Beast (40 page)

Louise sat, gloved hands in her lap—voile gloves that came to her elbows and left her fingertips bare; he could see her skin through the cream-colored voile. God bless, he thought. She was so lovely. She nodded at the opera singer's mother, smiling at the son. While Charles stood there, stunned silly, as he was every time his regard happened to come across his own wife afresh.

"So do you know her?"

"Yes."

The drunken fellow said, "She looks rich."

"She is." All three men stared.

Charles realized the taller of the two men beside him was Pia's "new fancy man," whom she'd pointed out, a sculptor of some prominence with a long French aristocratic name he didn't remember. He glanced at him. The new fellow was lean, with clean, sharp planes to his good-looking face and two perfect eyes set beneath a dramatically deep brow; he was about thirty and drunk as a coot. He smelled peculiar, as if he'd been drinking something other than the sherry and whiskey circulating on trays. Something vaguely undrinkable. After-shaving lotion, perhaps.

Staring at Louise, this man said, "She looks like—off a Botticelli canvas. Only more gorgeous." He spoke clearly for a drunk, the sure sign of a lot of practice. His opinion seemed to come from an esthetic perspective without a trace of lust.

"I agree," Charles said. The British bloke did, too.

"She looks tight-arsed," said the sculptor. Charles frowned and turned to look at the fellow, who rephrased: "Difficult, hard to get along with."

"Aah." Charles nodded. The man was too ploughed to get really angry at him.

"I like easy women myself." With that he took himself off in Pia's direction.

The British fellow remained. He was possibly, if Charles remembered correctly, a graduate student skipping school for a week to play on the Riviera, a friend of Gaspard, Tino's oldest. The truant scholar nudged Charles's ribs with his elbow. "Difficult or not, I say
that
is a bit of all right. Can you tell me her name, and do you know if she likes fast motorcars?"

Charles responded, "Her name is Louise Harcourt. I'm sure she likes fast motor cars. But she finds young men like you tedious." He hoped the last was still true.

The young man looked around sharply. "And do you know her so well as this?"

"I could know her better. I've only am married to her a week."

The scholar with the fast motorcar visibly blanched, then after a humble, muttered congratulations slunk off.

Charles and Louise, actually, had been married a week and three days. Louise's one day in Nice had become two, which in turn had become more. He pushed her to return to Grasse with him, but she wouldn't. He'd finally gone there alone yesterday to take the ambergris home.

Now was the very worst time of the year for him to go missing in his fields and laboratories. He fretted over his experiments sitting unattended in his green-house. He worried for his new jasmine. Moreover, September—of which there remained only four days—concluded the most important time of the year for gathering and extracting the attar from several varieties of flowers. The volume of his success this month would determine his overall success for a year.

Meanwhile, he lingered in Nice too much and too long. It had been a hell of a trip to go to Marseilles, Grasse, and back in twenty-four hours. But Charles found himself reluctant to force Louise to return, reluctant to leave her behind.

He eyed the young scholar, who was skulking in her direction even knowing her husband watched. The young fool would become part of the entourage
he
supposed.

Charles's wife had developed a little following, mostly of young men—or at least it was the younger ones who were willing to declare themselves. The tenor. The young race car driver. An English boy—hardly more than a boy—on grand tour who had decided to stay suddenly in the south
of
France "indefinitely."

This boy-child (who was still probably a year or two older than Louise) wrangled and bribed his way to every event Louise attended, God knew, it wasn't that she looked approachable. And Charles himself did his best to look as formidable as a Foo dog guarding the entrance to a temple of Buddha.

He couldn't fault these fellows for the blind stupor in which they followed Louise, since he himself was under her spell. But he could damn well punch any of them in the nose if they followed too closely or did anything more forward than drool—Charles rather enjoyed their drooling, to be honest.

Still, he hated this aspect of Louise as much as he loved it. And he feared it as much as he loathed his own face. In a week, he'd determined that he had a problem in public with her: He grew jealous too quickly. He felt far too possessive. He knew that he touched her more often than she liked—and with something of an unattractive greed. Yet he seemed powerless to stop himself.

