Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [115]
She looked through the scope, saw nothing but darkness. Then she found Michael’s head, so close to Anne’s that both their faces were in the sight. Magnified, the faces looked angry. They were arguing. But they faded away, and what Lydie saw instead was a cozy Village apartment with family photos on the flowered wallpaper and a young dark-haired woman lying on the bed. Instead of the orchestra, she heard the drone of a television and the voice of a two-year-old girl playing in the next room.
“Lydie …” Kelly said. She touched the back of Lydie’s hand, so softly she might have been afraid of setting something off.
But the shots had been fired more than a year ago. Lydie lowered the gun but continued to hold it as if testing its weight. She found the spot where it was perfectly balanced in the palm of her hand and let it totter there while continuing to watch Michael and Anne with the avidity of a theatergoer waiting for the final curtain. She felt peculiar, as if she had been given permission to feel joyous. She no longer felt sorrowful; she no longer felt the presence of ghosts—neither the young, dark-haired woman nor the handsome, grinning Irishman. Somehow she had laid them to rest. She glanced at Kelly. “Excuse me,” she said. She walked onto the lawn.
“What are you doing here?” Michael heard Lydie say in the calmest voice possible.
He stepped toward her, put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, Lydie,” he said. “She’s just leaving.”
“Your decorations are superb,” Anne said, dimpling. “And the château, well … if only it were not built in such an unfortunate epoch.”
“What are you doing here?” Lydie repeated, her shoulders tense under Michael’s arm.
“I was invited, of course,” Anne said. She tucked a loose curl under the wig, smoothed the line of her skirt.
Lydie looked up at Michael. Her face was blank, as if any expression was suspended pending Michael’s explanation. “I didn’t invite her,” he said.
Anne laughed, a gentle trill; she whipped an ivory fan from her reticule and held it to her face. She gazed into his eyes, seeming to implore him to take her side. “ ‘I conjure you to speak out on what you know about all this. I cannot have too many friends on this occasion.’ ” She spoke, as she had since Michael had encountered her tonight, in her Madame de Sévigné voice.
“Your name wasn’t on the guest list,” Lydie said. She turned to Michael. “Did you invite her?”
He shook his head no. He knew there had never been so flagrant a case of bad timing in the history of romance. All he wanted was to be with Lydie: court her, watch her in action at the d’Origny ball, dance with her, kiss her on the banks of the Loire. Yet here was Anne, spoiling it all. Not because of his old feelings for her, or even because Lydie seemed devastated by her presence—she didn’t; he felt Lydie press closer to him. But because he didn’t know whether Anne was acting or whether she had lost her mind.
“ ‘She has a charming tone of voice,’ ” Anne said to Michael, tilting her wig toward Lydie. “ ‘She is fair, she is clean …’ ”
“What are you talking about?” Lydie asked.
“I think she’s …” How to say it? “Quoting Madame de Sévigné,” Michael said.
“Where can I find Madame d’Origny?” Anne asked. “I must thank her for her kind invitation.”
“Patrice invited her?” Lydie asked, her head snapping around.
“I don’t know,” replied Michael, who had wondered all along how Anne had learned the ball’s location.
“I want you to leave,” Lydie said to Anne.
“ ‘The wife of Monsieur is outraged. A snag has developed in her marriage. Her tears flow, as from a fountain. Her great boob of a husband is not very loving,’ ” Anne said.
At that, Lydie’s face turned white, and her shoulders tensed. Michael wanted to protect her, to get her away from Anne. He shook Anne’s arm. “Shut up,” he said.
Anne spit on his shoe and walked away.
Lydie and Michael stood together, watching her go. Michael held his breath, waiting