Leonie (29 page)

Monsieur was spending more time with her, teaching her at last the things she had wanted to learn. He took her to inspect properties, not only in Paris but in industrial cities where he bought up land on speculation, knowing where industry would need to expand and where factories would be built. She invested her money alongside his, buying more shares in the de Courmont Automobile Company. His cars were his passion—he talked of little else, neglecting other business matters to devote more time to them, and already the first models were on the road. He drove a bright red one himself and to her it looked a clumsy vehicle, long-bodied, strapped with leather, glinting with brass handles and lamps and gadgets. It had padded brown leather seats and even a small Lalique crystal vase to hold flowers. She had rushed to Worth and bought a dress of scarlet silk, as bright and brassy as the car itself, and he’d driven her to the theater, enjoying the sensation they had caused in their wonderful automobile. “It’s the best advertisement I could have,” he had said, as he helped her from the running board. “You’ll see, Léonie, soon Paris will be full of cars—and most of them will be de Courmonts.” For the first time, he had
allowed her to share his excitement in his new business and she had been pleased to be even such a small part of it.

Best of all, he had promised to take her to New York with him. He was to leave the following week and Léonie was busy shopping, buying suitable clothes for the occasion—the first time he had so publicly acknowledged that she was more than just his mistress. She would be on his arm as his woman, the one he had chosen to share his life with, the woman he loved. And she felt sure he loved her—hadn’t he said that he’d missed her? Missed her so much that he was taking her with him this time? She wanted so much for him to love her. She wanted to be secure in his love.

She hurried into the Fortuny salon, hoping they would have her evening gowns ready. She’d chosen them with Monsieur in mind and they were all the same style: long fluid sheaths of pleated silk open to a
V
almost to her waist, curving to her body when she moved, clasped low on the hips with a barbaric belt of semiprecious stones of the same color and silken tassels. She had bought the same model in amber and jade, aquamarine and amethyst, topaz and crystal. They were superb.

“Madame looks marvelous in this dress,” the vendeuse murmured admiringly as Léonie inspected herself in the mirror, twisting around to examine the back. The delicate fabric swung in a loop from her shoulders, bare to the waist. It was sensational. Monsieur would be proud of her in New York.

She smiled at the vendeuse. “They are perfect. Please have them delivered to my house—no, wait, I’ll take this one with me.” She picked out the crystal dress. She would wear it tonight, just for him.

He could forgive her anything, he thought, when she looked like that. She was waiting for him in the big salon and she’d chosen her setting well. The dress had the same opaque quality as the fabric on her walls, a veil of mist that skimmed her body, sparkling where the belt of crystal beads clasped her narrow hips. In the lamplight even her hair seemed paler. She’d braided it into a thick elaborate plait entwined with beads so that it hung, glistening, down her smooth back.

The windows were open to catch the breeze and he recalled suddenly and vividly the night at the hotel when he’d made love
to her in the blue salon. He accepted the whiskey from Maroc and took a seat by the window. It was very hot tonight.

“Do you like it?” Her face was eager for his approval.

“It’s wonderful.”

“I’ve arranged a special dinner for tonight, come and see.” She held out her hands to him. “Are we having guests?”

“No guests. Just you and me.” She showed him the table. “We are having omelettes,” she said, “and a salad, and a simple glass of wine.” She laughed. “Like an old married couple.”

“I’m quite happy with an omelette,” he said indifferently.

“Ah, but you see, you can have any sort of omelette you like—an omelette with caviar or smoked salmon or truffles. Or
fines herbes?
”

“I must leave right after dinner”—he checked his watch—“in fact, in half an hour.”

She wondered what was wrong, surely not the children? “Monsieur, the children, they’re not ill?”

“No, they’re not ill. I’ve decided to send them to school in America for a while. They’ll be leaving with me next week. As will their mother.”

“Their mother? Then …” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Exactly, my dear. I’m afraid you won’t be able to go on this trip. Perhaps next time.”

Léonie could actually feel the tremor inside her body, as though the blood were shivering in her veins.

