Beast (43 page)

Charles, I'm willful. I'm vain. I haven't the least real interest in wifely business. I am socially adept—I can be nice to anyone for two minutes—but only because I'm such an accomplished liar." When he opened his mouth, she waved away his objections. "Oh, I know I'm pretty—and it's a good thing you value this.

I'm a lot of things. But I'm not nice. I wish I were. You are."

Without warning, her hand came up. He ducked at first, flinching his eye closed and turning his head.

Her hand smelled powerfully of the ambergris he'd thought was going to be such a clever thing to bring her.

Then he grew still—her fingers settled against his cheek, the marred side, so gentle, just warm pressure

that traced down his eyelid, down the numb scar. Louise studied his face in a way that made him inwardly cringe at what she must be seeing. Pity. Oh, no pity, please. Then she murmured in a perfectly acceptable tone, "No, not so ugly at all."

She lay her flat palm against his jaw, like a sorceress laying a spell upon him. He could not have moved if he'd tried. Her eyes boldly searched over his features, covering his face, studying it. Charles felt unsettled, unmanned to be so scrutinized. She continued, staring sincerely with interest and attention, then she took his breath by telling him, "Your face fascinates me, Charles. For what it is worth, I minded the kiss—and possibly even the way you made love to my hand—because I hate to reveal myself so wholly in public: Don't make me show everyone how strangely you affect me. If you need to show others that I am faithfully yours, then I shall attend to this for you. I shall make a point of it." She paused. "It is only fair. You make such a point of seeing to me."

Her hand dropped away. She picked up her skirts again and walked past him.

Charles couldn't move. He was left out there in the drive for a full five minutes, speechless, warmed from the base of his heels to the crown of his head, his scalp rippling. Waves of appreciative heat kept sweeping up over him, as he wondered just what this was, this amazing "seeing to him." What exactly was being offered? By this cool, cheeky girl of eighteen?

In blending perfume, ambergris can be used to intensify a fragrance. Just a touch of it mellows
and strengthens. It makes its surrounding scents glow, as from a soft warm light within, a
radiance that cannot be duplicated by any other ingredient.

Charles Harcourt, Prince d'Harcourt

On the Nature and Uses of Ambergris

What Louise meant by "seeing to him" appeared to be this. At the baptism of his sister's new daughter that week—to which the twit on grand tour somehow wrangled an invitation—Louise took Charles's hand as they left the church. She held it the entire time as they greeted family and friends. Afterward, at the party that followed, when Charles restlessly followed the silly mummery of his own cousin, as the young man tried to impress her, she crossed the room to Charles. She acknowledged those with him, casually latching her arm into his, then stood up onto her toes, leaned, and kissed his check.

The sensation itself was astounding, her taffeta bosom pressed up against his coat sleeve and arm for an instant, her soft lips just forward of his ear, at his bad side, no less. But the emotion, the feeling of connection to her as she did this, was overwhelming. Louise matter-of-factly turned the jealous insecurity he felt—what could have been such a bone of contention between them—into an easy, pleasant release of a partner's angst.

Her attitude didn't eliminate his anxiety. Charles still could become fearful and unhappy that other men, handsomer than himself, wanted her attention. But somehow she wooed his edginess: it became tangible, like a sting they blew on together, a sting she preferred to encourage to heal rather than to chafe and aggravate out of careless disregard.

Charles had not asked for this understanding. He had not known to want it. Louise herself could still be quite distant. Her face could grow vacant. She was not promising love or undying passion, but this

'"selfish" girl gave Charles what he could never recall having: close, honest knowledge of him tempered with compassion. And he so loved her for it. he hardly knew what to think, where to look.

They returned to Nice again the first weekend in October. They had just entered the house. Charles was in the process of making himself comfortable, taking off his coat and vest, loosening his cravat, when he and Louise found a huge bouquet of roses in a box on the dining-room table.

Charles read the card enclosed, then said, "I hope you don't mind. I am going to have to wrap my cane about the throat of that young fellow on grand tour, then hang him out to dry."

Louise laughed and threw the roses into the trash.

Charles, not laughing, got them out again and wrote a scathing reply, after which he snapped the heads off each flower, then boxed the mess back up, note, headless stems, buds and all. By the time he had done this, however, Louise had disappeared.

He sighed. He could return the flowers, but what did it matter? For there was one fellow that neither he nor Louise could seem to send packing. Himself. His other self from the ship. He knew where Louise was and what she was doing, but had no idea how to intervene.

She had gone where she always went immediately upon returning to Nice. Charles followed after her, down onto the beach.

As recently as two weeks ago, Charles had thought. Louise will get over the man from the ship. Hers was a case of first love. A bad case, but still essentially a young woman's first experience with adult emotions, adult dealings; her first fully realized romance with life. It would fade with time, maturity.

