The It Girls

by Karen Harper

  Elinor was stunned. “I—the honor would be all mine.”

  “New people, new stories,” the dear woman said with a smile and tapped her arm with a fan she expertly flipped open, then closed again.

  “I will write a formal invitation,” the grand duchess assured her. “My people will write about arrangements. Think now of the possibilities,” she concluded as she swept off with her coterie of friends again.

  “Think now of the possibilities,” Elinor whispered to herself as she saw Lord Curzon smoothly detach himself from the cluster of people where he seemed to be the center of attention.

  She studied him again, a luxury after her memories and all her daydreams of him. Actually, she’d heard that he had taken an interest in and corresponded with other writers, even a woman, but had he sent a letter to anyone else, saying he understood her book? And had he sent anyone else a tiger skin when that was obviously a symbol of passion and love—and seduction—in the story?

  The man most people addressed as Lord Curzon or simply George, if they were of his intimate circle, looked a bit exotic, however staunch his English roots. She knew he was about five years older than she. His skin was slightly olive hued, and his dark hair, frosted with silver, accented his high forehead. He had a narrow nose and an expressive, sensuous mouth. His bearing was strictly military, ramrod straight, but she’d heard that might be from the metal brace he’d worn for years due to a back injury in his youth. Strange, she thought, but Lucile had mentioned that Dr. Morell Mackenzie she’d been so attached to had worn a brace. Perhaps such instruments put out a magnetic pull to any Sutherland sisters in the area.

  And best of all, George Curzon seemed somehow above the common man, a lord of destiny, somewhat cynical, a wry observer, yet—

  Dear heavens, he was looking her way and had caught her stare. Their gazes held. She was so startled that she was slow to smile. Hopefully a friendly smile, not come-hither, though that’s how she felt.

  She stood rooted to the spot, feeling almost as if she were waltzing with him, spun round and round. As he nodded in recognition and began to walk toward her, she almost felt the floor give way.

  Never, never, not even with Seymour Finch had she felt like this. Admiration, passion—destiny?

  “Dearest Elinor,” he said, his voice steady, somehow both sharp and sweet. “I’ve been wondering how your trip to America was, for I intend to go myself when duties and single fatherhood let up a bit. We must meet for lunch so that I can hear all about it.”

  “The tiger skin you kindly sent me—as I wrote to you—amazing.”

  “I appreciated your letter—and the sensual scene in the book with the tiger skin.”

  He still held her hand. Tingles shot up her arm to her breasts, the tops of which peeked over the top of a low Lucile neckline. She tried to control her breathing and her voice. She almost blurted out that she used to think of herself as Belle Tigress.

  “Yes, amazing, that tiger,” he said as he studied her face. “Beautiful. One-of-a-kind stripes and vibrant colors in the tiger fur. I stalked and hunted it myself in India.”

  “I—you said that. It made me cherish it the more.”

  Surely she wasn’t going to be tongue-tied, she thought. But she could not have created better dialogue in her novel that said so much below the surface.

  “Luncheon, how kind,” she managed.

  “Tomorrow then? There’s a hotel on Jermyn Street with excellent food, if you are here for a few days in London.”

  She had to see her publisher tomorrow. Then she had to head back to work on her book in the country. She’d told them she’d be back.

  “That would be lovely,” she said.

  “Tell me where you’re staying, and I will send my carriage for you.”

  “Oh yes.” Heavens, she sounded like an idiot who couldn’t put more than a few words together.

  “I must admit,” he told her, loosing her hand at last, “I heard there were some—some family financial arrears.”

  What if he was making an assignation, expecting to pay somehow. But everything aside, her schedule, her sullied reputation for Three Weeks, or the Glyn bankruptcy, this was her chance. She had long admired this man from afar. Surely she could control this.

  “Yes, but everyone has ups and downs,” she told him with a smile. “It would be lovely to have some time to hear more of India, and I shall tell you of the wild, wild American West.”

  He nodded and smiled, showing his teeth. “Then we shall plan exactly that, and who knows where our talk may take us?”

