The Eleventh Year (37 page)

Alex smiled, the tension letting up a little inside his body. “It could be up to you too, Princess,” he said. “Most couples decide jointly.”

“Well, then, we shall decide jointly.” She stood up, and he was astounded by how tall she was. A big, tall tower of a woman. Her breasts were unrestrained beneath the thin gauze of her cotton sheath. He found himself staring at the hardened, large nipples outlined perfectly on the cloth. For a moment words didn't come. He had to shake himself out of the daze, looking away from her.

“My dear Marquis,” she was saying. “You are so full of preconceptions, of hatreds, of judgments. Do you ever take the time to live life as it comes? There's a sun in the sky, flowers to smell. But a frozen man cannot feel the rays, nor take in the scents. Don't waste your life.”

He heard the derision and felt the jolt of memory. The realization came to him in this swift half-second that he had always hated his mother. He could see the image of her, young, standing next to Bertrand de la Paume in her nightgown— and then the two of them taking him, a young child, into their bed. Charlotte had hated him too, her own son. He'd been an interruption. All his life he had taken care of his mother, hating her.

Elena, perceptive, was murmuring, her hands on her hips: “Women are part of life, Marquis. We exist, we breathe. Disliking us, resenting us, is actually more harmful to yourself than to us. Paul doesn't hate women, though he doesn't know how to love. But women have treated him well. Martine and Jamie loved him, and I love him.”

“But he hurts those very people who give him love.”

“One has to learn to be self-protective. I've learned, the hard way. I'd rather be loved by a man who is selfish, but who enjoys life, than to live with one who doesn't know the color of the leaves in the fall.”

“I love my wife,” Alex stated, conscious that his voice was trembling a little.

“Do you? Truly?”

She was standing above him, her breasts moving up and down beneath the orange, gold, and green. Her eyes shone like points of fire, which he knew were only the refractions from the lamps and the afternoon light. Still, she was prepossessing, enveloping. Her question made him quiver inside. For the first time since he had caught Lesley in the lies that bewildered him, he allowed himself to consider, to analyze his own feelings about the situation. He was hurt; he felt betrayed; but most of all, he didn't understand what her motives were in spending as if tomorrow would never rise and then not being honest with him about her actions. A well of anger rose inside him. He wondered:
Do
I still love her? She's doing something that is surely dishonest—certainly with me she is dishonest. And she won't give me a child….

He was brought back to reality with a shock. “I didn't come here for a philosophical discussion,” he said abruptly. “A little girl was born yesterday, at the American Hospital. Her name is Cassandra Lesley Stewart. I think my brother should know that he is a father.”

He rose and saw the look of quiet appraisal leveled at him from her black eyes. Did his pain, his feeling of the injustice of Fate, seem that apparent? He needed desperately to be alone, to escape from this strange woman and from the questions she had made him think about. This time she extended her hand firmly, like a man, and didn't allow him to raise it to his lips. “I shall tell Paul,” she said, and he saw that there was something like hurt in her face too.

Outside he breathed the air in hungry gulps and felt his heart beating. He heard a noise, and the oak front door to the building was opening. Elena Egorova, hugging her sides to ward off the wind, said to him: “He didn't want Jamie's child. Remember that. He wanted
me!”

It seemed an odd reason to have followed him outside. She added, almost angrily: “When I am ready for him,
I
shall marry
him.
But I won't do it by becoming pregnant. I'm not stupid.”

“Must a woman be machinating every time she gives birth to a child?” he contested wearily. “What about wanting to form a home, a family, out of love?”

“Spoken like a blindly egotistical male,” she said. “Through our bodies, you control our destinies. We must either strain against childbirth, to avoid complicating your lives—or, as in your case, we are made to pay if we choose
not
to have babies.”

“And you, Princess? If you were ‘in control,' as you say, what would you do?”

The light wind was making him hold his topcoat together, and it was swirling the gauze of her gown around her hips and ankles. She looked like a statue draped in cloth of gold. She said, “I am a complete being, Marquis. It's fine with me that Paul doesn't like children.”

