Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [41]
“Would you like a tour of the house?” Anne said, teasing him.
“Okay.” He lifted her into his arms. Laughing, she pressed her cheek against his chest. He kissed her hair, which was damp from the pool and smelled of shampoo and chlorine. “Tell me where to go,” he said.
“Let’s start in that room,” she said, pointing to a closed door.
Michael actually held her with one arm as he turned the knob with his other hand; she weighed nothing at all. He felt dizzy, breathless. The room was dark as a cave; heavy curtains blocked the light, and Michael stumbled. Anne clutched his neck; he steadied himself.
“It’s an adventure,” she said. “We go in there.”
“In there?” They stood before what appeared, in the darkness, to be a tent. He brushed the fabric with the back of his hand, found an opening.
“It is my great folly,” Anne said, laughing. She tumbled out of his arms. “My bed, can you believe it?”
“Are we playing ‘Arabian Nights’?” Michael crawled in after her. It was snug, fantastic. He began to unbutton her blouse. She rolled away from him.
“Not ‘Arabian Nights,’ ” she said, “but there is a fantasy, certainly. This is a canopy bed from the seventeenth century.” Anne giggled. “Sometimes I think about it: how many people living at that time could have afforded such a thing? Not many, and one of them was Marie de Sévigné. What if this belonged to her? I don’t dare tell you what I paid for it; you would think I am crazy. The curtains are not old; I had them made.” She sat erect, handling a fold of the silk damask drapery. The stiff fabric rustled between her fingers. She seemed absent, her mind gone back to the court of Louis XIV.
“It’s beautiful,” Michael said, lying back.
He sensed, rather than saw or felt, Anne. And he felt sad, because he knew that, although he was about to make love with her, the great moment of romance had passed. He was wide awake. His own mood had slammed into Anne’s. There she was, upright, conjuring characters who had died centuries ago. He still wanted her, even though she was crazy. She unzipped his pants, lowered her mouth to his erection. Shivering, Michael closed his eyes. He reached for her shoulders; five minutes ago, this would have been exactly what he wanted.
I hear that there is a constant round of pleasure, but not a moment of genuine enjoyment.
—TO FRANÇOISE-MARGUERITE, JUNE 1680
THE BALL WOULD be magnificent, Lydie decided. She had located a château in the Loire Valley, whose owners, a titled though impoverished elderly couple, rented it to paying guests by the day, weekend, or week. The eighteenth-century château stood in a park, surrounded by a moat, at the edge of a forest. It overlooked a swanless lake.
“It’s up to you,” she said over the phone to Didier. “It’s rather expensive, but I think it’s the perfect backdrop for our ball.”
“You say they will rent it for the weekend?” Didier asked.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s take it from Friday night through Sunday and make a country-house weekend of it. Hold the ball on Saturday night and shoot the ads then. We justify the expense of the château by using friends as guests instead of paid actors.”
“That’s clever,” said Lydie, who had been thinking the same thing. “When do you think we should stage it? After August, when people are back from vacation?”
“Absolutely. After the rentrée, at the end of September. Give people something to look forward to.” Lydie heard him clucking at his end of the wire. “Especially Patrice,” he said. “I suppose she has told you about her mother? Last night I had to give a tranquilizer to the poor girl.”
“I know she seems to be under a strain,” Lydie said. She had not yet met Mrs. Spofford, and although she knew that some women did not like their mothers, she thought Patrice’s bad reaction to her mother’s arrival petulant and mean. Patrice had said her mother didn’t travel easily. Lydie wondered how Mrs. Spofford must feel, coming to Europe to visit her only daughter and finding her furious. Patrice had said to Lydie, “I’m in a killing rage anytime she’s in the