  She might be forty-four years old, but, in the middle of a crowded ballroom, she nearly fell at his feet.

  “I love the mingled hues of the heather and the gorse, especially on a windswept, sunny day like this one,” Lucile told Cosmo as they sat on a woolen blanket with their picnic lunch not far from Maryculter mansion. “I shall use those colors in a collection soon.”

  Now and then their nearby horses nickered, but they were content eating grass. And despite all that filled her head, Lucile was content today too.

  Cosmo wore a kilt and, despite the brisk wind and his knee-high woolen socks, didn’t seem a bit cold. Beneath their view stretched bonnie braes he owned above the river Dee. Hawks sailed above in circles, and three kinds of clouds fought to rule the Scottish sky.

  “I love it all too, especially when we are here together,” he said, leaning back on his elbows. “You are so busy and famous now, my bonnie lass, but I know those looks when your head is spinning with ideas again. Ambitious, far-off ones. When will enough be enough?”

  “Conquering Paris will be enough. I know most of the French look down their Gallic noses at the English—our food, our sense of style. But I’ll show them.”

  He pulled her down beside him on the blanket with one arm under her head and one hand on her waist. As they stared up into the restless heavens, he told her, “With Lady Duff-Gordon, is even the sky the limit?”

  She turned on her side to face him. “You will go with me this time, won’t you? France is just across the channel, and the Scots have always had closer relations to the French than the English have. Cosmo, I need you in Paris to navigate things, at least to get started. We could lease a little house and enjoy the City of Lights even if I have to work hard for a while.”

  “You always work hard. But today and this week, I cherish. Yes, I’ll go too. You’ll take a staff, and I’ll take our menagerie of dogs. But despite your stakes in London, New York, and Paris, here is the home of my heart and I pray—for sometimes, at least—of yours. I’ll go with you to New York sooner or later too, at least when that new big liner is completed. I hear they’ve decided to name it the Titanic, for its massive size.”

  “Wherever we go, you are the home of my heart, my dearest,” she vowed and ran her finger along his lower lip under his mustache. It needed trimming. It made him look so rakish, like the pirate he had mentioned when she’d sailed to New York without him.

  In his rich voice, low and musical with that touch of Scottish burr, he said, “I hope the warmth you feel for me will keep the braw, chill wind from your legs and mine, because I want to seal that promise here and now. We have always sealed our vows well, have we not? People sometimes ask why we Scots wear the kilt. My love, you are about to find out one reason.”

  His gaze was so intense it heated her all over. How brazen that he lifted her cloak and skirts out here and fumbled with her lingerie. “Is that all there is to this?” he asked, looking annoyed, as his fingers snagged in her silk panties. “I don’t mean to ruin it.”

  “Let me do that.”

  “That’s the story of my life, my love, letting you do whatever. But I will always be along for the ride.”

  She reveled in the ride. When he possessed her body, her beloved Cosmo was like this land, strong and wild and brave.

  CHAPTER Twenty-Two

  Lucile slid the sketch of the ball gown across her desk to Elinor. “I can’t believe you’re going
to be a guest in imperial Russia. Thank heavens I’ve designed for Russian nobles before.”

  “As if,” Elinor said, squinting at the drawing, “I’m noble too. Ha!”

  “It’s going to be cold there, so I’ve tried to strike a balance between bare throat for your necklace but a higher décolletage and cap sleeves. Some velvet inlay because that will keep you warmer than satin and lace everywhere. And it flows.”

  Elinor heaved a huge sigh. “It flows like money. I can’t thank you and Cosmo enough for the loan, and I will pay it back.”

  “You will, not Clayton?”

  “You can see he’s to be trusted for nothing but eating, drinking, and being merry, even as our ship goes down. I’ve had several people dear to me offer a loan, but—”

  “Several people,” Lucile echoed, putting down her sketch pen and leaning closer. She put her elbows on the table and her chin on her clenched hands. “Including Lord Curzon?”

