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“Don't I just know it,” Dallie replied. He climbed behind the wheel, slammed the door, and then leaned out the window to look at her. “If you want to retain possession of your luggage, honey, you'd better get inside real quick, because in exactly ten seconds, I'm slipping the old Riviera into gear and me and Mr. Veetawn won't be anything to you but a distant memory.”
She limped around the back of the car to the passenger door on the other side, tears struggling to reach the surface. She felt humiliated, frightened, and—worst of all— helpless. A hairpin slid down the back of her neck and fell into the dirt.
Unfortunately, her discomfiture was just beginning. Hoopskirts, she quickly discovered, had not been designed to fit into a modern automobile. Refusing to look at either of her rescuers to see how they were reacting to her difficulties, she finally eased onto the seat backside first and then gathered the unwieldy volume of material into her lap as best she could.
Dallie freed the gearshift from a spillover of crinolines. “You always dress for comfort like this?”
She glared at him, opening her mouth to deliver one of her famous snappy rejoinders only to discover that nothing sprang to mind. They rode for some time in silence while she stared doggedly ahead, her eyes barely making it over the top of her mountain of skirts, the stays in the bodice digging into her waist. As grateful as she was to be off her feet, her position made the constriction of the corset even more unbearable. She tried to take a deep breath, but her breasts rose so alarmingly that she settled for shallow breaths instead. One sneeze, she realized, and she was a centerfold.
“I'm Dallas Beaudine,” the man behind the wheel announced. “Folks call me Dallie. That's Skeet Cooper in the back.”
“Francesca Day,” she replied, permitting her voice to thaw ever so slightly. She had to remember that Americans were notoriously informal. What was considered boorish on the part of an Englishman was regarded as normal behavior in the States. Besides, she couldn't resist bringing this gorgeous country bumpkin at least partway to his knees. This was something she was good at, something that couldn't possibly go wrong on this day when everything else had fallen apart. “I'm grateful to you for rescuing me,” she said, smiling at him over the top of her skirts. “I'm afraid I've had an absolutely beastly few days.”
“You mind telling us about it?” Dallie inquired. “Skeet and I've been traveling a lot of miles lately, and we're getting tired of each other's conversation.”
“Well, it's all quite ridiculous, really. Miranda Gwynwyck, this perfectly odious woman—the brewery family, you know—persuaded me to leave London and accept a part in a film being shot at the Wentworth plantation.”
Skeet's head popped up just behind her left shoulder, and his eyes were alive with curiosity. “You a movie star?” he inquired. “There's something about you that's been lookin’ familiar to me, but I can't quite place it.”
“Not actually.” She thought about mentioning Vivien Leigh to him and then decided not to bother.
“I got it!” Skeet exclaimed. “I knew I'd seen you before. Dallie, you'll never guess who this is.”
Francesca looked back at him warily.
“This here's ‘Bereft Francesca’!” Skeet declared with a hoot of laughter. “I knew I recognized her. You remember, Dallie. The one goin’ out with all those movie stars.”
“No kidding,” Dallie said.
“How on earth—” Francesca began, but Skeet interrupted her.
“Say, I was real sorry to hear about your mama and that taxicab.”
Francesca stared at him speechlessly.
“Skeet's a fan of the tabloids,” Dallie explained. “I don't much like them myself, but they do make you think about the power of mass communications. When I was a kid, we used to have this old blue geography book, and the first chapter was called ‘Our Shrinking World.’ That just about says it, doesn't it? Did you have geography books like that in England?”
“I—I don't think so,” she replied weakly. A moment of silence passed and she had the horrifying feeling that they might be waiting for her to supply the details of Chloe's death. Even the thought of sharing something so intimate with strangers appalled her, so she quickly returned to the subject at hand as if she'd never been interrupted. “I flew halfway across the world, spent an absolutely miserable night in the most horrible accommodations you could imagine, and was forced to wear this absolutely hideous dress. Then I discovered that the picture had been misrepresented to me.”
“Porno flick?” Dallie inquired.
“Certainly not!” she exclaimed. Didn't these rural Americans take even the briefest moment to examine a thought before they passed it on to their mouths? “Actually, it was one of those horrid films about”—she felt ill even saying the word—“vampires.”
“No kidding!” Skeet's admiration was evident. “Do you know Vincent Price?”
Francesca pressed her eyes closed for a moment and then reopened them. “I haven't had the pleasure.”
Skeet tapped Dallie on the shoulder. “Remember old Vincent when he used to be on ‘Hollywood Squares’? Sometimes his wife was on with him. What's her name? She's one of those fancy English actresses, too. Maybe Francie knows her.”
“Francesca, “ she snapped. “I detest being called anything else.”
Skeet sank back into the seat and she realized she had offended him, but she didn't care. Her name was her name, and no one had the right to alter it, especially not today when her hold on the world seemed so precarious.
“So, what are your plans now?” Dallie asked.
“To return to London as soon as possible.” She thought of Miranda Gwynwyck, of Nicky, of the impossibility of continuing as she was. “And then I'm getting married.” Without realizing it, she had made her decision, made it because she could see no alternative. After what she had endured during the past twenty-four hours, being married to a wealthy brewer no longer seemed like such a terrible fate. But now that the words had been spoken, she felt depressed instead of relieved. Another hairpin fell out; this one tumbled down her front and stuck in a ruffle. She distracted herself from her glum thoughts by asking Skeet for her cosmetic case. He passed it forward without a word. She pushed it deep into the folds of her skirt and flipped open the lid.
“My God...” She almost wept when she saw her face. Her heavy eye makeup looked grotesque in natural light, she had eaten off her lipstick, her hair was falling every which way, and she was dirty! Never in all her twenty-one years had she primped in front of a man other than her hairdresser, but she had to get herself back, the person she recognized!
