Part 13 (2/2)

Yasmin would marry a wealthier, more t.i.tled man and her wedding would be even more important in European royal society. And now neither Ursula nor Yasmin had to worry about Kevin doing or saying anything that might interfere with that wedding.

If it's an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good, maybe the Gilberti women considered Kevin's death and the archduke's illness to be a fortunate turn of events.

But I hoped they didn't.

Though I have ama.s.sed enough air miles for an upgrade on the first commercial trip to the moon thanks to work-related travel, I am still fascinated by the off-kilter view from an airplane window as cars, buildings, cities, lakes, and even mountain ranges shrink to the size of toys like the quick reverse zoom of a telephoto lens. Harry gave me the window seat on our flight from Dulles to Heathrow on Sat.u.r.day night; he travels first cla.s.s, a sublime luxury. We took off just after ten p.m., and before long, dusky shapes melted into deeper shadows until there were only constellations of bronze and silver lights, ghost images of cities and towns and dark-edged coastlines below. After a while even those faint winking lights vanished into the depthless void of a moonless night as we turned away from Nova Scotia and headed over the North Atlantic.

Harry ordered champagne for both of us without asking me because that's the way he is. If my handsome white-haired stepfather, a traditional Southern gentleman with a moonlight-and-magnolia sense of chivalry, could wrap his arms around the women in his life-my mother, my half sister, Lexie, and me-and keep the wicked world at bay, he would do it.

He touched his champagne gla.s.s against mine. ”You're welcome to come to Lingfield on Monday to watch the Winter Derby with me, kitten. The horses run on artificial turf. It ought to be a good race. You'd meet some nice people. What do you say?”

I smiled. ”Thanks, Harry, but if you don't mind, I'd prefer to stay in London. See some friends, revisit old haunts.”

Though Harry knew about Kevin's death, he didn't know I'd been at the monastery that day, nor did he know anything about the book, Asquith's, or my visit to Monticello yesterday. I also hadn't told him that while we were waiting at the gate at Dulles I'd received a disturbing e-mail from Zara Remington, the curator at the Chelsea Physic Garden. According to the time stamp, she'd written me at two a.m. London time.

I would very much like to meet you when you're in London. Though the garden is closed at this time of year, by exception we're open tomorrow, Sunday, for a sale of lilies in antic.i.p.ation of Easter. The sale will be finished by half three, so I can be available to see you at 4 pm. I hope this suits your schedule, but in light of the information you shared with me in your e-mail as well as further correspondence with Ryan Velis, I believe time is of the essence. I shan't let anyone know you are coming and would advise you to be similarly circ.u.mspect. Please let me know if these arrangements suit you.

I'd written her right back and said I'd see her Sunday at four and didn't plan to share that information with anyone. That included Harry. If he found out any of this, he'd insist on going with me.

”Whatever you want to do, sweetheart,” he said to me now. ”I just want you to have a good time.”

”It's London. I'll have a wonderful time.”

We got a few restless hours of sleep before they turned on the cabin lights and the flight attendant began serving breakfast. Harry had booked us at the Connaught-more luxury-and someone from the hotel met our flight at Heathrow, shepherding us to a waiting black Bentley that zipped along the motorway, eventually winding its way onto the quiet streets of Mayfair on a chilly, gray Sunday morning.

”I forgot to pack gloves. It's a lot colder than it was at home,” I said to Harry as the chauffeur pulled into Carlos Place and stopped at the gla.s.s-fronted hotel entrance. A doorman in a black top hat and a smart camel overcoat opened the car door.

”Welcome to the Connaught, Mr. Wyatt, Ms. Medina.”

Another doorman held the front door as Harry and I walked into the paneled lobby, where a fire burned in a small gas fireplace and the air smelled faintly of the fragrant pink and magenta roses that spilled out of a crystal vase next to the spiral staircase. A grandfather clock chimed eleven as a woman in a navy suit came toward us, holding a clipboard.

She, too, welcomed us to the Connaught in a faint Eastern European accent that I couldn't identify. ”Your rooms are ready and your registration has been taken care of. You're on the fourth floor, and James, your butler, is waiting for you. He can bring you coffee or tea, if you wish, and he would be happy to unpack your bags, which are already in your room.” She led us over to an elevator across from the registration desk.

