Destiny (2 page)

She spoke as if she had known him all her life. Edouard instantly felt the wildest elation.

"You can. I shall take you," he answered, accelerating.

It was then, he thought later—then that the obsession began. He was wrong, of course, and he came to realize that eventually.

It had begun before, long before—many years before he met her. A great

DESTINfY

gap of time, and all of it speeding forward to one place: that street, that church, that woman, and that still summer evening.

Pure chance. Sometimes he found that fact calming; at other times he found it frightening.

PART ONE

EDOUARD

LONDON, 1940

The house in Eaton Square was in the center of Thomas Cubitt's celebrated terrace, buih on the south side, and more elaborate in design than its neighbors. Tall Corinthian pilasters framed the windows of the first floor drawing room, and a graceful balcony ran the width of the building.

Edouard liked the balcony; it was an excellent position from which to snipe at the heads of the Nazis at present occupying the air raid warden's sheds in the square gardens. However, the balcony was now out of bounds. It had been damaged, his mother decreed, in the last raid. He looked at it scornfully. It did not look damaged to him.

Eaton Square was the jewel of the Duke of Westminster's London estates, and Hugh Westminster was an old friend of his mother's. The instant he had heard she was leaving Paris, he had put this house at her disposal. For this, Edouard was grateful. He would have preferred, naturally, to stay in France, with Papa, at St. Cloud, at the chateau in the Loire, or at the summer house at Deauville. But since that was impossible, and England it had to be, then it was better to be right in the middle of London. Here, he had a truly excellent view of the war. The daily fighter attacks of the late summer had given way now to night bombing raids, but in August there had been a spectacular dogfight between a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt ME 110, of which he had had, from the balcony, a grandstand view.

He had feared, when Papa had announced they must leave, that his mother would bury them deep in the country somewhere, for safety's sake. But luckily she seemed not to have considered that possibility. His brother, Jean-Paul, had to be in London, of course, because he had a very important job. He was on General de Gaulle's personal staff, organizing the activities of the Free French Army which would, one day soon, with a Uttle assistance from the Allies, liberate France. His mother had always bowed to the needs and demands of her elder son—Edouard wished the same were true of his demands—and besides, she loved London. Sometimes,

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Edouard thought, as she swept in in her beautiful furs and jewels, as she left for another party, sometimes he thought his mother was enjoying the war almost as much as he was.

He leaned against the tall windows now, and breathed against the glass. The square panes were crisscrossed with tape to safeguard against bomb blast. In one of the misted triangles, he wrote his name, idly. Edouard Alexandre Julien de Chavigny. It was such a long name—in the end it took two triangles. He paused, then added: Age — Quatorze ans.

He frowned, and looked out across the square. On the far side he could see the house that had received a direct hit a few nights before. Its remains gaped blackly: tilting side walls and a pile of burned timbers and rubble. His valet said no one had been killed, that the house had been empty, but Edouard suspected he had been instructed to say that. He himself was not so sure. He wished he were not fourteen. He wished he were ten years older, like Jean-Paul. Or eighteen. Eighteen would be enough. You could enlist then. You could do something useful. You could fight the Boches. Not sit around at home like a stupid girl, and do lessons, lessons, lessons.

One of the air raid wardens came into view, and Edouard aimed at his tin helmet, squinting down the length of his arm. Pe-ow! Got him in one!

He felt a moment's satisfaction, then a quick annoyance. With an angry gesture, he turned away from the window. He was too old for such games, he knew that really. He was fourteen, almost fifteen. His voice had broken, or started to break. There was soft down on his cheeks now; quite soon he was going to need a razor. There were other signs too: his body stirred, and hardened, when he looked at some of the maids. He had dreams at night, long glorious frenetic dreams, which left his sheets damp in the morning—sheets that his valet, not the maids, removed with a knowing smile. Oh yes, his body was altering; he wasn't a child anymore; he was almost—almost—a man.

