Chapter Ten #2
And I swear I saw her lips curve.
There are yet more offices and storerooms here, I see now.
It is not until I climb to the second floor—something that is a lot harder than it used to be with a pregnant belly—that I see more of what I expected to find if Taio’s mother actually lives here.
Private drawing rooms, a gloriously appointed dining room, a long gallery with the expected art displayed as if this is a museum.
I suppose, like the rest of the house, it is.
I find Francette herself sitting in a bright room that has built-in bookshelves, exquisite floral arrangements, and extraordinarily antique chairs and tables—all gilded and gleaming—that nonetheless look comfortable.
My mother-in-law sits at a delicate wood secretary, apparently attending to her correspondence like a heroine from a historical novel.
She gazes at me when I appear before her, without warning, and only lifts one silvery eyebrow. “I do not have a meeting with you in my diary.”
“I’m dropping in unannounced,” I tell her cheerfully. I walk into the room, find a seat on the sofa, and take my time lowering my heavy body into it. It’s as comfortable as it looks. “Only to be expected with uncouth Americans like me.”
Francette’s expression goes wry and she inclines her head. The way her son likes to do.
“I do not wish to offend you,” she tells me in her calm, lovely voice. “My son has taken great pains to inform me that I behaved badly. I forget that Americans can be so sensitive about these things. For me, you understand, it is always better to call a thing what it is.”
She reminds me of my stepmother then, always managing to get in that dig—
But I stop myself. Francette Arceneaux de Luz is not the same as mean little Cayleen Alden, tucked up with her blind pets, cowed husband, and spoiled daughters in a Pennsylvania town that no one ever visits by choice.
For a great many reasons, not all of them involving my mother-in-law’s blue-blooded hauteur and selection of everyday jewels.
There’s also the most important reason. This woman in front of me will be my child’s grandmother. My husband might find her problematic, but he loves her.
I’m not a child. I get to choose what kind of relationship I have with this woman. No one is forcing it on me and telling me that if I could only shape up and get with the program, maybe I’d be worthy of love.
Something, I vow then and there, no one will ever make my child feel. Not if I have anything to say about it.
“I understand completely,” I say to Francette, not the ghosts inside of me. “And that’s what I came here to do.” She eyes me. I smile. “I want to call the thing what it is, actually.” I lean in, as far as I can with my belly in the way. “But first I have a question. Do you love your son at all?”
She blinks. She pulls back, the very picture of French horror. “What kind of question is this?”
“A real one,” I say quietly. “Because my baby isn’t even born yet and I already know that I love it. More than that, I would protect this child with every last breath in my body, and I would never put it through the agony of a scandal I could end myself. So I ask again. Do you love Taio?”
She pulls herself up a bit taller in her seat, which should not be possible with her already ballet-straight back. I expect her to denounce me and send me away. She looks as if she’s considering it.
“Because I do love him,” I tell her, and I don’t mean for my voice to thicken. I don’t mean to sound so raw. But I can’t take it back. Maybe I don’t want to. “And I cannot bear to see him sink any further beneath the weight of this.”
And only then, as I gaze back at her, does she relent.
“You do not understand,” she says after a moment. “The way I was raised, one never comments on the baseless imaginings of others. It gives them legitimacy, does it not? When it should be beneath notice. Beneath contempt.”
“It isn’t going away. And it would be one thing if it didn’t bother him.” I lean forward again, keeping my eyes on her. “But you must see that it does.”
Francette frowns and sits back in her seat, her spine somewhat less straight. When she looks at me again, I can see Taio in her features. In that stern expression on her face.
“Amara Mariana was my friend,” she says, just when I’m starting to imagine that she’s going to freeze me out or send me away.
She doesn’t look at me. She keeps her eyes trained out the window, toward the lake, her gaze troubled.
“She was my servant, so I know that in these enlightened times, people will claim we had no friendship. But we did. We were both young girls thrown into circumstances beyond our control. We both made the best of it.”
I think she almost smiles then, as if remembering, but it fades before it takes hold.
“I was lucky in many ways,” she says. “My marriage was, at times, a heavy weight, but it was not cruel. The trouble for Amara Mariana is that she was a servant. And so, when my husband’s friends came to visit, as they did often in those days, there was one companion of his in particular who took a shine to her. Too much of a shine.”
Francette presses her lips together. She stays like that for a moment, then looks at me directly. “I hated him.”
She shakes her head, and I do not dare do anything but hold her piercing gaze.
“He was the sort to act one way when my husband was around, when other men could see how he was. But alone, when there were only women—and especially women who could not openly defy him for fear that they would be thrown out of the house—well. That was when his real face could be seen.”
Again, she presses her lips tight together, and I know she’s remembering that real face.
“Things are very different now. Back then it was still very traditional in this house. I required my husband’s permission to do most anything, and my wish did not always translate into his acquiescence.
” She folds her hands in her lap. Then rearranges them.
“If I did not care to wait for my husband’s permission, the only thing I could do was rely on what was only mine. ”
It seems as though she’s waiting so I nod encouragingly, hoping she’ll go on.
And she does. “My grandmother owns a great deal of property in France. Or I should say, she did. Some of it has been sold off. Some of it is mine. So I sent my friend to a little cottage where no one would think to look for her.”
