Beast (31 page)

This face, its new proximity somehow, and the immediacy of what was going to occur tonight were suddenly so hair-raising that Louise found herself unable to look at the man across from her for longer than a few seconds.

"Would you like some wine?" he asked.

And it was this not-looking-at-him that suddenly riveted her attention: to the sound.
Would you like
some champagne
? She looked up.

"Would you like some wine?" he repeated.

Staring, she jerked her head, a single movement. No.

His odd face registered disappointment. He set the bottle down.

Wine, not champagne, she told herself. No, it wasn't at all the same. He'd said it quietly, in French. Yet something… his tone… something had stopped her heart. For Charles—
her
Charles—rose up before her, like the day in the olive grove, only stronger. This time, her soul turned upside down. As if a ghost murmured from somewhere beyond life.

Louise stared at a man so different from her handsome, wicked Arab, who could yet evoke him so intensely she didn't know how to speak. His husband's voice was similar, she realized. Deep. He and her lover had size in common. They both made perfume—they both used scented soap, or toilette water or something, not so common among men, but pleasant even though she liked the Arab version better.

It was uncanny, come to think of it. some of the things they had in common. And pathetic, some of the things that separated them.

Her pasha was confident, ridiculously so. This man was hesitant. She frightened him. She knew she bowled him over.

Her old tantrum of the olive grove welled up.
Charles. I want my Charles and only Charles; not this
one
.

She missed the man who could scoop her up into his arms or, laughing, carry her on the front of him like a monkey to bed; her smooth, magnetic, impetuous lover of the ship. She had instead this circumspect, overly mindful husband, following her with his Mephisto's gait—a halting rhythm that by will alone he made fluid, like a musical phrase in a melodic minor with grace notes.

Her Charles was earthy. Unflinching. She missed his laughter. He laughed a lot. This man rarely smiled; he looked more often puzzled and on edge.

Her Charles was not afraid of her beauty or overly impressed with it. She suspected here in France, though—what with the drawbacks and contingencies that had come up to rush the marriage—she would not be wed to Charles Harcourt without it. The lame prince liked it. It proved something. He gloated over the idea of taking a stunning woman to wife.

Her Charles understood other ways to involve himself with her than this superficial one, turning her looks themselves into a kind of game. He knew how to play. He was not easily stymied. He was clever, kind.

And handsome—

Louise picked up her soup spoon with a clank, then glanced over the top of it at the man in front
of
her.

No, not handsome, not handsome at all. Though he was so peculiar to look at that a part of her wished she could narrow her eyes and glut on the sight, tilt her head and look and look to satisfy a kind of morbid fascination for his person that left her feeling ashamed, too curious for his disfigurement.

She couldn't do this, so she retreated back into the safety of glimpses, then realized. The really hateful difference between the two men was the difference she perceived in herself when in each man's presence.

Tonight she felt unsure, unsettled, and her confusion itself made her behave badly, far beyond the word
shrewish
. She felt like a termagant, a she-wolf out of season, ready to bite and snap at any who came sniffing. She felt closed, defensive—when she wanted nothing so much as to be open again. She wished to be what her Charles had called her once: honest, open, intelligent, generous. Sweet.

She couldn't remember what he had found sweet about her, though she knew she aspired to a sweetness of sorts. A kind, compassionate spirit. No one ever before had been tempted to use that term
sweet
with regard to her, yet it had endeared her pasha to her for him to call her this.

Louise knew she was intelligent, perhaps to a fault. This left her with
honest, open
and
generous
. What did she
honestly
think was happening to her here?

Why was she so uncomfortable? So unlike the new self that had lived briefly in a suite on a tossing ship?

Tonight, more than ever, she wished she could have talked to her naked priest of the dark, discussed her concerns, asked him what he thought. Her lover, her friend and confessor, maybe he could make her laugh about this: She was unnerved by the thought of giving herself to this man.

