The Last Princess (48 page)

Jean-Paul Duval! He was as good as a movie star! She would hardly be able to bear the wait until next week.

When the seven seemingly endless days had passed, she dialed his number, which she’d already committed to memory. But the phone buzzed over and over and no one answered. Finally she hung up in disappointment.

For the next three days, she called Jean-Paul’s number constantly, night and day. Finally, just as she was sure that he must have given her a wrong number, she made one last try, at eight o’clock in the morning, and someone answered.

“
Allo? Qui est-ce?
” came a sleepy, irritated voice.

“This is Melissa Kohle,” she ventured uncertainly. “We met at St. Moritz, don’t you remember?”

In truth, he had almost forgotten the incident. St. Moritz seemed like a long time ago, and at this moment he could barely recall what this Melissa Kohle looked like. While she had been anxiously counting the days, he had been racing and then wining, dining, and bedding Brigitte, the tall, luscious blonde ski bunny he had met at Val-d’Isère and cavorted with at Biarritz for the past five days.

Still, if he had given her his number, she must have been game worth the chase. Duval decided to stall for time. “Can I call you back? I’m a little tired … just got in a few hours ago …”

“I thought that perhaps if you were free tonight—”

Rubbing his eyes wearily, he said,
“Oui, oui.
At eight o’clock?”

“Yes, yes—where?” she exclaimed eagerly.

“The Coq d’Or, on the Left Bank? Do you know it?”

“Just off the Boulevard St.-Michel? I’ll be there at eight.”

As she hung up, Melissa thought she’d burst with excitement. God, what would she wear? And her hair—up or down? Did he prefer a sultry look like Simone Signoret’s or an Audrey Hepburn-ish gamine? She almost wished that she hadn’t made the date for that very evening, but after doing her hair in a French twist and slipping into the figure-hugging halter dress she had decided upon, she looked in the mirror with satisfaction. Her self-assurance began to come back.

She
was
pretty—everyone said so. Her dark hair was shiny and curled in beautiful ringlets, and her violet eyes were such an unusual color, they always drew attention.

After all, she told herself, she had already made quite a hit with the male sex so far. Now that she was liberated from those stuffy old schools, it was time to spread her wings and live a little. A whole new world was opening up to her, and she intended to make the most of it.

But her self-confidence took an abrupt dive when she walked into the Coq d’Or that evening and Jean-Paul wasn’t there. For fifteen agonizing minutes, she waited none too patiently. Then, at last, she saw his tall, bronzed figure saunter through the door. Melissa felt a wave of relief.

Duval was taller than she had remembered, tanner now and more glamorous than ever. Flashing her a devastating smile, he said, “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

“Oh, no—not at all. That is, just a few minutes.”

“Ah,” he said, eyeing her with evident pleasure. “You look
ravissante, chérie
. But isn’t that dress a little low-cut for a mere child like you?”

Melissa took a deep breath, reminding herself not to seem as excessively eager as she had at their first meeting. She had sounded like a gushing ingenue, and Jean-Paul was too much a man of the world to be interested in those. Maintaining her poise, she smiled provocatively and ignored his question, returning it instead with one of her own. “Isn’t it a little unusual for a mere ski bum to know the name of a novelist like Harry Kohle?”

The remark took Duval off guard. He began to feel that in Melissa he’d found a worthy opponent, not an empty-headed coquette. “We’re not all total Philistines, you know.”

The conversation drifted from one topic to another, and Jean-Paul found himself intrigued in spite of himself. She was certainly pretty, and the contrast between her kittenish face and her provocative way of talking once again made him wonder what she would be like in bed.

He filled her glass over and over with
vin ordinaire
. Melissa didn’t even realize how much she was drinking; she was already heady with the excitement of this daring new flirtation.

Finally Jean-Paul decided that the time was ripe. Leaning over, he whispered softly, tickling her ear, “Come on,
chérie
—the night awaits us.”

Melissa let him lead her out to his sporty Alfa Romeo. There she paused, turned, and wrapped herself around him, kissing him with abandon. The night was young, she was young. That he returned her kisses with equal ardor was more than she’d dared hope.

