Beast (39 page)

third black pearl was alternated by a clear, perfect diamond—set in platinum and cut in the round, forty-eight faces—as large as the pearls themselves. The dog collar clasped with a catch in back that would dangle a string of smaller diamonds down several vertebrae of her back. She could attach or detach the rest of the necklace with this. The rest was a shimmering cascade of dark, lustrous pearls and bright diamonds, these diminishing in size as the strands lengthened to become swinging ropes of stones and beads the size of the pearls she'd broken.

On their wedding night, Charles hadn't given them to her for the obvious reason that the extravagance had become so goddamned inappropriate. But he hadn't tracked it down to give it to her since then either. He didn't wish to take it back. He wished for it to become a gift he
wanted
to give. It meant something. Trust. Love. Eternity. The extravagant happiness he felt could be theirs, if only… Meanwhile, to give such a present now felt asinine. It was too fond—a gift to a treasured lover.

He stared at the ridiculous pearls a moment, then set them into their ridiculous box, clapping the lid shut.

He tossed the case into his satchel for no particular reason, perhaps just to get the thing out of the house.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an
essence found in the inglorious bowels of a dyspeptic whale!

Herman Melville

Moby Dick,
Chapter 20

1851

Marriage was easier for Louise in Nice. Even off-season, the city offered a luxury and ease more in keeping with what she was used to. With her family around her and the routine of social commitments, she became the Louise she knew, if not the Louise she liked. She felt in possession of herself again.

A week after arriving back in Nice (and after not having gone back to Grasse even once), she sat at her mother's writing desk addressing the last round of thank-you notes. Wedding gifts had begun to mount, most of them from people who had yet to realize the wedding had already taken place. She was alone.

Everyone else (save Charles, who hadn't arrived from Grasse yet, but was due any moment) was putting the finishing touches on a garden party to start in half an hour.

Louise blotted the wet ink on the day's final envelope. With her mother's help she had managed more than fifty brief notes today—her mother had ordered the cards, then organized a list; the gift, the name, the precise relationship, the address.

Her parents had also ordered formal announcements. These would arrive from the printer tomorrow, five hundred of them, all in need of addressing, many requiring more written contact, a few lines in Louise's hand. Louise was good at this sort of mindless nicety.
Dear Monsieur and Madame: As you
can see from this announcement, Charles and I have already married. We were simply too, too
keen to begin our life together, and though we cannot invite you to our wedding itself we hope
you will help us celebrate our nuptials in December at the affair Maman and Papa are planning
.

Louise's parents were outlining the strategics for an ambitious ball. It was to be a grand affair, the first major event—and the best, if Harold and Isabel Vandermeer had their way—of the Cote d'Azur season.

It would introduce the newly married couple while obliquely introducing the bride's parents as well, the host and hostess of the affair: a fine entrance to a social milieu they intended to frequent. "Our daughter lives here, after all. We want to be part of your life, be near our grandchildren."

Grandchildren, oh, Lord
. Louise tapped the last sealed note neatly into the stack. No doubt, her parents were sincere in wanting to be close. No doubt, also, they enjoyed their new access to the prince's social circle. Louise was witnessing a phenomenon: Her parents, already among the society magnates of New York, were consolidating, incorporating, and going international.

As if in tribute to this feat, a
corbeille
had accumulated at their house, a French tradition of which Louise's mother swore she was envious (and of which she was also slightly possessive—if Louise took anything out or rearranged it, her mother grew annoyed). This French tradition amounted to a grand display of jewels given to the bride by friends and relatives: tiaras and brooches and necklaces, parures—one in platinum and white opals, one in pink gold and pale rubies—all laid out in a glass case in her parents' home and watched over by a plainclothes guard and Charles's coachman. Such was the social consequence of the prince and Louise's family that, if people knew there was to be no huge wedding, they seemed to be taking it in stride. Louise had been given a copious number of pieces, each displayed in the case with the name of the donor; a detailed list would be published in the newspaper. It was quite the tradition, with people vying to see who could give the bride the most important piece on show.

Yes, everything was going perfectly. She had married and thus entered into a social contract that was now functioning exactly as it should: Everyone beneftted. Her parents were happy. She was secure for the rest of her days, with the Prince d'Harcourt clearly committed, bonded solidly into union by the gain of business advantages.

And a few other advantages, of course. His friends couldn't have been more impressed with his wife's beauty, some with seeming good wishes, some with outright envy. Her husband, she knew, was aware of both sentiments and enjoyed both equally. Meanwhile, Pia Montebello, often present at gatherings, took raging jealousy to new heights; he didn't mind that either. Louise had married a man who
liked
to set people on their ears.

Certainly Charles Harcourt unsettled his wife. He wanted something from her, though
what
was not entirely clear. Something more complicated than a quick coupling in the bathtub, for he could have had that. So, if not sexual compliance, what? An eagerness? An emotional openness—an undefended nakedness, so to speak, in the dark?

Oh, no, Louise wasn't about to do
that
again.

Meanwhile, surprisingly, impossibly, when she had reneged on her promise to return to Grasse. he expressed only bewilderment and concern—then stayed with her, managing his business affairs anxiously from a distance. Another reprieve, more grace, yet more room: as much as she needed. He made his own life more difficult for the sake of making hers more bearable. And Louise couldn't even take this favor with perfect gratitude. She hated that she needed it, that it amounted to her running back to her parents.

If she had been a lark to her lover, to this man she was… something more. A great deal more in exchange for a great deal less. Why?

She didn't know. Charles Harcourt made no sense whatsoever. Except to note that, even when he was perfectly within his rights to be demanding and importunate, he instead met each new thing she threw at him with an attempt to see her view: a generosity of spirit.

