Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [89]
There will be plays at Court and a ball every week.
—TO FRANÇOISE-MARGUERITE, JANUARY 1674
ON THE DAY that the Salle des Quatre Saisons would be unveiled, Michael leaned against the great table, watching workmen adjust the lighting on paintings by Georges de la Tour and Nicolas Poussin. He thought they set a fine seventeenth-century mood to carry tourists through the painting galleries. Although it had been his second choice, Michael found Poussin’s painting Apollo and Daphne deeply moving. There was Apollo, baffled in his love for Daphne, tricked by Mercury, frustrated in friendship by Hyacinth, who lay slain at Apollo’s feet. It seemed benevolent to have a painting of Apollo—god of poetry and painting—hanging in his Salle. Nicolas Poussin had died before finishing it.
Michael felt baffled in his love for Lydie. He thought back to springtime, when he had felt so sure he wanted someone new. Instead of trying to understand the dark things moving his wife, he had fallen for Anne. But his feelings had changed over time. Living apart from Lydie, he remembered how it had felt to fall in love with her. Not the second time, in Washington, but the first, in high school. Then it had seemed he saw her only from a distance. Across the room in French class, with other boys at dances, with Father Griffin, their heads together as they discussed matters of obvious importance—ostentatiously, Michael had thought.
Caterers from Lenôtre arrived, asking Michael where to set up the hors d’oeuvres. “Not on that table,” he said, because he thought the information table was a prime attraction. Its maker from Burgundy had been invited, along with his wife, their children, and members of the preceding generation on both sides of the family. Curators from museums all through France, members of the American community in Paris, and government officials had been invited. Lydie had been invited.
The caterers set out platters of canapés, a goose sculpted out of foie gras, open-faced sandwiches of smoked salmon. Charles had insisted that champagne be served, regardless of cost. Michael felt pretty sure the budget wouldn’t cover it, that Charles was making up the difference with his own money. But with the ministers and officials who were coming, this was a perfect opportunity for Charles to start lobbying for his next curatorship.
“Michel,” Anne said, startling him. He turned fast. She wore a wig, the hair piled high on her head, and an ancient dress that looked as though it would fall apart if you touched it. She pirouetted slowly.
“It’s … extraordinary,” Michael said, spellbound. Anne looked exactly like a woman from the seventeenth century; she might have stepped out of the portrait of Madame de Sévigné hanging in her apartment. The dress was quilted brown taffeta trimmed with what once had been silver thread. The wig appeared to be new, with chestnut tendrils curling around the face and two large bouquets of hair on each side.
“Isn’t it magnificent?” Anne asked, her dimples deepening. “I had the wig made.”
“But why? Where will you wear it?” Michael asked. She made him think of women dressed in period costumes at Sturbridge Village and Williamsburg. He’d seen waitresses dressed that way at the 1964 World’s Fair.
“I’m wearing it now, chéri,” Anne said. “What a silly question. I shall wear it to the party.”
Suddenly there was a commotion behind the partition blocking the Salle from tourists. A very small and wiry man, dressed in a tailored black suit, burst through.
“Mademoiselle Dumas!” he said angrily, catching sight of her.
Anne glanced around, as if looking for an escape, then turned to face him. “What do you want?” she asked.
“Give me that dress,” he said.
“It doesn’t belong to you,” she said.
“It belongs