“Yes, sure. That’s true. As an adolescent, her portraits stirred … well, they stirred something inside of me. Or, rather, on the outside if you want to speak medically.”
“Oh, God, please stop,” Pru said. “No more commentary on the stirring of your appendages. So do you love her?”
“Who? The duchess? God no! She’s nearly a hundred years old.”
“So she’s about your age, give or take.”
“It’s curious,” Win said, grinning, nothing forced about his humor this time. “You have a spirited mouth for someone who appears so perpetually blush-faced and innocent.”
Win thrust the bottle into Pru’s hands and took to pacing the floor.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “To me she was a myth, a legend.”
“Isn’t a myth, by definition, made up? By the by, it sounds like she created most of it herself, starting with the famous shifting birth date.”
“The duchess was known to tell a tall tale or four,” he said. “But in the words of Thomas Hardy: ‘Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.’ The most outlandish of her stories are the very ones people swear are fact. What about you, Miss Valentine? Who beguiled you as a wee one? Whose stories filled your mind?”
“I don’t know. Harriet the Spy? Mary Tyler Moore?”
“All right,” Win said, amused. “Mary’s a cute girl. And who wouldn’t love Harriet? But newsroom gals and plucky detectives are not the beat I’m after.”
“So what is it, then?” she asked. “I feel like I keep waiting for this ‘beat’ but it never comes.”
“Bloody hell. Why am I so cack-handed at explaining this? It’s my life’s work. Though, as it turns out, I’m horrible with words.”
“Here we go again,” Pru said and rolled her eyes. “Break out the tissues for the world’s most hard-luck writer! For the love of God, Seton, why not do the regular, normal-person thing?”
“And what is that, precisely?”
“Make like a bona fide storyteller and start from the beginning.”
Thirty-seven
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
“It all goes back to my chum Gads,” Win said.
“Gads?” Pru could not help but scoff.
“Ah, the young lady takes issue with my best mate’s name. I see how it is.”
“Sounds like a half-baked puppet show, is how it is. Win and Gads. Watch as they entertain children in the library at one o’clock.”
Win dropped his jaw in feigned outrage. He was not used to getting this much crap from someone not already tired from years of his gaffes and tomfoolery. Astonishingly, Win didn’t mind. He’d forgotten a good ribbing didn’t always bruise.
“A puppet show?” he said, laughing.
“I can already tell this story is going to be ridiculous. Win and Gads. It’s absurd!”
“Why, they’re jolly good names!” Win said, letting himself in on the joke. “Succinct! Punctuated!” He swung his arm twice, much like someone named Win or Gads might do. “No nonsense.”
“No nonsense? Gads?”
“They’re nicknames. Practical. Not born of romantic notions, Prunus laurocerasus. I won’t even start in on your surname, though I should.”
“Both of my names are unimpeachable.”
“A matter of opinion, that. If it makes you feel any better, Gads is officially Lord George William blah-de-blah cack-and-cobblers. He’s the youngest brother so his title is irrelevant. Since our childhood, and on through Eton, he’s always been Gads to me.”
“Gads,” Pru said a third time. “I can’t handle these names. Gads. Egads. Egads, that’s one crazy bloke! Mad as a hatter!”
“Your British accent needs some work. And whilst you think you’re being funny, ‘egads’ is often ascribed to him by any one of his three wives, past or present.” Win shook his head, still laughing. “As with most things, I blame my keen interest in Lady Marlborough—”
“Obsession.”
“I blame my diligent duchess scholarship on Gads and his family. Mind you, he’s merely the bumbling younger brother. His older brother John inherited the family dukedom, as big brothers do.”
“Yes, yes,” Pru said. “Happens all the time. If only I had a big brother to inherit ours.”
“If you’ll let me finish,” he said, grinning. “Gads’s older brother inherited the family title late last year, after marrying his third wife, the daughter of a Swedish count. Gads doesn’t expect it to last long.”
“Sounds like he’d know.”
“Nevertheless wife number three can say that she was at one time hitched to the eleventh Duke of Marlborough.”
“The same Marlborough as in…” Pru pointed toward Mrs. Spencer’s room. “That one?”
“Yes! Of course ‘that one’! There’s only one Duke of Marlborough! This isn’t a corporate position. It’s a title. It’s inherited. Honestly, Miss Valentine, I don’t even know if I can carry forward.”