Destiny (56 page)

"I don't know. I was afraid," she said finally. It was an evasion, and she waited for him to sense it, she waited for him to question her, but he did not. He gave a sigh of relief.

"My darling. Never be afraid. Not now. What can we fear now?" he said tenderly, and wrapped his arms around her.

Later, when they were in bed and Edouard slept, Helene lay, tense and wakeful, and thought about the fear. She calculated its-precise nature. She counted the weeks and months of it. She told herself she might be wrong. In the end she slept, and when she woke in the morning, there the fear was, waiting for her.

She rested her hands loosely across her stomach, and tried to will it away. Edouard still slept. Restlessly, she slipped out of bed, and went into the bathroom. As soon as she was on her feet, she felt the nausea. Cold sweat on the back of her neck, a sensation of weightlessness. She retched, leaning against the cool marble basin, and shaking. She splashed water on her face, and the nausea passed.

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She turned the faucet off, on again, and then off once more. She looked at her own pale face in the glass, and saw the strain in it, the shadows beneath her eyes. Billy's child, said a small flat voice in her mind; Billy's baby. She had known at once, when she looked at the date on the letter to Cassie.

Billy was not dead; he hved on in her, he would hve on in his child. That was the gift she had given him when they went down to the pool the day he died; that was the reason for the dreams she had and the guilt she felt. She turned away from the mirror and looked through into the bedroom where Edouard lay, still sleeping. She ought to feel glad, she told herself, for Billy's sake. It was wrong of her not to feel glad. Billy had loved her and Billy was dead: she owed Billy this child.

She knew, she thought dully, what she would have to do. She could see the course of action quite clearly; she stood there, turning it back and forth in her mind, and for a moment it seemed quite simple. Then she went back into the bedroom and looked at Edouard's sleeping face, and knew immediately that it was not simple at all.

Edouard's face was still, his features composed. He looked, as sleepers do, both peaceful and vulnerable. Her heart twisted with love for him; the pain of it ached in her mind, and her resolve immediately weakened.

She bent and pressed her lips gently against his forehead. She felt his breath warm against her cheek. After all, she told herself, it might not be true, there could be other explanations. It would be wrong and foolhardy to act before she was absolutely certain.

Edouard's eyes flickered open, and the flurry of ideas in her mind resolved themselves into one phrase. She thought: Perhaps — but not yet,

Edouard knew that something was wrong, and the knowledge tormented him. It was an instinctual knowledge, and when he tried to confront it rationally, reasonably—when had it begun, how had it begun, why had it begun?—he could find no answers. There had been some shift, some very delicate change, he sensed it with every part of his being. He thought, sometimes, that he could date it: it had begun on the day he went to Paris; sometimes he felt quite certain of that. But on other occasions even that certainty slipped away from him. Had it begun then, or was that merely the first time he had been aware of it?

And what, precisely, was it that he sensed? Helene's behavior had not changed; they had not quarreled; there was no physical estrangement between them; nothing was wrong.

So he argued—but it was not what he felt. What he felt in her was sUght,

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almost imperceptible, and difficult for him to name. A tension, perhaps; a reticence, which had always been there, but was now a little more marked; a withdrawal from him, delicate, sad, reluctant maybe, but a withdrawal just the same, step by step.

There was one thing in particular which she did—she had always done it, but now he noticed it more and more. She would be sitting quietly, listening to him, even talking, and then, quite suddenly, her eyes would change. He had the impression, then, that she saw something, or heard something, or remembered something very real to her; from that—whatever it was—he was totally excluded.

He had always found that quality in her mysterious, and because mysterious, arousing. It was like a challenge, a barrier he determined to break down. When he made love to her, he would have the illusion, while the act lasted, that the barrier had gone and he had reached her at last. Then the illusion would founder; it was as if he lurched, constantly, between a sensation of union and a sensation of loss.

