Baroness Read online

  Like shopping, yes. But Paris offered more than simply a change of fashion scenery. They’d escaped into a new world. A freer world. A laissez-faire, come-what-may aura hued the conversations, the laughter. Women, even more than in New York City, wore their clothes loose, almost boyish. Only last week, Rosie was lunching at the Ritz, eating with Dash and Bradley “Tripp” Martin, Blanche Stokes, and Pembrook Stockbridge, a chap Dash knew at Harvard, when across the restaurant strolled a woman in trousers.

  “She must be one of those arteests,” Dash had said, his grin following his mangling of the French accent. And his gaze followed the woman without apology.

  “Maybe you’d like to follow her all the way to the Left Bank, Dash,” Tripp said, blowing out a curl of smoke from his cigarette. “We should slum over to the other side of the river, see what Boulevard Montparnasse has to offer. Go dancing at le Café Select.”

  Blanche reached for Tripp’s cigarette. “Maybe we can talk Rosie into another glass of absinthe.”

  Rosie’s face heated. “Blanche, that’s not fair. I hadn’t eaten—”

  “What happened?” Dash said. He had a devastating smile, smoky dark, too-probing eyes, and a way of dancing with her that could make her stomach turn to warm milk.

  Blanche laughed, blowing out smoke, handing the cigarette back to Tripp. “Two nights ago, she had a glass of Pernod—”

  “They put water in it—it turned all green and milky. I thought it tasted like licorice,” Rosie said quickly.

  “Going down,” Blanche said. Her gaze shot over to Pembrook, who seemed taken with the blond, his mouth slanted in a line of approval. “Not so much coming the other direction, I would guess.”

  For a delicious moment, Rosie lost herself inside Dash’s amused smirk, not minding the chiding.

  “Pernod is not for little girls,” Tripp said, his mouth drawn down.

  His words jarred her, and Rosie glared at him. “I’m no little girl.”

  “What are you, twenty?”

  “Leave her alone, Tripp. Or I’ll start telling her tales about your exploits at Harvard. Let’s see, are you in your fifth or sixth year?” Dash said.

  Tripp pursed his lips and turned away to watch a pair of flappers stride by, stockingless.

  Little girl. Tripp’s epitaph had clung to her all week, even cajoling her into letting Dash back her into a dark corner of the dance floor at the Napolitain. As the accordion player squeezed out a tune, Dash had pressed his lips against hers and whispered something dangerous into her ear.

  She’d laughed, pushed her hands against his chest, but her heart stuck in her throat, watching him the rest of the night as he danced with Blanche and an Austrian tart named Lady Frances, whom he’d dubbed Frankie by the end of the night.

  Not a little girl. Rosie had grown up the past six years, with the rest of the world trying to break free of the fear, the poverty of war. Grief did that to a soul—aged it.

  She wanted to break free of the tentacles of grief, the specter of scandal. To feel every wild emotion layering Paris, to dance the Charleston and drink—yes, absinthe.

  She wanted to live it all, in one big gulp. Even this funeral procession, this last hurrah to one of France’s greatest performers, seemed alive and bold.

  It was time for a new Rosie to emerge. She’d be like Sarah Bernhardt—beautiful and adored. How hard was it to become an actress, to create a life on stage?

  More crying—the sound rippled through the crowd.

  “I don’t like this. Let’s go,” Lilly said, tugging at her hand.

  L’Arc de Triomphe loomed ahead. Rosie had no idea how long the procession might last—how deep into the Paris streets they might venture, but she held her cousin’s grip. “Stay with me, Lilly.”

  How tired she’d grown of babysitting. Of Lilly’s incessant whining, her refusal to behave when the seamstresses of Doucette attempted to measure her. Rosie had half a mind to let her buy her frocks off the rack in some peasant shop.

  Worse, Lilly refused to visit the cafés with Rosie, or even take in the opera. Always the books, or writing letters to some ranch hand in Montana. Lilly was missing everything.

  It was almost as if she’d forgotten she was the daughter of an heiress.

  However, maybe Rosie should direct them through Luxembourg gardens, just to satiate her.