Meanwhile she would have Charles in the flesh before her, demonstrating daily all they had in common, all they didn't have in common that dovetailed so perfectly. A living, breathing man could outshine a memory any day.

Yet something out there, within the Charles he
had
been, drew her like unfinished business. He worried about the intensity of their shipboard relationship. He worried about the bewilderingly hurt young woman he had carried out of the bathtub at the end of their first day of marriage, then the woman who'd demanded to go to Nice after smelling perfume. The affair seemed to have ended with more pain for Louise than he would have imagined. He feared less obvious problems, things she wouldn't admit or he could only guess at. For one, he had encouraged her imagination.
I am whatever, whomever you want
me to be
. He feared she had somehow made his other self into a paragon, filling in the blanks of the dark with all her young heart desired, to an extent that no real man could meet expectation—leaving her to be constant and faithful to an ideal.

On the beach, as he came up on her, she stood facing seaward, watching out over the water, quite possibly facing the invisible shore of Tunisia. In love with a phantom. In love with disaster, if ever Charles saw it coming.

So, tell her, he thought. This was the time. Things were good between them. Now. Tell her. Yet he counseled himself with these words a hundred times daily, then he always opened his mouth and said things like, "So have you told this young scallywag he should damn well leave you alone?"

Louise startled. Her hair blew. The breeze had taken wisps of it out of its coil. One blew across her face as she turned toward him. This slightly disheveled creature blinked. She hadn't known he was here. She asked, "Told whom?"

"The British bloke who sends you flowers."

"Aah." She nodded and relaxed, looking back out to sea. The water was calm but for ripples of wind gusting the surface. The air was cool, overcast, brewing the first autumn rain. "Yes, Charles, I have told him. But sometimes fools take a while to understand."

Yes. he thought. He looked down, inadvertently chastised.

He could remember himself on the ship—oh, so cynical, so cleverly avoiding the word
love
. He had just petted Louise and listened to her and stroked her night after night, cooing at her pleasure, calling her in his mind his poor, misjudged darling, his sweet friend, his wife. Without ever saying the word, he had emotionally married Louise Vandermeer somewhere back on the ship during five days' acquaintance. He hadn't been the same since.

She touched his arm. He captured her hand, kissed her palm; this had become reflex. In private at least, he was allowed to touch and hold and kiss Louise's hands all he wished, and, heaven above, did he do it; he knew this woman's fingers and palms and knuckles and the backs of her hands better than he had known any part of any woman he'd possessed from any which way or direction. Then Louise wrenched her hand free. Unexpectedly she ran her fingers along his neck, a touch inside the collar of his shirt, then out to drift flat-palmed down the shirt's placket, his chest. Charles tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress his jerking spasm of pure, startled delight.

At the waistband of his trousers, her hand pulled back, while her eyes, her extraordinary gaze—the color of hyacinths—regarded him.

He had been about to say something, but now forgot what it was. He'd lost his grip on any rational reason for having come out here.

Except to be touched like thai again.

Addled, he tried to remember the thread. He began, "You know the fellow you've told me about, the one whom you say is dead—"

"No." She interrupted. She compressed her lips, shaking her head. "We needn't speak of it. Once, this might have been the one place where you had reason to be jealous, but not now."

Not now? Charles tried to decipher where this put him, this no longer having to be jealous of himself. It didn't matter. He was going to do what he'd set out to do. "Louise," he said. "I want to tell you something—"

And they both stopped. He'd said her name. The name he called her in his mind had come out of his mouth. She turned immediately.

Louise looked to see the face of this man. And there it was, of course. His odd, appealing face. Yet for an instant—

No. He had only said the name that she wished sometimes to hear. Still, she couldn't help asking, "Why did you call me that?"

He didn't say anything for a moment. "I don't know. It just came out. It pleases me, I suppose, to have all your names, every aspect of you." He said, "I want all of you, you see: the full and open you."

Full and open. The phrase reminded her of the day he had taken his clothes off in front of her bathtub.

He was like that now, she sensed, ready to strip down again in front of her.

She became facetious. "I was open once—" She stopped herself with a short dry laugh. "But it didn't work out."

He stared at her till she turned away again, looking back out over the water. Then very quietly, his voice said, "Be that way now. With me." So painfully sincere.

She wanted to say something, but her throat was too tight.

When she didn't respond, he seemed to guess the reason. He began again. "This other fellow whom you say is dead—"

She interrupted. "Really, Charles, it's over. It's so, so over." Then she confessed, "And he's not dead. I only wish he were."

"Pardon?"

She kept her eyes straight, looking out to sea. She couldn't face her husband. But she was going to do this for him. force herself out into the open again. She began awkwardly, "We had an affair. You see, it was supposed to be safe. I thought I—that I would let him see—well, not see exactly—that I would be—" She sighed, frustrated with her inarticulateness. "With—"