneva enclave of Versoix, he was honest enough with himself to acknowledge he would not be sleeping with every woman he came across, and probably would not be inclined to sleep with anyone at all for quite some time. Nor did he think Abigail was an idiot; some small, sad part of him even thought of calling her to apologize for something she'd never even heard him say. To apologize for his mean thought.

All he really wanted to do was get into his pool. To wash it all away. He swam for hours, lap after lap draining any residual energy he might have left in reserve to contemplate the possibility of rapprochement with Abigail. He might not be cut out for meaningless sex with faceless strangers, but he was dead set on eradicating thoughts of meaningful sex with one woman in particular.

No apologies were in order. No future. As Abigail had so perfectly pointed out, they had barely begun.

He had nipped it in the bud.

Almost.

Abigail smiled as she turned from the narrow hall into the kitchen and saw her mother and Jack sharing one large bowl of café au lait between them and trading different sections of the newspaper across the battered wooden breakfast table. It had been almost a year since Abigail had seen or heard from Eliot Cranbrook, but being in Paris always brought on painful waves of longing. She stuffed the memories and tried to focus on the present.

Her mother and Jack's house in Paris was something out of a fairy tale. The fact that it was a tiny, seventeenth-century, free-standing cottage tucked into the far end of a small lane, hidden in the very heart of the Sixteenth Arrondissement, made it unique. But the residual evidence of the nearly fifty years that Jack had spent living there was what made it truly magical.

The two bedrooms upstairs had accommodated his family, but barely. His three sons shared one room and he and his Spanish wife, Nina, another. None of them had ever thought to complain of overcrowding. They lived like young adventurers in an enchanted, private world that opened up to the expanse of the Bois de Boulogne out the off-kilter back door, and onto the sophistication of the Avenue Foch out the shiny red front door.

Jack Parnell had taken the house on a dare after hearing about it from a law colleague as a rental during his first year in town, almost half a century ago. At the time, he thought he would be in Paris for a two-year stint, then he would return to Iowa to start a small law practice in his hometown. Instead, he fell in love with Paris. He fell in love with the little house down the lane. He renewed his lease year after year, constantly offering the owner inducements to sell until, after twenty years of renting, the owner was suitably satisfied that Jack had no nefarious intentions that involved altering or razing the unique property.

“Oh, Abigail, did I tell you that Eliot Cranbrook is getting married?” Sylvia looked up from the article she was reading and glanced at her beautiful, if a bit wan, daughter.

“No, Mother, you hadn't mentioned it. Who is he marrying?” Even after so much time, Abigail found it difficult to keep her voice perfectly level when she spoke about Eliot, so she tended to avoid actually using his given name aloud. The fish and the bicycle still hung low between her breasts; she had never taken them off. Whether she wore them as her own scarlet letter or a token of love—or both—she still wasn't sure.

“What's her name again, Jack? We met her in Italy last summer with Penny and Will, remember?”

Jack hummed a noncommittal response, his interest engaged elsewhere in the newspaper he was reading.

“Jack?” Sylvia prompted gently. Abigail noticed that her mother never lapsed into being short-tempered or cross with her second husband. The two of them had married within a few months of their first propitious meeting at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée.

At least it had been propitious for
someone
, Abigail often reminded herself with no small amount of self-deprecation.

“Yes, love?” Jack answered absently.

“What is the name of Eliot's fiancée again? I can't recall.”

“Marisa Plataneau, I think it was. Something like that. Nice woman. French. Very accomplished.” He returned his full attention to the newspaper while Abigail felt her heart fold in on itself at the thought of a most likely beautiful, nice, accomplished French woman sharing Eliot's life.

And bed.

And having Eliot's children.

Where
the
hell
did
that
come
from?
she wondered, then stuffed the stray thought firmly away. But she must have sighed aloud because her mother was looking at her intently when Abigail turned from the counter with her own large cup of hot black coffee.

“What?”Abigail asked defensively, in response to her mother's inquisitive gaze.

Not looking away, Sylvia said, “Jack, darling, Abigail and I are going to pop by the boulangerie to pick up some extra baguettes for tonight.”

“Mm-hmm. Good idea,” he replied without looking up from the paper.

The cool January air helped jar Abigail out of her reverie, along with her mother's abrupt inquiry.

