“Like I said, call me Win.”
“I will not call you Win. For one, it’s impolite. For two, it reminds me of Winston Churchill and you do not want to be mistaken for him. Mr. Seton, this book will be mine, not yours. I get the final say on what goes into it. Do you understand?”
“That’s what I planned all along,” he said.
“Also I want a cut. A financial interest.”
“A cut?” Win gawped. “That’s not how biographies customarily work.”
“I don’t care about custom!” she said. “I care about what makes me happy. This is your choice. I give you my time and you compensate me as I please.”
Win pretended to ruminate on the offer, though everyone in the room knew he’d agree to the terms. Money was not the point of the book. The book was the point. Moreover, he’d made precisely nothing from his authorial endeavors thus far. Mrs. Spencer was welcome to her half of zed.
“Very well, Mrs. Spencer,” he said. “I accept your proposal.”
Frankly, he didn’t have another choice. What was the price of a dream anyway? Win Seton was willing to give up half the money for the whole of this, his last chance to prove his worth.
Twenty-four
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
Gladys’s father was arrested for murder. “Parisian flirtations” aside, you simply couldn’t shoot someone through a couch and expect to get away with it.
That is, unless you cried adultery. In those days, murder was an acceptable response to a cheating wife. Had Edward Deacon attested to Florence’s dalliance with the now-dead Coco, she would’ve been the one in the clink. But Mr. Deacon refused to turn her in. Noble or stupid? It was certainly up for debate.
Mrs. Deacon did feel some guilt about the outcome. Immediately after her husband’s sentencing, she canceled an engagement with the Princesse de Sagan. Florence didn’t care to endure a luncheon less than twenty-four hours after her husband was carted off. She may not have loved him, but Florence Deacon had some semblance of a heart.
Alas, the press did not take kindly to this social misstep. Famed dandy Count Robert de Montesquiou wrote a poem about the event, asking at the end, “Does disaster preclude politeness?”
Evidently, it did not. Florence would not make such a mistake again.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
“I like this Win character,” Annie said. “I’m glad Pru had the good sense to let him stay.”
“Ha!” Gus responded with a small arf. “Well, you can join the very short line of people who have ever shared that sentiment. You like him in what manner, exactly?”
“I don’t know. He seems funny, affable.”
“Yes, he seems that way, doesn’t he?”
“You’re a tough customer,” Annie said. “So this marginally affable Win Seton wrote a book called The Missing Duchess. In your story he’s writing about Mrs. Spencer. So voilà! Your not-really-a-mystery is solved. Mrs. Spencer is the Duchess of Marlborough. The duchess is she.”
“The mystery is hardly solved. My dear, you are a pretty thing, smart as a whip, but I feel as though you’re not listening with both ears. Win said he’d write the book with or without the woman’s assistance. He was exactly the kind of person who, if Mrs. Spencer had become the least bit troublesome, would’ve written whatever the hell he wanted just to put something on the page. And Mrs. Spencer was always troublesome.”
Gus started walking back down the road, away from the Grange. He indicated for Annie to follow.
“Wait,” she called. “Maybe we should try to—”
“Go inside?” he finished for her, smiling over his shoulder. “You are persistent. And cruel. Poor old man, one foot in the grave, and you want to get him thrown in the brig?”
“You’re not anywhere near the grave, much less one foot in it.”
Annie jogged to catch up.
“Sorry, mademoiselle, no trespassing for me today,” Gus said. “Let me walk you back to your hotel. The Banbury Inn? Nicola Teepers? Whew. She’s a chatty one, isn’t she?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Once her pace finally caught with his, Annie wrapped both arms around herself. Her teeth clattered. She could feel winter coming.
“Here.” Gus unwound his scarf and passed it her way. “Borrow this. What were you thinking, coming out here in nothing but a pair of skimpy shorts? It’s brass monkeys outside.”
“I was jogging.”
“You were doing nothing of the sort. Heaving, more like.”
“Hey!” she said, laughing as she wrapped the scarf around her neck.
Around them the air was damp and chilled. The sun shone overhead but the morning fog settled in the foothills. The cold was so much colder in England, so wet and final. It was nice to have something to guard against it. What was she thinking, indeed.