Baroness (15 page)

Then she locked the door.

She knew exactly what she wanted, but since Jinx had packed her cases, it took a moment to find it.

The pearls still lay in the black velvet case, untouched since her birthday last year.
Pearls make a girl into a lady
, Jinx had said as Lilly opened them. Oliver had stood behind Esme, beaming.

That was also the first time her mother had called Oliver her father. As if her affections could be purchased.

She hadn't wanted to pack them for Paris, but Esme insisted.

She hadn't changed from her trip, still wearing her traveling clothes, her white suede traveling shoes. But she didn't bother with it now. Grabbing a satchel, she shoved inside an extra shirtwaist, her necessaries, a skirt, and her nightgown. Then she retrieved her wallet and counted the last of her allowance. Enough to buy her a ticket west, maybe not all the way back to Montana, but far enough. She'd figure out the rest. Just like her mother had.

She picked up the velvet case and considered the pearls. Her mother had brought her choker strand of pearls to Montana to purchase her new life. Certainly she wouldn't begrudge her daughter the same freedom? She shoved the case into the top of the satchel and closed it, then stared, finally, into the mirror.
Go home. Your adventure is over.

No. It had just begun. And if she wanted an adventure, she'd have to be someone…different. Someone bold and daring. Someone she didn't recognize. Taking a breath, she picked up the scissors she'd retrieved from the parlor.

She gripped her first braid, set the scissors right below her ear. “I'm not going back to New York City,” she said out loud as she snipped them hard and fast against the hair. The braid slumped in her grip.

She put the scissors to the other ear. “My mother was my age when she ran away to Montana.” The braid fell into her hand.

She laid both braids on the bureau then tugged on her hat, the one with the wide brim and rosette in front.

Glancing at the window, she saw Oliver, again seated on the bench in the garden, staring into the day as if he had no idea what to do with it. She heard his stricken voice.
It's just you and me now.

“No,” she said as she picked up her satchel. “It's just me.”

Then she closed the bedroom door behind her, crept down the stairs, and let herself out the front door to freedom.

T
HE SUICIDE LOOP

SOUTH DAKOTA. 1923

Chapter 7

Lilly had hoped to make it farther than Mobridge, South Dakota. Worse, it seemed as if she might not be escaping this dustbowl cow town anytime soon. But she refused to turn around and go home.

Not that New York had ever been home. But even less now. Especially since she hadn't shown up for her mother's funeral. Somewhere near Chicago, the regrets had awakened her, and she'd disembarked at Union Station just to check the schedules back to New York. But she'd traveled too far to return—the Chicago
Chronicle
captured the funeral on their front page. Apparently her mother had made the arrangements long ago.

No, she couldn't turn around. Not with the taste of shame in her mouth. But, obviously, she couldn't go forward, either.

“It can't possibly be two more weeks?”

“Sorry, Miss Hoyt.” This from the Milwaukee Road Railroad representative, an immigrant from Germany with large hands and kind blue eyes. “They're waiting on supplies from Minneapolis.”

Lilly managed a smile, digging it out from behind her frustration, and wandered back down the wide, dirty main street with the greening cottonwoods, the dented Ford trucks along with lazy horses parked outside the hardware store, the café, the feed and seed, the soda fountain. Dust sank into her pores like crème, layering her skin with grime, turning her hair to glue. She'd traveled back in time when her train chugged to a halt here, the last stop before the rails trekked over the Missouri River bridge and out to the great frontier.

A bridge inconveniently washed out by the spring flooding.

It seemed that Mobridge, South Dakota, had one foot in the frontier, the other edging toward civilization, with everything from a saloon-turned-tavern to a Sears Roebuck outlet. Surrounded by ranches and the Standing Rock Indian reservation, it hosted a railroad hub that ferried in goods and workers, but precious little in the way of escape. Mrs. Garrett's tiny boardinghouse had electricity, a small luxury she gave thanks for when she discovered that the privy was outside the back door and down three steps. A navigation that, in the middle of the night, had turned her ankle and caused her to lounge for a week on the front porch, reading every book she had within reach while she mended.

