The Golden Hour. Beatriz Williams

she does. But girls that age.” He shook his head, and that was all, because we had reached the goldfish pond and the duchess and the duke, laughing warmly with a short, perspiring man who had materialized from nowhere. The duchess’s head turned in my direction. She wore a dress of pale blue silk and an expression of brief, unguarded discontent, and a shock ran down my limbs because I thought perhaps someone had made a terrible mistake—God knew what, maybe that invitation hadn’t been meant for me after all. But the duchess’s frown smoothed away as I reached her. Oh, the duchess. It’s a funny thing, when you encounter a face like that, a face you’ve seen frozen in a hundred two-dimensional photographs, and here it is before you, looking at you, alive. Those pungent blue eyes, that coronet of dark hair. That skin stretched over her cheeks and jaw, now endowed with breadth and depth and texture. Around her neck, a staggering circle of diamonds and rubies set off the blue of her eyes and her dress. How patriotic of her. She took my hand between two of hers and shook it firmly.

      “My dear Mrs. Randolph! And Sir Harry. I see you’ve met our new recruit.”

      “Recruit?” he demanded.

      “The Red Cross. Mrs. Randolph’s volunteered her services.”

      “The Red Cross? What the devil for? You don’t strike me as a Red Cross kind of gal.”

      “Just doing my bit,” I said.

      “But you’re American. You’ve got no part in this damned war.”

      “Now, Sir Harry,” said the duchess, “the Red Cross has nothing to do with taking sides. We are a humanitarian organization.”

      Well, Oakes rolled his eyes at this—as well he might—and stumped a few paces to the right, where he greeted the duke with about as much ceremony as he’d greeted the duke’s wife. Stuck his hand out and grunted something. The duchess and I exchanged weary little smiles, almost intimate. A fellow like that can bind two females instantly. A pair of diamond and ruby earrings clung to her earlobes, matching the necklace. I thought she glanced down to assess the imitation pearls around my collar, but maybe that was my imagination.

      “I’m so terribly sorry to be late,” I said. “I didn’t realize about the entrance.”

      “Not at all. I haven’t anyone left to greet, thank goodness, so we can get to know each other a bit.” She slipped her arm around mine. She smelled of face powder and perfume, and her arm was like her hand, bony and purposeful. “Don’t you look charming in that dress.”

      I might have stuttered, so great was my amazement. “Why—well—this old thing?”

      “Of course, you’ve got the kind of figure that suits any dress, you lucky duck. Now, stick with me. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

      “Meet me? I can’t imagine whom.”

      She laughed. “David! David!”

      Her husband stood a few feet away, dressed in a pale suit, speaking to the other man and to Oakes, who had turned toward them both. The duke’s head snapped in her direction. For an instant, his eyes bugged in a terrified way. The lanterns poured gold on the duke’s waving hair, his shocked, twitching, haggard face. Next to him, Oakes and the other fellow more or less disappeared—not physically, of course, but rendered invisible by the halo of glamour. “Yes, dear?” the duke asked, pitched anxiously toward his wife, not registering my presence in the slightest degree.

      “David, it’s Mrs. Randolph at last.”

      “Mrs. Randolph?”

      “Yes, Mrs. Randolph. You remember, don’t you?” She grasped my elbow. “Mrs. Randolph, David. The girl I’ve been speaking about.”

      “Oh! Oh, yes. Of course.” He held out his hand to me, and although he’d turned in my direction and fixed his gaze politely on my face, I thought his eyes were unfocused, that he wasn’t really looking at me. Not past me, mind you, the way some people do, searching out someone of greater interest, but the opposite direction. Inward, toward himself. “Duke of Windsor,” he said, pronouncing the word duke like an American, dook.

      I made a slight curtsy. “Your Royal Highness. Leonora Randolph. I’m honored to—”

      “Charmed, of course.” He dropped my hand—he had a grip that wasn’t so much limp as motionless, without life—and turned to the duchess. “Have you seen Thorpe about?”

      “Not since he arrived.”

      “Oh, damn.” The duke cast his nervous eyes about the palms and the shadows. “Neither have I.”

      “Is something the matter?” she asked, but the duke was already bolting off. I suppose I stared after him, at least until his bright figure disappeared into the tangle of darker ones. I remember a feeling of disbelief—had I, or had I not, just met the former king of England, and did it matter if he hadn’t actually perceived my existence?—and then the tug of the duchess’s hand on my elbow.

      “Mrs. Randolph, do you know Mr. Christie?” she said.

      “I’m afraid not.” I held out my hand to the other man, who was plain and balding, thick-necked, green-eyed. His temples gleamed with perspiration. He was shorter even than Oakes, and next to Sir Harry’s bull shoulders, looked as slight as a lamb. “Leonora Randolph,” I said.

      The man took my hand and smiled. “Harold Christie. Pleasure.”

      His palm was damp. I extracted my fingers and said the pleasure was all mine. “I’ve already heard so many interesting things about you, Mr. Christie.”

      “Ah.” He cast a glance to the duchess—nervous or modest, I couldn’t tell. “I hope—I hope—good things.”

      “Aren’t you practically a one-man Bahamas development office? So they tell me.”

      “Oh, it’s quite true,” said the duchess. “Mr. Christie’s done so much to improve the colony.”

      Back and forth glanced Mr. Christie. “That’s too kind. I love the Bahamas, that’s all. Only doing what I can for them.”

      “How awfully good of you,” I said.

      “Turns a nice penny, too, from time to time,” said Oakes. “Isn’t that right, Christie? Turned a few of those pennies on my account.”

      “From which your account profited considerably, I believe.”

      “Don’t stop you borrowing a fortune from me, either. Eh, Christie? That Lyford Cay scheme of yours?”

      “You’ll be begging me for a plot of your own there, when it’s finished.”

      Oakes turned to me. “Wasteland. Wasteland all the way on the other end of the island, miles from town. If I could pull my money out of that one, I would. I must’ve been drunk when you asked me, Christie.”

      Christie smiled. “Now, old fellow, I’m sure the ladies don’t wish to listen to our business talk.”

      “On the contrary—”

      “Tell me, what brings you here to our little paradise, Mrs. Randolph? Our oasis from this mad world? I certainly hope you mean to make a lengthy visit.”

      “Careful,” said Oakes. “He’ll ply you with booze and get you investing in his damned schemes.”

      As coincidence would have it, a waiter approached us right that second, bearing a tray on which a few champagne coupes glistened in the light of the lanterns. I reached out and snatched one by the stem. “How opulent. I haven’t seen champagne since I left New York. Poor old France and all.”

      “We contrived to pack along a few bottles, when we left Paris in such a hurry,” said the duchess, plucking a stem, smiling softly, so I couldn’t help imagining a crew of stevedores unloading crate after crate at Prince George’s wharf,