Leonie (13 page)

“But I must get a job, Caro,” Léonie answered. “I can’t stay with you forever, and besides, it’s not fair to Alphonse. You’ve both done enough for me.”

But what sort of job? Léonie wondered, floating on her back in the pool. I’m different now from the girl who worked at Serrat. I’ve grown up a little. And, after all, I’m seventeen years old. Girls from her village were already married and producing their first babies by that age, or even their second! She hadn’t thought about Normandy since she had left, and she locked the stray thought away now, just as she had locked away her memories of Rupert. She
never
allowed herself to think of him. But what was she to do in the future?

“Enjoy it,” said Caro firmly, as they drove through the Black Forest that afternoon with a laughing group of her friends. But Léonie still felt the outsider, a temporary visitor who didn’t belong. She had refused to allow Caro to buy her expensive clothes and accepted only the older ones in Caro’s wardrobe, a couple of simple summer skirts. She didn’t need anything elaborate because she never went out in the evening, eating her supper in her room and going to bed early. The truth was that she was afraid of all those people, the glittering casino and the glamorous dining room. Léonie wandered in the splendid solitude of the Black Forest, where the green silence was marred only by the sounds of their voices echoing along the grassy trails and where the tall trees filtered the sun into fractured sparkles and thin strands of clean light. Its beauty only made her feel sadder. The future stretched ahead, blank and endless, unpenetrable and lonely.

She couldn’t sleep—the room was stuffy after the freshness of the day—and she tossed restlessly, waiting for dawn. As soon as it’s light, she promised herself, I’ll go to the pool. The very thought of the cool water was refreshing and she went out onto
the balcony and stared out across the park. Lights still blazed in the casino, though the orchestra had long since stopped playing and gone home to bed. At this hour of the morning only the serious gamblers were left. Everyone else was either sleeping or at one of the dozen or more parties. A couple strolled on the terrace beneath her window and Léonie leaned over to watch, straining her ears to listen. His head was bent close to hers and his arm was around her waist. The woman seemed to melt into him as they kissed, lingeringly, reminding her of Rupert. She closed the window quickly, shutting off the memory.

Rupert stared blearily at the pile of chips in front of him. He hadn’t broken the bank, but he’d had a phenomenal run of luck and Grandess would be furious to have missed it. He stretched his aching back; by God he was tired. Perhaps he should try the steam rooms, have a massage, clear his head a little.

The lofty marble halls were packed with men steaming away the excesses of the night, sweating silent and naked on benches amid clouds of vapor, preparing for a day at the races and another night at the casino or with a favored lady. The man manipulated Rupert’s tense muscles, sluicing him finally with icy water. God, that felt good, he could almost feel his pores snapping shut! “You might try the pool, sir,” suggested the masseur. “It’s always empty at this time of the morning and it’s very refreshing.” Was it morning already? It was still gray and quiet, the sun hadn’t yet pushed its way through the mist. A swim might be just the thing. Wrapping his towel around him, he padded through the steamy halls, losing himself in the twisting corridors, only locating the pool finally by the sound of water slapping against the tiles. Throwing off his towel, Rupert prepared to dive in. But someone was in the pool. A woman! Hastily he snatched up his towel.

“I do beg your pardon,” he called. “I’m afraid I didn’t realize that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t know that ladies were in here at this time.”

Léonie floated on her back with her eyes closed. She must be dreaming, hearing Rupert’s voice.

Was it possible? Could it be her? No, of course not. Rupert moved closer. The girl had the same color hair. It was her! “Léonie!”

It wasn’t a dream. He was there. Rupert. Her breath came out in a great gasp, choking her as she swallowed water and sank like
a stone. In a panic Rupert dived in, scooping her up from the bottom of the pool. “Léonie, oh, my darling Léonie.” He held her close to him. “I can’t believe it’s you … I thought I’d lost you, I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Rupert, oh, Rupert, I thought you didn’t care, that you were laughing at me.…”

“It wasn’t you I was laughing at, Léonie, it was the horse—you were wonderful, so brave and so clever. And you looked so beautiful, I was jealous that all the other men were admiring you.”

“But you were with that woman, whispering about me.…”

“No, no, no, my love, that’s not so.”

