Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [214]
She sent a quick cable to Francie and Buck in San Francisco signing it “Princesse d’Arancourt,” and they wired back their shock and demanded she bring her new husband home immediately to be inspected and approved. But Pierre wanted to go via Europe and they took the presidential suite on the first Messageries Maritime French liner bound for Marseilles.
Pierre was not a very tender and considerate lover, but Lysandra had no one to compare him to, and she just assumed his quick, take-it-or-leave-it attitude was normal. She didn’t for a minute suspect he found her inexperience a nuisance and her youthful adoration boring. She was just so enamored she only saw how handsome and debonaire he was and noticed, jealously, how other women watched him with predatory eyes.
Pierre was not unfaithful to her until they reached Paris. He spent a lot of time on the phone in their suite at the George Cinq, where they were staying because his apartment on Avenue Foch was “being redecorated”—though anyway he said he planned to sell it and buy a larger one. He sent her alone to the couturiers to buy clothes. “You can’t go on wearing those dreadful cheongsams,” he told her disparagingly, and she gazed at him, hurt, remembering how he had liked them. She didn’t know where he spent his afternoons and they seemed to dine early in their suite most nights and then he would leave her, telling her he had to visit his ailing grandmother, or that he was playing cards with his friends, or he had to travel to Deauville to sell the polo ponies he bred at the Argentine ranch.
They had been at the George Cinq for two months when she found the note from his mistress in the pocket of his robe and even though it was written in French she knew enough to understand it was not a casual affair, it had been going on for years, and she gasped with shock when she saw her own name mentioned … “the rich Chinese concubine who is keeping you in the manner to which you have always aspired to become accustomed,” it said. The scales of love fell from her eyes and she looked at the truth. She thought of her mother and the stories of how she had been “the Mandarin’s concubine” and remembered how much they had hurt her, and anger flared in her blue eyes, turning them to steel.
There was a rap on the door and when she called “come in” she was surprised to see the manager. “Princesse, forgive my intrusion,” he said, looking embarrassed, “but I think there must be some oversight on the Prince’s part. It is the bill, madame, we have presented it several times and the Prince promises to pay, but so far”—he shrugged—“nothing. I myself have brought it to you, madame, in the hope that you might personally take care of this small matter to all our satisfaction.”
Lysandra stared at him and her heart sank; it was all clear to her now. She thought of how Pierre had wooed her with his charming words and gifts and then she thought of the Mandarin and what he had said to her all those years ago in Hong Kong, when she was seven years old and his business acquaintances had showered her with a treasure trove of presents.
Remember, he had said, the gifts are not because these people are your friends, but because you are a Lai Tsin.
Pierre had not married her because he loved her; he had not married Lysandra. He had married the Lai Tsin fortune.
She signed the bill and the manager thanked her effusively, backing out of the salon and closing the door gently behind him, and a short while later a bottle of the best vintage champagne was delivered to her with his compliments