* * *
—
“Your uncle is impossible,” I said, fanning myself against both marital outrage and the summer heat of the outdoor café of the Ritz, where ladies in silk hats gossiped and bewhiskered gentlemen hid behind newspapers. “Absolutely impossible.”
My nephew Victor folded his farm-boy frame into one of the bistro chairs and chuckled indulgently. “I’ve long wondered how you put up with him.”
What choice did I have? I had, after all, married up. Even if my married life was an insufferable farce, I’d be expected to put up with everything short of divorce—even by my favorite nephew.
At the age of twenty-four, Victor had the kind of sensitive, artistic nature that meant the world was going to chew him up and spit him out if he didn’t have a worldly champion. That had always been me—I’d been the one to steer him to study architecture at the école des Beaux-Arts in Paris when his parents suggested a career in watercolors wasn’t the best path for a Harvard graduate.
I simply adored Victor and didn’t even count it amongst his faults that he worshipped my husband and tended to take his side. “You must realize Uncle Willie has always been like this. It’s family legend that he’d never come home crying with a black eye as a child. He’d just crawl off into a dark corner like a wounded animal.”
“Well, I’m happy to let your uncle Willie lick his wounds.” Especially since I needed to crawl off somewhere to lick my own. I’d stayed in Paris until my husband was out of surgery. Now that his condition was stable, I was eager to join my little cherubs at the beach, where I’d sent them with their governess. And I intended for Victor to come along.
When he balked, I wiped lipstick I’d left on his cheek when I kissed him in greeting and reminded him, “No one stays in Paris in August. And you’re looking so dapper in that gray flannel and boater that you’re sure to make a splash with my lady friend.”
Victor, who had been perusing the menu, lowered it to peer at me. “What lady friend?”
“The one who will be joining us shortly for tea.”
Victor groaned. “You’re matchmaking again, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.” Until I could do something about my own love life, I might as well meddle in someone else’s. A dreamy sort like Victor needed a practical wife to manage things—and I had just the girl in mind. “You’re going to adore Miss Sloane. A most charming creature, pretty in a natural way . . . a modern girl, just your age, here in France on business for her father.”
I’d met Miss Sloane at a charity gala in New York when some self-important socialite snubbed her. I’d taken her under my wing ever since. As the heiress to the W. & J. Sloane rugs and furniture fortune, Miss Sloane was often spurned in our circles for being New Money, but since my nephew was Old Money, it would all even out.
Still, Victor looked skeptical. “Why, pray tell, is this paragon still unmarried?”
“Because she was sensible enough to wait for you, darling!”
In truth, the Sloane family name had been tainted by scandal since the sensational divorce of Emily’s parents attracted the poisoned pen of Edith Wharton in mockery. In the divorce settlement, Emily’s mother had faced a choice between keeping her children or her lover.
She’d chosen the lover.
Poor Emily Sloane—deprived of a mother since the tender age of six—could scarcely have entertained the idea that true love was possible, but I felt confident Victor could change her mind.
Practical-minded girls adore sensitive, poetic young men, after all . . .
Now, through the crowd, Miss Sloane approached, and though her hat was two seasons old, she’d dressed sensibly for the heat in white chiffon. By way of greeting, she waved her newspaper and said, “The world has gone mad!”
Ignoring the bold headlines and the danger of war they portended, I said, “Miss Sloane, I don’t believe you’ve met my nephew.”
Having stood to greet her, he now tipped his hat. “Victor Chapman.”
“Emily Sloane,” she replied, displaying no apparent distress to be seen without a speck of rouge by an eligible bachelor.
Victor cleared his throat. “I hope you don’t mind my joining you for tea. My aunt Bea is—”
“Positively dying of thirst.” While my nephew held out Miss Sloane’s seat and summoned a waiter, I smiled. “Isn’t this a magnificent hotel? I adore the classical style. Which reminds me—did I mention that Victor is studying to be an architect?”