Nineteen fourteen had started out so well for Lucile; her business had grown and demand for her fashions increased. But then the unthinkable had happened in August: war. Germany had attacked France after marching through Belgium, leaving King George with no choice but to send England into war against his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm.
Some hoped the Yanks—the Americans Lucile loved so much—would get in, but there was no sign of that yet. Although Paris still seemed safe, Lucile had left the city she loved so much and, after a short trip to London and Scotland, persuaded Cosmo to come with her to the United States. She tried desperately to keep him happy here but knew he was yearning to go home.
“Cosmo, another good review for The Perils of Pauline!” she told him, looking up from the Chicago Tribune she was reading on the sofa next to him while he studied an issue of the London Times that was at least two weeks old. “They adored my costumes in it. William Randolph Hearst is going to run the series in his papers, and he’s put money into the moving picture serial. He’s been quite pleased with my fashion column in his magazine Harper’s Bazaar, you know. And to be asked to teach at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art—well, what an honor. See—this country is good luck for us.”
“For you, lass, not a homesick Scotsman.”
“But we’re a team, remember? What would I have done without your advice all these years?”
“Spent too much money too soon.”
“But the money keeps rolling in, so how can you say that? Flo Ziegfeld wants me to design costumes for his shows, and Sears and Roebuck in Chicago is interested in my adapting my designs for their stores. That’s my new mission here, lifting the spirits of the average American woman through an affordable but stylish clothing line.”
“Your mission, eh?” he teased, peering over the edge of his paper. “You’re sounding like a saver of souls in some far-off jungle. You work too hard, and it’s beginning to show. And how’s your stomachache doing? Too much rich food at your soirees, too many desserts fetched by your acolytes.”
“My stomach pain is still there, and it pains me to hear that innuendo. You know I need my apprentices, not only to help at the shop but to learn to emulate my styles, so they can lighten my load in the future.”
“Too damn many of them underfoot at your events,” he muttered, crunching his paper into his lap. “Especially that Italian Bobbie what’s-his-name. If he’s a rising opera star, why hang about a dress designer?”
“But he’s such a beautiful singer. He’ll become famous soon enough and then we’ll lose him, but his lovely voice has set the mood for the mannequin parades and receptions. My customers adore him.”
“So you don’t need to. He’s too doting, almost fawning. Other than for a good aria or two, not to be trusted.”
“That’s not true! He’s not bad at designing ideas either.”
“My point is he has designs on you, if you ask me—and you didn’t—so enough said. Lucile, my love, here in this city house, however prettily done up it is, I’m missing Scotland, the fresh wind, the scent of heather, my horses, and our home there.” He reached over and covered her knee with his big hand. “Come here on my lap, lass, and give me a kiss to make me forget it all.”
She sailed her newspaper on the floor at her feet, twisted toward him with her arms outstretched, and—and felt sliced in two by the most horrid pain she’d ever felt.
She cried out, pressing both hands to her belly. Falling, falling, but he caught her and laid her on the sofa where she gasped for air, and the world went screaming red and then all black.
“Over there, farther to the right,” Elinor ordered the two men holding the portrait of herself that Milor had commissioned and she had sat for in Paris. She pointed to the right, then back again. “Now up—the bottom of the frame about your waist height. You’ll have to heft it up the ladder once you get the hooks in the wall.”
The portrait was in the style of Reynolds or Gainsborough, just the sort of dreamy painting she used to moon over back in adolescence on the Isle of Jersey. She looked every bit the grand dame in a three-quarter portrait with a hazy background. She was wearing the sapphire earrings Milor had brought to their love nest in Paris.
She’d told both the artist, Philip de László, and Milor that she’d wanted to have a tiger skin in it, but that had been nixed by both. Yet this was a seriously stunning portrait, a far cry from the little drawings she used to do to entertain people when she had no name or fame.
Her dear Lord Curzon surely was taking their love seriously. He had leased this romantic, old Jacobean mansion named Montacute in Somerset and had asked her to come to live here while she redecorated it for him. It seemed to her a dream come true, to be important to him, to live in a grand house with him, worthy of his love. Surely, with her long estrangement from Clayton and him now so ill, this was a sign she had a future as Lady Curzon someday.
“Yes, yes. Exactly there,” she told the workmen as they struggled to hold up the framed portrait. Like everything here, it had to be placed just right. But now she must choose material for the draperies. Green, she thought, perhaps a jade green to highlight the color of her eyes, staring out so straight from that painting.
As she hurried from the high-ceiling, walnut-paneled dining room, she sighed. Wait until she showed this estate and palatial home to Lucile and Cosmo when they returned from America. So many rooms to decorate, but how blessed she felt to have a large budget. With Milor, perhaps her days of scraping and saving were over. She felt invigorated and thrilled, even though her dear lord and master was not due back until the weekend.
Yet she still did worry about poor, ill Clayton—who didn’t want to see her any more than she did him. So she struggled to write to pay his bills, and she telephoned frequently to their daughters, who helped tend him. He was living with Margot and her husband in Richmond, being spoiled, even to still having his rich foods and brandy.
And yet, Elinor worried, as she fingered through the drapery samples of sleek satin and brocades, this was a remote mansion, so she had not mingled with any of Milor’s friends. She supposed his so-called Soul group still spoke against her, however much she tried to waylay that with golden thoughts sent their way. So, as far as she knew, no one outside their families knew of her time and task here. Surely Milor did not plan to stash her away as his mistress while he spent most of his public time in London. After all, his daughters were in and out here; she’d met them and thought they liked her, another good sign.
