was looking for. Somebody’s perfume, maybe, some lingering hint of the sender’s identity. There was nothing, the smell of paper, a blank canvas.
I sat back in my chair, drew a hairpin from the knot at the back of my head, inserted it carefully at the envelope’s seam and sliced.
A rare cloud passed before the sun as I reached inside the envelope and pulled the contents free. Or maybe it’s just a trick of memory, maybe I only imagined that my patio darkened a degree or two as I sat there in my garden chair and stared at the instructions written in block letters on the back of the sealed packet before me.
FOR DELIVERY D/D WINDSOR ONLY, it said.
And beneath that, underlined, CONFIDENTIAL.
I rose, changed into my Red Cross uniform, noted Veryl busy in the kitchen, and slipped silently out the door. Well, I was due at headquarters at ten o’clock, wasn’t I? You couldn’t let a little thing like a clandestine envelope keep you from your patriotic duty.
Did I mention it was Christmas Eve? I don’t remember. Well, you can’t blame me. For one thing, there was this business of the intruder on my patio. For another, it didn’t seem like Christmas, what with the sunshine and the palm trees and all that, the straw hats and the bare arms. Still, the approach of Christmas did not stay the Red Cross ladies from their appointed rounds, oh no. The headquarters had been festooned with wreaths and garlands and all those things—not genuine pine, mind you, because you couldn’t import such things in wartime, just the tinsel kind—to say nothing of Christmas cards and bows and apple-cheeked pictures of Father Christmas, of ringing bells and incessant carols and a general Christmas keening in the air, if you know what I mean, such that you could just about smell the sugar cookies and the balsam that didn’t exist. But parcels must still be packed, and bandages rolled, and socks knit, and besides all that, Miss Nancy Oakes herself was about to make her society debut, and if you weren’t inside the walls of the British Colonial Hotel this evening, celebrating the coming of age of the richest girl in the British Empire, give or take a few shillings—why, you weren’t anywhere.
For four whole hours, wrapping up the remaining presents for the poor children of Nassau—of which there were plenty, believe me—the ladies could talk of nothing else. What they would be wearing, what Miss Oakes would be wearing, did you hear the Count de Marigny had agreed to be her escort? It was true! She’d walked right up to him at the Prince George bar two weeks ago and asked him herself, a man almost twice her age, already divorced, a notorious playboy and sex maniac. Everybody knew the sordid circumstances of his marriage, how he’d seduced the wife of his friend, how she fell madly in love with him and went to Reno for a quickie divorce, how she couldn’t keep up with de Marigny’s boundless sexual appetites and left him a few years later. The ladies agreed that Sir Harry and Lady Oakes should really put a stop to it. But Miss Oakes was so very headstrong.
At two o’clock, the last toy truck was sealed up. Mrs. Gudewill was going to deliver them to Government House in her Buick. I tucked my hair back into my Red Cross cap and volunteered to help.
In the middle of the afternoon, struck on all sides by the glare of the Bahamian sun, Government House was a different creature, not nearly so formal. Smudged pink and a bit tired, like a confection left outside. The sun burned the tips of the palm trees and the windscreen of Mrs. Gudewill’s automobile as it trundled up the drive to the west entrance. She kept up a friendly chatter as we went. She simply had to confess, she didn’t think much of the duchess before all this, did I?
I said I hadn’t really thought much on the matter. Royalty was never an interest of mine.
“Oh. Well, as I said, I always thought—and you mustn’t ever repeat this, Mrs. Randolph—between the two of us, I always thought she was a bit of an adventuress.” Mrs. Gudewill giggled nervously. Like the Oakeses, she was Canadian, a wealthy widow. She had two daughters, and the younger, a beautiful redhead named Marie, was rumored to be engaged, or pretty nearly engaged, to marry none other than the Baron George af Trolle,