by Karen Harper
She hurried to the door and unlocked it. The mere turning of the key seemed incredibly loud. She swept open the door.
“My Scottish lass is back,” he said as he put one hand up on the door frame, just leaning there and studying her. He wore his favorite kilt and dinner jacket. “You must have designed that skirt,” he added.
“I did. Ordered the material and had it made as a surprise for you. I know it’s a local plaid,” she said, turning round once, then backing up several steps until her bottom bumped into the high, four-poster bed.
“It’s called a tartan, lass. And that one’s a dress Stuart, the royals, you know. I see I need to give you some Scottish tutoring.”
“I’m always willing to learn.”
“Then let me serenade my lady love,” he said, coming closer. He took her hands in his and sang slowly, almost sadly in his beautiful, deep baritone, “Should Auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? . . .”
Tears filled her eyes. She stood as if mesmerized, longing to throw herself into his arms, but he stopped in midword and said, “My beautiful, beloved lass, you are always brought to my mind. I may have been a cad, and you’ve been a wee bit daft, but shall we try our marriage again—for old times’ sake?”
“I say yes. But how about for new times’ sake?”
She threw herself into his arms. Just as in the old days—surely like times yet to come—he picked her up and carried her to the big ancestral bed in his adjoining room. He lay her down and nearly ripped off his jacket.
“The lord and lady of the manor are going to be very, very late to dinner,” he told her and proceeded to show her why.
Chaplin and Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress—Chaplin had somehow been allowed to bring her without Hearst—insisted on taking Elinor back to her suite at the Ambassador Hotel after Valentino’s memorial service, so she sent her car home without her. Truth be told, Hollywood was a crime-ridden area, evidently as thieves realized how many wealthy people were running around in real jewelry. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had taken to having a guard in another motorcar follow Elinor home after dinner at their lovely mansion Pickfair. A woman alone—well, it was so kind of them. And somehow lately, she had really felt alone and was longing to take a trip home.
Lucile was in England now, though she’d heard little from her lately. They’d hardly seen each other in years. Besides, long absences from Elinor’s daughters and her grandchildren sometimes made the bright lights of Hollywood seem very dim.
“Come on then, old girl, let’s lift a toast to Valentino,” Chaplin said to her as his motorcar pulled up to the curb at the hotel. “Marion, pull that hat down but not the veil, because that makes people look at you. Hopefully, you will not be recognized, and we’ll go up with Elinor for a nightcap. Heaven knows, we need one.”
Marion gave him a quick punch in the shoulder. “And you think people in the lobby won’t recognize you?”
“My dears, I shall just look serious and walk straight and no one will turn a head.”
“I can’t stay long, though,” Marion said with a sigh. “It’s a miracle the old man let me out on my own for once. I do think Elinor looks like she needs friends right now, but you know who will have a rip-roaring fit if I’m late. Hearst is jealous of everyone.”
“Except me, which is a mistake,” Chaplin said as they went in single file, looking neither right nor left as the doorman opened the lobby entrance for them.
Elinor had once prided herself in being recognized from time to time as a famous authoress, but compared to the on-screen people, she could go anywhere without stares.
They were glad to snag an elevator with no one in it except the uniform-clad operator, but his eyes popped when he saw Marion. They piled out on Elinor’s floor and made the turn toward her suite. She was grateful for her friends, but suddenly, it made her so lonely for her family again, even for Lucile. Why had they not gotten on at times when so much bound them, past and present? Their lives, full of fame and fortune—and a wretched first marriage—had the blessing of daughters. They were so much the same.
“Oh my, someone’s drunk,” Marion muttered when they heard, then saw two men down the corridor, fighting. One was on the floor and one—oh, the other one was lifting a fist—no, a knife—and plunging it down again and again.
“Stop, there!” Chaplin shouted.
The standing man vaulted over the prone man’s body and ran the other way, toward the exit stairs down the way.
“Right outside my door,” Elinor cried.
“Go back down for help!” Chaplin ordered Marion and pushed her back toward the elevator.
She cried, “I can’t be seen here or Hearst will murder me. But I’ll tell them at the desk, then wait in the car!”
Chaplin rushed down the hall after the running man, though the villain had a head start. Elinor hurried to bend over the injured one. She had to tell herself this was real, not some moving picture. Blood puddled on the crimson carpet outside her door. She didn’t know him—couldn’t think what to do until help came. He lay face up, suddenly very still.
She hated to touch him but she ripped off a glove and felt for his wrist pulse. His skin was slick with his own blood. Nothing. No pulse. She felt for his neck artery. On this day of all days—a man dead, literally at her door.
Rushing down the hall came a portly man with a boutonniere in his lapel—oh, she recognized the hotel manager—and a security policeman with two other men behind them.
“Mrs. Glyn, are you all right? Do you know him?”
“Yes, I’m all right—and no. A stranger. He’s—he appears to be dead.”
