Belle Epoque (27 page)

This is my way in; I mustn’t waver. “I’m serious. Don’t you think you would have more freedom in every way as a duchess”—I pause—“rather than going it alone at the Sorbonne?”

She draws her brows together and shifts her position on the couch. “What are you saying? Do you not think I’ll get in?” She looks dubious.

I must capitalize on her self-doubt. That’s the key to breaking her resolve. “It’s not that. It’s just … it’s not your world is it?” My heart races; I’m an actor, performing the role of a
villain. “I mean, this is more the life you’re used to,” I say, gazing around the room.

Isabelle looks up from the book in her hands. “You don’t think I can handle academia?”

I force a smile to my face. I must commit to these words. “You’re intelligent. It’s not that I don’t think you capable. It’s just … well, the Sorbonne is a far cry from the schoolroom under your parents’ roof, isn’t it?”

She draws the book to her chest and folds her arms around it, then glares at me. “I don’t like your condescending tone, and I’m confused as to your motive. Unless you think I’m not good enough for university? Are you trying to save me the embarrassment of failure?”

I sigh deeply for effect, while inside I’m beginning to feel sick. Keep going, I will myself. Push her. “I just want you to be practical. Imagine a supportive husband who encourages your private studies, who is proud of his wife, as every husband should be. And you would have the comfort and security of his protection.”

“Protection? Maude, it’s university, not the jungle.” She pretends to laugh, but her eyes are serious. “Your choice of words … You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Isabelle,” I say, forcing my tone to be warm and kind. “I’m trying to warn you, not lecture you. A proposal from the duke might happen sooner than you think.” There, the element of surprise.

“I don’t care.” Her chin juts forward in defiance. “My answer will always be no. The sooner I can pass the entrance exams
and get a place, the sooner my charade as a debutante will be over.”

If only she weren’t so stubborn. It’s infuriating. She doesn’t appreciate anything she has, the advantages she takes for granted: her appearance, her wealth and status. Why can’t she see how lucky she is? It lights a fire inside me when I think of what I’ve had to do just to survive.

“All you’ve known is the gilded cage you thrash around in. How do you think you’ll survive in the real world? You’ve never had to do anything for yourself before.” Once I’ve started, I can’t stop. It’s as if I want to pick a fight now. “I think you foolish and immature to turn down a man like the duke.” I realize that genuine anger is simmering inside, and I mean every word.

She stares at me, shocked and confused. Then she gets up and stomps across the room in her riding boots.

I stand up and call after. “When are you going to grow up?”

She flings the door open, but before leaving she turns to me, her expression stormy. “I thought you were my friend.” Then she turns and slams the door hard.

I take a breath and let my heartbeat slow to a manageable pulse before leaving the library by another door. I
had
to do this—I tell myself. As I stride along the hallway, my pace quickens until I start to run. I hitch up my skirts and take the stairs two at a time, desperate for the solitude of my room.

An hour later the dressing bell rings and the chateau is a flurry of activity. From my window I can see that the English guests
and the Rocheforts have just arrived, and now maids and valets run back and forth with valises, polished shoes, hairpins and starched collars.

I sit at the dressing table as a maid helps me get ready. My heart is leaden as she fastens the catch on my new bracelet.

“You look very nice tonight, Mademoiselle Pichon.”

I see myself in the reflection, my hair pinned up in elaborate coils, my lips and cheeks stained with rouge. I am unrecognizable.

I study the girl as she tidies up the brushes and pins. Her face is honest and round with a rosy complexion, her lashes and brows fair. It’s a country freshness I haven’t seen in a while. Did I used to look like that?

A memory from the past floats into my consciousness. I’m standing in the cellar of Papa’s shop, an apple in each hand, listening to the farmers’ wives talking about me upstairs.
Thierry has been dropping hints.… I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. She doesn’t have her mother’s looks, that’s for sure.… Plain as flour. Poor thing
.

I am a complete hypocrite. I wouldn’t listen to what people wanted for me, wouldn’t fit into the box they wanted to put me in. I made my own decision to refuse a marriage prospect, defying my father and, in a way, the whole village of Poullan-sur-Mer. And now listen to the words that pour from me. I’m no better than a farmer’s wife, telling Isabelle what she shouldn’t set her sights on, encouraging her to do as she’s told. I hold up my bracelet to the light. Tonight it feels heavier than iron.

“Do you need anything else, mademoiselle?” asks the maid.

“Non, merci,”
I murmur.

She curtseys and leaves the room, and I struggle to make sense of everything.

What did I achieve fighting with Isabelle? Nothing more than hurting her and myself. And I did the same to Paul and Marie-Josée. My life has become so different since I started working for the Duberns.

I get up from the dressing table and move to the window, pulling back the curtain to look outside, but my own reflection is all I see in the glass. What is it that impresses me about this rich world? I think of the many things aristocrats enjoy: music, books, painting and photography. I’m drawn to them too, but not just as the furnishings of a rich person’s house. Culture is the path to knowledge and the key to an examined life. At least, that’s what the bohemians say.

I look beyond my reflection and out into the pitch-black of a country night. I can’t get away from the questions that fill my head. Am I truly attracted to the trappings of the gilded life, or have I tricked myself? I’m in a muddle, and all I can see is what the rich possess—their winner’s spoils, their aristocratic bounty. Confronted with these things, I think, That is the life I desire. But is it the box at the opera I want or the music itself?

These thoughts come from what feels like another voice inside me, one who hasn’t been taken in by the glamour of the past few months, who has been paying attention to what really matters. It’s not the same person who snapped at Marie-Josée and Paul. Or the same girl who made Isabelle question herself.

