by Juliana Gray
“Mrs. Schuyler,” he said, “how kind of you to suggest it.”
Day Eight
SS Majestic
In port, Liverpool
Penelope.
The whisper began at her ear, but she heard it somewhere in the middle of her head, like a memory. A memory of what? She was so warm and content, as if her body were made of electrified air, buzzing quietly against the sheets. She stretched one lazy arm above her head, where it landed in a smooth pile of silky thread that would, if examined, turn out to be silver.
For a moment, she allowed herself a luxury she hadn’t known in twenty years: the slow intimacy of waking up in bed with a man. There was the familiar scent of tobacco and soap, the solid bulwark of the chest behind her, the stir of his breath at her temple. How had she lived without this?
Olympia, she whispered back.
“It’s almost dawn,” he said. “The ship has stopped.”
Of course. The background drone of the twin-screw propellers had ceased; the ship no longer pitched on a restless ocean. They had slid into port as quietly and surely as Olympia had made love to her during the night, and the result was the same: satisfaction, completion. The happy climax to a thrilling journey, so right and perfect that you forgot, afterward, that it hadn’t simply been inevitable.
“So it has,” she said.
He stroked her hair with his knuckles. “I must return to my cabin. Evict the interlopers before anyone suspects.”
“And I must pack.”
“Yes, that, too.”
His knuckles went on rubbing. She closed her eyes again; there was nothing to see anyway. Nothing to do, in this instant, except to savor this last caress.
He went on. “I’m afraid I shall have to disembark immediately. My men in London must know of this incident without delay. I shall wire them from the docks and board the first train.”
“Of course.”
Stroke, stroke. With her eyes closed like this, she could feel all of him, she could concentrate on everything at once. His smell, his touch, his low English voice. The way she fit into the zigzag of his body. She remembered her first sight of that body, so lean and energetic beneath the stiffness of his shirt and the gloss of his dinner jacket. A mere six days later, and she was waking up in its shelter.
“And you?” he said. “You will, of course, be making your way to London.”
“Possibly.”
“Possibly?” The knuckles came to a halt, mid-stroke. “What the devil does that mean?”
“My dear sir, I have a world to explore. I have so much to catch up on. I might like to see Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. I haven’t been to Paris since I was a schoolgirl.” She yawned. “And Florence, I think. Yes, Florence, before the tourists descend. But Paris first.”
“Why Paris?”
“Because Paris is always a good idea. Don’t you think?”
“I thought,” said the duke, in that rumbling tone she recognized, “we had agreed to make this journey together.”
“And I thought I told you I wasn’t going to become anyone’s mistress.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She yawned. “Well, whenever you decide what you did mean, be sure to write. I’ll be collecting my mail at the American Express office on rue Halévy.”
“But how will you live? What will you live on?”
“Oh, I’ll think of something, I’m sure.”
He sat up, overturning the covers, and reached for his shirt. “If I didn’t have to go up to London at the earliest moment—”
“My dear sir, don’t think anything of it. I’ve had a lovely time, truly. The loveliest. Go off and do whatever business it is you do. I hope we shall encounter each other again, by some happy coincidence.”
“By God, we shall,” he said, again in that delightful growl, thrusting his legs into his trousers. “You cannot possibly elude me, Mrs. Schuyler. I have the entirety of Britain’s intelligence at my disposal.”
She snuggled under the comforter. “How formidable.”
“Look here—”
“You’re going to miss your train, Your Grace, if you’re not careful.”
Without warning, he seized her face between his hands. “Listen to me, Penelope. Listen to me very carefully.”
She opened her eyes to an intense and familiar blue gaze, framed by bones and skin that might have been hewn from a New Hampshire cliff, and she thought, I will never forget this sight, I will think of him always the way he’s looking at me right now. “Do I have a choice?” she said.
“I am not, at my age, in the habit of making casual love to women. I am not nearly done with you. I have only just begun, as a matter of fact—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Just kiss me good-bye and put the rest in a letter, when you get the chance.”
He made a noise of exasperation and kissed her, long and hard, and kissed her again. When he rose and slipped through the door, she hardly heard him.
“Not nearly done,” he said again, before closing the door.
She waited a minute or two, counting the beats of her heart. Imagining him climbing quietly up the stairs, deck by deck, until he reached the top.
Then she slipped her hand under the mattress and pulled out a leather portfolio. Her fingers spread across the cover, as far as they could reach.
“My darling fellow, I’m afraid you probably are.”
One Month Later
6 rue Halévy
Paris, France
A shower of rain had just burst forth from the sky, but Penelope didn’t mind. This was April in Paris, and unexpected showers were all part of the atmosphere, making the cobblestones shine and the air sparkle, making the world seem new again. Anyway, they didn’t last. By the time she reached the American Express office from the omnibus stop around the corner of rue Halévy, the drops were already scattering and a patch of brilliant blue sky appeared above.
