Baroness

by Susan May Warren

  The lamp cast a dingy glow on the throw rug, upon her bare feet, her grimy, now nearly black, white travel shoes. She looked up, stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair had grown a little after the shearing of her braids, and she looked bedraggled and misbehaved.

  Like a child.

  A petulant child who had thrown a tantrum after her mother died. She’d fled on a train, taking Oliver’s money, hoping it might prove that she’d grown up, could live her own life, make her own way.

  Moseby’s words pinged inside her. If you change your mind, we’re headed west in the morning.

  She snaked her hand under her pillow, closed her fist around the pearls.

  Don’t mind him, he’s just trying to scare you.

  She wasn’t that easily scared. Not anymore.

  He’s given you everything you have.

  Pulling out the pearls, she found the velvet case in the top drawer of the bureau and tucked them inside. She set it in plain sight. She’d just have to find another way to pay for the ranch.

  Certainly he’d let her keep her shirtwaist, her skirt, her shoes, a jacket. She wrapped up her necessaries in her pillowcase—she’d just have to owe Mrs. Garrett—and scooped up her shoes, carrying them as she tiptoed down the stairs. For a second, she stopped on the landing, listening.

  Her mistakes echoed inside, tugged at her. But this wasn’t a mistake. She just wanted to return to the world where she belonged.

  Don’t forget your name, her mother had said. Indeed. She was a Hoyt, a girl of the West of adventure and courage, and she didn’t need Oliver Stewart—or any man—interfering with that.

  She stepped out into the darkness and hiked barefoot out of town.

  The new moon cradled the old one, a crescent thumbnail as she walked out to the airfield. It shone upon the white tent, a beacon amidst a sea of night. The planes lined up like sentries with stout arms. Her feet crunched in the grass as she moved toward the planes, rehearsing her words, settling on the most plain. Please, take me with you—

  “Well, if it isn’t Miss New York. What are you doing here?”

  She stopped, searching for the voice, needing no identifier. “I’m…I came to take you up on your offer, Mr. Hawk.”

  He nearly startled her out of her skin as he rolled out from under a wing, found his feet. He wore a dark canvas shirt, rolled up at the arms and open, flapping in the wind, his hair askew, as if he’d already been asleep. “What offer?” he said, too much darkness in his voice.

  She hitched the pillow onto her other hip. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  He smiled, and she felt it behind her breastbone. “Nope.”

  “Fine. Take me with you. Please.”

  He leaned back against the plane, crossing his ankles. His shirt blew open in the wind, and she looked away. “Why should I?”

  “Because—because you need me. You need another wing walker—I can learn.”

  She glanced at him. He raised an eyebrow.

  “And I—I need you. I need to leave, head west, to Montana.”

  “Running from the law, are we?”

  She drew in a breath. “No.” But her voice emerged shaky enough to elicit a drawn breath.

  “Really. You’re not on the lam, are ya?” he said, softer now.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  He narrowed his eyes. She looked away, hating suddenly how he had her whole world in his fist.

  “Fine. And we’ll see about the wing walking. For now, you run concessions. I’ll talk to Marvel in the morning.” He came over, reached for her pillowcase.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Tucking you in. We sleep under the planes when it’s nice out. Don’t we, Mose?”

  “C’mere, doll.” A voice chirruped behind her. “You can sleep next to me. That way Truman won’t forget and leave without you.”

  Lilly crouched down and found Moseby on a blanket under the belly of the next plane. She made out the forms of other pilots, performers in the shadows beyond. Moseby pulled a blanket from a rucksack at her feet. “Good thing it’s warm out.” She tossed her the blanket, and Lilly spread it out beneath the wing. Then she hunkered down, shoving her “pillow” under her head.

  “We leave at dawn,” Truman said, settling back into the darkness.

  Overhead, the stars sprinkled light upon the prairie. Lilly drew up her legs, folded them into her dress.

  “What’s in Montana?” Moseby asked quietly.

  Lilly watched a star break free, cast to earth. The wind tickled her hair at her neck, and in the distance, a coyote bawled. “Everything,” she said quietly.

