by Jane Peart
“A penny for your thoughts,” a deep, accented voice spoke.
Knowing it was somehow familiar, Niki slowly turned around. She saw a handsome face she recognized. Deeply tanned, leaner, older, but those dark, mischievous eyes, the slightly ironic smile, were unmistakable. It was Paul Duval, Luc’s French companion. Her gaze swept over him. The black curly hair that used to fall across his forehead in waves and curl around his ears and neck was now clipped in a military cut; the mouth, with its curve of humor, was now shadowed by a mustache. But still it was Paul, the boy she had daydreamed about, the young man who had ignored her, until … last summer in Paris …
“Paul!”
“Cherie!” he responded with a broad smile. “Niki! Yes, c’est moi!“ He caught her up in a quick hug, kissing her on each cheek, and swung her around before setting her down again. Still holding her around the waist, he gazed at her with delight. “Are you surprised?”
“Of course, I’m flabbergasted! But how did you get here? We’ve been so worried. Luc’s written me a dozen times, asking if there was any word of you….”
“I got out with some of the last from Dunkirk. Here I was reassigned to what remained of my unit. I’ve been training … but enough about me. What are you doing here in England? I thought you went home with Luc last September.”
“Come, I’ll tell you all about it.” Niki took his arm. “Let’s find a place where we can talk.”
There was so much to talk about, so much to share. First Niki took Paul to meet Aunt Garnet, to explain who he was and how dear he had become to the family in Virginia. Then she introduced him to Bryanne and Alair and Cilla. Aunt Garnet insisted he stay at Birchfields instead of going back to the airfield, where he had temporary quarters.
“You are very kind, but I cannot.”
“How long will you be at the airfield?” she asked.
A curious, shuttered expression passed over Paul’s face. He murmured something about waiting for reassignment. Garnet, who understood wartime security, immediately said, “Of course, but you must come as often as you can get away. Any friend of Luc’s is certainly welcome at Birchfields.”
Paul glanced at Niki, who was looking at him eagerly. For a split second something passed between them that made Niki draw in her breath. Then Paul smiled and, bowing slightly to Garnet, said, “You are most gracious, Mrs. Devlin. I accept your hospitality with thanks. Merci.”
During the next few weeks Paul was often at Birchfields. Sometimes he showed up without advance notice. He was always there on the weekends. The time she spent with Paul was like a dream come true for Niki. All her girlish fancies about Luc’s fascinating French friend were playing out as from some predestined plan. The Paul she had fantasized about was a reality.
In the years since he had been at Montclair, he had attended the university, acquired a sophistication, an urbanity far beyond that of an American of the same age. Whatever he had been through in the short but savage war France had waged, about which he did not speak, had also given him a maturity that a less experienced young man would not have. Yet underneath he was genuinely sweet, surprisingly sensitive and sincere. When he and Niki were together, they spoke of many things they both enjoyed and a great deal about Paris.
“How I would love to show you Paris. It is particularly beautiful in the spring—” Here Paul’s eyes would glaze a little, and a look of loss would pass over his face. Niki would try to bring him back to the present, making some remark about the future. Surely one day they would explore Paris together. Now it seemed enough that they were enjoying this English summer.
Paul talked little about what he had been through in the last, disillusioning days of France or about his time since its fall. He worshiped Charles de Gaulle, now the leader of the Free French, and of course despised Pétain, the WWI hero turned traitor, who headed the government at Vichy that collaborated with the Nazis. When Niki tried to draw him out on his thoughts of the future, he begged off. “Let’s enjoy the moment, Cherie,” he would say and quickly change the subject. They did talk about Luc. Niki told him Luc was in the U.S. Army officers’ flight training program in Texas. “I think he wishes now he’d stayed when I did, gone into the British Royal Air Force. He already has a pilot’s license. He hopes America will join the Allies, if it’s not too late—”
“There’ll be time enough,” Paul said. “I’m afraid it’s going to take a while to defeat the Nazis … as my country learned to its regret.”