“But one day he may regret this and turn to his daughter.”

“That's the chance I have to take, isn't it? Life is full of risks.”

For a moment they didn't speak, but stood looking at each other with an odd, vulnerable honesty, barely hidden by the hardness of their respective tones. She made a mock bow. “You understand the politics of nations far better than that of women,” she finally murmured. “In another world we would have been friends. I understand all politics.”

He smiled, in spite of himself. And she smiled back, but only with her lips. She was a sad, tragic woman, he decided, watching her entering her building again. Stronger than his brother, and in a way cleaner than Paul. At least her motives were clear, if not honorable.

Starting up the engine of the Bugatti, he thought again of Lesley, his wife of six years. It seemed to him as he saw the blue smoke rising around the wheels of his car that he might already have lost her. Yet what had he done but want to love her in as total a way as a man could love a woman?

I don't ever want to grow to hate her, he thought, like all the other women in my life. The only two for whom he felt a clean, untampered love were the gentle Jamie, who was the sister he'd never had, and his new goddaughter Cassandra. If he couldn't be a father, he would make up for it with Cassie—his brother's unclaimed, abandoned, unwanted child. Paul's shame would be made up for by Alex's devotion. He'd always had to pick up after Paul's wreckage. There was no escape from this, there never had been.

But this wasn't a Popov situation. This time Paul hadn't left him only with the mess. Because what Paul now didn't want, Alex desperately wanted. Cassandra, by right, should have been a viscountess, next in line after her father. By law, Alex would make her his own heiress.

I
n his office
on rue La Boëtie, Bertrand de la Paume looked like a sleek, aging greyhound, perfectly polished. His gray silk shirt hung over a chest that was now concave, and deep lines had set in around his sharp brown eyes. Lesley sat on the edge of her chair across from his desk of delicate inlays, a line between her brows.

“My friend Natalia Gontcharova is most sorry that you turned down her offer,” Bertrand stated. “Frankly, I can't quite understand that.”

Lesley reached into her bag of tooled Moroccan leather, extracted a thin cigarette, and allowed the chevalier to light it for her. He noticed without comment that her fingernails were ragged. “You would do well as a set designer,” he continued.

“And the paintings I brought you?”

“We each possess certain unquestionable talents. Today there are many brilliant, innovative painters. Your canvas work is good, but it isn't unique. Forgive me for being so blunt, my dear.”

“So you're not going to sell them?”

“I've sold one. To the Princesse Murat. But understand that she bought it because of who you were, as a conversation piece. Your reputation isn't going to be made from this.” He hesitated, then plunged in. “But when you work with movement—as in the
Soirées de Paris
that you did last year for the Beaumonts—you possess a certain flair that comes to life.”

Lesley inhaled, blew out smoke, inhaled again. He murmured gently: “You've become very thin. Is there a problem?”

“No. Thank you. I'm just…disappointed.”

“You must learn to stick with things. How old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“You've found a niche. Don't become a jack of all trades and master of none. Not all of us can be Boticelli. Some of us have to be Gontcharova. It's an immortality of sorts. Her work will survive too.”

“And so will my father's.”

Lesley's bitterness surprised Bertrand, and he wasn't quite sure how to answer. But already she was standing up, struggling into her coat. “You could try your hand at fashion design,” he suggested, getting up to meet her. “Chanel was telling me you don't buy from her any more. She thought you were making your own designs and having them sewn for you.”

He had reached her too late to help her on with her wrap. She wheeled to face him, her eyes brilliant with something he couldn't fathom: anger, perhaps, or deep-seated resentment. “Everyone is full of guesses,” she said quickly. “Why can't they all leave me alone?”