  * * * * *

  New York City, 1923

  Rosie just wanted to hide in the cool, velvety padding of the Mark Strand Movie Palace and disappear inside Colleen Moore’s newest movie, Flaming Youth. It seemed that the actress might have reached right down inside Rosie’s heart and plucked out the storyline of betrayal, lost love, and heartache in the role of Pat Fentriss and the story of a girl who longed for the flapper life, only to find herself in over her head.

  “Pat should have known that Leo only wanted one thing from her. He was a fella, after all.” Lexie Wilson bumped her way down the row past the plush red seats as the lights from the grand swinging chandelier flickered on, washing away the surreal and plunging Rosie back to reality.

  The one where her mother wanted her help packing for a salvaged summer season in Newport, a useless and grand hope that they’d shake free of the grief that still held the family hostage.

  First Esme, then Lilly. Gone. And Uncle Oliver—Rosie could admit a growing well of pity for him. He seemed barely human when he shuffled to their house for dinner night after night, shuttering himself into Bennett’s office afterward. Jinx finally moved him into their apartment in the Warren and Wetmore building after discovering that he’d taken to sleeping on his sofa at the Chronicle office.

  Oliver couldn’t go home to an empty house—Rosie heard him confess it to Bennett while standing on the steps of Grace Church the day of the funeral—and over a month later, the words seemed a prophecy.

  Rosie understood Uncle Oliver’s sentiments exactly, and if she’d had a place to hide away every day, she would have fled to it to escape the grief that held their household in a cadre grip.

  She doubted that three months on the seashore would temper it.

  God had been unfair, taking Jack and her father, then Esme, and finally Lilly. She still couldn’t believe Lilly hadn’t returned for her mother’s funeral. It piled even more tragedy upon the event and stirred wretched imaginations of Lilly’s fate.

  Rosie couldn’t bear to entertain the thought that perhaps she deserved the loneliness, the despair after her wanton behavior in Paris. And, because of her flaming youth, as Colleen Moore had put it, Rosie had nothing with which to bargain the Almighty for Lilly’s safe return.

  Hence, she only had the dark, sultry escape of the movies.

  “I want to stay,” Rosie said as she followed Lexie into the aisle.

  Lexie hooked her arm, the smell of her tonic drifting over Rosie and conjuring up images of Blanche, or even Frankie. “No, you don’t. I promised Sherwood we’d meet him tonight at the Cotton Club. Besides, the next show is A Woman of Paris, and we both agreed you were going to erase that episode from your mind.” She tugged Rosie along. “Paris has you all balled up. We need to take your mind off that scoundrel Dashielle Parks.”

  “Dashielle who?” Rosie said, forcing a grin.

  Lexie laughed and Rosie let herself fall into it. Yes, perhaps a night out at some jazz club, listening to a sultry-toned singer, watching the dancers, letting some handsome banker parley her with something hot and smooth, might help her forget.

  Hide.

  Especially tonight. Because Colleen Moore’s story of a girl wooed by independence, who ran away from home, burned inside her.

  Lexie led them out of the theater hall and into the lobby. “I’d never fall for a sai
lor like Pat did.” She made a face at Rosie. “I want a man who can take me to the club and dress me in tinsel.”

  “Darling, you have enough tinsel to sink a ship.”

  Lexie Wilson could counsel a fleet of flappers on how to wheedle furs, jewelry, and adoration out of men. With her ebony black cap of hair, her dark crimson lips, her lean body, she had been the first among Rosie’s set to roll down her silk stockings and powder her knees, to teach Rosie how to make pin curls out of her short cap of hair, how to smoke, and even do the Charleston. And while Rosie had escaped to Paris, Lexie made headlines by moving out of her parents’ Fifth Avenue chateau to take a room at the Algonquin Hotel.

  Rosie had never been so happy to see her finishing-school friend as the day Lexie pulled up, two weeks after the funeral, driving her own roadster, a smart riding cap perched on her head. She’d practically thrown a rope to Rosie’s window to effect her escape back into society.

  “New York City is alive, and it’s time to stop moping,” Lexie had said as she dragged her from the apartment. Rosie had bit back any sort of argument and let Lexie’s plans balm the wounds inside.

  Now if Rosie could just convince her mother to allow her to summer in New York. She had a sick feeling her pleadings would fall on deaf ears.

