I'll See You in Paris by Michelle Gable Read Free Book Online

sporting a wide straw hat, soiled trousers, and no shirt. He waved madly at his visitors.
    â€œGet away!” the person yelled. Pru quickly ascertained he wasn’t waving but brandishing a revolver. “Get away or I’ll shoot you between the eyes! I’ve done it before!”
    â€œI thought she lived alone?” Pru said, heart pounding.
    Then she realized. This wasn’t a man. The screaming, ranting figure was a woman.
    â€œOh my God.”
    â€œAh yes,” the attach é said with a sneaky smile. “We have arrived. Welcome to the Grange.”

 
    Seven
    THE GEORGE & DRAGON
    BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
    OCTOBER 2001
    Â 
    Over the years, rumors placed the Duchess in London and Rome and Paris. A few spotted her at the Hotel Splendide in Cannes. Renowned priest Abb é Mugnier reported she was not traveling but instead holed up in a dilapidated estate in Chacombe-at-Banbury, an Oxfordshire hamlet.
    According to reports, the priest visited his old friend once a year, on Christmas Day. If he tried more often, Gladys shooed him away with warning shots or a vicious pack of snapping geese. Sometimes she leaned out a window and dumped a bucket of water on his head.
    The world was skeptical of Mugnier’s reports from the Grange but the doubting always struck this writer as bizarre. Here was a religious man, a fellow known as “le confesseur des duchesses,” the confessor of duchesses. Surely he would know of which he spoke. When I tracked down his fifty-seven cahiers de moleskine at the Dioc è se de Paris, I found the proof I sought.
    â€”J. Casper Augustine Seton,
    The Missing Duchess: A Biography
    â€œIt wasn’t the most auspicious welcome,” Gus said, draining the last of his cider. “To be greeted by century-old nude breasts. And a gun.”
    Annie tried not to blush.
    Half of her wanted to chastise this dirty old man for mentioning boobs while the other half was sniggling like a thirteen-year-old boy. She felt at times old-fashioned and hopelessly juvenile, as if she could’ve been born in 1879 or 1979. Maybe that’s what happened when you grew up on a farm and were raised by someone like Laurel, who was about as nonworldly as a person could get. It was a marvel Eric found anything in common with her at all.
    â€œHave I offended you?” Gus asked. “My apologies. I can be a real duffer. Comes with age. Though I don’t know what my excuse was before.”
    As he fidgeted, Annie thought she could hear his bones creak.
    â€œNot offended!” she chirped. “And frankly I’d be more put off by the gun. So that was her, I presume? The duchess? No offense, but how scary could she have been? She was, what, ninety years old by the time Pru answered the newspaper ad?”
    â€œNinety-one. Alas, my dear, we have not established the identity of the screaming harpy. It was the woman rumored to be the duchess, but whether she actually was the duchess remains to be seen.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘remains to be seen’? You’ve read the book, right?”
    â€œYes. It’s been a while, but I’ve read it.”
    â€œLook, I know we’re playing this coy game. No spoilers and all that. But let’s be honest, we already know it’s the duchess.”
    She turned the book to face Gus.
    â€œRead this part,” she said and ran her finger below the words. “‘Amongst the writings found.’ Start there.”
    Amongst the writings found in Abbé Mugnier’s journals were detailed descriptions of his visits to the Grange. In his diaries he also had a receipt from the Royal Oak, a pub not far from the Grange itself.
    Oddly, few believed the claims of l’abbé, when he was alive and especially after he died. The man was probably a pettifogger, they decided, mooching off the privileged and prestigious as he did.
    Plus, what would the Duchess of Marlborough, this most illustrious