The same color, in fact, as the eyes of a certain English duke, though she didn’t allow herself to linger on that thought. Instead she concentrated on the shaking of her umbrella, folding it shut just as she passed through the door and into the spacious office that smelled of damp wood and money. She approached the counter as she did each day, at precisely half past ten o’clock, buoyant and satisfied, having enjoyed a buttered morning brioche with strawberry jam, washed down by a cup of intense black coffee, and improved her French by reading the early edition of Le Figaro from beginning to end.
She would not let a thing so ordinary as a color disturb that tranquility.
“Ah! Madame Schuyler,” said the clerk, face brightening. “You have some letters. Also, there is a gentleman who waits for you.”
Penelope’s fingers froze in the act of fastening her umbrella. “A gentleman?”
“A very large gentleman.” The clerk leaned forward. “He is leaning against the wall just there, behind you.”
“Is he, now.” She tapped her fingers against the head of the umbrella and felt an electric blue gaze raise the hairs at the back of her neck. The hairs everywhere, in fact, and the blood in her veins, too, while she stood and stood, staring at the bemused clerk.
“Madame? Shall I summon the police?”
She held out her hand. “That won’t be necessary. May I have my post, please?”
The clerk looked over her shoulder and then back to her eyes, and an expression of sympathetic understanding crept over his face, as he comprehended the entire history of the affair. He was, after all, a Frenchman.
“Of course, madame,” he said, offering her the letters.
She took her time thumbing through them all—notes from a friend or two, a stately envelope from the lawyer in New York—while the clock ticked heavily on the wall and the clerk stole minute smiles as he bent over the led
ger on the counter. To her right, a slender man in a bowler hat was changing a traveler’s check. He was, it seemed, from Arizona, and this was his first visit to Paris. “Except the one in Texas, of course,” he told the other clerk, and the clerk smiled politely as though he hadn’t heard the joke a hundred times before.
“Madame? Will there be anything else? May I change you some money, perhaps? Arrange for a journey?”
She looked up, as if she’d forgotten where she was. “Oh! No, thank you. I haven’t quite decided where to go next.”
“Ah, well. You are in Paris in the springtime, madame. There is no hurry, I think.”
She smiled. “Yes, I believe you’re right. No hurry at all.”
She put the letters in her pocketbook and turned at last, in the kind of slow and magnificent rotation she knew the Duke of Olympia would appreciate.
He stood next to one of the enormous windows, dwarfing it. His arms were crossed against his tweed jacket, which was buttoned over a stomach equally as flat and elastic as when she had seen it last. His collar was crisp and white, his hat pulled low over his silver-white hair. He looked well-tailored and quietly expensive and so utterly masculine, she had an instant of jellylike weakness somewhere in the region of her knees. Probably he could crush her. Probably he would crush her. A man like the Duke of Olympia did not appreciate having his bold Roman nose tweaked by an upstart American widow.
As she stood there, eyebrows raised in question, he levered himself away from the wall and walked toward her. His feet clacked on the wooden floor, reminding her of the promenade deck on board the Majestic. Without warning, the taste of his mouth appeared in her memory. When he was a yard away, he stopped, bowed his head, and offered his arm. His magnificent face was so grave, she nearly buckled.
“A cup of coffee at the Café de la Paix, Mrs. Schuyler?”
“I’ve already had coffee this morning.”
“Then chocolate, perhaps.”
She took his arm. “Very well. Since you insist.”
He said not a word as he guided her along the sidewalk and across the Place de l’Opéra, holding back the traffic by the force of a single steely glance from under his brow. The maître d’ fairly quivered at their approach, and rushed to offer them a table on the sidewalk, which the duke refused in elegant French, preferring the privacy of a table indoors. “If that is acceptable to you, madame,” he said, turning to Penelope.
“Naturally it is acceptable,” she said, in equally elegant French, and the maître d’ whisked them inside to a table in the corner. Too late, Penelope wondered if this was wise. Weren’t you supposed to stay in plain view? Witnesses and all that? But surely she had nothing to fear from Olympia in the civilized public atmosphere of the Café de la Paix. He would never seek so crude a form of revenge.
“I have changed my mind,” she said, when she was seated. “I believe I will have coffee after all.”
“Two coffees and a basket of bread, if you will,” said Olympia, and he settled back in his chair and patted his waistcoat pocket, as if hunting for something to smoke.
“When did you realize the truth?” she asked, in English.
“About an hour out of London, I’m ashamed to say. You see, I was in something of a daze, which has not happened to me in many years.” He hesitated. “I might almost say, since I was a young man.”
She shrugged. “It passed quickly enough.”
He didn’t answer until the coffee and pastries had arrived and were laid out ceremoniously before them, cramming the little table as if Penelope and Olympia were sitting down to a feast. His eyes, however, didn’t leave her face. She refused to return his gaze. She had been warned about basilisks in her youth.
“So. Do you have questions for me?” she said at last.
