The Eleventh Year (45 page)

This time he did blanch. He sat down. There was a knock at the door, and he started. The bellboy entered, with the champagne on ice, and they both watched him intently, not looking at each other, while he uncorked the bottle and poured. After he had served them, Justin dismissed him. He remained with face half-hidden by the wine, his elongated fingers clasping the glass. Finally he said: “Lesley de Varenne. How do you know her?”

“Never mind. What are your feelings about her now, Ashley?”

A glimmer of understanding flickered in his eyes, but he kept silent.

“What do you know about her husband, Ashley?”

“Just what I've recently discovered. He's from an old, once-wealthy family, but it's her money that helped launch him. He was a deputy for five years, and then he lost his seat when the Left took over in twenty-four. He's up for reelection in two weeks.”

He continued, “And, Princess, if I may ask, what exactly is
your
interest in this whole affair?”

Elena's expression hardened. “Look, Ashley…Justin— we're both too clever to mince words. I admit that Lesley's little blackmail scheme was my idea. I put her up to it. She was indiscreet enough several years ago to admit to me that she had once been pregnant and had the matter, shall we say, arranged. I naturally promised to remain silent. But dear Lesley was foolish enough to end our friendship soon after. And my vow of silence ended with it. She has been…helping me financially for some time. But the well has run dry. When I saw you in the café the other day, I recognized an opportunity. And Lesley seemed the perfect pawn. Obviously I had no idea that you were the very man she had her unfortunate affair with. Life does play such unexpected little tricks, don't you agree? But, frankly, my dear, we worked together well before and I don't see why we shouldn't again. I have a plan.” Justin's face remained impassive. “Exactly what do you propose?”

“I am a realist. Paul de Varenne and I are near a parting of the ways. All my life I've had to struggle. And the Varennes are going to be my passport to a life of ease. Paul is the father of Jamie Lynne Stewart's baby. And, as you also may know, Alex adores the child. In fact, he has made her his heiress. I propose that you, let us say, remove Cassandra for a brief period of time. The ransom shall be twofold. For you, dear Ashley, a certain file in the Ministry of Justice, obtained by Alexandre. For me, hard cash.”

His eyes remained upon her, hard and unblinking.

S
ince 1926
, Raymond Poincaré had been the premier for the second time, replacing Edouard Herriot, the Radical Socialist who had taken over the government for two years in 1924. Alexandre had to admit to himself that, in spite of his earlier misgivings, tax collection had appeared to save France from the national bankruptcy that had threatened it. Poincaré, solid, conservative, hard-working, had, in his own steadfast manner, moved his country into a new prosperity. And, riding the coattails of this perennial leader, Alexandre felt a new surge of confidence that on this twenty-eighth of April, with the buds coming alive outside the window of his office, he would be reelected to the Chambre des Députés.

Micheline Prandot, a modest pink flower in the Psyche knot of her hair, knocked lightly on the door and opened it with shy familiarity. It was late afternoon, and shadows of golden light were streaking Alexandre's crimson and blue Persian rug. He gazed at her, found her touching in her light-beige suit, and felt at once a renewal of his constant guilty feelings about her. “Hello, my dear.”

“How do you feel?” She sat down in the client's armchair, all upholstered Louis XIII, and crossed her shapely legs.

He smiled. “It's going to be a precarious victory. Not like the one in nineteen.” He thought briefly of Lesley, of the last election that he had won. It reminded him of his wedding, of the dual celebration. The girl looking at him so earnestly was like this new election: less grand, less startling than the last. But genuine and meaningful.

“If the Communists had formed a coalition with the Cartel des Gauches, do you think the Left would be winning?” she asked.

“Absolutely. The Communists, by holding out, are forcing the Right back into focus. We won't be winning a clear-cut majority, but by casting two ballots, the Union Nationale is definitely going to return to a control of government. The Communists must surely realize that by pretending to hold themselves aloof from any bourgeois business, they are giving their greatest opponents a majority they wouldn't otherwise have gathered.”

“Are the two ballots really necessary?” Micheline questioned.

“For forming a united block and making compromises, yes. That's why we have to vote today. The first round, six days ago, didn't give us our hoped-for majority.”

“But six days ago, your seat was won.”

“Maybe mine was—but in a powerless Chambre, what good could I do? I need to be elected with a party back-up.”

“The Union Nationale isn't quite as strong as its predecessor, the Bloc,” she commented, and he thought: She's intelligent. She's well informed. She cares about me. That last idea made him both happy and sad. If Lesley had felt this way, how many problems could have been avoided.…And yet things had recently become different between him and his wife. There was something new, something hopeful, in the manner in which Lesley spoke to him these days, in the turn of her head, in the brightness of her eyes. It was almost enough to make him believe she might love him. But—had she ever? Micheline did.

I can't continue this way, he thought, squirming slightly in his armchair. Micheline is too good, too young, too kind. She's not anyone I would ever marry, even if I were free. She knows it too. Our social backgrounds are too dissimilar. But if I let her go free, she could fall in love with another man and make a decent home for herself. It's time. I've risked a lot to win this election. I can take a risk here too and try to make Lesley understand how much she means to me, and how important our future is. For this I must be clean.