  “He is a dear friend, an adviser. We have many interests in common, the classics, for example, and travel. And I adore hearing about his days in India.”

  “Excellent change of topic, madam authoress. But you are seeing him in private?”

  “For long lunches, so don’t you read more in. I am yet faithful—physically faithful—to Clayton.”

  “I must tell you people are talking.”

  “Let them. I’m used to that after becoming the notorious author Elinor Glyn of Three Weeks. I know it didn’t help that I tried to produce it as a play with my own money, until the wretched, priggish Lord Chamberlain banned it—when I had totally toned down the scandal in it everyone was expecting to see! So yes, then that was money down the drain in tough times, but it was my money, and I’d planned to make a windfall from it.”

  “I know. But a woman who bought some frocks last week here—a good many of them—said I should actually warn you to steer clear of Lord Curzon.”

  “What?” Elinor said sitting up straighter. “Warn me? And are you? Who was she, one of his so-called Souls, I suppose.”

  “Let me not answer that, since I promised I would not use her name. But the Souls? What sort of group is that?”

  “A clique of Lord Curzon’s longtime friends, mostly women, who dare to advise him on his personal life. They didn’t even like his wife, said she was a social-climbing American, when I know from what he’s said she loved him dearly and waited years until he proposed. But these so-called Souls are meddlers in his life and now mine!”

  “You said you two are just friends, so guard yourself and guard your heart.”

  “Too late for that, big sister,” Elinor admitted and fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief. “I’m deeply in love with him, whatever happens. I feared his ‘blessed Souls’ would speak against me. I’m not worthy of him, that’s what they must believe, though he speaks well of them and hasn’t said they are talking me down.”

  “Would you divorce Clayton for him?”

  “And then think he’d marry a divorced woman, the immoral author? He’s an honorable, idealistic, grand man with an important, public reputation who aims high, to be in the cabinet, perhaps to be conservative prime minister someday.” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Lately, we have had a tiff. He advises against my going to Russia, however much I’m to be feted there, shown simply everything, and get a new book out of it. He believes Russia is a dark place, a powder keg, he said, just waiting for something dreadful to happen, especially after that so-called Bloody Sunday massacre when the czar ordered peaceful protesters fired upon.”

  “He’s right that was terrible. And to think he’s cousin to our Prince of Wales.”

  “Well, I must go,” Elinor said, popping up. “I’ll stop by here myself for the gown and the frocks you’ve done for Margot for finishing school. I’ll be taking her there myself and stopping at Heidelberg on the way back.”

  “Heidelberg? Whatever for? On your own? You said you weren’t taking Williams with you just to drop Margot off. Elinor, you are blushing.”

  “It’s warm in here,” she said, fanning her face. “I must run and I do thank you for putting my gowns on a tab lately. What would I ever do without you?”

  “Probably be able to keep a safer secret that you must be meeting someone in scenic Heidelberg on the way home, perhaps for a liaison, perhaps someone whose name I could guess.”

  Elinor turned back at the door. “If you must know, despite the ruin of my marriage and my finances, George Curzon is the light of my life right now.” She pulled the door open and ran right into Cosmo.

  “Elinor, leaving?” he asked. “Are you all right? Both of you?” he added with a glance in at Lucile, who had followed Elinor toward the door.

  “Onward and upward, dear Cosmo,” Elinor told him. She looked back at Lucile and added, “Here’s to Heidelberg!”

  “My love, I can’t believe we’ve managed this,” George told her and swept her into his arms. “Privacy—real privacy at last where no one knows us.”

  He had been waiting at the Heidelberg hotel for her, sitting at a back table in the little first-floor restaurant where they had agreed to meet. “Your luggage?” he asked as he pulled out the other chair for her.

  She didn’t mind that she was looking only at the oak-paneled wall behind him, because she was, at last, really alone and looking at only him.

  “It’s at the front desk to be taken up to the room. I registered as you said, Mrs. Nathaniel, and they said you were already here and in the Rotrosen Room.”

