The second Andrew Mountbatten’s housekeeper opened his front door, it occurred to Margot that she should have made an appointment. But if she’d telephoned ahead of time, her courage surely would have failed her. Gina’s manuscript, her excuse for visiting Andrew that morning, was clutched tightly to her chest.
Last night’s argument had left Margot hurt and furious. She’d spent a long time blaming herself for losing years of her life to a cold and manipulative man. In the months after she left Sydney, only her native practicality had saved her from living mired in anger and despair. Instinctively, she’d known regret and recriminations would only keep her stuck in place when she needed to move forward. She must put the past behind her if she wasn’t going to waste even more precious time.
Gina had accused her of cowardice. If Margot hadn’t leveled that accusation at herself a thousand times before, it wouldn’t hurt so much. She wasn’t quite ready to forgive Gina, but she knew that she would, eventually, just as Gina would eventually forgive her.
Was she a coward for refusing to give Andrew Mountbatten a chance? Margot had lain awake all night, trying to decide whether Gina was right. Since that day he’d told her he loved her in the Bois de Boulogne, she’d ached for him with an intensity close to physical pain. In the contest between the yearning of her heart and the fear of becoming once again that beaten-down, powerless shadow of herself, which should be the winner?
She still hadn’t decided when morning came. She only knew she needed to see him, and she couldn’t wait.
“Ah, bonjour, mademoiselle,” said the housekeeper, perhaps recognizing her from her earlier visit. “Won’t you come in? Monsieur will be down in a moment. Shall I set another place for breakfast?”
Startled, for the first time that morning Margot checked her watch. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock. She’d sped over here without even realizing how early it was—not so early for an Australian, perhaps, but in Paris, everything began and ended later. “Oh! Forgive me. I ought to come back some other time.” She handed the housekeeper Gina’s manuscript. “Would you give this to Mr. Mountbatten please? I . . . I should go.”
“No, don’t run away.” Mountbatten’s voice floated down from above them. “Join me, won’t you?”
She turned to see Andrew jogging downstairs, fastening his cuff links as he went. He was coatless, but that was his only concession to informality. His gold tiepin gleamed against the crimson silk of his tie. His dark grey waistcoat emphasized his trim physique. He made Margot, who was usually a perfectionist herself when it came to the neatness of her attire, wonder if she’d even remembered to brush her hair before she’d charged out of the apartment, desperate to see him.
“I—I’ve already eaten, thank you,” she blurted out. Which wasn’t true, but she knew she couldn’t touch a bite.
He smiled at her, and his smile held tender amusement at her disarray. “Shall we go onto the terrace? The weather is particularly fine today.”
Andrew led her through the breakfast room, where the table was set and the sideboard filled with silver chafing dishes. Opening a French door for her to step through, he followed her out onto the terrace.
Wisteria wound through the trellis that ran along the eaves, framing a delightful prospect: a formal rose garden bordered with fragrant lavender and rosemary.
“Now. What brings you here this morning?”
With a start, Margot thought of Gina’s manuscript, which she had left with the housekeeper. But now that it came down to it, she didn’t want to make excuses. If only she could think of the right thing to say! Come on, Margot, she told herself. Aren’t words supposed to be your forte?
When she didn’t immediately answer, Andrew’s lips twisted in a rueful smile. “I’m glad you’ve come. After our last conversation, I thought I might not see you again before I left Paris.”
Her head jerked up. “You’re leaving?”
In his eyes, she saw pain and longing and her heart twisted. He transferred his gaze to the garden. “First, I will introduce you to those authors I mentioned. If you still want me to, that is.” He rubbed his chin with his thumb and his voice sounded strained. “I thought I’d take that trip to Bermuda, after all.”
Following that, he would return to New York and she’d never see him again. Inside Margot, a voice screamed in protest. “But you said you’d wait,” she blurted out, feeling wronged somehow, as if she hadn’t tried to push him away at every opportunity.
He turned his head to look at her, and his dark eyes lit with hope. She had the feeling he was seeing her—really seeing her—as no man ever had before. “I thought it might be best to give you some space as well as time.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Ah, Margot, you don’t know how hard it’s been to love you, be in the same city as you, and fight these feelings every day, forcing myself to respect your wishes and stay away.”
Her heart melted at his words. She wanted more than anything for him to hold her, reassure her, give her some ironclad promise that everything would be all right. But there were no guarantees in love. Gina was right. Margot would have to be brave, take a huge chance, if she wanted Andrew Mountbatten in her life.