“In Cap Ferrat,” I guess.
“But that was not far enough. Not for a man like my husband’s friend.
” Francette lets out a small sound, like remembered frustration.
“When he got too close, I set her up with a lawyer who had been a family friend of my grandmother’s.
He helped Amara Mariana to leave Europe.
And I have never seen her since.” Her gaze crosses back to mine once more.
“So perhaps we were not the friends I thought we were, after all.”
“Or,” I say quietly, “perhaps you were both girls stuck in bad situations who had to make the best of what they had, and decided not to look back.”
I’m startled when I see something warm in my mother-in-law’s eyes. “There are many such girls.”
“Indeed there are.”
And as we gaze at each other in this quiet, lovely room, I think we come to a place of understanding. It feels as close to a hug as I imagine a woman like Francette ever gets.
“When that so-called diary leaked,” she says after a moment, “I was incensed, of course. To imagine that I would scribble such things into a diary at all, then leave it to fall into the wrong hands… The insult .” She presses her lips together again.
“I assumed that a dignified silence would make it go away, as it should have. But it didn’t.
And I will tell you, since I am told you are good at finding the truth of things, that I have always supposed that this was an act of revenge by that same friend of my late husband’s. ”
I make a noise at that. She nods, slowly.
“He is precisely the sort who would wait. And look what he’s accomplished.
He has made me look like a bleating fool.
He has thrown Amara Mariana’s name all over the papers, hunting her all over again.
He has even managed to question my son’s legitimacy.
Mark my words, it’s he who is responsible for all of this. ”
“Do you wish you could have stopped him then?”
She lets out a bitter sort of laugh, telling exactly where Taio gets his. “évidemment.”
I lean forward in my chair. I hold her gaze, this woman who I understand better than perhaps I should. “Then, Francette, why don’t you be responsible for fixing it?”
Then I hold my breath. She stares at me in astonishment no less arrogant than her distaste.
But this time, she nods her head. “Do you know,” she murmurs, a gleam in her eyes, “I believe that I will.”
Later that evening, I stand out on the usual terrace before dinner, sipping on my drink as I watch Taio and his mother walk through one of the late fall gardens below. She holds his arm. He leans down slightly, giving her his full attention.
I know what she’s telling him.
I see him stop.
I hear his voice on the breeze, raised—but clearly not at her.
And when they embrace, out beneath the wild Spanish sky as the sun goes down, I know exactly what I must do.
I stay where I am. I wait until he comes.
When he does, he looks like a different man, and it makes my heart glad. Or maybe it simply aches for him the way it always does, I can no longer tell.
“My mother is going to take a blood test,” he tells me as he comes toward me. “She intends to settle the matter of the scandal once and for all.”
He comes to me, turning me toward him from where I’ve been standing at the terrace rail, gazing out across this ancient land as the sun drips into orange, then gold.
“Are you listening to me, Annagret? At last the cloud will be lifted from the De Luz name. The friend of my father’s who perpetuated this indignity will be held to account, one way or another. You are a magic worker indeed.”
Taio leans in to kiss me, and I should stop him. I know I should, but it turns out that I am perhaps as weak as my father ever was, after all.
It’s a sobering thought.
And it makes my heart hurt even more.
We separate, but I put my hand on the side of his face. He lifts a hand and places it over mine.
And it would be so easy to stay like this. Just like this.
But I love him. And my staying here can only diminish him. The fact that I don’t want that to be true doesn’t make it any less so.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about your family legacy,” I tell him, gazing up at that perfect face.
Those etched cheekbones. That deliciously stern mouth.
“I understand now, in a way I never could have before. I have no legacies. Only convenient fictions.” I breathe in, hard, then make myself say it on the exhale. “And that is why I will set you free.”
He looks down at me without comprehension. “Set me free? What do you mean?”
“I’ll wait for the baby to be born, so there can be no confusion.
No more scandals. No question, ever, about legitimacy.
” I take another deep breath, because this hurts.
But I’m certain it’s the right thing to do.
“We can divorce quietly. Then you can pick the appropriate wife that you deserve. A wife who will honor this legacy and enhance it. That’s what you deserve, Taio. ”
I expect him to react. To do…something.
But he only stares down at me as if I have grown several extra heads, or perhaps started spouting off in a different language than the ones he speaks. He blinks, but there is no other reaction.
“This isn’t a trap,” I assure him, in case that’s what’s fueling him here.
“I’ve so enjoyed my time here. I find this estate fascinating.
” I love you, I think inside, but I can’t say it.
I promised myself I wouldn’t say it. “But it made me deeply aware of what’s required here. And I am definitely not it.”
He steps back, something like thunder gathering on his face, as if a storm has swept in. A dark and dangerous storm. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
I blink as I look at him. Then I frown. “What kind of question is that?”
And as I watch, it’s as if he… implodes .
As if everything is thunder, crashing and rolling.
He grips my shoulders, not tight enough to hurt, but in a firm way that calls me immediately to attention.
“What are you—” I begin. I can’t breathe. “I’m setting you free, Taio. It’s a gift. ”
“I don’t want an appropriate wife, Annagret,” he roars at me, his fingers gripping me tight, his eyes pure fire. “I want you. You little fool, I have only and ever wanted you.”