GD: Let me tell you. I was a WELCOME distraction to Sunny and Coon.
WS: Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer smacked the table when she said the word “welcome.”
GD: That table won’t be the only thing smacked if you don’t knock it off.
WS: Mrs. Spencer, please continue.
GD: I can’t! I’ve completely lost my mind!
WS: Most would agree.
GD: Not my mind! My train of thought! You have me so befuddled. You’re a wretched conversationalist, you know that?
WS: My conversational skills are probably why I’ve become a writer. Come, Mrs. Spencer. Please sit back down. That’s better. Now. Please tell me why you were a welcome [Clap] distraction at Blenheim.
GD: Because the poor girl didn’t want to marry the man in the first place. Then he installed her in that god-awful monstrosity of an alleged home.
WS: Most find Blenheim unmatched in beauty and grandeur in the United Kingdom. Even the world, if not for Versailles. The royal family envies the palace. It’s better than anything they’ve got.
GD: I don’t give a damn about the royal family and their shit tastes. They’ve never had to live there. And they should count themselves lucky. Otherwise they’d be even more miserable than they already are.
WS: But the stately rooms? The gardens? The grottos?
GD: The palace was oppressive. Coon had a predilection for melancholy and that home sucked every ray of sunshine from the tender girl’s soul. She cried every night. She prayed for God to turn her into a vestal virgin.
WS: Vestal virgin?
GD: A woman freed of the social obligation to marry and bear children. Of course she was far too late for that.
WS: Sounds like Coon had a glum personality.
GD: She wasn’t a zippy sort, no. But let me tell you, when the Marlboroughs separated and she moved to London, Coon flourished as a single hostess.
WS: And after she made her move, you swooped in and made yours.
GD: I’ve haven’t swooped a day in my life.
WS: When Coon left Sunny, and was finally happy, you were free to pursue your best friend’s husband, free to consummate the simmering attraction you’d felt for a decade.
GD: Attraction. Ha. Give me some credit.
WS: Your stepson reported that you behaved shamelessly toward Sunny, even when he was married to your Coon.
GD: You mean Henry? He’s about as reliable as a drunk. Did I flirt with Sunny? Yes. At times. Just as I flirted with five to eleven other men in a given evening. There’s nothing wrong with a little Parisian flirtation, as my mother always said.
WS: Parisian flirtation usually refers to sex. Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer’s face has reddened.
GD: Listen here, you tosser. In those years, Coon meant everything to me. Could you imagine? If I’d been in love with my best friend’s husband?
WS: Yes. I can imagine. “She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”
GD: ARE YOU QUOTING EDITH WHARTON AT ME?
WS: Ah. The woman has a sharp ear for literature.
GD: Edith was my friend. And she would be outraged, a hack like you vomiting up her sublime words.
WS: So you’re angrier at my quoting of Edith Wharton than with the implication you stole your best friend’s husband?
GD: For God’s sake, yes! Because the implication is so ridiculous. Coon was my best friend.
WS: But it happens, Mrs. Spencer. It happens all the time.
GD: Stealing someone’s husband is an awfully big responsibility. If a woman chooses that path, she’d better be damned sure the man is worth the effort. And lest there be any doubt, most men are decidedly not.
Sixteen
THE GEORGE & DRAGON
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
Gladys’s mother was pregnant with her fourth and final daughter, Dorothy, when her marriage took its final hit.
The pregnancy itself was a source of contention, as Edward Deacon suspected the baby wasn’t his. Not an unreasonable fear given the hours his wife spent in Abeille’s company, and the time Edward saw the two of them exiting a lingerie shop together. And who was the first person to lay eyes on baby Dorothy after she was born? Abeille himself. Edward was inflamed.
“All French women receive these platonic visits from their men friends while they are lying-in,” Florence claimed, always quick to chalk up bad behavior to Parisian sensibilities.
His wife wasn’t French and so Edward remained unswayed by the country’s customs. Adultery was adultery, especially when one was from the States.
Not that Florence or Abeille were concerned by Edward’s fury or his threats. To them he was nothing but a silly, harmless dilettante. They certainly did not consider him the type of man who’d chase his wife’s lover about a room and then shoot him three times through a couch.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
Annie found Gus in the same corner booth, sipping his same type of cider. How many years had he done this for? she wondered.