“Frank, get a tarp or stretcher up here fast,” he ordered one man. “Have him taken down the fire stairs. Mrs. Glyn, you realize this never happened here. You saw nothing.”
“No, I saw the man who knifed him, though from afar. Won’t the police want to question what I saw? There was another witness, but . . .”
She glanced down the hall toward the fire escape door where Chaplin had run. Where was he? Surely he hadn’t caught or accosted a man with a knife.
“I don’t know where my friend went but I—”
The manager cut her off her words with a slice of his hand through the air. “We can’t have this happening here. Like the novels and movies you write, Mrs. Glyn—mere fiction. Reputation—everything here. In gratitude, of course, we will reduce the rate of your suite. Say nothing about this to anyone. It never happened.”
Elinor leaned against the wall for support. Shocked at their reaction as much as by the corpse, she just gaped at them. Too much today. Too much lately. But how could she be part of a cover-up of a man’s murder, especially not for a bribe? Did they intend to recarpet this entire hallway so those bloodstains would not show? So she would not have to see them and step over them every time she went in and out? Had both Marion and Chaplin known it would be handled like this? Had Chaplin really chased the killer, or did he just want to save his own skin?
Elinor’s hand shook as she walked around the men and, hugging the wall, unlocked the door of her suite and went in. She locked and bolted it, then barely made it to the sofa before her legs gave out. She was under contract here for almost three more years and was making good money and mingling with fascinating people. Even Three Weeks had finally been made into a film, somehow a justification for the attacks on it and her agony over it all these years.
But she’d been living a hollow life, a tarnished one, and—at least for a while—she was going home. Outside was a stain on the carpet and inside was a stain on her soul.
CHAPTER Thirty-Six
Lucile’s entire family came up to Scotland on the train for a Saturday-to-Monday holiday: Mother, Esme, Anthony, and their little brood; Elinor with Margot and Juliet with their husbands and children. It was early September, and the gorse and heather lingered on in the mild weather. The first full day, they took a huge picnic, four baskets full of food, up to the lookout over the glens and br
aes and the river. All three young mothers had brought their nannies to help watch the children, so the adults sat on a tartan blanket after their repast and chatted.
“So beautiful and wild here,” Elinor said, inhaling the crisp, fresh air and looking out into the distance. “I shall set a novel here someday.”
“That would be nice,” Lucile said, taking Cosmo’s hand and beating down the urge to mount a comeback. For once she didn’t scold Elinor for always talking about her writing.
“Scotland is most invigorating and unique,” Elinor went on, “as I hope my stories always are, on the page or on the screen.”
“Scotland would be a fresher location than the books you’ve set in Continental Europe or even England,” Lucile said before she realized, as hard as she was trying, she and Elinor might argue again—and she didn’t want that. She was finally so happy, and she wanted poor Elinor to be too after her difficult days in California working away at her so-called dream career.
“Although Sir Walter Scott has set many a novel here,” Elinor said, evidently refusing to drop the subject. “But I don’t mean to lecture. I think I shall stretch my legs and see the view out the other way.”
“I’ll go with you, and leave Cosmo and you younger folk to talk,” Lucile said.
Mother put in, “And I shall go help the nannies with my lovely great-grandchildren. I may be up in my eighties now, but I can still get round and intend to.”
Cosmo helped her up, and Elinor and Lucile went over to steady her. Cosmo winked at Lucile as Mother headed briskly down the path toward the barking of the hunt hounds and high-pitched laughter of the children. No hunting grouse or partridge today, Lucile thought, though the men planned on that tomorrow. Today was for just family time—finally, a family.
Lucile led Elinor to the brow of the hill with the best view. They stood there unspeaking for a moment, skirts blowing, hair flying in the brisk breeze, watching an eagle riding the currents.
Elinor said, “You’re back with Cosmo, really back. I can tell and I am happy for you.”
“Yes. You and I have had our ups and downs with men, haven’t we, and often not at the same time, so we could advise and help each other.”
“Don’t take this wrong, like I’m chattering too much about writing—I know I overdo that once in a while—but I’ve been thinking of ideas for a novel, maybe a movie script, called Knowing Men. Do you think I’d be a brazen idiot to write something with that title? God knows, I’ve made some terrible choices, loved and lost men, hardly seen the way they really were, including Clayton and Curzon.”
“I, too, made an early mess of things—before Cosmo and then I nearly lost him since I was so self-centered.”
“At least you escaped that now—and here I am, headed back to fantasy financial land in Hollywood soon.”
“But you’ll handle that and rise above. The thing is, at times I’ve had to protect my designs, my staff, my visions, but still . . . as to your question, I think it’s right for you to do that novel and script if you are ready to. A man would. And both of us have done well in a world no longer completely run by men.”
Elinor smiled, and her eyes lit. “Thank you for your trust and love, Lucile. You know something my friend Charlie Chaplin said once? He’s quite the sage, you know, despite his silliness on screen. He said, the only way to predict the future is to create it. But you and I—sometimes we’ve been clinging to the past.”
