Regret Not a Moment (16 page)

“You are even more beautiful in close proximity,” he told her in English too perfect to be anything but a second language.

“Ah, you speak English?” Devon asked, surprised that he had not told her so earlier.

“Yes. But like most Frenchmen, I prefer my own language,” he said with a smile.

Devon noticed his straight white teeth, something not always found in Europe, where dental hygiene was not taken as seriously as in America. He’s not exactly handsome, Devon thought, but he’s lethally attractive. Indeed, women found his sharp, predatory features exciting, for they gave him a devilish air. But the marquis was not at all evil. He was a wealthy, pleasant man whose passions in life were women and winemaking. In that order. His manner of wooing the objects of his desire—and they were many and varied—had become a fine art. And his artistry almost never failed.

“I notice,” he continued in English, “that you speak French exceptionally well. So many Americans have trouble with our vowel sounds.” But not this one, he thought to himself. When she spoke, she moved her mouth with all the mobility of a Frenchwoman, forming each word perfectly, uttering each sentence in the singsong melody that made French such a seductive language. The marquis enjoyed watching her crimson-rouged lips as they spoke his language. He could easily imagine himself kissing those lips. Kissing them, nipping them, and inserting his own tongue between them.

“My mother always believed that one should be fluent in a second language. So I had a French tutor from the time I was five years old. I used to resent it terribly,” said Devon with a laugh.

“Yet you learned beautifully,” replied the marquis.

“Only after my tutor discovered the secret to teaching me,” said Devon with a mischievous grin.

She is even more sublime when she smiles, thought the marquis. He smiled back out of sheer enjoyment of her comeliness. “The secret?” he asked, pleased that she was revealing secrets so soon. She would reveal many more to him later, he promised himself.

“That the best way to teach me was on horseback. Luckily, Monsieur Lamarque knew how to ride.”

“That is a secret I shall remember, for I intend to make use of it at some point in the future,” he promised.

The air was thick with undercurrents of sexual tension while the fish course—a meltingly delicious sole Veronique—was served.

“I look forward, with unprecedented anticipation, to the poultry course,” the marquis said with a sly grin, turning back to the lovely blonde on his left, as etiquette demanded.

Devon, too, found herself reluctant to turn to her other dinner partner, though politeness dictated that she do so. The ruddy banker was an important friend of the ambassador, but he drank a great deal and spent most of his time discoursing on how he managed to be one of the few profiting from the Depression. Devon was eager to return to the marquis.

As the footman placed the smoked pheasant in wild currant sauce before her, Devon scolded herself for her inappropriate attraction to the marquis. But as she turned toward him, an involuntary smile lit her face.

“So… we are reunited,” he said.

He has that absolutely deadly way that Frenchmen have of looking at you—like a visual caress, Devon thought. And he’s a master at it. Wherever the marquis looked, Devon felt a warm tingle, until her entire body felt flushed with heat.

The heat was palpable to the marquis, who, though accustomed to such reactions, never failed to be delighted by them. Ah, this one will be delicious, he told himself. She is seductive, but seems unaware of it. She still has a refreshing innocence about her. “Are you newly married?” he asked, trying to solve the mystery of her.

Devon looked toward John, who was on the opposite side of the table and several chairs away. Suddenly, she was stricken with guilt. How could she have allowed herself to feel such attraction for a stranger? She loved John. Loved him with all her heart.

The marquis realized immediately that he had made a tactical error in bringing up Devon’s husband, yet he was amused by her reaction. She is very young, he thought to himself, suddenly feeling old at age forty-two. For a moment, his thoughts dwelt on his own wife. She was a charming brunette his own age who still had the power to intoxicate any man she wished. The marquis knew that she spent many lively moments without him on the French Riviera and in Italy. He did not mind, for it kept the piquancy in their marriage. They enjoyed each other on the occasions when their paths crossed. Had there ever been a time in their marriage when his wife had chided herself for being attracted to another man? He had certainly seen no sign of it. Yet here was a seemingly sophisticated woman, of potent desirability, who was still innocent enough to be embarrassed at her attraction for a man not her husband. Intriguing. Intriguing but dangerous to his own strategy, he realized. He had to immediately reassure her that she had not made her feelings toward him obvious.

