Beast (32 page)

Neither ate much. Dinner was cleared. They were silent throughout.

When they did finally speak—at his strained but pacifying initiative—they held safely to the conversational surface. His schedule over the next five days. Her settling in. What she intended to do with herself while he had to work. Would she like to see what he did? The sort of exotic travel usually associated with a honeymoon was delayed for the same reason that Charles Harcourt could not come to New York for a wedding in the usual place, in the bride's hometown: He had budded important plants onto rootstock. A project he had been working on for some time in his perfume laboratories was at a crucial point.

She realized, of all things, he was speaking of the American jasmine he had picked up in Marseilles, along with herself, both direct from the care of her pasha. She had traveled just fine, better than fine in fact. But the bud cuttings had apparently been worse for the wear after their trip across the ocean. The prince hoped that some would be willing to take. He wanted to nurse the project personally through the first months, and especially these first weeks, so he knew all had been done that could be and exactly what results he could count on.

Louise relaxed, listening. The promise she had won from him left her more interested in hearing about his work, his interests, his comings and goings, his movements that would ultimately circumscribe much of her own life.

Dessert arrived. A platter of black grapes, local, plumply fresh, the tiniest, sweetest she had ever put in her mouth, with a bitter, tart seed if she happened to catch it in her teeth. She actually began to enjoy herself. Besides the grapes, there were bowls of this summer's cherries, one dish of them marinated in eau-de-vie, the other in vinegar and—he was quite specific—lavender honey from his own fields. He grew gracious again; stiff but decent. The fruit was followed by a golden, homemade peach liqueur with occasional leaf specks floating. When she didn't drink this up, he asked if she liked it.

"Oh, yes." She looked up. She wasn't certain where the next question came from. She wondered aloud,

"Don't you own champagne vineyards somewhere?"

"Yes. Near Reims. Though I wouldn't drink my champagne, it's adequate, corning along but not grand."

He paused then asked, "Do you like champagne?"

"Yes."

He reached back, just inside the doorway, and pulled the bell cord. When a girl came from the kitchen, he said, "Marianne, run down to the cold room of the cellar and bring up a bottle of the Widow, not the brute. Oh, and some fresh glasses." The Widow was apparently the brand he preferred to his own.

The champagne arrived. He sent for fresh fruit and cheese, then popped the cork. The bottle smoked.

He poured. Sec, despite its "dry" name, was faintly sweet, a champagne suited to dessert. It smelled familiar, reminiscent of bubbling wine shared in the dark, but more fruity. It was cold, delicious. Though not the same. Louise wistfully traced her finger along the curve of the bottle.

They talked a while more. He stood at one point, stretching as he looked out over the balcony into the night. The sky was strewn with stars. There was a three-quarter moon. He turned to lean on the ironwork of the balustrade, chatting randomly about nothing in particular.

Louise wasn't listening very closely, back inside her own head again, truth be known.

Then all at once he was right at her side, turning her chair around, taking hold of her hand. He tried to pull her up and out of the chair, into his arms.

There was no mistaking his intention. When she wouldn't stand, he bent down, one hand on the tabletop, the other braced on her chair back. It happened too quickly for her to be annoyed or defensive or have much of any considered reaction. He said, "Don't fall out of your chair. I'm going to kiss you."

His face came close.

She placed her fingers between their mouths.

She stared into his odd eyes inches away, his left as opaque as marble, his right as fair—and as intense in its radiance—as a clear, twilight sky. The flesh on her arms prickled. She had to lower her gaze. She looked him in the chin, then the mouth, then at the perfectly chiseled philtrum of his upper lip.

She knew he watched this happen. He backed off slightly and cocked his head to study her at this close range. He said, "A kiss. May I please kiss my own wife. It's not as if I'm trying to throw you down and dive under your skirts."

It was almost reassuring to know the Prince d'Harcourt could be rude. But nonetheless Louise didn't like the tenor of his thinking. And she was galled to be in this position, after they had already come to terms on the subject.

When he bent toward her again, she leaned back all the way till her hair caught in the fronds of a potted palm. She reached behind her, untangling herself, as she put her prohibition into words. She said, "Please don't." Louise remembered her pasha again and thought to pass along what sounded like marvelous advice all at once. "It would be better if you didn't try to kiss a woman until she had enough interest, until she is hoping you will: afraid that you won't."

He reared back to stare at her, as if she had just spoken to him in tongues.

Then he stood up so abruptly that his thigh hit the table. The dinner table shook, dishes, silver, glasses jangling. The spoon in a dish of cherries looped halfway around. Then, astoundingly, when everything wobbled back, level, the politely controlled creature she had married hooked his hand under the table edge and flipped the whole thing over intentionally, in a kind of fit.

Everything went. Round cherries leaped through a stream of juice, their bowls following to the floor end over end, crashing, splitting into pieces. Silverware clanked into crystal. Splintered glass and roses slid into cheese. Louise herself scooted back so fast her chair went over backward in her hurry to get out of his way. At which point this husband became truly monstrous.