When Nick and I lived in London, we occasionally stopped into the Connaught for drinks, and once I came to afternoon tea with a couple of girlfriends. But I'd never stayed in this small jewel of a hotel, and I already felt as though we were guests at a friend's posh country home. Our rooms, furnished in understated British opulence, overlooked Carlos Place and a shallow infinity pool in which two bare-branched London plane trees grew.

”That fountain is called Silence,” James said as we stood at the window in Harry's room after he'd brought coffee for Harry, English breakfast tea for me, and a basket of warm scones, jam, and clotted cream on a heavy silver tray. ”Every fifteen minutes a mist comes up from the base of the trees and then vanishes after fifteen seconds. At night when it's lighted, it's quite magical. But those plane trees . . .” He chuckled and shook his head. ”A right mess when they're in bloom. Just ask the doormen.”

James left after a.s.suring us he was available to indulge our every whim and we a.s.sured him we could unpack our own bags.

”What are your plans, kitten?” Harry set his empty coffee cup on the tray and pulled a credit card from his wallet, holding it out to me. ”Why don't you go shopping? Early birthday present from your mother and me.”

I closed his hand around the card. ”The trip is an early birthday present and Christmas and every other holiday. Thanks, Harry. I'm just going to walk, see the sights.”

He grinned. ”You certainly didn't inherit your mother's shopping gene. You going to get together with anyone?”

”I called Perry DiNardo, my old boss from IPS, before I left home. He's in Istanbul but he's flying back to London tonight. We're going to meet up for lunch tomorrow. What about you? What are you going to do?”

”I might rest my eyes,” he said. ”Just a quick nap. Then I'm having lunch with an old friend in Covent Garden. He used to come out to Middleburg to hunt when he was with the British emba.s.sy in the sixties . . . you're welcome to join us, you know.”

I kissed him. ”Thanks, but if I'm not there you can talk about horses and hounds and hunting to your hearts' content. I can entertain myself . . . I'll probably just take a nostalgia tour of all the old special places.”

”If that's what you want, then. Have fun.” Harry knows when I'm lying, but he gave me the look that said he'd stay out of my business and respect my privacy. ”What about tonight? Will you be free for dinner? I could ask James to make a reservation at the seafood place down the block. Drinks downstairs first in the Coburg Bar. What do you say?”

”That would be perfect, but if you mean Scott's, it might already be booked for this evening. That restaurant is always crowded.”

Harry flashed a roguish smile. ”Sweetheart, you're staying at the Connaught. If I asked James to arrange it, he'd find a way for us to have tea at Buckingham Palace.”

I laughed. ”Of course he would. What was I thinking?”

After living in London for more than a dozen years, I believe I'm ent.i.tled to call it home, or at least, I still feel I belong here. The doorman held the door for me and tipped his hat as I stepped outside, asking if I needed a cab or a map or directions to a particular museum or shop. I thanked him and told him I knew my way around, setting off down Mount Street and through Mayfair with its elegant banded buildings of red brick and white stone, luxury shops, quiet mews, and discreet clubs and businesses like a kid who has been turned loose in the toy store.

Let me just get it out of the way that I believe, as Samuel Johnson did, if you are tired of London, you are tired of life. As an adopted daughter of the South-Harry's grandfather and great-uncles fought with Lee and Stonewall-I grew to love Southern culture and its tradition-steeped ways, which is why I probably slipped into life in London so easily. They had a lot in common. I love this city's vibrancy and rich history, the green parks and flower-filled gardens, royal palaces and picturesque squares, the Globe Theatre, the erudition of the Times, the culture of Radio 4, dry British wit and understated humor, the pageantry of Trooping the Colour, strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, Christmas lights that turn the city into a fairyland, and bonfires on Guy Fawkes Day. I find comfort in putting the kettle on for a cup of tea, cab drivers and shopkeepers who call me ”love,” Big Ben chiming the hour, and I tear up when I hear a choir singing ”I Vow to Thee, My Country” in Royal Albert Hall on Remembrance Day.