Whatever happened, nothing—but nothing—would ever change her love for George Nathaniel Curzon.
“Keep sponging her off to bring down that fever,” a man’s voice said, dragging Lucile from deep sleep. “It’s making her delirious. Tell her husband he can come in to sit with her again in a few minutes. This raving might upset him.”
Her eyelids fluttered open. Who was raving? But her lips felt cracked, and she wet the chapped skin with her tongue. She saw a man in white in a room she didn’t know. Not her bed. Not her robe or nightgown, but a plain white drape over her. Had the Titanic gone down and she was in that stranger’s stateroom on the Carpathia? But where was Cosmo?
Her midriff was bandaged and hurt like the very devil. She dared not move her hands to touch it. The same woman—oh, a nurse—who had sponged her neck and arms was now holding her wrist and looking at her watch. Exhausted, floating, Lucile drifted off to sleep again.
But thoughts and pictures kept dancing through her brain. She felt dizzy. Had she been dancing and fell? What had she been wearing? Had that crazy client of hers, Isadora Duncan, refused to wear the gown she’d planned for her?
“I want to wear classic clothes!” the young woman shouted in her Paris shop.
“We make classic clothes here, Isadora,” Lucile had said, trying to calm her raving.
“I mean, classics—a flowing robe, a toga, a chiton like they once wore for their sacred dances in Athens, even on Mount Olympus!”
Now why didn’t this notorious, famous dancer agree to wear regular Lucile styles? At first, Lucile had scolded her: “Look, I’ve dressed the likes of Mata Hari, Sarah Bernhardt, and Lillie Langtry, but we can adapt all that.”
So she had designed for her just what she wanted, and Isadora had hugged her and promised to come to dance for her guests. But she was late arriving after Lucile had promised people a dance on the back lawn.
It grew dark and the party was over. Lucile was embarrassed and angry, and so very sad, felt so very heavy, like she would never dance again. But someone pounded on the door, and a woman’s voice floated to her, “I’m here, let me in! I feel better now. I’ve been drinking, but they had to operate on me.”
And she began to dance, whirling around. Her white mantle spun away and she was naked, dancing, yes, the famous dancer naked—or was she a designer? She was lying under the lights while they put a mask on her face and said they would help the pain, but she knew they meant to cut her open. They would see her fears then, her pride, her determination. But Isadora danced and danced in the moonlight with her eyes closed and then she opened them and—
Lucile struggled to open her eyes. Oh, a hospital room, a doctor and a nurse.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.
She was tempted to fling off the white cover and dance. But her lower belly hurt when she even moved her hand.
“Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon,” she told him.
“Summon his lordship,” the doctor told the nurse, who scurried from the room. “You had an abscess on your womb, milady, so we had to take it out—part of the womb. You will have pain for a while but should make a good recovery.”
Oh, thank heavens, Cosmo was here, leaning down, taking her hand in his big one. “You gave me a scare, lass,” he said. “Doctor, I will get her out of the city for a while, rest and recuperation.”
“And not back to work right away,” the doctor said, with a nod that was almost a bow as he backed from the room.
“Did you let Esme and Elinor know?” she asked. “Is all well at the shop?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve taken care of everything. You are not to worry, my love. I’ve let a house called the Anchorage for us on the shore of Long Island at a place called Mamaroneck, that area you liked. I need to get you out of this frantic city for a while. People have been worried. I won’t even complain if Bobbie comes and sings you a song or two. We need time for you to regain your strength and for me to regain you. As I said—I was worried.”
She squeezed his hand back as best she could and pursed her lips when he bent to kiss her. She trusted this man with her life and always would.
Elinor’s obsessive attention to the inside of old Montacute had spilled over to the outside. She had just ordered hundreds of blooming plants for the stone urns along the back stone balustrades and the beds surrounding the gravel drive. With each improvement she made, she stamped herself on this place—and, she hoped, on Milor’s heart.
When the telephone in the sitting room rang, she jumped and snatched up the earpiece. Expecting Milor’s voice, she realized it was Margot’s.
“Mother, he’s not going to last long. Daddy—he’s going fast, hardly breathing.”
“I have a motorcar and driver here. I’ll leave straightaway. Has he—has he been asking for me?”
“Once. But he thought you were swimming in some pool somewhere and kept saying you had your hair down.”
Elinor sucked in a sharp breath. Their honeymoon, when she’d had so much hope. He was dying, and after all the troubles between them he still thought of their honeymoon long ago. Lucile had nearly died in the States and now this. She knew Clayton was deathly ill, and yet the reality of it was such a sad shock.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can, Margot. Tell him.”
She hung the earpiece back on the hook and turned away to run upstairs for some things. “Thatcher, a dear friend is near death, and I need to go to him,” she told the butler Milor had just hired. “Please call the driver to bring the motorcar round and inform his lordship that I will be in Richmond at my daughter Margot’s for a few days.”
“Of course, Mrs. Glyn.”
Of course, his words echoed in her head. Of course she was still Mrs. Glyn, and with her author’s fame would always be. But, God forgive her, how desperately she wanted to be Lady Curzon someday.