THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
Pru wakened to someone depositing two live chickens on her head.
“Miss Valentine!” called the shrill voice she’d grown oh-so-accustomed to hearing.
Even with the decibel level, it was a miracle Pru woke up. She’d become skilled at tuning out the old woman. On top of that, she was spectacularly hungover. Though there were the chickens, which helped.
“Do you know where I found these birds?” Mrs. Spencer asked.
“Um, in the yard?” Pru said, and scooted up onto her elbows.
She glanced over to see Win snoring heavily beside her. So he did sleep. It was a revelation.
Oh God.
Win was beside her.
And Mrs. Spencer was standing over them, surveying what appeared to be a wildly indecent sleeping arrangement though all parties were fully clothed.
“I can take the birds outside if you’d like,” Pru said, scrambling to her feet. “Silly chickens shouldn’t be in the house!”
“They were in your room, Miss Valentine!”
She felt the woman’s voice all the way down to her fingertips. From the moment Pru stepped onto the property, she understood Mrs. Spencer could kill a man at twenty paces. But this was the first time she was well and truly scared.
“I found these chickens in your room!” Mrs. Spencer bellowed. “Roosting because they had plenty of space to do so, my randy assistant having flown the coop!”
“I haven’t flown the coop,” Pru insisted, using a foot to feel for her shoes. She swallowed, the taste of the wine thick on her tongue. “I was helping Mr. Seton with his, er, writing. And fell asleep.”
“Passed out, more like, judging from the smell and your purple mouth. Is there a particular reason you’ve decided to cop off with my biographer?”
“Cop off?” Win said, immediately prodded into consciousness. “Is someone copulating? That hardly seems fair.”
“Lord Almighty!” Mrs. Spencer said and tossed up her hands.
The woman shook both fists at the ceiling, which sent the birds flapping about the room. The chickens spent the better part of five minutes disrupting papers and banging into windows and walls until finally releasing themselves out into the hallway.
“No one’s copulating,” Pru mumbled and scooped up her shoes. “Not to worry.”
With both shoes gripped to her chest, Pru scooted to the room’s periphery and tried to slither out the door. Mrs. Spencer kicked it closed.
“No one’s leaving until you confess your sins.”
“You’re not a priest,” Pru said. “And I don’t have any sins.”
“More’s the pity,” Win said as Pru shot him a look. “Aw, Mrs. S., we’re not copulating. Don’t you worry, all body parts have remained with their original owners.”
Pru scowled again, an error in judgment to be sure. Her cute glower was an invitation, a call to increased cheekiness.
“Don’t give me any of your seductive gazes, Miss Valentine,” he said with a wink. “This poor old man can’t handle your wiles.”
“That was a glare, not a gaze!”
“Miss Valentine, I didn’t take you for such a harlot!” Mrs. Spencer said.
Pru groaned. Her mistake, thinking Win Seton was a chum for those few minutes. It astounded, his dire lack of social graces. No surprise he was thirty-four and unmarried. The bloke was a fiasco.
“Nothing happened,” Pru said. “I was trying to save your alleged biographer from mental collapse. He’s being impossible on purpose.”
“It wouldn’t be accidentally now, would it?” Win said with a chuckle. “Anyway, a harlot is not so bad an insult. ‘If a woman hasn’t got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she’s a dry stick as a rule.’”
It was a quote Pru recognized immediately, but it did not make her any less cheesed.
Okay, perhaps it made her a touch less cheesed. The very slightest.
“Very nice, Seton, with your D. H. Lawrence,” Mrs. Spencer said, picking up on the reference as quickly as Pru had. “He was a friend of mine, you know. I have a book of his sexually explicit drawings in my library.”
“Please. Show them to me straightaway.”
“You are both ridiculous,” Pru said. “As I told you, nothing happened and Mr. Seton would be lucky to experience one of my seductive gazes.”
“Here, here,” Win said.
“Edith Junior vowed that you were a nice girl,” Mrs. Spencer said. “Tight with one of the best families in Boston. What would the Kelloggs think of these exploits in the boudoir?”
“I don’t think the Kelloggs would much care.”
“Kellogg?” Win asked. “As in the foodstuffs?”
Pru nodded. She moved from the barricaded doorway and slumped down into Win’s writing chair.
“Mrs. Spencer … I am a nice girl,” she insisted, though it didn’t sound remotely convincing. “This is a misunderstanding.”