  They exited the theater with the crowd and Lexie hailed a cab. Yes, Rosie needed a night out to forget, and maybe this time it would take. Because regardless of how many nights she spent letting the jazz into her bones, she always returned home to the quiet of her room and listened to Dashielle lie to her.

  A guy could fall in love with you…

  They settled inside the cab, and Lexie pulled out a compact mirror, added another layer of lipstick.

  “But what about true love? Isn’t that really what Pat was looking for?” Rosie wasn’t sure why she had to press the issue—especially since she sounded pitiful and heartbroken and wanted to bite back her words the moment she spoke them.

  Lexie closed her lipstick, smacking her lips. She sighed and dropped the tube into her reticule. “There’s no such thing, doll. It’s all a game.” She leaned over to Rosie, a smile tweaking her face. “And the gal with the most tinsel wins.” She winked. “Besides, we’re not the marrying type. What, I’m going to settle down, pop out an heir and a spare, start decorating and hosting dinner parties? I don’t think so. I’m not the marrying type. I’m a good-time gal, just like you.”

  A good-time gal. Dashielle had certainly thought so.

  Outside, New York had turned to dusk, shadows draping over the buildings to clutter the street. Fruit and vegetable carts had already packed up, shops drawing the drapes of their storefronts. The Broadway marquees from the Hippodrome, the Heilig, and the Orpheum glittered into the twilight, turning the night to jewels.

  Lexie pulled out a cigarette, offered it to Rosie, who shook her head.

  “Suit yourself.” Lexie inserted it into the long ebony holder and lit it.

  Rosie read the billings on the theater doors as they crawled by. “The Follies will open soon.” Her mother had never permitted her to attend Ziegfeld’s show, but someday…

  “Oh, doll, I completely forgot. I have someone you absolutely must meet. I told him to meet me at the club, hoping I could persuade you to tag along.” She glanced at Rosie’s shirtwaist and skirt, her head adorned with a basic brown cloche hat, then leaned forward to the driver. “Pull over up here.” She pointed to the Algonquin. She looked at Rosie. “We’re stopping by my room before we head over to Harlem.”

  “Why?”

  Lexie leaned back in her seat. “Trust me.”

  The cab pulled up to the red brick and limestone hotel across the street from the Hippodrome. Down the street, roadsters and sedans edged up in front of Delmonico’s, white-gloved attendants helping patrons from the vehicles.

  Once upon a time, Rosie’s family made Sunday afternoon lunch a tradition at Delmonico’s. Now, her mother and stepfather lunched at home on Sunday, after attending church. She hadn’t attended church with her family since Aunt Esme’s funeral.

  Rosie followed Lexie through the dark oak-paneled lobby, past the gold velvet chairs, past the Pergola room, and to the gilded lift. An operator closed the cage behind them and pulled the third-floor knob.

  “I can’t believe your mother let you take a room.”

  Lexie pulled off a glove then the other. “I didn’t ask her permission. It’s my life—”

  “It’s her money.”

  “I simply reminded her of a few secrets that I’ve been keeping for her over the years.” Lexie glanced at Rosie then pursed her lips, her gaze darting to the white-gloved attendant. He gave no hint that he might be keen on the backdoor behavior of the city—politicians, bankers, Wall Street investors who frequented the Algonquin for lunchtime trysts.

  Lexie’s word latched onto her. Secrets. Like the kind her own mother had harbored about her affair with Bennett? Yes, that might make a mother surrender to the whims of her daughter.

  The doors opened, and Rosie followed Lexie down the hall to her room, the numbers in gold on the dark-paneled door.

  The twilight burned against the filmy white curtains, the long, green velvet drapes cast open.

  They’d walked into the sitting room—a sofa, coffee table, chairs with the discarded remains of a room-ordered breakfast on the credenza along the wall.

  “What happened to the maid? Is she asphyxiated in here somewhere?” Rosie followed Lex into her boudoir, pushed aside a crimson silk robe, and lowered herself onto the velvet settee.

  “I only have service once a week. My request. They bang on my door at all hours of the morning—”

  “Disturbing you and whoever you might be entertaining.” Rosie raised an eyebrow.