It took so few words to make the world all right again, she thought, so much pain erased by a few words. How stupid she’d been to run away! “I’m sorry, Rupert, I should have trusted you. It was all my fault.”

“Oh, darling, it’s my fault.” He kissed her wet hair tenderly, stroking her cheek, gazing into her lovely long amber eyes. She was here, his little love, his darling, but what was she doing here?

“I’m with Caro and Alphonse. They’ve helped me, Rupert.”

“But why didn’t Caro tell me? God, she knew I was desperate to find you!”

“I asked her not to, I thought you’d just been playing a game with me.”

He held her close. “It’s just a series of misunderstandings,” he murmured in her ear. “But now that I’ve found you, I’ll never let you out of my sight again.” He kissed her eyelids and her throat and remembered suddenly that he was naked. Leaping out of the pool, he wrapped the towel around his hips as Léonie averted her eyes modestly. Then he helped her from the water, snuggling her into the white robe and drying her tenderly. “Come and have breakfast with me,” he whispered. “We must make plans.”

“Plans?” Her eyes sparkled with new excitement.

He kissed her. “We have our future to think of.” Their laughter echoed through the tiled halls of the spa as they ran hand in hand back to his room.

As he closed the door behind them, he took her in his arms. “I can’t believe it’s true,” he murmured. “It’s all I’ve dreamed of for months. Oh, Léonie, I love you so much.”

Her mouth opened under his kiss and her body leaned into his. How could kissing feel this good, she wondered, how could her body feel this wonderful, as though it had turned to liquid, like
mercury, molten yet heavy? Oh, this was what love was, this was what it felt like when you belonged!

“I love you, Rupert … it’s different when you love someone, then it’s all right. Isn’t it?”

She looked so pretty and so young, she was irresistible. Rupert picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, kissing her, opening her robe, sliding the clinging wet fabric of her bathing suit from her shoulders, and gazing at her lovely body as she lay there proudly, pleased that he thought she was so pretty. She wanted to be beautiful for him, to please him; she loved him so much. Oh, it felt so good when he did that, it was so nice when he stroked her. She gasped with tenderness as he kissed her breasts and she closed her eyes unable to bear it when his hand parted her legs. It must be heaven, she knew it was heaven.

Léonie lay still with the weight of his body still on her and knew that this was what belonging meant, it was so simple, just two people making love, this wonderful, marvelous closeness.

He held her in his arms and told her how perfect she was, and they whispered their plans.

“You’re mine now,” he murmured in her ear. “We’ll go away to the inn—remember, I told you about it?”

“The white one by the sea, with the big cool room with the bed?”

He kissed her again. “Our room … our bed. We’ll leave this morning.” He couldn’t wait to have her all to himself. “I have enough money to keep us for a couple of months while I find some sort of work.” He laughed, remembering the win at the tables last night; it was going to come in handy. He felt a pang of guilt as he thought about Puschi, but he pushed it away. He was too filled with happiness to think of that, he’d take care of it later. And Grandess? Of course he’d tell her, he’d leave her a note, swear her to secrecy until he had worked things out. She would understand, he felt confident about that. Caro was the one who might be a problem, she’d kept Léonie away from him and he wasn’t going to risk that happening again. “You must leave Caro a note,” he told Léonie.

“But Rupert, I can’t do that. I want to tell her myself. I want her to see how happy I am … we are. She’ll be happy for us, I know it.”

“Caro blames me for hurting you and I know she’s not going to let you go with me.”

“But if I tell her, explain to her …”

“She won’t understand.”

Léonie was silent, thinking about Caro. She couldn’t just leave. Caro was her friend. She loved her and she’d been the one to find her, to help her; she owed her the loyalty of telling her. Léonie pushed herself upright. “I must tell her, Rupert. Nothing she may say could stop me from going with you.”

He stroked her thick soft hair, kissing the tendrils around her wide-boned face, loving her. “I’m afraid of losing you again.” He knelt at her feet, pleading with her. He was so beautiful, his body so slender and so strong. “I can’t risk that again, Léonie—write her a letter! Tell her what happened, beg her to understand. Say that we’ll come to her later, in Paris … she can come to our wedding.”