Now, after three weeks, Lilly was running out of money, patience, and time. However, she had come to know the fair citizens of Mobridge.

“Howdy, Miss Hoyt.” Curtiss Latham tipped his hat to her as she entered the soda fountain, the bell over the door jangling. He wore a layer of prairie around his mouth, embedded in his blond whiskers, and he'd been there at Lang's every afternoon for the past two weeks, his booted feet hung over the lower rungs of a counter stool, ready to inquire about her day.

“Curtiss,” she said. He looked about twenty, his cheeks reddened with too much sun, his forearms tanned and strong. He bore the look of the land on him, something honest and rough, and for that, she liked him enough.

Even if she refused his suggestions that she might find other pastimes than reading a book on the porch of her boardinghouse.

Maybe she should have turned around three weeks ago when they shut the line down, but returning to Minneapolis to be rerouted only seemed opposite her goal of heading
west
. And, despite her moaning, they hadn't sent a train to fetch her. Her money had only bought a one-way ticket, and even if she scraped together enough funds to hire a car, carriage, or pony to take her west, no one seemed to be headed that direction.

“A vanilla phosphate,” she said, and pulled out a nickel from her reticule.

“It's Tuesday. I thought you liked cherry on Tuesdays,” said Harvey, sweating in a white shirt, dark bands about his upper arms as he mixed her drink.

“I'm full of surprises,” she said.

He handed it to her, and she nodded to Curtiss before taking her drink to an alcove by the door.

Thankfully, Mrs. Garrett's boardinghouse hosted a fine collection of Zane Grey. It was the only thing that kept grief from swallowing her whole.

Sometimes, the brutality of her rash actions could curl her into a ball in her single bed, make her shove her sheets into her mouth to stave off her sobs.

Was this how her mother felt when she left New York City so many years ago, believing the man she loved dead?

Don't forget the blessings God has bestowed upon you.

What blessings?

Lilly read page twenty-four three times before she turned it, and right there at the beginning of chapter six, she heard it—a low, choppy buzz.

Almost like—

“There's an airplane driving down Main Street!” Curtiss jumped up from his stool.

Lilly put her book facedown. Sure enough, a fine-looking biplane with red wings and a sleek white body made a low pass along Main Street. And in the front seat, a woman sat, waving.

Lilly got up and pushed past Curtiss onto the boardwalk as a car sped down the street bellowing out, “The Flying Stars Air Show! Only one dollar per car to watch! Tonight at the fairgrounds!”

The plane made another pass, this time waggling its wings, and just for a moment, she was airborne with Rennie over the brilliant skies of Paris, touching the heavens.

“A buck a car.” Curtiss shucked off his hat, shook his head. “Too rich for my blood.”

“You got a car, Curtiss?” she asked.

“I got my boss's truck,” he said.

“That'll do,” she said. “But you have to take a bath.”

Two hours later, with the sun still high, the evening cooling after a thorough baking, Lilly sat on the back of Curtiss's pickup on a blanket. She cupped her hand over her eyes, watching with a crowd of Sunday-bestdressed ranchers as the Flying Stars air show flyers lined up their biplanes.

An announcer introduced himself from a makeshift podium as Marvel James and welcomed the crowd. A fleet of planes took off behind him, sweeping into the air. The sound of it rumbled through Lilly's bones, the dust from their wheels exploding in a fog that rolled into the crowd like a stampede.

Airborne, they became magnificent red and white birds, with a constellation of the Flying Stars etched on their tails. She counted a total of four, all winging through the sky with dips and turns and rolls, eliciting the awe of the audience before landing back on the ground and bouncing over the untended field like chickens.

Only then did she realize she'd been holding her breath.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen…” Marvel had the voice of a ballyhoo and wielded it well as he spun the dangers of the next act. “Truman Hawk, the Baron of the Air, famed World War I pilot, will perform his death-defying engine stall, operating a dead stick—”

“What's that?” Curtiss said.

“I think he turns the plane off while flying….”

“Jeepers, that don't sound like he's got a full basket.”