“You seem to he very much in love with him,” said the marquis in an indulgent tone.

“Oh, yes. Very much.” Devon was glad to have the opportunity to say it. The marquis should not misunderstand—just because she had been friendly…

“But you did not answer my question. Are you newly married?”

“A little less than a month, actually,” said Devon. Again she glanced at John. This time he was looking at her. She smiled at him, forgetting, in her guilt, her earlier anger.

The marquis also turned toward John and met his gaze. He very slightly raised his wineglass in a subtle toast. It was a polite gesture. A fairly commonplace gesture of greeting. But something about the marquis’s manner drew John’s attention.

John returned the gesture, smiled once more at his wife, and turned back to the lady on his right. But he found himself trying to observe Devon out of the corner of his eye. Every time he reached for his wineglass, he turned his head a bit more than necessary so that he could have a better view of Devon and her dinner companion. Now he took a sip and noticed the rosy glow that seemed to emanate from his wife. Even just one glass of wine had the ability to give her pale complexion more than a hint of pink, but tonight the glow seemed to come from within as well. The look she gave the marquis as the footmen served the meat course—and she was forced to turn to the gentleman on her other side—disturbed John. There was a familiarity about their demeanor that John would have expected from two people who knew each other well—yet they had just met.

John studied the Frenchman. He was distinguished, in a vulpine sort of way. He had an aristocratic bearing, but it was not affected. Rather, the man had about him an easy manner that John could see would be very attractive to women. He laughed and chatted comfortably and seemed truly interested in the conversation of the lovely blonde woman beside him. He flirted with her a bit, but John could see that the woman, though enjoying herself, was not as affected by his charm as Devon was. She seemed amused, but not enthralled. Devon, John realized, had concentrated on the man with an intensity he had previously seen her focus only on himself.

John picked rather halfheartedly at his beef Wellington as he listened in distracted silence to the small talk of the woman beside him, a kind-faced American matron who had apparently attended the Lancaster Academy for Young Ladies with his mother.

“Of course, your mother was two years behind me,” she was saying, “so I was not well acquainted with her. But she was a perfectly lovely girl…”

John didn’t have to concentrate on what she was saying. He could just nod politely and pretend to listen, which left his mind free to think about Devon. About Devon and the marquis.

As the salad was served, he watched his wife turn back to her seductive dinner partner. She was glowing. Positively glowing. And she was extraordinarily lovely. It was no wonder the marquis was taken by her.

John watched her tilt her head sideways and laugh at something the marquis was saying. She looked enchanting, John thought, with her hair spilling over her shoulder, her smile lighting up her face. A wave of jealousy and desire such as he had never known swept over him. He wanted her in his arms right at that moment. Wanted to kiss away the misunderstandings of the past few days. To fill the rift that had grown between them with the warmth of his love for her.

Just at that moment, Devon caught John staring at her. The desire in his face was unmistakable. She felt her heart turn over in response.

He has that effect on me, she thought to herself, and I suppose he always will. She gave him her most beautiful smile and lifted her glass to him in the same toasting gesture the marquis had performed earlier. John grinned back, feeling heady with relief and euphoria. It was wonderful to be in love. Wonderful to have the most beautiful wife in the world. He was the luckiest man alive!

The marquis, observing the exchange, sat quietly back in his chair and said nothing. It was clear to him, in that moment, that he could not hope to compete with the young man who was Devon’s husband. Devon would never agree to that final, most sublime surrender.

He sighed to himself and turned toward the blonde industrialist’s wife. She was, after all, extremely alluring.

It was not until Devon retired thirty minutes later to the ladies’ room that she discovered that the warm moisture between her legs was blood.