“What’s to misunderstand about you taking sexual advantage of my biographer! You’re not even French!”
“How many times do I have to say it? There’s nothing sexual! He wishes there was something sexual!”
“I like the way you say ‘sexual,’” Win said and wiggled his brows.
“Oh good grief! Don’t you think he’s more the taking-advantage type? I’m a fresh, young innocent girl of only nineteen. He’s a grizzled old bachelor.”
“Why, I’m gobsmacked,” Win said. “Simply beside myself! Miss Valentine, tell her the truth. Here I was, innocently pecking away on my manuscript—”
“I wouldn’t touch you with someone else’s hands!” she barked.
The man felt a troublesome sensation across his chest. Regret? Sorrow? The realization that this was all a big joke, that he could never hope to be in the position of fending off her advances?
Not that Win had designs on the girl, not exactly. She was indeed beautiful and he’d welcome the flattery of her attentions. But he’d never try to outright seduce the poor thing. She was too forbiddingly innocent for one, so ethereal with that flowing, glossy hair and her bright eyes.
And liberal education aside, the girl lacked a certain practicality. It wasn’t exactly a dearth of sophistication, but something close to it. Pru was polite and mannered, but in the way a schoolgirl might be, as though she were told how to act and had not yet learned it for herself.
Of course Win didn’t know about the dead fiancé, or the things she was trying to get over. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have mistaken her brave and quiet self-confidence for ordinary cluelessness.
“I’m only playing,” Win said at last. He felt bad, as if he’d been caught teasing a scared little girl. “Miss Valentine has acted appropriately at every turn. As you can see, we are both fully dressed.”
“You are in your shorts!” Mrs. Spencer said. “I can see the outline of your willy!”
Pru blushed hard and turned to face the window. She didn’t want Win to notice that she was giggling. But notice he did. She could feel his grin from clear across the room.
“The outline of my willy? Heavens!” Win swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Well, do enlighten me, Mrs. Spencer. How does my willy compare to, say, the Crown Prince of Prussia? The man who owned the Hope diamond? I can assure you its abilities leave women sparkling far more than the diamond itself.”
“Oh please!” Pru said, and bonked her head on the desk. “Dream on!”
Win hobbled toward her, his bones tired from spending all night maintaining an appropriate distance from his unexpected companion. As he walked, Pru tried her mightiest not to catch sight of his legs, which were bare and muscled in a way that brought to mind D. H. Lawrence’s book of explicit renderings.
“Up,” he said.
“Um, what?”
She could not stop staring at his legs. Better those than the “outline of his willy,” of course.
“Up out of my chair, you plotting vixen. I can’t be distracted by your sexual aggressions. I have to write my book.”
“You’re disgusting,” Pru said and tried, once again, for the door. Mrs. Spencer swatted her away.
“I can’t have this,” the old woman said, her voice scratchier by the syllable. “Two of my employees fornicating in my home! We have to contend with enough litters in this place. I’m not sheltering whatever godforsaken offspring the two of you might produce.”
“Which would be far less special than the spaniels,” Win said, and rolled a piece of paper into his typewriter.
“You don’t need to tell me that!”
“Relax, everyone,” Win said. “This is all in good fun. I’m merely trying to get a rise out of the two of you.”
“Getting a rise is precisely my concern!”
“You don’t need to worry about the hired help shagging,” he said. “What you see before you are the aftereffects of a couple of mates sharing a bottle of cheap wine and then promptly passing out. Plus whatever Miss Valentine said about my crack-up. That is also true.”
“Well, I’m delighted to learn you have so much excess time for drinking and losing the plot. I thought you were writing a book. You’re both here to work, by the by.”
“I can’t speak for the innocent young lodger, but as for me, I do swear by the Church on the Hill,” Win said and winked at Pru, “that I’m working hard as I can.”
“Church on the Hill? Not Winston again,” Mrs. Spencer said with a snort.
“Here’s the rub, though,” Win said. “You’ve given me so little to work with I often find myself facing gobs of free time. Can you blame me for befriending the only other employee of the Grange? I’m quite bored and Miss Valentine makes for excellent company.”
“Oh, I’ll bet she does,” Mrs. Spencer huffed. She sat on the bed. Pru inched toward the door. “You’re supposed to be writing my story, Seton. Paying attention to me.”
“Lady, that’s what I’ve been trying to do. Problem is, you’re not giving me the chance.”