“Please don’t bother to stay for dinner,” she said, her voice very quiet. “I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Léonie, but as you can see, I have no choice.”

“I don’t want to discuss it any further. Your life obviously goes on without me.” She trailed from the room, a gray wisp of shadow, her blond braid swinging as she went.

His eyes were cold as he watched her go. I could forgive you
almost
anything, Léonie Bahri, he thought, remembering Alain Valmont, but not
quite
all. We must all accept our punishment.

Léonie heard him leave. She wandered aimlessly down the stairs and peered into the dining room. The table for two looked so inviting, set with the thin crystal glasses that were his favorites and the simple fine porcelain she’d chosen because she knew he preferred it plain. Her anger boiled suddenly, tearing at her, consuming
her. With one blow of her arm she swept the table clear amid a splintering of glass and a crashing of china. “Léonie Bahri,” she screamed into the empty echoing silence that followed it, “you’re not meant to be any man’s mistress!”

She fled the next day to the south, taking only Bébé and one valise, hastily packed with the simplest clothes.

Maroc accompanied her anxiously, pacing the platform with her as the train steamed and puffed, preparing for its journey.

“But Léonie, what shall I say to him? Are you coming back?” This time it was serious; he felt it from her attitude. She had contained her anger, but it flowed inside her like a volcano ready to explode, a layer of heat to cover the hurt that she felt at the core.

“I never want to see Monsieur again. Caro warned me about his methods: he promises exactly what people want and then he takes them over. That’s what he does to me, Maroc: he finds out what I want most and then he takes it away. He tortures me … how can I live with a man like that!”

“Léonie.” He patted her hand gently. “You’ve always come back before. This has happened many times, it’s a game the two of you play.”

“Is it, Maroc? Am I as guilty as he?” Maybe she was. But weren’t her faults the ordinary, human ones? She didn’t wield godlike power over people the way he did.

She could see the despised man, like a shadow at the end of the platform. “Anyway, he’s sure to know where I’ve gone,” she said bitterly. “His spy will hurry off to telegraph his report as soon as the train pulls out. Oh, Maroc.” She held him tightly as her tears began to flow. “The trouble is that I
love him.
”

Bébé began to howl, a thin eerie wail, and Léonie picked her up, hugging her comfortingly. “It must be the steam,” she said. “The train has frightened her.”

She leaned from the carriage, holding Maroc’s hand. “Who would have thought, Maroc, when you and I first became friends, that our lives would turn out like this?”

“Life isn’t over yet, Léonie,” he said, as the train began to move.

–
• 25 •

Bébé rolled in the sunshine on the terra-cotta tiled window ledge, abandoning herself to its warmth, waving a lazy paw at a bee as it droned across her line of vision. Léonie was out on the hillside planting things in her garden. They had been there for almost two months and she was up with the sun every day, digging, raking, hoeing, and planting. In the evening, when the sun was low, she watered her plot, treating each of her precious plants tenderly, as though she could urge it to grow strong just by kindness. “One day you’ll see,” she’d said to Bébé, “this will be a beautiful garden and I will have created it.”

Monsieur Frenard had terraced the hillside down to the beach and the two of them pored over her plans and sketches, for she knew exactly what she wanted: a line of shade trees here on the west and an ornamental pool on the bit of headland that curved around the beach with a bench beside it so that at sunset she could sit beneath the jacarandas and look out across her pool and the sea. She’d planted palms and jasmine and yucca and oleander, and she loved them all.

“It’s the most satisfying thing I’ve done in my whole life,” she told Monsieur Frenard as she cleaned off her hands. “Look at me”—she held them out for inspection—“there’s dirt under my nails and calluses from digging. I’m a woman of the fields, Monsieur Frenard. Back to my peasant beginnings.”

At night she was so exhausted that she slept like a log, not dreaming or worrying. She did that in the daytime. All day. She had gone over the scene with Monsieur endlessly, wondering why?
Why
had he done it?
Why
did he
always
do it? One thing was certain, she never wanted to see him again. Or maybe she did so she could tell him that she hated him, that he was a monster and she wanted to tear his eyes out, to kick and bite and hurt him!
How could she love him? But sometimes she would want him desperately, long for the power of his presence, feeling waves of passion for him that she fought against, telling herself that she didn’t want him.

