Till We Meet Again (83 page)

When the lobsters were finished, Freddy heaved a great sigh of pleasure, and began to clean herself up with the help of fresh napkins and the large bowl of warm water with slices of lemon floating in it that had been set before each of them. When she was satisfied that she had scrubbed her face and her hands as well as possible, she untied her bib and emerged, her cheeks shining like those of a baby who had just had a bath. “Cheesecake?” she wondered aloud. “Or ice cream?”

“Both,” David said, and leaned over and kissed her lips. Freddy gasped in surprise. “I like a girl who knows how to get the best from a lobster,” he explained.

“So much that you kiss her?”

“Easily.” He kissed her again, his glasses bumping into her nose. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“Take off your glasses,” she suggested.

“Then I couldn’t see you.”

“You know perfectly well what I look like.”

“Not like this, not when you’re happy. You are happy, aren’t you, Freddy?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, “yes, I am.”

“But not entirely?”

“No … not entirely …” Freddy said, as she struggled to be completely honest about emotions she didn’t understand, and could not,
would not
, force herself to think about. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it—I guess I’m … a little depressed somewhere underneath … lots of reasons
 … it’s complicated … I hope it will just go away by itself. It’s probably a question of time. David, the thing is, I am happy for this particular moment, in fact I’ve been happy ever since we got here, and that’s more happiness than I can remember feeling for a long, long time. The other … that unhappiness isn’t your problem.”

“But it is.”

“Why would it be? You said I was ready to go home. You’ve pushed me out of the nest. After the way I attacked that lobster, there’s no way I can pretend I’m too weak to cope. Do I still need a doctor’s care?”

“Technically, no. But I want to keep on taking care of you.”

“How?” said Freddy, puzzled.

“I want … I want you to marry me. Don’t say no! Don’t say anything at all! Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, Freddy. Don’t tell me you can’t ask a girl to marry you after one date and two kisses. You can—I just did, and I haven’t done anything impulsive before in my life. I know you better than you can dream I do. I also know it’s much too soon, and I shouldn’t have said anything—but I couldn’t help it. I want you to know how I feel about you—I’m going to go on feeling that way, and you can take your time, and get to know me and decide … when you decide. That’s all, not one more word.”

“My goodness,” Freddy said faintly. “What will we talk about on our second date?”

24

N
EW Yorkers were always boasting about the glories of their city, and Bruno de Lancel found himself perfectly willing to agree with them. Was Manhattan more cultivated, more intellectual than London? Richer, more imperial than Rome? More dramatic, even more romantic than Paris? Yes, all of these and more. Whatever qualities they claimed, he accorded them freely, even half sincerely, as a taxi bore him toward the dinner that the John Allens were giving on a night in early October of 1951.

Marie de La Rochefoucauld had come back from her summer in the Loire Valley, as free, as unentangled as she had been when he’d seen her off on the Il
e de France
in June. Since her return, Bruno had managed to spend some time with her almost every weekend, although she still refused any dates other than afternoon excursions and quiet evenings in small restaurants. She told him that her family had been disappointed when unexpected business had prevented him from traveling to France during the entire summer.

“Maman said she would have liked to get to know you, from everything that I told her, and my brothers all counted on you for tennis … in short, you were missed, Bruno. You must not disappoint us again,” Marie said with a mild, half-joking sweetness and a shy, darting look that Bruno, who was able to chronicle each half-degree of intimacy of her expressions, realized was the warmest she had ever given him.

The Allens’ party tonight was to celebrate Marie’s birthday, and Bruno had searched for a week before he found a present that she would find not too important to accept, yet which would be worthy of this sovereign girl. Finally he’d settled on a first edition of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, a book she loved for reasons he had never been able to understand, although he’d read it with the careful attention of a man in love, as if it contained precious clues to her character. It had cost an astonishing amount of money, a fact he was
certain she couldn’t possibly realize, and, he reflected, it was always proper to give a book as a gift.