“No, I have not. An exchange of cables with our friend Madame de Sauveterre illuminated the major points of the ruse. How she had become alarmed at Dingleby’s fanaticism and yet powerless to stop her without the assistance of the authorities, whom she knew would treat her revelations with suspicion. How she cleverly managed to bring all of us on board the ship, counting on the close quarters and our own ingenuity to bring about the desired result, which would not only disable Dingleby’s plot but provide a convenient feint for you to smuggle the papers free unscathed.” He picked up his spoon and dropped a single heap of sugar into his coffee, which, like hers, was as thick and black as oil. “Have I missed anything important?”
“Don’t you want to know what the papers contained?”
“Can you tell me that?”
“No.”
“Ah, well. I suppose it’s just some nonsense, after all. These secret papers usually are. So much effort and sometimes blood, and it’s all for nonsense.” He tasted the coffee thoughtfully. “There is one thing I should like to ask you. From a sense of professional curiosity, nothing more.”
“Of course.” The coffee burned her tongue, but she hardly noticed.
“Did de Sauveterre tell you everything from the beginning, or did she leave you to manage the business on your own?”
“The second. I didn’t realize she had some great plan in the works until I retrieved the portfolio from the safe, two days before our arrival in Liverpool. I thought perhaps I should know a little more about what I was risking my neck for, and so I looked inside. In addition to the papers in question, there was a note from Margot. She’d been counting on my curiosity, you see.”
“And what did the note say?”
“Simply that if her friend the Duke of Olympia was such a numbskull as not to have recognized Miss Crawley’s true identity by the last night of the voyage, I would find the relevant information hidden under the seat of her chair. She trusted I would know what to do with it.”
“Hmm. A numbskull, was it?”
“I believe that was the term she employed.”
He selected a pastry from the basket and frowned at it, so sternly that Penelope was afraid it might wither away into his hand. “She took a great risk. What if I’d been able to lift the papers from you?”
“Well, as to that, I think she may have been—what’s the phrase—testing me out?” She arranged her fingers around the rim of the coffee cup. “You’re right, the information in those papers wasn’t the kind of thing to save lives or topple empires. The recipient was—is—in the hotel business. He was very grateful, however.”
“How grateful?” growled Olympia.
“Enough to allow me to stay in his hotel for as long as I liked, free of charge. Meals included, which is very nice. The chef is superb, absolutely superb. But the point is, I passed the test.”
“Yes, you did. I won’t deny it. You led the way in this little affair, whilst I failed you at nearly every step.”
“That’s not true. You showed me—if it weren’t for you, I—” The words died in her throat. How could she describe what he had meant to her? The strength she had taken from him, from his belief in her.
“I suppose Madame de Sauveterre wishes you to undertake further such missions?”
Penelope shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Will you accept?”
“I haven’t decided. It’s so much to take on. On the other hand . . .”
“Yes?”
“I haven’t had so much fun since I was a girl.”
The duke set down his pastry and steepled his fingers to consider her with the full weight of his concentration. “Yes. There is that. So much potential wasted. You should decide soon. The clock ticks, as they say.”
“Yes. I will. I can’t stay at the Continental forever, and I haven’t much money.”
The duke said nothing. He was looking at her hands now, grim-faced. She moved them from the rim of her cup and lifted the coffee to her lips, in order to fill this appalling silence with movement at least. What was he thinking? What was he plotting? Surely he wa
sn’t just going to let her get away with this. She had played fair; she’d let him know where to find her. Now it was his turn. Friend or foe? Concession or revenge?
“There is, of course, an alternative,” he said.
“Is there?”
He lifted his gaze to her face. “You can marry me.”
The words hit her in the chest. She wasn’t quite sure she’d heard them properly. “Marry you?” she repeated, as she might say Soak you in buttermilk?
“Yes. I have, for some time, contemplated a change in life. A shedding of my former ways, to be replaced by a—a—” The grand old Duke of Olympia could not quite find the words to express himself.
“A wife?” she ventured.
“Yes. To put the matter succinctly. You see, until now, whenever I contemplated this change, I couldn’t quite conceive what I might do to replace this business, which has occupied the heart of my life since I was a young man. I no longer relished these escapades as I once did, but what else was there to relish? What else might fill its absence?”
The blood pounded in her cheeks. “Are you saying you wish to marry me because you relish me?”
He sighed and gazed at the ceiling. “You want more flowery words, I suppose. Women always do. It is not enough that a man feels as he does, with all the strength of his heart; he must then declare it in the most honey-soaked language, flowing on and on, rotting his very teeth as it wanders through his mouth—”
“No.” She scraped back her chair and flung herself into his arms. “Relish will do very well.”
THE TIMES, 10 May 1893
Paris. The Duke of Olympia announces his marriage to Mrs. Penelope Schuyler, formerly of New York City, yesterday morning in the chapel of the Palais Royale after a short engagement. The bride was attended by the Countess de Sauveterre and Mrs. Robert Langley, both ladies also of New York City, while the groom was attended by his two grandsons, the Duke of Wallingford and Lord Roland Penhallow. A wedding breakfast was held at the Hôtel Continental. The Duke and Duchess of Olympia departed that same evening on His Grace’s private steam-yacht for an extended honeymoon, the destination and duration of which the duke declined to reveal.