Duchess (30 page)

He pulled out into the street, and Rosie pulled off her wig, handed it over to Sophie. Sophie pulled off her black wig, cut at the neck and covered in pin curls, and fitted it on Rosie.

Rosie adjusted hers onto Sophie, turning her into a brunette. Then she unclasped her pearls and placed them around Sophie's neck. “Sell them if you have to. They were from Dashielle. It's about time his fortune went to good use.”

“They're beautiful.”

“He gave them to me the night of my first premiere.”

She nodded. “It's a glorious movie, Roxy. I wept.”

Rosie squeezed her hand.

Sophie pulled on long black gloves while Rosie stripped hers off and unzipped her dress. She glanced at McDuff, but he seemed unaffected about the activity in the backseat.

Rosie wiggled into a new white evening gown, fur at the neck. Worked on a pair of long white gloves. Then she helped Sophie into her fur coat.

They pulled into the train station. McDuff parked and Sophie pressed on a layer of blood red lipstick then closed her compact. “Do I look like a movie star?”

“Do I look like a duchess?”

Sophie pulled her into a hug. “You'll always be a duchess to me.”

Then, as McDuff opened the door, Sophie as Roxy Price climbed out of the car and into her public. McDuff followed Sophie/Roxy to the train.

Rosie watched as Sophie lifted her hand to wave to her audience, pulling her fur collar up around her face, as if chilly. She hustled toward the train, to the private cars they'd rented, one for Hale, the other for herself.

Hale emerged from the other Rolls, waved to the gathering crowd. Around them, the other Rolls and Bentleys arrived, carrying the contraband nobles.

But they emerged with airs, playing their role, heading for the train cars, the elite society of Austria headed for a private party with Hale Nichols and Roxy Price.

Rosie held her breath as they all moved past the guards, showing their tickets to the conductor before they boarded.

Roxy Price stood at the rail of her car, waving, welcoming them aboard. Hale stood at the other car, doing the same.

Her car door opened and Rolfe slid in. Stared at her. Glanced at the waving Roxy.

“Sophie always said she wanted to be in the movies.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm staying here. With you.”

He shook his head. “No, Rosie, you can't. It's too dangerous.”

“In Vienna, yes. But not in Belgium.”

He opened his mouth, but she pressed her finger over it. “Listen to me. What you don't know is that your friend Otto is more than just a Jewish sympathizer. He's—he's my brother. My brother, Jack.”

Rolfe seemed not to know how to digest that information, frowning, shaking his head, then, “I thought he died.”

She nodded. “He's been here since the Great War. Working with Army Intelligence. And now, providentially placed to help us. He'll do the work here in Austria and send the refugees to our estate in Belgium. We'll get them visas and papers out of Europe.”

Rolfe swallowed, as if unable to understand her words.

“Please, say something.”

Outside, the train was pulling from the station, the whistle blaring.

It jolted him, and he seemed unraveled. “You did this? You did
all
this?”

“The train will take them nonstop to Paris. Jack arranged it.”

“Jack…” he made a soft noise, like a groan, then leaned over and cradled his head in his hands.

And then, suddenly, his shoulders were shaking.

“Rolfe?”

He didn't answer her. Just shook his head, his hands over his face.

“Rolfe, you're—you're scaring me. I thought you'd be happy….”

He looked up then, his face unreadable, his eyes reddened, his cheeks stained. “I—Rosie, you undo me. One moment I want to choke you, the next you take my heart right from my chest. I can't breathe around you sometimes with the force of you in the room. And yet, when you're not here, I think I'm going to suffocate.”

Oh. She swallowed away the bitter acid of disappointment in her throat. Looked away.

“No, you don't understand. I love you, Rosie. Since that day I saw you in the park, and every minute on the set of
Angel's Fury
, and all the moments in between, dying a little every time I saw your face on screen. I wrote the movie in the wild hope you'd agree to play the role, wishing you could see me the way I saw you.”

Oh.
Oh
. “I did see it, Rolfe. On the screen. In Hale's eyes.”