I think of my hosts and the guests at the chateau. Save for Isabelle, these are the sort of people who collect art but have never been really moved by it, the sort who have vast libraries
of first editions the spines of which haven’t been cracked. Art is a possession, a thing to be owned, and music is just a society event.

With uneasy thoughts crowding my mind, I walk downstairs to join the party in the drawing room. Isabelle pretends to be having an enjoyable conversation with Claire when I enter the room, and a stab of guilt twists in my heart. Thankfully the butler enters shortly after I do and announces that dinner is served.

As we assemble in the dining room, I am aware that for once the beauty of the setting doesn’t impress me—I’ve had enough opulence. The duke sits at the head of the table, Countess Dubern to his right and a horsey-looking English lady to his left. Xavier is sitting next to me, the count on my other side, and Claire—not her bubbly self tonight—is sitting opposite. Isabelle is seated at the far end of the table next to the duke’s cousin, the Earl of Rochester, and on her other side is Xavier’s mother. It’s odd that Isabelle should be seated so far from the duke, now that their engagement is imminent.

Course after course begins to come out, and I can’t help thinking a simple omelet would suffice. I couldn’t have imagined a few months ago that I would ever get tired of this, but I am.

The dinner conversation revolves around the idiosyncrasies of the English, and the earl is being very jovial about the teasing.

“Why is it that every Englishman likes his meat cooked to leather?” asks the count.

“I could ask why every Frenchmen likes his steak still
breathing,” replies the earl. His cheeks are pink from alcohol, and his whiskers make him look like a walrus.

Two servants carrying silver tureens make the tour of the table. When the countess is served, I see her distorted reflection in the dish; her features melt and stretch across its contours—she is transformed into a repoussoir with a narrow forehead, bulging eyes, flaring nostrils and a rubbery mouth. How could she live, the thought strikes me, if the mirror showed her this face every morning?

In reality, the countess’s features might have been cut from marble. You search for a flaw in the lines, an imperfection, a break from the symmetry—but you find none. Yet it’s not the kind of beauty that hits you like a shaft of sunlight; it’s not the kind of beauty that radiates and effuses something mysterious, some inner light. She has the kind of perfect beauty characterized by the deadness of stone.

“Tell us about the highlights of London,” the countess demands. “If not the English cuisine, then what?” she says, draining her glass.

“Oh, a lot of catching up with old friends, some galleries.” The duke pauses, appearing to compose himself. “I do have some good news to report.”

My eyes dart to Isabelle. A hush falls over the table. Could he have asked her before dinner?

The countess’s eyes are fixed on the duke as she hangs on his every word.

“Speak up,” says Xavier.

The duke looks at the Englishwoman to his left and says, “Lady Eleanor and I are to be married.”

S
EVERAL THINGS HAPPEN IN UNISON:
the walrus guffaws and thumps his fist on the table, the countess drops her knife to the floor with a clatter, champagne is produced and the unattractive soon-to-be duchess Lady Eleanor giggles. I immediately make eye contact with Isabelle, who is looking at me with a defiant smile, as if she has won a bet.

“Félicitations,”
says Isabelle’s father, raising his glass in a toast. He must be oblivious to his wife’s plans for their daughter, or possibly just indifferent. Xavier raises his glass with a smug expression, whereas his sister Claire looks to be fighting back tears.

I pick up my glass as well and everyone toasts the smiling couple. I take a sip of champagne and try to swallow the disappointment I feel toward the duke. It’s baffling to me. How could he choose a woman like that? She would be welcome at the agency—as an employee, not a client.

For the rest of dinner, I watch the duke and his English fiancée carefully. This woman has neither beauty nor charm. She doesn’t appear witty or overly intelligent. What hold does she have on the duke? Is she an ace, a trump card in the hierarchy of British nobility? Does it all just come down to status? I study his handsome face, his affable manner, and gradually it dawns on me that that’s all there is. The personality I credited him of having was my own creation. In reality, there is nothing more substantial to him than confidence and an easy smile. And why shouldn’t he be this way? What has he ever had to work hard at or compete for in his life? Everything has been handed to him.

We reach the cheese course and finally the end of this torturous feast is in sight. After dinner the guests glide into the drawing room and there’s talk of a card game. “Antoine, how about a hand?” says Xavier. “What do they say,
Lucky in love, unlucky in cards?
”

The duke narrows his eyes at his friend. “Other way round, I think.”

I take a seat far away from the others near the tall windows. It’s drafty despite the huge velvet curtains. I pick up a book left on the seat, probably by Isabelle, because no one else in the house seems to read. At least with the duke’s announcement, I’m relieved of my duty to convince Isabelle to accept him. Yet before long there will be another suitor the countess will want to throw her daughter at. Could I succeed in convincing her? And if so, would my reward be worth what I have to do to get it? Shame washes over me again when I think of my words to
her in the library. I flick through the pages of the book she was reading. If only I hadn’t fought with her this evening, we would be sitting together dissecting the duke’s revelation, still friends.

“Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?” I look up and see Isabelle standing over me. Her voice is prickly and I know that she hasn’t let go of our fight. Still, she takes a seat beside me on the striped settee.

“I’m so sorry, Isabelle, about today in the library,” I begin immediately.

She ignores my apology. “Turns out the duke likes his ladies as rich as Queen Victoria.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. As if Isabelle or Claire aren’t rich
and
beautiful.

“According to the earl, Lady Eleanor is an heiress to one of the largest fortunes in England.”

“But doesn’t he have enough money already?” I ask. “Unless he has some true regard for her, I mean.”

“They just met. And her family owns the half of England that the Queen doesn’t own.” She stares at me, her expression stony. “Is that the kind of good match I should be making?”