“I passed through in ’seventeen, on my way to France.”
Mr. Ravenel said it so casually, but there was no mistaking his meaning. Lucy remembered those days, the troops in their khaki, shipped through New York from Minnesota, Missouri, Maine. Men who had never left their hometowns, desperate to sample the pleasures of the big city before facing death in the trenches.
“I’m finding it a great deal more pleasant this time around,” said Mr. Ravenel, and Lucy couldn’t quite tell if he was making fun.
“Yes, well, I imagine one would, not having to worry about being shot at and all,” said Lucy and winced at how callous she sounded.
She was saved by the waiter, who appeared unobtrusively at the side of the table. “If madam and sir are ready . . .”
Defiantly, Lucy ordered lobster Newburgh. If Philip Schuyler wanted a steak, he could have one himself.
John Ravenel ordered in French. Not the rough sort of French picked up by a soldier trying to finagle a loaf of bread out of the locals, but impeccable, perfectly accented French. The sort of French Lucy’s mother had spoken.
“Your French is very good,” said Lucy. Hers wasn’t nearly as good, but at least she spoke enough not to disgrace herself among the Philip Schuylers of the world. Her mother’s lessons had been erratic, but they had stuck.
“Does that surprise you?”
“I—” It did, actually. It was Philip Schuyler, she realized, calling Mr. Ravenel “Huck Finn.” It had set an image in her mind, one their first meeting had done nothing to counteract.
But Huck Finn, she ought to have remembered, was cannier than he had appeared. And she might not know much about anything outside the five boroughs of New York, but she knew enough to be aware that Charleston was hardly a backwater. Mr. Ravenel was the son of a famous artist, owner of a gallery.
And she was just a secretary.
“I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising.” Lucy scrambled to regain her footing. “Given that you were, er, over there.”
“My father insisted we learn the language.”
“We?” She’d lost control of the conversation somehow.
“My sister Anna and my brother Oliver.” Mr. Ravenel was watching her with a calculating expression, quickly replaced by a self-deprecating smile. A Huck Finn smile, all Aw, shucks and Don’t mind me. “We started off on the wrong foot, didn’t we? When I saw you . . . you have the look of someone . . . someone I used to know. It startled me. That’s all.”
Reluctantly, Lucy asked, “Were her eyes blue?”
John Ravenel smiled at her. “Green,” he said.
Mr. Ravenel couldn’t know that Lucy had always secretly wished for green eyes, like her mother’s, instead of a pedestrian pale blue. Growing up in an area populated by immigrants from Northern Europe, blue eyes were about as unusual as having two feet.
Lucy hadn’t wanted to be like everyone else. She had wanted to be exceptional. Different.
Mr. Ravenel raised his glass to his lips. “When I saw you walking toward me, I thought I must be dreaming.”
Lucy wondered who the mystery woman was. A fiancée who had died while he was away at war? Someone lost at sea? Whoever she was, she must have been very dear.
“She sounds very glamorous.”
“Well, yes,” said Mr. Ravenel, and this time, Lucy didn’t miss the amusement in his expression. “She looks very like you.”
All too late, Lucy saw the trap she had walked into. “I didn’t mean like that,” she said quickly. “I would hardly—”
Mr. Ravenel looked at her quizzically. “Are all New Yorkers as leery of compliments as you?”
“Are all Southerners as free with them as you?” Lucy countered.
“Only when they’re deserved.” John Ravenel’s voice was an intimate drawl. Above, the fans swirled lazily, sending a pleasant draft of cool air down the back of Lucy’s neck. The air was sweet with wisteria and hydrangeas, the light low and soothing.
“It’s not polite to tease,” said Lucy sternly. “I thought Southern gentlemen were supposed to be the soul of chivalry.”
“Ah, but you’re a Yankee.” John Ravenel grinned, a pirate’s grin, all white teeth. His smile faded as he looked at her. He was studying her as though she were a painting he couldn’t quite place, a work of art without a signature. But all he said was, “That’s a fine necklace you’re wearing. Might I ask where you acquired it?”
Lucy’s fingers closed protectively over the pendant. “It was my mother’s.”
For you . . . Her mother’s voice had been so weak Lucy could hardly hear her. She had reached beneath the pillow, fumbling at the sheet, falling back as a fit of coughing bent her double, red blood on white linen. Red blood and the glint of gold. For you . . .
Lucy had never seen the pendant before, never known her mother had it. It wasn’t the sort of thing worn by a baker’s wife in Brooklyn.