“In my eyes,” he said quietly. “You are brave and beautiful and—and brilliant.” He put his hand to her cheek. “And I prayed every day that I could figure out a way to show you that. That someday I'd earn the right to have your heart.”

She leaned into his hand.

He wove it behind her neck, bent down, and kissed her. His touch was everything she remembered, everything sweet and full and perfect. He tasted of coffee, and the strength of a man who knew both hard work and privilege. And he smelled good. Too good for a man who'd spent two days in captivity. But perhaps that's what made him perfect too—the fact that he suffered without complaint, his candle lighting the way for others.

In his arms she sighed, full, whole. Applause in her heart.

And right then, she understood. She knew.

She didn't need applause. She needed this. Love. The kind that didn't leave, the kind that she could surrender her heart to.

The kind Jesus offered her. The kind he showed her through Rolfe.

And maybe she would have found it sooner, if she'd been meek, so many years ago, but God in His grace had brought her right back to her destiny.

Rolfe pulled her closer, holding her to himself, deepening his kiss, as if he had exhaled something he'd been holding on to far too long. He broke away to meet her eyes. “I love you, Rosie Worth.”

“Enough to allow me to go to Belgium with you? To help you?”

“It's so dangerous,” he said, his face somber. “I couldn't ask—”

“You didn't. Maybe God did, I don't know. But I am trusting Him, wherever He takes me. And I'm hoping that's Belgium.”

“I should have told you what I was doing. I'm so sorry. I didn't really think you were in danger. Until Otto called me that day in France and told me that Gestapo in Berlin planned to send a man on the promotional tour with us. Otto thought they might suspect us, and I couldn't—I couldn't risk you.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I understand.”

He was searching her eyes, as if for confirmation, when a knock at the window jerked her away. She shrank back into the plush shadows of the seat as Rolfe rolled it down.

Fredrik Muller stood at the door. She saw the flash of his uniform, his pinched face. He peered into the car.

Her heart filled her throat. No. He could still turn the train around. Arrest everyone this time. Sophie and Hale, Rolfe…

Jack?

“Can I help you, Herr Muller?” Rolfe said, blocking his view of Rosie.

She pulled up the collar of her coat, holding her breath. Please let Rolfe's arrest have escaped Muller's attention.

“Your Grace. I saw you here. I thought you'd be on the train with your party.”

She breathed, just a little.

“Thank you, Fredric. We're just leaving.”

Rolfe got out, closed the door behind him.

Fredric bent down, peered into the window. Frowned. Looked over at the departing train. “Is Roxy Price in there with you?”

She heard Rolfe's silence, and her chest tightened further.

“No. That's…”

She opened her door, got out, her back to Fredric. Affected the London accent Rooney taught her. Prayed that Sophie adjusted the wig correctly. “Dahling. I'm cramped and tired. Please, can we dispense with these frivolities and return to the hotel? After all, we are on our”—she turned, holding her collar at the nape of her neck, hiding her face, adding allure to her eyes—“honeymoon.”

She glanced at Fredric. “I don't believe we've met. Her Serene Highness, Duchess of Beaumont.”

Fredric looked at her, frowning. Back at Rolfe. Who grinned at him, cheeky and with too much vigor.

He'd never be an actor. Daredevil, stuntman, however—yes, she saw all of those things in his grin.

“Congratulations,” Fredric said quietly as Rosie slipped back into the car.

Rolfe got in, closed his door. Hung his hands on the steering wheel, breathing just a little too hard.

But then he glanced at her. Raised a brow. “Duchess?”

“I think it might be my greatest role.” She swallowed. “If you'll have me.”

“Have you? Or have your heart?”

He swallowed as the question lay there, in the silence.

She found the truth, nothing of the stage in her answer. “How about both, Your Grace.”

His smile was slow and sweet and beautiful. He lifted her hand to kiss it. “Brilliantly played once again, m' lady.”

