“Why’d she even bother, then?” Annie asked. “If she wasn’t going to tell the whole story why not keep yammering on about chickens and geese?”
“A fair question and she probably would’ve done exactly that, absent a little interference from the universe.”
“The universe?”
“Or God. Fate. What have you. You see, nearly overnight, Mrs. Spencer began to see Pru not as a diaphanous, wide-eyed household employee but a bona fide romantic rival. And no one, especially not an American, was going to steal the woman’s carefully crafted, century-old show.”
Thirty-four
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
“So I brought you duck,” Pru said, setting a plate on Win’s desk. “Not our ducks, of course. From the market. Although, who knows where they got them, so perhaps they’re ours after all.”
She nudged aside a few errant pieces of paper, fully expecting Win to bat her away. He was particular about the kind of mess he liked to have. But instead he sat unmoving, arms hanging limply like wet ropes in his lap.
“What’s the damage this time?” she asked. “You’re not improving the ‘moody writer’ cliché, by the way.”
“I thought she’d bite the hook,” he said in his most pitiable, sad-sack voice. “With Prince Willy dangling helplessly on the end like that, world peace in the balance. I thought this story would finally take flight.”
“She gave some color,” Pru pointed out. “It wasn’t a total waste.”
“What do you know of it? You were reading a bloody book.”
“I can do two things at once. And the Prince Willy conversation happened days ago! Why are you still twisted round the axle about it?”
Win glanced up and with one hand pushed back a chunk of floppy hair. Gone was the precise crew cut, which seemed so hopelessly old-fashioned when Pru first saw him. Even his formerly smooth face was now covered in stubble, partway to a beard. Facial hair: another thing Win Seton could only start and not finish all the way.
“Has it really been days?” he asked. “It feels like hours.”
“Times flies when you’re having fun. And you are clearly having a blast. Come on, try some duck. You look gaunt. Moping must really take it out of a person.”
“It makes no sense,” Win said, refusing to listen. “Gladys Deacon was nothing if not showy, full of her own greatness. Preventing a war? How is this not enough to wring the duchess out of Mrs. Spencer?”
“Maybe she truly sees herself as Mrs. Spencer.”
Either that or the writer was wrong from the start. It was a theory Pru had been batting around for the last several days.
Thirty-four years old and he’d accomplished little. Win Seton was an authority on exactly nothing and, on top of that, seemed perfectly content to hole up in a room like a naughty child from a Dickens novel. Pru didn’t understand how a bloke could seem so aimless and yet so determined at the same time. It made her question everything.
“This is never going to happen, is it?” Seton moaned. “The whole deal will go balls-up and everyone will be right about me. Every last damned person.”
“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Pru said halfheartedly as she arranged the duck. “Mrs. Spencer will come around.”
Pru didn’t necessarily believe this and in fact understood where Mrs. Spencer was coming from. They were both rather fed up with Win’s relentless sulking. You’d think he was the one who lost a fiancé in the war. Or the one pretending to be crazy as a loon.
“I can’t go up there again,” she announced the next evening as Mrs. Spencer cooked a batch of eggs on the stovetop.
“So don’t,” Mrs. Spencer answered simply.
“You could fix him, you know.”
“Gracious. And how might I accomplish that?”
“If you gave the poor bastard even the slightest drop of information, you could turn this whole thing around.”
“A drop of information?” Mrs. Spencer balked. “Have you not been paying attention? Every blasted night I go up there and spill my secrets!”
“The only thing you’ve spilled is whisky and chewing tobacco,” Pru said. “And thanks to your lack of help, the entire content of his story could fit on a matchbook, and I fear he’s irreversibly depressed as a result.”
“It’s not my fault he’s a shitty writer,” Mrs. Spencer said as she scraped the eggs into a chipped cobalt bowl.
“It’s a game to you, same as threatening townsfolk. Same as your cats with their half-dead and partially strangled mice. Just throw another rodent onto the heap.”
“His queries are nonsense.” Mrs. Spencer turned a salt shaker over the eggs and shook with zeal. “How am I supposed to answer questions about someone else’s life? Now. Go deliver his food.”
“I think you should. Then stick around. Do some reminiscing. Give the man an anecdote or two.”
“No, thank you.”
“I don’t know why you derive such enormous pleasure in being so damned fussy!”