WILLOWBROOK reminded Devon of the magnificent Greek Revival plantation houses that she had seen during her family’s voyage to Louisiana ten years before. Indeed, the Hartwicks, from whom John had bought the estate, had originally come from Natchez, Mississippi. Willowbrook, built in 1845 by Brent’s great-grandfather Beauregard Hartwick, had been intended to approximate the Hartwick estate in Natchez, and he had tried to transplant as much of its ambience as possible.

As the Alexanders drove up to their new home in the twilight of the midsummer evening, Devon thought that the only thing missing from Willowbrook to make it a replica of a Deep South plantation was the Spanish moss that draped the giant live oaks along the delta. But Willowbrook had the live oaks. They canopied the long, straight, gravel-covered drive that led from the main road to the house.

“The Hartwicks were so proud of this house,” Devon said wistfully, thinking back to the days before the Depression.

“I loved it from the first moment I saw it,” John said. “I’m glad you do too.” He took his right hand from the steering wheel and covered Devon’s left hand.

“Oh, stop here for just a minute!” Devon cried as she spotted the white Corinthian-pillared portico of the mansion through a frame created by the overhanging branches of the grand trees.

“It looks very imposing, doesn’t it?” John asked.

“Very. I guess the exterior hasn’t had time to get run down, even though I know Brent hasn’t had anything to spend on upkeep,” Devon said. In the last two years, she had noticed that some of the house’s delicate interior wall coverings had grown worn and the furnishings and paintings severely depleted as piece by valuable piece had been sold in an attempt—not always successful—to meet debts and maintain the productive capacities of the farm.

“Well… I had the outside painted,” John admitted with an excited smile. “And everything’s been whitewashed and the garden brought back. Other than that, everything was in pretty decent repair. Old Mr. Hartwick apparently kept the place up until he died.”

“Oh, yes. There was always work being done. But it looks more splendid than ever!” Devon responded happily. “I can’t wait to see it up close. Let’s go on!”

The gravel drive ended at a vast Kentucky bluegrass lawn that featured a small brick-edged fish pond surrounded by flowers and flanked by eight venerable magnolia trees. A brick walkway led from the pond to the front staircase, a graceful, wisteria-covered affair of black wrought iron that swept down to ground level in wide, converging arcs.

As John and Devon approached the stairway, he picked her up to carry her over the threshold. “I think I should be commended for including the stairs in this ceremony,” he joked.

“Commended and rewarded,” Devon replied, giving him a feather-light kiss.

The massive Corinthian columns that extended to the second story of the house created a spacious porch that wrapped around three sides of the house. The perfect symmetry of the building was punctuated by the four French windows that flanked each side of the front door. The main entrance to the mansion, a shiny black double door surrounded by narrow rectangular panes of beveled glass, was topped by a similar door at second-story height, which opened onto a balustraded balcony.

“Can you open it for me?” John asked. “It’s not locked. Your mother arranged for someone to make things ready for us.”

Once inside, John placed Devon gently on her feet and turned her toward him for a long embrace. But they were both too eager to inspect the house to linger.

After a thorough look around, Devon decided that as impressive a facade as Willowbrook presented, her favorite vantage point was from the rear, where the second-story veranda spanned the whole width of the house, and French doors created another large living area of the outdoor space. From there, Devon could enjoy the vista of green lawn gradually sloping down to a small lake surrounded by weeping willow trees. The willows partially screened the view of the barn and stables, painted white to match the house, and the white-fenced paddock beyond. It was a scene of perfect bucolic splendor, a peaceful and inviting setting for Devon and John to begin their new life together.

The next morning, Devon and John stood in the thirty-foot-wide center hallway and examined the scuffed floor.

“I barely know where to begin,” Devon said.

“The first thing to do is rehire the staff the Hartwicks had to let go. Many of them are still out of work, I imagine, with times as they are,” said John, looking up at the Regency chandelier, which was badly in need of polishing. “I considered hiring them when I bought the place,” John continued, “but I thought you would want to take charge of the hiring yourself.”

Devon turned toward John with the dimpled smile he loved, and joked, “We’ve been married less than two months, but you already know me too well!”