  “So my middle name Nathaniel is worth something for once. Sit, sit, then we’ll go up for a while before dinner. So lovely to be open about this and not behind closed doors, though I relish the idea of that. Does anyone know you’re here and not staying longer in Dresden?”

  “Lucile. But she doesn’t know where. I vow, she reads minds—mine, at least. She guessed. I didn’t exactly tell her.”

  He gestured to the waiter for a glass of wine for her. “And she said?”

  “She said one of your Souls bought a gown and warned her to warn me to stay away from you.”

  His high forehead, so aristocratic, furrowed right to the high bridge of his aquiline nose. “They have no right, and I’ll tell them so,” he promised. “They are another reason we are here instead of at some rural inn in the Cotswolds.”

  “You are too well known for even there.”

  “Mostly my name. And you too—your name. So we shall consider ourselves Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel here,” he asked, looking intently at her, as her wine arrived.

  “It’s a lovely fantasy—the best fiction I could imagine,” she said, blinking back tears.

  “We shall make time both fly and stand still.” He raised his glass to clink it against hers. “Not three weeks, but nearly three days. Just two people in love.”

  “Yes!” she said. “Oh yes.”

  Here she was on a train, having left cold Russia behind and she was still heated by the memory of her and George’s passionate days and nights together in Heidelberg two months ago. The countryside near Warsaw, Poland, blurred by. She had cut short her visit to Russia because everything had gone wrong.

  The worst was that Clayton had written that creditors were actually knocking at their door in rural Essex. She had to go home to see her publisher to get some sort of advance, promise something serialized, a new novel quickly—anything for some money. She’d managed to get them out of dire debt once, but this was even worse. Next their creditors would be hounding her and the girls.

  Besides that, her time in Russia, armed as she was with new gowns and accessories, had been ruined by the death of Czar Nicholas’s uncle, which had plunged the entire court into mourning black of which she had none. Events were canceled, her plans disrupted, though she did manage a tour of the Winter Palace. Her maid, Williams, had become ill, so she’d sent her home and replaced her temporarily with a Russian maid—a sullen girl with whom she could barely communicate.

  However, she had been helped by a Russia
n official to get this string of tickets home, at least as far as Warsaw. She was to stay in the Hotel de l’Europe tonight, then take a train to Berlin tomorrow morning. She would be met there, according to the man who had kindly made her arrangements, by a carriage to take her to the hotel.

  She was so physically and emotionally drained she couldn’t wait to get to a bed. Her head was nodding and kept jerking her neck, though her mind wandered again. How sweet and thrilling it had been to curl up in bed against George after their lovemaking, to put her head on his bare shoulder. Before he undressed her, he had rid himself of that terrible iron contraption he’d worn since he was a boy. He had been freed to be himself with her, a daring, darling man. Even in their lovemaking he was controlled, but wonderfully so. He had teased her to tell him what was her coded, private name for him in her diary, but she had not told him. She had two of them, one Milor, short for my lord, and Superior Person, or S.P. Both pet names would show him she adored him and that wasn’t good for—

  “Warsaw! Warsaw!” the conductor cried. Then he said in several languages, “For this train, end of the line, end of the line.”

  A muted screeching sound and jolt further woke her from her daydream—or night dream. Despite the lights in the train station, it seemed dark. Few people were on the platform and few other trains moving. Oh, so unusual to be on her own, to be carrying just a dressing case all the way home while her luggage was sent. Just outside the entrance, as she’d been told, there was to be a waiting carriage. And, once she disembarked and walked out, there was one.

  Two dark-suited men were on the high box seat. She was so used to seeing the newfangled motorcars at home or at least small cabriolets in the city that she hesitated.

  “Madame Glyn?” the man beside the driver asked and climbed down. “Let me help you in and pass your luggage in. Then we’ll be off.”

  “Just this bag,” she told him. His face was in shadow under his brimmed hat. His accent seemed Russian, not that she could pick out a Polish one. “To the Hotel l’Europe, you understand,” she said.