Rosie had forgotten what it felt like to be a duchess. Or maybe she'd never truly known it. After all, she'd only lived two short years at Rolfe's chateau before the Nazis invaded Belgium. Thankfully, Jack's sources alerted the stash of Jews in transit, and by the time the Gestapo rolled into the circle driveway, Rolfe had them re-identified and en route to Israel.

But Jack couldn't prevent the Van Hornes' deportation to Germany, where they lived in house arrest, under guard until the Germans finally deported them to Switzerland until the war officially ended.

They'd returned only six months ago, to find the château destroyed, the royal portraits and tapestries stolen, the china, chandeliers, and molding chipped and desecrated, the floors scuffed, the fireplace mantels singed.

But maybe being royalty had nothing to do with place. Or title. Maybe it birthed from something inside.

Something rich and miraculous.

“She's so beautiful, darling.” Rolfe leaned over the bassinette, the trauma of the past seven years seemingly erased from his face. His hair bore streaks of white, evidence of the bleak living conditions of their imprisonment. And the knowledge that he'd left his work unfinished.

Until, perhaps, now.

He reached in and pulled out the swaddled baby, cradled her close to his body.

Something about seeing Rolfe, his big aviator hands holding their child, his regal smile cast upon the cherub face of their three-month-old, could make Rosie weep in gratitude at their miracle.

A child born in her late years, conceived during war. Rosie prayed in earnest every day as she lay in bed, determined not to move.

Determined not to let it all vanish. Believing that, after all this time, hope wouldn't die.

The child squirmed in his arms, hiccoughed, frowning, working her tiny fists out of the blanket.

“I think she's hungry,” Rolfe said.

“Of course she is. She spends nearly every waking hour eating.” But Rosie took her into her lap, nestled her close.

“Can you check on the staff, see if Mr. Yates has brought in the tree—”

“Shh, Rosie. Everything is set. Yates and his staff have bedecked the halls just as you directed. The tree in the ballroom is up and sparkling, ready for tomorrow's gala, and he's erected another in the children's wing, even more glorious. The presents are tucked at its base and all the rooms prepared for the orphans.” Rolfe pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Relax. Everything is ready. I'm going to meet the train now. And Sophie and Hale will be bringing the children after dinner. Everything is going to be perfect.”

She caught his hand, delivered him a smile right before he closed the door.

Perfect. Maybe. But it didn't have to be perfect.

Because what she had was enough. More than enough.

Indeed, by her meekness, she'd inherited more than she could have asked or imagined.

Outside, falling snow drifted against a gray pallor, the glow from the windows upon the drifts. A fire flickered in her tile fireplace, sending warm, fragrant heat through the chamber.

She fell asleep with the child in her arms, rocking her, and woke to the voices in the foyer, lifting the two stories and tumbling down the hallway. She left the baby sleeping and changed into a short, double-breasted black dress with a high collar. She'd finally lost her baby inches, although she'd never regain her curves, not without a corset.

But those had died with the war, and she no longer worried about competing with the likes of Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, or the newcomers, Donna Reed, Lana Turner, and Ingrid Bergman.

In fact, with Rooney and Fletcher at the helm of Palace Studios, she merely watched it blossom as a movie-making machine, Spenser finally landing the lead roles he deserved.

Take that, Nazi Germany.

And her film—the original version of
Red Skies over Paris
—had hit America just in time for them to start to wake up to the Nazi atrocities, their takeover of Europe. She liked to think that, alongside her Academy Award for Best Picture, she'd helped awaken America to the threat of the resurging German empire.

But she never returned to America to claim her award. Or that life. Not when she had this rich, perfect, new one. She found the slew of letters from Irene waiting for her in Belgium, received and cared for by Sophie. Sammy had grown into a strapping sixteen-year-old, and Rosie could only thank God the war ended before he turned eighteen. They had a daughter, Dinah, age four, who sported Spenser's eyes, his dark curly hair.

She piled her long hair up on her head, pinned it in place, and wished she still had her pearls, or any jewelry to hang around her neck. But she'd given it away to Sophie long ago, and Sophie used it to ransom the lives of refugees smuggled out of the Third Reich.

