MAËLLE
“No, Maelle.”
“No, I may not guess? Or no, you won’t tell me whether I’m right?”
“Both.”
“You realize refusing to answer is itself an answer.”
“Your family is waiting for us for dinner.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm and turned us toward the house.
I’d given him the perfect opening to flirt with me, something I never did, and he’d ignored it. Better put, he chose not to do it. Why? Was it a game? If he disregarded me, acted as though he wasn’t interested, did he think it would make me chase him?
Or was it because he no longer wanted me? No, I knew better than that. What happened after I woke with a cramp in my leg proved it.
I’d felt ashamed over it all day, but if he touched me again tonight, I knew I wouldn’t deny him.
If I was right and it was a tactic, then he was exactly the man I’d believed him to be. But if I was wrong, did that mean I’d misjudged him all along? Or was he changing?
“Je suis vraiment une idiote,” I muttered under my breath.
“Don’t put yourself down,” he scolded.
I stopped walking. “How do you know what I said?”
“Idiot requires no translation.”
“Maybe I called you an idiot.”
He smirked. “I’ve heard that one from you enough to know that wasn’t it.”
We left the garden and took the gravel path uphill to the house. Midway, my thigh started to burn. Dagger noticed and shortened his stride to match mine.
“You don’t need to do that.”
He glanced over at me. “Do what?”
“I’m not an invalid. I can make it on my own.”
“You are the most stubborn woman I’ve ever known.”
“You say that because you don’t know many Frenchwomen.”
“True. One is enough.”
I slugged his arm but inwardly smiled. Dagger was flirting again, which meant things between us had returned to normal.
“Have you thought about a wedding date?” Maman asked when Marthe served the second course.
“Spring,” I said. “In the garden. Family only.”
“The garden will be lovely in May.”
“That’s why I chose it.”
“Monsieur and Madame Rourke,” my mother murmured. “It has a lovely ring to it.”
“Did you say family only?” My father set his fork down. “A Valais wedding with no one to see it. The neighbors will wonder what we’re hiding.”
“They do anyway,” Rémy muttered.
“It’s my wedding, Papa. Not the domaine’s.”
“We’ll speak of it later.”
“There’s nothing to speak of.”
When my mother touched my hand and shook her head, I let it go.
“Am I to give a speech?” Rémy asked Dagger.
“As long as it runs shorter than the tour,” he joked.
“Impossible. There is a lifetime of material.”
Dagger turned to me. “We’d best marry very early in the morning.”
Rémy raised his glass to that, and I grinned at the pair of them.
Across the table, Maman hadn’t stopped smiling since I’d told her we’d chosen to marry in May in the garden. The thought turned my stomach. It was a lie told on top of a mountain of them. How many more would it take to keep her smiling?
When Marthe came in with one of the girls from the kitchen to clear the table before the next service, her eyes met mine, then she looked in Dagger’s direction and raised a brow.
I wanted to leave the table, follow her out of the room, and demand she tell me what she was thinking. If I were still a ten-year-old child, I would have. Given I was a grown woman, I remained in my chair, turning over every possibility.
Was she on to us? Had she figured out that we weren’t really a couple? That we weren’t engaged? If she had, what was she thinking instead? “Je suis vraiment une idiote,” I said again, realizing only after I’d mumbled the words that Dagger had heard me.
When I glanced over at him, he half smiled, reached under the table, and squeezed my leg.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” he whispered when I froze.
I grinned at him. “Other leg.”
He squeezed again, but rather than let go, he left his hand where it was. It was all I could do not to cover it with mine and lean into him. If I had, no doubt he would’ve done the same and kissed my forehead. Like any engaged couple would.
Except we weren’t and this was all pretend. I was exactly what I’d called myself, an idiot. Every sweet gesture was an act. I’d do well to remind myself of that often.
I brushed his hand away.
The lamp was low when I came out of the bathroom, and the pillow was already down the middle of the bed. That he’d put the barrier in place answered the question I hadn’t asked and never would. Nothing would happen between us tonight.
“You’ve spared me the trouble,” I said, getting in on my side.
“Thought I’d save you the reach.”
“How thoughtful.”
“I’m a thoughtful man. You’d know—”
“—if I gave you half a chance. You’ve mentioned it.”
He chuckled and switched off the lamp. For several minutes, the only sound was the hoo-hooo of a tawny owl.
“How long do you think it will take for your father to finish the wedding guest list?” Dagger asked.