What a rage he flew into! With a swipe, he toppled the champagne stand. It went sloshing to the floor, a clunk and gurgle. He grabbed hold of palm fronds on Ins side of the terrace and yanked it. It tilted and rocked, almost righting itself, until, on the totter, he shoved it again. It toppled with a dull
clomph
to become a catawampus mass of leaves and stalks rooted in a spread of loose soil among shards of clay.

Ionise had never seen anything like it—such an outward display of temper—except perhaps in a two-year-old. This done, a total disaster made of the dinner table, he turned to stare at her, breathing hard, his expression a one-eyed squint: a tortured visage if ever she saw one. Then he kicked the poor champagne bottle once to send it burbling and skidding through the archway into the dining room, after which the angry prince limped past the mess into the room himself, then out of sight.

Louise let her breath out. standing there with her mouth open for a full minute. She tried to think what would make a sane man do such a thing. Yet all she could think was,
It was just a kiss
. It wasn't as if he and she were in love or had even known each other for very long. She stood there speculating as to whether or not her parents knew the prince had such a temper, whether his temper was dangerous, and whether or not she had made an unforseen and horrible error in putting herself under his roof.

She looked at the floor, where the terrace gave into the dining room. Grapes and wine and cherries and cheese had scattered onto his—their, she supposed—Persian carpet. She shook her head. What an inscrutable and volatile creature to have done such a thing on purpose. Her own skirts were splotched with reddish eau-de-vie or vinegar and honey; she wasn't sure which. She smelled like a distillery.

Well, there wasn't anything else for it, she thought. She lifted her wet hems—it was pointless, but it felt civilized—and picked her way through the food and broken dishes on the floor. She would find her way to bed and deal with whatever else as it came.

What she didn't expect was to deal with Charles Harcourt again immediately. Once through the dining room she found him in the front salon. He had his weight, his hands, braced on the mantel of the large marble fireplace. He turned almost as soon as she entered, and there she was again, face-to-face with the lunatic.

"I'm so sorry," he said. He was "very. very, desolated" again in French, only this time he seemed to be so in some tangible and profound way: desolated, devastated, laid waste and inconsolable.

Looking at him, Louise felt quite sad for him all at once. He seemed such a mixture of uncanny strengths and vulnerabilities.

He pushed his hand through his hair, wincing his eyes closed. "I can be more patient," he told her.

She murmured, "God knows you have been patient."

He was taken aback for an instant. Then he shook his head, a wordless retraction. No, of course not; patience wasn't the problem. When he spoke next, it was with a frankness that seemed so brave she hardly knew where to look. He said, "I am sorry I appall you." He glanced at her. "This is the problem, is it not? You are offended by the sight of me. I horrify you." He sighed deeply, before he continued. "I had hoped I wouldn't. But since I do, there is nothing for it but to wait until I don't. I'm sure, in time—" He broke off.

His hand went, unaware, to fiddle with a gap in his coat. His outburst had ripped the button there at his abdomen. He smoothed the front of his coat down once, saying, "Go on. Go up and get what you need from your trunks and bags. I need to stay down here, anyway, and gather my wits." He shook his head, his fingers going to his forehead. He rubbed a vein there. "Go upstairs and get ready for bed. I'll come up once I hear you're out of the bedroom."

When basking on the surface of the ocean, sperm whales
—
notorious for their irritable digestion
—

are often heard before they are seen: great, lumbering hollows that barely break the surface yet
rumble of whale-sized colic, emitting from time to time loud belches that are heard for miles
across the open water
.

Charles Harcourt, Prince d'Harcourt

On the Nature and Uses of Ambergris

Louise retrieved a few things from the prince's bedroom, a nightgown and robe and slippers, her toiletries, and a dress for the morning. She would have her trunk moved into the sitting room tomorrow, then figure out how to live with this arrangement. There had to be a guest room somewhere; she would ask. She washed and took her hair down, braiding it. She found sheets in the armoire at the end of the hall.

She was fastening the last buttons up the front of her nightgown when she heard Charles Harcourt come up the stairs. He entered his room from the hallway, making a ruckus, kicking and clonking around on the other side of the wall till light showed suddenly under the connecting door. All grew quiet. She thought she would see nothing more of him for the night. Then five minutes later, he opened the door between his bedroom and sitting room, just as she was laying a sheet out onto what was less couch, more divan, under the west window.

He didn't come in, but rather stared at the sheet, the divan, her activity, then leaned against the door-jamb. He folded his arms over his chest. He'd taken off the ripped coat. Likewise his vest. His shirt, collarless, cravatless, hung open. He was barefoot. He'd apparently been getting ready for bed himself when he'd suddenly found reason to open the door. He stood there brooding for several long seconds like some chimerical cross between a darkling Heathcliff and an angry cyclops.