“Are you still fostering feelings for Eliot? After so much time?” Sylvia asked as they made their way along the narrow, cobbled lane that led from the small house out onto the avenue.

“It's not as if I haven't tried to get over it. I just haven't met anyone… that I like as much… since I knew Eliot…” Her voice cracked on his name and she didn't try to hide it from her mother.

“Oh, dear.”

“How can I still feel so much about him when I haven't seen him or talked to him in a year? I only knew him for a few months, really. We only had sex that
one
time
for goodness' sake!”

“Please, Abigail. I am trying to be modern, but there are only certain hurdles I can clear. Kindly spare me the accuracies.”

“Very well. I shan't go into detail. But I only mention it because I stupidly thought I wouldn't become attached, or deeply affected, or whatever.” Abigail's voice trailed off as she realized her mother had slowed to a stop and was staring at her.

“Really, Abigail? You thought you could only have deep feelings for someone if the two of you had lots of
sex
?”

The way her mother pinched the word
sex
out of her patrician mouth made it sound very small and tawdry indeed.

Abigail sickened anew. “Yes. No! Mother. Please. I obviously botched the whole thing. I don't know what I thought. I thought it would be a fling, something light and fun. I adored Eliot…” Then quieter, “Adore Eliot… but I treated him so abominably, so
cheaply
, I don't think I would want to ever see me again either if I were Eliot… I can barely live with myself, much less imagine someone else wanting to live with me. And he was so tender and sweet.”

“Whatever transpired a year ago is no longer the issue. The man is on the verge of marrying another woman.
Think!
” her mother commanded. “Are you willing to sit by and watch? To just let that happen?”

Abigail smiled a poignant smile at her mother then looked across the almost painfully quintessential Parisian side street. A blond woman in stylish navy trousers and fitted black jacket walked her little son to school, the boy looking like a miniature, respectable banker escorting his lady friend; a bent older man carrying his folded newspaper tucked under one arm and his cane in the other, his perfectly cut, vintage trench coat catching the wind as he walked slowly away from them; the fishmonger replenishing the piles of crushed ice in the display bins inside his plate glass storefront window.

“I don't know. Maybe I am willing to sit by and watch,” Abigail said. “I don't want to hurt him.”

Sylvia Heyworth Parnell looked away from her daughter's pained expression and exhaled through her nose, silently cursing the double-edged sword of the depth of her late-in-life affection for her youngest child. Life had certainly been simpler back when she left the care and feeding, and emotional well-being, of her children to nannies and governesses. Now that Abigail was a twenty-nine-year-old adult, Sylvia had actually come to care for her so deeply, it was impossible to sit back and watch her flail. “Abigail, this is not a potential investment or philanthropic opportunity for you. This is your
life
. Please do not turn fainthearted now. It does not suit you.”

Abigail tried to turn away, but her mother's gentle hand on her cheek forced her to look her in the eye. Perhaps it was the absence of any maternal affection whatsoever for the first decades of Abigail's life, but her mother's subtle touch here on the sidewalk next to the newspaper kiosk was more than she could stand. Her eyes stung with unshed tears as she looked into her mother's eyes.

Just as Sylvia had been confused by the unfamiliar tenderness that had built gradually over the past few years, Abigail was equally befuddled. She wanted so much to rely on her mother, to simply fall into a hammock of strength, but Sylvia had been so completely unavailable for so long, it was, at base, a frightening prospect.

“Why did you have to turn into a real mother all of a sudden?” Abigail asked through a hiccup of emotion.

“I wish I knew. My life would be much simpler if I didn't seem to live in a parallel universe where I felt every triumph and catastrophe of yours as if it were my own. It's highly inconvenient.”

They both laughed as Sylvia lightly patted her daughter's cheek twice and wiped away a tear with her perfectly manicured index finger. The two women stared at each other: the one tall, elegant, fair-haired, and proud, the other petite, brooding, dark, and nearly defeated, their silver-gray eyes exact mirrors of one another.

“I hate to admit it,” said Sylvia, “but I believe this is a situation that calls for Bronte's version of sledgehammer subtlety.” Sylvia's eyes tightened around the edges as they always did at the mention of her brash daughter-in-law. “You must simply pick up the phone and speak to Eliot, to discuss matters plainly.”