He went toward her now, twisting sideways through people, facing as he watched Louise, his old belly-churning worry: that he had married a woman who would make a fool of him. He kept remembering how easily she had been seduced on the ship. He wanted to believe this ease had been for his own sake. She had succumbed to the old Harcourt charm that he exuded by the liter. Yet liters and liters of the same charm, all he could muster, were having a devil of a time seducing her now. He hadn't kissed her since the bathtub, not squarely on the mouth, try as he might. Thus, as he shouldered his way through people, he was arguing himself into circles, into knots, making bets with himself as to which fellow had the best chance, the sculptor, the tenor, the twit with the car, or—oh, God, Roland Montebello materialized about four people nearer Louise than Charles himself. Montebello waved at her.

Charles held his breath, then laughed: Louise turned conversationally in her chair, without so much as an arctic lift of an eyelash in the roue's direction, no acknowledgment whatsoever. The dear girl could be miraculously aloof. So far, Louise herself held back any and all suitors for her affections (including, alas, Charles)—with as much interest and as effortlessly as a mare batting flies with her tail.

He watched her as he moved toward her. She had her mother's social skills. She was a gracious and elegant guest of honor. She talked pleasantly with friends and strangers alike. And there were so many of both! God, the people.
Get out of my
way! he wanted to yell.

Charles pushed through an entire family from New York who lived the winter in Cannes, then between an Italian couple Louise's parents had met through mutual friends in Miami. Then, just as he was within a meter of Louise, he spotted Pia again. She was ahead of him, taking Roland's arm, the two of them stepping in front of Charles, demanding Louise's attention.

Pia said something to her. There was an exchange.

Charles nearly knocked a woman down sideways in his haste to get to his wife. He came up to Louise, bending over her chair. "Hello, darling. I'm sorry I'm late." He kissed her cheek.

He won an immediate flustered look. "What happened to you?" she asked "We had started to worry."

Her cheeks pinked slightly, he noted, as he stood up.

Charles promised details later, then stepped beside her. He touched her arm, ran his hand to her shoulder—more voile—up to her bare neck where he left it, his palm curved into the crook. He kissed the top of her head.

Louise reached for his hand, taking it into hers, effectively pulling it away. "Charles—" She was discomposed for an instant.

Embarrassed.
What must people think
? she asked herself.

But, of course, she knew what people thought. And the way her husband intentionally oiled the wheels, so to speak, of intimate speculation regarding the bride and groom brought heat into her face every time.

A strange sensation. Louise never blushed, or never had until lately. It was inappropriate, unsophisticated, and she was, if anything, a sophisticated young woman. In the last week, however, her sophistication had come under siege. She had learned, for the first time, the second time, the dozenth, what it felt like for a flush of heat to spread into her face, down her neck, and across her shoulders, a rampant, rubescent blush that answered to Charles's whims, not hers. There was no stopping it.

Moreover, he knew it happened. Anyone who wasn't colorblind knew. He liked it. No, more than liked; he watched it happen, waiting for it lately, with undisguised fascination on his face.

Louise met his regard briefly up and over her shoulder. His face smiled its peculiarly lopsided smile as he squeezed her gloved hand, encompassing it with his own. Just this, and she blushed faintly again, as if some mechanism in her body—like Tino's dangerous water heater—had run amok, gauges jumping.

Mrs. Montebello interjected into this, "Charles. Louise is under the impression you were not on the
Concordia
."

"I wasn't," he said, his voice flat. Louise had gained the impression that he and his mistress had parted company, permanently and unpleasantly, a surprise she found gratifying for a host of mean, small-minded reasons.

The woman laughed. "No, of course, you weren't. But I have just done the funniest thing. I confused our last trip across with our one before, when you were." Her mouth drew into a wide smile.

Mr. Montebello took over, saying, "We wanted to tell you both how happy we are for you." The diplomat smiled his best debonair leer.

