The Eleventh Year (43 page)

She was wearing a simple black sheath dress with enormous sleeves, that made her look like Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. At her ears she pinned two diamonds, and on the dress, a diamond brooch. The severe color contrasted with the clinging tightness of the material, which emphasized her curves. She'd become so thin that the round breasts were really more padding than flesh, and as she examined herself critically she wondered if she should have gone with a less fashionable dress that would have made her seem more anonymous and sexless. But it was too late. She dabbed some rouge in the middle of her lower lip, powdered her nose and cheeks, and went out into the hallway.

As she walked down the stone staircase, she could feel the beginnings of perspiration gathering in the tucks of the material. She almost turned back then, remembering a small enameled box in her boudoir where she kept a measured quantity of snow-white cocaine, with a golden spoon the size of a large hat pin. It was there in case she needed to fortify her spirit. But Bouchard was waiting for her. She saw, through his eternally discreet eyes, her own self, her figure. He approved. She looked the part he wanted her to be, the Marquise Alexandre de Varenne. And this too was whom this man was expecting to see. She had sent him the note on her finest, official stationery, asking him to come for tea to discuss a painting that she wished to purchase through him. She'd heard through friends that he was a specialist in little-known masterpieces. Her hand had trembled and she'd made a mess. He undoubtedly thought her one of the drunks of Parisian society. But today he would find her most sober. A dry, withered flower whom no man had touched in too many months and whose only recent emotion had been gut-wrenching despair. But she was not, after all, in the business of seducing this stranger. She wanted only to get rid of him quickly and with as few complications as possible.

Feeling her heart pounding, she took a deep breath and stepped into the subdued, elegant salon where Bouchard had settled the Scotsman. She could see him standing by the bay window, looking out into her rear garden. It was difficult to tell about his build, for he was wearing a jacket with padded shoulders. Close-cropped dark curls contrasted with the white of his shirt collar. The jacket was of navy-blue material, and his legs were long. She remained glued to the floor, small waves of strangeness passing over her. There was something about him that was wrong. Or maybe it was simply her own guilt and fear. She tried for her voice, found it, said: “How do you do, Mr. MacDougal. I am the Marquise de Varenne.”

He turned around, and his movement was quick, graceful, panther like. She couldn't breathe. A stillness had gathered that was like death. She was staring into his dark eyes, noticing tired lines around them. His nose seemed fuller. He wore a beard and mustache. But it was he. She knew it the moment he faced her, the moment his eyes, politely, sought hers. And she could feel her own shock passing through him. He hadn't known either!

He was the first to break the ghastly silence and the first to compose himself. He walked. He took steps that led to her, and as he approached she felt panic, the desire to run. Dizziness swam around her, like the dizziness of being drunk too quickly on champagne, without food to mitigate the effect.

“Lesley.”

“Justin.”

Now she wanted to cry, to
do
something, but the knot inside her throat felt like a cancer, swelling. “Really,” he began, “I didn't know who you were. Or I wouldn't have come….”

She couldn't swallow. The knot began to throb. He was almost stammering. “I mean…not unprepared. It's unfair this way, to both of us.”

“Fair.” She repeated the word, rolling it around in her mouth as if it were a slice of potato, to be tested for heat, texture, and flavor. There was something jarring about the word in his mouth: “fair.” She finally found her legs, went to the sofa, sat down without having made the slightest motion to invite him. She was oblivious to him except in the sense that he was
there,
in her house, in her presence, and she didn't know what to say or do. Her stomach sent shooting spasms through her.

“I didn't know you were the wife of Alexandre de Varenne,” he said, his voice dull but controlled. “I knew he had an American wife, but Paris is filled with expatriate Americans. . . .” The words stumbled out, almost incoherent.

“I've been married to him for nine and a half years! Surely a man who cons rich women doesn't miss such intercontinental gossip?”

He blinked and his lips parted. He swallowed. She felt breathless, her cheeks blazing from the outpour of twelve years of anger. Then he said: “After you left, I enlisted and spent some years in the Far East. I've been traveling ever since. I knew of the Varennes. I had no idea you had married one of the brothers. You must believe me.”