“My country, too, Paul. Remember?” Niki said softly.
“Of course, Cherie. Now I do remember. I had forgotten. You seem so American.”
“I do?” Niki looked disappointed.
Paul threw back his head and laughed. “French, American, who cares? You are adorable.” He leaned over and touched the tip of her nose with his index finger.
One Saturday evening several weeks later, Birchfields was crowded. It seemed to Niki more servicemen than ever had flooded through the gates and filled the house. They were also several hostesses short. Cilla had gone back to school, and Alair had a cold, so neither had shown up to help. Niki and Bryanne and a few local girls did their best. Stationed at the punch bowl, Niki couldn’t get away long enough to be with Paul as much as usual. By midnight, men with early-morning duties began to leave. Others drifted off to escort home some of the hostesses who lived in the village. Finally the bus left to take the rest of the servicemen back to the base.
Niki looked around, afraid that Paul, seeing she was busy, might have gone without saying good-bye. Then she saw him and, relieved, she went to him. He smiled and said, “I’ve waited all evening to have a dance with you.”
Bryanne and one of the servants were going about extinguishing lights and pulling back the blackout curtains in the rooms that no longer needed to be darkened.
“Let’s go outside. It’s a beautiful evening,” Paul suggested. Holding Niki’s hand, he led her through the library, where a few people remained. Several airmen, not wanting to see their brief respite end, taking their chances of hitching a ride or walking back to the base, lingered still, gathered by the phonograph.
The moon was rising above the treetops, illuminating the garden.
“Bomber’s moon,” Paul muttered. “Poor London.”
They both stood there, momentarily anticipating the whine of German bombers that would soon be roaring overhead on their way to send death and destruction on that beleaguered city. Then through the open doors the sound of dance music floated.
Paul took Niki in his arms, and they began dancing slowly to a popular ballad she loved. Paul was singing the lyrics in French, but Niki also knew them in English:
Long ago and far away
I dreamed a dream one day and now that dream is here beside me.
Niki’s heart quickened. She closed her eyes, following Paul’s lead. They moved across the brick terrace as smoothly as if it were a polished dance floor. It was like a dream, she thought, almost imagining they were in Paris and all this was happening at another time … a time of peace, when anything was possible …
Paul whispered something, and slowly Niki moved back to reality. He had said something about having to go.
“So soon?” she asked dreamily.
He gave a low chuckle. “It is late, Cherie. I must go.”
There was something in the way he said it that caused her heart to tighten—something almost final about it.
“But you’ll be back next weekend?” she asked, as if needing reassurance. When he didn’t reply, she prompted, “Promise?”
“Niki, in wartime there are no promises, no farewells, only au revoir,” Paul said gently.
Niki felt as if two cold hands were squeezing her heart. She started to ask something more, but Paul pressed two fingers against her lips, keeping her from saying it. Then he kissed her, not on each cheek in the traditional friendship manner of the French, but on her mouth. It was a kiss of great tenderness, but in it was a sadness, a relinquishment of what might hav
e been in some other time or place.
Paul did not return to Birchfields. Niki carefully questioned some of the airmen who continued to come to the weekend gatherings, and learned that a small group of French officers had gone from the base. Rumor had it they had been sent on some kind of secret assignment. The surmise was that they had gone to join General de Gaulle in North Africa.
Paul’s departure left an unexpected void in Niki’s life. Was she in love with him? She certainly had been swept away by his glamor. He was strikingly handsome in his French officer’s uniform, and his accent, his charm, were so different from the American boys she had known and dated in Virginia. It had certainly been a romantic interlude, but love? Niki wasn’t sure.