Edouard de Chavigny had been born in 1925, when his mother, Louise, was thirty. Several miscarriages had punctuated the years between the birth of Jean-Paul and this son, her second and last child. During her final pregnancy Louise had been very ill, nearly losing the baby on several occasions. After the birth, a hysterectomy was performed, and slowly— first at the Chateau de Chavigny in the Loire, and then at her parents' home in Newport—she recovered. To those who knew her only slightly, who encountered her only at parties, or balls, or receptions, Louise then seemed exactly as she had always been. A celebrated beauty, famed for her elegance and exquisite taste; only daughter of a steel baron, one of the

DESTINY • 17

richest men in America; brought up like a princess, her every whim catered to by an adoring father, Louise was—had always been—lovely, demanding, and irresistible. Irresistible even to Xavier, Baron de Chavigny— and he had long been regarded as one of the most elusive bachelors in Europe.

When he first went to America, in 1912, to open the Fifth Avenue showrooms of the de Chavigny jewelry empire, Xavier instantly became the toast of the East Coast. Society matrons vied for his attendance at their parties. They paraded their daughters before the handsome young man without subtlety or shame, and Xavier de Chavigny was charming, and attentive, and infuriatingly noncommittal.

To East Coast mothers he embodied the advantages of Europe: he was electrifyingly handsome, highly inteUigent; he had perfect manners, a fortune, and an ancient title.

To East Coast fathers, he had the additional advantage of a superb business head. This was no idle French aristocrat content to let his fortune dwindle away while he had a good time. Like most Frenchmen of his class, he understood the importance of land; he held on to, and built up, his already vast estates in France. Unlike most Frenchmen of his class, he had a thoroughly American taste for commerce. He built up the de Chavigny jewelry empire, founded by his grandfather in the nineteenth century, into the largest and most renowned enterprise of its kind, rivaled internationally only by Cartier. He enlarged, and improved, his vineyards in the Loire. He extended his investments into banking, steel production, and the diamond mines in South Africa, which provided the raw materials for de Chavigny jewelry—jewelry that had bedecked the crowned heads of Europe, and now bedecked the uncrowned heads of rich and discerning Americans.

Oh yes, the East Coast fathers remarked in their clubs, de Chavigny was smart. He had American virtues as well as European ones. Sure, he called his racehorse trainer every morning, but he called his stockbrokers first.

Xavier met Louise in London, when she was nineteen and he twenty-nine and she was being introduced to English society. It was late in 1914. Xavier had been wounded in the early months of the war, and—to his fury and disgust—released from active service. They met at one of the last great coming-out balls of the war years: she wearing a Worth dress of the palest pink silk; he wearing the uniform of a French officer. His leg wound had healed sufficiently to permit him to dance with her three times; he sat out three more dances with her. Next morning he presented himself to her father in their suite at Claridges with a proposal of marriage. It was accepted a decorous three weeks later.

They were married in London, spent their honeymoon on the Suther-

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land estates in Scotland, and returned to Paris with their two-year-old son, Jean-Paul, at the end of the war. In Europe, Louise quickly became as celebrated for her charm, her taste, and her beauty as she had been in America. Their hospitality, their generosity, and their style became a byword on two continents. And the Baron de Chavigny proved to have one quality no one had expected in a Frenchman: he was a devoted, and entirely faithful, husband.

So, seven years later, when Louise de Chavigny recovered from the difficult birth of her second son, and began to appear in society once more —to look, to charm, to dress just as she had always done—those who did not know her well assumed the charmed life continued. There had been a sad episode, a difficult period, but it was over. When, in 1927, the Baronne de Chavigny celebrated her return to Paris from Newport by purchasing Coco Chanel's entire spring collection, her female acquaintances smiled: Plus qa change, plus c'est la meme chose. . . .

Those who knew her better—her aging parents, her husband, Jean-Paul, and the little boy whom she never nursed and infrequently saw—found another Louise. They found a woman whose capriciousness increased year by year, a woman given to swift and sometimes violent changes of mood, to sudden elation, and to equally sudden depression.