They zoomed through the narrow streets along the Seine. The breeze yanked at Melissa’s careful French twist. She pulled out the combs, tossing them to the wind. Her hair fluttered loose and free.

They passed Notre Dame, gently illuminated on the Ile de la Cité. Then they circled the Eiffel Tower, turned and roared north over a bridge to the Right Bank, finally skidding to a halt in the courtyard of a magnificent old building on the Avenue Foch.

Melissa was breathless as she gazed up at the wrought-iron balconies gleaming in the moonlight.

“You live here?” she asked wonderingly.

But Jean-Paul was no longer in the mood to talk. Covering her mouth in a long, sensual kiss, he led her up the twisting staircase to his apartment on the top floor.

Once inside, Melissa glanced around curiously. Duval had a magnificent nineteenth-century apartment, with intricate floors of rose and sienna marble, a stunning carved mantelpiece topped by an enormous trumeau mirror, and a glittering Baccarat chandelier. Seeing the evident opulence and antiquity of the room itself, Melissa was surprised to find the furnishings stark and modern and scattered haphazardly about the room. The single couch was piled high with ski clothes and underwear. Skis and boots were stacked against the walls.

But Melissa and Jean-Paul did not long linger in the living room. He slipped off his black leather jacket as he walked her to the bedroom.

Their coming together was more tempestuous than even he had imagined. This
petite poupée
was better in bed than any woman of the world, and he couldn’t get enough of her. She stayed the next day and the next, and the lovemaking was as wild as he had ever experienced.

At first he was content, for Melissa was engaging enough to keep him interested even when they got out of bed. But as the weeks turned to months, he began to discover all the ways in which she had deceived him.

Her so-called modeling career was a fantasy; though she had a pretty face, her petite curvaceous figure was wrong for the fashion ideals of the time. Every modeling agency in Paris had told her so. She was also much younger than she had led Jean-Paul to believe; she had not yet reached her eighteenth birthday.

But worst of all was that for all her pretended sophistication, she was utterly ignorant of methods of preventing pregnancy. A mere three months after they had started their liaison, she could no longer conceal it: She was
enceinte
.

Jean-Paul was furious. Marriage and a family were the last things he had in mind; he loved his freedom far too much. He reveled in being one of the most sought-after bachelors of the World Cup circuit. He wasn’t about to give it up for any woman, to say nothing of a child he didn’t want.

In his own way, he did care for Melissa; she had a coquettish femininity which appealed to his masculinity, and beneath her pretty face a steel will and barbed wit drew him almost against his will. But now that will was making life difficult for him, and he reacted violently.

“
C’est impossible
, Melissa! You must do something about this
bébé, et tout de suite!
It was your responsibility to prevent this!”

“No, it wasn’t!” Melissa retorted. “You were there too, you know. You had as much pleasure as I did!”

“That has nothing to do with
bébés
. You must get rid of it!”

“I tried!” she stormed. “I took some pills that Michelle promised would do the trick, but they didn’t work! It was too late—I only realized that I was pregnant two weeks ago.”

“And you’re three months pregnant? How can that be?”

“How was I supposed to know? My cycle’s never been regular. I didn’t think to worry until this past month.”

“I’m not going to marry you,” Duval said evenly.

“You want your baby to be a bastard?”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who is going to have it! As far as I’m concerned, it’s your problem.”

And with that, he grabbed his jacket. “I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going?” Melissa cried, suddenly fearful.

But he had already slammed the door.

Melissa sank onto the couch. Morning-sick and now abandoned, her fierceness softened. She began to cry.

It was three hours later that she heard a key in the door. She sprang up, hardly daring to hope that it would be Jean-Paul. He stood in the doorway, eyeing her sharply. But instead of embracing her, telling her he still loved her, he said grudgingly, “All right, you can have the baby, but you’ll have to stay out of sight when you begin to show, and as soon as it’s born, you must put it up for adoption.”

“Oh, Jean-Paul! Of course,” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “Thank you, darling. I love you.”

He was the thing she lived for. She would never again be so foolish as to risk losing him through her defiance.

