The Duke’s past had as much hold over him as Wallis’s and Amelia’s did over them.
Amelia continued through the house and out onto the back terrace. Wallis lounged in one of the wicker chairs, reading a Paris newspaper and shielded from the sun by curtains and a tall, rounded colonnade. It was hot but not miserably so and without the humidity that used to make Baltimore summers unbearable.
“The French are embarrassing themselves by fawning all over the Fat Scottish Cook. The way they’re carrying on, you’d think no one had ever worn white before.” Wallis handed Amelia the newspaper and motioned to a nearby wicker chair. Amelia looked at the pictures of the King and Queen at the Élysée Palace with President Lebrun. The Queen, dressed in white for mourning for her recently deceased mother, appeared chic in her long dress and coat. The article was in raptures over her and her fashionable new wardrobe.
“Imagine her getting all the attention while I’m banished here.” Wallis stroked Pookie, who lay draped over her lap.
“It isn’t too shabby a place for a banishment.” The bright blue Mediterranean sparkled in the distance and Amelia could hear the waves crashing against the cliffs and the small bathing area at the end of the long walk. Wallis wore her Nile-green swimsuit with a white and red polka-dotted wrap skirt and a matching hair scarf.
“It isn’t Buckingham Palace either. Oh, I can dress it up to the nines and everyone who stomps through here curtseys and calls me Your Royal Highness, but I’m not a queen.”
“Do you want to be one?”
“Of course not, but after the support I’ve given the French fashion industry, you’d think they’d fete me with a state visit. Oh, they put me on the best-dressed lists and flatter me when they want my business, but I’ll never be more than an ex-king’s wife.” Wallis lowered her white-rimmed sunglasses over her eyes and continued to pet Pookie. A quiet moment passed with the seagulls calling to one another from the beach before Wallis spoke again. “Sometimes, I wish Herr Hitler would start a war and bomb Britain into oblivion. I’d love to see the fat queen and her imbecile husband knocked off their gilded thrones the way they pushed David off of his, the two of them forced to wander in ignominious exile. If I thought there was some way I could make it happen, I’d do it.”
“You don’t really mean that. War would be awful.”
“I know, I’m simply tired of people like Sir Walter telling us where we can and cannot go and kicking around Europe like the rest of the useless aristocrats. You can’t throw a stone without hitting one.” Wallis settled back against the chaise and stared at the ocean. “I really thought I was someone when David first noticed me. I knew what I was doing was wrong, especially to Ernest, and Aunt Bessie told me enough times, but after years of being nobody, I had respect, influential friends, everything it meant to be the woman behind the King. Then it all went to hell in a handbasket.” A seagull glided over the long lawn leading down to the ocean before flying out to sea. “Enough bellyaching. What’s on the agenda for today?”
Amelia went over the daily business, most of which involved the soon-to-be-arriving furniture from Wallis’s last excursion to the Nice antique shops. “I also have news about my American legal case. The attorneys have agreed for me to give evidence via letter instead of traveling to America.”
“That is good news. Better news would be you not being involved at all.”
Amelia stiffened at the snarky tone Wallis usually reserved for the Duke when she chipped at him about the abdication. It ruffled Amelia’s feathers but she’d mastered rule number five, to never look churlish, and held her bright smile. “Mr. Carlton is hopeful they’ll drop me from the suit once they see there’s nothing to get from me.”
“Good.” She set Pookie on the ground and he trotted into the house. “Speaking of money, how’d you like to do some work for Syrie Maugham while David and I are on our cruise? Her regular secretary is off nursing a sick mother and since you won’t have much else to do while we’re gone, you can assist her and make a little something on the side. Katherine Rogers needs you too.”
“I’d be glad to help them.” Both the Maughams and the Rogerses lived nearby so she wouldn’t have to travel far. She could use the extra money, experience, and connections and it meant Wallis was keeping good on her promise to help her.
Wallis swung her feet down onto the marble. “Then I’ll phone them this afternoon.”
Amelia spent the rest of the summer dividing her time among Wallis, Syrie Maugham, and Katherine Rogers. Amelia assisted Syrie with her husband’s fan mail and book schedules and helped Katherine organize the aid station she and her husband ran for poor farmers. The women had very different styles, with Syrie and Katherine far more relaxed than Wallis, but they both appreciated the order Amelia brought to their endeavors and were generous with payments and tips at the end of Amelia’s service. Being at the Maughams’ villa also gave Amelia the chance to use the many passages from Mr. Maugham’s works that she’d memorized for Wallis.