She agreed as they watched the pilot climb then cut the engine and fall to the earth. The crowd began to scream long before he neared the ground. As Lilly closed one eye, he touched the plane down in a graceful landing.

Her hand was sweating as she let go of the blanket.

A mechanic popped the prop, then Truman Hawk, the showman, buzzed the crowd, waving.

Three more planes took off, waging a mock World War I battle in the sky. Then, two parachutists jumped from the front wings, falling like rocks and pulling their chutes nearly too late in a breathtaking display of idiocy. A trail of white followed them like smoke.

As they floated down, Lilly could nearly feel the wind in her teeth, tangling her hair, the delicious sense of letting go, of flying.

They dropped a pair of guinea hens and let the children chase them across the field, then staged a motorcycle show—jumping it through a circle of fire.

“And for our final act, the Flying Angel will perform a death-defying wing walk!”

“You mean some dame is actually going to get out on that wing and walk around?” Curtiss said, his voice close to Lilly's ear.

Lilly had no words as she watched a woman in a white jumpsuit climb into the front cockpit. She shut her ears against Rennie's voice.
I'll show you where you belong.

Still, she easily imagined herself in that seat, goggles over her eyes, anticipation like a live coal in her belly.

The plane took off, did a loop and a roll, then leveled as the Flying Angel climbed out onto the lower wing, a white speck against the blades.

“That's gotta be the stupidest thing I ever seen a woman do,” Curtiss said, but he didn't take his eyes from the spectacle.

The woman walked out on the wing and waved to the crowd, then crossed to the other wing. Then, as the flyer circled back around, she climbed to the upper wing and sat down.

Lilly nearly wept with horror when the plane dove and the woman raised her hands over her head, as if to plunge face-first into the earth. The pilot pulled up then did a barrel roll, with the woman's hands still over her head. Lilly pressed her hand to her stomach.

Then, he turned upward, into an inside loop, and Lilly finally had to look away.

“She's a real tart, that one, to put up with his shenanigans,” Curtiss said, enough awe in his voice for her to know that he would be lining up after the show to catch an up-close glimpse of the Flying Angel.

The woman finally climbed back to the cockpit, and the pilot brought the plane to a bumpy, grandiose landing, motoring it around to face the audience. The Flying Angel jumped out, ran around to face the audience, and as the prop fizzled out, bowed in a flourish.

The audience erupted, honking, cheering, until finally the pilot joined her. Truman Hawk took her hand as they bowed together then joined the rest of the troupe to wave.

“Well, ain't that the darndest thing? I never seen an aeroplane, let alone the tricks it can do.” Curtiss climbed off the back of the truck, held out his hand. “Now how 'bout I show you some of my tricks.” He winked at her.

She gave him her best society smile. “Oh, Curtiss. I believe our time together is over. I will walk back to town.”

“It's nearly a half mile. And you got them fancy white shoes on.”

She folded up his blanket, handed it back to him. “See you at Langs?”

He managed something of an acquiescing smile, and she didn't look back as she headed toward the airfield.

Twilight skimmed the shiny wings and their sleek red bodies as she finally broke free of the departing spectators and lost herself among the airplanes, parked in a neat row before a long white tent. Inside the tent, lamplight flickered, voices of the pilots tumbling out onto the grassy field. Parked alongside was the red roadster she'd seen barrel through town, and a truck with The Flying Stars painted on the side, a trailer attached to the back. A man in a gray jumpsuit stained with grease sat on the running board smoking a cigarette, the ash a red eye in the encroaching darkness. A mongrel with a mangled ear lay at his feet.

She wandered between two planes, feathering her hand over the painted canvas of the wing. Bracing herself on a wheel strut, she pulled herself up to look into the cockpit.

“Please! Let's go around again!”

She heard her voice, high and bright, laughing into the wind.

Perhaps she did belong in the heavens—

“Moseby, listen to me. It's not any more dangerous than an inside loop—”

“Except it's my head you'll decapitate.”

Lilly slunk down behind the plane, her heart in her throat.

“Bertie Jones did it just a week ago, in Kearney!”