Bruno sat in the Allens’ drawing room, in an agitated but well-concealed condition of anticipatory jealousy, for he knew that the guest list had been determined by Marie, not by Mrs. Allen. When he arrived, Sarah Allen greeted him, and explained that Marie was still dressing. “She got stuck in that awful subway on the way down from Columbia, tonight of all nights … what’s more, here I am having a formal dinner and she only let me invite twelve of her friends besides you,” she complained. “I do wish Marie had allowed me to give her a ball … she’s made so many friends … but she didn’t want a lot of fuss.”

So there were to be twelve other people besides him, Bruno thought, as the guests arrived. Four were Marie’s two favorite professors and their wives; one couple was the Allens’ daughter, Joan, and her fiancé; two more couples were married friends she’d made among her fellow students. There was another unmarried man besides Bruno, but he brought a girl, a close friend of Marie’s, with whom he was clearly involved. Bruno had met them all before. He was the only single, unattached man there, he realized with momentary disbelief. She’d chosen him … or had she made it possible for him to choose her? Or—and knowing Marie, it was distinctly probable—had she just innocently picked out the names of the people with whom she felt most at home in New York? Did his invitation mean nothing more significant than the fact that he was another friend, a friend on the same level as the other guests? He couldn’t know, he realized. He might never know.

Bruno stood in a corner frowning, his dark yoke of eyebrows slashing across his brow, above his high-bridged, distinguished nose, his small, full mouth tight with anger that he should find himself so confused. Marie came into the room wearing a slim, floor-length, strapless dress of heavy white silk. Her long black hair had been braided into a coronet around her impeccably shaped head, enhancing the proud, slender shape of her neck. From her ears hung long pendant earrings, swaying sprays of old rose-cut diamonds with great cabochon rubies at their centers, and she had pinned a huge matching brooch in the center of her bodice, just at the point where the ivory skin of her shoulders rose from the top of her dress.

Marie’s jewels were so magnificent that only inheritance could justify someone so young wearing them, yet she carried them with the same ease as she wore the inconspicuous gold earrings, the gold chain and watch that were the only other jewelry Bruno had ever seen her wear. He bit his lip in impotent emotion. As much in love as he was, he raged at the sight of Marie’s unexpected and matter-of-fact possession of family jewels that had nothing to do with him. She should not be allowed to wear anything, not so much as a pair of shoes, that he didn’t give her; she must never surprise him by appearing in an incarnation he did not expect, did not control, no matter how beautiful.
Oh, if he owned her, she’d learn!

Dinner was a long, elaborate torture for Bruno, who found himself at the other end of the table from Marie. She sat between John Allen and one of her professors, looking happier and more animated than he had ever seen her. With sixteen people at the oval table, general conversation was impossible, and Bruno was forced to devote himself to his neighbors, while he tried to watch Marie, without being rude to either of the ladies at his right and left. She had not placed him next to her. Obviously she’d been in charge of the seating, just as she had been of the invitations. She had not even tried to catch his eye, he said to himself grimly, as they finished the birthday cake. The most accomplished flirt in the world could not have treated him with more cunning than the supposedly guileless Marie de La Rochefoucauld.
Oh, if he were her master, he’d teach her not to dare to play such tricks on him!

After dinner, while coffee and brandy were served in the drawing room, Bruno tried to sit next to Marie, but found the other place on the love seat casually preempted by the younger of her two professors, the one who had not been seated by her at dinner. The man couldn’t be more than thirty-five, Bruno thought, as he stood, balancing his demitasse and savagely studying this scholar who had chosen to make Chinese ceramics his life’s work. He didn’t have the fussy, dusty look that Bruno imagined a professional academic should have. He was obviously well bred and, judging by the elegance of his wife, must possess a substantial private income. The blond professor kept Marie laughing and parrying his irreverent remarks about the entire graduate school, until
Bruno was forced to turn away in order to hide the grimace of vengeful jealousy he felt forming on his features.

Was it possible that here was the reason she had returned from the summer without accepting some French suitor? Was it conceivable that she was in love with this fellow who shared her deepest interests? Had she invited him tonight with his wife, to dispel suspicion? What a treasure of opportunities they could find to be together in the course of any day, Bruno thought, remembering how easy it had been for his mistresses to deceive their husbands. Did the two of them meet secretly in the stacks of the library, in the workrooms where fragments of ceramics were studied, did they have lunch together, and after lunch … No!

