Baroness (31 page)

Wing walking. Trusting Truman Hawk.

Believing her own press. The Flying Angel. As if she might truly belong in the skies and save their little circus.

Clearly, Truman hadn't needed her. Hadn't even wanted her. Four years, and he hadn't come after her. Had simply flown out of her life, just like she knew he would.

Agnes the Angel. What a horrid show name.

She picked up the paper and dropped it into the wire trash bin under her desk.

“The news not fit to print?” Oliver stood in her open doorway, his arms folded across his chest, his shirtsleeves rolled up at the arms, showing a hint of tan. She knew others considered him a handsome man, his dark hair bearing just a hint of sand around the temples, his body lean and strong from his yachting. She knew he had women who admired him—she couldn't attend the theater with him without the eye of every society maid upon her, without the casual inquiries of even her friends about the state of his bachelorhood.

Oliver would probably never marry again. He still visited her mother's grave every week, still kept her picture on his night table. Still listed her name on the masthead of the
Chronicle.
And, it seemed, in Lilly, he intended to keep every promise he'd ever made to Esme.

She glanced at the paper in the wastebasket.

Now, he stepped up to her desk. “I saw it too. I'm sorry. If I had the power to keep him out of New York, I would.”

She knew he meant the words to comfort her, to protect her. Oliver had arranged the quick divorce from Truman, bringing her papers while she still convalesced at home after the crash. She hadn't wanted to imagine Truman's relief, and refused to ask after him.

She just wanted to forget him, to erase the memory of his voice, the way he lifted her to the stars.

The way his final words skewered her clean through.

However, she harbored a secret, burning hope that Truman hadn't raced after her to New York because Oliver had threatened him, or paid him off. She told herself that Truman regretted his rash words, and that after she'd left, he'd searched frantically for her, but…well, now he had Agnes the Angel, and that should shout volumes.

“Let's take
The Esme
out, shall we?” Oliver said. “Escape to the sea for the weekend?”

The sea. That much they could share. Besides, riding the yacht almost felt like flying.

Two hours later, Lilly sat on the prow of Oliver's twenty-eight-foot yacht and leaned back on her hands, lifting her face to the sun as the boat skimmed across the waves, heading out of New York City harbor toward the freedom of the Atlantic.

Oliver stood at the wheel behind her, his crew having already tied off the sails. He had a captain, but Oliver loved to sail the yacht out of port himself, the wind lifting the collar of his shirt, parting his hair from behind, as if he might be racing the sun into the horizon.

But that was Oliver. Always charging ahead to control his world. If she'd learned anything about her stepfather these past four years, it was that he left nothing to chance. Like tracking her across the country and hiring the best doctors to help her find her strength again. When she'd agreed to learn the ropes at the paper, he'd cleared out an office for her and given her an assistant in the faint hope she might find some useful niche at the
Chronicle.

She spent the first six months reading every article her mother had written, starting with the scandal of her uncle Foster's murder, through the short trial, and then every issue after that, until her mother took on the daily publisher's column, an analysis of politics and society that taught Lilly more about her world than any finishing school class.

Lilly finally started penning her own column. Clunky and far from eloquent, the words simply took up space, but Oliver published her thoughts anyway, as if they mattered.

She had to tell him the truth. She couldn't bear to see her name in print one more day. She wasn't—would never be—her mother.

Esme Price Hoyt Stewart had been brave and beautiful, had been loved by two amazing men. She'd run after her dreams and become the woman she was looking for. Her mother hadn't a clue what it felt like to be lost, to not know—or perhaps even like—the person she'd become.

They cleared the narrows and entered the lower New York Bay; Sandy Hook, New Jersey to the west, Rockaway Queens to the east. The bay emptied into the Atlantic farther south.

She heard Oliver hand the wheel to Captain McIntire, then he picked his way up to the prow and slid onto the smooth wooden surface. Water soaked the hem of his white linen pants, the leather of his boat shoes darkened from the sea. He leaned back, raising his hands over his head. Closed his eyes.