Watching her, he sucked in a breath. “The way you’re looking at me . . . I’m having a hard time not kissing you right now.”
Drawing on every ounce of courage she possessed, Margot gathered herself for the leap. “Then don’t fight it,” she whispered. Standing on tiptoe, she put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, pressing her lips to his.
He was gentle at first, but her response seemed to ignite something inside him and his kiss turned hot and hard—not what she’d expected from an English gentleman at all—and she felt the rush of breath leaving her lungs as he crushed her to him, lifted her off her feet. Still kissing her, he carried her to a love seat by the wall and sat down with Margot seated sideways across his lap.
When finally they broke apart, she cupped his jaw in her hand and whispered against his smoothly shaven cheek, “Don’t go.”
“Go?” he repeated, sounding dazed. “Who’s going anywhere?”
She laughed and tilted her head back, reaching up to smooth his unruly fringe. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Andrew Mountbatten, but . . .” She hesitated, warmed by the fierce joy in his eyes. “After that kiss, would it sound very foolish if I said I’d like to take things slowly?”
“If that means I can’t kiss you, we have a problem,” he murmured. He dipped his head and pressed his lips to the sensitive skin beneath her ear.
She shivered and gasped, laughter bubbling up from her chest. “No, it doesn’t mean that. But I want to make this clear. I am not going to marry again, ever.”
“You mean you won’t make an honest man out of me?” He kissed the side of her throat.
“Andrew! I’m serious.” She smacked his shoulder with the heel of her hand and he stopped what he was doing to look down at her with a serious expression. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “Truly. I understand.”
Margot rushed on, “I know you haven’t asked me, and maybe you aren’t likely to, but I just wanted you to know where you stand. I can’t even make any real commitment to you—not yet.”
She searched his face. “I’m not sure of myself yet, or of how the future will unfold. But when you said you were leaving, I . . . I realized I can’t be happy without you. And I don’t even want to try.”
“How about we take it one day at a time?” said Andrew, tracing her lower lip with his thumb. “I’ve waited all my life for you, Margot. I can wait a little longer to make you mine.”
After her fight with Margot and Claire, Gina couldn’t sleep. She sensed Margot lying awake in the bed beside hers but they were both too raw with the wounds they’d inflicted on each other to break the silence. Eventually Gina couldn’t stand it anymore. She took a pillow and blanket and went to lie on the drawing room couch.
She woke the next morning to find both of her friends gone. Was this the end for them? She couldn’t bear it if she lost Margot and Claire.
Margot’s pointed remarks about Hal had hurt. Now a carousel of worries whirled in Gina’s mind. Like carousel ponies, one concern rose, then another and another, and they spun faster and faster around her mind until she wanted to scream. If only she could go back in time and avoid that conversation altogether.
Hungry for reassurance, she dressed carefully and took a taxi to the Ritz hotel. Hal was due to leave for New York the next morning, and she’d spent the past forty-eight hours writing and arguing with her friends. What was wrong with her? She had to see him as soon as possible. Five minutes with him, and all her doubts would disappear.
Ordinarily Gina loved to visit the Ritz, reveling in the glamor and sparkle of its lush furnishings and winking chandeliers. Now she rushed through the foyer to reception and asked for Hal Sanders.
“One moment.” The receptionist called and handed her the telephone receiver.
“Gina.” Hal sounded relieved. “I’ve been trying to reach you. Come up.” He gave her his room number.
Dimly she remembered the telephone ringing in the apartment late the afternoon before but she’d been too absorbed in her work even to consider answering. Guilt tightened her chest.
She checked her reflection in the mirror near the elevator. Despite her disturbed sleep last night, she didn’t have bags under her eyes, thank goodness. She smoothed back a stray hair and checked her teeth for lipstick.
For the first time, it occurred to her that she was visiting Hal’s hotel suite. She smiled to herself. Maybe she’d give Hal something to remember on those lonely nights in New York before he saw her again.
But it wasn’t Hal who opened the door to the suite. Tommy stood in the doorway, a cold shower in human form, his index finger to his lips like a kindergarten teacher calling for quiet. “He’s on the phone to the French Finance Minister.” He led her into the sitting room of the suite.
The room was furnished in cream and fawn and pale blue, a restful palette. There was a painting of a young man on a horse over the mantelpiece and white roses in silver urns scattered about the room.
