“The woman denied it, however,” he told her. “Said she wasn’t a duchess. Called herself Mrs. Spencer.”
“When I’m ninety years old, if people want to confuse me for a duchess, I won’t stop them. Heck, I might even insist upon it. Hello, sirs! The Duchess of Middleburg calling. Where’s my tea?”
The man removed his glasses, dropped them into his pocket, and sat down across from her.
“I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of men willing to bring you tea,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”
“I think you already have. So. You seem to be one of the regulars.” She motioned toward the other white-hairs in the pub. “How long have you lived here?”
“In other words, I am fairly advanced in years. Was I one of the wary townsfolk?”
“You said it, not me.” She smiled. “So, did you know her? The supposed duchess? Were you two friends?”
“Friends?” He grimaced. “Gawd blimey. How old do you think I am? She was born a hundred and twenty years ago. No. Lord no. We weren’t friends.”
“I wasn’t trying to offend—”
“Trying and doing are two different things. No, young lass, I’ve not seen one hundred and twenty summers just yet. But I was here when that cut-rate author came to Banbury to write his stupid book of nonsense. My name’s Gus.”
He extended a hand.
“Annabelle,” she said. “But I also go by Annie.”
“And I also go by the Earl of Winton.”
She laughed at the joke but Gus’s face remained stern.
“Something funny about that?” he asked.
“Well, yes. No. I mean … the Duchess of Marlborough and now the Earl of Winton?” she said. “I didn’t realize there was such a stronghold of peers in this village. Does Burke’s know about this?”
Gus cracked a smile.
“Yes, of course they do,” he said. “That’s the very point of their existence. How are you familiar with Burke’s? You are an American.”
“Sometimes we read books,” she said. “Or hear about things that happen outside of the United States. Shocking, but true.”
“I find you suspicious,” he said.
“I’m suspicious? I was sitting here reading quietly, minding my own business, when you walked up. If anyone’s suspicious it’s strange men in pubs at one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Touché. What I meant was, I thought Americans were staying home right now. Avoiding air travel. Waving flags. Setting off fireworks.”
“Not all Americans,” she said, prickling.
Eric was in the middle of an ocean right then, floating at no discernible place. The fireworks he might soon set off she could not contemplate.
“I’m sorry,” Gus said, and gently touched her hands. “I’m not trying to poke fun. This has been a grievous tragedy. For the entire world.”
“No. It’s not that.” Annie shook her head. Well, it was that. But also more. “It’s fine. Not fine, exactly. I don’t like thinking about it.”
“Understood. I’m sorry. I have atrocious social skills. They’re pitifully out of practice living in this ‘derelict hamlet,’” he said, using the duchess’s own words and offering a sly grin. “And what hamlet are you from, my new American friend? Do I detect a Southern accent?”
“Yes and no,” she said, amazed to find herself smiling.
Whoever this Gus was, this Earl of Winton, he had a certain salty appeal.
“I’m from Virginia,” she said. “Which is Southern to anyone who doesn’t live in the South.” For a wistful moment she thought of her Alabama boy. “Do you get many of my compatriots around here?”
“Oh, we’ve had a few. We used to get all kinds before the coffee-processing facility closed a few years back. So why are you here? Visiting someone?”
“For work,” she said, then blushed. It was—what?—the second lie she’d told him? The third?
“Working bloody hard, I gather. Reading all day in a pub. Sounds like my kind of job. Is your company hiring any dashing, slightly older Brits these days?”
“Very funny. I’m … I’m a scholar actually.”
Again she cringed. Lie number three? This one was not as egregious. A scholar was the most recent thing she had been. Plus last week she’d perused a few grad school catalogs. A scholar she could be again.
“I’m getting my master’s,” she continued, rolling out the lies with a startling smoothness. “Concentrating in Victorian and Edwardian British literature.”
These fabrications were not completely off base, Annie assured herself. British literature had been her concentration in undergrad, which of course explained the lack of employment to anyone who asked.
“Ah,” Gus said. “So you’re here on an academic tour.”
“Something along those lines. Research, mostly. For my thesis.”
Annie could almost believe that it was true. In Oxfordshire, with Laurel, she hoped to prove something. Of course “who’s my daddy” would impress nary an English department, or even an old guy in a pub.
“Poking around used bookstores in a ‘derelict hamlet’ seemed like a decent start,” she added.