He was used, he told himself cynically, to women who gave themselves easily in every sense; their eagerness to do so bored him very quickly. Helene always eluded him. She was more candid, more direct, more forthright, than almost any other woman he had known. Her love was there; she spoke of it; it illumined her face and her eyes; she attached no conditions to it, seeming either unaware, or uncaring, that this affection she gave him so openly made her vulnerable to him. It might have occurred to her that he could hurt her—Edouard was not sure; she might have concealed that awareness out of pride, rather as he did. But he thought not. He thought the quality she possessed was simpler, and rarer: she had courage, and he loved her for it.

Yet still, in some way he could not define, he knew she was not open with him. She gave absolutely: she also withheld absolutely. The paradox disturbed him; it obsessed him; it was like a riddle which he had to solve.

Sometimes he thought the answer was quite simple: she had lied. Not about the important things between them, not about the love she felt—he never felt that—but about other things, yes, he felt she had not always told him the truth. She disliked being questioned about the past—he had discovered that almost immediately. Now, occasionally, he noticed slight inconsistencies, and vaguenesses. Tiny details, dates, places—they did not always quite square with things she had told him before. He felt that she was deliberately hiding something from him. Yet she was so young, what could she want to hide? What was the point of it? Some fact about her parentage? The circumstances which had made her leave England? A former love affair? His suspicions made him jealous, and he despised jealousy. So, when his instinct was to cross-examine her, to make her tell him what-

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ever the truth was, he always held back. She would tell him eventually, that was what he told himself, and it was important that she should do so freely, of her own will. So he waited, and she volunteered nothing; she would not talk about the past, and she would not, he reahzed with growing despair, she would not talk about the future.

This, again, was unusual in a woman, in his experience. Most of the women he had known had been only too eager to tie the future down. When will you call me, Edouard? When shall I see you again? He had always loathed that kind of insistence, and resisted it. Now, positions were reversed, now when it was he who longed to make plans, and pledges, it was Helene who stubbornly resisted all attempts to look further than tomorrow.

That refusal—or, rather, that gentle but firm evasion—tormented him most of all. Eternity, a lifetime: he felt like a gambler so convinced of the outcome of the game, that he had to stake all.

"I shall always love you," he said to her once, and then held his breath.

"I shall always love you, Edouard," she answered quite calmly, meeting and holding his gaze. He felt instantly, immoderately happy, and a httle shamed by the simplicity and certainty with which she spoke. Assurances? He and Helene did not need assurances—they were vulgar and trivial things. The next day, he saw again that distant look in her eyes, and he knew he would have given his soul for an assurance then, trivial or not.

Two days after he returned from Paris, sensing that barrier between them which he could not understand, he had made a conscious decision. Thinking that the barrier was perhaps of his own making, he had told her fully and for the first time, first about Gregoire, then about his marriage, the death of his brother, of Isobel and their child.

It was something he had spoken of to no one, and he found the words almost impossible to say. If she had attempted to comfort him then, if she had said any of the awkward consolatory things people said on such occasions, he knew he would find it unbearable, that, even though he loved her, he would wish he had remained silent. But she did neither of those things; she listened to him quietly, and when he had finished, she wept, fiercely, as if his grief were her own.

He loved her for those tears; he felt more bound to her then than he ever had before. But this sense of union did not last. By the very next day he once again despaired. He had shown his trust in her; yet still she held back: she could not, or would not, trust him.

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A week passed. The end of September was approaching, and Edouard knew that he must soon return to Paris. Helene must return with him; anything else was impossible. But in Paris, in the autumn, they could not be alone together as they had been here. He would have to begin a public Ufe once more, and Helene—of necessity—would have to be part of it.

Edouard wondered sometimes if that prospect frightened her, or if she disliked it, and if it was that feeling which she attempted to hide from him. It could be that simple, after all, he told himself, wanting to believe it. Perhaps, in bringing her here to the Loire, in giving them these weeks alone together, he had done the wrong thing. Perhaps he should have let her see, right from the beginning, the kind of life he had to lead. If he could just show her, he thought, that he wanted her there with him, that his public life need not be daunting, despite the gossip. . . .