Receiver to his ear, Hal turned his head when she walked in. His eyes warmed when he saw her and crinkled at the corners. He made a gesture that was a cross between a wave and a stop signal, then turned his back and shoved a hand in his trousers pocket to continue the conversation. “Yes, Minister, I appreciate that, but we need your support on this issue . . . No, I do understand. What you have to remember in situations like this . . .” He launched into a confident explanation of United States economic policy. It sounded like he wouldn’t be free any time soon.
From the three-piece suit Hal wore and Tommy’s hovering presence, Gina deduced Hal wouldn’t have much time for her today. Ordinarily she would have left him to it, but her failure to pick up when he called the day before and the fact that he was leaving Paris the next morning made her stay. She chose a magazine from the pile on the coffee table and flipped through it. Since she’d become serious about writing fiction, time had become a commodity she couldn’t afford to waste. She began to wish she had a pen and paper handy. She could jot down some notes for her new book while Hal wrapped up his conversation.
Finally Hal ended the call. Gina looked up to see that he was beaming, not at her but at Tommy. “We’ve done it!” said Hal. “The Minister has agreed to meet this afternoon.”
Tommy gave a hoot of victory and slapped him on the back. “See? What did I tell you? You’re a natural.” He turned his head to look at Gina. “Your future husband. Our future president!”
Hal gave a derisive snort. “Hardly. But that did feel good, I admit.”
He seemed to remember Gina. “Give us a minute?” he said to Tommy.
“Sure.” With a nod to her, Tommy let himself out of the room.
When the door closed behind him, Hal pulled Gina to her feet and into his arms. “Hello, you. Where’ve you been hiding?”
She smiled up at him, and with his arms around her, the tension began to drain from her body. “Not hiding. Writing. I lost track of time.” She tilted her head. “Weren’t you busy meeting with the Economic Reform Committee yesterday?”
“Yes, but I thought . . .” He blew out a breath. “I mean, I really wanted to see you last night, to talk over the day.”
“Well, I’m here now,” said Gina, linking her hands behind the small of his back. “Tell me.”
The telephone started to ring. Tensing, Hal glanced at it but didn’t move to answer. “I’m sorry, Gigi. I don’t have the time today. My plane leaves tomorrow morning and I still have a mountain of calls to make.”
She was disappointed but she only had herself to blame. “That’s all right. We can talk as long as we want when I get to New York.” She smoothed his lapel. “Can I share my news? I’ll be quick. Margot has found a publisher who likes what he read of my novel. She said he’s champing at the bit to read the rest.”
“Hey, that’s great!” Hal hugged her to him, seeming genuinely delighted, but then he frowned as if distracted, his arms slackening.
She stepped back from his embrace. “It’s a bad time. I’ll go.”
“No, no. Really, I’m happy to see you.” One hand on his hip, he ran the other hand through his hair. “But I wish you’d checked with Tommy before you agreed to show your novel to a publisher.”
“What?” She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I thought Tommy talked to you about this.” Hal raised his gaze to the ceiling and she watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “You’re not going to like what I’m going to say, but I’ll say it because I don’t want to hide anything from you, Gina. What happened with your father . . . it’s not a problem. At least, we’re fixing it. But we need to shape the narrative from here on out. Do you see what I mean?”
Shape the narrative? Already he was talking like a politician. Slowly, Gina answered, “Tommy told me I have to start dressing the part and attending the right events.” Her brows drew together. “What? Are you saying I have to run my writing by your people now? That’s not going to happen. I can’t believe you’d even suggest it.”
Hal shook his head. “It’s just a formality, a rubber stamp. Your book is a harmless novel about a couple of women, isn’t it? I can’t imagine there’ll be anything divisive in a story like that.”
“You mean because it’s about women it must be trivial?” Gina felt her voice rising.
Hal frowned. “No! That’s not what I meant. You’re twisting my words. I mean, it’s a novel, not a piece of hard-hitting journalism that might make things tricky for me politically.”
“There is no way I’m letting anyone vet my writing before it goes to print.”
Margot’s words came back to her. You’re already compromising bits of yourself. Margot had seen it. Hal had promised that Gina could be her own person despite the experience of a raft of politicians’ wives who had gone before her. Margot had known exactly how marriage to Hal would be.
The trickle of doubt she’d felt in her meeting with Tommy swelled into a flood. “I can’t do this,” she whispered, her eyes wide. With trembling fingers, she tugged at her engagement ring. “I can’t marry you, Hal.”
