The Eleventh Year (42 page)

Paul's eyes were interested yet also wary. He interjected: “But the man did you a favor. Because of him, you had funds to leave that hellhole and come here. Why would you want to pay him back this way?”

She said, insulted, jarred: “Because he's the only means we have for obtaining money! I don't like to harm this man—he was good to me long ago. But still—he's insignificant in my life, and you're everything. I'm doing it for
you,
Paul.”

He moved uncomfortably on the bed. “And? How are you going to blackmail him through Lesley? Why
her?”

“Because he already knows me and has nothing to fear from me. You've got a bad reputation. But she's clean—and a total stranger. He could never do anything to her—whereas he could, to us. She's the Marquise de Varenne: the wife of the deputy. He has nothing on her, but on me—so much! He could hurt me by spreading the truth about the manner in which I earned my living in Singapore. And our friends—society—would drop us at once. Paris is strange, my love. The same people who accept courtesans like Chanel—like
me
—like your mother—in their midst, would never be seen with a call girl. They have an odd sense of values. On the outside, one must look clean. I'm the Princess Egorova, and you're the Count Paul de Varenne. If I pose nude and you provide your acquaintances with
coco,
it's all right—so long as it's done behind closed doors. Do you understand now?”

He nodded, slowly. “Yes. You're right. I feel sorry for him. Lesley will have to do it. She's the ideal instrument.”

“
A
nd so
,” Paul said smoothly, finishing off his gin and tonic, “it's really very simple and uncomplicated. Think of it as helping out society. He's a con artist, Lesley.”

She sat, very still, in the winged velvet armchair. In front of her was a member of her own family. Alexandre's brother. And then she saw, in her mind's eye, the young man who had taken her in his arms, her, his brother's fiancée. The young man who had smoothly swindled the family out of thousands and thousands of francs, who had connived to destroy the family domain in Beauce. She remembered the day of their meeting, at Gertrude Stein's: He had liked her and caressed her with his eyes, silken brown eyes, moving over her body like a hand, softly seductive. Then he had taken her best friend to bed and lived with her openly. He had betrayed her friend with another friend—Lesley's only other
real
friend—and had allowed the first one to have a baby that he'd never claimed. And now this new betrayal. He cared about nothing and no one.

“So this wasn't even your own idea?” she asked in a low voice, sarcastic.

He looked down into the ice cubes in his glass, silent.

“You're such a coward, Paul. You can't even think up your own cons.
You re
the con artist personified, but you don't even realize it. You're too stupid.”

He still said nothing. She was afraid to rise, for fear that the contents of her stomach would come up. If she stayed completely motionless, maybe the nausea would seep away. Then he said: “It's so easy, Lesley. None of us cares about this man. He takes advantage of rich women. Your friends would bless you if they could find out.”

“Then why don't you do it?”

“Because I'm not the Marquise de Varenne. You're everything he will fear: the wife of a powerful attorney, a rich woman with connections and an unblemished record. And a total stranger. He'll never figure out how you discovered his secret. He'll be frightened, and he'll pay.”

“Just as I was frightened, and paid. Only it wasn't enough. Now you expect
me
to become the blackmailer.”

“We feel your name and prestige give you a better chance of success.…You know,” Paul continued, “Elena always finds out what's important to her.” He spoke almost as if he felt awe. Lesley thought: He doesn't love her anymore. The realization was chilling, as chilling as anything that had taken place that evening. She asked: “Why, Paul? You had everything a man could hope for with Jamie. No one will ever forgive you for leaving her when she was pregnant. She has so many friends. Because she knows how to give, and you can't even receive with a little grace.”

“Nothing we do in the heat of passion can ever be laid to rest. There is always someone who will hold it against us later.” His eyes had become opaque, and she thought: He wants what isn't his. That's the only
real
passion this man has ever felt. He wanted me because I was Alex's. He wanted Elena because everyone else wanted her.

“You, of all people, should understand that,” he continued. She didn't want to look at him; he was so foreign to her, to the emotions she knew, that it was impossible to avoid examining him like a fluke, like a fault, a crack in an otherwise perfectly crafted ceiling. “You loved; you were going to have a child. Apart from the fear of Alex's learning what you did, don't you ever feel the remotest regret?”

She remembered once, when her sister Emily had been fourteen, that a houseboy had fallen in love with her. He'd followed her up the stairs one afternoon and had abruptly seized her from behind and clasped her in his arms. Emily had been frozen with shock. Their worlds, so totally separate, had been like oil and water. That he had even dared to conceive of their mixing had been beyond her imagination, and so she hadn't been prepared to fend him off. He could have raped her. He could have done anything he wanted, her mind had been so completely numb with surprise. This was what was occurring now. She steadied herself, stood up. She couldn't speak, and so she simply walked out of her own living room, one foot in front of the other. She would think when her mind unfroze. Emily had screamed
afterward,
long after the cook had grabbed him and he'd been taken away, struggling—fired on the spot.

