Baroness

by Susan May Warren

  “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.

  “What?”

  “I can’t think of anyone who might be glad to be rid of you.”

  His words made her throat fill, conjured up emotions too long bottled inside. “I’m trapped in this life and I don’t know how to get away. Today is the first day since we’ve arrived in Paris I’ve felt like I can be myself. Or maybe the me I’d like to be. Someone who Rosie doesn’t have to doll up to keep from embarrassing her.”

  She ran her hand across her cheekbone, wiping away the wetness there. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired of feeling like I don’t belong.”

  Rennie stared at her a long time, until she finally looked away.

  “C’mon. I want to show you something.”

  He held out his hand and waved to a passing taxi. They climbed into the backseat.

  “Aéroport de Paris—Le Bourget, s’il te plait,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To show you where you do belong.”

  They drove north out of Paris until the carbon lights of an airstrip dotted the horizon. The round lights bordered the roofs of two long buildings and fanned out across a grassy, flat field of amber grass.

  The driver let them off and Rennie handed him a roll of francs.

  Then he took her hand and walked her across the grassy field toward the hangar.

  “Rennie—”

  “Trust me.”

  A row of planes sat parked outside the hangar, the moon shiny on their wings. He walked up to a biplane, ebony black, and ran his hand down her side. “This is Lola.”

  “After your girlfriend?”

  “My dog.” He grinned at her. “But don’t tell anyone.”

  The plane had two cockpits, and he reached into the front and pulled out a leather helmet and a pair of goggles. “Your eyes will go dry if you don’t wear these.”

  Her hands shook as she took them, but she tugged on the leather hat, the goggles, then took his hand to climb up onto the wing and into the front cockpit.

  It sat her low, almost to her ears.

  He climbed on the wing and leaned in over her, drawing a buckle across her lap.

  As he leaned away, he again said, “Trust me.”

  Oh, how had she gone from a flapper to a fool in just a day? But the peril stirred a dormant spirit inside her, and she nodded to him.

  He donned his own goggles then headed to the front of the plane. Giving a jerk on the prop, he let it go, and it spluttered then roared to life. The power of it filled Lilly’s ears, the wind blowing into her face.

  The plane had begun to move without Rennie in it. “Rennie!”

  He jogged around the wing, letting the plane catch up, then flung himself inside the second cockpit, settling down into the seat. “Going somewhere without me?”

  She laughed, but it came out too high, too much fear in it. She hung onto the sides of the cockpit as he maneuvered the plane out from the hangar and toward the grassy runway.

  Already, the exhilaration of sound and wind filled her belly. She gulped it all in, tasting something fresh and whole.

  They gained speed and she held in a scream as they lifted off, leaving the ground for the heavens.

  Her stomach stayed earthbound, however, and she covered her mouth with her hand to stave off her surprise.

  The light fell away from them as they ascended into the dar
kness, toward the stars. The farmland below darkened, buildings flattening, roads bleeding into the vast plane of shadow. In the distance, she made out the twinkling lights of Paris.

  She couldn’t speak over the roar of the plane, so she simply took in the wash of starlight above and below. Rennie turned the plane, and she held on, fighting another scream—this one more from delight, as they headed toward Paris.

  Now this was how a girl should see the Eiffel Tower. It lit up, a beacon all the way to the top, arching over the city, spilling light onto the river, blue-black under the glow of the big bridges.

  Beyond that, the city fanned out in sprinklings of light, the boulevards like rivers of fire through the city.

  She put out her thumb and blotted out the tip of Notre Dame, then the Eiffel Tower. With her hand, she laid waste to entire districts. The Latin Quarter, then the Champs-Élysées, the Hotel de Ville.

  She heard him laughing behind her, and when she turned, her braids wrapped around her. For the first time, she pondered cutting them off.

  Then her leather flying cap would fit better.

  Rennie arched the plane around the Eiffel Tower and then back toward the airfield, but she turned in her seat. “Please! Let’s go around again!”

  He must have heard her, because he grinned and nodded.

  She settled back for another turn.

  I’ll show you where you belong. Rennie’s voice hung in her ears, beyond the drone of the propeller, the sting of the breeze on her face.

  Here she’d been thinking she belonged in Montana. Could it actually be in the heavens?

  Chapter 3

  He wore a black tux, a creamy white shirt, and a gray ascot at his neck, and seemed so real as he extended his hand for her, Rosie wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not. She wore gloves, and possibly an opera dress, for she heard the sounds of Figaro deep inside her mind.

  Dash smiled at her, his eyes caressing her as he drew her up the stairs then lowered his mouth to ear. “A guy could fall in love with a girl like you if he only had some encouragement.”

  She lifted her face to his and—

  “Rosie!” A horn blared from the street outside, jerking her from the swaddle of slumber and into the misty gray dawn. She’d fallen asleep on Lilly’s velvet chaise lounge. Someone had pulled a blanket over her.