He remembered her that year at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts, with its many pavilions hoarding all the new ideas of the decade. Fashion, too, had been represented. She'd seemed like a little girl, going from works of art to architecture, and touching all the new designs that Chanel and Poiret had chosen to exhibit. But she'd also seemed nervous. She'd seen Elena Egorova and had darted away from him to avoid her. Yet at one time they'd been good friends. He sighed, thinking of Jamie. Now he said: “Think of what I've told you. You don't
need
to work. Therefore you can choose your medium. Choose it carefully.”

Her eyes held his, then flicked away. She said evenly: “Thank you, Bertrand. You're a good friend.”

She was opening the door, and he let her go. He closed it behind her, then went to the window to watch her leave. She always drove her green car now, and he saw her entering it hastily, and starting up the motor too quickly. The new generation was so impulsive. A sadness took hold of him, and he sighed as he returned to work. Nobody listened anymore: not Paul, not Lesley. Alexandre had never liked him. It wouldn't do, really, for him to meddle further. I understand too damned much, he thought, lighting his pipe.

J
amie held tightly
onto the little hand, marveling as she always did at its plump smoothness, at the miracle that was her daughter in every small limb. The tug at her hand was like a tug at her heart. She could feel the warmth of that small hand clutching at her, dependent upon her, and the respondent warmth within her.

Behind her to the right was the white Grecian simplicity of the Du Barry hunting pavilion. Jamie thought of all the work, all the hours spent slaving over her notes and her typewriter, spent making diagrams of character development, in order to come up with the two books that had paid for this mansion. It was as far from the house in Cincinnati, with its rancid smell of wax and old candles, as this child was from who she had been at her age: also an only child, but in such different circumstances! She said: “I wonder who you'll be when you grow up. Any ideas?”

Cassie looked up into her mother's face with that scrutiny that never failed to intrigue Jamie. Was it curiosity? Her name fit perfectly. She peered into one's face with the intensity of a seeress. “I'll be just me, Mommie.”

Jamie laughed. “And who will that be?”

“A fairy princess.”

“I see.” They were strolling through a small path bordering the wood, and now Jamie stopped, sat down on a bench in a cleared-out area with a broken-down fountain in the middle, and pulled the three-year-old child onto her lap. Cassie wound her mother's stray hair around her pudgy fingers, then touched Jamie under the chin and started to laugh. “Oh, Mommie.” She said it with the indulgent superiority of the worldly wise.

“‘Oh, Mommie,' what?”

“Just ‘Oh, Mommie.' I want you to tell me a story.”

“There was once a white elephant,” Jamie began in a singsong voice, rocking the little girl back and forth, “whose name was Omar.”

“Why?”

“Why
what
?

“Why was his name Omar?”

Jamie pretended to think it through. “His mommie liked the sound of it. ‘
0
—
mar!
Now can we continue?”

“I guess so. What did Omar do? Did his nanny force him to take baths?”

“He didn't have a nanny. He had a nannus. A nannus is a boy nanny. And his nannus was bigger and stronger than Omar, and yes, he forced him to take baths. All babies have to take baths. All big people too.”

“Mademoiselle smells bad. I bet she doesn't make herself take baths at all. I'd rather have a nannus. Why can't we get a nannus, Mommie?”

“Because we live in France and in France there are no nannuses. Omar lived in deepest darkest Africa.”

“Can we go there sometime?”

“Maybe. Anyway—”

“Oh,
Mommie.
You're such a funny mommie! I wish Mademoiselle would go away so you could always take care of me.”

Jamie smiled. “That would be nice. But if I didn't write books, we wouldn't have enough money to pay for the food we eat. And we need food, don't we, Princess?”

At that moment footsteps resounded in the pathway and an older woman entered the clearing. Jamie bounced Cassie off her knee. “Ah, Mademoiselle. Time for a snack?”

“Indeed, Madame. Cassie?”

The little girl peered back at her mother accusatorily. Jamie shook her head. “Come on. Now.”

Sulky, Cassandra shuffled toward her governess, and together they walked back toward the house. Jamie remained alone in the clearing. The old fountain was such a picturesque ruin, a memento of an age of elegance and grace long gone by. She sighed, rested her face in her hands. These moments of quiet aloneness did her good. Finally she pulled herself up and strolled in the same direction as her daughter and the governess.