Giving herself
. Even the phrase made her feel selfish. So much for
generous
. She didn't want to give anything. She wanted to take. She wanted to have. In the midst of all the prince's lavish attention, she felt needy and bereft. Alone again. No one who understood… Which, in turn, made her feel miserly with herself; mean-spirited and small-minded.

Louise spooned soup and smiled as she tried to force herself to say something pleasant. "Nice weather,"

she murmured.

The prince looked at her, as if surprised to hear this topic come up, then nodded. "Yes. We get wonderful weather year-round, though autumn can bring a little rain, quick and heavy. Last year we had a flash flood that ruined a field of roses."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Her mind went blank.

Oh, yes, she thought. The weather on the Riviera. Good year-round, except for some rain. An earth-shattering discussion.

Louise tried to take appreciative pleasure in what she normally enjoyed—a fine meal in extraordinarily pleasant surroundings. The prince had gone to a great deal of trouble. "This is delicious," she said, lifting a spoonful of whatever-it-was soup. In her spoon bowl it was thick and pale pink. She swallowed it without knowing whether the flavor was vegetable, fruit, or meat.

He responded by naming fish, or what she thought to be fish. Only the bass was recognizable, and translatable, as a fish she knew from the Hudson.

Why feel grateful
? she thought suddenly. All this kindness had purpose. This genteel man wanted to take her to bed well-fed and happy; that's what this was all about. And the thought—
to bed
—brought instant panic. Louise tried to calm herself. The prince was sure to be just as considerate tonight. She could count on his sexual tact. Or she thought she could; she hoped she could. Besides, with the lights off, in the dark, wouldn't it all seem familiar, more appealing when it was more like—

This question made her stop as she broke off a piece of bread. The poor prince could never measure up. More importantly, she didn't want him to.

It was a relief to understand this. Oh, yes. Louise resumed, spreading her bread enthusiastically with French "rust." a condiment that went with the soup; there was no butter. She didn't want Charles Harcourt, not at all. And, with this admission, something became clear: Husband or not, the idea of giving her body over to someone else's use did not seem like something she ought to have to do. She thought herself far too valuable to give away in any sense, even for a night.

She didn't want him. And that was that; she wouldn't have him.

It wasn't a
sweet
decision, but it was honest. She dipped her bread in the soup and picked up her spoon again as she prepared now to be open.

She said, "I want to sleep alone tonight."

The prince stopped in midmotion as he brought his own soup spoon to his mouth. "
Vous dites
?" he said—the blunt French equivalent to
huh
? or
what
? that asked for a remark to be repeated.

She was sure he'd heard her, though. She continued, "By myself. It doesn't matter where, on the couch is fine."

"You want to sleep on a couch?"

"Yes."

"A couch where?"

"I saw one in your sitting room upstairs."

"You want to sleep in the sitting room by yourself tonight?"

"Yes."

He put his spoon down and sat back, his brow furrowing, half his face alarmed, half looking like an ogre with indigestion. "I hesitate to mention that it is customary for a married couple to sleep together, particularly on their wedding night."

She didn't care what was customary. It was her own private choice that unfortunately, she could see.

rankled the man across from her. She wasn't happy to do this. But neither did she feel responsible for a grown man's ability to cope with the truth of a situation.

Truth. She struggled to find some more, looking for more comfort, more ease from the odd strain of emotion that bound her and held her back from being herself. "You have to understand," she said. "I'm trying to sort some things out. I didn't plan on being married to you two weeks after arriving. To say my life has changed too fast is an understatement." She scooped and blew on hot soup, staring into her spoon as if she might find propitiating words there. She added, "Mama and Papa believe you are very benevolent and broad-minded, so I hope you won't make a stink over this. I need time. I intend to—well, you know, have children eventually. I just didn't plan on being married so quickly and, to tell you the truth—" She glanced up and stopped.

Any charm on that strange face of his had fled completely. Without it, his expression, his whole posture took on a ferocious edge—a look of sullen disbelief made fierce by size and mass and facial anomaly.

She had seen him cast a fearsome look at other people, but she had never been the recipient of such a countenance. One moment, she couldn't look away: his face, his mien so fascinatingly terrible to witness.