“Your wife is giving you a fabulous celebration party,” Micheline was saying, as if reading his mind, and he heard the trembling behind her words.

“Yes.” They almost never discussed Lesley. Now he cleared his throat. “She's made a great effort, Micheline. This seat has preoccupied her almost as much as me.”

The delicate chin steadied itself with some difficulty. “It's been uppermost on the mind of anyone and everyone who loves you.”

“Thank you. I know how much you've supported me. Micheline—you've been wonderful. Without the strength of your gentle words, of your encouragement…”

“But Alexandre, something is wrong.”

He nodded, slowly. “My sweet Micheline, you've given me months of loyalty, months of something I desperately needed….”

“Love.”

He looked away. “It's not right for me to pursue this affair with you. You deserve better.”

“You've told me that many times! I think what I have is the very best. I love you so much, Alexandre.”

The earnestness in her blue eyes was so painful that it turned his stomach inside out. “I care for you too.”

“But ‘caring for' isn't the same as loving.' “

“I know. And that's what I'm coming to. Micheline, you're very dear to me. Too dear for me to lie to you. I still love Lesley. In spite of all the years of problems between us, if there's a chance for us to be together, I want to take it. She's my wife.”

He couldn't look at the tears in her eyes, but he felt them. She stood up. “It's all right. I do understand. If ever you should need me, Alexandre….”

Then he met her eyes. “Thank you. For everything. For—”

“Don't.”

She turned around, went to the door, stopped. “I'm going to stay long enough to train someone new,” she said softly. “You're going to need an excellent secretary. Please don't be afraid I'd let you down now.”

His throat felt so knotted that the words came out raw, hoarse. “You've never let me down. I want you to realize that of all the people who've been in my life, you alone stood by me without fail. All the time.”

She floated out of the office, and he laid his head in his hands. The election was over; there was relief but also sadness. The sadness of what had just taken place. Sometimes honor was difficult to come by. It would have been such an easy thing to keep her near….

He rose, shuffled the papers around his desk, and put on his jacket. He would go to Lesley now, and celebrate.

T
here had been
but few words between them, before the party. He'd entered, and she'd looked up and backward, from her vanity: her green eyes softening, stroking him. She'd had her hair newly bobbed, and it framed her small features like a bright, copper cap. “How handsome you look, Monsieur
le Député,”
she had murmured. “Tired, but handsome.”

“I wanted to tell you something, Lesley.”

Her brows had risen inquisitively, a half smile illuminating her triangular face.

“Darling, you were asking me about…there being someone else in my life. I want you to know that there is no one. Only you.”

He'd watched a shadow passing over her expression. “Thank you, Alex. We've been through so much, haven't we? And yet nothing that anybody could put his finger on. No major traumas. Just the erosion of ten years of knowing each other. But it's in the small battles that a war can be won—or lost.”

“And our personal war?”

“Was it a war? Or just a parapet that grew up between us?”

“I don't know anymore. I thought today about you, about our meeting, our wedding. You're the most important thing in my life.”

“And you're the center of my being. I once believed that those early moments of excitement were what made a woman love a man. But excitement is in confronting one's daily existence and still pulling through on the same side. I don't want to lose you. Alex.” And the party that followed had rung with celebration. He'd felt joy, hope—until the footman had come in with news of Cassie's abduction. Now he could only think of his niece, and of her mother.

He remembered Lesley's words as he entered the crowded drawing room, as he bent over Jamie's collapsed form and gently placed her on the love seat. It couldn't be possible that someone had kidnapped Cassandra. Jamie had suffered so much already. It couldn't be happening to her—to
them.
His brother had moved up and was sitting down beside Jamie's head, and his brown eyes were accusatory. He said tightly: “Alex, anything about Cassie is my business. It's time you understood that she's
my
daughter—not yours.”

Lesley placed a restraining hand on Paul's arm. “Please. This is hardly the moment. Cassie is a concern to all of us. And so is Jamie.” She raised her head to the liveried servant. “Madame Stewart should be put to bed in the blue guest room,” she stated quietly. “And see to it that the glasses are kept filled, that the party is kept going. The Marquis, the comte, and I want to see the nurse in my husband's study. And I don't want any word of this leaked out.”

Paul rose and made room for two men to carry Jamie away. Alexandre's jaw set nervously. It would be impossible to keep Paul out of this. “Come on,” he commanded abruptly. He led the way out, his wife following, his brother taking up the rear. Turning around, he saw Elena Egorova staring after them. Thank God, she hadn't made a move to join them.

Once behind the closed door, Alex took his seat behind the large desk and looked at the nurse. Her middle-aged features were ashen.

Lesley was standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Protecting him? On the opposite side—always on opposite sides, he remarked bitterly to himself—sat his brother. The nurse took the chair nearest him, sat with her back hunched over. “It wasn't my fault, Monsieur le Marquis,” she began.