“Why? Why should I believe anything you say?”

He couldn't reply. So she asked: “And why the new name? Why ‘MacDougal'?”

This time he answered, composing his expression: “For business reasons.”

She laughed, and the laughter was tinged with hysteria. “‘Business'? You mean, of course, forgeries. Is Tommy still your partner?”

“Don't, Lesley, please.”

He tried to meet her eyes, but their fire unnerved him completely. He made a move, stopped. “I'll go.”

She rose, and felt the sudden shot of adrenaline pumping through her system. “That's always been your manner,” she stated, her voice low. “You make a mistake and then you run away. I wish you'd died, Justin.”

She thought, amazed at the strength of her words: I meant it. I wanted him dead.

“That's cruel, Lesley,” he replied, his voice trembling.

“You deserve worse.”

He licked his lips, and she remembered that he used to do that as a young man, when he was considering possibilities, unsure of how best to proceed. “Lesley,” he said. “The feelings we had—twelve years ago—they were my feelings too. Don't hate me because I was young and ended a relationship. I couldn't handle my feelings for you.”

“That was
your
problem.”

“I can't believe that after so long, you haven't forgiven me. What we had was a lovely episode, but surely there were other men between our time and your marriage. We thought we were in love. We probably were. But one of us would have ended it sooner or later, don't you think? We were too young.”

“You were irresponsible. There were so many other girls you could have slept with—why me? I was a virgin. Was that part of your male egotism: to look for ‘unconquered territory'?”

At that moment they both saw Bouchard entering, pushing before him the tray on wheels with the Meissen teapot and three platters of delicate finger sandwiches. Lesley passed a hand over her brow, pressed two fingers against her temples. The maître d'hôtel stopped in front of her, and she addressed him with a voice that suddenly shook: “Thank you. I'll take care of it.” Now, after the initial reaction, she was feeling the release, as if her stomach muscles were letting go, as if she would be able to weep if she tried.

The servant bowed, made his retreat, and Justin said: “Lesley. It was a wonderful, emotional vacation. We were discovering what life was about. I don't think, in all honesty, that either of us was trying to find a partner to last us through our lives.”

“What you mean is, you wanted free love without commitment.”

“What did
you
want?”

His black eyes were riveted to her, and she suddenly rose, went to him, stood before him. “I loved you. I wanted it to continue.”

“You were going back to America. We both knew it.”

“You could have stopped me!”

“I didn't have the courage. Marriage seemed an enormous step to take at the time.”

“But making a baby seemed less crucial?”

She saw him flinching and strengthening himself. “I was pregnant,” she whispered, looking directly into his eyes.

His right hand clenched, unclenched, and he was very white. “Why are you saying this?” he whispered. “It isn't true. I'd have heard of a child!”

“Do you want proof? I had it taken care of in Poughkeepsie. My friend Jamie knows all about it.”

This time he looked away, turned around, to avoid her piercing green eyes, the accusation in them. He walked to the window again and stood there alone for a long moment, his hand steadying his body on the curtain sash. “Look at me,” she commanded.

He faced her. She wasn't sure what she read in his features, but he looked older, beaten. She saw the purple rings around his eyes, thought it strange that she'd failed to notice them before. Her anger was ebbing. In its place came the old sick despair, only worse, viler. She felt extremely ill, the room was tilting on its side. “It's all true,” she murmured. “I couldn't have had the child. I had it cut out of me by a cheap woman in a side street of Poughkeepsie. You've forgotten me, but I've had to relive every minute of that event, and of our time together, for twelve years.”

“Why didn't you write me?”

“To have you propose under duress? I had more pride than that.”

“I never thought—”

“That's right.
You never thought!
And I shouldn't blame you. What you did, I wanted. I just never wanted it to end. I loved you so much—”

And then the pain returned, and she twisted her fingers together. “I married a kind, gentle man I didn't love. For peace. And you? Are you married? Do you have children?”