“And say what, exactly? ‘Oh, hi, Eliot, Abigail here. Even though I behaved abominably, and I've never had the courage to apologize in all these months, I would like you to reconsider your plans to wed the lovely—and
accomplished
—Miss Marisa Plah-Whatever-Her-Name-Is, who probably shows you unreserved love and respect, and contemplate tossing your hat in the ring for fabulous me'? Something along those lines, Mother?”

Abigail shook out her crazy head of hair and wished her thoughts would shake right out of her head along with her unruly tresses. “I'm exasperated, Mother. I'm fine. I'm just going to walk for a bit, then I have meetings the rest of the day with the two professors from the Sorbonne about partnering with our foundation in Uganda. Don't count on me for dinner.”

“Tant pis. I thought you might join us. All right then. I will see you back at the house later tonight.”

“I think I'm going to go back to London tonight, after the meetings. Do you mind?”

“Oh, all right, darling.” They kissed each other on both cheeks before parting.

Abigail wandered around the cold city streets, the gathering, ambivalent gray clouds a perfect embodiment of her mood; directionless and mildly disappointing, with momentary glimmers of tentative, bright sun trying to come through. She was happy on so many levels, she argued with herself. Even her mother's brief regret that she wouldn't be able to join her for dinner represented such a wonderful change from the brittle, formal nonrelationship the two had tolerated until a few years ago.

Sylvia's love affair with Jack had transformed Abigail's mother in many ways. She not only shed her former aristocratic title, but a slew of attendant responsibilities and social codes. All of the commitments and strictures that had defined her—or that had defined the person called the Duchess of Northrop—were set down like a long-carried parcel that was suddenly of no use whatsoever. She was still as opinionated and single-minded as she'd always been, but there was a new tone in her voice, a burgeoning acceptance of other people's foibles. Lately, Abigail noticed that her humor was based on empathy rather than scorn. Jack Parnell loved Sylvia in a transcendent way that went far beyond the honorific title with which she had previously identified so closely. He was helping her see the world through a joyful lens.

After Sylvia met Jack that night at the Plaza Athénée, she gradually realized that she might have a go at something—someone—for the sheer pleasure of it. Prior to that moment, Sylvia's entire life had been a prescribed adherence to convention: her socially ambitious mother had schooled her in etiquette and proper behavior; her shrewd father had ensured she knew more than her fair share of economics, politics, and trade. She was a wife in training. Her father's wealth ensured she would make a fine marriage, but even well into the twentieth century, the fact that her father was in trade was never far from her (or her more aristocratic mother's) mind.

When Sylvia met George Conrad Heyworth for the first time, he was a shy, sweet farm boy from Northrop. His pedigree was unassailable—nephew of a duke on his father's side, nephew of a king on his mother's—but back then, it had never seemed that he would one day hold one of the oldest, most prestigious titles himself. In those days, he was not in line for the dukedom. George's uncle Freddy, the sixteenth Duke of Northrop, was hale and quite reproductive. At the time Sylvia met him, George already had three female cousins and twins on the way. Surely Freddy would sire a son at some point.

On the other hand, if Freddy ended up with a gaggle of girls, George's young, virile father, Henry, would be the duke if it came to that, and even then, George's older brother Ned would take the reins from him and off it would go down that side of the family. And by then, they'd all joked, who even knew if there would be such a thing as a dukedom?

Abigail's father had grown up living the life of an innocent (albeit wealthy and educated) country bumpkin. George's parents, Grandpa Henry and Grandma Polly, had little interest in the glittering London high life, opting instead to create their own small universe populated with eight children, myriad animals, self-produced dramatic performances, athletic competitions. George had a sister who started writing novels at the age of nine, a brother who built his first small tree house in the woods at eleven, all amid an environment that seemed to foster every form of creativity imaginable. By George's own reckoning, he was the most boring of the clan. He simply loved the land. Sylvia found him utterly charming.

She and her sister Claudia had been raised in bourgeois splendor in the small city where their father's mills prospered. Regimental precision was always the order of the day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner served at exactly the same hours; clothes and linens pressed mercilessly; menus planned weeks in advance; social schedules adhered to. Sylvia felt a pang of insecurity when she suspected the contrived aristocratic life her mother aspired to bore no resemblance whatsoever to the real aristocratic life that George Heyworth enjoyed.