“Just like Mother, I have no intention of acting old,” Lucile insisted. “We women need to forge ahead. If I cannot abide the new boyish fashions, I shall just not design them. But I meant to tell you I’ve had an offer to write fashion advice for a newspaper. I shall call my column Letters to Dorothy, a pseudonym, but everyone will still know the author is Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon. So now two writers in the family.”
“You’ll do splendidly. But the thing is,” she said, turning toward Lucile and seizing her hands, “my idea for Knowing Men—don’t you think that’s a lovely double entendre, if you know what that means in the Bible?—could be adapted for the stage in London, too, and you could do the costumes for it. I’d set it all in the past, and you could create the most delicious flowing frocks, all chiffon, satin, and lace again.”
Lucile sighed. “I’ve had to try to let go of that past, but yes—yes, perhaps. It would be good to work together, wouldn’t it?”
Elinor bit her lower lip and nodded. Their eyes met and held. They dropped hands and leaned against a granite boulder with their shoulders touching.
“If only we could have done that more,” Elinor said with a sigh that matched Lucile’s. “One of our mutual mistakes. But we’re together now in purpose and outlook—in sisterhood and friendship, too. And even when I head back to slapdash Hollywood, we shall stay in touch, really in touch.”
They held hands again. “We will go on, my dear Nellie,” Lucile vowed. “Onward and upward, as we used to say before things pulled us apart.”
Elinor laughed and elbowed her lightly. “Lovely Lucy, we’ll show the world how things should be done.”
“We ‘It Girls’ always have!”
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About the Author
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Meet Karen Harper
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Behind the Book
Excerpt from Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
Meet Karen Harper
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author KAREN HARPER is a former Ohio State University instructor and high school English teacher. Published since 1982, she writes contemporary suspense and historical novels about real British women. Two of her recent Tudor-era books were bestsellers in the United Kingdom and in Russia. Harper won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Dark Angel, and her novel Shattered Secrets was judged one of the best books of the year by Suspense Magazine.
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About the Book
Behind the Book
This is the second novel I’ve written set in the Victorian/Edwardian eras and beyond, and I hope to write another soon. These books are inspired by and based on real women, although, of course, scenes and dialogue are fictionalized—what Alex Haley, who wrote Roots, dubbed “faction.”
I have stayed as true to real people and events as I could—although these “It Girls” had such amazing careers and knew so many fascinating people that I had to ignore some events and occasionally collapse time a bit. I tried to be careful not to simply name drop, because their friends and acquaintances were a list of who’s who of two continents and several historical eras, and, in many cases, deserved development of their own.
I discovered Lucile while reading a research book, The Real Life Downton Abbey by Jacky Hyams, for my previous historical novel, The Royal Nanny. Three short paragraphs convinced me to look into Lucile’s life—and what a life! She was a survivor of the Titanic to top all that off! And then to discover she had a sister who was an early romance novelist who also wrote for early Hollywood was a special gift. However, having two dynamic heroines made this the most challenging book of the many I have written.
By the way, I didn’t create any of the sisters’ antics or adventures—for example: Elinor’s abduction in Warsaw really happened and was never solved. Elinor and her friend Charlie Chaplin did discover a murder right outside her hotel door. Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction.
The sisters did go on to present the play Knowing Men together, though it relied on the past so much that it wasn’t very popular in the new Jazz Age.
Both Sutherland sisters were famous enough to have been mentioned in Downton Abbey. If you were a fan, perhaps you’ll recall that Tom Branson mentioned that Mrs. Glyn “writes scandalous books” in one of the episodes. And way back when Edith was first to be married but then was left at the altar, her family members planning her trousseau mentioned putting he
r in Lucile lingerie.
By the way, there is still a modern lingerie company that banks on Lucile’s reputation; take a look at their wares at www.lucileandco.com. These are definitely not her designs, though she might have approved that they are lovely and risqué. And more trivia: Audrey Hepburn’s fabulous ball dress in the movie My Fair Lady was based on Lucile’s design for Snow Princess for the opera The Merry Widow. Lucile’s dress designs, like her hats, swept London fashions.
In case you would like to pursue any reading or research about these original “It Girls,” here is a list of some of the works I consulted. These are books focusing specifically on the sisters, though I also read others about the general culture and times.
Lucile, Her Life by Design by Randy Bryan Bigham, MacEvie Press Group, Los Angeles, 2012. This is a huge, expensive book with many illustrations. I want to thank Gayle Strege, curator of the Ohio State University Historic Costume & Textiles Collection, for obtaining a rare copy of it for me. Gayle and her staff have been very helpful. The amazing costume collection they oversee at Ohio State includes a 1916 Lucile ivory silk wedding dress, which can be viewed at this website gallery: http://fashion2fiber.osu.edu/items/show/3766. Additional Lucile designs can be seen on Pinterest or other sites by entering her name.
Other books I read and consulted include the autobiographies of both women:
Discretions and Indiscretions by Lady Duff-Gordon, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1932.