After checking on the baby, she closed the door behind her and made her way down the hall. Yates and his footman had already begun to transfer the luggage to the rooms. The laughter, deep and thick, trickled up along the stairway and quickened her heartbeat.

She found Finn already ascending the stairs, searching for her. He watched her, grinning, as she descended. He looked so much a man, she could hardly recognize him. But that's what the military and four years flying for the Navy did to a boy. He wore his dark blond hair short, and age filled out his shoulders, his chest broad and strong.

“Sis!”

She tumbled into his arms, and he swung her around, set her down on the landing.

“I didn't think you'd come,” she said, catching his face in her hands.

“And miss my niece's christening?”

“But the newspaper—?”

“Oliver certainly hasn't forgotten how to run the
Chronicle
. In fact, he reminds me nearly every day of that. The man can't seem to remember he's retired. He's in his glory, back at the office.”

“How was your trip?” She looked past him, searching for her other guests.

“Mama went to sit down, Bennett with her. His eyesight is going, so it's better if they stay together.”

She leaned past him, glimpsed her mother in the sitting room. Lowered her voice. “How is she?”

He leaned close. “She calls me daily with a list of eligible women for me to court. I fear I won't see another bachelor year.”

Rosie reached up, patted his cheek. “You could do worse than listen to her.”

The door opened behind him, ushering in the chill, and Rolfe entered, shaking off the snow from his coat. He caught Rosie's eyes. “Look who's back from boarding school.”

A willowy twelve-year-old with luminous blue eyes and dark hair edged out from behind him, carrying a carpetbag, wearing a wool coat, a red cashmere scarf.

“Angelica.” Rosie drew her into her arms. “How was your first term?” When Rosie discovered just who the little girl at the orphanage truly was, she insisted Rolfe bring his stepdaughter home, at least during the summer months, and she'd spent the entire glorious month of August discovering a young lady who could capture her heart.

Angelica surrendered in her arms then stepped back and curtsied. “Very good, m' lady.”

Finn raised an eyebrow.

“We talked about this, darling. You don't have to be shy with me. Call me Rosie.”

She managed a shy smile. Nodded. But Rosie knew how overwhelming it felt to step into so much grace, so much love.

“The housekeeper has made up your room, Angelica.” Rolfe said. He turned to Rosie. “Truman and Lilly are getting settled in their rooms, said they'd be down for dinner.”

“Please don't start with your war stories at dinner, Rolfe. Save them for your cigars.”

“I am sure even Truman doesn't want to relive our aerial battles over a dinner of roast goose.” He allowed one of the footmen to relieve him of his coat, his hat.

She stepped close to him. She didn't want to ask, afraid of too much hope blooming in her voice.

“Coco is here. And she looks just like you.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I fear we may have another starlet on our hands.” He winked at her.

Lilly had left the door of communication open, allowing Rosie to write to her daughter, to reacquaint her with her heritage. Chilly at first, Coco's letters had warmed over the past year.

She caught Rolfe's hand, squeezed.

He nodded. “His train gets in tonight, after dinner.”

That felt like an eternity, but he'd kept his promise after all. That should be enough.

She entered the parlor, found her mother with her shoes off, soaking her feet. “I feel that I am still rumbling, my bones rattled,” Jinx said, making to rise.

“Don't get up, Mother,” Rosie said and leaned down to kiss her. She wore a long black travel dress and smelled of powder, the faint scent of her French toilette. Age pearled her hair, and she wore it captured back, at the nape of her neck in a netting, Rosie couldn't ignore the skin gathered around her jawline, the years of war and worrying for Finn that embedded her eyes and lined her mouth.

By the grace of God, Finn had lived through his campaigns in the Pacific.

Bennett wore his spectacles, now bottle thick, and smiled at her. He was still handsome in his nearly seventy years, despite his thinning hair, the wrinkles etched into his face. “You're looking radiant, Rosie,” he said and she couldn't help but love him all over again.

“Where is my grandchild?” Jinx asked.

“I'll fetch her,” Rosie said.

“What of her nanny?”