As the months passed, Jean-Paul was as good as his word. He refused to be seen with her, or let anyone know that she was pregnant. Sitting at home by herself while he was skiing or partying, Melissa cursed her thickening waist. She hated being pregnant—the nausea, the ungainliness, the extra weight.

Realizing that her changed body actually physically repulsed him, she starved herself in an effort to hide her condition a little longer, but there was no way to keep her belly from protruding, even as her arms and legs grew thin as twigs.

As the months passed, she and Jean-Paul began to snap at each other. He spent more and more time away.

One afternoon, while she was in her seventh month, she reclined on the bed as Jean-Paul packed for yet another ski race.

“Please don’t stay away so long this time,” she pleaded sulkily. “I need you.”

“You don’t need anyone,
petite,”
he returned harshly, as he snapped the suitcases shut. “You are indestructible.”

But that pearl of wisdom had proved to be mere verbiage, for even as he launched himself on the final run of the downhill, Melissa was being raced to the American Hospital at Neuilly.

Had it not been for the concierge with the sharp ears in the ground-floor flat who heard her feeble cries, she would have bled to death amid the tangle of paraphernalia littering the bedroom.

As Duval daringly mastered a giant slalom course, Melissa was wheeled into the operating room, fighting for her life.

While he sat in the chalet, flirting with a lovely skier from the Belgian women’s ski team, the tiny baby he and Melissa had so carelessly created came into the world.

And as he finished another practice run and raised his arms to the cheers of the crowd, three people cursed him silently in Paris.

F
OR FORTY-EIGHT MORE
hours, Harry, Lily, and Ellis kept up their vigil over the two lives that had been so cavalierly treated—and then they heard the words they had prayed for.

“Your daughter is awake. The fever has broken. You may go in for a minute and see her.”

Lily went in first. “Melissa, darling,” she murmured softly.

The pale girl on the bed could hardly meet her mother’s eyes. The two remained silent for what seemed to each like a very long time.

“What are you doing here, Mother?” said Melissa finally.

“I guess you don’t remember. I’ve been here for several days, darling. The hospital called me.”

“You know, then—about the baby.”

“Yes.”

Tears welled up in Melissa’s eyes, and she turned away to hide them.

Instinctively, Lily leaned over and put her arms around her daughter, her heart aching for her.

“Darling, you don’t have to talk about it now. Just rest and try to get better. We’ll work something out.”

A grim look came over Melissa. Her mouth straightened to a thin line.

“I’ve already taken care of that, Mother.”

“What do you mean, dear?”

“I’m putting the baby up for adoption.”

Lily could barely speak. “Giving the baby away? How on earth …? Melissa, your own child?”

“I don’t even want to talk about the baby, Mother. I don’t want it, and Jean-Paul doesn’t want it either.”

“Jean-Paul—that’s the baby’s father?”

“Yes. He’s very famous. Jean-Paul Duval, the skier—surely you’ve heard of him?”

“Yes, I guess so…. He’s your—”

“Lover. He’s my lover.”

Lily flinched at the bald words, and Melissa said impatiently, “Now don’t start moralizing. I love Jean-Paul and he loves me. Marriage is so bourgeois, anyway.”

“But when there’s a child to consider—”

“Ingrid Bergman didn’t bother to get married when she ran away with Roberto Rossellini.”

“And look what everyone said about her and her son!”

“Well, that’s another good argument for giving up this baby! Look, Mother, I’ve made up my mind. There’s no use discussing it.”

Lily could barely believe it. Could this be the daughter she had given birth to? She seemed a stranger, speaking so callously about giving away her own baby. But then, why was she so shocked? Melissa was simply her grandmother Violet all over again, in character as well as appearance. Lily herself had been every bit as unwanted as this baby. Violet had been too conscious of appearances actually to abandon her, but in truth she had been as disdainful of motherhood as Melissa now was.

For a moment Lily wondered if it really was the best thing for the baby for Melissa to keep her. She shuddered to think what life might be like for the child, with Melissa feeling the way she did and this Jean-Paul apparently no better, if not worse. At least her own parents had had some sense of responsibility.