Charles arrived almost two hours late to the afternoon garden party being given in his and Louise's honor—a tardiness he suspected that would not be popular with his new in-laws and wife—but there was nothing for it. The trip from Grasse was never an insignificant one. Then his horse had thrown a shoe ten minutes outside of Nice—ten minutes, that is, if he had been at a gallop. He'd had to get down from the damn horse and walk them both home. After a hasty toilette, he had then had another good half an hour by carriage to the outskirts of Eze where Louise's parents had rented a house. He was lucky to have been only as late as he was.

An English butler took his hat at the door, then Charles proceeded through a residence he knew well.

He'd helped arrange for the rental of this large, pleasant two-story home owned by a friend of his and perched into a cliffside like the nest of an eagle. He was directed outside to the terrace where the bride, her family, his. and more well-wishers were gathered.

The back terrace was huge, with the ubiquitous view-to the Mediterranean. This particular sea view was made more dramatic by being set into breathtaking terrain. Over the back railing of the house, the cliffside fell steeply. The perspective from here was not only of sea but also of a wide, blue sky. This house was situated seemingly up in the air, in a kind of special limbo, like living on a cloud. If one reached over the terrace rail, one could literally touch treetops.

To get to the rail this afternoon, however, would have been difficult. As large as the terrace was, it was packed with people. As he moved into them, looking for Louise, several acquaintances greeted him.

offering their congratulations. One friend he hadn't seen in weeks clapped him on the back, kissed him on both cheeks, then said, rolling his eyes, "
Ooh la la
, my friend: the bride."

"Yes, she is splendid, isn't she?"

Charles couldn't find her for the throng. Isabel Vandermeer found him, however, and chastised him as soon as she was close enough to do so.

"Charles," she said, sliding sideways between two people, "you are unforgivably late. I can hardly bring myself to speak to you." She half meant the chagrin that showed on her face.

He said, "But, Madame, I was out making your daughter rich. Richer," he corrected. He wiggled his eyebrows at her and smiled. "Oh, Isabel, I collected the first shipment of ambergris from Marseilles yesterday and. Lord—" He let out an appreciative breath. "Your husband is brilliant. It is the best I have ever laid hands on. It is almost"—he lifted his gaze—"as fabulous as that young woman you raised." In delayed greeting, he kissed Isabel Vandermeer on her fingertips, and she made a tiny sound, a literal squeal of delight. He asked, "Where is Louise? I don't sec her."

"Oh. she is here somewhere, you charming man. Now, don't think you can flatter and beguile your way through every faux pas, but I'm letting it go this time, provided, of course, you introduce me to your cousin who arrived not ten minutes ago."

"My cousin?" He had a hundred of them. She turned him so he could see the gentleman in question.

"Aah." Charles's considerably older first cousin. Robert d'Orleans, due de Chartres, the man who, had there been a French king, would have been he. "Of course," Charles said.

As they headed toward this quasi-celebrity, she asked, "And how is it that you are a prince and he is a due, yet he would be king, not you? Aren't princes higher than…" She continued.

Charles ignored her, only shaking his head and smiling. He had given up trying to explain what she and her husband didn't want to understand—that their son-in-law's parents were a younger daughter of an abdicated king and the son of a Napoleonic sovereign, the principality itself long ago ceded to the church.

Nothing royal. Nor was Robert, for that matter.

Nonetheless, Charles introduced the excited Isabel to the due, then left, wading his way back through more cousins, aunts, uncles, his, Louise's. Every soul Charles knew who was currently within a day's drive was here—friends, friends of Louise's parents, everyone's relatives, including and especially those who had come across an ocean to celebrate, then been "deprived" of, a wedding.

Charles tried to be agreeable, stopping when he had no polite choice, as he continued to look for his wife. Until he found himself unable to move: Someone tugged on his arm. He turned. Pia. This meant that Roland was sure to be around somewhere, for alas. Americans didn't have a large party without inviting the chief American diplomat and his wife. Charles wasn't certain how Pia had wormed her way through the crowd to get to him so quickly, but she straightaway had a death hold on his arm.

"Charles!" she said warmly. He let her chat him up with a bunch of nonsense, remaining civil as he scanned the terrace.

After a minute, he said. "Excuse me. Pia. That's so very nice for you." She was rattling away about her new "fancy man," her
beau gars
, she called him, while her old fancy man frowned and tried to ignore the diminishing term.

Pia gripped his arm a second longer, near to arguing about whether or not he had a right to take it with him. He finally looked at her and said, "Pia, get your fucking hand off me. I want to go say hello to my wife."

She released him with a quick, nervous glance around her. two people wedged between them, and he was free.

Hardly three feet away, he was accosted again, this time by two gentlemen he didn't know, one already drunk. "We were wondering, old man, if you knew who that delectable creature over there is." a short British fellow said in English.

Accommodatingly. Charles hunted between heads and shoulders in the direction the man's finger suggested. He saw Louise's cousin, Mary, standing beside her parents.

"No. no, not that one, old fellow."

A lady in a very large-skirted dress moved, and Charles spotted the "delectable creature": Louise herself sitting in a chair at the east edge of the terrace. Charles's chest expanded. She was draped and tucked and ribboned into a concoction of silver-blue taffeta, her ivory-blond hair piled high on her head. He watched her talk to a mother and son down from Paris (met in the marketplace, and scooped up by Louise's mother "because they have such a glorious knowledge and love of flower gardening," and because the son was the new tenor at the Paris Opera—Isabel Vandermeer had a knack for sniffing out then collecting the renowned and elite).