“What? No!” Hal gripped her hands, trapping the ring in place. “After all we’ve been through, you’re going to end it over this?” Over a silly little novel? were the unspoken words Gina heard.
“I can’t do it, Hal.” She said it more in sadness than in anger, her throat swelling with incipient tears. “I can’t be what you need. I will always be one more problem to deal with if you want to make it to the White House one day.”
She would never ask him to give up politics. Of that, he was well aware. She was disappointed to find that he didn’t seem to understand what he was asking her to give up by becoming a politician’s wife.
“But we’ve been through all this about you hurting my chances and I told you it’s not true.” Hal tightened his grip on her hands, and the engagement ring she’d loosened twisted, its large diamond digging painfully into the side of her finger. “Why bring it up again now?”
“Because I trusted you to stand with me against the Tommys of the world!” said Gina. “I didn’t think it would be you and them against me.” She blew out a long breath and tried to speak in a measured way so he knew she meant it. “If we cannot agree on something this fundamental from the beginning, there is no hope for our future. And if I’m honest,” she said, tears welling in her eyes, “I would really, really hate being a governor’s wife.”
“But don’t you see?” Hal said as a tear rolled down her cheek. “If I don’t have you, then none of it matters. You are the most important thing in the world to me, you know that.” Gently he took her face between his hands and wiped at her tears with his thumbs. How could she bear to lose him? He was staring down at her so tenderly. “I love you, Gina. And you love me.”
Her heart felt shredded and bloody and she wanted more than anything to comfort him for the pain she was causing him. It would be so easy to give in, but today had been a sobering glimpse of their future together. For her, their marriage would have been full of battles like this, full of unwilling compromise and resentment on one side or the other—mostly on hers. She didn’t want a life like that.
“I hate it as much as you do, but I have to accept it. For us, love is just not enough.” Her voice trembling, she said, “You need to let me go now, Hal. Please.”
His expression changed from tenderness to disbelief and then anguish as he seemed to comprehend the strength of her resolve, the finality of her decision. He swung away from her and paced to the window. Looking back, he said, “We could have worked it out. You could have written your novel, even kept your career as a journalist, within reason. I would have let you do anything you wanted.”
And there it was. That one little word.
Let.
He would have given her permission, because once she married him, he would have ruled over her. And men like Tommy ruled him.
Hal paused, as if waiting for her to deny his claim. But there was nothing more to say. He wouldn’t even understand that what he’d just said obliterated any lingering doubts she might have had.
It wasn’t his fault that he was like this. It was centuries, millennia of attitudes passed down from father to son. It was the way of the world, the way his parents had been together, and hers, and on and on, back through the branches of their illustrious family trees, down to the very roots.
Gina didn’t even know what a marriage of equals looked like. She could marry Hal and try to educate herself and him, and fight all those battles until she was scarred but victorious, but why should she have to? As a writer, she’d always be rowing against the tide while all the men around her cruised along with the current, their sails billowing with support from their wives. If she pursued a career as a novelist while married to a senator, she would have to do it in the teeth of opposition, from his family and hers, from his spin doctors and political masters, and from society at large. The prospect was exhausting. And that was before she even thought about bringing children into the equation.
She wasn’t angry at Hal. The situation wasn’t of his making. Deep in love with him, even she had disregarded these considerations when she’d agreed to be his wife.
“Hal, I’m sorry.” The words couldn’t begin to describe what she felt. She still loved him, and probably always would. He wasn’t a bad person. He was merely a product of his upbringing, like everyone else. One day, he would realize she’d done him a favor, when he married a nice young woman who was content to be Mrs. Hal Sanders. There were plenty of those kinds of girls around.
She knew better than to say so. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I wish, so very much, that things were different.” What she wished, deep down, was that he’d never even thought of going into politics. But she could no more demand he give that up for her than she could give up her dreams for him.
Hal stared at her as if her words were so inadequate, he couldn’t believe they had come out of her mouth. A muscle in his jaw began to tick. He was holding his anger in check and she couldn’t blame him for his fury, because for a long time before her father lost his money, she’d been content to cruise along in luxury at his side. It must seem the height of folly for her to insist on jumping overboard without a life preserver to swim against the tide.
The telephone’s ring ripped through the silence.
“I’ll go,” Gina whispered. She placed the diamond solitaire he’d given her carefully on the mantelpiece. “You’d better get that.”