It was then that Edouard conceived the idea of holding a dinner party at the chateau before they returned to Paris. Helene did not oppose the idea, though she tried to persuade him to postpone it, and Edouard, seeing her reluctance, became more and more certain that she was needlessly afraid of the transition from a private to a public alliance. He teased her gently for her objections, and went ahead with his plans.

The dinner was arranged for September 24. It was an occasion which Edouard never forgot. Afterward, whenever he looked back, trying to understand the past, he saw that evening as a point of division in his life.

The guest list was formidable. The Due and Duchesse de Varenges, both elderly—they had been close friends of Edouard's father. Jean-Jacques Belmont-Laon and his wife, Ghislaine, the interior decorator—their invitation an act of pure defiance on Edouard's part. People will talk, he had said with a smile. Let them. If we invite Ghislaine, we will give them all a head start. . . . Christian Glendinning, the art dealer, and one of Edouard's oldest friends. Clara Delluc, who worked with Ghislaine as a textile designer, and who had been Edouard's mistress for many years. // has been over between us for a long time, my darling. There is no ill feeling. You will like Clara. She and Isobel were friends. I want you to meet some people you can trust. ... A quartet of American business associates, other couples, most of them French, the women very elegant, every single person at the table much older than she was, and apparently perfectly assured. People who were part of the framework of Edouard's life; people who had known

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him for years, some of them since before she was bom. The Due de Varenges on her right; Christian Glendinning on her left. The Due, a kindly man who spoke excellent Enghsh, was discoursing on the subject of fishing. He had been doing so for some time.

Helene's head was turned toward him; she listened with seeming interest; she hoped she did so, for in reality she heard not one word.

Twenty people; Edouard and herself She glanced up and met Edouard's eyes. He was smiling at her gently, down the length of the table, as if to encourage her. The occasion itself frightened her; but the enormity of what she had decided she must do made her mind freeze with fear. Edouard would be hurt, and if she had had any choice, she felt as if she would rather have died than hurt him.

But there was no choice, not anymore. The certainty had grown, all week. She wished, passionately, that she could have persuaded Edouard not to hold this terrible dinner. She wished none of these people had met her. It might have been easier for Edouard then.

"Trout." The Due de Varenges shook his head. "I particularly like trout. Wily creatures. Full of guile. Better sport even than salmon, though most people wouldn't agree with me. I don't suppose you like fishing? Very few women do, in my experience." He sounded regretful, quite sad. Helene looked at him blankly; for a moment she had been quite unaware of his existence.

"I've never fished, I'm afraid," she said quickly.

"Ah, well. Ah, well." He smiled at her kindly. "You must persuade Edouard to teach you."

"I would like that."

The words were spoken before she could stop herself It was the truth, and it was also a he, because it would never happen. The Due was benignly assuming a future which did not exist; so were most of the other people at the table, she could tell it from their curious glances. So was Edouard. She knew that, she had let it happen, and she should have stopped it.

Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God. What have I done?

From his vantage point, at the head of the table, Edouard looked at Helene. She was wearing the white dress he had bought her at Givenchy, and he thought she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Givenchy was a genius, and these dresses of his, famous for their pure hnes, were made for Helene. He had known that, and Givenchy himself had sensed it immediately. Plain white silk satin, cut with a narrow boned bodice, the long skirt a slender bell. It left her throat and her shoulders

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quite bare: absolute severity and absolute sensuality: Givenchy had seen at once the paradox that was at the heart of Helene's beauty.

Her pale gold hair was drawn back from her forehead, and fastened simply at the nape of her neck, emphasizing the oval of her face, the calm and dazzling perfection of her features. She was pale—she was afraid of this dinner, he knew that—but now, he saw with relief, a little color had come back into her face. It stained her cheeks, and made her eyes glow; the Due had been talking to her, and she had just answered . . . perhaps she was beginning to relax, to see that there was nothing to fear. Edouard felt a surge of optimism. His instinct in arranging this evening had been right, he thought.