Roland Montebello was an outwardly engaging man, moderately good-looking. For a "young" man (Louise's mother's assessment) he was "a great success for his age." Though not a full ambassador, he held a high appointment—plenipotentiary minister to a country with which his own did not have the full diplomatic relations of an embassy. This was a credit to his true diplomacy, Louise supposed, since he was stricken by a case of skirt-chasing so outrageous it would have sent a less savvy American to the bottom of the diplomatic corps.

This man, the male half of a predatory, promiscuous pair, touched one finger to a curl at the front of his hair, worn otherwise slicked back with pomade till it looked wet and black. His eyes were dark and lively, actively assessing Louise.

He said to her, "Your husband has been quite the heartthrob in these parts," then had to add, "strange as that may seem." He shrugged, a good-natured salute to incomprehensible fact. "There are many ladies weeping over this marriage. And quite a few gentlemen, I dare say, breathing a sigh of relief.' He smiled, then made a meaningful, and perhaps suave, lift of one eyebrow. "You have harnessed a legend, my dear." He put his arm around his wife, patting her shoulder, smiling, confident. He said, "Yes, indeed, a legend. Arid not one that every man would be as happy to tell you about as I am."

The man was an ass. An ignorant ass. Whose judgment Louise was no more likely to trust than she was likely to fly.

The "legend" murmured to Louise, "Darling, I would love to speak to you privately a moment." To the Montebellos and the rest, her husband offered, "Excuse us." And Louise felt herself lifted up by the hand and pulled out of her chair.

"What's wrong?" she murmured at Charles's back as he pushed their way through the crowd. "Where have you been?" She flapped her fan against his shoulder blade, put out with him, though less so for the reason she pretended. She wished he would stop playing with her hand. "You are two hours late," she scolded. "I should skin you alive."

He glanced over his shoulder. "In a moment, precious."

She pursed her lips.

This made him laugh. "Your Highness. Dearest." He enjoyed teasing her; she couldn't figure out how to stop this either.

He drew her arm under his as he moved through the crowd, pulling her up against him.

"Charles—" She resisted, her hand at the small of his back. Her resistance went unheeded.

He dragged her the full length of the terrace like this, two waddling companions, back to belly like penguins in a line. At the far corner of the railing, he wedged his way through then pulled Louise in front of him and around by the elbow, placing her beside him. They came to rest, arm against arm, almost shoulder to shoulder, himself between her and the crowd.

He finally let go of her.

Louise breathed in a deep, clear breath, even smiling faintly—partly at herself, for fearing something so innocuous as his holding her hand. She asked, "Where have you been? You were supposed to be here ages ago."

He recounted a saga of thrown horseshoes, delays, frustration. When she became sympathetic, he added, "I have to talk to you about all this. I can't stay here; I can't keep going back and forth; and I can't leave you. I want you with me."

They had had this discussion before. She looked past his shoulder. The view was fairly stunning. Sky and sea. But for a near, jutting treetop, she stared out into blue that spread above, below, and out all the way to the horizon. "I'm happier here," she murmured. "It's safer."

"Whatever that means." After a pause he said, "
Safe
isn't everything.
Safe
is usually boring, in fact.

You're bored to tears here. Lulu. I was thinking: My accountant in Grasse is retiring at the end of the season. You are good with numbers. You hate the running of a household, and I have plenty of people who can do that. So why not come with me to the factory and learn the books—"

She glanced at him. "Bookkeeping?" He may as well have said,
Wouldn't you like to eat dust
?

He frowned. "Well, even if it doesn't amuse you, it could keep you busy, and it would be of help to me."

"Oh," she said. A relief. She didn't have to plan or commit to anything for herself. "I'll help you, Charles, if that's all you're asking. Can you bring your books here?"

"No, I can't."

She dropped the subject, lifting her arm to point. "Over there. What exactly is out there?"

He looked, didn't understand at first. "More water," he said.

"No, on the other side of the water."

He turned around self-consciously, his bad side to her. When he understood she meant North Africa, he listed countries: "Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Egypt. The dark continent," He sighed.