In her room she sat on the edge of the bed, fingering her quilt. Then she did something she hadn't done in years. She sank to her knees in her silk stockings and thought: I can't pray. I've forgotten how.

Dear God. Help me. Or take away my life. In two weeks Alex would either be elected or defeated, and Paul would pick that moment to crush him by exposing her. The deputy's wife is a whore, a murderer. She killed her own child.

Alex had asked her for a child, had asked her for a real marriage. She'd been cheating him for ten years: one of engagement, nine of marriage. She'd cheated him out of a present, out of a future. If she'd let him go in 1919, he'd have found someone else. He
had
found someone else, at last. She should write him a note, letting him go. You deserve somebody clean, somebody who will give you a son, a beautiful daughter. You deserve a fresh start.

But then she remembered that during her childhood, the nuns had taught her that suicides always went to hell. The Bible said that life was a gift from God, and that taking one's own life was stepping into God's domain, trespassing. God never forgave. No, she didn't want to die. She was afraid of what came after life. She hadn't meant to hurt the baby—it hadn't been a baby to her. She'd been conscious only of her parents, of what they would say and do: her mother's cold eyes, her father's disappointed face, etched in the pain of bewilderment. How could she have done such a thing to them? And then there had been the shame of Justin's lack of caring. She couldn't have gone back to a man who hadn't loved her enough. He'd taken her as lightly as she had shed her clothes to be with him. But she hadn't meant any
harm.
She'd done something joyful, by making love to celebrate being alive. God had already punished her for it. Why, why did she have to keep on suffering?

She felt a sudden wave of pity for the poor stranger whom she would have to confront, because she had no choice. She respected Alexandre, and there was no way in which she would hurt him beyond what she'd already done. He would have been free if it hadn't been for the promises she'd made when she'd accepted his marriage proposal. She'd married him for peace, to escape from the pain of her failed affair with Justin and the lost child. And to escape from the control of her parents. She hadn't loved him. She'd liked him, felt comfortable with him. And he had been good to her. She owed it to him to protect his career.

Dear God, she prayed, forgive me. There's just nothing else I can do. I've run out of energy.

“
Y
ou don't understand
at all,” Elena said impatiently, fastening her dark eyes on his face. “She won't give in. She's absolutely frightened to death. And she's the one person he would yield to. She is too important for him to ignore her. Because of Alex, her family, her social standing. She's the perfect pawn for us to use”

He didn't answer. She sat up in bed, the sheet falling away from her large, pear-shaped breasts. “She won't remember us,” she said. “She'll be doing it for herself—to save her marriage and her dignity. To think she'd be willing to blackmail a stranger, just to prevent our revealing an act she had no choice but to perform. Whoever he was, the man who seduced her was the criminal—not Lesley.”

“You feel such sympathy for her?” Paul stared at her, shocked. “But—”

“She's a woman!”

“Then why don't you leave her alone?” he asked, incredulous. Fascinated by her eyes and this new revulsion he felt toward her.

“She's the key to money—Alexandre's and Ashley Taylor's.” Her eyes hardened, her mouth twisted. “Because she was my friend. She had no right to cut
me
off! How did she
dare
not understand? She too was a woman!”

“But Jamie was her best friend.”

“Jamie was useless to everybody. With me Lesley had a powerful ally.”

“Jamie was a woman also. Don't you feel sorry for
her?”

“My compassion doesn't stretch that far,” she replied, and her voice was flat like a steel-edged knife, uncompromising. Paul thought of Lesley and felt a surge of unusual pity. She'd become a means to an end. She added: “Ashley Taylor has a lot of money, Paul.”

“But he's the only man who's ever helped you!”

“That's too bad for
him,
then, isn't it? He's another man who abuses women! Not me, but perhaps I'm the woman who can make him pay. If I weren't here, he wouldn't be blackmailed. He could repeat his con, safe under his beard. It's incredible these days what a simple beard and mustache can do to change a man. And his hair is different. Only the eyes are the same.”

“But—what if Lesley is different from you? Not everyone,” he added, “can act in cold blood and hurt someone for no personal reason.”

“Lesley has a lot to lose. She won't fail us.”

L
esley's hair
fell to her shoulders now, because women were wearing it longer again, but also because she hadn't bothered to go to the
coiffeur
in some time. Her maid had trimmed the ends and Lesley had been growing out the bangs. She felt old. The mirror reflected back small creases in her forehead. The bangs had hidden them, but now that two pearl combs held back their too-long wisps, she was struck by these sudden age marks. She thought her skin was sallow and that her face looked skeletal. She had carefully decided how to present herself to this man, Daniel MacDougal. She would hide behind her most conservative, modest exterior, not for him but for herself, to bolster her through this ordeal that would be as dreadful for her as for him. Maybe, if he looked deeply into her eyes, he would sense the truth and not judge her. Somehow she hadn't been able to convince herself that he was a dishonest man who needed exposing. She saw herself as the guilty party about to perpetrate a criminal action against an innocent. For, after all, what had this man done to hurt her?