“Listen to it, Lilly. The sound of the ocean on the hull, knocking, like it's trying to get in. The cry of the seagulls, envious.” He drew in a breath. “Your mother loved the sea. She'd beg me to take her out, to escape the city, if only for a few precious hours. You remind me of her most when we're yachting.”

She tried to smile at his words. Sometimes, out here, she could close her eyes, and she'd be back on the wings, the wind on her face stirring up the taste and smell of the sky, of gulping in so much freedom it could nourish her for days, perhaps even years. “I thought Mother spent every free moment at the
Chronicle.
”

“She loved the
Chronicle,
for sure. But it was only one of her passions. She had so many faces—I wish you could have known her better. Longer. And I wish she'd seen the woman you've grown into.” Lilly swallowed back any comment. Oliver had been so good to her, she couldn't bear to tell him how working at the
Chronicle
gnawed away a little more of herself each day. But what else did she have, really?

Oliver roused her from her spiral into herself, reliving the betrayal. “Your aunt Jinx has asked me if you might be interested in summering with her in Newport.”

Lilly made a face, and Oliver laughed. “I know. Ever since Rosie ran off with that ballplayer, it seems Jinx has made it her mission to marry you off.”

“She'll have a schedule of summer teas and parties that I must attend, along with a list of the current eligible bachelors—do you think it's possible for me to decline?”

Oliver raised his face again to the sun. “I do. But only if you have a good reason.”

She pushed herself up to the rail as the yacht skipped over the waves. The water, translucent in the afternoon sun, appeared so inky blue it could be the sky, pulling her to the heavens. She sat on the edge, let the foamy spray splash on her bare legs, icy droplets that made her shiver. She'd taken to wearing pants in the office—thank you, Moseby—and even embraced the skin-baring bathing suits fashionable now. Oliver had turned away, his face pinched and red the first time she skimmed off her dress at sea, but had said nothing.

“Perhaps I could fall ill?”

Oliver's laughter rose behind her and she let it inside, let it stir a smile. “I fear she would only hire you a nurse and post her outside your door.”

Aunt Jinx did seem to have a desperate need to fill Esme's shoes. Then again, with Rosie living in Chicago and estranged from her family, Jinx had endured too much loss for blame.

“What if I could offer a solution, something a bit less drastic?” Oliver said.

Lilly leaned her head back and looked at him.

Oliver came to sit with her, his hands curled into the ropes. The captain had slowed the yacht, looking for a place to throw anchor. “I need you to go to Paris.”

She let his words sink in, searched his face for guile. “Paris? Why?”

The chain for the anchor channeled into the ocean.

“Everyone is buzzing about this Lindbergh fella attempting a flight across the ocean, and just in case he makes it…I'd like someone there who can get an audience with him. Someone like—”

“Like a reporter with the
Chronicle
who knows how to fly?”

Oliver lifted a shoulder. “I don't like to remember how you risked your life, Lilly, but I know you miss it.”

She couldn't let him see the way his words worked their way inside, like he really understood her. Like he knew how she stole away to the tower of the Woolworth Building, fifty-seven stories over Manhattan, and imagined herself rousting out of the cockpit to venture onto the wing, to raise her hands to the wind.

“I believe you could deliver the kind of insight into Lindbergh's flight that only a pilot could muster.”

A pilot. She knew what it cost Oliver to say that.

“You could check in on our bureau, make sure everything is running smoothly.”

And there it was, his attempt to include her in a business that she hadn't a prayer of understanding.

Still, she'd first glimpsed the person of courage she'd wanted to be in Paris. Sometimes when she stood at her window, staring out at the lights of the city, she could trace all of Paris, the molten streets threading their way through the city, the Eiffel Tower like a lantern high above. She could even taste her heartbeat as she gulped in freedom for the first time.

Yes, Paris.

And, Rennie. What if he was still there? She hadn't thought of him in years—not since Truman had filled all the empty spaces in her life. But what if she found him, the flyboy who'd first given her a taste of the skies? What if she looked into his eyes and saw that he missed her?

