She looked at the papers now in her hands, and saw no choice but to cram them into her backpack. Annie cringed as the sheets bunched together into soggy globs of pulp.
The door popped open.
“Oh, hi, Mom,” Annie said to the rasp of her backpack’s zipper.
She chucked it toward the bed, almost pummeling Laurel as she made her way across the room.
“Ugh! I’m so late! Whoops … flying backpack.”
“Nice of you to show,” Annie grumbled.
“I am so sorry,” Laurel said.
She paused to catch her breath as Annie gawked, astonished to see her mom looking so wild and unkempt. Laurel’s face was shiny, her hair a riot of knots and gnarls. And the suit. It looked like something out of the donation bin at church.
“Mom?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Laurel said again. “The meeting ran over and traffic was abominable and…”
She stopped, then exhaled, appearing to deflate all at once.
“In other words,” she said. “All the regular excuses.”
“Yeah,” Annie answered with a grunt. “Exactly. Your excuses are getting old so feel free to sell them to someone else because I’m no longer in the market.”
Annie should’ve given her mom more leeway, seeing as how her own actions of late weren’t exactly beyond reproach. But she couldn’t help herself, an alarming trend the past few days.
“Honey, you seem agitated,” Laurel noted.
“Of course I’m agitated! You’re an hour late and I’m starving!”
It was both of these things, but also more.
Yes, Annie was miffed at her mom and her stomach felt like it was trying to reach through her skin for something to eat. But she was also unfairly irritated with Eric for being so wonderful and then getting on a ship. And she was bugged by Nicola Teepers, proprietress. The woman could’ve included international dialing instructions beside the phone.
She also resented Gus for spooling out information in dribs and drabs, as slow to the story as Mrs. Spencer was with Win. Hell, Annie was even mad at Mrs. Spencer, a woman dead some twenty years.
But more than all of these people combined, Annie was most furious with herself. The Diet Coke spill. A “job” she loved that was a complete invention. And what kind of person could be mad at Laurel, Gus, Nicola, and Eric in the first place?
What exactly was Annie getting worked up about anyway? How could a book drive her so thoroughly insane, an old tale that was probably more fiction than fact? Of all the people in Gus’s story, Annie couldn’t believe it was Win that she sympathized with the most. The book, the story, these things were make-or-break for the man. How was it Annie completely understood? Why did she feel the same way?
Thirty-three
THE GEORGE & DRAGON
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
Sometime during her thirteenth year, Gladys learned about the Duke of Marlborough’s betrothal to Consuelo Vanderbilt, whom he wed in 1895 in exchange for $2.5 million worth of Beech Creek Railway stock.
“I suppose you have read about the engagement of the Duke of Marlborough,” Gladys wrote to a friend. “O dear me if I was only a little older I might catch him yet! But hélas! I am too young though mature in the arts of woman’s witchcraft and what is the use of one without the other? And I will have to give up all chance to ever get Marlborough.”
Sure, she spent a few moments envying Consuelo’s good fortune and glittering new existence, but Gladys Deacon was not a woman who stopped at moral or romantic defeat. She vowed to get Marlborough, and in the end, that’s exactly what she did.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
Annie hesitated in the doorway.
She scanned the bar and decided Gus wasn’t there. Another strikeout for the hapless Miss Haley. Annie let her shoulders slump and shuffled back toward the sidewalk.
Then came a sharp whistle.
“Annie!” called a voice.
She poked her head back inside.
“Hey, Ned!” she said. “I, uh…”
“He’s over there.” He jerked his thumb toward the corner. “Fading into the woodwork, the old codger. I’m as shocked as you are.”
Annie squinted toward the rear of the pub and there sat Gus, in a booth, sipping cider with another man. His companion was a spindly fellow with a mop of curly black hair and a beak of a nose. So Gus knew other people. An unexpected surprise.
“Miss Annie?” Ned said, raising his forehead questioningly. “You can go on. Don’t think he’d mind.”
“Oh, I don’t want to bother them,” she said. “I’ll catch Gus later! Cheers!”
Annie stepped back, eyes still caught on the mysterious meeting in the corner, when suddenly the corkscrewed man stood. He and Gus traded a mostly forced hug, followed by a series of aggressive back-pats. Wallops, more like. The man belted out a final “good-bye” and strode Annie’s way. She froze. He swept past, smiling warmly in her direction.
“Annie!” Gus hollered just as she was about to (inexplicably) follow the strange man. “You’ve arrived just in time! My schedule’s cleared for the day!”