Baroness (33 page)

She hailed a cab and climbed into the backseat. “Five Eighteen Avenue des Champs-Élysées, s'il vous plaît.”

“Very good, ma'am.”

His English surprised her. “Where are you from, sir?”

“Ireland. Was shot down in France and stayed.” He glanced back at her, smiling. “Fell in love with my nurse.”

“Of course you did,” she said. He motored her over the Rue du Bac bridge and then down the Champs-Élysées. Across the river, the Eiffel Tower arched over the city, shiny and bright.

A lighthouse.

“Any news on Lindbergh?” she asked, leaning forward. All of France buzzed about the attempt; some said he had even left early in hopes of beating the weather.

“Aye, they spotted him off the Emerald Coast a few hours ago.”

She let the words sink in.

“Can you take me to Le Bourget, instead?”

“Oh, ma'am, there's a hundred thousand people there—you won't see a thing—”

“Please, sir. I made a promise to my father to watch Lindbergh land.” The words just slipped out. Her father.

He gave her a smile. “Ah, that I might be so fortunate someday to have my daughter think so much of me.”

Like eyes, the windows along the boulevard watched her, bright and unblinking, their reflection glistening upon the cobbled street.

“I can't believe this Lindbergh has the spine to fly all the way over the Atlantic. Not with two Frenchmen that went down only last month. Daft.”

She made a noise that sounded like agreement.

“Or maybe dedicated,” he said as they eased out of the city. “There's power in commitment. It turns you into the man you hope to be. The man you can live with. Maybe even a hero.”

She glanced at him, noticing now that only one hand gripped the steering wheel, the other absent, his sleeve folded up into itself.

Le Bourget had turned the night sky to daylight with the beacons streaming to the heavens. Cars clogged the roadway, so the driver let her off to walk. “Do you need me to wait?” he asked.

She shook her head and paid him. Her position at the
Chronicle
had purchased a spot for her in one of the hangars and an interview with the aviator when—or perhaps if—he showed. She wheedled her way around the cars—Peugeots and Benzes, along with Citroens and not a few horse-drawn carts and buggies, driven from nearby farms. Adventure showed no social prejudice.

As she drew nearer, the light betrayed the crowd, an immensity of people pressed up against the iron gates that surrounded the field. A row of hangars beyond showed more people—probably the flyers who worked out of the field, along with mechanics, and not a few men in tuxedos—probably local dignitaries.

An explosion downfield startled the crowd and a rocket flared into the sky. Search beacons for Lindbergh. People holding onto the faint hope that he might actually keep his word.

She pushed her way along the back, saw people hanging from the iron staircases that roped up the side of the hangars. She tried to edge her way to the front.

French epitaphs landed behind her, and she gave thanks for her too-rusty French. Still, the crowd seemed to work in unison and closed around her.

So much for her interview. Oh, why had she allowed the nostalgia of the city to woo her away from the field? The one thing Oliver asked of her and she couldn't manage it. Who knew that Lindbergh might prove to be the hero he set out to be?

And then she heard it, the distinct rumble of a motor. The crowd roared in reply until the noise grew above it, thunderous.

Then the silver bird dropped from the night and into the stream of light, gliding. No one moved, no one breathed, and in that moment, Lilly felt it.

The magic. The ethereal sense of being able to rise above the clouds, to see the world as a thumbprint. The power of climbing out of an airplane to stand on the wing, press her hands to the wind, gulp it in.

As if she only need close her eyes and lift her arms and she'd be flying.

She heard him then, as if he'd never left, as if he'd chased her all the way to Paris.
“I guess the only question left is…what are we going to call your act?”

“Lola,” she said softly as Lindbergh's plane drifted down onto the swath of light in the middle of the runway. “The Flying Angel.”

Lindbergh's plane bumped along the ground, the prop still whirring, but the crowd caught its breath and surged forward, a mass of people climbing the six-foot fence.

“Stop! Wait!”

But the iron fence collapsed as they churned forward, running toward Lindbergh's triumph. She heard choruses of
Vive!
but only tuned her ears to Lindbergh's prop chopping the air.