What if Rennie could make her forget?

Oliver turned away, staring out into the ocean. “Lilly, I know what it's like to miss someone so much it feels like you're caving in on yourself.”

He played with his wedding ring, still on his left hand. “When your mother left for Montana, when I realized she wasn't returning, it cut me so deeply, I felt as if I'd never heal. I couldn't stay in New York. I had to leave. I had to figure out the person I was going to be, without her.”

He looked at her then, his face twisted, as if in pain. “I…am still trying to figure that out, Lilly.”

She held out her hand, tried to catch a wave. “Do you ever wonder why God took her away so soon?”

She glanced at him and the hard set of his jaw as he drew in a breath. “I am just glad I had her for the few years I did.”

“But if He loves you, wouldn't He have given you more time?”

“God never promised me a long life with your mother, Lilly. Just eternity. I'm believing His love, that He's going to give us that. If there's one thing I learned from Esme, it's that we are safe in His hands. His love. That we belong to Him, and He doesn't fail us.”

The yacht rocked as the waves lapped against it. A gull cried from the skies above them, swooping into the troughs between the swells. The sun pressed upon her face, her nose, trickled sweat down her back.

“God failed me, Oliver. Over and over and over. He's taken everything from me and left me nothing.”

He glanced at her, his eyes watering, probably from the wind. “I'm so sorry you feel that way.”

Lilly licked her lips, tasting salt.

He surprised her then by touching her arm, something he did so infrequently, it left heat behind. “You don't have to go to Paris— I just thought it would be easier. You need to learn how to live without Truman.”

His words landed like a slap. So rarely spoken, Truman's name shouldn't have so much power over her after four years. Not after she'd wept herself dry, not after she'd changed her name back to Hoyt, not after she'd traced the scars of her wounds in the mirror and realized how close she'd come to dying.

But in Oliver's statement, she heard his name echo back to her the wind, and behind it, his voice.
“Marry me, Lilly. Right now. We'll put our act together and set out on our own.”
The wind bit her eyes and they burned. She blinked moisture into them, wishing she had her goggles.

She watched another yacht slicing through the waters, its bow clean and white, the name in red script on the hull, the sails like surrender flags against the creamy blue sky.

“When is Lindbergh's flight?”

“In two weeks.”

She said nothing. She got up and unknotted her swim robe. “When do I leave for Paris?”

“As soon as you're ready.”

She dropped the robe and stared at the ocean, knowing the bracing waters would bite, burn through her, steal her breath. “Arrange my passage. I'll write you the best article you've ever read.”

Then she took two steps and dove in.

* * * * *

Rosie didn't deserve to be this happy, and she knew it. Sure, she and Guthrie still lived in the three-room brick walk-up in Lincoln Park, with the reek of Vinnie's Italian Deli drifting up through her windows in the summer to sour their apartment, the dust from the delivery trucks churning up onto her furniture, the shouts of boys in the vacant lot next door playing stickball keeping her awake as she waited for Guthrie to return from one of his road trips. But living in the dark heart of Chicago, with the dangers of the mob wars, couldn't destroy the seed of joy that had taken root inside her the day she escaped New York City in the arms of Guthrie Storme.

She stood at her second-story window, watching the dusty street, now draped in shadow, lamplights like spotlights upon the men returning home for the night, dressed in suits, vests, and fedoras. Below their apartment, Vinnie ran the grate over the deli window, and across the street, the Fifth Street Bakery turned off its lights. Next door, Mrs. Kaminsky must be frying up pirogues, because the smell of sunflower oil slid under the door, saturated the walls. Outside, she heard the crack of a bat, voices raised in competition. Sometimes she watched the boys out of her bedroom window and imagined a younger version of her husband, the one Guthrie's mom described for her when they visited after his first season with the White Sox. She could see his dishwater-blond hair unruly over his eyes, wearing a soiled cotton shirt and a pair of knickers, darting around bases made of old tires, scraps of wood, perhaps a flour sack filled with dirt in a field near his house in Kansas.