The summer wasn’t all work and flattering writers’ egos. There were walks along the Saint-Tropez seaside, visits to the Monte Carlo casinos, and free afternoons swimming in the pool or the sea. During a shopping trip in Nice, Amelia found an antique silver tie tack with bonne chance engraved on it. She sent it to Robert to wish him luck during his travel with Ambassador Bullitt to Italy to join Prime Minister Chamberlain in trying to woo Il Duce away from Herr Hitler. She missed his regular letters but hoped the statesmen were successful in weakening Germany’s growing influence. Ending the threat of war would mean ending the threat to her time in Europe with Wallis and Robert and her new life.
Toward the end of summer, when most of the trunks had been sent ahead to Boulevard Suchet and their tickets on the Blue Train to Paris were booked, they spent an afternoon aboard the Rogerses’ yacht Gulzar. Amelia sat in the back soaking in the late afternoon sun, deepening the tan that’d browned her Paris pallor. The subtle vibration from the schooner’s motor radiated through her and the sea spray sprinkled her exposed arms and legs and dotted her sunglasses. At midship, the Rogerses lounged with their guests beneath a large canopy. The Duke stood behind the bar mixing the Wallis cocktail, going through generous amounts of Cointreau, peppermint, gin, soda, and lemon juice while jaunty French tunes drifted out of the wireless. Across the water, the white walls of Château de la Croë were just visible above the cliff.
Wallis stepped out of the shade of the awning and the wind caught the hem of her blue and green agate-patterned dress. She staggered with the gentle roll of the yacht and grasped the back railing to steady herself as she came to sit in the deck chair beside Amelia. “Glorious day, isn’t it?”
“I hate to leave it.” Amelia’s tan would fade in Paris, and the days were already getting shorter, but she was eager to see Robert again.
“Me too, but I have something to make your Paris return a little sweeter.” She slid a letter out of her dress pocket and handed it to Amelia.
Amelia held the letter tight to keep it from blowing away. It was from her American lawyer but addressed to Wallis. She had no idea why he was writing to her or how she’d failed to see it in the post. She opened and read it, unable to believe it. “You paid my legal debts!”
“We negotiated down the bill in return for payment in full. In the future, if anything else arises, you’ll speak with Lord Jowitt, the Duke’s solicitor. He’s already on retainer and won’t cost you a penny.”
“This is too much. I can’t accept it. I’ll pay you back, I will.”
“Don’t even think about it. It’s a gift. I want to help you.” Wallis clasped Amelia’s hand, forgetting their pact to be formal in front of others. “You’ve been like a daughter to me, someone to share my strange and hard-won knowledge with, and you’ve used it well. I’m so pleased with how confident and capable you’ve become.” Wallis beamed at her with the same pride she’d shown at Amelia’s Oldfields graduation when she’d welcomed her as a fellow alumnus. It meant more to Amelia than the paid debts. “I can’t protect you from heartache or loneliness but I can help give you financial security and perhaps keep you from making a mess of your life the way I did.”
“It all turned out in the end.”
“It could have been better, but I was so chummy with uncertainty, I almost preferred it to security, the thrill of it, at least, and I practically ran after it. I don’t want you to develop the same bad habit. You’re too good for that and the likes of me, and I adore you more than you realize.”
Amelia threw her arms around Wallis, saying with her embrace what she couldn’t put into words. Wallis didn’t jerk away, but wrapped her thin arms around Amelia and rubbed her back the way Aunt Bessie used to do. Amelia held on tight to her cousin, inhaling the fruity notes of her Teo Cabanel perfume, touched to know how much she really meant to Wallis. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for everything you’ve done for me.”
Wallis sat back and held Amelia at arm’s length, her blue eyes sparkling with the same unshed tears stinging Amelia’s. “You can start by finding someone to replace Mr. Schafranek. Hiring a new chauffeur will give you practice for when you have employees of your own one day.”
“I’ll hire the best one I can find.”
“I know you will.”
“Darling, you have to hear what Herr Goering said about Queen Elizabeth. You’ll die of laughter,” the Duke called to Wallis.
“I’m coming.” Wallis patted Amelia’s arms then let go, the intimacy gone but not the joy softening her face. She staggered
back to the shade, leaving Amelia to dream about a future she couldn’t have imagined a year and a half ago. The long shadow
of Jackson’s crimes receded into the background, finally a part of her past instead of a weight on her present and future.
It was more than she could’ve ever asked for, and none of it would’ve been possible without Wallis.
Chapter Fourteen
Paris, November 1938
“The German diplomat that Polish man shot died this morning,” Robert said from across the Café Capucines table.
Amelia pushed her half-finished croissant away, her appetite gone. “I met Herr vom Rath at a party for Herr von Ribbentrop last year. He was nice and not much older than us.”
“Everyone at the Chancery is on edge because of it. We wonder if one of us might be next.”
