My eyes narrowed as something clicked into place. Destiny was a word women seldom embraced except in reference to romance. And I felt a flare of victorious pleasure. “Oh, well done, Emily Sloane. I almost believed you to be driven by pure patriotic gumption. Then I remembered the lipstick.” Before she could purse her guilty red lips, I accused, “Far be it from me to say a woman cannot be driven by patriotism alone, but you have a secondary motive, my friend. You’re hoping to rendezvous with my nephew.”
She puffed up with offense. “Insulting and outrageous!”
“I know you’ve been exchanging letters with him.” I felt smug and self-satisfied that my matchmaking had borne fruit. News of Victor’s wound must have pushed her into realizing her true feelings and—
“I am fond of your nephew,” she said, flushing from red to purple. “But—but if you must know—I’ve formed an attachment to a French officer.”
A French officer? I was at once shocked and deflated. “Do tell . . .”
“You know him. We took tea with his mother and sister before the war.”
I felt my eyes bug. “The Baron de LaGrange?”
Drat. The very tall bachelor baron was stiff competition for my nephew, indeed. Miss Sloane already had money, after all; what she didn’t have was Old World prestige, and a Frenchman with even a minor noble title could give her that.
“Lieutenant LaGrange is a wonderfully interesting man,” she said. “With interesting ideas about technology. He believes France must have an air corps and intends to join.”
Only Emily Sloane would find herself enraptured by a man who wrote to her of technology. Thus, I realized my efforts to match her with artistic Victor had always been doomed. Sourly, I complained, “Aeroplanes are diabolical inventions.”
“Which is why we need men heroic enough to fly them.” Emily’s decidedly stiff upper lip quivered on the word heroic.
Oh, dear. She was quite gone for the man. I supposed that was all the more reason for us to save the world before this war chewed up a whole generation of gallant young men like my nephew and her French baron.
* * *
—
“Patience, darling!” I said, pins between my teeth, trying to keep Billy from squirming away. “Don’t you want to look fetching onstage as Lafayette? I need to fix the button on your uniform.”
With the curtains of the Century Theatre set to rise, my son trembled with stage fright. “But I c-can’t do it.”
I put away the pins and took his shaking hands in mine. “It’s only a case of nerves, darling. It happens to everyone.”
Miss Sloane was trying to quiet the child performers, and if my son didn’t lead them onstage, The Children’s Revolution would be a catastrophe. Hell’s bells, what would my husband say to encourage him? Probably he’d regale our son with tales of meeting Butch Cassidy, or tell him how he once charged up San Juan Hill dodging a hail of bullets. Those were the sorts of things that inspired boys. I had nothing comparable to offer. I could only say something that would have helped me as a child. “If you go out onto that stage tonight, you’ll look back with pride to have been of real service at so young an age. And you’ll know you’re a person of consequence, no matter who your mother and father might be.”
Billy looked hopeful. “What if I forget my l-lines?”
“You won’t. That’s why we practiced. You’re going to be marvelous!”
Fortunately my youngest—freckled, precocious Ashley—all but vibrated in eagerness to perform his part . . . which helped his older brother muster his courage. The musicians took up their instruments as the cream of New York society settled in for a show, then Billy blew out a breath and stepped onstage. I watched, heart in my throat, only to realize Miss Sloane was watching me.
“It’s too late to tell me this was a mistake,” I whispered.
“I was going to tell you that I wish I’d had a mother like you.”
I leaned my shoulder against hers in fond appreciation—and for support when Billy spoke his first lines. Oh, he stuttered, but it was scarcely noticeable, and the audience loved every minute! I stood in the wings, basking . . . and that’s when I saw him.
“He’s here,” I whispered urgently, tugging Emily’s sleeve.
“Who?” she asked.
“The president!”
She gave a dubious little snort, because neither of us esteemed the bespectacled Woodrow Wilson and his feeble administration, but that wasn’t the president I meant. I pointed to the colonnaded balcony, where sat our fiery Theodore Roosevelt—the former president and the man who might soon be president again. My heartbeat quickened, knowing his presence at our play would be understood by everybody as a stamp of approval.