  The crowd neared the Arc and surged forward, anticipating the narrowing of the parade through the gates. Some pushed, a woman screamed, and Rosie nearly fell. She released Lilly’s hand. Immediately, Lilly sank behind. “Lilly! Stay with me!”

  “No—I’m being suffocated!” Lilly turned, as if to escape the crush of the crowd.

  “Fine! I’ll meet you at the Café a la Paix!” They’d lunched there only yesterday—certainly Lilly could find her way.

  She glanced for Lilly again, but the crowd closed around her.

  “They called her Divine Sarah, did you know that?” A woman next to her held a handkerchief to her mouth. “I saw her in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. She made a heavenly Cleopatra.”

  Rosie found a sympathetic smile and only nodded. Clearly the woman considered Rosie to be French, and although her accent might be tolerable to the local garcón, she didn’t want to try it out on the locals.

  She followed the crowd to Père Lachaise Cemetery then stood on the edge, aware that she hadn’t purchased the requisite triad of flowers.

  The crowd had barely thinned by the time she snuck away, feeling—despite her attempts—a foreigner.

  She inhaled the day as she returned to the Champs-Élysées. Regardless of the circumstances, the hour had a buoyant spirit about it—sparrows singing from the horse chestnut trees, the fragrance of lilac trees and pink dogwood blossoms, and the nutty smells of coffee twining out of the open cafés. Rosie lingered on her way back to the Boulevard, buying a new Figaro from a kiosk and a bouquet of pink tulips for her room. Lilly would be so angry with her, but for this brief hiccup of time, Rosie drank in the freedom away from her cousin.

  Sure, Lilly pined for the frontier life she lost, but she’d been a wild-edged Calamity Jane when Aunt Esme decided to stay in New York and marry Uncle Oliver. Lilly should be happy to have a father after all these years. Rosie didn’t understand the animosity Lilly bore toward Oliver—it wasn’t like he had an affair with her mother, had disgraced the family name. Oliver was the co-publisher of the Chronicle. He had offices in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. He’d made something of himself after growing up as a footman in the home of Esme and Jinx, their mothers. Lilly, the champion of the helpless and hunted, the bearer of all tales Wild West, should appreciate that.

  Besides, Oliver adored Lilly. Or, at least it felt like that to Rosie. He shared Lilly’s love of reading, showered her with books, and even gave her a camera and taught her to shoot photography. Not like Rosie’s stepfather, Bennett, who looked at Rosie like he was seeing a ghost. She didn’t resemble her father, Foster, that greatly, did she? Or maybe she was simply a reminder of the fact that her mother had chosen his brother over him.

  Rosie tried not to hate Bennett. But he had an old-fashioned, even overprotective tendency, and the moment her mother married him, he’d enrolled Rosie in finishing school. Rosie felt like an antique as she walked across the room balancing a book on her head, or memorized French verbs, or learned how to waltz.

  So that, what?—she might become more appealing in order that he could barter her off for a stake in some New York Knickerbocker family fortune?

  Bennett didn’t own her. And she didn’t need his protection, or his affections. Let him direct them to her mother, finally happy after all these years, and her little half-brother Finley.

  Finn, after all, could make anyone smile. Finn deserved to be loved.

  “Rosie!”

  The name turned her, and she looked around to see Blanche emerging from a hat shop, carrying a box. Rosie tried not to envy Blanche’s platinum-blond bob, those green eyes that could hold a man captive. She had watch
ed Dash dance with Blanche and finally took a breath when Pembrook cut in.

  “Where’s your tagalong?” Blanche swung the hatbox onto her arm. Her family had a fleet of servants, but Blanche had long ago emancipated herself from her mother’s archaic expectations. Nichole Stokes had undoubtedly sent her daughter to Paris for the summer season in hopes of keeping her off the Chronicle’s Page Six. But Paris had only ignited Blanche’s joie la vivre. She smoked and drank like a man, and told jokes that made Rosie want to hide under the table. Her mother, Jinx, hated Blanche.

  Rosie planned to spend every moment she could with her before Jinx returned to Paris.