“Wait!” How many times had Truman told her to stay clear—she'd heard too many stories of wing walkers and ground crew walking into a churning propeller. “Stop!” She tripped over a mangled, deserted bicycle and went down on her hands and knees.

She looked up just as the plane turned and charged toward the crowd. Lilly screamed as the mob turned, scattering. Lindbergh's plane rambled toward them.

Cut the engine! Cut—but even afterward, the prop would continue to skewer the air—

She found her legs just as the machine ground to a halt, rocking back as if exhausted. The propeller died with a splutter.

Thirty-three hours in the air.

The crowd went berserk as Lindbergh opened the hatch of his plane. They pulled him from the plane, carrying him across the tarmac. She caught a glimpse of him—towheaded, tall, and lean. Probably handsome. Most flyers were, if you added in the twinkle of danger in their eyes.

In that moment, she could almost see Truman, waving, his grin broad and white in this moment of triumph.

Souvenir hunters cut pieces of fabric from the plane—the
Spirit of St. Louis
. The police rescued Lindbergh and delivered him to the dignitaries in the hangar downfield. She followed and tried to move in to hear the loudspeakers, but after an hour, she gave up trying to get closer to hear. She'd hunt him down in the morning, perhaps use Oliver's connections.

Meanwhile, the exhausted
Spirit
sat tended by a handful of gendarmes, the souvenir hunters having been chased away. She wandered toward it and informed one of the guards of her credentials. He allowed her passage to the airplane, and she climbed up on the wing—she should have worn trousers—and hauled herself into the cockpit.

She lowered herself into the wicker chair of the cockpit, still feeling the heat of it, the weight of Lindbergh's body on the fibers. An empty canteen of water lay on the floor near the pedals. Under the seat, a crumpled paper bag rustled against her foot. She took it out and opened it.

Two uneaten sandwiches.

Uneaten, after thirty-three hours. She closed the bag then gripped the yoke, the cool polish of it fitting into her hands. She imagined herself over the ocean, fighting the wind shears, leaning into the currents.

What had her driver said about commitment? It turned regular men into heroes.

And women?

She leaned back into the seat, closed her eyes, listening to the wind through the trees at the far side of the field.

Be who you're looking for
.
Don't spend your life looking for what you want to be, or you'll never stop searching.
She wasn't sure why Moseby's voice, a haunting from the past, found her, but she settled into it.
You are who you commit to be, doing what you commit to doing.

Oh, how she loved to fly. In fact, maybe one of the local pilots would let her borrow a plane, take it up over Paris.

She climbed out and headed to the flight office. A congregation of French flyers, some of them drinking hot coffee, others talking about Lindbergh's trip, looked up as she came in and found her way to the counter. Behind them, maps of the French, English, and Austrian countrysides, along with a huge expanse of ocean and the eastern American seaboard, papered the walls, with a red thread marking Lindbergh's route.

“Bonjour,” she said, resurrecting her French. “I…I'm looking to hire a plane for the day tomorrow.”

“It can't be!”

The voice startled her, and she looked for the source. For a moment, she didn't recognize him, not with the scar along his chin. But the dark smudge of a smile hadn't dimmed from her memory, nor his green eyes and the power they once had to turn her inside out, steal her thoughts.

“Rennie?”

“Lilly Hoyt, what are you doing here?”

She had no words for this, not sure where to even start. He parted his way through the crowd and offered his hand and she took it, rough as it was in her grip. She'd forgotten the feel of a pilot's hands, the chips and digs in his skin from his hours overhauling his plane. Truman had those hands.

“Ray, come and see who I found!” He turned toward the door to the weather office. An older woman wearing jodhpurs sauntered in from the next room.

Ray? The woman looked familiar. “I'm sorry, I don't remember—”

“Baroness Raymonde. I'm one of the flyers here at Le Bourget. Are you here for the flight?”

“I'm a reporter—yes, but—”

“And she's come back to me!” Rennie nudged Ray out of the way. “Remember her, Ray? She went to the bullfights with me and Presley in Spain.” Around her, others had turned to watch. Probably they could see her face flaming. He wore a sleek leather jacket, longer than Truman's, a white scarf at his neck, derby cocked on his head. As he leaned close, she caught a whiff of something from the past, absinthe, perhaps, and the faintest hint of cigarette smoke lifting into the wind. He remembered her too, his gaze upon her familiar, even intimate.

