Chapter Five #2
She turned to a fresh page in her sketchbook, and started to draw something, anything. A meadow, the sky. She wanted to lose herself in her own created world, as she had so often, but it was elusive now.
The door to the sitting room suddenly opened, before she could pretend to be ignorant, to be a blithe bride.
Startled, she glanced over her shoulder to see Alain standing there.
How beautiful he looked, his tousled hair, his wrinkled shirt, hastily donned and speaking of intimacies.
Sandrine might have hoped her girlish longing for him, for all he seemed to stand for in his confidence and carelessness and brightness, would have frozen along with her heart.
Yet it was still there, so strong, reaching out for him in such yearning.
She turned back to her sketchbook still open on the table, blinking back warm tears she would give anything for him not to see.
Alain frowned. ‘Sandrine, please…’ he began.
Then his glance fell to the little package on the carpet, the portrait peeking out from the edge of the note.
His face shifted, changed, grew serious, and she knew it was true.
‘What you just saw, it was nothing. I don’t know why Danielle would come here now.
Oh, my dear Sandrine. I am so sorry…’ He broke off, running one shaking hand through his hair, and any wild hope she’d had that she had misunderstood what she’d seen was severed.
Tell her what? Of his love for another woman, maybe that he was going to run away with her?
To her horror, she felt a touch of moisture on her cheek as she stared back at him across the vast chasm of the little room and angrily swiped those hateful tears away.
She could not lose what little dignity she had left on top of everything else!
‘You were going to tell me that you had to marry me, I take it?’ she managed to whisper. ‘I know that. Or, I should have known that. My parents would also not have let me say no. Our families need each other, and we’re their most useful tool to get what they desire.’
‘It isn’t like that at all, Sandrine!’ he said, his voice filled with tension.
He sat down beside her, and the heat of him, that lemony scent that she loved so much, seemed to mock her.
He reached for her hand, but his touch dropped when she flinched.
‘That is, maybe it was like that at first. Our families do need each other, and I must do my best for them, for my sisters. But then…’
He was fumbling, not at all like the confident Alain she’d come to know, and she softened towards him. After all, this was a situation neither of them could control. ‘Then?’
‘Then I came to know you. Your sweetness and kindness.’ He gestured at the sketchbook on her lap. ‘Your love of art. I know it is not just something you do, not some pleasant past-time, but who you are. I know you deserve to pursue it with your whole self.’
Sandrine sniffled. He was not wrong. Art was as necessary to her as sunlight, but no one had seen that until him. Why, why did it all have to go so wrong? ‘So you thought I might traipse off to paint and, what, leave you to your love? To you doing what you want in life, making your own way?’
She knew instantly by the look on his face, the flushed chagrin, she’d come close to the mark.
‘Not like that,’ he said. ‘I hoped we could be real friends, could help each other find our happiness. Help each other become ourselves.’
‘And now?’
‘Danielle is to marry someone else,’ he said quietly, tightly. She heard the pain behind those words; he was hurting, too. Sandrine saw they were both trapped.
‘I am sorry,’ she whispered.
He glanced up at her, a hopeful smile touching the corner of his lips. ‘But after last night—surely you see how things have changed? We understand each other fully now, can build a life that suits only us. You know everything about me.’
‘But what can suit us? How do you envision the future for us?’ Maybe he still envisioned a future with Danielle, with his wife to cover for him. She could never bear that. She would crack under the pain of it all.
He ran his hand through his hair again, leaving it adorably on end, so full of confusion.
Sandrine saw then how young he really was, how young they both were, caught in a situation not of their making.
‘I’m not sure, Sandrine. We can decide together.
We have our freedom now! We have each other. Are we not friends?’
Friends. Of course he did not say they loved each other.
That he loved her. He was done with lies now.
She had to be, too, even to herself. She carefully rose to her feet, feeling so stiff and unsteady, so old.
She went to the window and stared outside for a long, silent moment.
The day was bright now, and it made her ache.
That day she’d so longed for, longed to see what it held, now just shone its light on how silly she’d been.
‘Freedom. Yes. I think I might wish to find that now.’
‘In what way?’ he asked, his voice puzzled. She was very glad he didn’t come to her side, didn’t touch her now. She needed to think clearly.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said, and she really was not. Not at all. But she knew staying near him, in a marriage she knew was empty, a mere friendship where he thought she was ‘sweet and kind’ and she longed for all of him, would tear her apart. ‘I must go.’
He did come to her side then. She sensed his hand, raised as if to reach for her, then fall to his side. She still wanted to lean on him, feel his arms around her, find that haven she thought she’d discovered in him, but it was all gone.
‘Go where?’ he asked roughly. ‘To Brighton for our honeymoon?’
‘Maybe for now.’ She realised the house would be awake very soon, that everyone would expect her to take breakfast with them, to laugh and smile as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
They would be watching her so closely to see how she had fared last night.
How could she bear it? ‘I don’t want to hurt our families, though they are the ones who brought us to this.
I don’t want them to know. I will leave with you today, and once we reach Brighton, I will decide where I must go next. On my own.’
‘Alone? Sandrine, no! What can you mean?’ he said, his voice hoarse, full of disbelief, concern. Concern for her, or for himself?
She looked at him at last, into those beautiful eyes that spoke now of shock.
‘I mean that I will find a place to stay, to live. You needn’t worry, Alain.
I shall do nothing to endanger our marriage agreement; your parents and dear sisters will be secure, and my parents will have the connections they want.
They won’t question me very closely about where I’m actually living, not when they have the society they desire to move in.
You can find a way to be close to Mademoiselle Aurac. ’
‘No, no. I told you, she is marrying another. And now I can see that…’ He broke off, shook his head.
‘Then you can find someone else to love that way.’ She gently touched his hand, trying to reassure him, reassure them both, that something could be salvaged from this. As he’d said, they had their freedom now. ‘It will all be for the best.’
He turned his hand, seized her fingers in his, held on tight. If she’d had the wild hope that had filled her that morning, such a touch might have given her happiness once more. But she knew better now. She didn’t dare trust. ‘The best? But we are married.’
‘But we don’t have to be. Not in a real way.’
‘A real way. What happened last night…’ His voice cracked, and he faltered.
Sandrine shook her head, desperate not to remember last night, not to remember the joy of his touch, his kiss.
The way it had felt to be joined as one, move as one.
‘You’d had too much champagne. We were caught up in the wedding.
I do understand.’ She didn’t, not really.
She’d been caught up only in him. But he could never know that.
‘That was not it at all! You are so beautiful, Sandrine, so…’
‘Don’t say sweet,’ she snapped. She didn’t want to be his sweet, understanding little wife. She’d wanted to be his goddess, his true love. How ridiculous she’d been.
She could not look at him a moment longer, not see the confusion in his eyes, the way his jaw grew taut, his lips tighten.
She spun away, welcoming the interruption as a knock sounded on the door and a maidservant bustled in.
Sandrine could not pretend a moment longer.
She rushed into the bedroom, leaving her husband staring after her amid the wreckage.