David Hockney-the modern British painter who decamped to California-says there's nothing wrong with photographers as long as you realize we see the world through one eye, or as he says, we're a bunch of momentarily paralyzed Cyclops. To me that implies that we miss a lot, or worse, we see the world flattened out in two dimensions, not fully formed in three. London, and Britain, for that matter, have their share of warts, which I'm not blind to-an ingrained cla.s.s structure that can be stultifying, free socialized medicine that is worth what you pay for it, overly boiled vegetables, and more descriptive ways to describe rain and gray weather than any other country on the planet. I will never understand why the British celebrate so many days with the limp, uninspired t.i.tle of bank holiday, and am still baffled by the illogical grammar of collective nouns and matching verbs so that it's correct to say, ”England are winning the match.”

I know they return the favor with their aversion to our loud go-big-or-go-home swagger when we travel, our gun-toting culture and accompanying violence, which scares them, the staggering cost of our health-care system, our mindless fascination with people who are famous for no logical reason, and our belief that we are at the epicenter of world politics yet most of us probably couldn't correctly fill in a map identifying the countries of the United Kingdom if our life depended on it.

But as I walked down the Sunday-quiet streets, London felt as familiar and welcoming as catching up with an old and well-loved friend. I took the side streets until I reached New Bond Street, where I lingered in front of Asquith's window and wondered if Bram had come to any conclusions about the value of Kevin's copy of Adam in Eden. At Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly I bought tea for Grace and my landlady from a gentleman in a morning coat who called me ”madam” and afterward spent half an hour roaming the floors of Hatchards bookstore, running my hand over the dust jackets of books I hadn't seen in any bookstore at home, like a lover who has been told it's the end of the affair. A pub lunch at the crowded, noisy King's Head-a pot of tea to warm my hands and then fish and chips with a pint of Fuller's-while a television blared the Chelsea versus Spurs match. When I left, Chelsea were winning.

Eventually I gave in to the sharp, cold sting of English weather and bought a pair of forest-green knit gloves and a matching cloche at a shop on Regent Street after I walked down to the outdoor market at St. James's Church, where I would have found something offbeat and cheaper, until I realized it was Sunday so it was closed. By then it was time to take the Underground to Sloane Square and make my way to my meeting with Zara Remington, about a twenty-minute walk through the quiet residential streets of Chelsea. The wind had picked up again, buffeting me and whipping the last dry autumn leaves around my feet like small cyclones. I turned up the collar of my coat, glad for the hat and gloves.

Zara Remington hadn't given me any instructions other than to show up at the garden at four o'clock, so I first tried the visitors' entrance, a locked wrought-iron gate in the middle of an ancient brick wall on Swan Walk. No one was at the kiosk inside the garden, so I walked around the corner to Royal Hospital Road and rang the bell at the staff entrance.

A slender dark-eyed man opened the door. Early thirties, maybe, with curly brown hair that ringed his face, giving him an innocent, angelic look. Though he was staring directly at me, one eye was focused at something off to my right. ”I'm sorry, miss, the garden's closed. I'm afraid the Easter lily sale has finished.”

”I know,” I said. ”I have a four o'clock appointment with Ms. Remington.”

”Today?” He looked at me with interest. ”And you are-?”

”Sophie Medina.”

”How do you do? Will Tennant. Why don't you come in and I'll let her know you're here?” Will Tennant opened the door wider and called over his shoulder, ”Zara, Sophie Medina is here to see you.”

I stepped into a long, narrow anteroom dominated by a wall map of the Chelsea Physic Garden in the 1800s. Below it a wooden table held brochures and information sheets in neat piles. In a corner, the shade was pulled down at an information window across from a door with a STAFF ONLY sign.

A woman whose light brown hair was silvered with gray and done up in a windblown bun walked through a door at the far end of the hall. She wore Wellingtons and a quilted jacket over a tweed blazer and jeans as though she'd just come in from walking her spaniel across the moor. Her clothes smelled of the fresh chill of outdoors and Easter lilies, but more to the point, she didn't look happy to see me.

”Thank you, Will,” she said, her tone an unmistakable dismissal. He nodded, giving me another curious c.o.c.keyed look before he left through the door she had just used. Zara Remington turned to me and added in a brisk voice, ”We're just finis.h.i.+ng up with the lily sale in the gift shop. I need a moment with Will, but if you'd care to have a look around the garden, I'll join you shortly.”

”Thank you.”

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