“I haven't employed one, Mother.” She glanced at Finn as she exited, hoping the baby was awake.

She was nearly at her chamber when the door across the hall opened. She stilled at the woman that appeared in the hallway. Eighteen and shapely, with amber blond hair cut short below her ears, just a little too much of the Wild West of her Montana home in her green eyes, she wore a pleated wool skirt, a long cashmere sweater, and as she paused, so did Rosie's heart. Crazy, wild tears burned her eyes.

“Hello, Coco.”

The girl drew in a breath, lifted her chin. “Aunt Rosie? Nice to finally meet you.” She found a smile, something tentative, and held out her hand.

Rosie caught it, let the warmth, the youth of it soak into her. The old ache revived, swept through her, and with everything inside her, she wanted to pull her daughter close, to tighten her arms around her, breathe her in, never let her go. But Coco didn't know her. Not really.

Not yet. She took a breath, and for a moment, took the stage and found the right voice. “Thank you for coming.”

Silence. Rosie's breath rose and fell in her chest as Coco considered her, too much in her eyes for Rosie to discern.

Please, let me in. Let me apologize. Don't run away
.

Then, “I wanted to meet my half sister,” Coco said quietly.

Yes. Okay. Rosie let out a breath and nodded. “She's in here.”

She opened the door to her room, heard the baby rustling in her blankets. Rosie went to the bassinet, fixed her swaddling, and pulled her into her arms.

Coco stepped close, ran a finger down her cheek. “She's beautiful.”

“She looks like you.” Rosie hadn't stayed long after Coco's birth, but she'd never forgotten the shape of her newborn's face or the smell of her skin.

“She does?” Coco glanced up, then, aware of her tone, glanced away.

“Yes,” Rosie said softly. “She has your hair, the way it stands up in tufts, and your big eyes. And she cries like you did. Loud and stubborn.”

“I'm not stubborn,” Coco said, but caught her lower lip between her teeth.

“I doubt that,” Rosie said, winking.

Coco grinned. Then she leaned over and kissed the baby on the forehead. “Grandma Jinx has talked of nothing but this baby for three months.”

“Let's introduce them.”

She brought the baby, now waking, downstairs. Jinx had replaced the pan of water with a knitted afghan. Rosie placed the child into her waiting arms.

She said nothing, just stared down at her, as if drinking her in. “She's so lovely, Rosie.” She leaned close, pressed her lips to the baby's forehead. “And she smells like you.”

Oh. Rosie sank down on the divan opposite her. “She does?”

“A mother never forgets,” Jinx says.

Rosie glanced at Coco. No, she doesn't.

She wanted to capture this moment on film. Everyone hitting their marks, their faces stilled for all time. Coco, a younger snapshot of herself, strong, courageous, ready to dive into life, and Angelica, believing in a family, in belonging. Finn, dashing and the embodiment of grace, a blessing to them all. Jinx, her expression a sort of awe, Bennett beside her, touching the bundle of his step-grandchild. Rolfe pressed his hand to Rosie's shoulder and squeezed.

Yes, maybe a girl didn't have to be a duchess to feel royal.

And then the door opened. Feet stamped into the foyer, and everyone looked up, toward the commotion.

And time stopped.

Rosie saw it just as she'd hoped it would be. Jack, tall and covered with diamond droplets of snow glistening in his blond hair. A slight layer of whiskers at his cheeks, the evidence of his overnight train ride from Brussels where he worked with the international community tracking down German war criminals. The war had aged him, especially after the German SS discovered his covert activities and he'd escaped from the country.

Thankfully, they never connected him to Rolfe, or perhaps they too would have suffered the fate of too many anti-Nazi conspirators.

Jack closed the door behind him, swiped the derby from his head, and crunched it in his hands. Then, with only a hint of accent, “Hello, Mother.”

Rosie held her breath, the secret coiled so tight inside her for the past six years she thought she might expire with the pain of it in her chest.

Jinx had turned white. Rosie got up to rescue the baby, but Rolfe beat her to it. Instead, she helped her mother to her feet.