1941
chapter
7
Mayfield, Virginia
Spring 1941
LYNETTE MONTROSE MAYNARD always felt an emotional tug when approaching Avalon. A sudden quickening of her heart, a sting of tears, a tightening of her throat. Its old brick-and-timber structure, the arched entrance overhung with climbing roses, all brought back the magical childhood she had spent there with her brother and sister, a childhood that had ended cruelly and abruptly with the death of their mother, Faith, in the Titanic disaster. The aftermath of the tragedy had split up their little family. Lynette had gone to the care of their grandmother, Blythe Cameron, in Virginia. Her baby sister, Bryanne, had gone to their other grandmother, Garnet Devlin, in England. Their brother, Gareth, had led a peripatetic life, moving about from place to place, living in New Mexico with their father, Jeff Montrose, a well-known artist, part of the year and going away to boarding school nine months of the year.
Providentially, somehow they had all survived.
At eighteen Gareth had rebelled, left college, declaring he had spent most of his life in school and now wanted to find out for himself what he wanted to do. He had chosen to come back to Avalon, the family home, situated on a small island across the river from Arbordale, Virginia. Their romantic parents had created a kind of enchanted world for themselves there and brought their children up on the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Gareth was living out that legacy. A bachelor at thirty-two, he seemed perfectly content to remain on the isolated estate. He had become a landscape architect and ventured away from Avalon only as necessary for business. The rest of the time, he seemed to enjoy his solitary existence in his own woodland kingdom.
Lynette skillfully maneuvered the small boat she had rowed across from the ferry landing at Arbordale. She tossed the rope around one of the pilings and, coiling it securely, climbed up on the wooden dock.
A path of flat stepping-stone, bordered by a glorious abundance of white alyssum, pink phlox, purple lobelia, made a winding walkway up to the house.
“Gareth!” Lynette called. “It’s Lynette! Where are you?”
A few minutes later a tall man in stained overalls, wearing leather gardening gloves and holding a large pair of pruning shears in one hand, emerged from around the side of the house.
“Well, Sis!” he greeted her with a wide grin. “To what do I owe a visit from the wife of our eminent state senator? An official inspection tour? Checking up on your recalcitrant brother?”
“None of the above!” She made a dismissing gesture. “I’m here on business, actually. Aren’t you going to invite me in? Where are your so-called host manners?”
“I’m much too dirty to suggest we go inside. How about the grape arbor?” He gestured toward a rustic arch nearby, its latticed sides heavy with twining grapevines, and they walked over to it. “Business or no business, I’m glad you came,” he said, indicating a seat. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “What kind of business?”
“We have a job for you,” Lynette said, brushing off the seat before sitting down. “Frank is going to rent Shadowlawn, his family’s house in Arbordale. The yard badly needs tending. We’ve been in Richmond so much of the time and spent so many weekends out at Spring Hill. It’s been in the hands of a realty firm, and they’ve been showing it for possible sale, but nobody seems to have the money these days. Frank doesn’t like the idea of renting it to just anybody, but the realtor has come up with a good tenant, and we have agreed to a six-month lease. But the yard needs to be cared for—hedges trimmed, lawn mowed, everything tidied up. The renter will be here at the beginning of next month. Do you think you can have it ready by then?”
“Sure. I’ll take a look at the place, of course, see what it needs. But probably a week will be enough time.”
“Frank and I won’t be here when they come, so will you take care of it for us?”
Gareth nodded. “Done.”
“Good. Thank you, Gareth. That’s one thing off my mind.”
“You have a great many things burdening you, Sis?”
“Just the usual. Social things, mostly. Frank’s colleagues and constituents, too.” Lynette sighed as she got to her feet. “Well, I really must be off. I’ve shopping to do and errands to run.”
“I’ll walk to the ramp with you.”
“Yes, do. I don’t really understand why you continue to live out here by yourself, Gareth.” She gave a little shudder. “It has too many memories for me. Even for father. So why do you?”
“I don’t mind memories. Most of mine are happy ones. Except, of course, mother’s death. I’m far happier here than I ever was away at school or in New Mexico.” Gareth made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Besides, I love this place.”