After a few weeks, the first pain had passed and she had thrown herself into her work, which was at least disciplined and satisfying—at the end of each day there were results that she could see and each week her plants grew and the garden developed.

She had heard nothing from Monsieur and had no idea whether he had returned or if he was still with his wife and children in New York. It was none of her business anymore. That part of her life was over.

She had become a country girl again, not even venturing into Monte Carlo or Nice. The inn was truly her home. The peace that she had always felt in its welcoming warmth comforted her. One thing she knew for certain: the little man in the brown suit was nowhere to be seen. Monsieur Frenard checked every day and confirmed that there were no strangers in the village. “Anyone hanging around here would stick out like a sore thumb,” he reassured her. “I know everybody around these parts. This is no place for a spy, Mademoiselle Léonie.”

Straightening her aching back, Léonie examined the path that she had made leading across the garden and down to the rocks where she liked to bathe. She had dug it and smoothed it herself and then paved it with broken slabs of rock and old terra-cotta tiles in a patchwork of shapes and colors, filled in with smooth pebbles from the beach. The sky was darkening rapidly and even as she looked there was a flicker of lightning on the horizon. She gathered up her tools quickly, cleaning off the trowel with a tuft of grass and wiping her hands on the cotton skirt she had bought in the village of Saint-Jean. Bébé trotted eagerly toward her, hoping it was time for a walk.

Thunder rumbled across the water as the lightning flickered again, illuminating the sail of a small boat tacking toward the shore. There wasn’t a breath of wind and its sails hung limply under the menacing purple sky as it tried to outrun the coming storm. Léonie watched anxiously from the headland above the rocks, wondering whether he would make it. A zigzag of lightning cleaved the sea suddenly as the wind and rain began, thrusting the
boat toward the rocky Point. She ran down the slope to the beach, barely able to see through the driving rain, slithering over the rocks, trying to keep her sodden hair out of her eyes as she struggled toward the spot the boat had been heading for. She was upon it almost before she saw it, beached neatly into a sliver of sand in between the rocks. There was no sign of anyone on board and Léonie stared at it in concern. Could he have been swept overboard? The sea boiled and foamed, soaking her feet, spitting back at the lightning and rain, roused angrily from its usual blue tranquillity. “Is anybody there?”

A head appeared from behind the sail. “I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m just trying to get this damned sail down before the wind rips it to pieces.”

Léonie sank onto a rock, her knees weak with relief. “I thought you were dead.”

There was a laugh from behind the sail. “What, me? Never. I’ve been in worse storms than this one—and in smaller boats. There, that’s that.” He jumped from the deck and surveyed his work with satisfaction. “Did a good job, didn’t I? I spotted this bit of sand from out there and realized it was the only place to head for, just made it before the storm really caught me.” He turned to her with a smile. “But thank you for your concern.”

He was young—probably her own age—and as wet as she was. His hair was plastered to his head and water was dripping down into his eyes. Léonie began to laugh. “What a sight we must both be,” she said, struggling to her feet.

He put out a hand to help her. “Well, if
you’re
here, there must be food and shelter to be found—or is this a desert island? I don’t know how good I am at building huts from palm leaves and hunting for wild berries to feed you.”

She laughed. “There’s no need for that, there’s an inn at the top of the slope.”

“Wonderful. The boat should be safe here until the storm blows over.” He rechecked his vessel, making sure she was secure. “There’s more weather in that sky yet.”

Léonie watched him curiously; he was efficient, capable. He knew what he was doing. She needn’t have worried about him.

“Let’s go.” He took her hand as they bounded up the hill together, arriving laughing and panting at the top, slithering together through the mud of her sodden garden until they reached
the terrace, where they sat down for a moment to take off their wet shoes.

He looked appreciatively at the inn. “I couldn’t have been shipwrecked at a better place. Do you think they’ll have a room for me?”