  Lexie’s smile tweaked up one side. “Oh don’t be such a Mrs. Grundy.” She dropped her gloves onto her cluttered bureau. “For all your talk, you’re still so naïve.”

  Rosie walked to the window, stared at her reflection. She’d lost weight since Paris, and dark wells hung under her eyes. “Not as much as I was. But I never thought I’d be the girl whose heart is broken.”

  Lexie came up behind her. Tucked her chin on Rosie’s shoulder. “Tonight, you get to be someone different.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “Anyone you want to be.” Hands on Rosie’s shoulders, Lexie turned her. “And I have just the dress to be anyone in.”

  Rosie had only heard of the Cotton Club, never actually found the courage to leave Manhattan and venture north to Harlem, and as they pulled up, a thrill buzzed through her. She got out and tried not to adjust the low-cut sleeveless dress Lexie gave her, the lime-green silk shiny under the marquee lights. Somehow, although she’d worn nearly the same style dress in Paris, it lacked the scandal of this outfit. The silver headband and peacock feather hit the door of the cab as she climbed out. She hung onto Lexie’s pearls swaying from her neck and tried to look older.

  A man in a tuxedo escorted two women to the door, where a dark-skinned doorman let them in.

  “Are you sure we can get in?” Rosie said, cutting her voice low.

  Lexie wore an organza white dress and long gloves, a striking contrast to her dark hair and red lips, the beaded white headband. “Trust me,” she said again and led the way to the door. When she reached the doorman, she leaned up and whispered into his ear.

  He glanced at Rosie, back to Lexie, then opened the door.

  Rosie felt the doorman’s gaze on her, burning as she walked past him, and didn’t want to know what Lexie told him.

  Inside the club, round tables covered with white cloths and flickering candles surrounded a large show floor, and upon it, a woman with dark-as-night skin swayed to music, her smoky voice rising to fill the room, adding a sizzle of anticipation to the evening. Behind her, a full band played under the direction of a tuxedo-attired conductor.

  Lexie led Rosie across the room, where she saw two men rise from their chairs. Both appeared ten years her senior,
the first lean and tall, his brown hair brilliantined back, shiny against the dim lights. He wore a pair of black tails and a bow tie with a white vest—a real dapper that made him exactly the sort Lexie might prefer. He took Lexie’s hand. “You look delicious.” He kissed her cheek.

  “Sherwood.” Lexie patted his cheek. “Sorry we’re late. We had to freshen up.”

  “It’s a lady’s prerogative to be late, isn’t it?” This from the other man. He looked Italian, with black curly hair close-cropped to his head, groomed sideburns, dark eyes that seemed to match the music and settle upon Rosie like heat. He wore power in his expression, and more than a little appreciation as his gaze roved over her. She took a breath at his appraisal but didn’t hate it.

  Dash was a child compared to this man. He held out his hand to Lexie, his gaze finally flicking to her. “Hello, Alexis.”

  “Cesar.” Lexie took his grip, glancing at Sherwood, her smile speaking approval. She gestured to Rosie. “I want you to meet my friend—”

  “Red,” Rosie said. She wasn’t sure where the impulse originated, but suddenly she did want to be someone different. Someone bold and daring. Someone without heartbreak on her countenance.

  A woman who deserved Cesar’s appreciative look.

  For a second, she heard Dash’s voice when Cesar took her hand and said, “Red. Nice to meet you.”

  Then Dash vanished and only Cesar remained to pull out her chair and settle in beside her.

  He smelled good—something expensive, and wore a ring on his pinky finger, just enough tinsel for a man.

  “Sherwood said that Lexie would be bringing a friend. Bella, you are worth the wait.” Cesar slid his hand behind her chair.

  She smiled, no, giggled, and remembered the lessons she’d learned from Frankie. A woman too interested in a man just might lose him.

  Interested might not be the correct word, but Rosie had had enough with losing. She leaned her elbow on the table and reached out for his drink, smelled it. “A martini?”

  He had his eyes on her as he raised his fingers and snapped. She let him order for her while she sipped his drink.

  The gin burned and she wanted to cough, but held it in behind her smile. “I thought alcohol was forbidden.”