“And being alone?” his sister persisted. “Don’t you ever want to meet someone and fall in love? How do you expect anyone to share your castle with you when you isolate yourself on this island?” Lynette regarded her brother with a mixture of bewilderment and pique. “I’ve invited you dozens of times to events where there were any number of attractive young ladies, but you always refuse or don’t show up.”
“Don’t worry about me, Sis. When the time is right, the right person will come along. Until then I’m perfectly happy, content.”
“I hope you won’t end up a crotchety old bachelor,” she said, frowning.
Gareth laughed. “I’m sure you’ll see that I don’t—at least the crotchety part. Thanks for all your concern, Sis. But honestly, I’m doing just fine. Tell Frank I’ll see to Shadowlawn, not to worry.” He helped her into the boat and untied the rope. “By the way, who did you say is renting it?”
“I didn’t say. The realtors handled the transaction, and Frank’s secretary saw to the details.” Lynette unlocked the oars and gripped them. “It’s a missionary, just returned from Japan. Been ill, I understand, needs rest and quiet. Shadowlawn will be the perfect place for that.”
A few days later, in Arbordale on business of his own, Gareth went to Shadowlawn to see what needed to be done to the yard. Lynette had given him the key, asking him to go inside and make sure that the house cleaners she hired had done a good job.
Arbordale had developed and grown in the other direction, so this part of town had very few houses. Most were very old, rundown, and spaced widely apart on a meandering country lane. The Maynards’ family home, a simple, unpretentious colonial, was set back from the road on a large, overgrown lawn shaded by ancient trees. At least it came by its name rightly, Gareth thought as he got out of his pickup and looked around. Scraggly rhododendron bushes lined either side of the driveway, and the front porch was heavily hung with wisteria, nearly obscuring the entrance.
Gareth walked all around the house. The grounds needed a lot of work, he observed. This was more than a matter of simply mowing the grass and trimming the overgrown shrubbery. But that was about all he could accomplish before his sister’s tenant came. He went up on the porch and let himself inside. At once the combined smells of astringent cleaners, furniture wax, floor polish—the residue of the house cleaners—made him sneeze. He could report to Lynette that a thorough job had been done.
A center hall ran the length of the house. The rooms were on different levels. On one sid
e two steps led down into a large parlor; on the other side was a dining room. A staircase composed of a short flight of steps, a landing with a balcony, and then a longer flight of steps led up to the second floor, where the bedrooms were.
The rooms were sparsely furnished. Lynette had taken some of the better pieces and antiques to Spring Hill. As he walked through the downstairs, Gareth decided it had a peaceful feel, probably just right for the quiet, uncomplicated life—a good place for a recovering invalid.
Gareth worked most of the next weekend at Shadowlawn. He uncovered some flower beds that had been nearly eclipsed with weeds. As a professional, he saw what a beautiful place Shadowlawn could be if properly cared for. Maybe another day he could come back, if there was time.
Busy with his own spring planting, he did not get back to the Maynard place that week. In checking the calendar the following week, he couldn’t recall the exact arrival date of the tenant. He hoped he hadn’t missed it. Feeling somewhat guilty that he hadn’t accomplished everything he knew needed doing, he decided to take some flowers from his own garden over to Shadowlawn, place them in vases in the house as a welcoming gesture.
It was late afternoon when he pulled into the driveway of Shadowlawn. To his dismay he saw there were lights on inside. He was too late. Somehow he had missed the time of arrival.
He got out of his pickup and, carrying two bouquets of mixed flowers, walked toward the house, then halted. He saw a figure standing at one of the long, open French windows at the side of the house, a woman in some kind of flowing robe.
It was an enchanting picture. For a few minutes he stood, captivated by the graceful silhouette created by the light of the room behind her. Then someone spoke to her and she half turned, so that Gareth saw her profile. He was struck by its perfection.