He shook his head. Tentatively he touched her shoulder. The wells of anguish all at once spilled over, and she couldn't see him anymore through the glaze of tears. But she could feel his hand. She remembered its touch, and it hadn't changed.

He tried to pull her gently against him, and she didn't resist.

He put both arms around her, and she wept against his jacket. She could feel his chin on the crown of her head. At length she looked into his face. “Were you ever sorry you sent me away?”

He nodded again, silently. “Talk to me,” she insisted.

“I felt tremendous emptiness. I did care, Lesley.”

“I felt you cared. Or it wouldn't have hurt so much. That you simply didn't care
enough”

“It wasn't exactly that. I was…caught between too many things. You can't understand.”

“No, I can't.”

“There was the war. I felt. . . panicked. I didn't have room for the gamut of emotions you were expressing. Most men were like that, in those days.”

“That's a convenient excuse. You had ample time to work on your forgeries.”

“The forgeries were
because
of the panic.”

“No,” she answered. “You're still forging.”

His face seemed all at once to harden—to close. “You're like my brother-in-law,” she continued, relentless now. “He takes advantage of moneyed people. I think you enjoy it, Justin. To you it's become a game.”

“You don't know what you're saying.”

“No? Would you care for me to say it more loudly—so that my friends could all hear me? What would happen to you then?”

“Lesley . . .”

“I loved you twelve years ago. I went through an ordeal because of you. I loved you, and then I hated you, and I hated myself—for not having told you. I was sorry at times that I'd married Alex instead of you. But I was shocked, Justin, at the kind of work you did. I'm still shocked. You haven't changed. You might have married me, but only to avoid being banned from society by my grandfather. And I would have suffered far more than I did when you left me. A lifetime of sleeping with a thief, of lying with him and for him—”

“Stop it, Lesley!”

“—of smiling at his colleagues and pretending I wasn't gagging—”

“Stop it!”

His face had reddened, and he had dropped his arms from her. She saw the compressed violence in his eyes and yet felt impelled to push forward, to crush him in order to equalize their pain. But nothing would ever equal what she'd lived through on that table. Suddenly she felt absolutely in control. The ache, the memories had disappeared. The wound had finally closed. She'd just buried a corpse, and she felt relieved, almost exultant. “Why should I stop it, Justin? I'm telling the truth.”

She smiled at him with an odd, detached sadness. Then she turned away and went to the serving tray. “Our tea must be cold,” she announced. “Sit down, Justin. We still have another matter to discuss.”

He went to the sofa and sat down, crossing his long, elegant legs. He was wearing a double-breasted blazer from which an ascot flashed, and his shoes shone. As she poured tea, she looked at him covertly. He was attractive; he had changed very little. There was a litheness and natural grace in every one of his movements. How did one outgrow one's first, traumatic love? He was sitting there across from her, and her hands on the Meissen china were quick, expert, no longer trembling. She thought: We've both aged. Now her composure had returned. She could see him clearly. He'd never loved her. He'd had some fun with her. She asked: “Milk or lemon?” and he replied: “Lemon, please.” She dropped the slice in the cup, asked about sugar, dropped a brown sugar cube after the lemon. Then she raised her eyes to him and handed him the cup. I've recovered, she thought, and sat down, emptied out but whole. He waited, while she stirred the liquid in her own cup and drank from it.

“Lesley,” he said, “I never knew anything about the baby. I swear it to you.”

“Many women die when they go through what I did. I was very lucky.”

“You have no children now?”

She said evenly: “It's just like you to ask. For years you might have kept up with what I was doing. But I was merely a single episode in your life. Why did you bring up love? It would have been better to be honest with me.”

“There is no logic between men and women. We act according to our feelings of the moment.” He looked at her seriously. She thought of Alexandre, of his pained, kind face. He had no poetry inside his soul, only prose. But it was the prose of an honest man. Why had she preferred the rogue? She was, then, like Jamie and Elena. Milton had made his point about the power of evil over good. Women especially fancied evil as strong, intriguing, and good as boring, commonplace.