“By dawn, there will be names we cannot possibly leave off. By Friday, it will be half of Burgundy.”
“Only half?”
“He feuds with the remaining fifty percent.”
“And what will you say?”
“I’ll remind him that a wedding requires a bride, and brides can be difficult when their wishes are not respected.”
“I’d pay good money to watch that.”
“No need. You’ll have a front-row seat.”
“And your mother’s list?”
“Short. She would marry us in the kitchen tomorrow, with Marthe as witness, and call it the wedding of the year. She’s never needed an audience. My father has never needed anything else.”
“Speaking of Marthe. She gave you a look, then glanced at me when she cleared the table tonight.”
“She counts the silver after every meal. It is nothing personal.”
“It was definitely personal,” he said.
“If she didn’t like you, you would know.”
“It wasn’t me she was looking at.”
At dinner, I’d talked myself out of the worry that she was on to us and called myself an idiot for it. If he’d caught Marthe’s look too, maybe I wasn’t so stupid.
Nothing got past the woman. When I was a child, and even more so when I became a teenager, Marthe somehow found out about every “crime” I committed and every secret I tried to keep.
The bad part was that I hated disappointing her more than I would have my parents.
The good part was that, to my knowledge, she never went to them with her discoveries.
My only punishment was the guilt I felt.
“It was one look,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Bonne nuit, Dagger,” I whispered a few minutes later, in case he’d fallen asleep more easily than I would.
“Bonne nuit, Maelle,” he responded.
After breakfast the following morning, Rémy took Dagger to see more of the cuverie. My father disappeared into his office, saying he had more calls to make, and my mother said she was going upstairs to rest.
I waited ten minutes, then followed.
From the door that was open a crack, I could see her sitting in the chair by the window. The sun’s rays were directly on her, but she still had a blanket covering her legs.
“Enter, ma chérie,” she said before I knocked.
I closed the door behind me and sat on the end of her bed.
“Maman, please tell me what’s wrong.”
She folded her hands on her lap. “I don’t want to ruin your visit when the reason for it is such a happy one.”
“Do you think my worry over not knowing isn’t doing the very thing you’re trying to prevent?”
“I know you’re right, Maelle, but this is not an easy thing to speak of.”
“I’m your daughter. Your only child. You can tell me anything.”
Her fingers felt thin and cold when she took my hand. “In September, I found a lump on my neck, below my ear.” She touched it. “My doctor sent me to Dijon for tests.”
“And?” I pressed.
“The diagnosis is diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. It is aggressive but treatable.”
I got off the bed and knelt beside her chair.
“When did you start treatment?”
She didn’t look at me or respond.
“Maman? When were you meant to begin?”
“I have not.”
“You said it’s aggressive. When did the doctors say they should start?”
Again, she didn’t respond.
I rose so I was directly in front of her. “Why are you ignoring this?”
“Your father believes it will pass.”
I was incredulous. “Pass? It will not pass. If you don’t get treatment, you will die.” I turned to leave, and she grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t.”
I jerked my arm away. “He needs to understand, Maman.”
“Wait. I have more to say.”
I sighed and waited.
“The day I begin treatment is the day this house stops being a home and becomes a sickroom. You would have given up your life to come here to care for me. I didn’t keep this secret out of pride, Maelle.
I kept it so that when you finally did come home, it would be to see your mother and not a patient. ”
“When was your last doctor’s appointment?”
For the third time, she didn’t reply. I’d had enough. “Answer me, Maman. When?”
“Maelle—”
“You haven’t seen him again, have you?”
She didn’t need to respond for me to know the answer.
“First, I’ll call and make an appointment for the soonest you can be seen. Then we’ll plan and begin treatment.”
“I have conditions.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I was very much like her, after all. “Go on.”
“There will be no hovering. You will speak to me as my daughter, not my caregiver, and you’ll treat me as an adult, not a child.”
“Maman—”
“If you agree, I will see the doctor. Otherwise, I will not.”
“Very well. I agree.”
“Now, let’s talk about happier things.” She squeezed my hand.
“Like?”
“The man you brought home, who cannot take his eyes off you. Tell me more about him.”
I hated that I couldn’t tell her the truth about the engagement. What I could share was that, after only two days in France, I was seeing Dagger so much differently than I had before.
“He makes me laugh, Maman, even when I am furious with him. Nothing gets past him. He knows what I need before I say it, and he does it without asking for anything in return. In all the time I’ve known him, he has never told me what to do. He lets me decide.”
Every word of it was true. The engagement was the only lie.