  “Lilly and I got separated in the funeral procession. I told her to meet me at the Café a la Paix.”

  “You went to the funeral?” Blanche stopped to purchase a handful of petite white daylilies from a youngster in a derby.

  “Just the procession, but it seemed as if the entire city turned out. They loved her here.”

  “Paris loves a spectacle.”

  “No, there were real tears. Sarah Bernhardt was truly beloved.”

  Blanche lifted a shoulder. “And quickly forgotten, I’ll wager. All of Paris is a stage and each of us players. We’ll see who they mourn tomorrow. Come, let’s track down Pembrook and Dash—I have a proposition for us all.”

  “I have to meet Lilly—”

  “She’s probably back in her room, her nose in a book. That girl has no sense of adventure.” Blanche traded the flowers into her other hand and then wove her free arm into Rosie’s. “What would you say to a trip to Auteuil, to the horse races? We can pack a basket with wine and sandwiches, be provincial and take the train?”

  “Sounds splendid. When?”

  “Tomorrow? Your parents haven’t yet returned, but it seems our time is short.”

  “And Lilly? My mother would send me back to New York if she knew I’d abandoned Lilly for an outing to see the ponies. She nearly pledged on her life to Aunt Esme that we would keep Lilly safe and entertained.”

  Blanche smiled, tugged her close. “Perhaps she’ll surprise us all and beg to join us. A day under the clouds, reading. She’ll be no trouble at all.”

  “It’s more likely she’ll tuck up her skirts and leap right on a horse and gallop for the horizon.”

  “You don’t like her much.”

  “I love her like a sister. She simply lacks the ambition to taste life. She hates Paris, or at least my Paris. If I allowed her to, she would wander the gardens of Luxembourg, lost in her memory of a life that is no longer hers.”

  “Montana.”

  “Her beloved ranch and her herd of buffalo.”

  “Buffalo?”

  “Did you know that Lilly can shoot a pistol, ride a horse, and even swing a lasso? I know because she told me. Again, and again. She spends hours writing letters to a cowhand she left behind—”

  “A beau?”

  “More like an uncle. He runs their ranch in Montana, and before she moved to New York City, he took the place of the father she never had.”

  “Pity. What happened to her real father?”

  “He died in a mining accident before she was born. Her stepfather, my Uncle Oliver, is the only father she’s known, and she all but ignores him. No, Lilly has no interest in beaus, at least none in Paris. But I fear that someday Uncle Oliver will arrive home with the bookish son of his accountant and marry her into some austere flat on the outskirts of Manhattan. She will spend her entire gray life pining for a world she left behind and never truly live.”

  “I take it back. You do care for her.”

  “Of course. Who else does she have but me?”

  Rosie stopped to look at a window display in front of Cartier’s. She’d already perused their spring collection, but that long strand of pearls…

  “Perhaps she will find a beau here, in Paris.”

  Rosie laughed. “No. Lilly isn’t interested in love—it would have to get her attention and pull her nose out of her fairytale westerns and into the real world.”

  “But you might be. I saw the way Dash looked at you at the Napolitain. He kissed you, didn’t he?”

  He’d tasted of brandy, sweet and sharp, and for a moment, in his arms, Rosie had felt the bright lights of Paris shine through her. “Dash admires too many women for my taste.” She added a shoulder shrug to her tone. “Not to mention himself.”

  “He does seem to relish his own reflection.”

  Rosie laughed. “I want a man who can’t stop thinking about me, who will cross oceans and spend his last dime to woo me. A man who would surrender his life for me.”

  “You don’t ask for much, do you, Rosie?”

  “What’s wrong with wanting everything?”

  Blanche let her go, drew in the fragrance of her daylilies. “Because I fear you won’t get it.”

  * * * * *

  She couldn’t possibly cross the Champs-Élysées without perishing. Lilly stood at the corner, the Café a la Paix crowded and loud and beckoning across the street, the name written in gold foil along a green canopy, and knew that if she stepped her foot out, some manner of bus or brougham or milk cart would mow her down.