P
aul's restlessness
touched every nerve ending, until he could feel his hands tensing on the wheel. On the open road away from Paris, his heart pounded at the thought of what he was about to do. He had been driving very fast. He was driving in the direction of Louveciennes.

He was going there because an inner urge had moved him. He had to admit it: He was curious. Now he was almost there. He couldn't just go back to Paris. So close…He might as well take a quick look at this place she had bought three years before, of which he'd heard about from friends. Jamie Stewart, living now in grand style, while he struggled with Elena, on Lesley's money.…He was all at once seized with frustration, at himself, at his weakness, and at Jamie. He pressed on the accelerator determined to see where she lived.

The small town square of Louveciennes descended into side streets. It was a pretty town, with stone and brick houses dating back from the time of the Bourbon kings. He found where the street was. It curved away from the train station, becoming more rural as it progressed. The property stood to the right, at the dead end, shut off by a black iron gate. Typical of Jamie, the gate was ajar.

He parked the car some way down and walked to the gate. He passed inside the property. It was amazing, the quiet of the place, with birds making the only noise around. They might have been living a million miles from Paris, instead of a mere fifteen or twenty. He looked ahead and saw the clear pond, with its lily pads, and the meticulously kept lawn stretching toward the house, with its two twin paths bordering each side. Drawn irresistibly, he went close to the pond, went to one of the paths, began to walk toward the house.

And then he saw her. Walking, head bent forward, hair falling from the pompadour onto her forehead. Wisps curling from the spring warmth around her face. She was walking slowly. The blue gingham dress, too long, but becoming. Her sandaled feet kicking at the gravel.

He wanted to call out to her; memories assailed him. Her face in the crook of his arm. Her marvelous eyes, examining him. Her hands, massaging his back. The soft, round, full, free breasts. Gentleness. He opened his mouth, held in his breath. How on earth could he call out to her, admit to his intrusion? But he was so filled with nostalgic longing, with need, that his whole body ached.

She'd never been beautiful. Yet at that moment, when she entered the house, going up the few steps to the Doric veranda, he knew, simply knew, that letting her go, not loving her, had been the biggest mistake of his existence.

He stayed glued to the pathway, jealous. Jealous of her belonging to this house, to this beautiful, peaceful domain. Jealous of her survival without him. She'd loved him so—and he'd wasted that love. All his life he'd wasted good things, not appreciated them. Martine, too, had loved him. He'd killed her with his neglect.

A noise startled him. The front door of the white mansion was opening again, and a small child was scampering down the steps, a middle-aged woman in uniform behind her. His heart began to beat twice as fast. The child was coming toward him, running down the path. He slipped behind a tree and as she passed by, running, he held his breath: that firm little body, those sturdy little legs, that pink face—those eyes! My God, it's my daughter.

The child was laughing, he could hear her. The governess was huffing behind her. Finally they stopped, and he strained to catch the child's expression. He felt an emotional longing so great that relief seemed impossible.

The governess and the child were walking near the pond. The child was pulling away. The governess was trying to braid her hair. Such marvelous, lustrous brown hair, with reddish tints.
His hair!
Minutes passed—endless, yet somehow static: a moment caught on the wing. Then, sighing, the older woman rose. “Very well, Cassandra,” he heard her say in the precise, clipped French of well-mannered Parisians: “You may stay outside fifteen more minutes. But take care of the water. You could fall in.”

“My
maman
told me. I won't lean over. But the goldfish are so pretty—”

“Just so you don't forget! I'll be calling you.”

The child was alone. He was alone with his daughter.
His daughter.
He stood mesmerized behind the tree, wanting to stop time so that the fifteen minutes would never end. He feasted his eyes upon her, this little girl whom he had never seen before, who was of his own flesh and blood. Suddenly he wondered: Had his own father ever seen him, ever felt these emotions? Was his father Bertrand de la Paume, as some claimed?