“Yes, of course. Mother ensured we were schooled in the arts. All of us were fluent in half a dozen languages by the age of ten. Even Edith, with her head thick as a brick. Mother squeezed the best parts from us. That’s what she did.
“My dearest sister Audrey and I both demonstrated early musical prowess so we trained at the Sacré-C?ur. I can still feel Audrey’s hand in mine as we promenaded through the wooden-planked entrance and toward the white domes that loomed over the city. We found our greatest happiness inside the basilica’s cool towers. So many people hated the Sacré-C?ur, so whipped up were they in Gothic furor. Audrey and I never felt threatened by the building’s aggressive Catholicism, though. Mostly the place made us want to sing.”
“Tell me about living in Rome,” Win said. “With your mum in the aforementioned unicorn castle.”
“It was a decline in station,” Mrs. Spencer said. “Despite the Renaissance palace. Mother encountered great difficulty in trying to establish herself. Italians are more rigid than their Parisian counterparts, and much less amenable to colorful backgrounds and spotty pasts. Parisians celebrate liveliness and intellect, irrespective of skeletons lurking in the closet.”
“Literal skeletons. Ergo, Coco.”
“Through it all,” she went on, doing a hero’s job of trying to hide her vexation. “Mother kept her head high and her elegance intact. She suffered no fools. She suffered nothing, really. Even at her most destitute, at the end of her life when the bills had come due and there was no one left to pay them, even then she lingered on in the palace, blue and white peacocks strutting across the lawns.”
“Form over substance, eh, Mrs. Spencer?” Win asked with a sly grin.
“Young man, my mother was nothing but substance. It was only fitting she had the form to go with it.”
Forty-five
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
A few days later, Pru was washing a trio of dogs when she happened to glance out the window. She almost couldn’t believe her eyes.
It was Win Seton. Outside. Standing beneath a weeping birch in the honest-to-God daylight. He hadn’t even yet disintegrated into a pillar of salt. Pru thought it her duty to investigate.
She approached as Win stood on the embankment, whistling and skipping stones across the partially frozen goose pond. Whether he was trying to hit the geese on purpose or suffering the effects of his poor accuracy, Pru didn’t know.
“And the writer emerges from his lair,” she said, walking up behind him. “Finally.”
He turned to face her, grinning wide.
“Never let anyone—ahem, my father—tell you I’m not a keen outdoorsman,” he said as the sunlight shot through his hair. “A glorious day, isn’t it?”
Pru nodded, feeling daft and off-kilter. Lord help her. She’d been cooped up in that blasted home too long. Win Seton was starting to resemble a movie star, all golden and radiant. Pru shook her head. This would never do.
“Here,” he said, handing her a stone. “Would you like to have a go?”
“I’d love to.”
Pru took the smooth, cool rock and with a flick of her wrist sent it ricocheting across the water.
“Not too shabby,” he said. “Though I think the ice helped.”
“Ice, nothing. I realize it’s no tape recorder against a wall,” Pru replied, and skipped a second rock, inordinately pleased with her newly discovered skill. “But it works.”
Seton grinned again. Hard. It felt almost like a violation though he’d done precisely nothing wrong.
Pru immediately cranked her head away, flushed once again. She thought to leave but what Win said was true. Right there, in the dead of winter, it was a glorious day. It hardly looked like winter at all.
Around them witch hazel abounded, also honeysuckle with its lemon-scented flowers. Viburnum bloomed its cotton-candy pink and bright purple irises burgeoned beside the southernmost wall. Across it all, a dusting of snow and ice, like a swath of glittering tulle.
What was this? Pru wondered. This unfamiliar feeling? Was it some sort of … happiness? It seemed too exotic a thought.
“So what brought you out here on this bright and pleasant day?” Win asked.
“Oh. Well. I was passing through. Decided to say hello.”
She didn’t mention that she’d spotted him from Mrs. Spencer’s bedroom, way up in the highest spot of the house. Pru left three dogs shimmying and spraying water on Mrs. Spencer’s gold lyrebird wallpaper, just so she could check him out.
“And what is it you’re doing out here?” she asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you leave the house.”
“Huh. I’m not sure that I have. Well, the answer is I’ve been writing like mad and needed a break. A jolly good problem, to be sure. Mrs. Spencer is finally giving me what I need.”
“And probably much that you don’t.”