  But perhaps, if she navigated through the space of traffic, a moment at a time…how hard could it be? She used to herd buffalo on horseback. Certainly crossing traffic couldn’t be that dangerous.

  Besides, Rosie could be waiting for her right now. And while Lilly relished the moment she’d had wandering the gardens of the Palais Royal, feeling a bit like she’d finally escaped the congestion of Paris, Rosie might find herself in trouble if Lilly didn’t meet up with her.

  After all, who had been the one holding the chamber pot after Rosie’s experiment with Pernod? Seen her dancing in the darkness with Dash? Watched the way Tripp’s eyes raked over her?

  It would help if Rosie didn’t paint on her jersey sweaters along with her rouge. But Rosie’s flirting was harmless. Dashielle’s wasn’t. She didn’t for a moment trust Dashielle or Pembrook, and Rosie’s friend Tripp could intimidate her, if Lilly were the cowering type.

  But Aunt Jinx had nearly made her promise in blood that she’d stay with Rosie, keep her cousin from foolishness, and she intended to cross the street and keep her part of the promise.

  She waited until a bus passed, saw a break in the flow, and darted out into the street like a chicken. A carriage nearly nipped her, the horse’s hooves clomping like gunshots against the cobblestones, but she leaned away. Then—

  “Are you trying to kill yourself?” A hand snaked around her arm, yanked her back. A Citroën nearly clipped her suede shoes.

  Her rescuer pulled her back to the curb just as a trolley scooted into her spot.

  For a slick, hot moment, her breath caught, her heart bulleted through her ribs.

  She’d nearly died on the streets of Paris. A dramatic, tragic finale Rosie might have enjoyed, but…

  Her arm began to burn where he gripped it.

  “Let me go!”

  “And watch you get run over?”

  He moved her away from the edge of the boulevard where a fruit truck made a swipe too close to the curb.

  Only then did she realize he’d addressed her in English.

  Lilly shook out of his grasp, breathing hard, and looked at him.

  He had dark brown eyes, the color of Parisian chocolate. They sank into her for a moment, sweeping away her words. Brown eyes, and light hair the color of parched prairie grass that curled from under a derby hat. He wore a tweed jacket, yet bore the tan of a field hand, the sunshine red upon his cheekbones and around his eyes. He looked in his late twenties, a little wear and tear around the eyes.

  “I…I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  Her tone apparently flushed away the scolding in his expression.

  “I’m alive,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t have handled you so roughly.”

  She refused to rub her arm in front of him. It would only accentuate her stupidity. Imagine what Abel
would have said if he’d seen her throw herself in front of a stampede. Her face burned. “Thank you. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “There are plenty of cafés on this side of Paris, I assure you.” He had an accent, but not French. She couldn’t place it.

  “I am not hungry.” Particularly. “I was simply trying to meet up with my cousin. We were separated, and she told me to meet her at the Café a la Paix.”

  “So darting across traffic like a jackrabbit seemed the best option.”

  A jackrabbit. She smiled at the comparison. And the way the rest of his frown eased from his face.

  “I must find a way across the boulevard. My cousin will be waiting.”

  “I can’t follow you around all day saving your life. I’m going to need some promises here.”

  The faintest excuse of a dimple appeared against what looked like a smattering of overnight whiskers, and as a smile emerged, her world slowed to a languid swirl.

  “I…promise not to cross the road?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. No good. I saw the look in your eye even before you stepped out on that curb. It scared the spit right outta me. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to accompany me to the nearest footbridge.”

  He held out his arm as if she would really take it.

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “Rennie Dupree, flyer and lifesaver at large.”

  She couldn’t tell if he might be joking or not, his tone of voice solemn despite his white smile.

  “Lilly Hoyt. Uh, daredevil.” She wasn’t sure why she said the words—both her former last name, and the moniker—in fact, for the last five minutes, it seemed she didn’t recognize any of the words issuing from her mouth. But she hadn’t seemed anything like herself since arriving in Paris—or New York for that matter. And she rather liked this title. It reminded her of who she’d once been, before her life had been stolen from her.

  Most of all, she liked the way his smile settled into a smirk.