'Well, yes… no. You see, Nicky, my fiance-'
'Never mind.' He pulled off his cap by the brim and shoved his hand through his hair. 'I'll drop you
off at the airport. Only you have to promise that you won't talk on the way.'
She bristled, but before she had time to reply, he jerked his thumb toward the passenger door. 'Hop in. Skeet wanted to stretch his legs, so we'll pick him up down the road.'
She had to use the toilet before she went anywhere, and she would die if she didn't change her clothes.
'I need a few minutes,' she said. 'I'm sure you won't mind waiting.' Since she wasn't sure of any such thing, she turned the full force of her charm on him-green cat's eyes, soft mouth, a small, helpless hand on his arm.
The hand was a mistake. He looked down at it as if she'd put a snake there. 'I got to tell you, Francie-there's something about the way you go about doing things that pretty much rubs me the wrong way.'
She snatched away her hand. 'Don't call me that! My name is Francesca. And don't imagine I'm exactly enamored with you, either.'
'I don't imagine you're exactly enamored with anybody except yourself.' He pulled a piece of bubble gum from his shirt pocket. 'And Mr. Vee-tawn, of course.'
She gave him her most withering glare, went to the back door of the car, and pulled it open to extract her suitcase, because absolutely nothing-not abysmal poverty, Miranda's betrayal, or Dallie Beaudine's insolence-was going to make her stay in her torturous pink outfit a moment longer.
He slowly unwrapped his piece of bubble gum as he watched her struggling with the suitcase. 'If you
turn it on its side there, Francie, I think it'll be easier to get out.'
She clamped her teeth together to keep from calling him every vile name in her vocabulary and jerked
on the suitcase, putting a long scratch in the leather as it banged into the door handle. I'll kill him, she thought, dragging the suitcase toward a rusted blue and white rest room sign. I'll kill him and then I'll stomp on his corpse. Grasping a chipped white porcelain knob that hung loose from its plate, she pushed on the door, but it refused to budge. She tried two more times before it finally swung inward, squealing
on its hinges. And then she gulped.
The room was terrible. Dirty water lay in the recesses of the broken floor tiles revealed by a dim bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a cord. The toilet was encrusted with filth, its lid had disappeared, and the seat was broken in half. As she stood looking at the noisome room, the tears that had been threatening all day finally broke loose. She was hungry and thirsty, she had to use the toilet, she didn't have any money, and she wanted to go home. Dropping the suitcase outside in the dirt, she sat down on it and began to cry. How could this be happening to her? She was one of the ten most beautiful women in Great Britain!
A pair of cowboy boots appeared in the dust at her side. She began crying harder, burying her face in her hands and releasing great gulping sobs that seemed to come all the way from her toes. The boots took a few steps to the side, then tapped impatiently in the dirt.
'This kickup gonna take much longer, Francie? I want to fetch Skeet before the 'gators get him.'
'I went out with the Prince of Wales,' she said with a sob, finally looking up at him. 'He fell in love with me!'
'Uh-huh. Well, they say there's a lot of inbreeding-'
'I could have been queen!' The word was a wail as tears dripped off her cheeks and onto her breasts. 'He adored me, everybody knew it. We went to balls and the opera-'
He squinted against the fading sun. 'Do you think you could sorta skip through this part and get to the point?'
'I have to go to the loo!' she cried, pointing a shaky finger toward the rusty blue and white sign.
He left her side and then reappeared a moment later. 'I see what you mean.' Digging two rumpled tissues from his pocket, he let them flutter down into her lap. 'I think you'll be safer out back behind the building.'
She looked down at the tissues and then up at him and began sobbing again.
He took several chomps on his gum. 'That domestic mascara of yours sure is falling down on the job.'
Leaping up from the suitcase, tissues dropping to the ground, she shouted at him, 'You think all this is amusing, don't you? You find it hysterically funny that I'm trapped in this awful dress and I can't go
home and Nicky's gone off with some dreadful mathematician Miranda says is glorious-'
'Uh-huh.' Her suitcase fell forward under the pressure of Dallie's boot toe. Before Francesca had a chance to protest, he had knelt down and flipped open the catches. 'This is a god-awful mess,' he said when he saw the chaos inside. 'You got any jeans in here?'
'Under the Zandra Rhodes.'
'What's a zanderoads? Never mind, I found the jeans. How about a T-shirt? You wear T-shirts, Francie?'
'There's a blouse,' she sniffed. 'Greige with cocoa trim-a Halston. And a Hermes belt with an art deco buckle. And my Bottega Veneta sandals.'
He propped one arm across his knee and looked up at her. 'You're startin' to push me again, aren't you, darlin'?'
Dashing away her tears with the back of her hand, she stared down at him, not having the faintest idea what he was talking about. He sighed and got back up. 'Maybe you'd better find what you want yourself. I'll amble back to the car and wait for you. And try not to take too long. Old Skeet's already gonna be hotter than a Texas tamale.'
As he turned to walk away, she sniffed and bit on her lip. 'Mr. Beaudine?' He turned. She dug her fingernails into her palms. 'Would it be possible-' Gracious, this was humiliating! 'That is to say, perhaps you might- Actually, I seem to-' What was wrong with her? How had an ignorant hillbilly managed to intimidate her so badly that she couldn't seem to form the simplest sentence?
'Spit it out, honey. I got my heart set on findin' a cure for cancer before the decade's over, or at least having a cold Lone Star and a chili dog by the time Landry's boys hit the Astroturf for the division championship.'
'Stop it!' She stamped her foot in the dirt. 'Just stop it! I don't have any idea what you're talking about, and even a blind idiot could see that I can't possibly get out of this dress by myself, and if you ask me,
the person who talks too much around here is you!'
He grinned, and she suddenly forgot her misery under the force of that devastating smile, crinkling the corners of his mouth and eyes. His amusement seemed to come from a place deep inside, and as she watched him she had the absurd feeling that an entire world of funniness had somehow managed to pass her by. The idea made her feel more out of sorts than ever. 'Hurry up, will you?' she snapped. 'I can barely breathe.'
'Turn around, Francie. Undressing women is one of my particular talents. Even better than my bunker shot.'
'You're not undressing me,' she sputtered, as she turned her back to him. 'Don't make it sound so sordid.'
His hands paused on the hooks at the back of her dress. 'What exactly would you call it?'
'Performing a helpful function.'
'Sort of like a maid?' The row of hooks began to ease open.
'Rather like that, yes.' She had the uneasy feeling that she'd just taken another giant step in the wrong direction. She heard a short, vaguely malevolent chuckle that confirmed her fears.
'Something about you is sort of growin' on me, Francie. It's not often life gives you the opportunity to meet living history.'
'Living history?'
'Sure. French Revolution, old Marie Antoinette. All that let-them-eat-cake stuff.'
'What,' she asked, as the last of the hooks fell open, 'would someone like you know about Marie Antoinette?'
'Until a little over an hour ago,' he replied, 'not much.'
They picked Skeet up about two miles down the road, and as Dallie had predicted, he wasn't happy. Francesca found herself banished to the back seat, where she sipped from a bottle of something called Yahoo chocolate soda, which she'd taken from the Styrofoam cooler without waiting for an invitation. She drank and brooded, remaining silent, as requested, all the way into New Orleans. She wondered what Dallie would say if he knew that she didn't have a plane ticket, but she refused even to consider telling him the truth. Picking at the corner of the Yahoo label with her thumbnail, she contemplated the fact that she didn't have a mother, money, a home, or a fiance. All she had left was a small remnant of pride, and she desperately wanted the chance to wave it at least once before the