If Marie belonged to him, she would have no such vile liberty!
He would dispose of her every minute, he would make sure that she had no intimate friends, no interests that he did not find suitable for her, not one aspect of her life that excluded him would be permitted. He would gain control of her nights and her days, slowly, moment by moment, with such dexterous care that she would never suspect how she was being trained, until it was far too late to struggle against it. La Vicomtesse Bruno de Saint-Fraycourt de Lancel would never be given leave to sit in a drawing room and giggle like a schoolgirl. She would learn what he would permit her to do, and she would not risk doing anything of which he did not approve.

“More coffee, Bruno?” Marie de La Rochefoucauld asked him, startling him because he had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t seen her get up and come toward him. The light caught the green flecks in his brown eyes as he looked down at her.

“Thank you, Marie, no. I like your hair around your head that way. It makes you look almost fifteen.”

“I think I look too dignified. Don’t try to tease me,” she commanded him, so calmly, so self-assuredly, yet so charmingly that his heart yearned as he looked at her, although his manner, powerful, easy, invisibly armored as ever, betrayed nothing. “Thank you for
Alice,”
she continued, “it’s the most enchanting present anyone has ever given me … how did you find it?”

“That’s a secret.”

“Bruno, do tell me,” she insisted. “It’s not the sort of book you can find in any bookstore. And I hate secrets, don’t you?”

“You seem to have a few secrets of your own with that professor of yours,” Bruno said lightly, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the blond academic.

“Joe? Isn’t he amusing? I adore him, in fact everyone does. And his wife, Ellen, is one of the most charming women I’ve ever met—did you get a chance to talk to her? No? That’s a shame—they’ve only been married for a year—she just told me that she’s expecting a baby—it’s wonderful to see two people so happy. Perhaps …”

“Perhaps what?”

“Joe and Ellen are giving a party for a group of students next week. Would it amuse you to come with me? I warn you, the other guests will all be from the Department of Oriental Art, but I think you’d like them and … I know they’d like you.”

“What makes you think so?” Bruno asked. “I don’t share their specialized interests.”

“Bruno, sometimes you can be so … so obtuse! They’d like you because you’re you and …” She hesitated, and, it seemed to Bruno, she had thought better of saying the words that came to her mind.

“And,” he probed, “and what?”

“For heaven’s sake, Bruno, they’ve … heard about you,” Marie said, looking flustered. “I suppose they’re … curious. Some of them don’t think you exist, they think I’ve invented you.”

“So you talk about me with your classmates?”

Marie tilted her head upward to meet his eyes squarely with her ineffably candid gaze, her calm self-assurance stripped away by her honesty. She spoke with a seriousness and a flame he had never seen in her.

“I can’t help it, Bruno. How could I keep you to myself?”

“You are the most wonderfully law-abiding driver I’ve ever known,” Freddy said to David, as he maneuvered his navy-blue Cadillac town car along the almost deserted stretch of Sunset Boulevard, where long, lusciously carved curves seemed to have been engineered to tempt drivers to swing and sway around them. “Did you ever go over the speed limit?”

“Probably, in college, but not on purpose, darling. When you see enough car crash injuries in the emergency room,
you lose your interest in getting there a minute faster or passing the next guy on the right.”

“I can certainly understand that,” Freddy agreed. When she had first driven with David out to Jack’s at the Beach, two months earlier, she’d imagined that his careful observance of the most detailed precautions known to the Department of Motor Vehicles had been due to his knowledge of her fear of venturing outside the world of the hospital. She’d assumed that he was taking special care of her, that he knew she was experiencing a shock of vertigo, a dizzy, phobic fear caused by the sheer openness of the world after the months she’d spent inside protecting walls. She thought that he was forcing himself to hold his powerful car down to a legal speed limit, which no other Californian she’d ever known had obeyed. Now, after two months during which she’d seen David at least three times a week, she realized that vehicular decorum was part of his personality.