“Rupert! Oh, Rupert … do you mean it? Our
wedding?
”

She kissed him extravagantly. She would do
anything
for him. Even write the note to Caro, if that was what he wanted. Rupert came first. Caro would understand, she knew all about love and passion. And, of course, she would come to their wedding.

The inn was exactly as he had described it, sparkling white in the clear southern light against a gentle hilly backdrop of green-black cypresses and ancient olive trees. It perched above a strip of white sand with a flight of rickety wooden steps leading down the slope from the wide terra-cotta tiled terrace to the sea. The sea! Léonie couldn’t believe any sea could be this blue. It seemed to reflect the sky and double it, deepening its color. Even under the moonlight, it was a deep inky blue. But at night she wasn’t looking at the sea, she was in Rupert’s arms in that wide white bed in the cool room with just the sound of the murmuring waves as a backdrop to their words of love.

It was everything Rupert had promised her it would be. Monsieur and Madame Frenard, who ran the little place, had few guests for their three rooms, an occasional traveler, perhaps, but the inn was off the beaten track, a little too far from Monte Carlo or Nice to be popular. They made their living mostly from the lunches they served to the locals, who ate in the dim little dining room at the back, leaving the terrace to Rupert and Léonie. The Frenards liked them, they were so young and so obviously in love and they were so beautiful—brown from days in the fresh sea air with their hair bleached whiter from the saltwater and the sun.
Like a young god and goddess, they thought, turning away discreetly as the two dashed naked into the playful waves, cavorting and laughing as he made her practice her swimming.

Their life was so entirely physical that Léonie couldn’t imagine how she had ever lived before without feeling like this. Her body was pampered with the sun and sea and tiny breezes and lavished with love. She was vibrating with energy and happiness from the moment she awoke in his arms until the time they fell asleep still entwined from making love. And they made love everywhere, on the beach, hidden behind rocks at the Point with the waves washing over them, or lost in the grasses behind the chalky paths that circled the Point Saint-Hospice, and she felt wild and ecstatic, a part of the earth and the sea and the sky. It was all exactly as it should be.

–
• 8 •

Marie-France de Courmont was not happy to see her husband back from America, but her two small sons were. They rushed forward to greet him, knowing he would bring presents. He always did—at least she had to admit
that
in his favor. He might neglect her, but he never forgot the children. It was just that he didn’t know how to behave with them, he was so stiff, so un-tender. She didn’t know how to describe it, it was simply a lack of warmth. The fact was, the man was incapable of showing emotion, even if he felt it, and she suspected he didn’t. If he’d had a daughter, she wondered fleetingly, would he have been any different? She knew he felt that the boys should be brought up to be little men. But it was hard for her to treat Gérard, a six-year-old, and Armand, who was only four, as little men. They were babies and she adored them. At least he’d given her that.

“Gérard, Armand … how are you?” Gilles rumpled their hair genially, smiling at them. Gérard looked tired, he thought, and a little pale, but he was dashing about just like Armand.

“Where are our presents, Papa?” demanded Armand, pulling at his father’s trouser leg impatiently. Gérard hung back a little, keeping his distance.

“Here you are.” He brought the parcels out from behind his back. “The blue box is Gérard’s and the red is yours, Armand.”

The little boy danced up and down with excitement, clutching his box, already tearing at the wrapping. “Come and see, Maman, see what I’ve got,” he said, struggling with the box. Marie-France helped him, casting an anxious eye at Gérard. She knew the boy was worried about being sent away to school, she must try to convince Gilles that it was too soon. He was too young, too sensitive to leave home yet; another year or two wouldn’t hurt.

Gérard knelt on the floor, opening his box carefully, peeling
back the wrapping paper deliberately, delaying his pleasure in the gift.

He’s like me, thought de Courmont, he enjoys the anticipation. He smiled at his elder son, and the boy stared back in surprise. “Well, do you like it, my boy?”

“It’s beautiful, Papa. It’s wonderful.” He gazed at the little motor car, an impeccable copy of the prototype that his father was soon to produce. His was blue and Armand had the identical one in red. It was the best present he had ever had. He would like to play with it if his head didn’t ache so; he wished he didn’t have to go away to school. He was afraid. The boys at the park had told him such terrible stories about how cruel they were at school, especially to new boys. He hoped Maman would remember to ask Papa not to send him away.