Moonlight Over Paris(10)
“There. Fixed.”
“Really? I tried that half a dozen times but I couldn’t get it to stay on.”
“You’d have probably got it on eventually. Using the stick helps.”
“Of course. That’s, ah, that’s terribly helpful. Thank you so much, Mister—”
“Howard. Sam Howard.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. Howard. I’m Helena Parr.” She wondered if she ought to offer her hand for him to shake, but remembered, just in time, that it was dirty. Of course his hands were dirty, too, so it really ought not to matter.
“Do you need any more help, d’you think?”
“No. You’ve done more than enough. I mustn’t keep you.” She winced at the sound of her voice, so prim and starchy compared to his unaffected friendliness.
“So long, then. Perhaps I’ll see you around town.” He smiled then, really smiled, and she saw that he had a dimple in one cheek and a sprinkling of freckles across his nose and cheekbones. She’d never known a grown man with freckles, or perhaps she simply had never noticed before.
“That would be very nice.” What was wrong with her? Very nice? Even as a green debutante of eighteen she’d been capable of conversation that was ten times as sparkling.
“It was good to meet you, Miss Parr. You’re sure you don’t need me to stay? Just to make sure you’re fine?”
“I’m sure. I mean, I’m sure that I’m fine. Really, there’s no need to stay. Thanks ever so much.”
“As long as you’re sure, then,” he said, and smiled at her once more. It made his eyes crinkle at the corners in an awfully endearing fashion, and it also made her notice, rather unwillingly, just how handsome he was. “Good-bye.”
He returned to his car, somehow managed to fit his long legs into its cockpit, or whatever one called the driving compartment of a motorcar, and drove off in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
By the time she got home, a half hour later, Helena was grimy, terribly thirsty, and suffering from a tremendous headache. Leaving her satchel in the studio, she hurried upstairs to the bathroom, praying there would be enough hot water left in the cistern for her to have a modest bath. She opened the hot water tap all the way, and went to look at herself in the cheval mirror while the tub filled.
It was even worse than she’d imagined. Her frock, fortunately an old one, was streaked with bicycle grease and dust from the road. Her face was nearly as dirty, and her hair, which now reached to her earlobes, was standing on end. She might have been one of the urchins from Fagin’s den of thieves. Her laugh echoed in the tiled room—no wonder Mr. Howard had been grinning at her. Between her disheveled appearance and her tongue-tied responses, she must have come across as decidedly strange.
The tap began to clamor and clank; that was the end of the hot water. She added a splash of cold, so she wouldn’t scald herself, and poured in some lemon bath essence. She would wash her hair, wash every inch of her person, and then she would swallow two tablets of aspirin and take a short nap. When she awoke, she would be perfectly rested and ready for a pleasant evening with her aunt and the Murphys—and then, maybe tomorrow, she would locate her wits and what little dignity she still possessed, go into town, and find Mr. Howard to thank him properly for his help.
Chapter 5
Helena was, indeed, much restored by the time they left. She wore the nicest of her dinner frocks, a simple shift in heavy, midnight blue silk charmeuse, its inky darkness brightened by scrolling silver embroidery at its neck and hem. Her hair was now long enough to look fashionably bobbed and not simply shorn, and apart from setting a slim diamanté clip in the locks by her left temple, she left it alone.
Agnes was wearing one of her glorious velvet devoré caftans, this one in a burnt orange color that ought to have looked dreadful but instead suited her admirably. In her hair, which had been hennaed to a shade that very nearly matched her frock, her aunt wore a peacock feather aigrette, its clip adorned by a diamond the size of a quail’s egg.
The H?tel du Cap, which occupied an enviable swath of seafront at the southeastern tip of the cape, was all but deserted in high summer, its wealthy and titled clientele preferring to holiday in milder climes. Monsieur Sella, the hotel’s proprietor, had been planning to shut the hotel for the summer, Sara had confided, but Gerald had persuaded him to keep it open.
Gerald and Sara were sitting with a single man, his back to them, when she and Agnes arrived. The table, which had been set for five, was at the edge of the dining room, its linen napery fluttering in the soft evening breeze.
Gerald was the first to notice them. “Sara, darling, they’re here!”
Just then, the man turned to face Helena and Agnes, and she was astonished to see that it was Sam Howard. It was such a surprise that she simply stood and gawped while Gerald made their introduction.
“Sam Howard, may I introduce you to the Princess Dimitri Pavlovich, and to her niece, the Lady Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr. Ladies, may I introduce you to Mr. Sam Howard, a correspondent with the European edition of the Chicago Tribune.”
“Good evening,” they chimed.
He was somehow even taller than she remembered, though not as young as she’d first thought, for there were deep-set laugh lines around his dark blue eyes when he smiled. His hair, in the lamplight, looked more brown than auburn, but his freckles were just as noticeable.