Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [112]
“What?” Lydie asked.
“Can we do ourselves a favor?” Patrice asked, pushing a glass of champagne at her. “Can we drink a really festive toast?”
“Here’s to the d’Origny ball,” Lydie said, raising her glass over her head. Light poured through the tall window, making her bare arm look pearly white.
“Here’s to you and me. Best friends forever,” Patrice said.
“Here’s to that,” Lydie said, drinking.
From then on, things veered uphill. Lydie used an ivory buttonhook to do up Patrice’s buttons, stopping now and then to shake her arm and complain about lactic acid buildup. “My arms feel as if they’ve just done fifty chin-ups.”
“Press on, only a hundred more to go,” Patrice said. Their jewels sat across the room in little velvet cases, and as the time drew near to put them on, Patrice felt more excited. She strode around the room, feeling velvet swish over her silk stockings.
Lydie’s dress was made of rich green satin; against it, her pale skin glowed like porcelain. When she turned around, stepped back to let Patrice look at her, Patrice could see that she felt beautiful. Her golden hair fell to her shoulders, brushing the satin. Smiling at her, Patrice wondered if this was how a mother felt, watching a daughter dress for her wedding. Yet Patrice and Lydie were the same age, or practically. What gave Patrice the feeling of seniority? She knew, of course: a marriage that had been happy and loving.
“Michael’s going to fall in love with you all over again,” Patrice said to Lydie, feeling a little sad because in saying it she was relinquishing Lydie to Michael and America. She opened one jewel case and ceremoniously removed Lydie’s ruby-and-diamond necklace. Lydie smiled, staring at the necklace. She lifted her hair as Patrice clasped it around her neck.
“It’s beautiful,” Patrice said.
Lydie touched the stones with one hand. Then, saying nothing, she went over to the bureau and removed Patrice’s necklace from its chest. Patrice turned her back, waiting for Lydie to clip it on. It felt slightly unreal, to be decked out like fairy princesses for the d’Origny ball. As the clasp was fastened, Patrice felt the stones’ weight tug at her neck.
“This is the real me,” Patrice said to her reflection in the cheval glass. “I am never giving these back.”
“They’re great on you,” said Lydie, who couldn’t stop touching the large ruby dangling from her pendant.
“And they’re great on you,” Patrice said, smiling in spite of the superstitious shiver she felt at the sight of her best friend wearing rubies.
La Brinvilliers has gone up in smoke … her poor little body was tossed, after the execution, into a raging fire, and her ashes scattered to the winds! So that, now, we shall all be inhaling her! And with such evil little spirits in the air, who knows what poisonous humor may overcome us?
—TO FRANÇOISE-MARGUERITE, JULY 1676
PATRICE HAD ALREADY told Lydie that the name on everyone’s lips that night was “Lydie McBride.” Patrice said she had intoned it a thousand times, in answer to all Didier’s crowd from Saint-Tropez, his business associates, his sister Clothilde, asking who had done the fantastic job. And only about half the guests had arrived so far. Lydie had to admit the ball had an air of glamour and mystery, with an orchestra playing and flashbulbs going off in everyone’s eyes. She had lined the château’s drive with votive candles, hundreds of them in paper bags. Wooden chandeliers, each full of fifty tall white candles, hung from ropes in the trees. Beneath them was a dance floor bordered by long tables covered in white cloths.
There was Patrice, adjusting her diamond tiara, taking a sip of champagne. She gripped the ebony wand and directed her black-sequined mask to her eyes. She surveyed the crowd. Lydie touched the ruby tiara Patrice had insisted she wear, and at that instant Patrice caught sight of her. “Oh, Your Majesty!” Patrice called to Lydie.
“How do you think it’s going?” Lydie asked, feeling impossibly anxious. Wondering why Michael hadn’t come downstairs yet.
“It’s ugly, everyone