This was not discussed. A series of physicians was hired and fired. The Baron de Chavigny did everything in his power to please her. He gave her new jewels: a set of perfectly matched sapphires; a magnificent necklace of rubies made by de Chavigny for the last Czarina, which had found its way back to the Baron in the wake of the revolution. Louise said the rubies made her think of blood; they made her think of a cellar in Ekaterinberg. She refused flatly to wear them. The Baron bought her furs: sables of such quality, each pelt could be drawn through the circumference of a wedding ring. He bought her racehorses; a superb Irish hunter, for she liked to ride to hounds. He bought her cars: a Delage, a Hispano-Suiza, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost; a sports car built to order in Bugatti's factory. And when these bagatelles failed to please her, he took her traveling. To England; to the West Coast of America, where they were guests at Pickfair, and her spirits revived, briefly. To India, where they stayed in the Viceroy's palace, and shot tiger with the Maharaja of Jaipur. To Italy, where they had an audience with the Pope. Back to England. Back to France.

Each night he would escort her to the door of her bedroom:

(^a va mieux, ma cherie?

Pas mal. Mais je m'enniue, Xavi, je m'ennuie. . . .

Then she would turn away from his kiss, and close the door.

In 1930, when his wife was thirty-four and the Baron was forty-four, he finally took the advice his male friends had been giving him for some years,

DESTINY • 19

and took a mistress. He made sure Louise found out, and to his delight, jealousy revived her. It also excited her, he observed with a sinking heart, when, in bed together once more, she questioned him feverishly, obsessively, about his affaire.

Did she do this, Xavi? Or this?

She leaned back on the lace pillows, her thick black hair tumbUng around her perfect face, her dark eyes glittering, her full hps rouged. The Baron had torn the lace of her neghgee in his impatience, and that had pleased her. She had high rounded childish breasts, which he had always loved, and her slender creamy body was still as lithe as a young girl's. She hfted her breasts in her hands now, and offered them up to his seeking mouth.

Calme-toi, sois tranquille, je t'aime, tu sais, je t'adore. . . .

He took the small pointed nipples between his Ups and kissed them gently. He would be slow, this time, he promised himself. Very slow. He could hold back, and he would, bringing her to climax once, twice, three times before he came—and she would tremble, and cling to him, the way she used to. The memory made him hard, and she felt his body stir against her belly. She pushed him, feverishly, quickly, lifting his head.

"Not Uke that. I don't want that."

She spoke in English now when they made love; before it had always been in French.

"Put it in my mouth, Xavi. Go on. I know you like it. Put it there—let me suck you. ..."

She pulled him up in the bed, maneuvered him so his stiff shaft was poised above her hps. She smiled at him, touched the tip of him once, twice, with a httle snakelike flick of the tongue.

"Your cock tastes of me. It tastes salty. I like that. . . ."

Her eyes shone up at him darkly. She opened the full red lips, and he shuddered as he felt the warmth of her mouth, the steady sucking. He shut his eyes. She was good at this, she always had been. She knew how to tease, to draw her tongue softly around the hne of his retracted foreskin. She knew how to quicken his response, sucking him just hard enough, so he thrust against the roof of her mouth, sucking him sweetly, moistly, rhythmically. Now she drew her hands slowly down over his buttocks, shpped them between his legs, massaged him there where the skin was loose and damp from their lovemaking. She cupped his balls in her delicate hands, and tilted her head back, so he felt as if he were driving at the back of her throat. He felt the surge begin, start to build.

Then suddenly she stopped sucking. She let the full penis shp from between her lips and looked up at him.

"Did she do this for you, Xavi? Did she? Can she suck you like I can?

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Tell me, Xavi—say it into my ear while you do it—I want to know. What else did you do with her, Xavi? Did you just fuck her, or more than that? Does she like it up the ass? Xavi—tell me, tell me. ..."

Her coarseness both repelled and excited him. He felt his erection start to fade as he looked down into those dark eyes, that rapacious mouth. He shut his eyes, and pushed her back on the pillows. Then he shifted position, parted her legs, thrust up inside her desperately. She arched her back and cried out. Xavier began to thrust: deep, then shallow, deep once more. The hardness was coming back into his penis. He drove it into her, pulled out, then thrust again. To his own surprise the image of his mistress came into his mind. He saw her plump accommodating body, her large breasts with their dark nipples, heard her panting breath. That image brought him to climax. He groaned, and spilled himself into his wife's still body, hating himself, hating her. When he withdrew, she pulled her nails sharply down his back.