“I always knew you'd come back to Rennie, ma chérie,” he said, and winked. “I've missed you so.”

* * * * *

Rosie just knew that any day, she'd come home to their little flat in Queens and find Cesar on her doorstep, ready to make good on his dark promise. Every time she opened the door and stood in the quiet hallway of their three-room apartment, her heartbeat thundering in her chest, she listened for his breathing, searched the air for the aroma of his Cubans.

It was only a matter of time.

Her fight with Guthrie still had the power to stop her cold, shake tears from her.
I want more for you than this pitiful apartment in the middle of Chicago! Pitching for the Yankees means a better life for both of us.

You just want to be a star. You don't care if it's going to get us both killed!

He'd winced, and she longed to yank back her words.

No, if she hadn't wanted to be a star, maybe she wouldn't have fallen for Cesar, let him dig his claws into her life.

Yet again, perhaps she would never have had to escape with Guthrie, and found this surprising place of joy.

I'll keep you safe
, he'd said when he'd shown her their new apartment, the locks he installed on the front door. Such a smile on his face when he walked into the big white kitchen then opened the door to two tiny back bedrooms.
One for Charlie
.

The place came with a postage stamp–sized, weed-riddled courtyard in back where he'd found a secondhand table and chairs, and a front bay window off the family room. In the morning, the sun turned the hardwood floors a rosy gold.

She set her groceries on the kitchen table and slid onto a chair. Her legs hurt, and her entire body had turned into an incubator. What she wouldn't give for a day at the sea, at her mother's estate in Newport, lounging on the patio chairs, a cold lemonade at her merest beckoning.

She unbuttoned her shirtwaist, letting the collar hang open, got up, and wandered over to the fan, turning it on. The blades churned the air, and she leaned into it, letting the whir fill her thoughts, settle a cool breeze over her body.

Two weeks since she'd returned to New York City, and she still hadn't the courage to track down her mother. Because that would mean an apology. And introducing Jinx to her husband.

She couldn't bear to put Guthrie through that, to hear the disdain in her mother's voice.
He isn't our set, Rosie.

Maybe not. But maybe she didn't want to belong to that set anymore. Maybe…maybe she'd found a better set, a new place to belong.

It didn't keep her from wanting to see Finn, however. Maybe after the baby was born she might introduce the child to his or her uncle. This little one might bring reconciliation to them all.

The baby turned inside her and she pressed her hand against her stomach, sitting down on the sofa. Maybe she'd just put her feet up for a moment, lean her head back. A few moments' rest before Guthrie's game this afternoon.

The noon chime woke her and Rosie blinked her eyes open, a chill running over her from the breath of the fan as she found her bearings.

Guthrie's game started in an hour; he would already be looking for her in the stands. She splashed water on her face then tidied her hair and pulled on a long-waisted dress that stretched over her belly. One glance in the mirror told her she looked like a seal, bleached and dragged in from the sea.

A fine sweat filmed her back as she tucked on a canvas cloche hat, an orange silk pansy in the brim. Then, picking up her fan and her handbag, she locked the door.

She had a vague recollection of how to find the Polo Grounds in Manhattan where the Giants played, but Guthrie's directions tangled in her thoughts, a product of the heat and fatigue.

She got on the Roosevelt Avenue Corona Line at Elmhurst Avenue, rode it through Long Island City, over the East River, through the 60th St. Tunnel until she saw the signs for Fifth Avenue.

Fifth Avenue, across from Central Park, where she'd grown up in the Worth family chateau. Oliver and Esme had owned a home just down the street before her mother had sold the estate and moved into rooms farther down on Fifth Avenue, in the Warren and Wetmore Building.

Lilly might have married, maybe even lived in one of the gallant houses on Fifth.
I'll forgive you someday...
Lilly's words on the boat so long ago could still brush tears into her eyes.
Please, Lilly. Be happy
.