The next, she couldn't bear the sight.

She dropped her gaze in order to finish what she had to say to him. "There is a great deal that I have to adjust to here"—more than she had imagined perhaps—"and I would rather take it a step at a time, so if you could give me a little grace."

There, she had gotten it all out, Louise thought. She set her spoon into the plate of her soup bowl. It clinked twice, ringing on the china. She looked down at the sound, rather than meet his eyes—or eye.

Lord, he gave her the willies when he sat like this, still and quiet, scrutinizing, herself the converging point of his brutish discontent.

There was a long pause. "All right." he said at length.

She tried to suppress her sense of relief. "All right?"

"Certainly. How much time do you wish?" His voice was calm, smooth, but he was not happy. He kept his focus down on the table, where he began to tap the salt shaker with the tip of his finger.

"I don't know. I'll tell you when."

His regard lifted abruptly at this bid for total sexual autonomy, his one azure blue eye, alive, astute, macabre in its beauty, fixing on her, then narrowing. He had nothing further to say on the subject for the present. But she knew she had not gotten exactly what she wanted.

She had her reprieve, but it was not given innocently nor was this a charming understanding. He was angry and disappointed, and he made no attempt to hide the fact.

Louise was struck again by guilt, a feeling that he deserved better from her—though not so strong or brooding a guilt that she actually wished she could accommodate him.

The soup bowls were removed. The prince poured himself more wine. An oppressive silence insinuated itself over the little table.

In an attempt to relieve this, she asked, "When do you pick up your first shipment of ambergris?" It seemed apropos to remind them both why he'd really married her.

He drank his wine, upending the glass instead of answering, then, as if this were just too laconic, muttered four words: "In about a week."

She had no clear idea where to go from here. "What is it?" she asked.

"What?"

"Ambergris."

"A perfume fixative."

She knew this already. "No, I mean, how does it end up in the sea. Where does it come from?"

"Squid beaks."

"Squid beaks?"

There was a long pause as if he meant not to speak further. Ultimately, though, he poured more wine and said, "In the whale's stomach. He can't digest these and some random shells of cuttlefish, so his body makes a bile that encases the indigestible pieces. This is squeezed into a bolus in his intestines. Then the whole is excreted in a black, viscous regurgitation. There it is"—
Voilà
—"ambergris." Gratuitously, he added, "It floats, of course: It's feces."

Louise blinked, looked up at him. He was turned from her, his best profile, which was sharp-featured, still not precisely good looking. He sat there in an angry slump, turning the wine glass by its stem—having put a pretty definitive end to this dinner conversation. She murmured, "How disgusting."

He glanced at her, his relatively perfect mouth sneering into a sarcastic pull. "Well, it improves under the right circumstances. It becomes quite elegant."

Indeed. It was boiled down and turned into something else entirely. If he were suggesting this as a metaphor for himself, she refused it.

Still, he didn't seem quite the same odd, timid fancy man she had first thought. His restrained manner did not seem to come out of weakness so much as out of a lack of interest in power for its own sake. He was strong, formidably so, she sensed. But like a vampire or incubus, mere obedience to his strength wasn't what he wanted. He wanted her will to bend toward him. This made her feel both safe, since she didn't honestly believe in vampires or incubuses, and on edge, since it seemed possible she had married the closest thing to them that walked the earth.

The main course arrived, something or other roasted, herbed, colorful, beautiful, a waste. With it, came a servant who lit the lamps at the cornerstones of the balcony railing, old, oil-burning glass and iron globes. Beyond the balcony, the towns and villages between Grasse and the coastline became nestled clusters of twinkling light, a plummeting progression that fanned and sloped toward the sea like a black velvet night brought out to show off a diamond spill of civilization. Far off, similar jewels, more closely arranged, showed the shape of the coast beyond which a tiny ship glided off-center through a watery ribbon of moonlight. Closer to hand, a glow from the dining room whiffed into existence. The terrace became awash in soft, romantic illumination, yet Louise and her husband avoided looking at each other.